THE BECOMING-ANIMAL IN LUIZA NETO JORGE AND PAULA REGO: GOAT WOMAN, DOG WOMAN AND OTHER METAMORPHOSES

Abstract

The works of Luiza Neto Jorge and Paula Rego are a good example of a polyphonic dialogue between the various arts. Being contemporary, their surrealist works reveal a clear desire to deconstruct and subvert the traditional concept of art by recreating it. Both resort obsessively to an identification with different animals translated into complete or partial metamorphoses of the female figure. The attitude of Neto Jorge’s woman, represented mainly by the goat woman, is always that of an erotic, active, aggressive and challenging woman while the animality in Paula Rego, mainly carried out by the Dog-Woman, presents her submissive, humiliated, but revolted by her situation. If to Neto Jorge we can apply the total Deleuzian "becoming-animal", in Paula Rego it appears «internalized», projecting into grotesque and monstrous figures, where the metamorphosis reveals itself externally. However, the women painted by Rego are not less insurrect than those of the writer.