"Why praise anachronism when we are historians?" - asked Loraux. Anachronism was once a sin for historians, but has become a necessity. Approaching the issue from the perspective of some contemporary philosophers, such as Agamben, Rancière and Didi-Huberman, who rouse in our thought a new conception of time, this article argues that Ismael Nery (1900-1934), the "damned artist" of Brazilian Modernism, can be taken as an anachronistic artist. His art (painting, drawing and poetry) sets up temporal collages to express one of the principles of his philosophical system: the abstraction of time and space. The art of Nery presented itself as universal, mystical and spiritual, what placed him out of his time, or rather, out of the aesthetic representation that had been called upon to give visuality to the themes of the national.
time; anachronism; art; modernity; mysticism; androgyny
