The exhibition as a novel’s lost chapter: the first edition of Max Aub’s Jusep Torres Campalans.

Abstract

the ideas developed in this article are part of the essay Charlie Brown não frequenta museus de arte (one of the three parts of my PhD thesis) in which I analyze, among other subjects, the emergence of the art’s exhibition, the exhibition space and the museum as a place to read and narrate. Or as literary genre. In this article I analyze the case of the book Jusep Torres Campalans, published by franco-spanish author Max Aub in 1958. The central point is the relationship between the narrative inside the book, the events (especially in the exhibition of paintings claimed to be by Jusep Torres Campalans, the title-character) and the “legend” about the book. The analysis tries to figure out the book and the events as a single work, making room to think about the extrapolation of the book as literary form, and to think about Max Aub as a writer-artist and his relations with very contemporary art works.