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Citation

Olivera GE (2007) El discurso de la mediatización y de la alineación en el "pop art" de Oscar Masotta. DeSignis, 11, pp. 195-208.

Abstract
This article explores the critical interventions about pop art put forward by Argentine art critic and theorist Oscar Masotta between 1965 and 1967, within the framework of the Instituto Di Tella's aesthetic experimentations and conceptualisations, including its pioneering elaboration of 'mediatization' as a critico-analytical category. The author analyses, in Masotta's critical text, certain rhetorical movements of reversal (and their potential for displacement) within the discursive logics in which it operates: the discourses of alienation and of mediatization. It is thus argued that, according to Masotta, pop art renders visible the fect that both the subject and the object are 'irremediably mediatized'. By bringing the code and the meta-linguistic function to the foreground, pop art displays the objects of reality as primarily symbolic and mediatized. The subject, for her/his part, reveals her/himself as mediatized by the 'inside-out mask' and by her/his 'inherence' or 'envelopmment' within sign systems. By reversing the very structure of the mask (from so-called 'primitive' cultures), pop art stages an impass within social processes of identification, thus producing a decentering effect on the subject: it is precisely there - it is argued - where pop art's de-alienating potential lies.    

Keywords
pop art; mediatization; Argentine art criticism; visual art criticism as discourse; visual semiotics; alienation

Journal
DeSignis: Volume 11