Eros and Thanatos: A visual poetics on the margins of the marginal.

Abstract

This narrative is divided into two parts. The first reflects on the history of the representation of Eros and Thanatos in Western art from the 16th century onwards, and the inherent marginality of these themes when converted into images., mainly because the concepts linked to eroticism, pornography, and death in Western thought have always been controversial and firmly prohibited in various circumstances up to the present day. The second part refers to the medial exchange between painting, engraving, photography, and draw involving Eros and Thanatos, not as a result of theoretical elaboration, but as source from which the interaction between the media emerged, giving the images their forms and, perhaps, their content.