Exercise of Power

by Szirtes, George; Pacheco, Ana Maria

• ISBN13: 9780853318279
• ISBN10: 0853318271
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Independent Pub Group

Summary

Exercise of Power traces the career of Ana Maria Pacheco, a remarkable sculptor-painter-printmaker, from her origins and education in Brazil, through her arrival in England as a British Council scholar at the Slade in 1973, and her development over the next twenty-five years into one of the outstanding figurative artists of her time, crowned by her residency at the National Gallery, London in 1999.The book explores the strands of the Baroque, the magical and the humane in her imagery and relates these to the culture of post-colonial Brazil as well as to the visual language of power and potency in Europe. At a time when most contemporary artists shy away from literature and myth, Pacheco meets them head on and draws sustenance from the fields of reference they provide.By following the progress of her imagination through the various media in which she works, the book reveals the monumentality of Pacheco's vision, and highlights the streams of visual narrative that make her such a unique and imposing figure, one capable of uniting the sensibility of South America with that of Western Europe.George Szirtesis a poet, critic and translator who has won various major prizes for his books, the most recent of which are The Budapest File and An English Apocalypse. His original training was as an artist.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	7	(2)
Introduction	9	(2)
Origins	11	(2)
From Brazil: cannibals and missionaries	13	(8)
London: exercise of power	21	(14)
The first cycle: powers and graces	35	(12)
The second cycle: sacred spaces	47	(41)
Notes	88	(1)
Appendices	89	(4)
Select bibliography	93	(2)
Index	95