The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris probably does not need an introduction. The blaze that engulfed the church on 15 April 2019 and the ensuing debates about its reconstruction, which appeared on the front pages of much of the world’s printed press as well as on the internet and television news, thrust the monument onto centre stage, exponentially increasing its ‘celebrity status’, although perhaps not in an entirely approving way.

In one of his classes, Alexandre Alves Costa said the destruction of Cluny Abbey during the French Revolution – the paradigm of all the excesses and luxuries that characterised the Ancien Régime – represented an irreparable loss for architecture, but it was also the sign and affirmation of an irreproachable historical conquest. In fact, the history of architecture is nothing but the history of its permanent destruction, i.e. a long and endless list of burnt, plundered and imploded buildings.

She was born into great wealth but died destitute. Every day from birth until death belonged to her. She said that she wanted to turn herself into a work of art. Muse, patron and socialite; eccentric, excessive and extravagant; free, liberated and libertine, her life was a constant performance. She collected herself with the greed and obsession of frustrated collectors. She was painted, drawn, sculpted and photographed by dozens of artists. She multiplied her image to become someone else, which was the only way she could be herself. She threw the wildest parties, sported the most original dresses and wore the most shocking makeup. Her realm extended to houses and palaces in Milan, Rome, Venice, Capri, Paris and London. The ‘futurist marchioness’, as Marinetti called her, set trends and anticipated artistic and cultural attitudes in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The work of Magali Reus, a renowned contemporary artist nominated in 2018 for the prestigious Hepworth Prize, has been exhibited in leading galleries and museums. Born in Holland, she has lived in London for almost two decades. In this Portfolio, commissioned for Electra, the artist presents her photographic work for the first time. The images shown here are accompanied by an essay written especially by the American novelist, poet and curator, Andrew Durbin, editor of Frieze Magazine. He says: ‘I have always seen Reus’s work as an art of possible and impossible objects for possible and impossible places and people.’ He adds that the Portfolio is an invitation ‘not only to feel more, but to look closer’.

Jean Starobinski, who died last March in Geneva, his hometown, has been described as the greatest literary critic of the 20th century. But ‘literary critic’ does not do justice to this man who held degrees in classical studies and medicine (he worked as a hospital intern for five years). He showed great insight in his analysis of the history of ideas, literature and art, and practiced thematic reading and interpretation like no other. The history and representations of melancholy recurrently appear in his work, as mentioned by António Guerreiro, whose text recovers part of an interview given by ‘Staro’, as his friends called him, during a conference in Porto in July, 1990. Author of a brilliant study on Rousseau, he left a lasting mark on 18th-century studies. It was mainly from that era’s soil and subsoil that he took the mask motif, which radiates throughout his work and attaches itself to his own face. This is shown by Barbara Chitussi, who continues here the interpretation of Starobinski’s work initiated in an essay entitled Jean Starobinski e la conoscibilità della maschera.

Jean Starobinski, who died last March in Geneva, his hometown, has been described as the greatest literary critic of the 20th century. But ‘literary critic’ does not do justice to this man who held degrees in classical studies and medicine (he worked as a hospital intern for five years). He showed great insight in his analysis of the history of ideas, literature and art, and practiced thematic reading and interpretation like no other. The history and representations of melancholy recurrently appear in his work, as mentioned by António Guerreiro, whose text recovers part of an interview given by ‘Staro’, as his friends called him, during a conference in Porto in July, 1990. Author of a brilliant study on Rousseau, he left a lasting mark on 18th-century studies. It was mainly from that era’s soil and subsoil that he took the mask motif, which radiates throughout his work and attaches itself to his own face. This is shown by Barbara Chitussi, who continues here the interpretation of Starobinski’s work initiated in an essay entitled Jean Starobinski e la conoscibilità della maschera.

The verb to contaminate, from Latin contaminare (‘to deteriorate by mingling, to sully, to defile by touching’), lends itself to discursive resourcefulness producing a fair range of specific uses, from a particular action on food, water or the environment to politics or language and literary processes.