A brief reminder that the fourth seminar of our 2022 online Research Seminar Series will take place today at 6.00 PM, UK time.
Dr. Maite Barragán, Assistant Professor, (Albright College), Surrealism and Essentialism in Giménez Caballero’s Esencia de Verbena
This paper presents how Esencia de verbena also used aesthetic choices to convey an ambiguous political message that become clear when considering how the short was exhibited upon a national and international stage. References to contemporary aesthetics befit the film’s intended audience composed of the attendees of the 1930 avant-garde International Film Congress celebrated in Brussels. Esencia de verbena elevates the fairs, characterized by their combination of religious devotion with sensuous appetites, to signifiers of Spain as a Surrealist nation. Giménez Caballero reassigns meanings to historical monuments and anachronistic traditions and aligns them to the subversion and eroticism appreciated by Surrealists. Thus, the film’s aesthetics imbued Spanish difference with avant-garde relevance.
The session will be moderated by Piers Baker-Bates, chair of ARTES
Register here: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=i9hQcmhLKUW-RNWaLYpvlNMF-qNhnXNCmAShgOHLsKdUREU0M0RJTjAzSUpIVlFaTzZWRlQzSlQwSy4u
The seminar series has been jointly organised by the Zurbarán Centre and the ARTES Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group in association with the Embassy of Spain and the Instituto Cervantes.
The event is free and open to all. Please click here for the full programme and more information on the seminar series.
ARTES 