Since its introduction in the 1960s, video as a medium has formed a self-differentiating system, a layering of applications and conventions that cannot be reduced to the material characteristics of their technological foundation. This article gives an overview of different theoretical perspectives on the electronic image, its materiality, and its dispositive discussing the writings of Maurizio Lazzarato, Rosalind Krauss, Raymond Bellour, Yvonne Spielmann, Ina Blom and others. Video is analyzed as an ever-changing technological assemblage from which certain affordances emerge and which encompasses technical as well as human agency.

The Korean video scene of the 80’s explored video in its brute form and the 90’s followed up by exploring the image as a property of video itself, demanding that the qualities of the image become exacerbated. By the 2000’s installation was imbedded in video art scene thus making for image to go to great lengths and plaster itself all around museum and gallery walls. Thereafter, image came to inhabit not only the monitor but also every surface upon which it could possibly project itself. Today, virtually generated images dominate every medium and insinuate themselves onto the subconscious of the beholder. In one way, image is galvanizing, in other way, it aims to visually suppress the medium, causing the beholder to watch a spectacle of phantoms, afterimages and Pepper’s Ghost effects. The medium thus becomes what is visible as prophesied by the likes of Jean-Louis Baudry following up from Platão readings.

A hundred thirty years after his dramatic death, António Soares dos Reis (ASR) remains a huge challenge for art history understanding and art criticism interpretation, since he has been seen simultaneously as “a Greek, […] a realist, […] a classical, […] and a naturalist” (Arroyo, 1899: 78). His major sculpture – O Desterrado – being “an existential work” (França, 1966: 454) escapes from the classic orthodox aesthetic analysis, standing apart from the typical sculptural work of late 19th century. Our hypothesis is that ASR art works like a Rorschach test, for the narratives referred to it, instead of unveiling its character, reveal the concepts and beliefs upon which successive art studies have been produced. No visual images are displayed in this text, since the aim of our study is to detect the mental images associated to the insights and models that art historians and other authors traditionally used to assess ASR’s artistic work.

The MET Cloisters acquired a peculiar architectural canopy in 2016 that belonged to the main portal of the medieval monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória in the Portuguese village of Batalha. This piece, now in New York, surmounted one of the twelve statues of the Apostles. In the 19th century, during restoration works, the portal was altered from its initial dimension and many of its original sculptural elements were replaced by copies. This research note intends to trace the current location of all the original elements, in both public and private collections, as well as their path in the art market. It also analyzes how this canopy represents a unique example of micro-architecture, relating its composition to the monastery’s architecture. The canopy seems to allude to the dual function and meaning of the Portuguese medieval monastery: the divine temple is represented by the five small buildings and their tile-roofs, as the church’s chevet with five radiating chapels; and royal funerary place as represented by the vertical segment, a sectioned octagonal volume evoking King John’s funeral chapel. In its simplicity and micro-scale, this canopy displays remarkable artistic quality, constituting an excellent example of the fourteenth-century production led by the master Huguet in the Portuguese construction site of Batalha.

The present article focuses on the work of João Miguel dos Santos Simões (1907-1972), a researcher, historian, scholar and promoter of Portuguese azulejos and their use in Portugal, as well as the founder of the National Azulejo Museum. Santos Simões played a very important role in the identification both of the azulejo’s specific characteristics and of their use in Portugal. He was, in the 20th century, one of the most important promoters of the azulejo as a distinctly Portuguese art form. His main theoretical contribution concerns the recognition of the azulejo’s unique expression in Portugal — and, by extension, in Brazil. Its use gave rise to monumental decorations and helped shape the architecture in original ways. Apart from identifying the main characteristics of the use of azulejos in Portugal, Santos Simões also compared it to the situation in other countries, namely in Spain. Moreover, he studied the azulejo as a touristic phenomenon, a subject whose topicality warrants, according to the author of the present article, a detailed examination.

A diplomatic gift in the form of a Hanukkah Lamp, given to President Harry Truman by the Prime Minister of Isra­el, David Ben-Gurion in 1951 was selected for this occasion by museum personnel from the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem and the Jewish Museum in New York. Based on primary sources found in archives in Israel and in the United States, this case study investigates the process of objects exchange between two museums, orchestrated on the basis of an existing collegial relationship, and illustrates how the Hanukkah Lamp becomes more than itself and signifies both the history of the Jewish people and the mutual obligations between the two nations. Drawing on the theories of Marcel Mauss, Arjun Appadurai, and Igor Kopytoff on the notion of the gift, the article highlights the layers of meanings attributed to a gifted object.

Delfim Maya (1886-1978) iniciou a sua carreira artística em 1931, com 45 anos, depois de ter estado preso por razões políticas. Lutou pelas suas convicções monárquicas, o que o levou a ser preso e demitido do Exército em 1919. Fugiu da prisão e exilou-se em Espanha, onde viveu até 1921, o que teve grande influência na sua arte. Ainda que com enormes constrangimentos financeiros, a sua independência do poder político deu-lhe liberdade para criar uma arte diferente e ter um percurso único na arte portuguesa.
 O desejo de liberdade revela-se também no movimento que imprime às suas esculturas, característica marcante da obra deste artista.
 Delfim Maya foi o primeiro escultor português a construir esculturas em chapa industrial de metal. O processo como o fez também foi original: desenhava uma planificação e erguia a escultura a partir dela numa única chapa, sem soldaduras. Podemos enquadrá-lo num movimento neo-cubista.