Los seis proyectos de james Abbott Mcneill Whistler

Abstract

A series of oil sketches by James McNeill Whistler embodies a particular case in the art of this painter, known as one of the precursors of “art for art’s sake” in England. This paper will examine texts written by Whistler himself and a few of his contemporaries, in which the Six Projects are discussed. The aim of this essay is to establish relations between the sketches and the rest of Whistler’s production, as well as with the painter’s aesthetic theories. We seek to demonstrate the central role of the Six Projects in Whistler’s career, in spite of his unfinished state. In the framework of these texts, the Six Projects would incarnate some of the essential contradictions of this artist, as well as would permit to link Whistler’s art with posterity, for instance, with abstract art and the theory of modernist fragment.