Synthesis, purification and spectral remains: the surrealist and inventionist image in mid-century Argentine magazines

Abstract

In a 1929 essay, Walter Benjamin postulated the need to end metaphor and comparison in order for the image to reach a revolutionary power, and pointed to surrealism as the movement that had been given that task. This invites us to think about the image problem in other avant-garde experiences, such as mid-century Argentine invention and surrealism. Both experiences were characterized by the rejection of the logic of metaphorical representation in art and literature; and although they differed in procedures, they agreed on the desire to achieve a total image, an image without gaps. Likewise, it is finally possible to account for a moment of suspension of the totality. The notion of “uncreated reality”, devised by Maurice Blanchot in an essay in the Buenos Aires poetry magazine, where he imagined a totality of the lack, is related to the reflections of the inventor poet Edgar Bayley about the common in art. In both cases, it is about alternative ways of living with the spectralities of art that the images of total aspiration sought to conjure up. Keywords: surrealism; inventionism;