Virtues of surface: Watteau’s painting by Vinicius de Figueiredo

Abstract

This text seeks to continue a dialogue initiated with Vinicius de Figueiredo on the occasion of his acceptance as the supervisor of my postdoctoral research in 2023. The project proposed the concept of the singelo (the simple/unassuming) as a distinct form of aesthetic experience, considered in ap.oximation and contrast to the concept of the sublime. Vinicius identified an initial point of contact between this proposal and his recent work: the transformation brought about by Antoine Watteau’s painting within the context of the formation of the moral individual in France. According to his analyses, presented in the book A paixão da igualdade <The Passion for Equality>, the founder of the French Rococo managed to originally combine the ideas of freedom and equality, replacing, on an artistic level, the ideal of the classical hero with a sui generis form of a “leveled individual”, common and equal. This paper aims to pay tribute to the brilliance of Vinicius’ philosophical analysis and, furthermore, to outline a possible path for responding to his suggestion of a bridge between his argument and the idea of singeleza (unassuming and tender simplicity) as a unique form of aesthetic experience.