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Arts & Communication Geographical-artistic horizons

When realizing that disciplinary boundaries can be
momentarily broken with non-hierarchical articulations,
the common themes between the two fields emerge
vigorous and devoid of intolerance and arguments
about the lack of scientific rigor; arguments that, in fact,
contribute to the consolidation of scientific disciplines as
institutions of power.
On the contrary, we have increasingly seen the
manifestation of reflections in the field of research and
teaching, which suggest a playful and vivid character
and risk setting in motion the exercise of deconstructing
a geographical science more attuned to the rules and
normative standards that imprison its arts. Therefore, the
choice of the title of the article refers to horizons in the
plural, a word that reports to varied future possibilities
and directions, capable of affirming a creative and original
geographical science art. I will highlight some of these
potentialities of approaches from three horizons:
(i) Art and science as unfinished narratives of the world,
and not hierarchical Figure 1. Map of the Western Mediterranean (Brussels, 1903), by Élisée
(ii) Dialogs between geography and art: between the Reclus and Émile Patesson. One of the globular maps made of aluminum
intelligible and the sensitive is available in the library of Geneva. Department of Charts and Plans.
(iii) Future geographical and artistic horizons Scale = 1: 5,000,000.
Source: Ferretti, 2012. 4
I aim to demonstrate that art currently produced in
different spatial contexts can complement geographical Artistic productions of all kinds, their agents, and their
knowledge and reveal spatial knowledge, especially in different perspectives are stimuli that have been mobilized
urban environments. by geographers in the analysis and interpretation of space
and cultural production in different territorial contexts.
2. Art and geography as unfinished, non- That is why we see the fascination for studies that are
hierarchical narratives of the world on the border between the arts and geography and that
This debate has been presented by several authors, such directly trigger the spatial perspective.
as Deleuze and Guattari, who did not hierarchically This charm has involved not only geographers but also
1
differentiate art and science and revealed that science builds urban planners, art historians, and sociologists among
models, art builds blocks of sensations, and philosophy others. Art has long been a complementary way of thinking
builds concepts. to geographers. One of our main classical authors, Élisée
Events and publications that encompass artists and Reclus, was an artist, sometimes for his cartographic
spatially delimited artistic productions expand in the achievements (Figure 1) and sometimes for his friendship
current moment, in which we are invited to be geographers with (neo) Impressionist artists who influenced his
of the arts in the plural (in the same way that there are thinking, to the point that Réclus conceived the world as
art historians), integrating artistic manifestations in our an artwork (FERRETTI, 2014). 2
research and crossing artistic expressions to go further. Federico Ferretti, commenting on Élisée Reclus’ long
There is currently the development of reflections on career as a geographer and activist, points out that he was
art, and Brazilian geography has been in recent decades concerned with the figurative arts, especially painting:
speculative and at the same time imaginative in its research In his long career as a geographer and activist,
at the international level, tending today to assert itself as an Élisée Reclus (1830–1905) was concerned with the
analytical discipline of art . figurative arts and, in particular, with painting, in
1
at least three respects. The first is his collaboration
1 An example of this fact is the constant presence of with various artists for the construction of the rich
discussions about geography and art in the main recent iconographic apparatus of his works. This is the case of
national events of humanistic and cultural geography, such Charles Perron (1837–1909) and André Słomczynski
as those promoted by NEPEC, NEER and GHUM. (1844–1910), responsible respectively for the maps

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 2 doi: 10.36922/ac.1870