Tzvetan Todorov e l'arte figurativa: per un'ermeneutica del pensiero figurale

The critical activity of Tzvetan Todorov turned in the final period of his career on visual arts studies. This piece highlights how the Todorov’s approach to these matters, although near to others academic fields interested on this subject like Bildwissenschaft and Visual Studies, is treated in a very personal way. Indeed, through the analysis of the author’s methods and their application on the essays Goya. À l’ombre des lumières (2011) and Le Triomphe de l’artiste (2017), the piece points out how, according to Todorov, artistic expression shall be read like a contribution to building an accomplished social immaginary, characterized by figurative specificity and intellectual autority. Then, regarding some considerations from Gilbert Durand and Yves Bonnefoy, the paper focuses on the hermeneutic purposes of Todorov’s works, in which different discursive levels – figurative, immaginative, biographical – dialogue to each other with the aim of emphasise the ethical and historical significance of a specific intellectual experience, the activity and life of the artist himself.