Difficulties of Difference

Abstract

This article examines the persistent conceptual and structural obstacles that pluralism faces within the Euro-American art system, particularly in the fields of criticism, art history, and aesthetics. The study situates its inquiry within broader debates around the politics of difference and the decolonization of knowledge, aiming to understand how theoretical frameworks historically incorporated plurality in ways that ultimately neutralize its disruptive potential. Methodologically, the article combines philosophical analysis with a critical rereading of canonical texts by figures such as Clement Greenberg and Arthur Danto, juxtaposed with insights from Indigenous, Black, and decolonial thinkers. The findings suggest that pluralism, while rhetorically embraced, is frequently rendered compatible with a teleological and universalizing narrative that privileges Western aesthetic trajectories. As a result, forms of difference are tolerated only insofar as they can be translated into hegemonic terms. The article concludes by advocating for critical practices that sustain rather than resolve difference, calling for frameworks capable of embracing dissonance, incommensurability, and multiple ontologies without collapsing them into sameness. In doing so, it repositions the contemporary struggle over meaning in art not as a problem to be overcome, but as a necessary symptom of epistemic plurality.

Ever since I wrote the conclusion of my doctoral thesis, at the end of 2013, a little over a decade ago, I have been obsessed with the issue of plurality. I had just concluded that the aesthetic distance—the relationship between the public and the work of art—characteristic of the affinity—or lack thereof—with contemporary artistic production might have different reasons; but; for at least a century; at the heart of the problem was the fact that plurality is an inherent quality of artistic output. This did not prevent countless theorists and artists from blaming plurality and the supposedly “recent” inability to know what art is or how to talk about it as the source of what has been called the contemporary Art quarrel (see Jimenez 2005). I love this word: quarrel! I love it because it translates very well the complaints, lamentations, and claims made in many manifestos, theories, prognoses, end-of-life statements, events, and exhibits since the beginning of the 20th century that attempt to “settle” the issue, making much ado about it, sometimes, without any progress.

Among the best-known attempts, that of the famous United States Art critic Clement Greenberg is the most emblematic. His theory of flatness assumes abstract art as the teleological destiny and raison d’être of painting itself. The critic decided within himself that art could not distance itself from this. He was in an uproar when avant-garde movements of the 1950s and 70s sprang up. He gave several lectures and wrote texts, published in major newspapers and magazines, categorically stating that this was not “the future of art” (see Greenberg 1961). Naturally, as we know, artists continued to produce art however they wanted or thought necessary, without any concern about Greenberg’s decision. This did not intimidate the critic; between the 1960s and 1980s, he remained firm in his conviction (see Greenberg 1999), even though he had lost space in the United Statesian Art Criticism scene. I confess to admiring the character’s self-esteem. When, in the 1980s, artists resumed producing abstract paintings again, the critic returned to the scene, stating he had been “right all along” (see Greenberg 1993). He died in 1994, still convinced of his prognosis, to my knowledge. Several artists have used abstraction as a technique since the so-called advent of contemporary art; however, nearly all of them had nothing to do with the assumptions of “flatness” Greenberg had championed.

While the irony of Greenberg’s stance is evident in hindsight, it must be acknowledged that his theories were deeply influential. That is why, rather than merely bordering on the absurd, this anecdote sets the stage for the problem of plurality. At this point, I use the term “problem” before “plurality” because it has been treated this way by most attempts to approach the subject. I emphasize the significance of the word “problem” because, in recent years, it may have lost its critical force by becoming synonymous with “question”. However, I focus on its quality as a hindrance, impediment, or obstacle. This is how plurality is treated, as something needing to be “fixed” or overcome.

During the 20th century, “problems” and quarrels, in the context of European-United Statesian1 Visual Art theory, became the go-to adjectives of plurality. In other words, not only is it a tradition (after all, it is over a hundred years old), but the problem never ceased to be a pending issue, despite the fact artists continue to create without being intimidated by it. Plurality has become a kind of unpaid debt for theories and institutions, to be periodically tackled, even though, on the surface, there is a feeling that the problem has finally been put to rest. Exhibition spaces and museums now display an enormous diversity of works, a far cry from the categories present in Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia of 1751, which defines Art as “painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry”, or from the qualities of “beauty” and “the sublime” appearing throughout texts of Aesthetics from the 18th century.

Despite this apparent armistice, theories, critiques, histories, and aesthetics are still just taking stray shots at the unsinkable dreadnought of plurality. General Art History books have practically disappeared; the same compendiums produced until the 1980s, for the most part, are still present on the shelves. Due to the absence of more recent references, they continue to make up the syllabus of academic courses and furnish the shelves of dilettantes2. In them, the problem of plurality in art from the end of the 19th century and the avant-gardes of the early 20th century is addressed (up until the emergence of Fauvism), creating a sequential narrative of canonized issues, each duly linked to the other in a herdlike procession of profane cows. After Fauvism, each avant-garde was transformed into a separate history of art, occupying the same space as the previous movements but sharing the roster with parallel histories, unrelated to each other yet continuing to be linked to the problems of the canon. This strategy has safeguarded the model, besieging plurality within the teleological encirclement of the narrative.

The most recent books cleverly cut around the issue, place, or medium while trying to sidestep the problem of plurality without exactly being successful. Books on the history of photography, engraving, or books on specific regions and themes are among the most common. However, unfortunately, this strategy does not fix the problem; it just leaves it aside while reproducing the same canonical model in specific snippets3. There are very few exceptions of history books that intend to cover the entirety of art, but to our surprise, someone is always willing to accept the challenge. The most famous example is the book “Art since 1960” by Michael Archer4. In the many pages of this well-written and researched book, the art produced since the 1960s is portrayed in detail, showing different trends and tendencies. He even released a second and third edition, including the most recent artworks. However, to make any sense, it would be necessary to add the toponym “New York” to the title since the story he tells is almost exclusively about the artistic production that took place in that city. The presumption of universality could perhaps be justified if he treated the city as the axis of the Western canon of the period and if the legion of foreign artists visiting the city for exactly that goal had been included, but alas, that was not the case.

The Aesthetics and Philosophies of Art were not intimidated by their lack of progress, continuing to produce totalizing theories based on the nineteenth-century model. The history of theories following modern and contemporary artistic productions can be summarized in three categories: those arguing with Kant, those arguing with Hegel, and those arguing with both. In other words, the plurality quarrel has become an intrinsic matter of artistic production, and all solutions sought and found so far aim to either broaden or reposition canonical theories, which ends up maintaining the closed and well-established model created in the eighteenth century. This is the case of the famous “Kant after Duchamp” (De Duve 1996) by Thierry de Duve and “After the End of Art” (A. C. Danto 1997) by Arthur Danto, to name a few remarkable contenders. Most of the exceptions to this rule belong to analytical philosophy. Although those are theories that do not discuss Kant or Hegel, their great whale is to find an answer to what art is, which, in the end, sustains the unity and status quo of the High Art institution5.

In Art Criticism, the scenario is not much different. Hushed murmurs endorse its demise, while the hopeful proclaim a crisis, which ironically began immediately after its emergence (or at least its most recent emergence). Since Kant, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kant 2016), affirmed the autonomy of art, arguing that each work sets its own rules for experience, the void regarding how this will be achieved has remained open. After all, Kant created modern Art Criticism but did not provide the tools to carry out the task. This has transformed the barely concluded two centuries separating us from the publication of the third Critique into a sequence of crisis proclamations. Their cause may differ, but the problems provoking them do not: how can art criticism be done without a basis to organize and direct its work? How can we avoid succumbing to prescriptive models without descending into a free-for-all? How can we respect the rules a work sets and still make heads or tails of everything to be seen as art? To make matters worse, the crisis of Criticism in the 20th century becomes mixed up with the crisis of Art, as these questions become even thornier with artworks perfectly suited for proclaimers of the apocalypse. In the hall of fame, Duchamp continues reigning as champion by a wide margin in the category “Art is over”. After him, many other artists and works came along, and with the evolving changes in what was understood as art came subsequent crises of Criticism. I wrote a piece on the subject myself to avoid being left out (see my article Oliveira 2019). Unlike Aesthetics and Art Philosophy, which have the option of remaining abstract and picking appropriate examples for the theory they intend to produce, Art Criticism works directly with experience and, thus, cannot escape contradiction. In Criticism, it is impossible to maintain the boundaries between theory and production. Crisis proclamations are escape valves for the Art system because when experience demands change and basic theories maintain the same model, a crisis is set up. If art is plural, but the way we talk about it is not, then a crisis ensues. Try to fathom a crisis that begins at conception yet only seems to worsen; it is like a perpetual adolescence. It is no wonder that gossipers prefer its extinction; what is the use of a tool that does not seem to fit the problem for which it was designed? However, sadly, Art Criticism insists on existing. In mid-crisis it occupies highly specialized ghettos, having little contact with the public but still fulfilling the inglorious function of keeping the nineteenth-century model of Art alive. Its strategies have changed little, despite the complete metamorphosis of its object.

Let us now broaden the lens, moving from structural critiques to the geopolitical distribution of difference in the Art world. This disheartening scenario reveals a telling pattern: plurality becomes a problem only when the dominant art system is the target of debate, that is, when the assumptions of High Art are questioned by the artists producing this same type of art. I would bet that if modernism had not unfolded as a process of constant refutation of the academic canon, this “problem” would only have emerged after pressure from decolonial and anti-racist demands in the second half of the 20th century. European-United-Statesian Art History, theory, and criticism have established well-defined spaces for art from different peoples and places6. When I use the word “different”, it is because that is all it needs to be, from a “different” people or place. If the production is not located in a specific latitude and longitude, it is defined as “different”. It does not fit the model. And when it does, it functions as an exception that proves the rule, a singular case used to demonstrate that the system is, allegedly, open. This mechanism of institutional inclusion and exclusion is not exclusive to contemporary narratives of art. Its effects ripple through historiographical traditions as well, particularly in how non-European artistic expressions are framed in dominant narratives. It is no coincidence that much of the theory on the Baroque in Brazil is immersed in the justification or questioning of this manifestation as Baroque art. Such questions only make sense because historiography maintains and replicates the teleological sequence of the European historical narrative in the rest of the world, establishing analogies through temporal or thematic proximity. This is true for all Baroque, Academic Arts, Modernisms, and Contemporary Arts throughout the world, and, at the same time, there are Baroque, Academic Arts, Modernisms, and Contemporary Arts on a global scale.

The strategies used to allot difference are mainly adjectives and hierarchies, usually working hand in hand. Plurality does not require the classification of thought, production, and exhibition of and about works of art as long as they occupy a different category and museum. This merely requires minor adjustments to achieve and the opening of another field of research—it is the opportunity of a lifetime knocking on your door! A new field organized by reproducing the same scheme of canonical art, without allowing differences to coexist, and, when they do exist, they are valued negatively for what they lack, not for what they have. Indigenous arts are excellent examples of this. They are not treated in the pages of Art Theory and History books, are not the target of Criticism, nor belong to the same museums and exhibition spaces as canonical art, with few exceptions. One powerful counterexample to this institutional logic of exclusion can be found in the insurgent intervention of Denilson Baniwa at the 2018 São Paulo Biennial. In the performance (Baniwa 2019)7, the artist channeled the entity jaguar-shaman to hack one of the most important art institutions/exhibits in the global South. In an unauthorized manner, as hacking should be, the artist invades the exhibit and exploits one of its vulnerabilities: the appropriation of objects and images from different Indigenous peoples without these same peoples or even other Indigenous peoples being among the participants in the exhibit. Singing and dancing ritually, duly embodying a jaguar-shaman, Baniwa walks through the corridors of the Biennial building, in Ibirapuera Park, leaving flowers to all the Indigenous objects/images present. When he finishes greeting those following him, the artist buys a book entitled “Brief History of Art” and scatters its pages in the air while questioning both the use of Indigenous objects/images and the absence of Indigenous artists in the Bienal and in the pages of the book that he rips into pieces. After more than five hundred years of co-existence between white Latinos and Indigenous people in these lands, their presence is not even recognized or expected. The history of canonical art does not include Indigenous people and yet comfortably settles white artists, with their supposed “objective gaze of whiteness”, in addition to “seeing” for Indigenous peoples and taking their place.

This scenario adds another layer to the problem of plurality. If theories cannot even handle the Western Canon of Art, there is no prospect they will be able to handle other differences. The most impressive part is the resilience of the model. Even with countless questions raised within the correct latitude and longitude, as is the case of feminist art historians and the Black art movement, the problem of plurality continues unaddressed. The last century may be understood as a regime of harm reduction, of containment, where different actors fulfilled the function of expanding the scene of High Art while maintaining the model because change would imply a loss of power and distinction. We can agree it is totally reasonable to have a snow shovel, without any design work, be considered a work of art, but a beaded necklace is going too far.

To illustrate how these structural dynamics operate even in the most celebrated theories of pluralism, I turn to an emblematic figure: Arthur Danto. It has often been said—half-jokingly—that criticizing Arthur Danto is a personal hobby of mine. I insist on returning to him not out of obsession, but because no other figure has so effectively come to represent, across contexts, a supposedly pluralist framework that continues to affirm the canon. This explains why I tackled him in my thesis and personally translated his book with Professor Debora Pazetto. Despite this, over the years I realized his philosophy is a corollary to the nineteenth-century model. This statement, at first, may sound odd, because, as I said, plurality is the main characteristic of what this philosopher calls “post-historical art”, or art made after “the end of Art”. An end marked quite precisely by Andy Warhol’s exhibition at the Stable Gallery in 1964 in New York. The problem is, how can he achieve plurality without his theory being pluralistic? Unfortunately, it is possible, and his form of plurality deceives many people. Danto knew how to read the spirit of the times like few others; his fame and importance are not accidental. He understood the problem, that what we call art is a recent invention founded on institutions and theories, and their maintenance is a universal human quality predicated on broadening the model while maintaining its structure (see Part II: Shiner 2001). His philosophy is one of the most successful proposals for sustaining plurality within European-United-Statesian Art and keeping out, or in its hierarchically appropriate place, the productions of other peoples and places.

To do this, Danto differentiates Art made before 1964 from art made after that moment based on two expressions/concepts: the art world and the meanings incorporated into it. After attending the Andy Warhol exhibit (A. Danto 1964), the philosopher coined the expression “Artworld”. The precise date of birth of the expression coincides with the philosophical problem presented by the exhibit. The existence of indistinguishable objects: artworks visually identical to common objects. This situation, confusing to say the least, demands the differentiation of two categories; otherwise, the pedestal of High Art would instantly melt. After all, if a reasonable difference were not found, art would once again be part of the world of mere mortals; it would reunite with its sisters8, from which it had been separated at birth: the artifact and the craft. Danto did not hesitate to embrace the pedestal with his own hands, and he did so with the expression Artworld, which refers to a process of legitimizing a work as Art based on the place it occupies in the context and history of art. It circumscribes the institutional and theoretical character of what we call Art by differentiating ordinary objects from artworks through the idea that a context of theory is necessary for something to be considered as such. This context keeps Brillo pads in the supermarket and Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box in the gallery, preventing the dreaded paradoxical reunion of siblings separated in the cradle.

The expression “embodied meanings” is a polish to the new pedestal, because it is not enough to assume the existence of a context, an atmosphere of theory, without explaining where it comes from. Lest it become like social media avatars, anyone can create an atmosphere to call their own. The expression distinguishes the Brillo Box from its replica in conception, even though they appear identical, or at least visually, extremely similar. It is a genetic distinction, which means the boxes are not twins separated in the cradle but something like a doppelgänger, an ominous walking double. Quibblers enjoy pointing out that Warhol’s boxes are silkscreens on plywood, not real boxes, which would make them, theoretically, more akin to what we call Art than artifacts. Sadly, for them, there would be no difference to the theory we are discussing if Warhol had taken the supermarket box and placed it in the gallery; the difference only exists for doing criticism about the artist’s work. This is because both fall under the umbrella of “embodied meanings”, which presupposes that a work of art is a reflexive creation that requires being transformed into a body; that is, there is a specific peculiarity to how an artist embodies an idea. This transubstantiation of an idea into a body is part of the causal history of work. In this case, whether the metamorphosis into a body occurs through the appropriation of the supermarket box itself or through copying the design, this is the artist’s choice (see A. C. Danto 1981). Just like doppelgängers, Brillo boxes appear to be the same but are essentially very different things from each other. Let us face it, this definition of “embodied meanings” is quite convincing.

By maintaining the difference, albeit theoretical, between the two Brillo Boxes, the philosopher maintains the nineteenth-century distinction between art, artifact, and craft, which constituted the difference between what would be art and other forms of creativity, which, in turn, would become “lesser forms”. This distinction makes Art a superior and autonomous product, separate from life, and elevates European creative production over all others in the world. Truly all of them, because no other people, to my knowledge, have decided to displace a constitutive (see Descola 2021) characteristic of their lifeworld. The cherry on the cake is the connection made by Danto between the works of art after the Brillo Box, which he describes as post-historical, and the metaphysical and teleological model of traditional Art Theory and History. This atmosphere of theory that makes something part of the Art World connects contemporary production to tradition because, to be considered Art, it is necessary to dialogue with/refute/question/use the entire arsenal within the repository of traditional or modern art, which, in turn, are duly organized in a well-woven chain, making this trajectory and its figures inescapable. As if there were not enough reasons already, the nineteenth-century model of what I will henceforth call the Artworld comes equipped with a weapon of historical objectification: the teleological construction of narratives, which facilitates the externalization of an organized trajectory, reduces the number of actors, and serves as a didactic reference for those who want to follow it. It is simultaneously an expansion of Diderot and D’Alembert, a solution to the crisis of Art Criticism, and an update of Hegel’s “death of art”. In this way, Danto encloses a space for the visual plurality of artworks while maintaining the nineteenth-century model. It is a plurality with blinders, restricted to the institutional limits of so-called High Art.

I think I have made my case and established multiple reasons to put the philosopher on the stand. After these paragraphs, I can not help but mention that he has fancily claimed himself “the last philosopher of Art” because he would have “solved the problem” (see A. C. Danto 1997, p. 44). If Danto were alive, I would be tempted to ask whether someone has informed him yet. The word “plurality” does not mean what the philosopher thinks it means and allows to exist; his meaning is not even remotely enough to enable us to build art worlds and art theories that do justice to what plural would be. Those expressions should have been coined in the plural to begin with to make any sense. The goal should be the opposite of what Danto has done: it is necessary to expand the number of definitions, not to broaden a definition as if it were a miracle solution, until it is capable, at any cost, of containing everything that exists and will exist, only to keep the high castle of Art standing. After all, everyone knows that castles were not designed to include multiplicities but to wall off supposed aristocracy from the world. The Castle of Art is so solid and well-built that it survived the colonial era, withstanding its constant questioning by Indigenous creativity. It has turned the whole world into apprentices of academic techniques, so eager that the problem of dealing with modern pluralization has been exported and globalized. Statements such as “My son does it too” often refer to drawings/paintings/sculptures that do not respect the rules of geometric perspective (a creation of the Renaissance), drawings made without the rigorous training that this type of technique requires, despite artists questioning this imposition for over a century. The dominant art system, especially so-called Traditional Art, has become the sole reference for a more elaborate type of creativity, imbued by a semi-religious aura, inspiring reverence and awe, and intimidating the general population. Everyone has seen an art exhibit and avoided talking about it because they were not “knowledgeable enough” and did not consider themselves qualified to comment on the experience they had. Speaking in this way, the contradiction appears and brings to light a world with artworks that sometimes are revered just because they are labeled Art. And the experiences that should be the very reason for their existence are constantly repressed. Therefore, the fact that there is a theory that supposedly solves the problem contributes greatly to everything remaining exactly as it is.

It is necessary to emphasize that the apparent timeless existence of High Art, the Artworld, or any other expression or word referring to this alternate universe has the same origin. They are abstractions theoretically designed as Olympian gods: they have an aura of eternity and immutability demanding worship while also being part of the empirical world, made manifest by liabilities and historicity. There is a paragraph by the French anthropologist Philippe Descola that explains this ambiguity very well:

One of the merits of anthropology is that it escapes the idea that the present is eternal, that the world is nothing other than this theater in which we find ourselves today with our way of thinking, our common ideas. But no, that is not the case. There are other ways of thinking about the world and other ways of imagining a future for this world. That is what anthropology allows us to conceive. That is why I do not question sciences, which would be absurd; what I contest is the idea that cosmology that made sciences possible is itself scientific. No, it is not; it is historical, as all cosmologies are.

(Descola 2016, pp. 48–49)

The same thing can be said about the Art world, Art History, and the entire conceptual universe surrounding it. It makes no sense to question Art; that would be absurd, but it makes perfect sense to question the cosmology/ontology it is part of. It is essential to understand that art is not a universal human fact, that it HAS a history, and that this presumption of sovereignty and immutability is part of that history. Art, with a capital “A”, is an institution that keeps Europe, and more recently the United States, duly positioned at the top of power relations, a subtle and intellectual power projecting the appearance of existing throughout antiquity. The 18th-century antiquity? No, the antiquity imagined by Europe in the curation of its past transformed Greece into the classic in the fabrication of an origin and a path culminating in its greatness. Its museums and its books tell this story. Therefore, any attempt to speak or promote diversity must begin from this starting point.

It must start from the realization that plurality is neither a symptom nor a consequence of any changes or, as has become common more recently, of globalization. If we pay attention, globalized art is the standardization of art; it is the elimination of differences in favor of a model that serves a global market based on local particularities that provoke curiosity9. It is the performance of a “world concert of nations”, paraphrasing the Brazilian poet and theorist Mário de Andrade (see Andrade 1974). After all, a concert is the harmonic conjunction of a series of different musical instruments; it requires a well-orchestrated or planned arrangement between diverse components to achieve a goal. I think this goal was very well achieved. Plurality is at the root of the problem, the motivation for the idea of the Art World, although with a meaning completely different than what Arthur Danto alleged. The Art world is the univocity with the appearance of plurality. A world in which differences coexist through the creation and maintenance of power by a calculated process of hierarchization and classification designed to keep diversity in its proper place. So, how do we actually give way to plurality? How can we allow differences to coexist? How do we diversify the menu of references?

Attempting to outline a few potential answers to these questions, I will begin by establishing what plurality is not. When we do not know what something is or should be, we can often say what it is not. Using this premise as a guide, I have identified some mistaken or short-sighted understandings on the subject, listed below:

First: Plurality is not a symptom or a consequence. It is at the root of what I like to call the culture of ranking10. Comparison in the Roman world is a rhetorical exercise of putting things in parallel to understand their similarities and differences and define the superiority of one over the other. In other words, comparatism is the deliberative exercise of managing differences through hierarchization. This exercise was recovered during the Renaissance due to the experience of otherness brought by the domination of the Americas, using comparison as a tool to engender the superiority of those who compare. The fiction of universality constructed by European modernity is built by the opposition of singularities; that is, systematic and hierarchical comparatism became a project, a program, especially after the emergence of anthropology in the 19th century (see Descola 2019). Pluralism is not the destination; it is a departure from European culture. This exported model is not very plural.

Second: The systematic and evaluative classification of the arts of other peoples and different places as the periphery of the boundaries of history, or outside the limits of Art, is not pluralism. It is a tacit agreement with a value scale established by Europe since the Renaissance. The contemporary name for this type of attitude is ethnocentrism11.

Third: Plurality is not a quality that was born in art with modernism; that is, it is not a symptom of choices made by artists that offend the sensibilities of many and, perhaps, could not have been done. This type of understanding presupposes the idea that it would be possible to “go back” and “fix” the problem, something that many people who are not initiated in the jargon of art believe. For example, the work The Most Wanted Paintings by the duo Komar and Melamid12, is an excellent illustration of how the academic model of the arts was still a reference for various peoples in the 1990s. This likely has not changed much. As previously mentioned, modernism is the moment plurality broke the limits of the High Arts from within, not when it came into existence.

Fourth: Plurality is not the inclusion of different perspectives because this movement encloses diversity into part of the model in which they will be inserted. It does not enable the existence of multiplicity; it only fabricates an illusion of multiplicity.

Fifth: Plurality should not be seen as something to overcome, nor should it be quarreled over or against. This only happens because we are up to our necks in a univocal ontology where difference, if and when it exists, is tortured until it confesses to the Spanish Inquisition to be a part of the one true reference. Just as there is not necessarily a single god (or any), it makes no sense whatsoever to say there is a common universal prime mover to justify the idea that all peoples produce a specific form of High Art.

After establishing this short list of mistaken understandings, often well-intentioned, about plurality, I will begin to outline an attempt to answer the questions I have raised.

The word “plurality” comes from the Latin “pluralitas, pluralitatis”, and it means a “state of being multiple”. It presupposes the coexistence of several voices, without them having to conform to a dominant ontology. Given this scenario presented, I believe that enabling the existence of plurality requires the multiplication of narratives about Art, that is, with the construction of stories that have diversity as the destination of their departure, not the arrival to a pre-established model. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie points the compass in that direction when she says, “Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity”. (Adichie 2019, p. 32).

It is precisely about those many stories that I defend the multiplicity of narratives. My defense of multiple narratives in and about art stems from a commitment to dismantling the hegemonic framework of Western tradition, which has long upheld a single, normative model of artistic meaning. This model prevents the existence of anything that does not conform to it and, automatically, is not assimilated, at least in part, by the dominant one. The coexistence of stories/narratives does not require the absolute relativization of societal references, as many have already advocated and still advocate for, especially because multiplication does not imply the enclosure of singularities into part of universality. It is about letting them speak from where they stand. Multiple ways of telling a story may coexist if they accept to look at the world from the place occupied by each of these singularities and not from a hegemonic “objectivity” that supposedly reveals “the truth” according to curated events or works of art.

In the world of art, the best place to start making this happen is through Art Criticism, since it is criticism that deals directly with experience, and it is criticism that gives standing to works and artists by transforming them into narratives: verbal, written, visual, curatorial, auditory, etc. Art history, theory, or philosophy cannot be produced without Criticism, in the same way that without ethnography, anthropology cannot really exist. There is no theory, no history, no philosophy of art that does not emerge, in some form, from criticism, from an encounter between a person and an artwork, between a situated body and a cultural production. The problem of aesthetic distance with which I started this paper is based on the inadequacy of narratives about Art and the intimidation of the public that this inadequacy generates. Narratives will never multiply if people who frequent art spaces do not begin to talk/write/imagine their own experiences if they do not stop being intimidated by the “supposed” grandeur and incommensurability of what they are witnessing.

Critical engagement is the zero degree of art discourse. Even the most abstract aesthetics or the most systematized historiographies begin with someone looking, reading, interpreting, and judging. Criticism is not commentary; it is originary narrative. Without it, art would not even enter the realm of the sayable. This is why plural narratives are not only desirable but necessary: they are what allow art to circulate outside the narrow corridor of the canon. Yet defending multiplicity is about shifting the conditions under which meaning is produced in the first place. The act of criticism, understood as a situated and embodied encounter, is where these shifts begin. It is through critical acts, anchored in specific geographies, histories, and epistemologies, that alternative narratives emerge and unsettle dominant frames. Thus, any claim to multiplicity that ignores the positionality of who speaks, writes, curates, or historicizes risks reinforcing the very univocal structures it purports to resist.

This situatedness is not a theoretical abstraction. It is material, embodied, and political, as Glória Anzaldúa says: we write, read, and see the world with our feet planted on the ground; that is, our positioning constitutes our point of view; therefore, embodying our thoughts is the real challenge (Anzaldúa 2021, p. 144). Especially to an ontology in which the body has been transformed into its greatest obstacle. As a Latin American woman, I cannot tell the story of my country from a “discovery” point of view—despite the dismal fact that it is still taught that way in schools throughout Brazil to this very day. From Brazil’s point of view, there was no discovery, but domination, a finding at most. After all, discovery requires not knowing, and this perspective of history can only be told by Europe. Talking about discovery implies moving to the dominant point of view, the accepted coordinates, while erasing history from the perspective of those who inhabited the same lands I inhabit today (what came to be called Brazil was not an empty lot waiting to be occupied, despite many books promoting this notion) (see Barriendos 2011). “Discovery” implies speaking as if my latitude and longitude and my belonging can disregard many things that existed before. It means valuing everything that existed before the Europeans set foot on these lands as hierarchically less important. A multiplication of narratives implies the (very simple) idea that it is possible for individuals/groups/societies/peoples to coexist without one having to transform into the other.

I may be accused of relativism, and I defend myself against the accusation I indicted myself with. The multiplication of narratives will not create an atmosphere of “anything goes”, because it is already reality. In a world where narratives do not adapt to the art being made, the result is a crisis, as I have already argued. The feeling that “anything goes” is present even for those who faithfully attend art spaces. My defense of the plural production of narratives aims to address this impression by creating an environment in which dissent, discussion, and analysis can bring back a feeling of belonging to the public, allowing them to see themselves as capable of constructing narratives about their own experiences around artworks, since the idea is that narratives start from the place from which they speak and not from the manual of Art History.

A compelling initiative of multiplying narratives is the “Projeto Afro” [Afro Project] (projetoafro.com), a digital platform launched in 2020 by Deri Andrade, a Black Brazilian curator. It maps and documents over 150 Black Brazilian artists and gathers biographies, interviews, academic texts, and cultural programming. This project provides not only visibility but also a structure for critical engagement that emerges from historically marginalized perspectives, since Art History in Brazil is “A Place of Whites”, as I argued in a previous paper (Oliveira 2023). Instead of waiting for canonical validation, “Projeto Afro” offers its own criteria of relevance, authorship, and significance. It is a form of discursive sovereignty: an initiative that challenges the monopoly of institutional art history by creating a living, expanding archive of narratives authored by and about Black artists in Brazil. The platform itself functions as a curatorial, pedagogical, and critical model grounded in multiplicity, not in the mere inclusion of difference, but in the production of alternative genealogies. Such projects do not merely support artistic production; they are themselves acts of criticism by constructing new frames of visibility and criteria of relevance. They perform the very kind of narrative production that a pluralistic critique demands.

In a 1967 text titled “A Bienal e a Fenomenologia” [The Biennial and Phenomenology], Vilém Flusser (Flusser 1967) describes how visitors to the São Paulo Biennial traverse the 30,000 square meters of exhibition space wearing what he calls a “cotton cape”. This cape is made of ready-made theories, interpretive models, and pre-digested concepts —tools designed not to engage the artworks but to shield oneself from them. According to Flusser, the visitor enters and leaves unchanged. No artwork manages to pierce the membrane. Nothing is allowed to shift perception or demand reflection. The cape preserves the model; it ensures the experience remains harmless, digestible, and untouched by the world. What I am calling here the multiplication of narratives is the opposite gesture. It is not about adding more explanatory layers to the artwork but about creating the conditions for it to actually act on the viewer, on language, and on meaning itself. It is an invitation to suspend the safety devices. To hold interpretation in abeyance. Not to remain silent, but to allow meaning to emerge from implication, from friction, from the uncertainty of not knowing in advance what one is supposed to find.

Criticism, in this sense, is not a form of protection; it is a site of exposure. It does not begin by naming, but by experimenting. It does not aim to resolve difference but to dwell in it. Multiplying narratives means refusing the neutrality of the cape. It means assuming that there is no universal key, no singular horizon, no interpretive safety net that can translate the complexity of experience without remainder. This does not lead to relativism but to responsibility. To attend to art not as a closed text, but as a world that might help to reconfigure the one we live in.