Representações do livro na pintura: práticas de leituras evocadas

Abstract

Just as the book materializes the thought to a written text, the painting reflects the ways of interaction and the perception of society. A painting could present the reading ways from different readers by depicting the handling and storing of the many foundations from which the book has been through as well as the context in which it is inserted. Thus, by trying to comprehend the reading practices in different periods and places, a descriptive and exploratory research was made with the general aim of investigating the representation of the book figure in painting, considering its materiality and the reading practices that it evokes. This study is based on a historical approach of the reading and the book by the works of Roger Chartier, bringing into materiality what he calls "cultural practice", that is, taking in consideration the book inside a sociocultural context. The research corpus comprises 11 pictures indicating the paintings from artists of different historical periods and artistic movements. After the assembling of the images, the selection of the works were made by correlating them with the reading practices and then making an analysis based on the selected literature. The assembling of the images took place in november, 2018. An overview regarding the kind of image that would be used for the framing of research was made with the purpose of correlating the reading practices with the pictures that would be analyzed. The observation was the main analytic tool, which was centered specially in the stances and gestures in the moment of reading and the artistic movement of the selected point in history, also considering the individual’s gender matters depicted in the artwork. Categories of analysis were formulated to show those reading practices, such as: silent/lonely reading, reading out loud and accompanied reading. The research results indicate that the analyzed pictures reflects the reading practices of their epoch. By those informations, it is concluded that the historical context was preponderant in defining the practices and reading manners. The characters portrayed on the painting made visible the society in which they belonged, making possible to ponder why such gestures were put in practice on that occasion, generating, through observation, a sequence of assumptions regarding the work of art, the book and the reading mood depicted by the paintings.