Abstract

DIAZ JARAMILLO, José Abelardo. Art at the service of the people: the work of Clemencia Lucena seen from the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2019, vol.42, n.1, pp.271-291. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v42n1.66631.

The article analyzes the work of painter Clemencia Lucena on the basis of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social fields. Its working hypothesis is that the artist from Manizales sought to subvert the dynamics that legitimized the field of art in Colombia during the 1960s and 1970s through her creative production and critical practice. It argues that in order to achieve that objective, Clemencia Lucena resorted to diverse strategies in order to question the definition of art thought to be legitimate in the artistic field and to debate the contents of works, as well as their production processes and their commercial projection.

Taking into account the country's political and cultural turmoil during that period, the article highlights that Clemencia Lucena's defense of the political function of art in society was connected with her militancy in the leftist party, Movimiento Obrero Independiente y Revolucionario (MUIR), which advocated socialist realism with respect to art and the role of artists. Additionally, it suggests that Lucena's artistic proposal could be described as a sort of heretical critique within the field of painting in the 60s and 70s, which places her work in what Pierre Bourdieu calls emerging avant-garde.

Nevertheless, the article affirms that both Lucena's criticism and her own artistic proposal run counter to the process of autonomy that Bourdieu saw as an essential requirement to guarantee the independence of the artistic field, since they deny the laws and the logic that should govern the field by trying to subordinate those dynamics to the disputes of the political field.

Keywords : artistic field; Clemencia Lucena; Colombia; emerging avant-garde; socialist realism.

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