The discursive analysis of body representation: a critical, realistic and embodied overview

Abstract

The aim of this article is to acknowledge the implications of addressing the visual representation of the body from a critical and realistic discursive perspective. Besides allowing the identification of the mechanisms for the artist’s name and work-recognition this perspective has allowed the study of body representation as language and as a common system of meanings, not just giving attention to the forms of connection between the image and speech or written text, but also to the rules, practices and social relations that produced and governed them. Also it has permitted interrogation of and reflection on the relation between two important categories used in the analysis of self-representation, that is, the relation between‘artist’s identity’ and ‘work’s identity’ in the cases of Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder, whose works are characterized and recognized by the specific use of the artists body figures.