The Great Art History

​

Gustavo Speridião works in a wide range of media including photography, film, and collages and drawings with words and pictures atop existing media, which playfully intervene in the appropriated imagery. At Parasophia, he presents The Great ARt History, which is made by scrawling words and images on top of The Great LIFE Photographers, a compendium of photographs from LIFE magazine. Through additions ranging from simple visual jokes to doodles inviting complex interpretations, Speridião transforms the iconic 20th-century scenes into a separate, fictional "great" history of art. This is not only an ironic take on capital-lettered History and Art, or on politics and society, but also a critique of the way we interpret photographs, one that piquantly dismantles all sorts of calcified clichés.

A Japanese-language edition has been produced for Parasophia in addition to the English, Portuguese, and French editions.

 

(The Great Art History, 2005-15)