Humlab HITS with José Vicente Martín Martínez and Miguel Lorente, artists and researchers at Miguel Hernández University, Spain.
Tracing a Framework for Art Research: Cases and Experiences from a Spanish Context
The master’s degree and, especially, doctoral studies in art are a lively challenge for the academic art institutions throughout the world, not only because of their content and methodology, but also because of the way these programs trace the relationships between art practice and research production. From this material ground we can analyze, better than from more essential questions, how to develop the possibilities of art research in order to extract some insights and conclusions for our discipline, our institutions, the scholarly community and the society.
Thus, we shall explore the current Spanish context and its historical evolution as a means to explore the different scenarios where art practice might be considered and recognized as research. In this seminar we will discuss about the different systems and criteria for recognizing research in art, the status of the artist/researcher in the educational field and its resemblances and differences with the artist working for the art market, the estimation of the output of their research throughout their production in the field of specialized reviews, books, exhibitions, the transference of knowledge from the art research institutions to the rest of the society, etc.
José Vicente Martín Martínez and Miguel Lorente Boyer are artists, PhD professors and researchers at Miguel Hernández University, Spain. José Vicente Martín Martínez is the Chair of painting, dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Altea and director of the Master’s in Project and Research in Art. Miguel Lorente has a long career as an artist and he is one of the most significant specialist in the Spanish impressionist painter, Joaquin Sorolla, which was the topic of his PhD thesis.
About Miguel Lorente
Miguel Lorente has worked primarily in two and three dimensions, often incorporating written texts as part of his works. Lorente has also used other formats such as video, performance, mail art and others. Among the constant features of his work as an artist is the attention paid to scientific knowledge and the questioning of the figure of the artist as inherited by romanticism. In this context, the frequency of his works in collaboration and the repeated use of pseudonyms can be understood.
Currently, Lorente is developing a project in the form of a comic or graphic novel whose theme is the analysis of the concept of time from a philosophical, technological and scientific perspective. This project, as it is his habit, is open to the participation of guests or spontaneous collaborators.
As a researcher he has studied the movements of European and Spanish art from romanticism to the first quarter of the twentieth century; paying particular attention to the manner, routes and rates of transmission of the innovative features of painting. His PhD thesis is dedicated to the European -mostly French- influences in Spanish painting at the end of the 19th century, and specifically in the career of the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923).
In his exhibitions, Lorente has explored the use of electric motors in small appliances (Motores eléctricos, 1998); a condensed history of visual culture (Visión 1656-ca. 1966, 2006); the activities of Marcel Duchamp as a chess player and promoter (Duchamp-Ajedrez, 1994); or a summary of the world (Mundo, 1995), among other subjects.
About José Vicente Martín Martínez
José Vicente Martín Martínez career as an artist has focused on a figurative painting which aims to question the nature of reality. This media that have been expanding progressively to other ones such as sculpture, drawing or installation.
His artwork has been shown in several solo exhibitions, highlighting Galería Buades in Madrid (1995); Club Diario Levante of Valencia (The flight is worth it, 1993); University in Valencia (The shrinking man, 1995); Gallery 4 in Valencia (Custom-made lies, 1998); Muelle 27 Gallery in Madrid (World of J.V. Marjov, 2003) and the Espai d’Art “La Llotgeta” in Valencia (Homunculum and demons, 2006), The Exhibition hall of the Fish Market of Alicante, (Memorial, 2017) and the University of Umea, Sweden (The end of the biography, 2018). Some of the collective exhibitions he has participated are: Muestra de Arte Joven (Madrid, 1993), Muelle de Levante (Valencia, 1994 / Madrid, 1995), Plural. The Spanish art in the 21st century (Madrid, 2002) or Imago Mundi. Spain Identity / Modernity. Luciano Benetton Collection (Málaga, Spain / Venecia, Italy, 2015), among many others.
His artworks are in collections such as Art Contemporary “La General” in Granada, Collection of contemporary art “City of Pamplona” or the collection of the Regional Congress of Valencia, among others. Likewise, critics of art and theoreticians as Inocencio Galindo, Juan Manuel Bonet, J.R. Danvila, Fernando Huici, Román de la Calle, Miguel Fernández-Cid, Horacio Fernández or Vicente Jarque have written about his artwork.
He is a founding member of the collective The Mutual Society of Art (www.lamutuaartistica.com).
In the academic field, he began his career with a scholarship for training researchers (1992-1996), which concluded with the doctoral thesis Portraits of Fernando Arrabal. Between commissioned painting and the theory of the Panic group (1996), directed by Inocencio Galindo Mateo. This research was materialized in the exhibition Visions of Fernando Arrabal, on the relationship of the playwright born in Melilla with painting, organized by the Consortium of Valencian Museums, that was exhibited in the cities of Valencia, Madrid, Alicante, Zaragoza and Lisbon during 1999 and 2000.
He has focused his research on media archaeology during the las years, publishing the articles: Martín Martínez, J.V. and Luna Lozano, S., 2019. “The synthetic face. Representation strategies for the artificial portrait”. Artnodes, (23). DOI: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i23.3186 and y Martín Martínez, J.V. and Albalate Gauchía, I., 2018. “Looking inside the box. The Diorama viewer with selective focus as a practical case of media archaeology”. Artnodes, (21). DOI: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i21.3187. Moreover, he is the autor of the the national patent Diorama viewer with selective focus (number: 201100414, dated 16/6/2014)
He has written the books History as a model in German Romanticism (Spanish) (Miguel Hernández University of Elche, 2014) and Athene in the campus. An approach to Fine Arts considered as a university discipline (Spanish) (Polytechnic University of Valencia, 2007; with Inocencio Galindo) and he is the editor, with Inocencio Galindo, of the book Image and knowledge. Artistic tradition and technological innovation (Polytechnic University of Valencia, 2008).
He is a professor and a researcher at Miguel Hernández University (Spain) from 2000 until now, being, from 2019, Chair of Painting.
He has been the curator of the Plan Z exhibition Project, from 2016 until now, organized by the Altea Council and the Miguel Hernández University.
He has held several administrative positions, being Dean of the Fine Arts School of Altea form 2008 until now. He has been the director of the Master in Art Project and Research (Miguel Hernández University) from 2014 until now.
