e) Box-object: in these the role of the box is fundamental, creating a space in which the contacts between functional and material objects are established. The box may be closed or not, what’s important is the meaning it has as the bearer of a space different from an everyday space (Joseph Cornell, “Eclipse progresión”, 1962; Arman, “Clic-Clac Rate”, 1960-66; Louise Nevelson, “Composición real V”, 1960).

III. Semantics and Pragmatics of the ‘object’

The aim of an ‘object’ semantics and pragmatics is on the one hand to establish the process through which it becomes a sign and the relation it has with its designata, and on the other hand to delimitate the mechanisms which the artist-creator of ‘objects’ uses in structuring the above in order to persuade the recipient-spectator.

In the “presented-object” the distance between art and life seems to disappear because it emerges from the functional object such as we find it in our everyday use. However, the artistic ‘object’ moves away from its everyday use and turns the functional object into a sign. Through decontextualization, it distances from its first meaning or denotation (“plain” language). We consider a double articulation of sense in everyday objects: a denoted sense that corresponds to the function of that object, and a connoted sense linked to the sensorial and affective field. Advertisement places its emphasis on this last aspect and it’s also the aspect involved in artistic ‘objects’: tactile, visual, and symbolic values. In some way, we can speak of an object metalanguage because the artistic ‘objects’ are in some cases a reflection upon everyday objects. This possibility of reflecting upon the system of objects from within the system of arts offers the advantage of starting from a material charged with life and signification. The ‘object’ is an assemblage of materials provided with sense. It isn’t the formless matter, the indeterminate marble block but the “urinal” (“Fountain”, Duchamp), and the meanings denoted and connoted by its existence prior to entering the world of the work. Starting from the functional object directly involves the individual that employs it and who now becomes the recipient of a message to be decoded. The ‘object’ incorporates objects to the artistic field that we would have taken for granted before: in the ‘object’ we rediscover objects.

The artist-creator makes use of the structuring of his persuasion message (rhetorical figures). The objective is to illuminate a novel aspect of reality, to open up a new possibility of knowledge. In this sense we understand rhetoric as “nutritive”, that is, as a persuasion technique based on non-codified, new solutions, which do not confirm the original code but rather put it in crisis and enrich it. In its procedure rhetorics starts from the concept of deviation or transgression of a norm accepted as such within a certain system. The artistic ‘objects’ system is configured in the beginning as a transgression of the norm of two other systems: the object and the arts systems.

In the case of the objects system, the norm is given by functionality. Seemingly, in the ‘object’ separated from its denotative function (zero degree), the object appears to us foreign, distant, novel. The deviation from the norm is produced by its decontextualization in the first place and then acting on the formal identity of the object, through the four rhetorical operations of suppression, adjunction, substitution, and interchange. These operations act by suppressing a part, adding another element, substituting it in part with another object, changing its arrangement or altering its internal organization. They give place to different rhetorical figures destined to produce effects of a particular sense. When Duchamp defunctionalizes the bicycle, he suppresses a part of it and places the wheel on top of a bench, he works with irony and synecdoche. He turns the wheel, as a part of the bicycle, into an antimechanism, distancing it from its denoted meaning and turning it into a critical reflection about itself. Through metaphors, hyperboles, symbols, etc. the artist leads us to a reflection on the signification and transcendence of the world of objects.

In relation to the arts system and specifically to the system of sculpture, the deviation from the norm is produced in the first place by allomateriality; that is, by the introduction of materials foreign to the specific sculptural ones. In the second place, the norm of the sculptural task is transgressed: there’s no more sculpting, no more casting. There’s a selection, a presentation and an elevation to the rank of work of art of the most unlikely objects. In the arts system this deviation implied an expansion that multiplied its expressive possibilities.

Through the development of the ‘object’ we can speak today of an artistic ‘objects’ system. In this system, decontextualization of functional objects, allomateriality, and creation as presentation are norms. These norms that function as a transgression in relation with the other two systems are fundamental in the signification of the “artistic” object. Within its structure, functional materials and objects are related to each other through their connotations, creating a new object and giving place to what Barthes calls the “dispersion field” of meaning: it presents itself to us as the bearer of a floating chain of meanings from which we can choose some and ignore others. Faced with this polysemy, the title acts by anchoring one of the meanings. It’s a metalanguage applied to the signs of the iconic message, it’s a control against the projective power of the meanings, it has a regressive value. On the other hand, this ‘object’ depends on an individual code: the code of the artist that produces it (idiolect). The understanding of the operation of the rhetorical mechanisms and the process of resemanticizing the functional object in the artistic ‘object’ will allow us to access the meaning of the work and understand the artist’s idiolect. We must point out, however, that since it is structured in an ambiguous way in comparison with the general code, the message of the artistic ‘object’ is always susceptible to new interpretations. The work is not exhausted by a single decoding.

By approaching a set of ‘objects’ created by the same artist, we seek to explain the mechanisms intervening in its construction and the expressive possibilities it offers.

In Adolfo Nigro’s pictorial production, the object represented performs the main role. From 1969 it appears in his work with characteristics that remain until 1985. It’s a simple, everyday object, constituted by a single matter and destined for a single use. It’s found in what Van Lier calls an “old” object. It’s that useful object that throughout the centuries has remained almost unchanged: cups, plates, pitchers, wheels, spoons, lamps, etc, along with them we find cosmic objects: stars, moons, and communication objects: boats, bus tickets, railroad signs, postage stamps. Animals (fish, snail, hen) and vegetation (branches, reeds, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, leaves, flowers) also integrate the object world of his paintings. These objects speak to us of a determined symbolic meaning issued by the understanding of the group they belong to: a group foreign to ostentation, primitive, and close to nature.5 They appear in the pictorial space establishing arbitrary relations with each other. Endowed with a life of their own, they fly, they fling themselves over cities, they fragment, they deposit themselves in stratified spaces, they live among other objects, but they always remain differentiated from others that accompany them. It’s an autonomous object, capable of establishing unusual and novel relations and characterized by belonging to a concrete world, the artist’s: “This bus ticket and no other; The number of the house in Rosario where I lived during my childhood; That cup of milk and coffee; The letter from my friend who lives in Barcelona; The loaf of bread, the spoon and the everyday plate.”6

As an icon this object is a legisign, it represents a general idea with a high degree of abstraction, an essence of the object. Autonomous, free, biographical, this represented object finds its continuity in the ‘object’ created since 1987.

Parallel to his pictorial production, he develops the collage. From the beginning the two expressive possibilities of collage -plastic and significative- intervene simultaneously. The bits of paper, cardboard, burlap, act in the plastic structure on account of their form, their color, their texture. But they also contribute what they signify on account of their origin, their meaning prior to their arrival in the world of the work. To the evocative power of the material is added that of words, letters, and numbers.

In the collage and in painting, the concepts of interrelation and unity between the world of the work and the world of reality are established, as well as between the objects within the work. This idea is expressed through the displacement of a quality from one object to another: a piece of burlap is a yellow moon, a scrap of newspaper, a boat, a bus, a chimney; or also through color: the color of the sky is that of the wheel, a cup, the earth; or the red of the tomato on the moon, a starfish, a fish. These concepts of unity and integration begin in 1984-85 to affect the object itself, to transform it. A form is at the same time boat, coast, sky. Contours and colors in the representation of different objects are unified in a single form. The moon and the fish are moon-fish, the hand and the boat, man-boat. There is a process of integrated mutation in which the limits imposed by reality disappear and the object itself becomes unrecognizable. In 1986 and 1987 (year in which the ‘objects’ appear), the transformation is complete. The metamorphoses succeed each other and in an uninterruptible flow, the objects invade the entire space of the painting. It’s important to point out that the theme at this time is linked to water (the coast, the water edge, the littoral, its “inhabitants” and “dwellers”), therefore these transmutations are produced in a liquid environment, origin and ending of life, a place where all the beings of this earth are unified and which therefore is constituted as a symbol of transformation, gestation, birth. As Cirlot points out, “the immersion in water means the return to the pre-formal, with its double meaning of death and dissolution but also of rebirth and new circulation, for immersion multiplies the potential of life.”7 This metamorphosis is not, however, its death but a transfiguration during its own life. That’s why, despite being almost unrecognizable, the object remains.

Thus we arrive at the appearance of ‘objects’ at the time in which they become unrecognizable on the painting. They were born as the children of his pictorial work and his previous collages, but guided by another expressive need. The functional ‘object’ enters them whole or sectioned, merging with others by a likeness in form or color, mutating its form into another. They completely correspond to the definition we have given of the ‘object’: they are the result of the union of functional and material objects intentionally chosen that within the structure of the artistic ‘object’ suffer a plastic and semantic transformation. In our classification they correspond to the “modified objects” and to the “box-objects”.

In his “modified objects” the idea of association of elements in the actual, everyday space prevails. The frontal position dominates; they’re not meant to be seen from different points of view, but from the front. In them we can distinguish two special ideas:

To be hung on the wall (“Herramientas del Mar” [Sea Tools], “Guitarras” [Guitars], “Girasol” [Sunflower], “Figura” [Figure], “Pájaro” [Bird], “La noche del pescador” [The Night of the Fisherman]).

To be placed on a support (“La casa del pescador” [The Fisherman’s House], “El ojo del pez” [The Fish Eye]).

The “box-objects” are conceived in a space differentiated from real space. The box acts as a habitat of materialization and imposes on them an organization that supposes polarities: inside-outside, above-below, left-right. Associated with the box are the ideas of conservation, of care, of creation of a world apart separated from the everyday world. We can differentiate two types of “box-objects”:

a- those in which only the internal space of the box-bottom is used, which functions as support from which the elements advance. This bottom is uniform, without divisions. The objects within dialogue with it exclusively based on the idea of interiority.

b- ‘objects’ in which the whole box is a support and not only the bottom as in the previous ones. The interior is divided and each part turns into a significant element. The box acts as a reference through which spatial polar relations are established: inside-outside, above-below, left-right, front-back. In these, the box evidences the spatial parameters of the outside world and its meanings, as well as the relation between the space of the ‘object’ and the outside space. Inside the box, all the spatial relations it proposes are used. Outside it, there’s a significative selection: only the topside and the front are used. The use of the top symbolizes the idea of ascension, of penetration of superior levels (of knowledge, spiritual). It’s a positive use, which is opposed to the symbolization of the bottom, linked to the idea of descent, of inferiority, of retrocession. The employment of the front side also has a positive meaning: it’s associated with the idea of growth, of future.

“Modified objects” and “box-objects” share a predominant direction in their structure, which is verticality. It acts as an articulating axis by which the ‘object’ acquires plastic unity. This vertical orientation also supports the symbolism of ascension. In both cases, functional objects, materials, plastic elements, conjunctive elements, words, letters and numbers are employed. Functional objects have a long history prior to our century, primitive, unifunctional: pulley, key, measuring tape, square, colander, pencil, clothes hanger, bottle stop, brush, etc. always appear defunctionalized, distanced from their denoted meaning. They are resemanticized through distant or close connotations that turn them into signifiers of other meanings. They haven’t been found by chance but chosen for being linked to an object world that had already been defined in his painting. In this sense, it’s not just any square, but “that” square. They’re characterized for having shared the artist’s life even if only briefly.

Selected for their roughness and rusticity, the materials employed take us back to a primitive world. This choice also implies a rejection of our century’s industrial development. Wood, burlap, cardboard, paper, stone, clay are introduced with a degree of formal geometricalization. In very few cases formless fragments are used. These materials are incorporated into the work through the meanings they might connote on account of their form, their origin, their color. They’re also characterized by coming from a place where the artist has been or by being linked to his world: the pebbles he gathered on the beach, bits of cardboard and fabrics worn out by personal use and that belonging to his world act as its synecdoche. On the other hand, these materials introduce their presence in the work because they belong to the vegetal and mineral world. Some times they’re incorporated as significant elements, others as plastic elements for compositional balance or for the plastic quality of their texture.

Line, splash, color, graphism, resources inherent to the pictorial language enrich the surface, create signs (eyes, stars, stairs, moons, snails, hands, beaks, etc.) or through color they give meaning to a form or through the connotations they can have (yellow like the beach, like the sand; blue of the sea or night) act metaphorically. The primary plus black and white always provide the palette; orange, green, and violet are barely used. Words, letters and numbers are not arbitrary either. They are the letters of the names of loved ones, words that indicate a direction (the south), numbers that point to a certain date. The conjunctive elements (strands of thread, nails, wire, hooks) are employed to tie, hang, to shut off spaces (physical function), to articulate stressing verticality, to create rhythms, forms (plastic function), or they’re metaphorically associated to other objects: the thread is the fishing line, the guitar chord, the mesh of the net, a woman’s hair (signic function).

His ‘objects’ are not constructed with a previously defined plan. They emerge from experimentation with multiple possibilities of encounter between different elements. They’re the result of a game of chance that proposes infinite possibilities, and the selection of one of them is made when it coincides with the artist’s creative world. The title has the task of anchoring one of the meanings; it has a regressive value that allows us to choose one meaning among the many it proposes.

Among the “modified objects” the “guitars” are characterized by not incorporating functional objects. Only materials, plastic elements, letters, and adjunctive elements intervene. The guitar is represented by some of its parts: chords, pegs, soundboards (synecdoche). In general, the instrument appears associated with another element: star, rooster, and wind.

“Guitarra y estrella” [Guitar and Star] is a stone with a rope tied to it, forming the legisign star. The rope here has two functions: tying the stone and giving shape to the star and they’re both joined as a conjunction of opposites (antithesis). The stone participates with its material and concrete presence and contributes a set of connotations associated to the paradigm stone: opacity, heaviness, part of the earth (synecdoche of earth), associated to worldliness, to contingency. The star is represented; therefore, it doesn’t have an actual existence in the work, only an evoked one. It contributes the connotations of brilliance, of belonging to the sky as a part of what’s in it (synecdoche of sky), a symbol of the elevated and unreachable, of the transcendental and spiritual. But the “star-stone tie” form a unity in which the spiritual world, the material world and the human act of tying intervene, which makes it possible to tie those two spheres. There is a dialectics between the stone and the star whose synthesis is the union through the action of man. This synthesis also implies elevation (the star is on the top). We are faced with a symbol of overcoming that is emphasized by the ascending triangle formed by the nails beneath it.

The “sea tools” integrate decontextualized functional elements (rope, square, brushes), along with materials and adjunctive elements. Among these instruments there isn’t a single recognizable one, they’re objects that seem destined for several uses. In “Herramientas del mar II” [Sea Tools II], the square is metaphorically associated by a likeness of shape to what could be the tip of a harpoon or a knife. The rope, element we also frequently find in his paintings, appears defunctionalized here, it’s untied; like in the paintings, it’s a symbol of freedom and not captivity, and at the same time a possibility of union between man’s external consciousness and his spiritual essence. In this ‘object’ the symbol of freedom is associated with the idea of shelter, of care implied by the box that contains it. It’s a sheltered, protected freedom. Both the tools and the guitars connote human presence, the only presence capable of giving them sense by using them, by putting them into action.

Among the “box-objects” that only use the inside of the box, we will highlight “El carro” [The Cart]. Here the defunctionalized rope is a signifier of wheel (by likeness of shape) and of cart, which is represented by one of its parts (synecdoche). The rope delimitates a world apart, symbol of a perfect world in its circularity, where only objects and materials that acquire their meaning on account of their origin are incorporated: a letter from his brother, a piece of pottery modeled by his daughter, are defended from external dangers in this atmosphere.

In this group, “Sur” [South] is an object placed inside the box divided in three panels. In the first one, a pencil significative on account of its origin. In the second panel, a star (symbol of the spirit), stairs (symbol of ascension, of communication between different levels), and the word SUR [south] that indicates a direction. In the third one, the moon and a measuring tape nailed in a number (his birth date). We can say then, that panels 1 and 3 have an autobiographical meaning, and panel 2, a transcendental and ideological one. Abraham Haber points out the polarity North-South as a cultural phenomenon that has been recorded in every historical age. The north is always linked to the ideas of superiority (political, economic, military, intellectual), and the South linked to the ideas of inferiority (economic, political, military but not intellectual or spiritual).8 Here, however, the South is on the superior plane of the attainable ideals (the star and the stairs symbolize this). There is an inversion in the meaning given to the south (what is below, inferior) that also Torres-García proposes when he inverts the map of America and places the South in the north. In this inversion the idea of transforming reality is also implicit: that the South subdued by the North would cease to be dominated.

Among the “box-objects” that make use of all the possibilities of the box, we can find “Pez, luna y cañas” [Fish, Moon and Fishing Rods]. Inside it, the fish appears with the character of a legisign, it is the “idea” of fish, resulting from a high degree of abstraction, with a non-analogical color: red. Also inside the box there are other elements like burlap (signifier that substitutes the signifier sand which is metaphorically associated by likeness of color and texture), the bottom side of the box painted in blue (water) and the pulley, functional element that allows weights to be lifted. On the upper part of the box, there is the moon and fishing rods inside and outside the moon (anaphora). Here, again, the set appears articulated by a dialectics between what is above (the moon) and what is below (the field, the sea) synthesized by human labor (labored field, labored water) and by the human action that makes it possible to elevate, rise, ascend (pulley), therefore signs of transformation and elevation.

The ideas of unity of everything that constitutes our known world, of elevation, of overcoming, of transcendence, appear as a constant in these “objects”. This overcoming, however, is not a mystical ascension; it is the elevation through transformation by man’s labor and actions. Man always appears represented by the hand and the eyes: which allow us to see, understand and act. On the other hand, it is important to point out that these ‘objects’ appear because of the need to objectivize, of giving real and concrete existence to that world of mutated objects that emerges shortly before painting. They represent, as in the Surrealists, the possibility of expressing ideas, feelings, experiences through the everyday world and not through representation. It is the expression of the internal, the conciliation of opposites in order to overcome them. It is a way of penetrating into man’s depths.

Having decoded the meanings of this object micro-world, we consider fundamental to delimit the sense with which we use the terms symbol and metaphor -recurrent figures in Nigro’s work- in order to reach some conclusions concerning the possibilities offered by the use of these rhetorical figures.

For our definition we begin with the differentiation Kant makes between concepts and ideas. In Kant’s body of thought, concepts have the function of giving character, sense, “form”, to what an instant before was nothing but chaos, something indeterminate. They function as a “framework” into which the possible experience fits: the matter contributed by the intuitions. According to Kant concepts must be linked to the sensible experience furnished by intuition, otherwise they are empty concepts. We emphasize this sensible character that the matter on which the concept is applied should have. Regarding ideas “Kant christens with this term those ‘necessary concepts’ whose object however can’t be given by any experience.”9 Ideas, therefore, transcend all possibility of experience, they can’t be seen in the sensible world, they correspond to the ideas of soul, freedom, spirit, etc.

We will link this differentiation with the one Le Gern makes between metaphor and symbol: “Actually, the essential difference between symbol and metaphor consists in the function that each one of the two mechanisms attributes to the mental representation that corresponds to the usual meaning of the word employed and that we can comfortably designate with the term image. In the symbolic construction, the perception of the image is necessary to capture the logical information contained in the message (…). In the metaphor, contrary to that, this intermediary is not necessary for the transmission of information; at this level the global meaning of the word employed is not used but only the elements of this meaning that are compatible to the context. While the symbolic image must be captured intellectually in order for the message to be interpreted, the metaphorical image does not intervene in the logical texture of the enunciation, whose content of information could be picked out without the help of this mental representation. In opposition to the symbolic image, which is necessarily intellectualized, it will suffice the metaphorical image to merely impress the imagination or the sensibility.”10

From the above, we can deduct a relationship between the Kantian concept and the metaphor on the one hand, and the idea in Kant and the symbol on the other. The concept, like the metaphor, has to be applied to the material provided by sensibility and which we perceive through intuition. The idea and the symbol surpass all possibility of experience, we can’t perceive them through sensibility for they are not given by any concrete experience. We can only capture them intellectually, a mental representation is necessary.

The metaphor, as it is applied to the material provided by sensibility, allows us to find external phenomena that serve as links to express something related with man’s intimate life. The metaphor provides, in this way, the possibility of reconciliation that allows the overcoming of the subjective and the objective, the conciliation between the subject and the material world.

The problem posed is how to reconstruct the sense of metaphorical figures. It is important to find contextual significations that could offer a logic for all metaphorical explanation of the work. Two principles regulate this logic: Ricoeur says, following Beardsley: “The first one is a principle of convenience or congruency: it’s up to us to decide which, among the connotations of the modifier, is convenient to the subject (…). This first principle is rather a principle of selection; in the reading of a poetic phrase, we progressively close the amplitude of the connotation range, until we only have those secondary significations susceptible of surviving in the total context. The second principle corrects the first; it’s a principle of plenitude: all the connotations that can ‘go with’ the rest of the context must be attributed to the poem: this ‘signifies all it can signify’.”11

Taking these two principles we seek a logic of explanation that would allow us to find significations contextual to the metaphorical figures that appear in Nigro’s work: in each metaphor we construct the explanation based on the significations we find in all the works of this period. The presence of a constant theme is the guide for our decoding in each particular case: the presence of water, of the sea, of the sky and of all that inhabits them (fish, roots, sand, pebbles, birds, heavenly bodies, etc.). We choose one among the possible connotations and thus we associate yellow with sand, square with harpoon, circle with moon, the rope tied to the stone with star. In each particular case, we choose a meaning that can also be attributed to the totality of the work from this period. We find then that these two principles work in close interrelation; they allow us to choose a meaning that we can only understand in the totality of the work. They correct, in their reciprocal action, any delimitated or arbitrary interpretation, they allow the decoding of a worldview and not of a figure in particular.

The symbolic construction, as we said, expresses necessary concepts whose object is not provided by any experience in particular. The symbolic image is based on an analogy that must be captured intellectually and that expresses ideas like soul, freedom, transcendence, perfection, totality. The decoding of the symbol takes us back to the meanings of an ideological worldview. It allows us to enter the set of ideas that constitute the signification that man, the world and everything on this earth have for the artist-creator. The principles of plenitude and congruence also guide us in the symbolic decoding: in the stairs, in the lifting gear, we select the meaning of elevation, of the search for perfection and transcendence; in the star, of spirit, of something elevated one seeks to ascend to, and we can take these meanings to describe the totality of the work.

Then, what is it that makes an object symbolic? Beardsley12 considers the presence of three bases in the symbol to be essential:

1- natural basis: consisting of the natural similarity that exists between the symbolic object and what it symbolizes,

2- conventional basis: that consists of the decision, agreement or stipulation through which a group of people decides that such object should have a certain symbolic function,

3- vital basis: the object has to have a history in order to become a symbol, it has to acquire the ability of evoking emotions, of being part of human activity.

The stairs, the star, the verticality as a symbol of ascension and of spirituality, possess a powerful natural basis. Rising, with a literal material sense, branches out symbolically in a spiritual evolutionary one. They’re symbols whose conventional and vital basis is weaker and is provided by their use throughout art history, from Egypt to our days. But this doesn’t exhaust the fundamentals of its symbolic construction, for the symbols it employs are also explained in the context of the work, inside its micro-world. We can find then, recurrent images and structures that speak to us of a great symbolic coherence, that take us back to a search for transcendence, of ascension to the spiritual, of optimism and confidence in the effectiveness of the paths to reach it. This coherence is also manifested in the selection of symbols associated with the reproductive and the unconscious: the lunar symbolism (linked to the myth of periodical creation and recreation of the universe), the presence of water (along with the earth, a feminine principle), the box, the lunar animals (those that alternate appearances and disappearances, such as the snail or the fish, also associated with the unconscious because of its ability to submerge).13 In this micro-world, the spiritual is a direction and the material, the reference. Both levels are presented differentiated but interrelated. To exceed oneself is always dialectical (the constant presence of the number 3 supports this assertion). The path is from the material to the spiritual: the fish, the birds, the heavenly bodies, man, water are part of the same system in which each one performs a role.

In Nigro’s work, through metaphorical constructions, a new description of the universe of representations is expressed. Through symbolic constructions, the world of representation acquires a new meaning. In his work, he creates a rearranged version of the world. From chaos, fluid, water, a new order emerges. Starting from reality he proposes a possible and more desirable reality. Possible, because it starts from the same reality that constitutes raw matter; desirable because it overcomes contradictions, eliminates pain, conserves the most beloved and elevates it to areas in which change and transformation are no longer desires.

NOTES

1Breton, A.: Manifiestos del Surrealismo. Barcelona, Guadarrama, 1980, p.278.

2 For this characterization of the object of use see: Moles, A., “Objeto y comunicación”, in Moles, A. and Others: Los objetos, Buenos Aires, Tiempo Contemporáneo, 1969, p. 17-18. Les objets, Communications, Nº 13, Editions du Seuil, 1969

3This differentiation between old and contemporary objects is established by Van Lier, H. in “Objeto y estética”, by Moles, A. and Others: op. cit., p. 135-146.

4Breton, A.: op. cit., p.307.

5In relation to the social hierarchy manifested by object consumerism see Baudrillard, J.: “Función-signo y lógica de clase” in Crítica de la economía política del signo,

Mexico, Siglo XXI, 1987, and by the same author: “El sistema de los objetos”, Mexico, Siglo XXI, 1969.

6Interview of the artist by Silvestre Byron: “El oficio de magicien”, in Pájaro de fuego, Year II, Number 13, Buenos Aires, 1979, p. 52-53.

7Cirlot, J. E.: Diccionario de símbolos. Barcelona, Labor, 1979, p. 54.