Painting Comics as a “Permanent Commentary on the State of the Arts”*

Abstract

SummaryEduardo Batarda (b. 1943, Coimbra, Portugal) is a Portuguese painter, whose work has, by its particular characteristics, been questioning art history, as well as the relation between art and politics throughout the years, since 1964. I propose to focus particularly in some examples of his paintings from the 1970s when Batarda developed a watercolour technique of saturated colours and refined drawing to make an explicit cumulative figuration akin to underground comics. He used it not only to comment the changing in the art world but in the world itself, namely the political changes in Portugal and the colonial war, as well as foreign policies, mixing all up in layers of multiple readings, and intrinsically connecting art history and politics. The fact that he used comics to do it was a way of mocking the art world with a language that was considered “low”. He also used the watercolour technique consciously for its conventional relegation to a less prestigious realm, and both this technique along wit...