Evanescence Time in Modern Plastic Art - ua

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Fudan Journal of the Humanities andSocial Sciences ISSN 1674-0750 Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci.DOI 10.1007/s40647-020-00291-6

Evanescence: Time in Modern Plastic Art

Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel & ÁngelEnrique Carretero Pasín

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Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Scienceshttps://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-020-00291-6

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ORIGINAL PAPER


Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel1 · Ángel Enrique Carretero Pasín2

Received: 30 July 2020 / Accepted: 8 August 2020 © Fudan University 2020

AbstractThe Article follows the trail of Max Weber’s comprehensive sociology and uses the hermeneutic and iconological analysis methods applied to significant contemporary plastic art works (painting and sculpture) which are representative of modern and late modern art. Starting from these theoretical and methodological bases, it pursues three specific objectives: (a) to analyze the construction of Time in plastic art, (b) to verify how this theme has evolved in artistic practices from the first modernity to the second and (c) to verify the way in which the complementary visual language the conceptual of contemporary sociological theory. In this regard, our paper pro-vides evidence that the selected works prioritize a kind of temporality determined by the logic of capitalist industrial modernity. It likewise becomes obvious that time—focused on an accelerated and instantaneous omnipresent—lacks both an origin and a telos; it has neither a past nor a future and, in parallel, a gap has opened between the time of natural life and the artificial one, as well as between space and time, which is only transiently bridged at the imaginary level of art. Finally, the experi-ence of time has been emptied, in such a way that the latter has lost some of its solid-ity and its sense of permanence, while the contingent, the fleeting and the ephemeral now occupy in its place.

Keywords Evanescent time · Plastic art · Iconological analysis · Social hermeneutic · Social sciences

* Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel [email protected]

Ángel Enrique Carretero Pasín [email protected]

1 University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain2 University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Author's personal copy

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1522-5918

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2498-1291

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s40647-020-00291-6&domain=pdf

J. A. Roche Cárcel, Á. E. Carretero Pasín

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1 Introduction: Theoretical and Methodological Foundations and Objectives

As this article will hopefully prove, western modern plastic art (painting and sculp-ture) offers powerful images which are not only significant but also representative of time conception, and which have an ontological, ethical, political, esthetic, and sociological scope. And it does so by supplying irreplaceable information about the construction of temporality and about the various ways in which that temporality influences society. It additionally permits to check how this vision has progressed during the two stages of modernity—i.e., modern and late modern, simple or reflex-ive—(Lash 2007, pp. 13–29).

Therefore, this essay seeks to achieve three essential goals: (1) providing a con-ceptual map for the social construction of time, according to what has been estab-lished by Social Sciences, and unveiling its most important categories and concepts too; (2) verifying how it has developed throughout both stages of modernity; and (3) analyzing and interpreting how it has become integrated into modern and late mod-ern artistic practices, for the purpose of verifying whether they constitute a reflec-tion of social cosmovision or a construction thereof.

Our efforts to achieve the objectives described above were supported on the fol-lowing theoretical and methodological foundations. First and foremost, our research basically stems from a Weberian approach to our discipline, i.e., from Comprehen-sive or Interpretive Sociology (Weber 2006, pp. 13, 43–4 and 172; González García 1992, p. 37; 1998, p. 208), according to which both the social world and the relation-ships that it generates are meaningful. However, this by no means implies that the latter is exclusively positive or that it does not express the “evil” or, in our case, the concern or uncertainty which results from the vision of modern space. Anyhow, sig-nificance is the information that sociologists work with, and the one which—thanks to the concepts of “correspondence in meaning” or “collective affinities”—ena-bles them to find the common links between the different cognitive dimensions—esthetic, ethical, economic, political, religious, and social—that modernity has fragmented, thus recomposing the sense, the contemporary “cosmovision” (Muñoz López 2001, p. 23), and more specifically, the temporal category which defines it and—as will be seen below—devastates it. To be more precise, an attempt will be made to identify the general correspondences existing between the conception of time offered by plastic art and the one which characterizes modern society.

The aforementioned Weberian sociological theory is complemented with two methodologies. The first one, the “heuristic or interpretive method” originated in hermeneutics, has proved to be a highly useful science for comprehensive Sociol-ogy, insofar as interpretation arises as its main problem (Ricoeur 2008, p. 39). It is indeed based on a philosophical reflection—which has a sociological scope, in our view—about the comprehension experience, as well as on the axial role that the interpretation of humans’ behavior plays in their relationship with the world; in fact, what social hermeneutics interprets is the things themselves—albeit seen in their own context. The aim sought more accurately consists in find-ing the deep keys of artistic images, or expressed differently, in revealing their


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inner sense from the external speech or ideological discourse (Grondin 2014, pp. 10–1 and 43–107). Hence why its object is not language, but a text—an image, we might add—which never has an autonomous nature, as it is contextualized (Beltrán 2016, pp. 3–4), this contextualization precisely constituting the key for a sociologist.

The choice of such a theoretical-methodological framework—that of symbolic hermeneutics aimed at analyzing the art work—implies assuming a gnoseological premise by virtue of which the meaning of human creation forms, framed within a cultural horizon, cannot be explained but only understood (Dilthey 1944, pp. 71–77). In this sense, the methodological emphasis placed on this comprehensive approach reveals the conviction that experiencing art would open the doors to access a type of truth which cannot be expressed through the usual methodological canons (Gadamer 1977, pp. 23–27). What is more, relying on the symbolic sphere would suggest that the content of the representation to which the work of art refers goes beyond the domain of objectivity and would consequently betray the fruitlessness of its knowledge constrained as a mirror of nature (Rorty 1995). Quite the opposite, it ought to be admitted that this representative content nearly always turns out to be ineffable, and that it leads toward an objectively absent and necessarily open sense (Durand 2007, pp. 9–25)—which in turn harbors the potential for an interpretive plurality around it (Ricoeur 2003, pp. 17–18). During the last few decades, a variety of incursions have been made within a hermeneutics-based course around the deci-phering of time frames Panofsky (1972, p. 15; 2014, pp. 45–48)—the most impor-tant ones are collected here.

Nonetheless, the need still existed to decipher it from an iconographic type of hermeneutics applied to certain renowned works in modern art. This contribution is not only going to fill this gap, but also to simultaneously introduce methodical ways to unveil the spatial codes which are fundamental in late modernity.

The second methodology that will be used here consists in the “iconological” or “iconographic” analysis, originally developed by E. Panofsky, who states in his works Studies on Iconology and Meaning in the Visual Arts that it has three sig-nification levels: the first one describes the elements which shape the work, so to speak the rationale of the image, i.e., how the different elements shaping it—char-acters, objects, landscapes, actions, gestures, dialogues…—relate to one another; the emphasis on the second level is placed on a careful observation of symbolic values; and the third one sets itself the goal of reaching the intrinsic meaning that goes beyond the artist’s conscious will. This last meaning is defined “as a unify-ing principle which simultaneously explains the visible manifestation and its intel-ligible meaning, determining even how the visible fact takes shape”; to which must be added—according to Panofsky—that this level pursues the objective of finding meanings in the depth of the unconscious. In other words, addressing it will only be possible through research and the support of documents and sources closely linked to the work and to the artist—and, for me, also to the time that artist lives in. Therefore, under the rationality of an image lies its logos—its discourse—or to put it in another way, the ideology advocated by the image in question. Following Van Dijk’s postulates, ideology is regarded here as a system of ideas, values or precepts which organize or legitimize the group’s actions. Discourse in turn appears as the



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social action and interaction mode located inside social contexts, which means that both the discourse and its mental dimensions (its meanings, for instance) are framed within social situations and structures (Van Dijk 1998, pp. 16–19).

This method has been inherited by Sociology, which owns a long tradition in its implementation (González García 1998, pp. 23–43)—although probably not enough is known about it. The method was certainly received from the Warburg School by A. Weber—M. Weber’s brother—and subsequently utilized by K. Mannheim—in what he refers to as “the documentary method”—(Barboza 2005, pp. 348–351), by P. Sorokin—who examined thousands of artworks—(Harrington 2004, p. 68), by P. Bourdieu—privately rather than publicly—(Barboza 2006, pp. 391–414), by Nor-bert Elías—moving the analysis from images to words—. It has also been found lately among sociologists in whose books on different topics artistic works are ana-lyzed to exemplify it (Le Breton 2016; de Singly 2016; Bude 2017; Sennet 2006, 2014).

The most outstanding of all—and worthy of special interest in our opinion—is “the documentary method” employed by K. Mannheim (Barboza 2006, pp. 348–351), an exemplary method when it comes to analyzing image in Sociology. After all, this method guides the sociologist’s interest toward the social informa-tion supplied by images, by regarding them as “documents of an emotional attitude specific to the period or the society in which the image in question was produced” and as proofs of the “singularity that defines a particular social group or histori-cal period.” Furthermore, according to Mannheim, the documentary interpretation method—the same as in Panofsky—includes three sense levels: objective (the repre-sentation of things or a situation); expressive (the author’s intention; the only sense which differs from the one described by Panofsky); and documentary (a specific conception of the world) (Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

It clearly follows from the above that Mannheim’s documentary method is in tune with the iconological analysis, and their coincidence could be summarized in the interaction existing between three reality levels: the world-society (people, the

Fig. 1 Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. 80.3 cm × 60.3 cm (31.6 in × 23.75 in). Oil paint. Photo: Google Arts & Culture


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Fig. 2 Robert Delaunay, Endless Rhythm, 1934. Tate Liverpool. 1619 × 1302 mm Oil paint on canvas. Photo: Google sites

Fig. 3 Giovanni Anselmo, Untitled, 1968. Georges Pompidou Center, Paris, France. Photo: UnDo.net

Fig. 4 Claude Monet. Impression, Sunrise, 1873. Musée Marmottan Monet. Paris. Oil on canvas. 48 cm × 63 cm (18.9 in × 24.8 in). Photo: Wikidata



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objects around them, and the space where they manage in life); the work; and the artist’s intention. These three levels will help us analyze the seven selected works which, in our view,1 are sufficiently significant as well as representative of modern and late modern plastic art.

In short, the iconological analysis of modern art works looks for the meaning that they conceal with regard to the conception of time, ultimately seeking to transform them into social documents, taking into account both the actual image and its con-text, along with the artist’s intention. The artistic work revealed by means of icono-logical analysis—or the documentary method—thus provides sociological and dis-cursive data which express a hidden, ontological, political, esthetic, and sociological scope.

Fig. 5 Henri Matisse, Bathers by the River, 1909–1910. The Art Institute of Chicago. Oil on canvas. 260 × 392 cm (102 1/2 × 154 3/16 in.). Photo: WikiArt.org

Fig. 6 Richard Serra, One Ton Prop (House of Cards), 1969. MOMA. Lead antimony, four plates. Each plate 48 × 48 × 1″ (122 × 122 × 2.5 cm). Photo: Moma. Org

1 Not in vain, these works often appear in contemporary art manuals.


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On the basis of these theoretical and methodological foundations, and pursuing the objectives mentioned above, our article has consequently been structured around two broad sections, respectively dedicated to: (a) vanishing time seen from Social Sciences; and (b) time in modern and late modern plastic art. These two sections are in turn subdivided into several subsections each: temporality: a socio-cultural construction, the path toward the configuration of modern temporality and transfor-mations of temporality within the context of late modernity (regarding the first part); and, (in relation to the second), vanishing time in plastic art, and the inseparability of space and time in visual art. It all will be preceded by an introduction and subse-quently completed with some conclusions.

2 Vanishing Time Seen From Social Sciences

2.1 Temporality: A Socio‑cultural Construction

Let us start from a well-known principle, namely: social time is both a historical construction that depends of the prerogatives arising in each type of society and an objectivized form of some shared meanings (Berger and Luckmann 1986, pp. 74–91). There is indeed a time of nature, the time governed without constraints by the inexorable patterns of biology, with its endogenous laws and rhythms. Multiple temporalities of a social nature overlap—as a sort of second nature—this natural time, though, which allow the members of a society to give sense to their reality and to interpret it, these temporalities arising not only as key constituent parts of their culture but also as decisive normative elements which additionally contribute to integrating that culture (Lasén 1998, pp XV–XVII).

From the legacy transmitted by Durkheimian sociology, it is our conviction that the synchronicity of social times represents a sine qua non condition to maintain

Fig. 7 Richard Serra, Installation, The matter of time, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Torqued ellipses I, II, IV, V, VI, 1996–99), Double torqued ellipses I, II, III, 1997–99) and Snake (1996). Acero patinable. Photo: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa



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a group that responds to the need to endow itself with a set of common—ritual-ized, albeit conventional—reference points around which all collective activities may be simultaneously aligned (Durkheim 1982, pp. 8–17). The way in which a particular society chronologically subdivides the calendar reveals a social synthesis which frames and envelops that society, thus institutionalizing an objective—and in essence arbitrary—framework for time representation that permits to translate the temporarily shared subjective experience. This framework is familiar with the perio-dization of astral or natural movements, but, most significantly, it is one on which the delivery of reality of mana, of the sacred, flies over everyday time (Hubert 1990, pp. 177–206). Something else deserves to be highlighted in our opinion: the quintes-sence of the social sphere responds to the way in which the latter exploits its link with time, to how—in an excellent definition—it addresses the two-dimensionality woven between cronos and kairós, as a unity within difference; between how the former devours its objects placing them in a situation of successive movement and the former provides them with a temporal meaning when they are perceived and experienced (Valencia 2007, p. 103). It actually seems symptomatic that the roles of social coordination and integration traditionally associated with time management have been delegated to monarchs and especially to priests throughout history (Elias 2000, pp. 64–67); hence why it is legitimate to admit that, in addition to being a symbolic representation which determines the behavior of social realities, it works as a mechanism for the exercise of power and control over the lives of individuals and groups.

2.2 The Path Toward the Configuration of Modern Temporality

In archaic societies, perfectly adapted to nature rhythms, a clear-cut spatial–tempo-ral line existed between the recording of profane time and that of the sacred sphere (Eliade 1965, pp. 63–100). These social formations staged a ritual gestuality aimed at evoking and updating a primeval (sacred) past which gave an archetypal signifi-cance to the everyday (profane) event. It was an act of periodical consecration to the parameters of a sacred time condensed in the immemorial universe of myth, coupled with a cyclical version of time assembled with an eternal return of the same, by means of which the collective body becomes re-created and re-generated at regu-lar intervals. The metaphorical differentiation between a profane time and a sacred one will survive in postmodern societies, albeit accepting that the introduction of a Hebrew eschatological cosmovision, incorporated into Christianity by Joachim of Fiore and with a peculiar sharpness by Augustine of Hippo, will move the cycli-cal consideration of time—paradigmatic in the Greek world—away from social centrality.

In another respect, taking the double heuristic level established by C. Casto-riadis (1989, pp. 77–80) between “imaginary time” and “identitary time” as a reference allowed us to clear up the keys that would explain the evolution of tem-porality in postmodern societies (Carretero 2003, pp. 149–160). On the one hand, it is worth highlighting that modern time will be inseparable from a conception of history where the central idea of progress prevails. According to it, the flow of


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history would be predetermined by a telos, by a future expectation, that would fill present events with meaning, additionally keeping the uncertainty demon under control. The idea of progress, forged within the framework of the western cul-tural accord in the second half of the 18th century, will be underpinned by the conception that the successive historical stages mankind has gone through entail an advance and an improvement for it, and the responsibility for the compliance with this program exclusively relies on the prominent role assumed by human intervention on the world (Nisbet 1996, pp. 17–26). The aim—on the basis of human activity—is to conceive the future, by definition, as an inexorably more perfect phase—with higher levels of fulfillment and emancipation—than the past. A recycled vision about the expectation of a Judeo-Christian-rooted “final judg-ment,” about the eschatology that seeks to provide the field of historicity with unity and unilaterality—though forced to materialize in a secularized scenario (Löwith 1973, p. 217 and ff.; Koselleck 1993, pp. 21–40). Enthroning the idea of progress led modernity to focus on speeding up the definitive encounter with the ultimate end of history, thereby quickening time. The immediacy of the pre-sent will thus become tensioned by a salvific future vector. In fact, the mark of historical linearity unveiled during the Middle Ages will result in the conquest of an immanent redeeming future, irreversibly located at the end of historical evo-lution, a yearning to evade the pressure of historicity, to abolish the “terror of history” (Eliade 2000, p. 135 and ff.), and to suspend and transcend the profane temporality that archaic societies used to short-circuit through a ritual reencoun-ter with the memory of a mythical past.

Modernity will additionally dislocate the natural articulation between time and space which characterized premodern societies, through the coupling of the former with the rotation in the calendar fixed by natural cycles and the farm work based on leaving the land fallow that prevailed during the heyday of feudalism (Duby 1999, pp. 36–43), which eventually put it at odds with that articulation. That is why a feeling arose at the end of the Middle Ages—when the idea of an irreversible time finally came to be accepted—which, being attached to the ancient order about to be consummated, assumes an obsession with death, the result of a non-return, oblivion, and nostalgia of a cyclical time (Debord 1999, p. 126). Modernity is thus going to shape a rationalization of temporality subject to an objective, quantifiable, and meas-urable magnitude, outlined as a standardized, unitary, and homogenized formula to calculate time that will overlap its qualitative nature inherent to a situational context. This way of segmenting time over space, used as a variable of dependent magnitude in physical–mathematical science will arise—in the hands of the incipient bourgeoi-sie—as an unequivocal social time pattern. It is the time incubated in the secluded and highly methodical life of Benedictine monasticism which, after going out of the ecclesiastical institution, will now firstly cross the limits of sacred time and then, some centuries later, will very accurately regulate and govern the automation required by the taylorist industrial system (Mumford 1994, pp. 29–31). Moreover, Christendom—more worried about eternity than about the fleetingness of time, and in charge of organizing chronology throughout most of the Middle Ages—distances itself from the concern about fixing a scrupulous measurement of time. Between the 12th and 13th centuries, a proto-bourgeoisie formed by merchants had to resort



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to an objective measurement of time seeking to improve the development of their commercial activities, ridding themselves from the temporality determined by the Church until then—and now seen as useless. In the 14th century, Italy adopted the clock as the secular machinery that will automatically regulate time from then on, thus depriving bell towers of their role in this respect (Le Goff 2004, pp. 127–128).

It likewise deserves to be highlighted that this interest in overrating an arithmeti-cal objectivity of time will be the counterpoint which feeds and nurtures the philoso-phy of history supported on the idea of progress. What is more, it will help extend it, since the channel to implement the progressive ideology is going to require a translation and treatment not only of time but also of objectivized things in general, in a transposition of the episteme forged with Galilean science. In the end, this mod-ulation of institutionalized time, as an axis around which the social group’s func-tioning in unison revolves, will not only end up “unanchored” from space (Giddens 1993, pp. 32–38) but also appropriate the idiosyncrasy of its logics, straining them and submitting them to its control. This will trigger a situation of discipline and servitude within the constellation of multiple temporalities—that create “multiple realities” (Schutz 1974, pp. 197–238)—emanated from the heterogeneous plexuses where social life is randomly made and remade. And that following the dictum of a univocal time, emptied from quality and memory, thus favoring the opening of a gap between the time which characterizes the prose of life (of a subjective, qual-itative nature)—the time of durée—and the artificiality of objective, quantitative, and impersonal time that would have been adopted as a model reference to space (Bergson 1999, pp. 61–102; Halbwachs 1997, pp. 143–192). The aforesaid emptying constitutes a mandate imposed by the external, uniform, and mechanical synchroni-zation demanded by the production processes arisen after the emergence of the capi-talist production system, where the essence of goods will only be conceived in terms of abstract and universal value, regardless of their qualitative nature (Marx 2014, pp. 41–46), through an attempt to transfer this regulation of time to any dimension of the social sphere and a consequent reification of intersubjective relationships (Sim-mel 1988, p. 570 and ff.).

2.3 Transformations of Temporality in Late Modernity

This characterizing synopsis of time in late modernity reveals a phenomenon of dis-possession and sequestration of our existence within time. Albeit gestated and devel-oped throughout the Middle Ages, such a phenomenon will reinforce some nuclear features of its physiognomy, additionally reworking the alignment of other of its risks in late modernity. It is the reign of a vanishing time, where the latter becomes dissolved in a sequential accumulation of snapshots, in the immediacy of several specific moments, without a leitmotiv which can internally bring them together and tie them, being able to serve as a transmission belt between past and future with a stopover in the present. The process that Z. Bauman catalogues as the passage from “heavy” to “light” modernity—once time has previously managed to annihi-late space—attests a suicide of time caused by a cult of the snapshot as a social ideal (Bauman 2003, pp. 122–138). If something accurately defines this evanescence


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of time it is simultaneously the metaphors of contingency and evolution, together with its correlate—uncertainty—taken to paroxysm. As for the first one, N. Luh-mann (1996) provides a solid theoretical apparatus to address it, stressing that the development of modern society, governed by a growing functional differentiation, has favored an mismatch between the potential horizon of expectations and factual reality, insofar as this society’s evolution would have multiplied the options avail-able within its action scope. After accumulating a high degree of optionality, it all was going to be one way, but it might as well have been different. If the future con-sequently admits endless possibilities, it is now up to individuals to make the future come true and accomplish all those possibilities. This in turn triggers a “contraction of the present” projected over their personal identity (Beriain 2008, pp. 160), since the present will definitely make an attempt to complete as huge a number of activi-ties as possible in the least possible time. And regarding the second one, it would need to be deciphered as an effect inherent to the internal dynamics which governs capitalist commercial production, in which whatever aspect of social experience comes to be subject to an incessant change, to a submission to volatility, to novelty, which ends up with the consolidation of an “eternity of the transitory” (Roche 2009, p. 107). A more detailed description about the profiles for the drawing of this tempo-rality will be offered later on through three interconnected dimensions:

A) The idiosyncrasy of this time is closely related to the fall into decline of the progressive approach to philosophy of history. Due to the crisis of the modern met-anarratives and ideologies marked by an emancipating interest, stressed ad nauseam by the postmodern discourse (Lyotard 1994, pp. 63–88), the expectation of an even-tual historical liberation will disappear from the spectrum of societies, a transvestite redeeming vector pointed at the future vanishing into thin air (Marramao 1989, pp. 80–127). In this sense, the crisis of modernity might be reinterpreted as a crisis of its time imaginary.

Nonetheless, the disappearance of this expectation originally harbored in the modern vision of historical temporality will keep its continuation intact: the entire control over social life in the hands of a universal, objective measure of time. There-fore, the temporal experience of late modern societies, skeptical and dissociated from a telos, and lacking a unitary sense structure focused on the future, will end up in a withdrawal into the immediacy of the present, settling a “messianism of the eternal instant” (Maffesoli 2000, pp. 55–92). An antidote (fallacious or not) to solve—without too many guarantees of success a priori—the absence of a purpose which can unidirectionally galvanize the collective goals and on whose accomplish-ment the possibility for mankind’s improvement or progress largely depends. The aforesaid absence is made worse, though, by a reassessment of the extent to which society as a whole undergoes the coercion exerted by an abstract time which tabu-lates its experience and rejects the significance of other times that form part of the social framework. In short, a series of present times successively enchained without a leitmotiv able to intertwine them which, after emptying their quality from a con-tinuum with the memory of the past and the projection of future, turns into diaboli-cal tyranny (Beriain 2008, p. 188 and ff.).

B) The dissolution of a present time which contains the future will result in the latter being exhausted during the very act of its implementation and, accordingly, in



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the demand for an ipso facto consummation of the consequent present time, follow-ing a hyperbolic sequencing which tends toward infinity. This will lead to an avidity for fleetingness which precipitates an acceleration of time aimed at an indefatigable search for new things that will immediately become old at the very moment when they are consummated. For the most select champions of the look which interrupts modern temporal iconography, that of the flâneur—Ch. Baudelaire (1989, 2004) or Benjamin (1998)—the purgatory, disguised as heaven, urged as a result of the course followed by modernity, is one of euphoria framed within a thirst for nov-elty. As its boomerang effect will arise a feeling of criticism aroused by a perma-nent acceleration subject to the cult of an “omnipresent present” (Beriain 2008, pp. 49–69). Despite the fact that a trace of modern temporality actually survives in the ‘timescape’ of our societies and, although—being meticulous—it would be mislead-ing to certify its demise or definitive dissolution, the truth is that presentism stands out as an undoubtedly differential sign of today’s western societies (Ramos 2014, pp. 166–167). Suffice it to point out that the original meaning of the word ‘mod-ern’ connotes “what has just happened,” “the recent,” with a high popularity among early twentieth-century European intellectual and political circles. Modernity makes acceleration become its essence, albeit now without the leitmotiv represented by an ultimate goal to be reached. It thus enters the crazed dromos of an activity which becomes exhausted in a paroxysmal “anachoresis of celerity,” regarded as a “techni-cal substitute of God” (Beriain 2008, p. 164), in an emptiness intensity experience, in a feeling of apátheia or indifference when faced with the world’s pain linked to time, whose “metaphysical record” will show an entire dislocation of the world’s real spatial/temporal experience, and whose culmination will mean the annihilation of that experience (Virilio 1988, p. 114 and ff.). Expressed differently: late modern societies, stripped of a future promise of eternity in their symbolic universe, rear-range the substance of that promise within the acceleration of their pace, packing as many experiences as possible in the least possible time, even if that means installing a new form of reification through a different use of the time regime (Rosa 2016)—which will find its replica in an art of living based on un bon usage de la lenteur (Sansot 1998).

Otherwise, insofar as collective sense orientations—linked to a futurization of history—collapse, the breeding ground is created for the functional place where the former had become consolidated to be occupied by the mythologies put in the field within the media and advertising strategies fostered by consumer soci-ety (Baudrillard 1970, pp. 301–316). Sense with a capital letter, previously time tensioned toward a goal—whether it is transcendent or recycled in the format of an immanence loaded with a political messianism—becomes fragmented into an itinerant range of microsenses tied to the present, specific and individualized, manufactured by consumer capitalism (Baudrillard 1970, pp. 17–56; Ibáñez 1994, pp. 3–8; 165–185; Alonso 2005, pp. 64–81). As it corresponds to the passage from a social model supported on production and which resorted to corrective and repressive domination toward another social model based on consumption where seduction will prevail and which will boost the promotion of a libidinal circulation linked to the object’s absorption by the sign (Baudrillard 1994, pp. 58–69). The demand for sense is detected, metabolized, and produced in the heart


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of the consumption network itself, forced to be recycled within the limits of this network, appearing readjusted pursuant to the model of a structural set of life ideals incessantly promoted as worthy of being emulated. At the same time, the logic inherent to consumption, where the newest thing instantly and necessarily becomes already old, in accordance with the inescapable imperative of a con-stantly increased production, makes it impossible for the substance shaping sense to remain solid, perennial, and intransigent with the wandering of fashions. This “liquefaction” of sense (Bauman 2003, pp. 21–35) induces the latter to obligato-rily acquire an ontological condition, so to speak, transitory, fleeting, and ephem-eral. However, it also encourages its dramatic exhaustion, its expected and prompt expiry, as well as the replacement by other sense formats, either new or recycled, ready to be consumed. And during this process, individuals will be gripped inside the paradoxical map of an eternal present, in conjunction and faced with an unim-aginable future, after blocking—for their uncertain nature—the expectations of a historical change (Jameson 2000, pp. 70–71).

C) The norm in the construction of subjectivity has been affected by the break-down of a future time horizon and its short-circuiting with the present time. The boom of communication technologies makes mechanical time—that of the clock, aimed at the future—become quasi-anachronistic, thus entering a cultural stage characterized by a complication of the relationship between the present and future time horizons (Adam 2006, pp. 119–126). This has caused a compulsoriness of reduction into shorter periods, with a lesser perspective of distance, of the hori-zon of temporal expectations available for their use by social actors. The future has stopped being a collective goal to pursue a weighed temporality—channeled through a shared participation in a long-term project—to become a challenge related to a tailor-made personal life construction, to the flexible whim of an individualized “survival strategy” (Bauman 2007, p. 133 and ff.), which would have directly influenced the way of structuring subjectivities. The chronology of biographical itineraries is no longer predefined, sequenced, and harmonized in a ritually stressed discontinuity by means of stages, at the mercy of several tra-ditional contexts external to the individual, such as the family or the profession, tying themselves up into diffuse and interwoven spatial–temporal dynamics, and shaping an identitary typology conceived as a sort of ‘do-it-yourself’ (Balandier 1988, p. 168), where it becomes impossible to device a coherent, long-term pro-file thereof (Sennet 2000, pp. 47–78).

Therefore, since someone’s future is written by nobody else but themselves, each person, with their merits and demerits, will be considered exclusively responsible for their labyrinthine fate. With this aim, a plethora of life options to choose from is widened, though none of them with the predictability of a suc-cessful end and all of them with risk as a guest in the potential decisions, the ghost of this risk lurking even in inaction or in its prevention (Luhmann 1996, pp. 157–163). A huge inflation of options presided by the shadow of a contin-gency that the individual is forced to struggle with. Owing to the fact that taking sides for one option ipso facto discards other alternative options, without being in a position to foresee the happy or unhappy fate of none of them and open-ing the door to the uncertainty flood across the social body. Furthermore, the



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restructuring of modern time frames, with the subsequent potential multiplication of choices, promotes the idea that the possibility to implement a number of them should concentrate on a short time interval, fueling the appearance of psycho-pathological conditions associated with states of anxiety, anguish, and depression (Ehrenberg 1998; Beriain 2008, pp. 158–164).

3 Time in Modern and Late Modern Plastic Art

3.1 The Vanishing Time in Plastic Art

On the right part of the composition of this painting, a number of indistinguish-able individuals who form a broad diagonal and are shown with black colors and white points walk along the Parisian boulevard (Kendall 1989, p. 10). On their right, some awnings suggest the presence of shops that these same people come into or go out of. Above the awnings, at least two people can be seen, dressed in a bourgeois style and wearing top hats and elegant black outfits, who watch—as if they were voyeurs—the movement of passers-by and the hustle and bustle of the street and urban life. All of this, together with the fast execution speed (Ureña et al. 2009, p. 84), refers us to the description of the flâneur carried out by Ch. Baudelaire, in The Painter of Modern Life (Baudelaire 2004, pp. 86–87), of the agitated, strolling, con-suming, and hedonistic human type which characterizes the modernity in progress: “… for a passionate observer, it is an immense joy to choose a dwelling in the num-ber, in the undulating ground, in movement, in what is fugitive and infinite.” Thus, the walkers’ psychological indifference, the absence of their individual faces, their anonymity (Martínez Rivas 2009, p. 4), their changing shape (Ureña et al. 2009, p. 85), and their apparent melting into a whole due to their black clothes, suitably describes the consumerist mass that consumes and is consumed, and that destroys the substantial subject. Hence why the line which delimits the bodies stops being necessary, the focus being displaced toward the free, colorful mass that seems to move across the canvas without any restrictions, driven by the energy of industrial modernity and the liberal society, as well as by the progress of laissez faire. Further-more, these bodies are no longer human beings with eyes and mouths and have been transformed into objects2 (Maure 2014, p. 136)—into things where the change value outweighs the use value—which seem to move mechanically, like the carriages traveling by their side.

Added to the above, three large diagonal spatial stripes stand out in the paint-ing: the boulevard with trees and shops along which people are taking a stroll, the central street packed with carriages and the part where the buildings are arranged. The history of painting presents diagonals as symbolizing movement, which is why the whole painting represents the continuous swinging, insofar as human beings, trees—their twisted, leafless branches seem to confirm this mobility—, cars and even the actual façades of buildings, undefined and trembling, are circulating. The

2 F. Léger wrote a text about this in 1948—1990—: “On the human body regarded as an object”.


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same apparently holds true for the eye that gazes and moves to observe every detail of the scene and, anyhow, Monet masterfully captures the modern urban pulse in progress, with its transitoriness, fleetingness, and instantaneity (Ureña et al. 2009, p. 84), with its elusive, fugitive, and evanescent nature (Fiorentino 2009, p. 4) where everything seemingly moves at the pace of the very rapidly produced and consumed goods.

This painting shows a series of superimposed complete or incomplete spheres of different sizes and colors—red, green (with four different darker or lighter hues), sky blue and dark blue, yellow, orange, white, and black. The circles are inserted around a diagonal axis which goes from one end of the canvas to the other, touching two of its four sides, but without exactly occupying the center of the composition—instead, it is located a bit further up toward the left and leaving the right side more open. On the foreground along the diagonal stand out four white and black spheres—smaller than the others—which gradually alternate these colors, both inside and outside them, and always following the axis. The background of the picture appears nei-ther totally flat nor homogeneous, since it is painted in more or less dark beige with green spots; some of the spheres—the green one and the dark blue one—are not completely pure either, since they seem to have several layers of pigment and varied ranges within the same color.

The lines and colors of this abstract painting go beyond the mere formal con-ception, since they express a meaning. This work thus specifically refers us to the rhythm of sphere-shaped plastic elements, a sign of the cosmos rhythm and of the one which characterizes bodily sensations and, in short, of the human being’s life, understood both physically and morally (Roque 2019, pp. 39–41). It likewise depicts the circular management of the look, along with the panoramic extension of the visual field (Rousseau 2002, p. 35), without forgetting that it is associated with the constant movement of (the) circles, to their endless oscillation—as suggested by its title—and with a multiple, simultaneous circularity3 (Sarabia 2003, p. 130). Special attention must be paid in this regard to the spheres on the foreground, which seem to slide on the axis, from top to bottom or vice versa, or to constitute the four succes-sive stages of movement along the diagonal of a single sphere. After it, the other cir-cles apparently show rotation or translation movements, spinning around their axis or carrying out a transit from one side of the painting to another.

Most importantly, the painting represents the rotations and rotations, and the movements and translations of the spheres; or expressed differently, in addition to moving tirelessly, they have a rhythm without a beginning or an end. Certainly, although the observation of it all generates beauty and pleasure, the complete lack of an objective, a purpose or an explanation about the reason why they are agitated gives us food for thought. Therefore, these circles seem to do it for no apparent rea-son, randomly, with no necessity driving it, without any freedom diverting them from their mechanical course, and without them starting from an origin or heading toward a predetermined destination.

3 The same happens in the Tour Eiffel series of paintings (Sarabia 2003).



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It could additionally seem that the omnipotence of this rhythm does not affect the whole canvas, insofar as the spheres adhered to the diagonal axis move with the limits imposed by the latter, to which must be added that the right half of the painting keeps a space not reached by the circles. Nonetheless, some visual gestures contradict this. On the one hand, not even this last area is dominated by a full void, as proven by the diversity of shades and the more or less bright areas which seem to be somehow affected by the energy and the light produced by the spherical move-ment and its effects on the space—the most luminous background zone is precisely located next to the spheres with the brightest colors—light green, yellow, and white. In fact, this can be even more easily seen on the top left, as the green of the circle spreads toward the canvas background.

Ultimately, the endless rhythm—time—evidences its true power will, since it ends up invading the whole canvas space—the axis reaches its walls—and probably what lies beyond it—as suggested by the unfinished spheres which are touching the frame, as if they were going to be completed outside the painting—what is outside the representation, reality itself.

Four essential elements shape this Arte Povera sculpture: (1) a perfectly carved geometric granite block; (2) a fresh lettuce with wide open green leaves; (3) the string which ties that lettuce to the granite; and (4) a white “ash” arranged beside one of the granite sides, exactly the one under the lettuce.

The coherent layout of these elements makes it possible to suitably interpret the piece that the artist has conceived meticulously and with a strong philosophical component. More precisely, we can find four interrelated senses. Firstly, a highly elaborate and up-to-date conception of time (Gamba 2012, p. 36), since the sculp-ture draws a contrast between the long4 superhuman time of the stone carved from the hard granite, which has needed thousands of years to take shape in nature—and which is indifferent too (Moure 1996, p. 20)—and the ephemeral time of the lettuce, which will deteriorate and rot in very few days. Next to these two temporalities, there are also the two temporalities defined by the phenomenological philosopher Blumenberg (2007): the time of the world; and the time of life. After all, we know today that the temporality of the cosmos, of our galaxy, of the land and of life is very long, as opposed to the extremely short human life. Thus, if the ancients correlated human beings’ life to that of seasons and knew that their lives ran parallel to those which characterize the evolution of nature, now the fracture between humans and nature has widened to such an extent that they are only left with an enormous frus-tration: we will have died and, indifferent to that fact, the sun will follow its daily course and the stars will continue shining in the firmament.

Secondly, the essential discordance exhibited by the sculpture between the geo-logical and the biological process (Gamba 2012, p. 36), between the geometric and the organic sphere (Críticos 2001, p. 84), between granite and lettuce, refers us back to the contrast between life (Gamba 2012, p. 37) and death; in fact, as a whole, the

4 A similar idea can be found in his work Three Hundred Million Years, where he uses anthracite, and in which the artist expresses the notion of cycle and renewal, as well as a natural phenomenon which devel-ops over a long time that we humans cannot perceive (Duval-Wingel 1973).


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sculpture looks like a funerary monument with a wreath. Life anyhow appears as something extremely fragile, though (Moure 1996, p. 15), as a thread which may break at any time.

Thirdly, the fact that the lettuce is going to die, which means that the artist will need to replace this vegetable every time he makes an exhibition, and the fact that, if it did not exist, the sculpture would mean quite a different thing, all of this reveals that it is a contingent and ephemeral work, which can stop having this status at any time and which lasts as long as the life of the organic material present in the exhibi-tion continues. It accordingly becomes an expression of future rather than of being (Celant 1968).

Finally, the sculpture arises as an outstanding example of conceptual art, the one which denotes that art works—and the objects included in them—are not only that, since they represent words (Guasch 2002, p. 140), ideas or concepts. In this case, the coherent arrangement of the four elements shaping the sculpture as well as the way in which they are related permit to ascertain the meaning of this work. Should each one of these elements not be placed identically or if it were absent, then such a work of art would not exist.

For that reason, this conceptuality ultimately tells us about the abstraction of con-temporary society, the absence of the body in it, or, at least, the privilege that the mental and conceptual sphere currently enjoys over sensations. And, as a corollary, it lets us know that time shapes an abstract reality rather than a carnal one.

3.2 The Inseparability of Space and Time in Plastic Art

The painting which gave birth to Impressionism allows us to observe a seascape where three small boats—diagonally arranged, a sign of movement in pictorial art (Paz-Agras 2019, p. 26)—with people in them are leaving the port of Le Havre (Muros 2016, p. 1). They are probably going fishing, and they do so at dawn, as suggested by the small red sun in the sky and the trembling glimmer that its image leaves on the water.

All the figurative forms in the painting are chiseled by virtue of the color stain, without any defining and limiting lines, as if color had gotten rid of the line and as though the shape of objects and of the space containing them were built from impre-cision and spontaneity. By way of example, the slight movement of the water in the lower part is modeled with dark, choppy brushstrokes arranged at a certain distance, while the surface of the water near the port is more crystalline and brighter. In this respect, the position of the sun indicates the exact time of day when the former is situated in the sky and whose light projection gradually varies (Bayle 2001, p. 160; Muros 2016, p. 1), managing to overcome the partial shade that the night leaves behind it. The moment, the specific seconds, are thus captured, albeit knowing that a few intervals later, the landscape, its light, and the shape of its objects will no longer be the same, which is why it can be said that the artist has an interest in rescuing the very instant when it all happens, together with the awareness that everything changes. The boats themselves, and their passengers, seem to emerge from the night to travel toward the day, to go out of the port and into the sea; and they do so with a



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slight movement—as suggested by the intermittent brushstrokes which represent the water.

All the strokes in the painting, without any lines, without limits, without defini-tion, ultimately seem to express a brushstroke, and a vanishing and contingent world which “is,” but which will immediately cease to exist.

In this work by Matisse, we can see four bathers inserted in the same number of vertical rectangles which contrast with the horizontality of the canvas. From right to left, one of them has a blue background, the other three respectively having a white, black, and green one. The latter shows the back of a wide-hipped bather, who finds herself in a place with plants and is standing, slightly tilted, naked, with the arms stretched backwards and a head divided by two parallel lines, a sign of her move-ment from top to bottom (Maidagan 2012, p. 233).

The next black-colored rectangle portrays another bather who introduces her knelt leg into the water—hence why her foot does not appear complete—while the other leg, the same as the previous woman’s head, is split (an expression of her mov-ing forward). A “window” comes out of the higher part of her body with a part of it that fulfills the function of bringing her closer to the viewers, since she is placed in an extreme close-up.

In the third vertical white rectangular stripe, there is a woman placed in the oppo-site direction of the other two. Her head is slightly leaning forward and simultane-ously somewhat tilted, and her two hands are similarly arranged, converging as if she were going to enter the water, an impression which becomes strengthened with the juxtaposed lines of her legs, yet again a sign of movement.

The last stripe in blue color shows the body of a woman, whose legs cannot be seen. Her round-shaped face, like that of the previous one, has neither eyes nor ears or a mouth and is inserted, together with the upper part of the body, in a dark rec-tangle. From her oval-shaped face comes out black hair that falls on her shoulders. Her breasts and her navel are strongly marked, and the brown-hued parts of her abdomen and the area under one of her breasts might suggest that her swimsuit is very closely adhered to her body because of the water. However, since not the whole body has the same color, one might think that she is coming in and out of the water, or expressed differently, that some parts of her body are submerged while others are out of the water; and the same applies to her head, which seems to come in and out of the water, as suggested by the contrast between the black background and the white face. Furthermore, the most surprising thing about this figure, and what distin-guishes it from the previous ones, is her bird’s eye view position—as it happens with the snake—an indication of the successive bodily movements in the water: swim-ming, diving into the water, and getting out of it.

The juxtaposed lines of the first three figures, of the plants, and of the snake, as well as the arabesque-shaped lines which are present in three of the rectangles, express the combined rhythm of four different scenes. In this respect, it could first and foremost be said that time—due to Einstein’s influence—has become just another geometric dimension (Maure 2014, p. 132). Thus, although the gen-eral feeling is that the world finds itself in a stage of evolution and is fractured, the arabesques try to fuse the neighboring rectangles. And the space thus becomes


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indissolubly linked to time (Maderuelo 2008: 28); they walk together in a work that includes various narrations, places, and moments.

In sum, the world is broken, and the human being fragmented; only the eye and pictorial imagination can bring the scattered pieces together again.

This sculpture by R. Serra comprises four lead sheets (Llabaca 2010, p. 146) which shape a cube and are placed on the floor of an art gallery or a museum, with-out them being welded (Guasch 2002, p. 47); their upper ends lean on one another instead. White-colored traces of oxidation can be seen on its surface, which makes us think about the passing of time, as well as about the wear and tear and the erosion that time causes even in the hardest and most resistant materials, as is lead; noth-ing can accordingly escape from the almighty lord of time. The way of reuniting the pieces—though apparently safe and stable considering their heavy weight—is fragile (Foster 2001, p. 44) and unstable (Guasch 2002, p. 48), since it resembles a house of cards—the title expresses it like that—where, after you take one card, all the others inevitably fall down on the floor. Therefore, the sculpture wishes to describe the actual fragility of things, along with their contingency, as they are but might not be, which would happen in this case if one of the steel sheets dropped to the floor. There would no longer be a sculpture.

In other words, Serra’s sculpture coherently represents the contrast between the pureness of conception and the contingence of perception (Foster 2001, p. 44), between fragility and stability, and between ephemeral time and the eternal one; and above all, it symbolizes in a highly expressive way the sociological idea according to which “all that is solid vanishes into this air” (Berman 1988).

This sculptural installation by R. Serra exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao comprises 8 pieces of weathering steel with sinuous, spiral, and labyrinthine shapes which visitors can not only see but also walk around, both in its inside and in its outside. They effectively shape spaces with no defined beginning or end, without the possibility to see neither the direction of the trip nor its end, thus generating a perceptive spatial–temporal tour (Arce 2015, pp. 17 and 18) which is experienced in praxis, and not in the objectuality of the sculpture (Llabaca 2010, p. 164).

Throughout this tour, the viewers located inside the space perceive a whole wealth of multiple as well as varied feelings and sensations (Arce 2015, p. 18) rang-ing from anxiety to unease, to an unbalanced state of mind, to rootlessness, and to insecurity. If we add to this that, once inside the circuit, visitors can see neither its beginning nor its end, this makes us wonder where we come from and where we are heading, the possible answers to those questions remaining unknown.

All in all, this whole spatial experience relates to the time-related one. The same as it happens with space, we are faced with multiple or overlapping psychological, emotional, perceptive or esthetic times other than the real one (Llabaca 2010, p. 164). In this sense, as highlighted by the artist himself, “it is a non-narrative, discon-tinuous, fragmented, off-center, and disorienting concept” (Serra 2005).



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4 Conclusions

In accordance to the theoretical and methodological foundations, to the fixed icono-graphical hermeneutics, as well as to the objectives proposed in this article, after the establishment of a conceptual time map following Social Sciences and through the interpretive iconological analysis of seven significant works which are representa-tive of modern and late modern plastic art, it was possible for us to verify that artists reflect a whole range of meaning correspondences between their visions and those of the actual society they belong to.

Consequently, the implicit content converges with the essential postulates of the sociologists who have approached the subject of Time, although it goes further because the foray into the iconographic hermeneutics of these works puts an image to the conceptual theoretical discourses of the sociologists, in a way that visual language complements and enriches, with more emotional and sensitive nuances. Therefore, our discipline begins to overcome a traditional deficit, in that it moves from the essential rationality that structures its origin and turns toward a greater coupling of the emotional and sensitive social plane.

In any case, the following characterizing aspects stand out in this regard:

(1) The prioritization of a temporality subjected to the dictum imposed by the logic of capitalist industrial modernity, where objects and human beings are seen as objectivized entities—eventually transformed into masses—, as goods, stripped from any qualities other than those subsumed within a commercial rationale that is quantitative and abstract at the same time.

(2) The sequestration by modernity of both past and future time reference horizons, and a resulting abandonment of time to a blind and mechanic succession of unconnected instants that lack any purpose whatsoever.

(3) The exposure of an incorrigible gap unveiled and displayed by modernity, then chronically projected, and also accentuated in late modern culture: the one exist-ing between the time of life—that attached to the internal rhythm of nature—and the artificiality of a temporality onto which the former eventually overlaps; to which should be added the short-circuiting of time’s natural link to space, only transiently bridged at the imaginary level of space arts –sculpture and painting.

(4) The volatilization and emotional emptying of the genuine experience of time, by virtue of its yielding to the arbitrary codes of temporal modernity.

(5) The lack of solidity in late modern temporality which permeates the time of life and its subsequent detachment from eternal time, together with the prevalence of a contingency, fleetingness, and an ephemeral nature both of art and of social life.

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Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel is Professor of Sociology of Culture and Arts at the University of Alicante (Spain). Between his last publications they emphasize, like author, Entre el Monte de Apolo y la vid de Dioniso. Naturaleza, Dioses y Sociedad en la arquitectura teatral de la Grecia Antigua (Between the Mount of Apolo and the vine of Dioniso. Nature, Gods and Society in the theatrical architecture of Ancient Greece), Anthropos editorial, Barcelona, 2017 and La Sociedad evanescente, Anthropos, Bar-celona, 2009 (in English The Vanishing Society, Logos Verlag Berlin, 2013); and, as editor, Espacios y tiempos inciertos de la cultura (Space and uncertain times of culture), Anthropos, Barcelona, 2007; La Sociología como una de las Bellas Artes. La influencia del Arte y de la literatura en el pensamiento soci-ológico (Sociology as one of the Fine Arts. The influence of art and literature on sociological thinking), Anthropos, Barcelona, 2012; and Transitions. The fragility of Democracy, Logos Verlag Berlin, 2016. He is the author of numerous articles in national, European, Latin American and North American special-ized journals and coordinator of monographic issues of Spain, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, among which, the Política y Sociedad, Arte y poder (Art and Power), Universidad Complutense, Madrid, nº 46, 2007; of Papers, Revista de Sociología (Papers. Journal of Sociology), Culture and Migrations, Univer-sitat de Barcelona, nº 94, 2009; of Res Publica. Revista de las Ideas Políticas (Res Publica. Magazine of Political Ideas), Transiciones. La fragilidad de la Democracia (Transitions. The fragility of democracy), Universidad Complutense, Madrid, nº 30, year 16, 2013; of Res Publica. Revista de las Ideas Políticas (Res Publica. Magazine of Political Ideas), Cuerpo y poder en la Antigua Grecia (Body and Power in Ancient Greece), Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 2016); Política y Sociedad (Politics and Society), El conocimiento social de los antiguos griegos. En homenaje a Gómez Arboleya (The Social Knowledge of the ancient Greeks. Tribute to Gómez Arboleya), Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 2016; of Culturas (Cultures), Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina, Cinema and society, 2017; and The reasons and emotions of the images / As razões e as emoções das imagens, RBSE Revista Brasileira de Sociologia da Emoção, v. 16, n. 47, Universidade Federal da Paraiba, Brasil, 2017. He has been research coordina-tor of the Culture and Arts area of the ESA (European Sociology Association) and Vice-president of the AESCA (Spanish Association of Sociology of Culture and Arts). He is a member of the FES (Spanish Federation of Sociology) and of the ISA (International Association of Sociology). He has been invited to give lectures, graduate courses or to participate in academic activities, among others, at the National University of the Litoral and the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), at the Pontificia Javeriana in Cali and at the Pontificia Javeriana in Bogotá ( Colombia), at the University of Guanajuato (Mexico), at the Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil), at the University of Gaziantep (Turkey), at the University Paris VII and Paris VIII (France) … He is visiting professor in CUNY (City University of New York). He is currently Co-director of the collection of Social Sciences, Globalizaciones (Globalizations), of the Anthropos publishing house (Barcelona). President of the Sociology of Emotions Committee of the FES (Federación Española de Sociología)



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Ángel Enrique Carretero Pasin Associate Professor in the area of Social Anthropology at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Doctor in Sociology with work: Social Imaginaries and ideological criticism from USC, Diploma of Research Proficiency with work: The reception of Jürgen Habermas to the first Critical Theory (USC). Graduated in Philosophy from the same university. Guest Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center d’Études sur l’Actuele et le Quotidien (CEAQ): Université Paris V (Sorbonne). Full Profes-sor of Philosophy at the IES Rosalía de Castro (Santiago de Compostela). Guest Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Criminology (USC). Professor in the Postgraduate History, Theory and Method in the human and social sciences and in the Master in Youth and Society (USC). Member of the Compostela Group for Social Imaginary Studies (GCEIS) and the USC Research Center on Processes and Practices Culturais Emerxentes (CIPPE). Member of the Center d’Etude sur l’actuel et le Quotidienne of the Uni-versity (Paris V). Spanish coordinator of the Iberoamerican Network for Research on Imaginations and Representations (RIIR). He has published the books: Michel Maffesoli. A nomadic thought (Baía, 2004), Pouvoir et imaginaires sociales (L’Harmattan, 2007), The symbolic universes of contemporary culture (L’Hergué, 2010) and Ideology and Social Imaginary (Erasmus, 2011) and in collaboration Creatividad: Numbers and imaginary (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2015). He has published more than seventy publications among articles in specialized magazines and book collaborations, including: Politics and Society, Spanish Journal of Sociological Research, International Journal of Sociology, Journal of the West, Anthropos, Societes, among others. He has been evaluator of ten specialized magazines both in Spain and abroad. He has taught different Seminars, Colloquia and Conferences, both in Spain and internationally, around his lines of research: Sociological Theory, Sociology of Culture and Sociology of Postmodernity.


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Evanescence Time in Modern Plastic Art - ua