José Emilio BURUCUA

Research Project

Two posthumous books by Italo Calvino (Lezioni americane: sei proposte per il prossimo millennio, 1988, Perché leggere i classici, 1991) reassure us about the interest and validity that could be found in an attempt to construct an aesthetic history of six useful ideas for the 21st century, namely: humanity, finitude, beauty, truth, forgiveness and hope. The aim is to situate the development of each idea using aesthetic objects – images produced by painting, photography or cinema, the sounds of music, the sounds and meanings of poetry - within the framework of western cultures, without excluding the possibility of exploring other horizons of civilization, such as Hindustani and African, given the presence of colleagues specialised in these fields at the Institute. For each idea, we have chosen a specific field of aesthetic production (but this is liable to change as the project progresses): images for humanity and truth, poetry for finitude and forgiveness, and music for beauty and hope. Initial goals: to put together exhibitions over a three-year period on three of the six ideas selected and to gather critiques, coincidences or refutations which colleagues have been able to draw from their own fields of study, i.e. sociological theory and practice, anthropology, philosophical systems and old and new branches of historiography.

Biography

Born in 1946 in Buenos Aires, José Emilio BURUCUA obtained a PhD in History of Arts from Buenos Aires University in 1985. He was full Professor of Modern History In the same institution from 1986 until 2004. From April 2001 to April 2004, he was Director of the Institute of Theory and History of the Arts "Julio E. Payró" (School of Philosophy, Buenos Aires University). From 2004 onwards, he has been full professor of Problems of Cultural History at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM), where he led the Master’s Program of Art History from 2004 to 2008. He has published books and papers on the history of perspective, the historical relationships among images, ideas, techniques and materials of colonial painting in South America.
Visiting professor at the universities of Oviedo (Spain) and Cagliari (Italy), Directeur d’Études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1999, 2000, 2005), Winter Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, California) in 2006, Gastwissenschaftler at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz during winter 2007, visiting professor at the Collège de France (2008, 2013), Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in the academic year 2012-2013 and Fellow at the IAS-Nantes in 2015-2016. He is a member of the National Academy of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires. He is the director of Eadem utraque Europa, a magazine published by the Centre for Cultural and Intellectual History "Edith Stein" at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM). On 8th November 2016 he also became a member of the National Academy of History (Argentina).