• Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Raphus Press
Bibliophage

Paulo de cantos vision

3/7/2015

0 Comments

 
Some curious mechanisms and tricks developed by the Modern Art allowed the reemergence of the polygraph character – the artist/scientist who tries to conquer various matters of Spirit and Form available on the known and unexplored connections between Culture and Nature territories. In general, this figure is usually represented by names such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Athanasius Kircher and Emanuel Swedenborg. The polygraphic view of the universe requires a singular displacement from some concrete problem (usually technological in nature) to more abstract layers of Culture, involving language and cognition: such displacement is the work of a polygraph complex flyover and flux which marks the language limits and possibilities, even when the "theorizing" side (since inception in multiple areas of knowledge necessarily leads to a continuous effort to theorizing and justification) shows absurd, outdated or invalid aspects. Essential to the Renaissance spirit, the polygraph reappears in the Twentieth Century incarnated by figures like the Italian Luigi Russolo, the Russian Velimir Khlebnikov, the Argentine Xul Solar or the Portuguese teacher, editor, graphic, philanthropist, philologist Paulo de Cantos (1872-1979). A contemporary of Portuguese modernists like Fernando Pessoa, Cantos built a work based on the imaginative dissemination of Science in books like Astrarium (1940) or O Homem Máquina (1930-36). But, in Cantos, the imagination always exceeds the momentum of systematic dissemination of Science and History in its atrocious or beneficial consequences or constructions, by the use of a creative typographic images and text recreations from edifying volumes by scientists and philosophers.

The "cantian" work – as it is known by its new researchers – invisible and ignored for long time, now beginning to be discovered by young Portuguese designers, delighted by the creative use of typographical and editorial elements in all the weird books published by Cantos. However, the original poetic language designed in complex configurations created by Cantos still await systematic analysis.

Below, pictures of books Astrarium and Adagios/Maxims (1946), taken from articles on websites Montag and The Ressabiator. An interesting video produced and published by the magazine Público, addressing initiatives about rediscovery Paulo de Cantos works, can be seen here.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Alcebiades Diniz

    Arcana Bibliotheca

    Archives

    January 2021
    August 2020
    July 2020
    December 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015

    Categories

    All
    Avant Gardism
    Avant-gardism
    Comics
    Editions
    Egaeus
    Exegesis
    Ex Occidente
    Gallimard
    Imaginary Cinema
    Infra Noir
    Infra-Noir
    Interview
    Patreon
    Poetry
    Raphus Press
    Sol Negro
    Swan River Press
    Tartarus
    Tartarus Press
    Theory
    Zagava

    RSS Feed

    Bibliofagia
    Patreon
    Raphus Press

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.