Carlos Gradim
Diretor-presidente do Instituto Odeon - MAR
Cícero Dias Eu Vi o Mundo... E Ele Começava no Recife [I Have Seen the World… And It Began in Recife], 1926 - 1929. Guache e técnica mista sobre
papel kraft [Gouache and mixed technique on kraft paper], 198 x 1.186 cm. Coleção Particular [Private Collection]
14-15 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Pernambuco Experimental
Clarissa Diniz
Coleção [Collection]
Fundação Gilberto
Freyre
16-17 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre no
Ateliê de Vicente do
Rego Monteiro [Gilberto
Freyre at Vicente
do Rego Monteiro’s
Studio], 1922
Reprodução de
caricatura original
de [Reproduction of
original caricature of]
Gilberto Freyre, 10 x
15 cm
Coleção [Collection]
Fundação Gilberto
Freyre
Enquanto Freyre cedo compreendeu, com Dias, que o “nonsense em 9. FREYRE, Gilberto.
Cícero Dias e seu
vez de fim é na verdade um meio: um esforço no sentido de ‘novas “nonsense”. Diário da
Manhã. Rio de Janeiro,
formas de expressão da vida’ […], busca de sua pintura toda ousada 7 nov. 1942.
de experimentação”,9 Dias, por sua vez, adotou a relação com 10. DIAS, Cícero. É
preciso conduzir a
sua região natal como parte de suas estratégias estéticas: “Nunca arte à vida cotidiana.
Originalmente
esqueço de levar meus quadros a Escada, na persuasão de que sua publicado no Diário
de Pernambuco,
valorização cresça em contato com o povo”.10 Para ambos, o universo Recife. Posteriormente
plástico e temático da obra de Dias era mais uma continuidade face ao republicado na revista
Região. Recife, ago.
imaginário pernambucano do que uma ruptura com o mesmo, hipótese 1948.
pela qual o painel Eu Vi o Mundo... E Ele Começava no Recife (1926-
1929) teria provocado uma suposta polêmica apenas quando exibido
fora de seu contexto de referência.
Cícero Dias
Condenação
dos Usineiros
[Condemnation of the
Plantation Owners],
c. 1930
Cícero Dias
Eu Vi o Mundo... E Ele
Começava no Recife [I
Have Seen the World…
And It Began in Recife],
1926 - 1929
(detalhe [detail])
Guache e técnica
mista sobre papel
kraft [Gouache and
mixed technique on
kraft paper]. Coleção
Particular [Private
Collection]
Cícero Dias
Eu Vi o Mundo... E Ele
Começava no Recife [I
Have Seen the World…
And It Began in Recife],
1926 - 1929
(detalhe [detail])
Guache e técnica
mista sobre papel
kraft [Gouache and
mixed technique on
kraft paper]. Coleção
Particular [Private
Collection]
Cícero Dias
Eu Vi o Mundo... E Ele
Começava no Recife [I
Have Seen the World…
And It Began in Recife],
1926 - 1929
(detalhe [detail])
Guache e técnica
mista sobre papel
kraft [Gouache and
mixed technique on
kraft paper]. Coleção
Particular [Private
Collection]
Francisco Du Bocage
Armazém [Storehouse],
Diferentemente de outras manifestações culturais de Pernambuco, em
1913 sua maioria surgidas em regiões rurais (especialmente no contexto
Fotografia
[Photograph],
dos canaviais, a exemplo do maracatu), o frevo aparece no começo
40 x 60 cm. Coleção do século XX como uma experiência claramente urbana, repleta de
[Collection] Fundaj /
Benício Dias referências advindas do fluxo globalizatório que se intensifica a partir
do porto, ao passo que se caracteriza como modo de ocupação da
cidade e suas ruas. Improvisação e fervura – agitação calorosa de
onde deriva o termo frevo – eram elementos não só de sua música ou
dança, como também de todo o contexto cultural que fizera com que
Pernambuco já não tivesse aderido à resolução nacional de 1855, a
qual, a partir do Congresso das Sumidades Carnavalescas (realizado
no Rio de Janeiro), acordava que a não proibição ou criminalização do
Carnaval equivaleria à sua realização dentro de um padrão europeu –
decisão aceita pelos demais estados do país.
Fotografia [Photograph],
50 x 80 cm (cada uma
[Each one]). Coleção
[Collection] Luiz
Gonzaga Cardoso Ayres
Filho
do jornalista Joaquim Inojosa, que em 1924 publica A Arte Moderna,15 15. Joaquim Inojosa.
A arte moderna.
carta que convoca a adesão ao “credo novo” que no Brasil teria Originalmente publicado
na revista Era Nova.
surgido na Semana de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, em 1922. João Pessoa, 1924.
Cícero Dias
Casa-Grande do
Engenho Noruega[The
Master’s House on the
Noruega Sugarcane
Plantation], 1933
Ilustração para o livro
[Illustration of the
book] Casa-Grande &
Senzala, de Gilberto
Freyre
Aquarela e nanquim
sobre papel
[Watercolor and China
ink on paper], 52 x
52 cm
Coleção [Collection]
Fundação Gilberto
Freyre
tempo em que diferencia seu ímpeto moderno do futurismo: para o
jornalista, tratava-se da construção de uma modernidade cujo ponto
de partida se encontrava na importante contribuição de Graça Aranha
em seus posicionamentos no campo intelectual e literário, bem como
por sua obra A Estética da Vida (1921), em que se funda uma espécie
de fenomenologia da luz no Brasil, sublinhando suas relações com
a história da formação do país em termos étnicos e sociais. Assim,
em A Arte Moderna, Inojosa lê o campo da arte como um território
dividido entre aqueles que seriam adeptos do parnasianismo, do
academicismo, do naturalismo, do passadismo, ou da arte oficial,
entre os “regionalistas sistemáticos” e, por fim, os modernos, numa
clara compreensão da não convivialidade entre esses diversos regimes
sensíveis e políticos.
de suar, [que] se avermelham à luz das fornalhas, e assumem, na Grafite e aquarela sobre
papel [Graphite and
23. FREYRE, Gilberto.
Algumas notas sobre tensão de algumas atitudes, relevos de estátuas de carne”,23 por sua watercolor on paper],
a pintura do Nordeste
do Brasil. In: FREYRE,
vez, Lula Cardoso Ayres verá na cerâmica popular outro profícuo 22 x 32 cm. Coleção
[Collection] MAR - Fundo
Gilberto et al. Livro do
Nordeste, comemorativo
território para explorar a relação entre calor, corpo, fogo e carne. Com [Fund] Lula Cardoso
Ayres Filho
do centenário do Diário uma abordagem claramente antropológica, a partir de 1932 o artista Caderno de Desenho
de Pernambuco: 1825-
1925. Recife: Off. do frequenta terreiros e outros espaços das manifestações populares, [Drawing Book], c. 1960
Diário de Pernambuco,
1925. bem como faz viagens de pesquisa pela Zona da Mata, desenhando Grafite sobre papel
[Graphite on paper], 22
o que observava e produzindo um importantíssimo conjunto de x 32 cm
fotografias que se tornaram uma referência para a compreensão da Coleção [Collection]
Luiz Gonzaga Cardoso
história da cultura de Pernambuco. O corpo do artista imbricava-se Ayres Filho
Fotografia [Photograph],
50 x 80 cm. Coleção
[Collection] Luiz
Gonzaga Cardoso Ayres
Filho
30-31 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
O método eminentemente vivencial de Lula Cardoso Ayres conferia 24. Alguns dos artistas,
escritores, dramaturgos
carnalidade a suas pinturas e seus desenhos, ao passo que lhes e jornalistas que
atuavam em Pernambuco
garantia uma dimensão antropológica até então inédita na arte de fundaram, em 1948,
a Sociedade de Arte
Pernambuco: não à toa, os desenhos que o pintor realiza no princípio Moderna do Recife
(SAMR). Tendo à
dos anos 1930 a partir de visitas aos xangôs do Recife participaram frente Feijó, Abelardo
da Hora e Ladjane
do I Congresso de Estudos Afro-Brasileiros realizado em 1934 por Bandeira, entre outros,
iniciativa de Freyre. Seu método inspiraria, ainda, um artista como a SAMR representou,
talvez, a primeira –
Abelardo da Hora em seu método da pose rápida, um desenho ágil e organizada – iniciativa
de legitimação de um
performativo realizado em terreiros, mangues, periferias e canaviais campo profissional
para a arte em
que seria a base para os preceitos estéticos do Ateliê Coletivo 24 (1952). Pernambuco por meio
da institucionalização de
Daniel Santiago Como analisava Freyre, no caso de Lula Cardoso Ayres, eram “[...] uma “classe artística”,
Cream Cracker compreensão política
Confiança, 1978 olhos transferidos para as pontas dos dedos [...]. Olhos-dedos de da cultura que Abelardo
Arte correio a partir de pintor discípulo de ceramistas rústicos. Descobrindo novas relações da Hora trouxera de
sua passagem pelo
embalagem de produto
alimentício [Mail art entre luz tropical e forma. Entre luz tropical e cores. Entre luz tropical Rio de Janeiro, onde
estivera engajado nos
made of containers of
food products]
e gentes”.25 Tratava-se, ainda, de uma importante contribuição para protestos em torno da
não realização do Salão
12 x 11 cm. Coleção
[Collection] MAR -
pensar as retroalimentações – caracteristicamente modernas – entre as Nacional de 1945.
(...)
Fundo [Fund] Z outrora denominadas “arte popular” e “arte erudita”.
Como esclarece José
Cláudio, “volta Abelardo
Na profícua obra de Lula Cardoso Ayres – também um fundamental
da Hora [...] disposto a
fundar uma sociedade
artista gráfico que se engajaria ativamente na industrialização em
de artistas para poderem
batalhar juntos e
curso na modernidade pernambucana, em que se situa sua contribuição
inclusive criar entre nós na criação de dezenas de marcas para produtos e fábricas locais –
a profissão de artista”.
É no seio desse primeiro observa-se um diálogo crucial entre fotografia, desenho e pintura.
esforço, a SAMR, que
surge, em 1952, o Ateliê As imagens fotográficas geradas pelo artista em suas andanças pelo
Coletivo. Na história da
arte de Pernambuco,
interior do estado serão a fonte primordial para sua obra gráfica. Não
o Ateliê marca não
só uma tentativa mais
apenas a documentação de tipos humanos inspirará seus desenhos
ampliada (sistêmica)
de constituição de um
– entre os quais se destaca a figuração de índios e comunidades
campo profissional para indígenas com abordagens diversas (até mesmo econômica), o que
a arte (no que concerne
ao ensino, à produção, enuncia uma preocupação política do artista – como, mais adiante,
ao pensamento, à
exibição e mesmo à a conformação estética da fotografia tal como praticada por Ayres,
comercialização da arte,
aspectos vivenciados
em sua estaticidade e nitidez de contornos, será referência para seus
na prática do Ateliê),
como também, no que
desenhos e suas pinturas posteriores, o que contrasta as soluções
ocupa papel central,
representa talvez a
plásticas de sua obra com aquelas de seu contemporâneo Cícero Dias,
mais clara distinção exímio artista do movimento, da fluidez e da continuidade.
– até o período – dos
paradigmas da arte
moderna face àqueles
da arte acadêmica,
diferenciação possível
a partir da vinculação Lula Cardoso Ayres
de um programa Caboclos TucHau do
político às investigações Carnaval do Recife
estéticas que estavam [Caboclos TucHau of
sendo perpetradas. Recife’s Carnival], 1963
Sua produção plástica
e orientação política Óleo sobre tela [Oil on
são, a despeito da canvas], 100 x 110 cm
intencionalidade Coleção [Collection]
revolucionária, Thomaz Lobo
significativamente
canônicas, razão
pela qual o Ateliê
Coletivo não foi
incluído como grupo
na mostra Pernambuco
Experimental, senão por
meio da participação
individual de alguns
de seus integrantes
eminentemente
experimentais.
25. FREYRE,
Gilberto. Prefácio. In:
VALLADARES, Clarival
do Prado. Lula Cardoso
Ayres, revisão crítica
e atualidade. Rio de
Janeiro: Recife: Spala,
1978, p. 11.
Ambos, contudo, estiveram interessados na plasticidade da arte
popular como matriz para a arte moderna. Enquanto é comum
encontrar nas pinturas de Dias a representação de animais
(especialmente bois e cavalos) dentro das referências da cerâmica
do Alto do Moura – cujo destaque é a obra de Mestre Vitalino –,
como se pode ver em Eu Vi o Mundo... E Ele Começava no Recife, em
Lula Cardoso Ayres tal interesse se expande para séries e conjuntos
inteiros, incorporando as referências da cerâmica produzida na região
26. Agradeço a Thomaz
Lobo a compreensão da
de Águas Belas.26
referência a Águas Belas
na obra de Lula Cardoso
Ayres.
Cícero Dias
Eu Vi o Mundo... E Ele
Começava no Recife [I
Have Seen the World…
And It Began in Recife],
1926 -1929 (detalhe
[detail])
Guache e técnica
mista sobre papel
kraft [Gouache and
mixed technique on
kraft paper]. Coleção
Particular [Private
Collection]
Lula Cardoso Ayres Tirador de Loas e Gonguê, 1930. Nanquim, guache e grafite sobre papel [China ink, gouache and graphite on paper]
44 x 32 cm. Coleção [Collection] Mamam
34-35 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Guache e aquarela
sobre cartão [Gouache
and watercolor on
card],
81 x 94 cm. Coleção
[Collection] Luiz
Gonzaga Cardoso
Ayres Filho
Joaquim do Rego
Monteiro
La Rotonde, 1927
Joaquim do Rego
Monteiro
América do Sul [South
America], 1927
[p. 38] Legendes, Croyances et Talismans des Indiens de l’Amazone, 1923. Adaptação de [Adaptation by] Pierre Louis Duchartre e
ilustrações de [Illustrations by] Vicente do Rego Monteiro. Paris, editions Tolmer (detalhe [detail]). Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
[p. 39] Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Quelques Visages de Paris, 1925. Reprodução de fac-símile editado pela [Facsimile reproduction edited by]
Imprensa Oficial do Governo do Estado de São Paulo
40-41 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Legendes, Croyances et
Talismans des Indiens
de l’Amazone, 1923
Adaptação de
[Adaptation by] Pierre
Louis Duchartre e
ilustrações de
[Illustrations by] Vicente
do Rego Monteiro.
Paris, editions Tolmer
(detalhe [detail]).
Coleção [Collection]
MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
Revista Renovação
[Renovação Magazine],
1939 - 1942. 32 x
23 cm
Coleção [Collection]
Biblioteca Pública de
Pernambuco
Lula Cardoso Ayres (projeto gráfico / graphic project). Cartaz da candidatura de Gilberto Freyre a deputado federal [Poster for
Gilberto Freyre as federal deputy candidate], 1945. 98,5 x 68,5 cm. Coleção [Collection] Luiz Gonzaga Cardoso Ayres Filho
Assim como parte da obra de Cícero Dias fará uma crítica social ao
imaginário e à economia do açúcar, como nas pinturas Condenação
dos Usineiros (década de 1930) e Os Senhores das Terras (década de
1920) – nas quais os conflitos de classe são tema central –, por sua
vez, a crítica cultural do pensamento de Gilberto Freyre foi elaborada
por alguns dos artistas de Pernambuco, em especial por Jomard Muniz
de Britto, cujo tropicalismo se dará, a partir dos anos 1970, como
contraste e sátira das concepções regionalistas, tal como no vídeo O
Palhaço Degolado (1977) ou Inventário do Feudalismo Cultural ou
uma Ficção Histórico Existencial (1978). O ácido texto de O Palhaço
Degolado, de autoria de Wilson Araújo de Souza, não permite que
descansem as inquietações que a arte deve ter contra sua própria
cultura. Na figura de um palhaço que percorre a Casa da Cultura
de Pernambuco (antigo presídio) enquanto em seu discurso trafega
por encruzilhadas políticas e estéticas da cultura do estado estão
postas questões que precisam não ser caladas: “Recife de todas as
sofríveis promessas / dos novos complexos portuários aos / seculares
desejos des-reprimidos / ontem casa de detenção: exposta em seu
cruel miserabilismo / hoje casa da cultura: transposta no mais dócil
folclorismo / ontem e hoje: casa de detenção da cultura”.
Fotocópia e colagem
sobre papel [Photocopy
and collage on paper],
40 x 30 cm Coleção
[Collection] MAR - Fundo
Raul Córdula
Cícero Dias Os Senhores das Terras [The Owners of the Lands], c. 1920. Aquarela sobre papel [Watercolor on paper], 50 x 46 cm. Coleção Particular [Private Collection]
Jomard Muniz de Britto
O Palhaço Degolado
Contudo, os problemas regionais não cessaram de se fazer urgentes
[The Decapitated
Clown], 1977
e de ampliar seu papel político, no que Freyre continuou a ter um
Vídeo [Video], 9’22’‘
papel relevante ao longo da vida. Como parte de sua atuação como
Coleção [Collection] deputado federal, fundou, em 1949, o Instituto Joaquim Nabuco
MAR - Fundo [Fund]
Jomard Muniz de Britto de Pesquisas Sociais (atualmente, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco),
dedicado à pesquisa e à melhoria das condições de vida na região
agrária do Nordeste brasileiro, no seio do qual são ainda hoje
desenvolvidos projetos sobre o Nordeste, o sertão e suas múltiplas
dificuldades – entre elas, a seca, a fome e a educação, temas que
encontrarão significativa reverberação entre outros autores e artistas
de Pernambuco.
Impressão em papel
moeda [Print on money
paper], 7,5 x 15 cm
Coleção [Collection]
MAR - Doação de
[Donated by] Luiz
Guimarães
Ministério da Educação
e [and] O Cruzeiro
Projeto gráfico [Graphic
design] Aloísio
Magalhães
Cartilha abc, 1962
José Cláudio Primeiro a Fome Depois a Lua [First Hunger then the Moon], 1968. Tinta a óleo sobre eucatex [Oil on MDF], 82 x 62 cm
Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
Uma espécie de célula político-cultural em ebulição, o MCP foi
fechado com a instalação do regime militar em 1964 – suas ideias e
experimentações ecoariam, contudo, em pensamentos e políticas que
se estendem aos dias de hoje, no Brasil e no mundo, a exemplo do
método de alfabetização Paulo Freire. Desde então, a educação torna-
se uma questão de grande atenção dos artistas pernambucanos, que Daniel Santiago
se engajam em processos educacionais – a exemplo da colaboração Série Exercícios de
Caligrafia [Caligraphy
entre Abelardo da Hora, Aloisio Magalhães, Jomard Muniz de Britto e Exercises series], 2002
Paulo Freire – ao passo que estão criticamente atentos às implicações Desenho e impressão
offset sobre papel
ideológicas do ato de educar. É marco desse interesse pela educação [Drawing and offset print
on paper], 34 x 25 cm
e, mais especificamente, pela alfabetização, uma série de exercícios (cada uma, com moldura
caligráficos por parte dos artistas dos anos 1960 e 1970. De alfabetos [each one, including
frame]). Coleção
reinventados à criação de tipos, o letramento torna-se um ponto de [Collection] MAR - Fundo
[Fund] Z e Fundo [Fund]
partida para experimentações sígnicas mais amplas, como nas séries Daniel Santiago
Aloisio Magalhães Cartazes para Meio Rural (Governo Arraes) [Posters for the Countryside (Arraes Government)], 1963 - 1964. Impressão offset [Offset print]
Coleção [Collection] João Souza Leite
52-53 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Cícero Dias Cena Vegetal [Vegetal Scene], 1944. Óleo sobre tela [Oil on canvas], 80 x 60 cm. Coleção [Collection] Roberto Marinho
54-55 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Montez Magno Série Fragmentações [Fragmentation series], 1964. Óleo a seco sobre papel [Dry oil on paper], 71 x 100 cm
Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Montez Magno
56-57 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Montez Magno
Da série [From the
series] Caatinga, 1963
Documentação
fotográfica de obra
destruída [Photographic
documentation of
destroyed work].
Coleção [Collection]
Montez Magno
Revista Região,
33 x 24 cm
Dezembro de 1948
[December 1948]
Coleção [Collection]
Fundaj / Acervo
Biblioteca Central
Blanche Knopf
Cícero Dias Moça ou Castanha-de-Caju [Lady or Cashew Nut], 1946. Óleo sobre tela [Oil on canvas], 105 x 125 x 10 cm (com moldura [with frame])
Coleção [Collection] Waldir Simões de Assis Filho
Cícero Dias Galo ou Abacaxi [Rooster or Pineapple], c. 1940. Óleo sobre tela [Oil on canvas], 100 x 80 cm
Coleção [Collection] Ivo Pitanguy
64-65 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Coleção [Collection]
Cehibra / Fundaj
Composição
Geométrica [Geometric
Composition], 1958
Montez Magno
Caixa II [Box II], 1967
Ladjane Bandeira
Sem título [Untitled],
1958
Montez Magno Caixa I [Box I], 1967 Madeira policromada [Polychrome wood], 30,5 x 22,8 x 3 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Doação Fundo Z [Z Fund donation]
Montez Magno Caixa II [Box II], 1968 Madeira policromada [Polychrome wood], 20,5 x 22,5 x 4 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Doação Fundo Z [Z Fund donation]
Vista de exposição com obras Caixa I e Caixa II de Montez Magno [View of the exhibition with Box I and Box II from Montez Magno]
78-79 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Fotografia [Photograph],
18 x 20 cm (cada uma
[each one]). Coleção do
artista [Artist’s collection]
Wishlist
[p.80]
Montez Magno
Série Cidades
Imaginárias [Imaginary
Cities series], 1972
Fotografia [Photograph]
17 x 23 cm (cada
imagem [each image])
Coleção [Collection]
Galeria Pilar
[p.81]
Montez Magno
Série Cidades
Imaginárias [Imaginary
Cities series] Tesserato,
1972
Sabão de coco e
palitos [Cocunut soap
and sticks]
25 x 40 x 25 cm
Coleção MAR
[MAR Collection]
Série Cidades
Imaginárias [Imaginary
Cities series], 1972
Fotografia
[Photograph],
18 x 20 cm. Coleção
do artista [Artist’s
collection]
82-83 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Paulo Bruscky
Partitura [Music Score],
Mais adiante, como experimentado também por Montez Magno, a
1982 visualidade mostra-se um rico campo de reinvenção do código musical,
Fotografia som
[Photograph and
que é reescrito por entre desenhos, apropriações e poesia, a exemplo
Sound], 53 x 82 cm do álbum Notassons (1970-1992), que leva a investigação sígnica
Coleção do artista
[Artist’s collection] e caligráfica de séries como Fragmentações (1963) a uma dimensão
musical. Para o artista, Notassons – bem como Cromossons (1994),
cuja lógica é essencialmente cromática – pode ser entendida como
música aleatória ou poesia visual, no que se avizinha também a outras
obras da dupla Bruscky & Santiago. Como fazem ver as pranchas Montez Magno
Sonata para Olho e
Sonata Esquizo (1976) e Impromptu-3 (1992) do álbum em questão, Ouvido [Sonata for Eye
and Ear], 1970
Montez Magno está atento às tecnologias que então reconfiguravam
Caneta hidrográfica
a prática artística e que serão proficuamente exploradas individual e sobre papel
coletivamente por Paulo Bruscky e Daniel Santiago. [Hidrographic pen on
paper], 33 x 24 cm.
Coleção [Collection]
MAR -
É assim que, em diálogo com a obra de John Cage, a Equipe Bruscky Fundo [Fund] Montez
Magno
& Santiago desenvolve happenings para a criação coletiva de
Montez Magno
sonoridades, como o Con(s)(c)(?)ertoSensonial ou, ainda, numa chave Poema Sinfônico
Universon [Sinfonic Poem
mais metafórica, a Composição Aurorial. Enquanto o Cons(s)(c)(?) erto Universon], 1992
é uma ação participativa – regida cromaticamente pela dupla no Nanquim sobre papel
Teatro Santa Isabel – de produção de sonoridade a partir de caixinhas [China ink on paper],
33 x 24 cm Coleção
de fósforos que são tocadas pelo público, Composição Aurorial articula [Collection] MAR -
Fundo [Fund] Montez
de modo igualmente inventivo as relações entre visualidade, Magno
[p. 84 - 85] Montez Magno Sonata Esquizo - Em Clé - Único Movimento Electro [Schizo Sonata - K - One Movement Electro], 1975
Nanquim sobre papel [China ink on paper], 33 x 24 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Montez Magno
86-87 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Paulo Bruscky
Silence: Homage to
musicalidade, silêncio, tecnologia e poder, sublinhando a dimensão
John Cage, 1993 política, ao passo que utópica, da arte. Tratava-se de uma proposta
Tinta nanquim e
cotonetes tingidos sobre
publicamente apresentada em 1976, pelos jornais: “a Equipe propõe
cartão [China ink and expor uma aurora tropical artificial colorida provocada pela excitação
tinted ear sticks on
card], 15,3 x 10,9 cm dos átomos atmosféricos a 100 km de altitude. Os átomos voltarão
Coleção [Collection]
Mamam espontaneamente ao estado natural depois da exposição. A exposição
não polui o espaço, não altera o tempo, nem influencia a astrologia, é
Equipe Bruscky &
Santiago
um acontecimento de arte contemporânea”.53 Sem retornos, uma vez 53. Jornal do Brasil,
1976.
Composição Aurorial
(Carta para NASA)
publicado o anúncio, a dupla insiste no projeto junto à NASA, para
[Aurorial a qual envia carta de apresentação e solicitação de cooperação –
Composition (Letter to
NASA)], 1976 igualmente sem retorno. Tomando como exemplo esses dois trabalhos,
Fotocópia sobre papel vê-se que será aí, no espaço entre a efetividade e a ineficiência sociais,
[Photocopy on paper],
33 x 22 cm. Coleção
estéticas e políticas, que se situará parte importante da obra de
[Collection] MAR -
Fundo [Fund] Z
Bruscky & Santiago.
Equipe Bruscky & Santiago “Composição Aurorial (A Exposição Noturna de Arte Especial Visível a Olho Nu da Cidade do Recife)” [“Aurorial Composition (The Nocturnal
Exhibition of Special Art Visible to the Naked Eye from the City of Recife)”], 1976. Matéria de jornal [Newspaper clip]. Coleção [Collection] Daniel Santiago
4.
7.
1.
5.
8.
2.
6.
3.
José Cláudio [1] História de um Carimbo nº 1 [History of a Stamp n. 1], 1969. Carimbo com nanquim sobre papel [China ink stamp on paper], 50 x 70. Coleção [Collection] MAR –
Fundo [Fund] Z. [2] História de um Carimbo nº 4 [History of a Stamp n. 4], 1969. Carimbo com nanquim sobre papel [China ink stamp on paper], 50 x 70 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR
– Fundo [Fund] José Cláudio. [3] História de um Carimbo Nº 5 [History of a Stamp n. 5], 1968. Carimbo com nanquim sobre papel [China ink stamp on paper], 50 x 70 cm. Coleção
[Collection] MAR – Fundo [Fund]. [4] Dispersão [Dispersion], 1969. Carimbo com nanquim sobre papel [China ink stamp on paper], 60 x 70 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR – Fundo
[Fund]. [5] Vê Se Gosta [See If You Like It], 1969. Carimbo com nanquim sobre papel [China ink stamp on paper], 50 x 70 cm. Coleção do artista [Artist’s collection]. Coleção [Collection]
MAR – Fundo [Fund] José Cláudio. [6] Nebulosa [Nebula], 1969. Carimbo e bico de pena com nanquim sobre papel [China ink pen and stamp on paper], 50 x 70 cm. Coleção
[Collection] MAR – Fundo [Fund] Z. [7] História de um Carimbo – 5 [History of a Stamp - 5], 1969. Carimbo com nanquim sobre papel [China ink stamp on paper], 50 x 70 cm.
[8] Festas de Varão [Male Parties], 2005. Carimbo e nanquim sobre papel [Stamp and China ink on paper], 50 x 70 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] José Cláudio
Aloisio Magalhães / João Cabral de Melo Neto (O Gráfico Amador) Aniki Bobó, 1954
Impressão tipográfica e clichê de barbante sobre papel [Typograhic print and string mold on paper], 13 x 15 cm
Coleção [Collection] PVDI Design
92-93 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Ypiranga Filho
Assim Não Dar Pé [It’
Won’t Work Out This
Way], 1976
Fotocópia e nanquim
sobre papel [Photocopy
and China ink on paper],
19 x 23 cm Arquivo
[Archive] Paulo Bruscky
96-97 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Paulo Bruscky
É a Arte Reversível? [Is
A arte correio tinha outro eixo fundamental na própria discussão
Art Reversible?], 1977 de seus modos de circulação, com os quais se fazia também uma
Colagem sobre cartão
[Collage on card],
leitura geopolítica da arte, a exemplo do pequeno desenho Situação
10,5 x 15 cm. Coleção Geográfica - Distância de Artista (1982), de Paulo Bruscky, que
[Collection] Mamam
evidencia a distância entre o artista e seu parceiro Leonhard Frank
Duch (residente em Berlim), ao passo que revela que, por meio da arte,
existia sua possibilidade de conexão, a ponto de a obra inverter as
ordens geográficas e afirmar “Bruscky em Berlim” e “Duch em Recife”.
Tal possibilidade de conexão e rede, ainda antecessora do grande
boom da globalização, é a pauta de um cartaz em xerox como 6.000
Agências (1977), de Daniel Santiago, onde se lê “os correios têm
6.000 agências para você mandar arte por correspondência”, e da
apropriação (1978) feita por esse artista de embalagens de alimentos
que são ressignificados como postais. Ao mesmo tempo, sempre
cientes da dimensão de ineficiência ou fracasso que é parte constitutiva
da dimensão política da arte, Paulo Bruscky fará a colagem –
distribuída em larga quantidade como cartazes fotocopiados –
Returned to Sender - ao Remetente (1979), em que reúne selos de
correspondências que não chegaram a seu destino, afirmando ser
também no espaço do ruído entre emissor e receptor que a arte tem
força singular.
Paulo Bruscky 6000 Agências [6000 Agencies], 1977. Fotocópia sobre papel [Photocopy on paper], 33 x 22 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo Z
Por entre postais, cartas e outras formas de correspondência, notam- Paulo Bruscky
Situ/Ação Geo/Gráfica
se ainda dois intensos campos de investigação: a palavra e o corpo. - Distância de Artista
[Geo/Graphic Situ/
Se um trabalho como Lembrança de Itamaracá - Minha Pele da Coxa Action - Artist’s Distance],
1982
Queimada em Itamaracá (1975), de Leonhard Frank Duch (no qual o
Tinta hidrocor sobre
artista cola no papel parte de sua pele descolada do corpo pelo efeito papel cartão [Hydrocolor
paint on card paper],
do sol), trata de um corpo que se faz presente na medida mesma de 10,8 x 14,8 cm Coleção
sua ausência (recurso comum às estratégias da arte sob estado de [Collection] Mamam
Paulo Bruscky Returned to Sender – Ao Remetente, 1979. Fotocópia sobre papel [Photocopy on paper], 44,7 x 31,2 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
100-101 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Jomard Muniz de
Britto/
cidade de Fazenda Nova, interior de Pernambuco, foi realizada
O Cruzeiro/Caetano
Veloso
a I Feira Experimental de Música, posteriormente conhecida como
Série O País da
Saudade [Raul Córdula]
“Woodstock do Nordeste”. O evento marca a constituição de uma
– “Mas É Isso que É a cena musical contracultural que, surgida entre Recife e Olinda (com
Juventude que Diz”
[The Land of Longing a colaboração de músicos de estados vizinhos), representa uma
series – “But That Is the
Youth contribuição singular para o contexto brasileiro da época, identificado
Who Says”], 1980
principalmente pelo tropicalismo e pela Jovem Guarda. Para essa
Fotocópia e colagem
sobre papel [Photocopy
cena musical colaborava a Fábrica de Discos Rozenblit, uma das
and collage on paper],
40 x 30 cm
maiores do Brasil, responsável, por exemplo, por gravar os discos do
Coleção [Collection] selo independente Solar, a exemplo de Satwa (Lula Côrtes e Lailson)
MAR - Fundo [Fund]
Raul Córdula e Paêbirú (Lula Côrtes e Zé Ramalho). A sonoridade, a poesia, a
visualidade (largamente devedora da presença criativa de Katia Mesel,
autora ou coautora de grande parte dos projetos gráficos de discos
e cartazes do período) e a performance experimental de bandas/
iniciativas como Nuvem 33, Lula Côrtes, Marconi Notaro, Phetus,
Flaviola, Ave Sangria, dentre outros – comumente denominados
de movimento udigrudi (corruptela inicialmente pejorativa de
underground), psicodelia nordestina, beat psicodelia recifense –,
em seu cruzamento de referências populares e do rock, ainda hoje
emanam uma inconteste potência revulsiva.
Lula Wanderley/Peixe Cartaz [Poster] Feira Experimental de Música, 1974. Impressão offset [Offset printing], 31,5 x 21 cm. Coleção [Collection] Lula Wanderley
104-105 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Tamarineira Village Cartaz [Poster of] Tamarineira Village no Teatro do Parque, 1973
Impressão offset sobre papel [Offset print on paper], 33 x 22 cm. Coleção [Collection] Almir de Oliveira
terminar e que foram importantes para os encontros e
as parcerias daquela nascente cena musical. Além dos
integrantes mais estreitamente vinculados ao grupo
– Otávio Bzzz, Lula Wanderley e Bactéria (Humberto
Avellar) –, também inúmeros colaboradores participaram
da Nuvem 33, a exemplo de Carneirinho (Carlos Fernando),
Bactéria (Humberto Avellar), Robertinho do Recife,
Rodolfo Mesquita, Ivan Maurício, dentre outros.
Convite [Invitation],
8 x 14,5 cm. Coleção
[Collection] Lula
Wanderley
Fanzine, c. 1972
Ave Sangria Cartaz [Poster of] Ave Sangria: Perfumes y Baratchos, 1974. Impressão offset sobre papel [Offset print on paper], 48 x 33 cm. Coleção [Collection] Almir de Oliveira
Nuvem 33
Cartaz [Poster]
Concerto Nuvem
33, 1972
Impressão offset
[Offset printing], 22
x 32,5 cm Coleção
[Collection] Lula
Wanderley
hibridizava referências e, assim, criou o forrock,
mistura de forró com rock que teve na canção “Alagoas”
seu melhor exemplo. Posteriormente ao Phetus, seus
integrantes – Lailson de Holanda, Paulo Rafael, Zé da
Flauta – atuariam em outras bandas do Recife e manteriam
parcerias entre si.
Raul Córdula
Sem título [Untitled],
1965
Aquarelas, guache,
nanquim sobre papel
[Watercolors, gouache,
China ink on paper],
61,5 x 72 cm (com
moldura [with frame])
Coleção [Collection]
MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
Discos de vinil [Vinyl LPs]
Satwa, 1973
Coleção [Collection] Lailson
Montez Magno
Cidade Esférica
[Spherical City], 1988
Maquete em metal e
madeira [Metal and
wood maquette],
36 x 36 x 7 cm.
Coleção [Collection]
Galeria Pilar
Carta datilografada
[Typed letter], 10 x 23,5
(Envelope). Coleção
[Collection] Montez
Magno
114-115 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Montez Magno
MMMausoléu, 1969
Diversamente à escala utópica ou individual das obras de Montez
Grafite sobre papel
Magno, situam-se as colaborações entre Daniel Santiago e Paulo
[Graphite on paper],
21,5 x 30 cm. Coleção
Bruscky por meio da dupla Bruscky & Santiago. Suas preocupações
[Collection] MAR - com a dimensão social da arte tornam possível uma série de projetos
Fundo [Fund] Paulo
Herkenhoff nos interstícios da cidade, como a 1ª Exposição Internacional de
Paulo Bruscky Art Door, que em 1981 ocupou 111 outdoors com intervenções de
Arte Cemiterial
[Graveyard Art], 1971
artistas de todo o mundo. Esses artistas chegaram à cidade, por meio
Convite [Invitation]
da rede de arte postal, a convite dos organizadores da exposição,
10 x 6 cm
Coleção [Collection]
MAR - Fundo [Fund]
Paulo Bruscky
Montez Magno O Ovo [The Egg], 1969. Grafite e lápis de cor sobre papel [Graphite and colored pencil on paper]
21,5 x 30 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Paulo Herkenhoff
116-117 pernambuco Experimental - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Madeira, metal,
bombons [Metal, wood,
candies]. Coleção
[Collection] MAR -
Fundo [Fund] Z
Montez Magno
Ludus Bellicum, 1973
Madeira, vidro e
soldados de chumbo
[Metal, glass and lead
soldiers], 27 x 10 cm
Coleção do artista
[Artist’s collection]
Paulo Bruscky Luto [Mourning], 1976. Carimbo sobre envelope [Stamp on envelop] , 7 x 11 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
Silvio Hansen Linha Dura [Hard Line], 1977. Nanquim sobre papel [China ink on paper], 21 x 29,7 cm. Arquivo [Archive] Paulo Bruscky
Equipe Bruscky & Santiago Limpo e Desinfetado [Clean and Disinfected], 1987. Offset, 12,1 x 16,3 cm. Coleção [Collection] Mamam
Paulo Bruscky Título de Eleitor Cancelado [Cancelled Voting Card], 1976. Fotocópia, selo, carimbos e etiqueta sobre papel [Photocopy, postage
stamp, stamp marks and label on paper]. 12,2 x 16,5 cm. Coleção [Collection] Mamam
A atenção – e a crítica – ao lugar de poder da arte na criação desses
imaginários será exercício constante dos artistas de Pernambuco e,
em especial, das redes de colaboração entre eles. Desde o princípio
do século XX, os diálogos e as parcerias que tanto identificam o
campo da arte local serão essenciais para a criação de uma cena cuja
efervescência se faz também nas relações entre artistas, públicos,
meios de comunicação etc., numa diversidade de perspectivas que
instaura alteridades (auto)questionadoras que talvez tenham como
um de seus corolários o experimental. Será nessas relações que as
fervorosas perguntas lançadas pelos trabalhos de tantos criadores
continuarão a ecoar, insistentes em sua urgência diante da experiência
abismática do mundo.
Silvio Hansen
Brasil Coração Partido
[Brazil Broken Heart],
1977
Paulo Bruscky Série O País da Saudade [Raul Córdula] – LUTO [The Land of Longing series – MOURNING], 1980. Fotocópia e colagem sobre papel
[Photocopy and collage on paper], 40 x 30 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Raul Córdula
124-125 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
“A pureza é um mito.”
Hélio Oiticica
de l’Amazone, 1923 Monteiro foi um pintor primitivista da Escola de Paris que, na Europa, 3. Vicente do Rego
Monteiro e Géo-Charles:
Publicação [Publication] descobre não o ‘outro’, alienígena, a que a vanguarda recorria para correspondências.
25,7 x 22,2 cm
Coleção [Collection] fazer a ruptura da tradição, mas o ‘mesmo’, indígena, capaz de In: BRUSCKY, P. et
al (org.). Vicente do
Coleção [Collection]
MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z repor as tendências destrutivas da arte moderna, no curso de uma Rego Monteiro: poeta,
tipógrafo, pintor. Recife:
poética nativista intermediária entre a novidade e o tradicionalismo”,3 2004, p. 93.
5. O Gráfico Amador
desenvolveu experiências
que enlaçam Vicente do Rego Monteiro, João Cabral de Melo Neto,
gráficas inovadoras
e amplos conteúdos
O Gráfico Amador 5), ou ainda as preocupações de ordem social,
culturais a partir de
sua criação em 1954,
concomitantes com a vida do período escolhido, por grande parte de
em Recife, por Aloisio seus teóricos mais importantes (Gilberto Freyre, Josué de Castro, Paulo
Magalhães, Gastão de
Holanda, José Laurênio Freire, Celso Furtado). Essas matrizes reflexivas acabaram introjetando
de Melo e Orlando
da Costa Ferreira. Em questões críticas na atividade de cunho plástico, sem cair, porém, no
oito anos de produção,
a gráfica multiplicou
protocolo de muita arte ideológica, politicamente engajada (o que foi,
as coordenadas de
impressão com o uso de
às vezes, quase outra caça às bruxas, guardadas as distâncias).
tipografia e ilustrações
feitas em litografia,
clichê de metal,
xilogravura, clichê de
barbante e pochoir.
Josué de Castro
Segunda edição de
[Second edition of]
Geografia da Fome
[Geography of Hunger]
(1946), 1948
22 x 15 cm
Coleção [Collection]
Biblioteca Pública de
Pernambuco
128-129 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Pode-se dizer agora que talvez seja a ironia uma das figuras Jomard Muniz de Britto
Jogos Frugais Frutais
de linguagem mais inseridas na cultura e no comportamento [Frugal Frutal Games],
1979
nordestinos – neste caso, falando de Recife –, em contraste com Vídeo [Video], 13’50”
outros estados do Brasil. Faz parte do tratamento oblíquo e crítico Coleção [Collection]
MAR - Fundo [Fund]
da cultura pernambucana essa característica que, por exemplo, não Jomard Muniz de Britto
Cícero Dias Pão de Açúcar [Sugar Loaf], c. 1920. Aquarela sobre papel [Watercolor on paper], 40 x 45 cm. Coleção particular [Private collection]
132-133 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Daniel Santiago
A Democracia
Chupando Melancia
[Democracy Eating
Watermelon], 1980
- 2011
Daniel Santiago Vacina Contra Tédio [Vaccine Against Tedium], 1984. Cartaz, impressão offset sobre papel
[Poster, offset print on paper] Coleção do artista [Artist’s collection]
134-135 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Equipe Bruscky & Santiago O Duelo [The Combat], 1975. Vídeo [Video], 3’18”. Coleção [Collection] Paulo Bruscky
136-137 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Documentação da
ação (caixas de fósforo)
[Documentation
of action (matchboxes)]
Coleção [Collection]
Paulo Bruscky
Tampouco deve ser alheia a essa profusão de elementos gráficos a
tradição que no campo da gravura e da edição representa a cultura
pernambucana. Esse aspecto de cartografia sígnica, tão prolífico
na poesia visual por suas derivas imagéticas, começa cedo com
as experiências avant la lettre de Vicente do Rego Monteiro, com
sua paixão pela poesia e pela edição. Concrétion (1952), livro que
surpreendeu os concretistas ao tomar notícia dele várias décadas
depois de sua publicação, ou Cartomancie (1952), poemas impressos
sobre baralho de naipes que se dimensionam para outra percepção
lírico-plástica, como exemplos que influenciaram João Cabral de Melo
Neto em sua condição de impressor durante sua estadia na Espanha,
chegando a publicar Joan Brossa ou, depois, contribuindo para as
experiências do grupo O Gráfico Amador. Talvez isso explique que,
nessa poética de sinais, tenham-se incluído nesta mostra exemplos
de poemas visuais mais desconhecidos de Joaquim Cardozo, poeta
sempre lateral ao cânone versicular e merecedor de maior espaço, em
parte por seu pionerismo em outras vertentes, poesia visual/sonora,
livro de artista, caso também de Katia Mesel (estando presente nesta
exposição a joia gráfica O Livro, de 1970, com páginas limpas para
aforismos espaciais) e de Lula Côrtes, com suas próprias edições de
livros.
[p. 138 - 139] Katia Mesel O Livro das Transformações [The Book of Transformations], 1975. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
Paulo Bruscky Aépta, 1982. Super-8 / xerofilme colorido [Colored film copy]. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Paulo Bruscky
Ypiranga Filho Dinâmicas do Traço I [Trace Dynamics I], 1967. Vídeo [Video], 3’04. Coleção do artista [Artist’s collection]
Ypiranga Filho Dinâmicas do Traço II [Trace Dynamics II], 1967. Vídeo [Video], 2’45. Coleção do artista [Artist’s collection]
Paulo Bruscky O Meu Cérebro Desenha Assim I [My Brain Draws Like That 1], 1976/2007. Vídeo [Video], 7’29’’. Coleção do artista [Artist’s Collection]
Aloisio Magalhães Tobogã [Slide], 1979. Cartema, 59,5 x 42 cm. Coleção [Collection] Mamam
144-145 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Daniel Santiago Alfabeto Comilão e Alfabeto Eleito [Glutton Alphabet and Elected Alphabet], 1988. Impressão offset sobre papel [Offset print on paper]
29,7 x 42 cm cada um [Each one]. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
Daniel Santiago Alfabeto no Plural [Plural Alphabet], 1980. Impressão offset sobre papel [Offset print on paper]. Coleção do artista [Artist’s collection]
146-147 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Montez Magno Traça/Traço [Moth/Trace], 1992-2010. Canetas hidrográficas e estereográficas sobre papel
[Hydrographic and stereographic pens on paper], 23 x 16,5 (fechado [closed]). Coleção do artista [Artist’s collection]
148-149 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Almandrade
Série O País da
Saudade [Raul Córdula]
– Saudades do Livro
Obscuridade do
Desejo, Recusado pela
Fundação [The Land of
Longing series – Missing
the Book Obscurity of
Desire, Rejected by the
Foundation], 1980
Fotocópia e colagem
sobre papel [Photocopy
and collage on paper],
40 x 30 cm Coleção
[Collection] MAR - Fundo
[Fund] Raul Córdula
150-151 Uma Poética de sinais - Adolfo montejo Navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
ficção.
Daniel Santiago O Brasil É o Meu Abismo [Brazil Is My Abyss], 1982. Cartaz [Poster]. Texto de [Text by] Jomard Muniz de Britto.
Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Orlando Nóbrega.
(Página Direita / Right Page)
Daniel Santiago
O Brasil É o Meu Abismo [Brazil Is My Abyss], 1982
Fotografia (registro de performance) [Photograph
(performance documentation)]
Texto de [Text by] Jomard Muniz de Britto
Coleção [Collection] MAR -
Fundo [Fund] Orlando Nóbrega
156-157 recife como centro do mundo - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Francisco Du Bocage Demolição da Rua do Bom Jesus e do Pelourinho [Demolition of the Bom Jesus and Pelourinho Streets], 1913. Fotografia [Photograph]
Coleção [Collection] Fundaj / Benício Dias
Recife era, então, uma localidade sempre definida tanto pelo que
estava situado além de si mesma quanto pelo local. Isso se nota na
obra magistral de Cícero Dias, na qual reserva um espaço de sua tela
exuberante para representar os morros do Rio, permitindo que outros
elementos do lugar adentrem seu retrato de Recife. A representação
que Cícero Dias faz do Rio afirma o deslocamento, mas também a
160-161 recife como centro do mundo - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Unhandeijara Lisboa
Sem título [Untitled],
1977
Equipe Bruscky & Santiago Artexpocorponte [Artexpobodybridge], 1971. Livro de artista [Artist Book], 48 x 72 cm, ed. 1/1
Coleção [Collection] Paulo Bruscky
162-163 recife como centro do mundo - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
década de 1960 que teve desdobramentos na esfera artística a partir 7. SILVA, Itamar
Morgado da. Fissuras
da criação de iniciativas como o Movimento de Cultura Popular do e capilaridades: o
individual e o coletivo
Recife (1960), o Movimento da Ribeira (1960) e o Movimento Armorial na formação da poética
artística de Daniel
(1970) – todos preocupados com a coletividade e com a cultura Santiago, dissertação
de mestrado. Recife:
popular.7 Universidade Federal
de Pernambuco, 2013.
p. 33-4.
Equipe Bruscky & Santiago Artemcágado [Artontortoise], 1972. Fotografia [Photograph]. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] CIFO
A formação da rede de arte correio em Recife era tanto literária
quanto performática – implicando o corpo – desde o princípio. Os
artistas em Recife se envolveram com a arte postal inicialmente por
meio do movimento poema/processo, que desenvolveu algumas das
8. Assim como a arte questões dos movimentos de poesia concreta e visual.8 Apresentado
postal, o movimento
foi em rede, surgindo pelo artista Wlademir Dias-Pino na revista Ponto (1967), o poema
em várias cidades ao
mesmo tempo, como processo proclamou uma poesia focada no “desencadeamento crítico
observou Neide Sá: “O
poema/processo foi um de estruturas sempre novas”.9 Dias-Pino define o poema/processo
movimento fundado em
1967, que aconteceu
sobretudo em relação à noção de jogos, marcação de pontos e
simultaneamente em
vários pontos do
atividades – uma poesia que emerge da página para a esfera social.10
Brasil: aqui no Rio, no Como Craig Saper observa:
Nordeste, em Natal no
Recife e em Minas. O
Movimento do Poema/
Processo se desenvolveu O poema processo se constrói nos avanços da poesia
de 1967 até 1972 e concreta e segue em direção à tendência de jogos visuais
chegou a ter cerca de
250 artistas e poetas conceituais, placares e atividades. Embora esses poemas
participando. Ele não sirvam ainda para marcar pontos, sugerem um sistema
era aberto a novos
participantes para de código secreto à espera de um leitor que o interprete
o que o correio era ou jogue.11
intensamente utilizado
– a arte via correio.
Muita gente que faz
arte – correio hoje Essas redes já estabelecidas vão ao encontro da internacionalização
participou do poema/
processo” Entrevista da arte postal alcançada pelo compartilhamento dos endereços de
com Regina Célia Pinto,
sem data, site do Museu
correio dos artistas nas revistas e entre artistas e poetas.
do Essencial e do Além
Disso. Disponível em:
<http://www.arteonline. A conexão entre a poesia experimental e o corpo foi exposta no
arq.br/museu/
interviews/neide.htm> poema performance Poesia Viva (1977), culminância e celebração
Acesso em 4 jul. 2012
do poema/processo. Organizada por Paulo Bruscky e Unhandeijara
9. DIAS-PINO,
Wlademir. Process: Lisboa, essa ação afirmou o corpo como o próprio poema. No texto
project reading. Rio/
Montevideo: Ponto/
distribuído no evento, Lisboa declarou: “Somos a própria obra,
OVUM, Oct., 1969
apud PERRONE, Charles
nós somos a letra em movimento”.12 Cada participante segurava
A. Seven faces: brazilian uma das letras que compunham o título do trabalho e, ao longo da
poetry since modernism.
Durham: Duke University performance, ajudava a formar outras palavras ao mover o corpo pelo
Press, 1996, p. 66.
espaço. O corpo se tornou a letra, a letra se fundiu com o corpo, e o
10. Ibid. n.p.
significado foi criado coletivamente por meio da recuperação simbólica
11. Citação de Craig
Saper, Networked art.
da relação entre língua e corpo, a resposta do coletivo para a quebra
Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 2001.
dos sistemas semióticos codificados.
12. Statement issued as
part of the performance, A interseção entre texto e corpo também é notável no caso de duas
1977. Paulo Bruscky
Archive. performances comparáveis, cada uma delas de autoria de um dos
colaboradores de longa data, Bruscky e Santiago. No caso Bruscky, O
que É Arte, para que Serve? (1978), a obra questiona literalmente o
papel da arte na sociedade. A pergunta, como nas letras carregadas
Paulo Bruscky Poesia Viva [Live Poetry], 1977. Fotografia [Photograph], 40 x 70 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR. Fundo [Fund] Ariel Aisiks
Arnaldo Tobias Olho Mata [Eye Kills], 1970. Fotocópia sobre papel [Photocopy on paper], 33 x 22 cm. Arquivo [Archive] Paulo Bruscky
166-167 recife como centro do mundo - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
O fato de ser a arte postal uma forma de arte sem corpo não impediu
que os artistas seguissem experimentando formas de colocar o
corpo como protagonista de seus trabalhos postais. Em 1975, por
exemplo, Leonhard Frank Duch enviou uma lembrança bem-humorada
das férias em Itamaracá, praia famosa no litoral no Nordeste. O
cartão-postal, no lugar de imagens pitorescas da cidade litorânea,
estampava a própria pele de Duch queimada de sol, dirigindo a
atenção ao corpo e à carne do remetente ausente. Nos trabalhos
de arte postal, assim, o correio normalmente atua como emissário,
viajando como representante ou no lugar do artista. Além disso,
havia a preocupação em estabelecer interações mais íntimas, indo
contra o cenário de desumanização da comunicação tecnológica e dos
meios de comunicação de massa, que deveriam estabelecer conexões
afetivas entre as pessoas. Amelia Jones atribui o interesse dos artistas
conceituais pelo corpo a uma reação à mercantilização, declarando
que, no “pancapitalismo, os sujeitos se tornam objetos do sistema
mercantil inseridos no processo de troca sem-fim.”13 No entanto, ainda 13. JONES, Amelia et al.
The artist’s body. London:
que certamente preocupados com a racionalização da comodificação Phaidon, 2000, p.21.
Daniel Santiago Do Que É Que Eu Tenho Medo? [What Am I Affraid Of?], 1976. Trabalho publicado em Commonpress. Revista Internacional de Arte Correio
[Work published in Commonpress. International Magazine of Mail Art] (ed. Paulo Bruscky e [and] Leonhard Frank Duch). Arquivo [Archive] Paulo Bruscky.
168-169 recife como centro do mundo - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Paulo Bruscky Cuidado com Violação [Careful with Violation], 1978. Colagem e desenho sobre papel/envelope
[Collage and drawing on paper/envelop], 9 x 20,2 cm. Coleção [Collection] Galeria Nara Roesler
Esses “corpos envelopes” convertem o envelope, de sua função de
recipiente, em sujeito considerado agente em si. Tal compreensão da
obra funcionando como agente, corpo ou ícone aparece nas diferentes
propostas articulando o corpo na arte postal. Essa obra pode,
portanto, ser vista como representante físico do artista, e talvez como
forma de “fuga” de regimes repressivos.
Daniel Santiago Fome [Hunger], 1976. Carimbo sobre papel [Stamp on paper], 9,5 x 12 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
Unhandeijara Lisboa Fome Hoje [Hunger Today], 1976. Carimbo sobre papel [Stamp on paper], 7,9 x 13,4 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Daniel Santiago
172-173 recife como centro do mundo - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Raul Córdula
AEestéticaÉODefeito
A experiência e o conhecimento corporificados, que podem ser
DoArtistaODefeitoÉ
AEstéticaSocial
encontrados em Merleau-Ponty e, até certo ponto, no método de
[Aestheticisisthe
DefectOfTheArtist
alfabetização de Paulo Freire, entendem o corpo como agente social
TheDefectisTheSocial básico. Ao escrever sobre sua obra magistral, Cícero Dias comentou
Aesthetics], 1981
que “toda a história do Nordeste” tinha passado pelo seu corpo.17 17. DIAS, Cícero. Eu vi
o mundo: Cícero Dias,
Fotografia [Photograph]
(registro de intervenção Como, então, a obra arte postal age à distância, como corpo viajante p. 83.
em outdoor/register
of intervention on
que é localidade em si mesmo? Desse modo, a obra de arte postal
billboard)
Coleção [Collection]
também se torna representativa de um lugar, tanto como sujeito quanto
MAR - Fundo [Fund]
Raul Córdula
como objeto, deslocando-se de um lugar para o outro, deslocando
Paulo Bruscky AlimentAÇÃO, 1978. Livro [Book], 19 x 13 cm. Coleção [Collection] MAR - Fundo [Fund] Z
174-175 recife como centro do mundo - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Regionalismo e o translocal
[p. 176 - 177] Tiago Amorim Lago Tracunhaém, 1978. Nanquim sobre papel [China ink on paper], 18 x 12 cm. Coleção [Collection] Celso Marconi
QUER MESMO SABER? (I & II)
José Cláudio
186-187 QUER MESMO SABER? I - José CLáudio PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
1948.
Galo ou Abacaxi.
[p. 190 - 191] Vista da exposição com obras de [View of the exhibition with works from] Cícero Dias
Guarda-Chuva ou Instrumento de Música [Umbrella or Musical Instrument], 1943. Óleo sobre tela [Oil on canvas], 100 x 81 cm. Coleção [Collection] Fadel
Galo ou Abacaxi [Rooster or Pineapple], c. 1940. Óleo sobre tela [Oil on canvas], 100 x 80 cm. Coleção [Collection] Ivo Pitanguy
Moça ou Castanha-de-Caju [Lady or Cashew Nut], 1946. Óleo sobre tela [Oil on canvas]. Coleção [Collection], 105 x 125 cm. Waldir Simões de Assis Filho
192-193 QUER MESMO SABER? I - José CLáudio PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Na hora não percebi esse milagre todo porque sem nenhum contato
com o mundo das artes e das letras de canto nenhum. Nem sabia
que pintura ainda existia. Minhas únicas obras tinham sido as
ilustrações nos cadernos dos colegas e, vejam só, foram elas
que destamparam de uma petelecada acidental todos os meus
sonhos, sonhos encobertos que nem eu mesmo sabia que tinha!
Ora, um dia qualquer, em 1952, encontro casualmente o ex-colega
de classe do Colégio Marista, Ivan de Albuquerque Carneiro,
com quem nem tinha maior aproximação. Ele era externo, ia para
casa depois das aulas. Não me lembrava do nome dele. Nem ele
do meu. Tanto que me parou e perguntou: “Você ainda gosta de
desenhar?” Fiquei até sem saber direito se dizia sim ou não,
tanto tempo fazia que não pensava no assunto. Estava cursando
o primeiro ano de direito, ou repetindo, que nunca ia lá, na
mesma faculdade onde vira a exposição de Cícero Dias quatro
anos antes, sem saber o que ia ser na vida ou o que fazer da
vida.
Cosmos, 1968
[p. 200 - 201] Ionaldo Cavalcanti Álbum Paisagens Concretas [Concrete Landscapes Album], 1958. Serigrafia sobre papel [Serigraphy on paper]
14,2 x 23,1 cm. Coleção [Collection] Fundaj | Coleção [Collection] Mauro Mota
202-203 QUER MESMO SABER? I - José CLáudio PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
L utar com palavras e performances pode ainda ser a luta mais vã.
Y sem verbos nem verbas: Yang & Yin. Dialética sem síntese.
Interpenetrações gilbertofreYreanas nas tropicologias e
democracias metarraciais. Tropicais alegorias e melancolias.
Mestiças e híbridas solidões.
José Cláudio da Silva (Ipojuca, PE, 1932) despertou Adolfo Montejo Navas (Madri, Espanha, 1954) é
para a pintura ainda na escola primária ao ver o poeta, crítico, curador independente, tradutor e artista
pintor Othon Fialho de Oliveira, seu padrinho de visual. Colaborador de diversas publicações culturais
crisma e ex-promotor, desenhar os fregueses nos na Espanha e no Brasil, é correspondente da revista
papéis de embrulho da loja de seu pai, Amaro Silva. de arte internacional Lápiz, de Madri, desde 1998.
Em 1952, abandonou o curso da Faculdade de Direito Realizou curadorias de Anna Bella Geiger, Victor
do Recife e juntou-se ao grupo do Ateliê Coletivo, Arruda, Regina Silveira, Wlademir Dias-Pino, Paulo
dirigido por Abelardo da Hora, sendo um de seus Bruscky, Vera Chaves Barcellos, Liliana Porter, Iberê
fundadores. Na Bahia trabalhou com Mário Cravo Camargo, Eduardo Haesbaert, além de diversas
Júnior, Carybé e Jenner Augusto; em São Paulo, com coletivas na Espanha e no Brasil. Além de poesia,
Di Cavalcanti e estudou gravura com Lívio Abramo. aforística e traduções, publicou Miscelânea Cortázar
Premiado na IV Bienal de São Paulo, ganhou o Prêmio (Coleção Memorial de América Latina, 2009), A
Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, concedido pela Bola entre Palavras (org. com Vanderley Mendonça,
Folha de S. Paulo, e, com bolsa da Fundação Rotelini, Annablume, 2010), Regina Silveira (Charta Books,
passou um ano na Europa. Atualmente expõe na 2011), Victor Arruda (Casa da Palavra, 2011), O Outro
galeria Espaço Brennand, em Recife. Lado da Imagem e Outros Textos – A Poética de
Regina Silveira (Edusp, 2012), Poiesis Bruscky (Cosac
Jomard Muniz de Britto (Recife, PE, 1933), graduado Naify/APAC, 2013), Mário Carneiro – Trânsitos (coautor,
em filosofia pela Universidade do Recife (atual MinC, Circuito, 2013). Ganhou o Prêmio Mário
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco-UFPE), integrou, Pedrosa de Ensaio de Arte e Cultura Contemporânea
nos anos 1960, a equipe de alfabetização de adultos (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, 2009). Coordena Limiar
do educador Paulo Freire. Com o AI-5, mesmo após Edições Extraordinárias.
ser preso e aposentado da UFPE, seguiu atuando
como professor titular da Universidade Federal da Clarissa Diniz (Recife, PE, 1985) é crítica e curadora.
Paraíba-UFPB até 1973, ano em que foi impedido Mestre pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Artes
de lecionar por meio de comunicação sumária. Foi da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)
reintegrado na duas universidades após a anistia. O e graduada em artes plásticas pela Universidade
poeta lúcido, político lúdico e pedagogo libertário, Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE). É gerente de
autor de mais de dez livros, atuou ainda como crítico conteúdo do Museu de Arte do Rio, tendo realizado
cultural, no Cine Clube Vigilanti Cura, em Recife, a curadoria de diversas de suas exposições, entre
e no Jornal do Commercio. A partir da década de elas, Pernambuco Experimental, O Abrigo e o
1970, participou ativamente do tropicalismo, com Terreno – Arte e Sociedade no Brasil I, junto com
uma extensa filmografia em super-8 e variadas Paulo Herkenhoff e Do Valongo à Favela: Imaginário
performances. e Periferia, junto com Rafael Cardoso. Foi curadora
assistente do Programa Rumos Artes Visuais 2008-
Zanna Gilbert (Norwich, Reino Unido, 1980) é pós- 2009, do Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, e assinou
doutoranda no Departamento de Desenho do MoMA, a curadoria e cocuradoria de diversas exposições,
doutora pela Universidade de Essex e Tate Research. como Refrações – arte contemporânea em Alagoas
Atuou como professora em cursos de pós-graduação (Pinacoteca da UFAL, 2010), Ambiguações (CCBB,
na Universidade de Essex e na Universidade Nacional 2013), Zona tórrida – certa pintura do Nordeste
Autônoma do México (Unam). O foco de sua pesquisa (Santander Cultural - Recife, 2012), contidonãocontido
são as redes de artistas e a circulação transnacional (MAMAM, 2010) e Contrapensamento selvagem
da arte através do correio. Foi curadora das (Instituto Itaú Cultural, 2011). Editora da Tatuí, revista
exposições Felipe Ehrenberg: Obras do Arquivo Tate de crítica de arte, desde 2006, e membro do Grupo
(2009), Burocracias Íntimas: Arte e Correio (2011), de Críticos do Centro Cultural São Paulo de 2008
Jogos de Competição: A Revolução do Design do a 2010, Clarissa é também autora e coautora dos
México em 68 (2012), Daniel Santiago: O Brasil É o livros Crachá: aspectos da legitimação artística;
Meu Abismo (Mamam, Recife, 2012; MAC-Niterói, Gilberto Freyre; Montez Magno; e Crítica de arte em
2014) e Edgardo Antonio Vigo: O Desfazedor de Pernambuco: escritos do século XX.
Objetos (MoMA, 2014).
Versão em Inglês
[english version]
214-215 presentation - carlos gradim PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
experimental pernambuco - clarissa diniz
The Museu de Arte do Rio presents Experimental Pernambuco The rich seam of Experimental Pernambuco also gave rise to
(PE: EXP), a selection of art produced in Pernambuco between a program of related educational activities based on the idea
1900 and 1980. Curated by Clarissa Diniz, PE: EXP also sheds of educational experimentation later resulted in further show,
light on some of the key debates of this period, demonstrating Experimenting with Experimental Pernambuco, in which the
the singular features of the Pernambuco context and also educational activities produced in the course of PE:EXP took
pointing to dialogue with art from other parts of Brazil and center stage in a new exhibition put together by the managers
overseas. of the MAR’s content and education sectors. The show also
gave rise to a concert involving musicians and bands from
The geographical efforts introduced into the curation by Paulo the 1970s whose work had been included in PE:EXP. Staged
Herkenhoff for MAR collection programs and exhibitions during the final week of the exhibition as part of festivities
have produced a map of Brazilian contemporary art. Since to commemorate the first year of the MAR, it was a unique
it opened in March 2011, the MAR has brought together opportunity to bring these bands back together and to revive
paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, artist’s books, their work and their legacy in the context of Rio de Janeiro and
videos, films, visual poetry, photocopy art and other kinds for a younger audience.
of work by 15 different artists, ranging from Vicente do Rego
Monteiro to Lula Cardoso Ayres. In addition to what Herkenhoff This catalogue edited by Clarissa Diniz is the third MAR title
calls Experimental Pernambuco, his trilogy also includes published in 2014, along with Pororoca – A Amazônia no
Modern Pernambuco (which he co-curated in 2006), and MAR and Largo do Paço, the generous donation by Fundo
Contemporary Pernambuco. After proposing the experimental Fátima Zorzato and Ruy Souza e Silva. It is with the greatest
module for the MAR, he entrusted the project to Clarissa Diniz. of pleasure that we present this catalogue as part of an
editorial program that builds up alternative histories based
The exhibition brought together works, artists and movements on continuous dialogue between exhibitions and catalogues.
that have emerged in Pernambuco, whose experimental Bringing together previously unpublished texts by Clarissa
intensity added weight to the collective construction of the ways Diniz, Adolfo Montejo Navas, José Cláudio, Zanna Gilbert and
people exist, think and create. The exhibition also challenged Jomard Muniz de Britto, this catalogue aims to provide a point
the always inadequate circumscriptions of the history of art, of reference for researchers and lovers of the experimentation
urging research institutions and those connected to them to that emerged in Pernambuco but spilled over and had a broad
take responsibility for continued efforts to think outside the box. influence on the culture of the whole of Brazil and around the
With its combination of individuals, differences, invisibilities, world. The Museu de Arte do Rio – MAR extends a warm thank
stereotypes and marginalities, Experimental Pernambuco shed you to all those who made this project possible.
light on different projects of modernity, ideas of a country,
experiences of art and collective sensibilities. It was therefore
an exhibition that reacted critically and creatively to the comfort
zones of our culture – an ongoing task to which the Museu de
Arte do Rio is always committed.
Carlos Gradim
President director of Instituto Odeon - MAR
EXPERIMENTAL PERNAMBUCO
Clarissa Diniz
Rather than to label the art produced in Pernambuco, the Few artists’ work speaks so eloquently of the artistic, social
aim of Experimental Pernambuco is to discuss the power of and political contradictions of the context of Pernambuco
invention and revulsion of artistic practice and that which we as Cícero Dias. A clear experimentalist, his career combines
may call its experimental character, capable, in the words invention, radicalness and conservatism in a typically Freyrean
of Jomard Muniz de Britto, of “confounding the established “sui generis”. For Gilberto Freyre, a “sui generis” life is the
and establishing differences”.1 Bringing together works, incarnation of “antagonisms in equilibrium”4 – a feature he
artists, debates, initiatives and various episodes, this is the stresses in his defense of a history of Brazil as a tightrope act,
experimental intensity that presents itself, underlining general effectively negotiating fraternization and violence of every
questions that pervade the period between 1900 and 1980 kind.5 It wouldn’t be different with Cícero Dias.
covered by the exhibition.
A child of the sugar plantation aristocracy like so many
Although it is very well-known for its contemporary work young men at that time, Cícero Dias left Pernambuco in the
of the 1990s and 2000s, Pernambuco was a hotbed of 1920s to study in Rio de Janeiro, where he set out on his first
experimental art throughout the preceding century, when explorations. His watercolors and drawings, while daring in
modern developments broadened their scope and provided the context of the Brazilian capital, did not appear to cause the
fertile ground, intensifying with the Manguebeat movement, same shock when exhibited back in his home town of Escada.6
for example. Experimental Pernambuco addresses the points Organized by Gilberto Freyre, two exhibitions of Dias’s work (in
at which projects of modernity were built up, radical forms 1928 and 1929) in Jundiá – the sugar plantation where he was
explored, new media experimented with, new bodies invented, born – illustrated the interest of the pair (who were lifelong
collaborative projects involving creation, sociability and the friends) in the sensible world of the sugar culture of the time,
circulation of art engaged in, and the constant recreation of while responding to the criticisms the artist had received in Rio
critical strategies for resistance and social and political action and Recife, including that of producing “nonsense art”.
was in course.
The dialogue between the two began in 1932, when the painter
More than the assertion of certain positions or strategies, it returned to Pernambuco: “Could I be participating in his ideas?”
is above all the constant reinvention – transformations and Dias asked, imagining that “the renowned sociologist could
conflicts – of language that interests us: the exhibition places never find a form of painting in which literary and sociological
its faith in the shifting force that disentangles art from regional affinities were so close to the visual arts”.7 The lifelong dialogue
determinants or identities. After all, while for an artist such as between the pair gave rise to an interest in the ways painting
José Cláudio, “art is not farm produce”, “it doesn’t come with the relates to its social, cultural and environmental context: “Could
flour we eat or with the blood we have”,2 for Jomard Muniz de Gilberto have been the first to show me the greens I used in
Britto and Daniel Santiago too it is an abyssal experience that my canvases? The greens of the Pernambuco sea I saw, where
extends beyond one’s place of origin: “Brazil is my abyss”. all painters conventionally saw blue. It is curious that painters
aiming to copy nature turned greens into blues”.8
Art that is abyssal and libertarian, but not without “contexture
- between the difference that comes from the root and the Freyre understood early on that, with Dias, the “nonsense
involvement that comes from the con-text”.3 Experimental was not the end but, in fact, a means: an attempt to produce
Pernambuco thus also challenges the stereotypes and ‘new ways of expressing life’… his painting strives towards the
commonplaces that are imagined by art over time, at times boldest of experimentation”.9 In turn, Dias took on his relation
fuelling, albeit collaterally, conservative conceptions of society. with his homeland as part of his artistic strategies: “I never
It is, after all, in the libidinal and dissenting clash with the forget to take my paintings to Escada, as I am persuaded that
context that the frictional character of creation takes shape and they gain in value through contact with the people”.10 For both
this is both the justification for and the basic issue addressed by men, the visual world and themes of Dias’s work was more
this exhibition. a continuation of the symbolic world of Pernambuco than a
break with it, which may explain why his panel I Have Seen
the World... And It Began in Recife (1926-1929, p. 154 - 155)
supposedly stirred controversy only when exhibited outside of
its local context.
1. Jomard Muniz de Britto in O que fazer da crítica cultural? (1979). Originally 6. “When Cícero Dias staged an exhibition at Jundiá, in Escada, his aim was precisely
published in BRITTO, Jomard Muniz; LEMOS, Sérgio. Inventário de um feudalismo that of scraping away the encrusted prejudices of the cognoscenti of the capital city,
cultural. Recife: Gráfica Nordeste, 1979. in order to achieve the popular intensity of the culture of humble farmhands, far
2. José Cláudio in Não há Nordeste (1961), Published in Diário da Noite. Recife, 13 from the ideological and intellectual disputes and deformities of the great artistic
June 1961. centers. It is a known fact that a young rancher or an illiterate shepherd, endowed
3. Jomard Muniz de Britto in O que fazer da crítica cultural? (1979). Originally with unconscious artistic sensibility, can get a better feel for a modern painting than
published in BRITTO, Jomard Muniz; LEMOS, Sérgio. Inventário de um feudalismo a scholar of any of our establishments of higher education. This is what the men of
cultural. Recife: Gráfica Nordeste, 1979. letters struggle to understand.” PEDROSA, Mário. Pernambuco, Cícero Dias e Paris.
4. Cf. Gilberto Freyre. Casa-Grande e senzala (1933). Revista Região. Recife, dezembro de 1948.
5. Cf. Gilberto Freyre. Um pintor brasileiro fixado em Paris. Rio de Janeiro, José 7. DIAS, Cícero. Eu vi o mundo: Cícero Dias. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2011. p. 69-70.
216-217 experimental pernambuco - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
An icon of his sexually explicit modern painting11 and of his Later, with the advent of the 20th century, the climate of
relation to the Northeast region and social history, the panel philosophical and political renewal attained an unprecedented
apparently provoked a timorous reaction from the public to urban scale, centered on the renovation of the Port of Recife.
the libidinous drives exposed in it. Partially vandalized when Apart from enabling a more intense flow of goods and ideas
exhibited at the Revolutionary Salon (National Museum of between Pernambuco and the rest of the world (an exchange
Fine Arts, 1931), the approximately 12-meter-long panel, with in which the zeppelins that stopped off in the city also played a
its transparency of form and theme, profaned the distance role), the transformation of the port radicalized the experience
kept between art and more ordinary feelings and narratives. of a modern Recife. Different from the stylistic eclecticism that
In Dias’s grand painting – executed on Kraft paper, which was setting the architectural tone of the period in other parts of
signaled from the outset its profanation of the métier –, while the country – such as the façades if the buildings lining Central
the initial pretext for the work was to tell the story of Joaquim Avenue in – the Pernambuco capital saw the emergence of a
Nabuco, it inevitably metamorphosed into a flurry of images of modernist urban fabric that occupied entire blocks, completed
the everyday. “Everything was mixed up in my head. Images by the strengthening of a hybrid culture, fed by European and
from my childhood. So many things: women, folk tales, Jacob’s African influences, the intermixture and reinvention of which
ladder, the eleven thousand virgins. Could I put all these images gave rise – through the combination of marches, maxixes,
into a grand fresco?”12 The epic intent is shot through with brass bands, fanfarras, capoeiras and dobrados – to the
experience of life; the ordinary and mythical merge in the body carnival dance and music known as frevo.
of the artist transformed into a pictorial carnality capable of
attracting and repelling, seducing and revolting. Cícero Dias Different from other manifestations of the culture of
knew that “the whole history of the Northeast coursed through Pernambuco, mostly coming from rural regions – in particular
his body”.13 the culture of the sugar plantations – such as maracatu – frevo
appeared at the outset of the 20th century as a clearly urban
Various images of contradictions – including social ones – that experience, replete with references coming from the globalizing
interested Freyre and the experimentalist Dias feature in I Have flux passing through the port, characterized as an occupation
Seen the World.. And It Began in Recife. While the panel does of the city and its streets. Improvisation and fervor – the heated
not have the critical clout of some of his later watercolors, such agitation from which the term frevo is derived – were features
as Condemnation of the Plantation Owners (1930, p. 17), with not only of music and dance, but also of the whole cultural
its bitter critique of the oligarchical system, it nevertheless does context in which Pernambuco had refused to adopt the national
point up the coexistence of cultural differences, such as a white resolution of 1855, according to which, based on the Carnival
woman breastfeeding a black baby, an airplane juxtaposed Authorities Council (held in Rio de Janeiro), Carnival would not
with an oxcart, or the architecture of the plantation alongside be prohibited or criminalized so long as it followed European
that of the metropolis. Such “antagonisms” are rhythmically laid patterns – a decision accepted by other Brazilian states.
out in the panel.
Frevo is thus also evidence of the critical verve that formed in
The rural landscape and port city of Recife appear among the nationalist, republican, abolitionist atmosphere that had
the choreographed figures, seeming to overwhelm a tiny Rio been taking shape in Pernambuco since the 19th century and
de Janeiro, whose Sugar Loaf Mountain is thrown deep into that can be seen the rich tradition of the caricatures produced
the background, a political statement and an indication of the daily in the state. Typical of this is Emílio Cardoso Ayres’s Álbum
cultural, political and intellectual ferment that had marked (1912), which, in the same vein as the cartoons of J. Carlos,
Recife since the 19th century, especially through the Faculty of caricatures the forms of urban life that were being introduced
Law – a shaper of ideas as important for the country as the in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Recife. Ayres was innovative
thinking of Joaquim Nabuco, Tobias Barreto or Graça Aranha. in developing the elegantly urbane portrait-cartoon depicting
modern types such as the flâneur and the dandy, tracking the
lifestyle connected to the grand-scale urban reforms in these
cities, with their transatlantic manners, verandahs, tea houses,
art galleries and new patterns of behavior.
8. DIAS, Cícero. Eu vi o mundo: Cícero Dias. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2011, p. 69. 14. Cf. Rigel de Orion. Revista do Norte. Recife, 2nd fortnight of 1924.
9. FREYRE, Gilberto. Cícero Dias e seu “nonsense”. Diário da Manhã. Rio de Janeiro, 15. Joaquim Inojosa. A arte moderna. Originally published in Era Nova magazine.
7 Nov. 1942. João Pessoa, 1924.
10. DIAS, Cícero. É preciso conduzir a arte à vida cotidiana. Originally published in 16. FREYRE, Gilberto. Algumas notas sobre a pintura do Nordeste do Brasil. In:
Diário de Pernambuco, Recife. Later republished in Região magazine. Recife, Aug. FREYRE, Gilberto et al. Livro do Nordeste, comemorativo do centenário do Diário de
1948. Pernambuco: 1825-1925. Op. cit.
11. “I don’t cultivate shadow but resplendence. Nothing is obscure in my work”, Cícero 17. FREYRE, Gilberto. A propósito de Francisco Brennand, pintor, e do seu modo de
Dias notes in his biography. DIAS, Cícero. Eu vi o mundo: Cícero Dias. São Paulo: ser do trópico. In: Vida, forma e cor. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1962.
Cosac Naify, 2011. p. 74. 18. FREYRE, Gilberto. A favor da arte popular regional. Diário de Pernambuco.
12. DIAS, Cícero. Eu vi o mundo: Cícero Dias. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2011. p. 55. Recife, 27 Feb. 1972.
13. DIAS, Cícero. Eu vi o mundo: Cícero Dias. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2011. p. 83.
In this cultural ferment, the initial phase of Cícero Dias’s Throughout Freyre’s career there was a growing awareness of
career—and his dialogue with Freyre, whose The Masters and the context rather than regional ambition, which would lead
the Slaves (or Casa-Grande e Senzala, the original title), from him to state that “we increasingly need to think in terms of the
1933, he illustrated – would project him into an unquestionable inter-relation of things”,18 freeing regionalism from its unique
role in the lively debate regarding the projects of modernity connection with the Northeast and seeing it rather as the modes
that were unfolding in Recife. Broadly speaking, on the one of relation of any region, thus founding what would come to be
side there was the early uptake by politicians and intellectuals called – in pioneering fashion in Brazil – ecology: a complex of
of “renewing” conceptions which – like the renovation of the geographical, social, cultural and biological relations. The “man
port – was commonly regarded as futurism in aesthetic terms,14 of the Northeast” would thus gradually come to interest Freyre
with its enthusiasm for progress, instantaneity and a break primarily as a “situated man”,19 a socio-relational perspective
with the past. This was the case, for example, of the journalist that would lead him to defend the use of marijuana as a
Joaquim Inojosa, who, in 1924, published Modern Art,15 a letter regional custom,20 along with the use of skirts by men 21 – an
which called for adherence to the “new creed” which had idea that would also be touted as typical of tropical culture or
emerged in Brazil during the São Paulo Modern Art Week, in tropicology.22
1922. In a manifesto-like tone, Joaquim Inojosa conveys his
belief in “a new form of artistic expression” opposed to “the old The regional, ecological and tropical dimension of Freyre’s
formulae”, whilst differentiating his modernist spirit from that of work has fuelled the cultural and social ferment in Recife
futurism. In his view, modernity should be constructed based from the 1930s onwards. His active defense of that context
on the important contribution of Graça Aranha in intellectual also reveals the importance of artists such as Cícero Dias and
and literary fields, and his study The Aesthetics of Life (1921), Lula Cardoso Ayres for the development of his social thought.
which established a kind of phenomenology of light in Brazil, Before Dias produced the watercolor The Master’s House on
underlining its relation with the history of the ethnic and social the Noruega Sugarcane Plantation (1933) for The Masters and
formation of the country. In Modern Art, Inojosa therefore reads the Slaves, Freyre was already familiar with I Have Seen the
the art world as a field divided between those who espouse World... And It Began in Recife (1926-1929), a work imbued with
Parnassianism, Academicism, Naturalism, antiquarianism, the artist’s personal experience of the sugar culture, akin to Lula
or official art, the “systematic regionalists” and, finally, the Cardoso Ayres’s anthropological photographs and paintings.
modernists, in a clear expression of the incompatibility of these Both played a key role in developing Freyre’s imagined world
various sensibilities and schools of political thought. of the Northeast. Together they built up the modern image of
tradition and the contemporary relevance of the region, in a
On the other side, there were those who sought to value both dialogue that also required Freyre to produce some artwork;
the modernist spirit and certain local or traditional aspects of he produced various sketches during conversations with these
the culture of Pernambuco, foremost among them Gilberto artists, including a sketch for Dias’s watercolor for The Masters
Freyre and his thinking on art and society. It was in 1925, in and the Slaves.
a text entitled Notes on Painting in the Northeast of Brazil,
published in Livro do Nordeste, that Freyre first argued for While Gilberto Freyre imagined a painting of the Northeast
an artistic “renewal” that did not overlook “regional issues, that bore the sugar plantation memory of the “ovens in which
without losing sight of a Brazilian and universal view of affairs” the tinderwood glowed to quicken the fire... and semi-naked
nor “descending into rural localism or separatism... into the bodies in movement, oily with sweat, reddened by the light of
patriotic, anecdotal or apologetic”,16 a theme that he would the ovens, and assume, through the tension of some poses, the
develop throughout his career with two central points of status of carnal reliefs”,23 Lula Cardoso Ayres, in turn, would see
emphasis – regionalism and ecology. The two would converge in folk ceramics another fertile ground for exploring the relation
in his thinking and stimulate the aesthetic debate across Brazil, between heat, the body, fire and meat. Adopting a clearly
especially in the Northeast and Pernambuco, nurturing a anthropological approach, as of 1932 he started frequenting
fruitful dialogue with the work of artists such as Cícero Dias Afro-Brazilian temples and other places related to folk culture,
and Lula Cardoso Ayres. This was a cultural context dedicated, and to go on field trips to the Zona da Mata, drawing what he
in the words of Freyre, to thinking through “the problem of the saw and producing an important collection of photographs
relations” between art and its context: “to what extent is art that became a point of reference in the understanding of the
independent of the regional conditions of the physical and cultural history of Pernambuco. The body of the artist became
sociocultural environment in which it and the artist develops?”.17
19. FREYRE, Gilberto. Algumas notas sobre a pintura do Nordeste do Brasil. In: 24. In 1948, some of the artists, writers, playwrights and journalists working in
FREYRE, Gilberto et al. Livro do Nordeste, comemorativo do centenário do Diário de Pernambuco founded the Recife Modern Art Society (SAMR). Headed by Feijó,
Pernambuco: 1825-1925. Recife: Off. do Diário de Pernambuco, 1925. Abelardo da Hora and Ladjane Bandeira, among others, the SAMR perhaps
20. Cf. Gilberto Freyre. Uma palavra a favor da maconha. 31 January 1953. represented the first – organized – initiative to legitimate a professional art field
21. Cf. Gilberto Freyre. Arte e civilizações tropicais. Published in Vida, forma e cor. Rio in Pernambuco by way of the institutionalization of an “artistic class”, a political
de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1962. understanding of culture that Abelardo da Hora had brought back from his stay in
22. Cf. Idem Rio de Janeiro, where he had been engaged in the protests surrounding the failure
23. FREYRE, Gilberto. Algumas notas sobre a pintura do Nordeste do Brasil. Ín: to stage the National Salon in 1945. As José Cláudio points out, “Abelardo da Hora
FREYRE, Gilberto et al. Livro do Nordeste, comemorativo do centenário do Diário de returned... ready to found a society of artists that could fight together and even
Pernambuco: 1825-1925. Recife: Off. do Diário de Pernambuco, 1925. create the profession of artist among us”. It was from this first attempt, the SAMR,
that the Atelier Coletivo emerged in 1952. In the history of the art of Pernambuco,
(...)
218-219 experimental pernambuco - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
involved with its “object”, wherein lies the methodological While paintings such as Cutting the Cake (1943) and Family
difference in comparison with Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Portrait (1943) surprised the viewer by presenting traditional
for example, whose relation to the ceramics of the Amazon scenes to the sugar aristocracy and depicted them in a popular
region was primarily literary or museological. The eminently manner that repositioned the status quo and the place of art
experiential method of Lula Cardoso Ayres gave his paintings with regard to the issue of class, it is the artist’s study notebooks
and drawings a carnality, and assured them an anthropological that best reveal his creative process. We can see the volume
dimension till them unheard of in the art of Pernambuco. It was of the ceramics emerging from rounded drawings, giving
no coincidence that the drawings produced in the early 1930 them density and thus reorganizing the spatial nature of the
based on visits to Xangôs African-Brazilian spiritual leaders in work. It is no coincidence that the spatial nature of the works
Recife featured in the 1st Congress of African-Brazilian Studies in which Lula Cardoso Ayres explores the aesthetics of popular
held in 1934 at Freyre’s bidding. His method also inspired an ceramics is radically different from the flatness of much of his
artist like Abelardo da Hora with his ‘rapid pose’ method, an work, as can be seen in the drawings and paintings of cultural
agile performative kind of drawing used for the Afro-Brazilian movements such as maracatu, whose angles and lines testify
temples, mangroves, suburbs and sugar plantations that would to an artist prepared to investigate the territory of abstraction.
form the basis for the aesthetic precepts of the Atelier Coletivo24 Like Lula Cardoso Ayres and Cícero Dias, Vicente do Rego
(1952). In Freyre’s view, Lula Cardoso Ayres had “...eyes on his Monteiro would also be guided by an interest in ceramics as a
fingertips.... The eye-fingers of a painter who is a disciple of the point of reference for modern painting – in his case Marajoara
rustic ceramicists. Discovering new relations between tropical ceramics.
light and form. Between tropical light and people”.25 This was
also an important contribution to thinking about the feedback As Paulo Herkenhoff contends,27 there may have been another
loops – characteristically modern – between what were once “Modern Art Week” in the year of 1922 – not in São Paulo, but in
denominated “popular” and “erudite” art. Paris, as evidenced by the caricature of Gilberto Freyre on the
occasion of his meeting with Vicente do Rego Monteiro in the
In the prolific work of Lula Cardoso Ayres – another French capital. The Rego Monteiros – especially Vicente and his
fundamental graphic artist who was actively involved in the brother, Joaquim – conducted investigations whose modernity,
industrialization under way in modern Pernambuco, with his different from the then nascent São Paulo modernism,
creation of dozens of brands for local products and factories proclaimed interests fundamental to Brazilian culture.
– the dialogue between photography, drawing and painting is
crucial. The photographic images generated by the artists on This is the case with Joaquim’s exercises using the flat plane
his travels in the interior of the State would be the primordial of composition, which, while exploring his experience as a
source for his graphic work. Not only will the documentation cosmopolitan man (he made various urban landscapes and
of human types inspire his drawings – especially figures of “cartographies”), developed into geometrical abstraction
Indians and indigenous communities addressed using various early on in the history of Brazilian art. This relatively unknown
approaches (including economics), testifying to the political artist, whose work was interrupted by an early death, shows a
concerns of the artist – but also, later, the development of an continuous process of abstraction whose measurements and
aesthetics of photography as practiced by Ayres, with static formal perspective are on urban scale, which is also political:
forms and clear contours, would be a starting point for his the paintings derive a powerfully simplified accent from the
drawings and more mature paintings, which contrast the initial landscapes – including especially paintings of ports,
plastic solutions of his work with those of his contemporary with inscriptions and grooves showing a concrete relation
Cícero Dias, the doyen par excellence of movement, fluidity and to form – informed by the urban modernity the artist had
continuity. experienced both in Paris and in his native land, as can be seen
in South America (1927), in which human figures and symbols
Both, however, were interested in the plasticity of folk art as are schematized, as are the compositional planes which are
a model for the modern. While it is common to find animals potentially geographical territories or atmospheric features.
depicted in Dias’s paintings (especially oxen and horses) in In other works of this period, the references to the space of
the style of the ceramics of Alto do Moura – the master of the city gradually disappear – although they are still present
which was Mestre Vitalino –, as can be seen in I Have Seen the in paintings such as La Rotonde (1927) – to affirm a “pure”
World... And It Began in Recife, in Lula Cardoso Ayres this same spatiality of cartographic marks, which appears geometrical,
interest expands into entire series and groups, incorporating although permeated by rounded forms that act like silent
references to ceramics produced in the Águas Belas region.26 silhouettes in a kind of melancholy approach to the modern
city.
(...) the Atelier marks not only more far-reaching and systematic attempt to establish Experimental Pernambuco, except for some eminently experimental individual
a professional field for art (in terms of teaching, production, thinking, exhibition and members.
even the sale of art, all of which were practiced at the Atelier), but also, primarily, 25. FREYRE, Gilberto. Prefácio. In: VALLADARES, Clarival do Prado. Lula Cardoso
it perhaps represents the clearest distinction – up to then – of the paradigms of Ayres, revisão crítica e atualidade. Rio de Janeiro-Recife: Spala, 1978, p. 11.
modern art as opposed to academic art, a difference made possible by connection 26. I am thankful to Thomas Lobo for understanding the reference to Águas Belas in
with a political program of artistic investigation that was under way. Its production the work of Lula Cardoso Ayres.
of work and political orientation were, despite revolutionary intentions, relatively 27. Paulo Herkenhoff. Pernambuco Moderno. Recife: Instituto Cultural Bandepe,
canonical, for which reason the Atelier Coletivo was not included as a group in (...) 2006.
Vicente do Rego Monteiro has also developed works that through its defense of the culture, society and economics of
establish a dialogue with the modern urban fabric and the the sugar plantation, it would on various occasions generate
pictorial and graphic plane of art, which is especially eloquent conservative political positions, based on the possibility of an
in drawings in Quelques Visages de Paris (1925), aerial views interpretation – albeit doubtless a superficial one – of the work
of the French capital that bring the experience of social order of Freyre as an apology for the “myth of racial democracy”:
to the drawing plan. Later, he would move on to Legendes, the idea that, in Brazil (and especially the Northeast), given
Croyances et Talismans des Indiens de l’Amazone (1923), the extent of inter-racial marriage in the region, civil and
whose repertoire of signs combines complementary Egyptian, economic inequalities are assuaged by a partially harmonious
Marajoara, Mexican and Chinese traditions. It is here, in the coexistence of classes. Although an emphasis on this myth is
contrast between cultures, that a universalist intention can usually derived from an inattentive reading, unable to take
be found which makes the schematized water in the planes account of the ambiguities of Freyre’s works, this provides
of Quelques visages de Paris simultaneously the serpent in a clear example of the ideological path of regionalist ideas
illustrations dedicated to Amazonian legends, two arms that in Freyre’s political career; He would be a candidate for the
then merge in painting such as Indigenous Motif (1922), in Federal Chamber of Deputies for the National Democratic
which the aerial map-like flatness, in combination with the Union (UDN) – see his campaign poster, illustrated by Lula
signs of indigenous origin whose source of inspiration exceeds Cardoso Ayres – and later favorable towards the military
the palette of the work. regime.
Monteiro’s research into “primitivism” thus transformed Brazil Just as some of Cícero Dias’s work would be a social critique
in terms of modern visual art. Amazonia ceramics, made of of the symbolic and economic world of the sugar plantation,
terracotta – or clay, as it is called in the Northeast – aroused as in his paintings Condemnation of the Plantation Owners
the interest of Vicente do Rego Monteiro, who explored the (1930s) and Lords of the Land (1920s) – in which class conflict is
colors, volume and, in general terms the ways in which figures the main theme –, a cultural critique of the thinking of Gilberto
are schematically reduced. The colors are reminiscent of Freyre was mounted by some Pernambuco artists, especially
terracotta and the ceramics painting of indigenous peoples, Jomard Muniz de Britto, whose tropicalism would provide, from
his figures emerge from a volume similar to the reliefs, putting the 1970s onwards, a contrast to and satire of regionalist ideas,
together a visual vocabulary which also draws on the clay as in his video The Decapitated Clown (1977) or Inventory of
dolls of the Northeast and the tubular cubism of Fernand Cultural Feudalism or an Existential Historical Fiction (1978).
Léger. His repertoire also included – at various points in The caustic text of The Decapitated Clown, written by Wilson
his career – a stylization common to art deco, especially of Araújo de Souza, provides no respite from the criticisms that
the 1920s, a certain grammar of the “return to order”, which art should raise of its own culture. In the figure of the clown
had proliferated in Europe after the First World War with the who runs through Pernambuco House of Culture (formerly
observance of classical values, including the aesthetics of the prison) and in his discourse shot through with political
oriental antiquities, such as those of Ancient Egypt. Such a and aesthetic issues regarding the culture of the State of
diversity of influences made Vicente do Rego Monteiro a unique Pernambuco, he poses questions that should not be silenced:
artist – not to mention his prolific work in the field of poetry and “Recife of all possible promises / from the new port complexes
visual poetry, which we will deal with later – whose contribution to the / un-repressed age-old desires / yesterday a detention
to the development of modern Brazilian art has still not been center: exposed in its cruel misery / today a house of culture:
sufficiently well investigated. transformed into the most docile folklore / yesterday and
today: a detention center for culture”.
Freyre’s regionalism, like the return to order that would
influence Vicente do Rego Monteiro, also contained a However, regional problems did not cease to be urgent or to
series of political contradictions, which mark the connection extend their political influence, in which Freyre continued to play
between artistic practice and the ideological dimension of a significant role for the rest of his life. As part of his work as
art. While the European movement would reach a crossroads federal deputy, in 1949, he founded the Joaquim Nabuco Social
when it encountered fascist tendencies – in the case of Research Institute (currently the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation),
Brazil, often monarchical ones, as evidenced locally by the devoted to research and the improvement of living conditions in
editorial participation of Monteiro in Renovação magazine the rural parts of the Brazilian Northeast, an institution that now
–, regionalism would achieve symbolic repercussions and, develops projects on the Northeast, the semi-arid region and its
220-221 experimental pernambuco - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
various challenges – such as drought, hunger, and education – Since then, education has become a major issue for artists
which would strike a significant chord with the thinking of other in Pernambuco, who have become actively involved in
writers and artists from Pernambuco. educational processes – as in the case of the collaboration
between Abelardo da Hora, Aloisio Magalhães, Jomard Muniz
This was the case with The Geography of Hunger, published de Britto and Paulo Freire – while remaining critically alert to
in 1946, a book in which Josué de Castro brings together the ideological implications of the act of educating. One sign of
thinking and research developed since the 1930s, in which this interest in education and adult literacy more specifically, is
he examines hunger as an historical problem, deriving from a series of calligraphy exercises produced by artists in the 1960s
the staggering social inequality to be found in Brasil. Later, and 1970s. From reinvented alphabets to the creation of fonts,
he would expand his research to global level, publishing The literacy became the starting point for broader experimentation
Geopolitics of Hunger (1951), in which he restates the thesis that with signs, such as in Daniel Santiago’s Alphabets series (1980s
hunger is not a consequence of population growth or lack of and 1990s).
food resources, but an effect of imbalances in the distribution of
capital. Having been raised near the mangroves of Recife, his Apart from direct involvement in adult literacy, gestures,
work thus reflected the concerns of someone who had known improvisation and the free use of signs number among the
extreme poverty and understood that science, social thinking, interests of artists as varied as Cícero Dias, Vicente do Rego
and art could be used as weapons in the struggle against the Monteiro and Montez Magno. In Pernambuco, in the late 1950s,
circumstances that perpetuate social inequality. Many artists Vicente do Rego Monteiro developed a series of monotypes
shared the concerns of Josué de Castro, including Abelardo that ranged from abstract figuration to an experiment with the
da Hora – who illustrated one of his books with his Kids of clash of gestures between paint and graphic space. Although
Recife series (1962), produced during the period when the artist he certainly had in mind a dialogue with the unconnected
was part of the Popular Culture Movement – along with José tachisme and abstract expressionism, without knowing him,
Cláudio, Paulo Bruscky, Unhandeijara Lisboa, Daniel Santiago, Monteiro also established a parallel with the work of the
and others, transforming the social problem of hunger into young Montez Magno, who at the time was creating a series
one of the political battlegrounds for the art produced in of monotypes under the experimental supervision of Aloisio
Pernambuco, especially from the 1950s onwards. Ideologically, Magalhães: “He [Aloisio] taught me and encouraged me to
however, hunger continued to pose a set of issues to which art use diverse materials (stylus, razors, pieces of wood, cloth and,
would turn again, since, as Jomard Muniz de Britto summed sometimes, my fingers) to open the way for the paint”.30
it up in 1979: “how do we distinguish / in the cuisine of the
oppressor / the food of the oppressed?”.28 Modernist non-figuration thus went beyond geometry. Other
kinds of modernity were explored using free brushstrokes, “art
Later, in the early 1960s, a political alliance at national, regional without a ruler”, improvisation in the space of the composition,
and municipal level provided, in Recife and Pernambuco and in the manner of painting. Without right angles, the
(and other parts of the Northeast), a number of significant pictorial matter comes to light and acquires importance,
experiences in the field of popular and cultural education. density and meaning. Passing across the surface, the gesture,
One of the leading lights of this time was the Popular Culture the brushstroke, the trace and the shapes sometimes become
Movement (MCP), dedicated to “raising the level of cultural signs, inventing forms of calligraphy or ideograms. At others,
education of learners in order to improve their ability to acquire they scratch the surface, tear the substance of the paint and
social and political ideas”, thereby extending “the politicization thus emphasize the non-representational character of art
of the masses, and awakening them to the social struggle”.29 beyond the principle of geometry and “pure form”.
Artists and intellectuals grouped together around MCP activities
– presentations, workshops, courses, exhibitions, the publication In this rich field of experimentation which extends into the
of books and manuals – especially the adult literacy teaching contemporary – and which, expanding beyond painting or
work led by Paulo Freire, who had got involved in the initiative drawing, takes the form of stamps, videos, photography, books,
developed by Germano Coelho and colleagues. A kind of performance, or photocopies – Vicente do Rego Monteiro and
ebullient cultural and political cell, the MCP was closed down Aloisio Magalhães are particular important as advocates of
when the military regime took power in 1964, but its ideas and constant resistance to strategies regarding languages and
experiments would nevertheless find an echo in thinking and media. The presences of the experimental work of Monteiro
politics to this day in Brazil and across the globe, as is the case – who also produced poetry, illustrations, books and sound
with Paulo Freire’s adult literacy training method. experiments – and the accumulated force of Aloisio Magalhães
and Gastão de Holanda at O Gráfico Amador [The Amateur
28. BRITTO, Jomard Muniz; LEMOS, Sérgio. Inventário de um feudalismo cultural. 30. Statement made by Montez Magno to Clarissa Diniz (6 March 2009). In: DINIZ,
Recife: Gráfica Nordeste, 1979. Clarissa (Ed.). Montez Magno. Recife: Grupo Paés, 2010.
29. Silke Weber in an interview for the UFPE Department of Sociology, Recife, June
2009 In: Juliana Rodrigues de Lima Lucena. Do lar ao largo: novas relações de
gênero e poder no cenário cultural e político do Recife (1955-1964). Dissertation
presented to the Department of Letters and Human Sciences, Post-Graduate
Program in the Social History of Regional Culture at the Federal Rural University of
Pernambuco (2010).
Publisher] spread an experimental drive that, occurring In view of the uproar caused the retrospective exhibition at
throughout the 1950s, would be crucially important for later the Recife Faculty of Law, the December edition for that year
decades, exercising a key influence, for example, on the of Região magazine was dedicated in full to debating various
strikingly experimental artist Paulo Bruscky. Experimentation aspects of this artist’s work – from ambivalence to radical
thus found a social place as a gesture of art. geometrical abstraction, from the relation between learning
and hermeticism to the political role of art. Foremost among the
The history of the gesture in the art of Pernambuco – which is texts published was “Pernambuco, Cícero Dias and Paris”, by
extensively exploited in Montez Magno’s Caatinga (1963) and the Pernambuco critic (based in Rio de Janeiro) Mário Pedrosa,
Fragmentations (1963) series, and in the videos of Ypiranga for whom Dias’s work combined an ecological experience
Filho (Dynamics of the Trace I, II and III, 1967) and works by of the Northeast with a process of formal reductionism: “all
Paulo Bruscky, such as Aépta (1982) or a significant portion that was really left in terms of regional themes was visual in
of his work using photocopiers in the 1970s and 1980s – have nature: the shapes of plants and architecture taken from the
precursors in an important movement in which Cícero Dias Pernambuco landscape, especially that of Recife, and certain
played the principal role. local colors, blues and yellows resistant to all light”.31 Among the
discussions published in Região there was also later an account
In the 1940s and 1950s, the debate between regionalism and – albeit a stereotypical one – of the reception of modern art in
modernity was underway nationally, provoking a very wide Recife, as pointed out in the aforementioned text by Pedrosa:
range of responses and positions on the part of the general “Recife reacted forthrightly to Dias’s experiment... Bourgeois
public, critics and artists. In Recife, the iconic representations families lost sleep over it; grave men and petit bourgeois
of this dispute regarding modernity are the murals designed moralists could not understand how the august halls of the
by Cícero Dias for the Treasury building and his retrospective Faculty of Law, the hallowed guardian of the most respectable
exhibition at the Faculty of Law, both in 1948. By producing such of traditions, could open their doors to these scrawled
ambivalent images and exploring geometry, Dias reoriented monsters. For the good people of Recife, Dias was a local boy
the discussion regarding regionalism, which was then centered possessed by the devil, having fallen into bad company in
on the “representation of the Northeast” in predominantly Paris”.32
social and anthropological terms. The modernist question
in Pernambuco thus freed itself of “regional figuration” – In addition to the powerful 1948 exhibition, there were also the
eschewing a kind of “genre painting” – and becoming an murals created by the artist for Pernambuco State Treasury
“ecological form”, capable of responding sensitively and building, work on which had begun in 1941. Also produced in
critically to its context. 1948, these were probably the first abstract murals in Latin
America and they show how Dias transformed singular aspects
The one time charming “young master of the sugar plantation” of the Pernambuco landscape – the light, the sugar plantation,
would not neglect to experiment with negative repercussions, the tropical fruits, the port, the beach, the river Capibaribe,
when his work came up against this. His 1948 retrospective the sugar mills – into a repertoire of geometrical forms whose
exhibition displayed paintings from the 1940s which (con)fused luminous intensity remind us of the tropicology Gilberto Freyre
images and meanings through a linguistic kind of surrealism: imagined in 1965, interested in observing how the tropics – the
Umbrella or Musical Instrument (1943), Rooster or Pineapple (c. torrid zone of the globe between the Tropics of Cancer and
1940), Lady or Cashew Nut (1946) and Papaya Tree or Dancing Capricorn – informed art, although he recognized that “the
Girl (1940s). Like the Comte de Lautréamont (who described the world is vast and exhibits a diverse range of colors and forms,
beauty of a boy as the “chance meeting on a dissecting-table climates and environments. The simple fact that an individual
of a sewing-machine and an umbrella”, a line later cited in a was born in Brazil does not oblige them to be, as an artist, an
work by the surrealist photographer Man Ray), these paradox- enthusiast of bright sunshine, raw light and vivid colors”.33 The
paintings replaced the industrial element of the juxtaposition mural and the exhibition thus signal the development of a more
proposed by Lautréamont with tropical fruits. He thereby complex approach to an aesthetic project that, while open to
created an ambivalence that, at the time of the exhibition, a regionalist interpretation, goes beyond this and becomes a
troubled the public in Recife. relational manner of understanding and practicing art, which
would make Pernambuco a place where constructivism would
reinvent itself in parallel to its industrially inspired abstract side.
31. PEDROSA, Mário. In: Pernambuco, Cícero Dias e Paris. Recife: Revista Região,
December 1948.
32. Idem
33. FREYRE, Gilberto. Arte, ciência social e sociedade. In: Revista da Escola de Belas-
Artes de Pernambuco. Recife: Escola de Belas-Artes de Pernambuco, 1958, p.
222-223 experimental pernambuco - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
As at the beginning of the 20th century, such questions and their Similar questions led Gilberto Freyre, in 1985, to reflect again
relation to the region – like the problem of the relation between on the Brasília project, which he acknowledged to be “indeed,
the rural and the industrial – also manifested themselves in aesthetically exquisite”,35 but raised other questions: “Is the
urban design. One of the hallmarks of this process was the project aesthetically suited to Brazilian circumstances? Why is
DAC, created in 1934 by Governor Carlos de Lima Cavalcanti, the model inspired by imposed European center and not by
who transformed the then Public Works sector – the city one based on the Brazilian tropics? Why is so much glass used
planning branch of government – into the Directorate of in buildings that should be followed as models of for a unique
Architecture and Construction (DAC). Under the leadership of architecture, making them difficult for future Brazilian residents
Luiz Nunes, the DAC intervened radically in the urban fabric of to live in comfortably? Why the lack of recreation grounds?
Recife, introducing a modern way of thinking about the city, Why the lack of spaces for urban solidarity?”.36 His questions
which, as Nunes himself put it, architecture was understood criticized a form of urban thinking that was primarily aesthetic,
as “an administrative issue, a manifestation of culture and underlining the need to view cities “socio-ecologically” – that
spirit, something very human and social”.34 Although short- is, in terms of the various aspects of their geographical, social,
lived, the work of the DAC added to the intellectual ferment cultural context and so forth. If we do not do this, he warns, we
in the city surrounding urban planning, as can be seen, for will be adopting “the most un-Brazilian, anti-ecological, anti-
example, in a number of projects signed personally by Luiz tropical of models”.37
Nunes, in particular the Olinda Water Reservoir (1934), with
its architectural strategies that were totally new at the time, This dilution of regionalist references also on an urban scale,
such as pilotis and latticework – strategies that would later be helps us to understand Cícero Dias’s efforts – following
explored by architecture across Brazil, as in the buildings of investigations by Vicente and Joaquim do Rego Monteiro – to
Brasília. establish different possible routes for the problems of abstract
form that the artists of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro had also
This period also saw the landscape designer Roberto Burle taken, closer to the constructivist references that would soon
Marx at work in Recife, where he developed projects for shape the debate between concretism and neoconcretism.
Casa Forte and Largo Benfica Squares, using plants from Shunning the logic of suprematism, neoplasticism or concrete
Amazonia and the Caatinga region, respectively. This was art, Cícero Dias regarded color as the singular protagonist in
thus an special time of experimentation in architecture, in the geometrical composition then being produced in Brazil.
which people realized that specific ecological and cultural As in his watercolors of the 1920s and 30s, his experiments are
characteristics could be used to reinvent various aspects of the strident and unclassifiable, exhibiting a lavish audacity that
built environment, such as construction technology, illumination, would lead the São Paulo concrete artist Waldemar Cordeiro to
ventilation and the ornamental features of a city. refer to the “hedonistic non-figurativism of Mr. Cícero Dias”.38
Freyre’s concerns regarding the need to see cities in ecological Such disregard for the canons then in vogue in other parts
terms would later also inform Acácio Gil Borsoi’s architectural of Brazil would find echoes – and dissent – in artists who, in
project for the Cajueiro Seco community, in Recife. Initiated in the Pernambuco of the 1950s and 60s, were engaged in a
1962 – but suspended after the 1964 military coup – this was a free field of exploration of abstraction, geometry, color, form,
public housing project using the vernacular and widespread and viewer participation, such as Montez Magno. Prolifically
rammed earth mud-brick construction technique, typical of experimental, this artist would play a fundamental role: his
low-income communities across the Northeast. Chosen for work realized that the historical period of modernism had come
its construction features as well as the fact that it is a widely to an end and, therefore, inventively confronting the modernist
known technique with which the population – who would build paradigms, developed perceptions and problems that would,
the houses themselves in a joint effort – was familiar, Borsoi in Pernambuco, drive the experimentation of contemporary art.
was conducting research to determine the optimal use of this
material and technique when work was suspended on a project It is interesting to note the crucial role that the reduction and
that aimed also to critically review architectural and urban deflation of vegetation played in the abstract experiments
planning paradigms. of Cícero Dias, Aloisio Magalhães, Ladjane Bandeira and
Montez Magno. The last of these, for example, in his Black
Woman series (1961-2007) or in Gestural Drawings (1962),
used a supposedly scientific eye to produce a formal exercise
of a phenomenological nature: “the series emerged as
the development of vegetal forms, except that I follow a
34. Nunes, Luiz. Portaria n. 14. Diretoria de Arquitetura e Construção, 4 de dezembro 39. Statement made by Montez Magno to Clarissa Diniz (7 March 2009). DINIZ,
de 1935. In: Alcântara, Antonio Pedro Gomes. Luiz Nunes. Arquitetura. Revista do Clarissa (ed.). Montez Magno. Recife: Grupo Paés, 2010.
Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil, n 13, july 1963, p. 5. 40. SCHENBERG, Mário. Montez Magno exhibition leaflet. São Paulo: Casa do
35. Gilberto Freyre em Brasília e Lucio Costa. O Estado de Sâo Paulo. São Paulo, 3 Artista Plástico, 1963.
February 1985. 41. PEDROSA, Mário. Da caligrafia ao plástico. Jornal do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 7
36. Idem Feb. 1958.
37. Ibidem 42. Painting on Canson paper was a procedure also used by Anchises Azevedo, who
38. CORDEIRO, Waldemar. Ruptura. Correio Paulistano. São Paulo, 11 Jan. 1953, p. 3. shared Magno’s studio, in Olinda, in the early 1960s.
reductionist process, stripping away everything but the trunks. His abstract work would also find other routes. The Morandi
I make dozens of drawings of these trunks that are stripped series (1964) typifies an aesthetic position that aims to avoid the
down more and more to the shape of black fruits, until I risks of exoticizing Brazilian or Northeastern light and culture, as
produce pieces where even the fruit disappears, leaving only in the geometrical work of Cícero Dias, for example. Antithetical
black stains”.39 In the words of the art critic and physicist Mário towards the chromatic tropicality of Dias’s geometry, the
Schenberg, whom the artist used to visit in the early 1960s, smooth rational orderliness of the Morandi series touches on
“...Montez’s painting began to grow richer when it adopted the notion of sensitive Latin American geometry, interested in
the theme of space and musical emptiness... His large-scale an intuitive government of forms. Produced in Italy, the series
drawings... their thick strokes functioning like fibers channeling reveals the enchantment the then young Montez Magno felt
organic fluids, produce authentic vital archetypes. The series at being in a foreign land, which, while distancing him from
of small drawings influenced by oriental calligraphy of 1961 regionalism, kept him in touch with the ecological concerns that
reveals a new sensibility: the organic rhythm is captured still abounded in Pernambuco: “I am not a nationalist, nor a
internally.40 regionalist, nor a neighborhoodist... You can do things related
to the region – as I have done... But this interests me whether I
In this process of “internalization” which would lead to am here or on the West Bank for example”.45
“calligraphic drawings”, Montez Magno does not however
focus precisely on the shapes that form into attempts at signs, Such paintings develop the Morandi legacy of an existential
but on the processes that enable them to emerge. As Mário experience of space that, beyond Euclidian perspective,
Pedrosa pointed out, “when the sign emerges in its pure reveals the “space of consciousness as a concrete reality”.46
potential, without any verbal linguistic context, to be a unique The suggestion of a space spills beyond the boundaries of
signifier on the symbolic aesthetic plane, it is always the fruit the painting is clear. Far from the geometrical grid or physical
of some necessary initial act of violence, an energetic impulse definitions of form, the floating elements in the Morandi
that gives birth to it”.41 Especially interested in this “violence series are like small parts of a cosmos – almost always in
of energetic impulse”, Montez produced the reel paintings Spring blue – which we capture in the snapshots that we can.
of the Caatinga series (1963, now lost),42 in which there is an Adding complexity to the spatial drift that the artist initiated in
explosion of fruit and landscapes of the Northeast, which, Caatinga, Fragmentations and the 1962 collages, the Morandi
when fragmented, become stray signifiers. Then, unravelling series confronts the void as matter, in a dialogue with the full
the very logic by which these signifiers were constructed, emptiness of Lygia Clark. The inclination of his almost square,
Fragmentations (1963) appeared: “Basically, it is as though almost rectangles, almost straight lines provide a glimpse of
I wanted to see what is happening inside matter, a kind of continuous movement: in that pictorial and existential world, the
atomization... Then, in 1966, this fragmentation acquired a background is not a vacuum, it is air. In this way, key features
three-dimensional support, giving rise to reliefs. They are the of Montez Magno’s political discourse, color and form will be
three-dimensional fragmentation of form. I discovered that intensively experimented with by him in a “constructivism” that
these things were linked to photons. Then I wanted to stretch occupies a unique place in the history of Brazilian art, a place
out the fragmentations, as if they were waves”,43 giving rise in in which the Boxes developed by the artist as of 1967 play an
turn to the Bacchianas series (1966). active part.
Composed of strokes and stains that fill their respective In a possible response to the experience of being imprisoned
surfaces homogeneously without direction or center, the under the military regime – also present in The Egg (1969) and
paintings from the Caatinga and Fragmentations series share MMMausoleum (1969) – Boxes transforms the experience
the same concerns as research being conducted since the of space of the Morandi series into a Mondrian-like space:
1950s, such as that, for example, of the Ceará artist Antônio rigid, objective and apparently homogeneous, except for
Bandeira. While, according to the critic Paulo Herkenhoff, its participatory dimension. They look back to Montez’s first
Bandeira’s paintings “represent a new constructive program abstract works of the 1950s with their right angles, saturated
in Brazilian art, different from concretism or geometrical art colors, a priori boundaries, grid. The series arose from the
in general”,44 the experiments of Montez Magno formed part appropriation of glued and painted school pencil cases, works
of Pernambuco’s contribution to the development of this new produced through manipulation by the audience. The Boxes
program. Coincidentally, in Paris in the 1960s, Cícero Dias had announce a concern that will drive a significant part of his work:
deviated from his caustic angular geometry of that period in “space-time and color-light will increasingly be the elements
a short series of paintings entitled Entropy, in which the paint that artists will use in their work”,47 leading them to explore the
organically gives way to the force of gravity. participatory dimension of the other in the artistic experience,
43. Statement to Clarissa Diniz on 6 March 2009. 47. Extract from Testo e Contesto, a text by Montez Magno, published in a leaflet
44. Pincelada, Pintura e Método: Projeções da Década de 50. Curated by Paulo accompanying the artist’s solo exhibition at the Petite Galerie. Rio de Janeiro, 1970.
Herkenhoff. São Paulo: Tomie Ohtake Institute, 2009.
45. Statement from interview with Clarissa Diniz, 6 March 2009
46. ARGAN, Giulio Carlo. Arte Moderna: do Iluminismo aos movimentos
contemporâneos. Translation by Denise Bottmann and Frederico Carotti. São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 1992.
224-225 experimental pernambuco - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
given that, for Montez, “the goal of art is to be re-integrated It is anti-art: a proposal based on almost nothing. That which
into life, in such a way that everyone can participate creatively is used and now a new act... [Montez Magno’s] exhibition tells
in everything made by humans for humans”.48 Artistic practice us that the material provokes creation, suggests invention,
should have the “power to lead the viewer to take action”, a spontaneous and free of any particular connotation. It takes on
process that “implies the taking of a philosophical position, a new origin – not that of everyday use – but that of a dream
on the part of the artist and public alike..., reaching out to all in color.51
and developing our creative capacity” – a concern that can
be found in many of his works, such as Manipulable Sculpture The experimentation with form gradually broke with the
(1968-1970), made of long sheets of aluminum and roofing monopoly of the visual, contaminating the image with a
paper available for manipulation. grammar of a musical nature. The composition space becomes
a field of rhythm – empty space becomes silence, lines
Different from Lygia Clark’s Animals (1960), Magno’s work sounds, gestures harmonies – and artists develop this desire
reduces the presence/mark of the artist by not previously for synesthesia, a mixture of the senses (including seeing and
molding the aluminum, transferring the authorship to the hearing), in a variety of experiments. Noise becomes music
subject who interacts with the object. With no folds, hinges, and musical scores are everywhere – from the nests on the
welding, or fitted parts, Manipulable Sculpture gives up the electricity wires in the album Compositions on the Wire –
object-work in favor of pure experience, confrontation and Changing Scores (1979) to the stones stuck in the gutter in the
dialogue between the subject and the material. In the absence sound photographs of Score (1982) by Paulo Bruscky. In these,
of artificial stabilization or arrangement, the work consists of the eye for the everyday, which – in the work of the artist and
negotiation of an organic self-generated equilibrium between beyond the material do it yourself of Magno – also occurs
sheet, space, time and body, an interplay of forces that usually through an intervention in ordinary reality, is revealed in a
leads to ovoid forms, a circular labyrinth that is always open primarily poetic emphasis that plays with the silence of the eye
on one of its sides. Physically and symbolically, the point of in the face of the cacophony of urban life.
contact between Manipulable Sculpture and the world is not
closed, as occurs in Lygia Clark’s 1958 painting Linear Egg, “a Later, as Montez Magno had also experimented with, the
space that is contained, but does not want to be contained in visual also shows itself to a rich field for the reinvention of
that situation”.49 Neither is the experience of the work closed: the musical code, which is rewritten through the drawings,
there is no possibility of a conclusion of the relation between theappropriations and poetry, as in the Notesounds album (1970-
author-participant and the object in a final fixed form, given 1992), which led the exploration of signs and calligraphy in
that the equilibrium of the organization of the sheets passes, series such as Fragmentations (1963) to a musical dimension.
necessarily, through the presence of the subject interacting with For the artist, Notesounds – like Chromosounds (1994), whose
the material – the piece “is always making itself present, always logic is essentially chromatic – can be understood as random
recommencing the impulse that generated it and of which it music or visual poetry, similar to other works by the Bruscky &
was already the origin”.50 Santiago duo. As can be seen from the tracks Schizo Sonata
(1976) and Impromptu-3 (1992) from the album in question,
In Montez Magno, the containment of Boxes is transformed into Montez Magno was aware of the technologies that were then
openness to the world and to the other and, then, the sheets reconfiguring artistic practice and would be widely exploited by
literally grip this world in a series of objects (1970) which join Paulo Bruscky and Daniel Santiago both separately and jointly.
aluminum to pieces of old wood. In “replacing” industrially-
treated metal with strips of precariously assembled old It is thus that, in dialogue with the work of John Cage, Team
wood the artist humanizes, reaches out, politicizes. Far from Bruscky & Santiago staged happenings to collectively create
harboring the mystery of the “black boxes” of photography, sounds, such as SensonialCon(s)(c)(?)ert or, in a more
Boxes and other works by Montez, such as the installation metaphorical key, Aurorial Composition. While Cons(s)(c)(?)
Look (1973), have a do it yourself air to them, a theme much ert was a participatory action – conducted chromatically
explored throughout this artist’s career, especially in the series by the duo at the Santa Isabel Playhouse – involving the
of models Imaginary Cities (1970-), pregnant with political production of sound from match boxes played by the audience,
intentions whose critical reach and material poetics were Aurorial Composition, in a similarly inventive manner, brought
accurately perceived by Lygia Pape in Montez’s 1968 solo show together the visual, music, silence, technology and power,
at the Ibeu: “As a proposition, a sampling, the transmutation of underlining the political, yet utopian, dimension of art. This was
ordinary use to a new significance. Something differentiated. a proposal publically presented in 1976 by the newspapers:
The anti-residue of the teamwork, something new and full. “the Team proposes to exhibit a colorful artificial tropical
48. MAGNO, Montez. Statement. Leaflet accompanying a solo exhibition of the 51. PAPE, Lygia. Montez Magno. Diário de Notícias, Rio de Janeiro, 4 Dec. 1968.
artist’s work. Rio de Janeiro: Ibeu, 1968.
49. HERKENHOFF, Paulo. Diagrama da vida – interview with Paulo Herkenhoff. In:
ROLNIK, Suely; DISERENS Corinne (ed.). Lygia Clark – da obra ao acontecimento.
São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2006.
50. GULLAR, Ferreira. Manifesto neoconcreto. Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 22
March 1959.
aurora caused by the agitation of atoms in the atmosphere Such publishing experiments combined creative sophistication
100 km above the earth. The atoms will return spontaneously with simple, often home-made, techniques, such as
to their natural state after the exhibition. The exhibition will photocopying, stamps and silkscreen printing. At the same time,
not pollute space, alter the weather, or influence astrological manually printed publications combining printed and hand-
charts; it is a contemporary art event “.52 No-one responded to produced material brought a concern with reproducibility
the announcement, but the duo insisted on sending a letter of and the uniqueness of each book and each reader. This was
presentation to NASA requesting help, which, likewise, received how the publications of O Gráfico Amador maintained the
no reply. These two pieces show that it would be in the space intimate nature of a book such as Aniki Bobó (1958) – poems
between the socially, artistically and politically effective and by João Cabral de Melo Neto based on illustrations by Aloisio
ineffective that the most important work of Bruscky & Santiago Magalhães, produced using string to make stamps – and, at
would be situated. the same time, the city-wide circulation of the mimeographed
concertina book Recife Tourist Guide (1955), by the same
Another unique experience that combined gestures, music and authors. The experimental freedom of O Gráfico Amador
graphic arts was the Stamps series by José Cláudio, an artist combined with the methodological and aesthetic rigor of the
who worked for many years as a draughtsman at Sudene experiments of Vicente do Rego Monteiro, who published his
(Superintendency for Development of the Northeast, created in own poetry in both France and Brazil, on supports as distinct as
1959 based on research and policy proposals by Celso Furtado), newspapers, magazines, small pamphlets, records, and books.
where he illustrated a wide range of materials, publications
and plans. On one occasion, when he needed to produce large These initiatives, apart from publishing the work of the artists
maps of the Pernambuco countryside, he made stamps out of who coordinated them, were also responsible for the national
erasers to repeatedly place symbols representing sugarcane and international circulation of the poetry and prose of authors
or coconut tree plantations, for example. The technique – such as Carlos Pena Filho, João Cabral de Melo Neto and
which was from his childhood – came to interest him as an Ariano Suassuna, continuing the cultural ferment that, since
artist and, in the late 1960s, he conducted various experiments 1941, had generated the Recife Poetry Congresses, organized
using erasers, combined with graphics and other rubbing by Vicente do Rego Monteiro and partners. The congresses,
techniques. These works included the visual narrative History publishers and artists of Pernambuco thus turned Recife into
of the Stamp (1968-69) and artist’s books using the technique, an important center for production of and reflection on the
all of them involving the repetition of a set of elements, which, literature, which would later develop into a prolific mail art,
when arranged on the surface of the paper, create a rhythm visual poetry and process-poem scene.
and emulate music to some extent. The work is important in
the history of art in Pernambuco, in the wake of the productive Another distinguished figure in the Pernambuco publishing,
investigations that were being undertaken, especially between printing and poetry scene was the engineer, poet and critic,
the 1940s and 1970s, leading to the process/poem. Joaquim Cardozo. Active since the 1910s as a caricaturist and
a poet, in the 1920s his work began gradually to be published
Over this period, especially between 1950 and 1970, the field of (although not in sufficient volume during his lifetime), as
graphic arts saw a fruitful cross-fertilization of different media: Cardozo took over the editorship of the Revista do Norte and
design, poetry, literature, visual arts, music, and photography. became more heavily involved in debates regarding art in
A significant number of the artists, writers and poets active modern Recife, being developed by Vicente do Rego Monteiro
during this period contributed to small-scale publications which a Ascenso Ferreira, Gilberto Freyre or Luís Jardim. Apart from
were independent or part of the catalogue of experimental working on building and engineering in Brasília, Joaquim
publishers, including among others La Presse à Bras (1948- Cardozo would also use his poetry as a space for the invention
1957), the Paris Publisher of Vicente do Rego Monteiro based of and experimentation with modern forms that would strike a
on a manually-produced print run brought from Recife, chord not only among his contemporaries, but later among the
Renovação (Vicente do Rego Monteiro), O Gráfico Amador artists and poets of the 1970s and thereafter.
[The Amateur Publisher] (1954-1961), founded by Aloisio
Magalhães, Gastão de Holanda, José Laurênio de Melo and Pernambuco was an important center of mail art in Brazil,
Orlando da Costa Ferreira, at the instigation of João Cabral de above all because of the work of Paulo Bruscky, who
Melo Neto, and Abrakadabra (Katia Mesel and Lula Côrtes). exchanged letters, proposed and participated in postal art
initiatives elsewhere, and also organized – with the aid of
partners such as Ypiranga Filho, Daniel Santiago, and others
– international mail art exhibitions. Also deeply involved were
the States of Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte. In the latter, stamps from letters that did not reach their destination,
there had been, since the 1960s, a rich tradition of the process- demonstrating that art derives its unique power in the space
poem, a kind of concrete poetry that radically deconstructed created by the noise between emission and reception.
the idea of poetry, as explained in a 1967 text, signed by the
process/poem group: “poetry to be seen and without words... The postcards, letters and other forms of correspondence cover
painting that is only structure... comic books and humor, without two other main themes: language and the body. While a work
captions, paintings serving as textile patterns, (industrial) such as Leonhard Frank Duch’s Souvenir of Itamaracá – Skin
noise regarded as music, the electronic computer for musical from my Thigh Sunburnt in Itamaracá (1975) – in which the
exploration”.53 artist sticks part of his peeled off sunburnt skin on the paper
– deals with a body that makes its presence felt even through
Although mail art adopts various approaches, there is a its absence (a common strategy in art produced under a state
large body of work that both affirms and questions the status of political exception), other developments are based on the
of art through the new mode of circulation and creation. In emancipation of movement and the fluxes so dear to mail
Pernambuco – as in other parts of the world – some of these artists restricted to the two-dimensionality of paper. This is
works are a source of criticism of institutions, as with Paulo the case with Paulo Bruscky’s Living Poetry (1977), in which he
Bruscky’s Attitude of the Artist/Attitude of the Museum: I dresses people in letters and groups them together to form the
Continue to Insist Art Cannot Be Held in Captivity (1978), or the words Living Poetry, causing them to experiment with being
work of Team Bruscky & Santiago (1976 onwards), based on signifying signs; both related and disconnected, depending on
parts of a single image cut up and sent on postcards around the movements and the relations between their bodies. This is
the country, which would only come together again to recreate the reinvention of the possibilities of meaning for that which is
the image in the salons which had selected the work, without apparently posited, a primeval function of living poetry and of
the judges or institutions involved having any guarantee that a poetic life.
this would occur, dealing thereby with the critical potential of
failure. In this field of criticism of institutions and of art, Paulo
Bodies and the relations between them had always been of
Bruscky produced countless objects and postcards, such as interest to Pernambuco artists. While this had been one of the
Is Art Reversible? (1977), Art (1976) – the word “art” etched on central elements of Gilberto Freyre’s contention that, in Brazil,
sandpaper – and joint undertakings with Daniel Santiago as sex and cuisine, for example, smooth out and assuage class
the Bruscky & Santiago duo, including Open and Smell: the First distinctions, it is also the privileged field of practice, protest
Memory is Art (1975), as did Leonhard Frank Duch (Arte Kunst, and discourse that does not accept that contradictions are
1976) and Ypiranga Filho, (The Art of Good Service, 1975, and It reconciled in the body. Various artists, such as Daniel Santiago,
Won’t Work Out This Way , 1976), to cite just a few examples. Paulo Bruscky and Montez Magno, have thus dealt with the
body under a constant state of exception – subject to social
Another fundamental axis of mail art was the discussion of hygiene, repressed and abused – and shown how each body,
its own modes of circulation, which it also used to produce a for reason of its uniqueness, is an exception. This is also the
geopolitical reading of art, as in the case of Paulo Bruscky’s case with the theater group Vivencial Diversiones and the
small drawing Geo/Graphic Situ/Action – Artist’s Distance videos of Jomard Muniz de Britto, whose discussions of gender,
(1982), which demonstrated the distance between the artist and sex, and other forms of invention of subjectivity keep alive to
his partner Leonhard Frank Duch (a resident of Berlin), while this day the intensity of a society that generated the revolution
revealing that art provides the possibility of connection, to the of the body.
extent that the work inverts the geographical order, locating
“Bruscky in Berlin” and “Duch in Recife”. This possibility of a Active in the 1970s and 1980s, Vivencial Diversiones was an
connection and a network, a precursor of the great boom of experimental theater group that emerged in Olinda, in the
globalization, was the theme of a photocopied poster, such context of the pastoral work of the local archdiocese, and
as Daniel Santiago’s 6000 Branches (1977), which reads “the would soon show itself to be an important forum for debating
post office has 6000 branches where you can send art by issues as wide-ranging as homosexuality, politics, poverty,
mail “, and the way, in 1978, this same artist appropriated the drugs, violence, culture, and the market. Working largely
packaging of food products to turn them into postcards. At the with stage improvisations and textual collages, Vivencial also
same time, Paulo Bruscky, always aware of the inefficiency or encouraged the active participation of the public, to the point
failure that are a constitutive part of the political dimension of that, in 1979, they set up a theater in the Olinda mangrove,
art, produced the collage Returned to Sender (1979) – which where, over the years, shows and performances involving
circulated in large quantities as photocopied posters – using transvestites were watched by an extremely diverse audience.
53. Manifesto Proposição (1967). In: GALVÃO, Dácio. Da poesia ao poema: leitura 55. Idem
do poema/processo. Dácio Tavares de Freitas Galvão. Natal, RN: Zit Gráfica e 56. Jomard Muniz de Britto, Aristides Guimarães, and signatories Alexis Gurgel,
Editora, 2004. Achieta Fernandes, Caetano Veloso, Carlos Antônio Aranha, Celso Marcondi,
54. Jomard Muniz de Britto, Aristides Guimarães & Celso Marconi. Manifesto Dailor Varela, Falves Silva, Gilberto Gil, Marcus Vinícius de Andrade, Moacy Cirne
Tropicalista: porque somos e não somos tropicalistas. Originally published in Jornal e Raul Córdula. II Manifesto Tropicalista - inventário do nosso feudalismo cultural.
do Commercio. Recife, 20 April 1968. Originally published in a solo show by Raul Córdula at Oficina 154. Olinda, 1968
Likewise, as one of the organizers of the 2nd Catholic University of the Northeast”. The event marked the emergence of a
of Pernambuco (Unicap) Winter Festival, in 1979, Paulo Bruscky countercultural music scene, which, beginning in Recife and
invited Hélio Oiticica to visit Recife to present his Environmental Olinda (with the collaboration of musicians from neighboring
Program and, in particular, Parangolés (1965-). The artist’s stay states), provided a singular contribution to the Brazilian culture
in the Pernambuco capital was an occasion for public debate of the time, identified principally with tropicalism and the
regarding his work and he acknowledged the contribution Jovem Guarda. This music scene enjoyed the collaboration of
of the State to the tropicalist movement, with an intensive the Rozenblit record companies, one of the largest in Brazil,
exchange of ideas and the publication of two manifestoes responsible, for example, for cutting disks for the independent
(Tropicalist Manifesto – Why We Are and Are Not Tropicalists, Solar label, including Satwa (Lula Côrtes and Lailson) and
and 2nd Tropicalist Manifesto – Inventory of our Cultural Paêbirú (Lula Côrtes and Zé Ramalho). Mixed with references
Feudalism, both in 1968), written mainly by Jomard Muniz to pop and rock, the sounds, poetry, visual images (largely
de Britto, but also signed by artists such as Caetano Veloso, owing to the creative presence of Katia Mesel, that authored
Gilberto Gil, Moacy Cirne and Falves Silva. These manifestoes or co-authored many of the record sleeve and poster designs
were already acknowledging the limitations and contradictions of the time) and the experimental performance of outfits
of the tropicalist project: “We realize that tropicalism is such as Nuvem 33, Lula Côrtes, Marconi Notaro, Phetus,
transitory (in transit and in a trance), and the dangers of Flaviola, Ave Sangria, and others – collectively known as the
commercialization, mystification and idolatry. We therefore udigrudi movement (an originally pejorative corruption of the
say, “Down with the festive left!” and add “Down with tropicalist English word underground), Northeastern psychedelia, Recife
fanaticism!”.”54 psychedelia beat, still resonate today with their unquestionable
counter-cultural potential.
The presence of tropicalism in Pernambuco clearly runs against
the creative and political apathy associated with local traditions
TAMARINEIRA VILLAGE: The band Tamarineira Village changed
in the arts, clashing especially with the ballast of Freyre’s
its name to Ave Sangria in 1974, when it recorded the disk of
thought, understood as “regionalist loyalty” based on “love of
the same name. With its psychedelic sound and unabashedly
our traditions”. In this ballast, tropicalism would include its most
existential lyrics, the band sold a significant number of records
recent manifestations, from João Cabral de Melo Neto to the
and brought together musicians such as Almir de Oliveira, Marco
Teatro Popular do Nordeste (TPN), which would form a “new
Polo Guimarães, Agrício Noya, Paulo Rafael, Israel Semente and
and very new generation” under “syncretistic, luso-tropical,
Ivson Wanderley.
sociodelic, joãocabralian, t-p-nistic tutelage”.55 Likewise, while
it sought to distinguish itself from this “traditionalism”, it also
NUVEM 33: In 1972, a number of young musicians,
saw a difference between tropicalism and “tropicrap”, whereby
poets, artists and illustrators came together as Nuvem 33, a
the former was a “radical critical creative stance”, using the
transdisciplinary initiative with a range of interests and concerns
resources and strategies of its time, such as the process poem,
– including the professionalization of the culture of the Northeast
in its exploration of technologies, media and information
region of the country – which circulated in fanzines, texts,
networks as a way of making “contradictions even sharper”,
manifestoes, and newspaper articles. The group’s texts also
while tropicrap insisted “on providing antiquated answers to
included compositions (many of them by Tiago Araripe, whose
problems, revealing its antiquated nature through nostalgia,
fictional literature imbued Nuvem 33), although we have no
daintiness, picture postcard picturesque, and ignorance,
recordings of these. Characterizing itself as a collective rather
thereby helping to perpetuate under-development; seeing
than a band, Nuvem 33 did not launch disks, but organized
things in a blinkered prejudiced manner”,56 like the Boards of
concerts – such as Retreta Eletrônica – with a high degree of
Culture and Academies of Letters. Tropicalism thus opposed
improvisation (musicians, performers, poets and artists from
censorship and opted for unrestricted disobedience of norms
all over the city were invited to participate) and no fixed
and canons, stressing support for “all non-official cultural
duration. These were important for establishing connections
initiatives”, the “radical student movement” and “independent
and partnerships in this nascent music scene. Apart from those
intellectuals”, as well as “any avant-garde cultural movement” that
most closely associated with the group – Otávio Bzzz, Lula
breaks with tradition. In short, “madness against stupidity!”.57
Wanderley and Bactéria (Humberto Avellar) – Nuvem 33 had
many other occasional collaborators, including Carneirinho
The experimental scene of the 1970s in the field of poetry and
(Carlos Fernando), Robertinho do Recife, Rodolfo Mesquita, Ivan
visual arts also involved a lively music scene. In 1972, the city
Maurício, and others.
of Fazenda Nova, in the interior of Pernambuco, staged the
1st Experimental Music Fair, later known as the “Woodstock
57. Jomard Muniz de Britto, Aristides Guimarães & Celso Marconio. Manifesto
Tropicalista: porque somos e não somos tropicalistas. Originally published in Jornal
do Commercio. Recife, 20 April 1968.
228-229 experimental pernambuco - clarissa diniz PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
PHETUS: The band Phetus was active for exactly nine months in In 1975, Montez Magno wrote Algúria, a utopian short-story
1973. There are no recordings from the time, but some recent that recounts the forms of organization of Al-gures, capital
ones, such as “Purple Cows”. Their performances were at once of the ideal society of Algúria. In the story, the admirably
somber and comical in character (they only played after midnight harmonious fictional journey around houses, streets and
and wore dark clothes) and they mixed styles, creating forrock, institutions leads us to note the extent to which our urban
a mixture of forró and rock, the best example of which was the experience is marked by non-contiguity between the city
song “Alagoas”. After Phetus, its members – Lailson de Holanda, we live in and the one we imagine, desire and project into
Paulo Rafael, and Zé da Flauta – continued to work together and the future. The uncanniness in turn echoes the disjunction
played in other bands from Recife. between an eminently modern style – the icon of which was
the construction of Brasília, criticized by Gilberto Freyre for
SATWA: Considered the first independent psychedelic rock its paucity of ecological consciousness – and another more
record in Brazil, Satwa (1973) was the intriguing result of a contingent way of thinking about the urban experience.
partnership between Lula Côrtes and Lailson. On their return Artists of this period thus came to work not with the ideal or
from trips to Morocco and the United States, respectively, the planned city but with the conflict-ridden urban fabric, whose
two musicians recorded acoustic tracks that mixed western and frictions are a potent source of creativity and criticism. The
oriental sounds with those of the Northeast. String instruments – process of transforming modes of perceiving and acting in
such as violas and mandriolas – produced a psychedelic folk cities has inspired interventions, happenings, photographs,
sound (as is clear from titles such as “Mushroom Waltz” or “Crazy videos, models and so forth, which, giving up the ambition of
Allegro”) which were totally unique in the Brazilian music scene restructuring cities, seek above all to intervene in the possible
of the time. The same year saw the launch of Marconi Notaro ways of inhabiting and understanding them.
in the Sub-Kingdom of Metazoa, also on the Solar label, whose
psychedelic sound also found room for a samba and more direct It is no coincidence that there was an appeal for political
references to the popular music of Pernambuco, as in “Maracatu”. asylum in Algúria, sent by Leonhard Frank Duch to Montez
Magno (1975) – who designed this utopian society whose
PAÊBIRÚ: Trips by artists and musicians to Pedra do Ingá, an capital is Al-gures – demonstrating a double contradiction:
archeological site in the interior of the State of Paraíba, were on the one hand, the distance between imagined cities and
decisive for the creation of Paêbirú (1975), a project put together those that prove to be possible; on the other, the impossibility of
by Lula Côrtes and Zé Ramalho, also involving Alceu Valença, finding refuge in an oppressive political regime that represses
Geraldo Azevedo, Robertinho do Recife, and others. The legends social life as a whole. Art, in turn, inhabits the cracks between
and symbolic world of the Ingá people – represented here by the the possible and that which is deemed to be impossible,
drawings of Raul Córdula, who joined some of these expeditions setting up a topos – a place – of symbolic, subjective and
– are added to the psychedelia of Lula Côrtes, in keeping with political power, which, by resisting, perpetuates the desire not
the alchemical quality of the album. Arranged in four parts (earth, to conform to apparently preordained realities. This is why, for
air, fire and water) and mixing elements of popular culture, rock example, Montez Magno continues to build cities – of soap,
and jazz, the songs make use of unusual instruments, as well as stone, plastic, or any other “waste material” produced by our
sounds of the body and synthesizers, giving rise to the frenetic— society.
“crazy” in the jargon of the time – mixture of rattles, violas, bass,
electric guitar and fiddles, to name but a few. The rich range At the same time, in the historical context of Brazil in 1969, a
of references and the appealing history of the production of the time when bodies were under siege, Montez designed two
record are, in turn, recounted in the extensive sleeve-notes that spaces for architectural activism, The Egg and MMMausoleum,
accompany it, including sleeve design by Katia Mesel and her in which the artist, in the midst of the military regime, ironically
Abrakadabra group, whose work played a fundamental role in proposes the erection of “monuments” to violence. Combining
1970s Pernambuco culture. ideas from institutional criticism, architecture, anthropophagy,
participation, utopianism, urban planning and so on in an
FLAVIOLA: 1974 saw the launch of Flaviola e o Bando do Sol, architecture designed for a single body – that is simultaneously
also on the Solar label, an album that explored similar artistic present and absent – the projects also deal with issues of life,
influences (folk, rock, and the popular music of the Northeast), death and libido.
and that was imbued with an especially distinctive poetry and
outstandingly smooth melody. The lyrics, almost always clipped,
involve repetitions and subtle variations between verses, as in the
exquisite “O Tempo”, whose poetry appears to speak to us today
of the memory/forgotten age of that music scene: “I could have
forgotten /Killed or lost / It’s been so long / As much as I could
/ Until forgotten / It’s been so long / That I clamor for the things
that I love /As much as I could / Until forgotten / Or born once
again”.
The collaborative work of Daniel Santiago and Paulo Bruscky, Concern for – and criticism of – the place of the power of art
through the Bruscky & Santiago duo, differs from the utopian in the creation of these symbolic worlds would be a constant
or individual scale of the work of Montez Magno. Their concern theme of the artists of Pernambuco and especially of the
with the social dimension of art made it possible to create a networks of collaboration between them. Since the early 20th
series of projects on the interstices of the city, such as the 1st century, dialogue and partnerships that clearly identified
International Art Door Exhibition, which, in 1981, occupied 111 the field of local art would be essential for the creation of
billboards with interventions by artists from around the world, a scene in which relations between artists, audiences and
who, at the invitation of the exhibition organizers – Team communications media, for example, could flourish, with a
Bruscky & Santiago – arrived in the city through the mail art diverse range of perspectives establishing (self-)questioning
network. Ironically combining advertising strategies with the alterities, for which the experimental may have been as one of
habitual “invisibility” of art still in vogue during the military the corrollaries. It would be in these relations that the burning
regime, as well as a significant intervention in the city, the questions raised by the work of so many creative individuals
project proposed that art come out of “the refined galleries and would continue to reverberate, insisting on their urgency in view
antiquated museums... The artist, in the final analysis, being of the abyssal experience of the world.
judged by the people... in a non-commercial exhibition in which
advertising gives way artworks using various techniques”.58
58. Paulo Bruscky & Daniel Santiago. FREIRE, Cristina. Paulo Bruscky: Arte, arquivo e
utopia. Recife: Companhia Editora de Pernambuco, 2006, p. 99.
230-231 A POETIC OF SIGNS - Adolfo montejo navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Brazil, a cartography inscribed in the cultural history of the one that of a native (Monteiro) – as a way of expressing the
nation. It is inscribed not only on account of its own merits and contradictions of a country without traditions, trapped in a
transcendental character, but also by way of identity codes or commitment to be ‘original’. Monteiro was a Primitivist painter
those that are powerful and unique enough to create a certain of the Paris School, which, in Europe, discovered not the alien
dissonance in a cultural historiography that always tends ‘other’, which the avant-garde used to break with tradition,
towards the mainstream or in the cyclical reading of generic but the indigenous ‘same’, capable of replacing the destructive
accords. The State of Pernambuco and, by symbolic extension, tendencies of modern art, by way of a nativist poetics
the culture of the Northeast region – that climatic zone defined intermediate between novelty and traditionalism”, in the critical
3
as torrid, with its tropical light, during the period covered by observation of Francisco-Oiticica Filho.
Experimental Pernambuco, 1900-1980, put down firm artistic
and socio-cultural roots in the soil of the time, as a modernity On the other hand, if Hélio Oiticica inscribed an aphoristic work
in gestation in various fields of knowledge and social life. Noneon this aspect, at a time when Rio neoconcretism was in full
experimental swing, inspiring a whole generation of artistic
of this occurred without creating friction with local conservative
force lines, but this also fostered and drove other artistic breaks with the past in various fields,4 the demystification of
references that, in some way, challenged or diverged from the this classical concept was already being carried out in some
prevailing models and standards in Brazil.1 form or another in Pernambuco, by way of works that aspired
to be porous and open to the world in a different way – in
We should thus recognize a certain conceptual impurity – in a which the purity, typical of the thinking of the time, became
clash with pure form, with the absence of the world – that the merely an outmoded luxury item. This vital contamination that
art rooted in Pernambucan soil expresses and exalts, producing Pernambucan art fostered from a very early stage somehow
a different artistic tone. We find, therefore, a demystification became, decades later, a point of reference for relational
of strictly formalist elements and the obligatory traces of art, a new context and a new articulation of language and
constructivism – such as the curious absence of straight lines reality. Various factors contributed to this point of reference
– along with a discovery of other frequencies and harmonies, being established, be it the association with local indigenous
as atavistic as they are permeable, as coded by the site of (marajoara) roots or the graphic tradition (from the various
action as they are attuned to the winds coming from the rest forms of engraving to the truly graphic experiments that
of Brazil and overseas. The pioneering presence of artists connect Vicente do Rego Monteiro, João Cabral de Melo Neto
of the caliber of Vicente do Rego Monteiro and Cícero Dias, and O Gráfico Amador [The Amateur Publisher]),5 or even the
with their Europe-Recife and Recife-Europe cultural multi- preoccupation with social order, that was part of life in the time
vision, produces an historical opening that will have further under review, of most of its major theorists (Gilberto Freyre,
consequences and ramifications. The works selected for the Josué de Castro, Paulo Freire, Celso Furtado). These reflexive
show exhibit a surprisingly high degree of experimentation with features ended up injecting critical questions into the activity
visual signs, beginning with the first modernist paintings and of visual artists, without falling, however, into the protocols of
moving on to more open experiments (Montez Magno, Aloisio much ideological, politically engaged, art (which was, at times,
Magalhães, José Cláudio, Paulo Bruscky, Daniel Santiago, almost another witch-hunt, regarding the diferences).
among many others).
1. The modular boxes of Montez Magno (1967) and Paulo Bruscky’s book objects 2. Géo-Charles, French poet, art dealer and critic, friend of Vicente do Rego
and artist’s books (from previous decades until now), for example, were absent from Monteiro.
Aberto Fechado, Caixa e Livro na Arte Brasileira (Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2012), 3. Vicente do Rego Monteiro and Géo-Charles: correspondance. In: BRUSCKY, P. et
an intriguing recent exhibition curated by Guy Brett that investigated these spatial al (ed.). Vicente do Rego Monteiro: poeta, tipógrafo, pintor. Recife, 2004, p. 93
microuniverses. 4. Rio Experimental, el Poema Mas Allá del Arte, el Poema y la Acción. Fundación
Botín, Santander, 2010. This show, in Spain, drew a map of historical artistic conflict,
in which the “experimental exercise of freedom” proclaimed by Mário Pedrosa
broadened into the “acceptance of the experimental” advocated by (...)
In view of these prior summary considerations, we can view all II. When the World Began in Recife: the Other Modernity
of the notions of the artistic cited and included in this historical
group show, which is at once documentary and conceptual The beginning of the world already once was in Recife in a
(somewhere between the curiosity cabinet and the archive as 1929 panel painting, in which things were glimpsed in a rare
studio), as providing a plural, multifaceted aesthetic schema, constellation of images, living together as hybrids, appearing
which nevertheless reveals a certain emblematic axis that loose, as if adrift or in suspension – as occurs in the pictorial
generates future developments and intercommunication. imagination of Chagall, although the Pernambucan painter’s
use of drawing and color concatenates the diverse worlds
Should we therefore think in terms of a different kind of more, since his “collage” does not present itself as a directed
modernity? Another project beyond the avant-garde and its idealization, but rather as a poetic construction, a more
doctrines and legacy of a break with the past that fits better libidinous presence of reality from a primitive perspective
into the more extensive metabolized body of art, outside (without background). Curiously, the association of figures,
the bell-jar of the field of plastic arts? At root, the possibility architecture, and spaces contained in the three panels breaks
of another broader map of art, which already forms part of with any normal narrative – the epic linearity that was so
the critical cultural dynamics of our age of revision of official much the hallmark of the Mexican muralists. Besides, these
history and also seeks to situate a wider constellation of cultural images, for the most part, merge into one another and overlap,
phenomena, more living and extensively dialectic, is what many presenting a mutable nature, as the background seems
excluding binary oppositions eclipse. Despite a certain historical geological, rich in layers of the real, the fruit of a painter poet,
flavor, the conflict surrounding the monopoly of modernism lies as Picasso would designate him. Although an identifiable
at the geographical heart of the problem of the 20th century, image appears at one point (of the Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf),
with a southern-leaning tendency to center attention on the the itinerary one is led to follow is a compass rose of urban
1922 Modern Art Week as the only axis of this modernism. The and landscape art that flows out in all directions.7 As if the work
resulting and long-standing polarity between São Paulo and belonged to a memorialist imagination (Joaquim Nabuco, Frei
the Northeast is thus guided by full-on, mutually exclusive Caneca) converted into continuous time, emanating from the
oppositions, based on the regionalism vs. modernity model, as shifting images.8
happened later in the dispute between concrete and process/
poetry (fundamentally another São Paulo-Northeast-Rio On the other hand, the dream-like substance of this enormous
polarity). painting also lies in the shadow-swathed hybrid architecture,
which sometimes echoes de Chirico, just as there is a popular
The sense of freedom of the premises in play in Experimental almost Chaplinesque humor, as with the shadow laughing
Pernambuco is undeniable, both because of the freedom of at the bust that projects it or various scenes of diversion
language professed by them and because of the recovery of that pervade the composition – half-bodies dancing by. In
less well-known, or, in their national extension, underestimated this masterwork, if this category still means anything in the
conceptions of art, which have not been set in a context that contemporary world, the shifting and fragmenting of the
reflects their true value. Joaquim do Rego Monteiro, Montez images, brought together by the way things are cut and their
Magno and Jose Cláudio are three notable examples of such contours distorted in unusual ways, seems, to this day, to lead
neglect. Experimental Pernambuco is one of those retrospective to the poetic conviction that the world first unfolded and came
shows that aim to lead to future ones, for reason of the nature into being in Recife, and is still supply opening out a little more
of the critical proposals generated and the reflections that each time we look.
clash with a convenient bourgeois reading fixed in its historical
and methodological comfort zone and, hence, by way of Given this, it is interesting that other works by Cícero Dias, his
connections it suggests as a new cross-cutting territory to be four symbol-paintings of the late 1940s (three of which are in
explored. In fact, history, especially recent history, is always in the exhibition), are pieces that promise the kind of painting
constant need of revision, perhaps in the chimerical promise that Francis Picabia or René Magritte too would establish as
of a better understanding of the present, as Giorgio Agamben the seminal territory of the bad painting to come. They are
puts it, in so far as it is only by delving into the latent shades of a deliberate illustrated iconography, disconnected elements
the past and making them fresh again in the inconceivable part that play ironically with emblematic shapes (the typical fruits
of the present, that it is possible to have a true feeling of time.6 of the country), hovering between the logic of parody and
comic desire. This is something that Jormard Muniz de Britto
would also do, in his own manner, in his film Jogos Frugais
(...) by Hélio Oiticica as a question of life and behavior that is always free, in a state 6. AGAMBEN, Giorgio. O que é o contemporâneo? e outros ensaios. Chapecó, SC:
of being invented, in progress. Argos, 2009.
5. O Gráfico Amador produced innovative graphic experiments and broad cultural 7. It is no coincidence that, in Mário Carneiro’s short film on the painter, the sound-
content from the time it was set up in Recife in 1954, by Aloisio Magalhães, Gastão track that accompanies this masterwork was composed by Hermeto Pascoal (“Act of
de Holanda, José Laurênio de Melo and Orlando da Costa Ferreira. Over eight Creation”), thereby setting visual and musical freedom on the same plane.
years, it expanded the ranging of printing techniques, producing typography and 8. Mário Hélio Gomes remarks on the connection between verbal and pictorial
illustrations using lithography, metal plates, woodcuts, string and stencils. memory in Memories of a Painter. In: DIAS, Cícero. Eu vi o mundo: Cícero Dias.
Cosac Naify, São Paulo, 2011, p. 220.
232-233 A POETIC OF SIGNS - Adolfo montejo navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
Frutais [Frugal Frutal Games] (1979), in which the female nude There are various surprises in this show, the first being the
and bananas (the stereotypical tropical fruit) play the role of canvases of Vicente do Rego Monteiro’s prematurely deceased
an erotic alter ego, a shameless co-protagonist, more than brother, Joaquim, in which organic or pictogrammatic shapes
ironic narration with the right to the cultural strip-tease “for and signs make up an emphatically planar painting, very
foreign eyes,” in which the affinity between sex and fruit in this different from everything else being done at the time, including
Nude Maja posing with fruit attains a perfection of parody. his own brother’s work, which were more geometrical and
The watermelon that appears in this work also appears in allied to a more sacred or mythological conceptions with
the video A Democracia Chupando Melancia [Democracy indigenous roots (despite the fact that in Quelques Visages
Eating Watermelon] (2011), by Daniel Santiago (performance de Paris, 1925, a book of poems included in Experimental
with guests), which offers another visual image corroded by Pernambuco, the artist’s illustrations, with their mixture of
criticism. anagrams, visual logos and pictograms, closely resemble this
poetics of signs). In the case of Joaquim do Rego Monteiro,
It could perhaps be said that irony is one of the figures of in paintings such as La Rotonde or América do Sul [South
speech most typical of the culture and behavior of people America] (both 1927), we see different structures and planes
from the Northeast – in this case Recife –, in contrast to other of color with human figures – synthetic indices, silhouettes of
Brazilian States. This characteristic, not very oftenly found at drawings whose formal economy approaches a language
other latitudes, forms part of the oblique and critical treatment of signs in its extreme codification (as also in the book
of Pernambucan culture. This feature – which always plays Silêncios (1925), produced by his sister, Débora do Rego
obliquely with ambiguity and challenges dominant powers Monteiro, in homage to her dead brother, José, which is full
– can never be coded in a geographically exclusive manner, of somber schematic drawings). Likewise, the two paintings
since it not only constantly permeates a wide number of called Composição [Composition] (both 1930) show another
artworks and art products in various fields, from the verse of feature that was unusual for the time: a rooted constructivism,
Manuel Bandeira to Sebastião Uchoa Leite, the plays of Ariano somewhere between the desire for geometric composition
Suassuna or cordel literature to the most generic rhythms or and its opposite, with amorphous, formless, semiorganic
even the closest musical adventures, the experiences of Zé shapes, included in the series of paradoxical paintings that
Ramalho with Lula Côrtes included Northeastern-style in the Experimental Pernambuco brings to light, via Joaquim do Rego
exhibition, Nação Zumbi or Mestre Ambrósio. It can likewise Monteiro10 or Cícero Dias.
easily be seen to be an everyday practice, a simple daily
habit of reading things differently. From the metamorphic III. The Music of Signs
alphabets of Daniel Santiago (variations on a single graphic
code, Alfabeto Comilão, Colorido, Eleito, no Plural... [Glutton, Signs have had a strong presence in the Pernambucan art of
Colorful, Elected, Plural Alphabet]), of the 1980s, to the titles the twentieth century, with the construction of a visual music,
of the caustic works of Jomard Muniz de Britto, such as his not only in more explicitly musical works such as those of
film, Alto Nível Baixo (1977), whose sound-track augments Montez Magno [Bachianas (1964), Madrigais (2009)] and
the dissonance of the images, or even the work of José Paulo Bruscky SensonialCon(s)(c)(?)ert (1972), Partituras
Cláudio, oil on eucatex with a whiff of proclamation, Primeiro (Musical Score, 1984) – which always have some intriguing
a Fome Depois a Lua [First Hunger Then the Moon] (1968),9 affinity with post-Cage sound art –, but also in works by José
with its militant anti-Parnassianism (and the socio-political Cláudio, and earlier in a sign-based painting that goes beyond
conscience of Josué de Castro with his work on the geography the geometrical or figurative, such as that of Cícero Dias and,
of hunger), or the outdoor festivals of the early 1980s (1981, above all, Joaquim do Rego Monteiro with his iconographic
1982), an outright contravention of publicity in reverse. In all of elements, as noted above.
these one can scent the vitriol that irony distills, its libertarian
antidote to totality (as some verses by Uchoa Leite put it in Neither is Pernambucan culture’s tradition of engraving and
Poética dos Mosquitos: “with needle pricks/in a kind of atonal book editing and publishing free of this profusion of graphic
poetics”). Playful irony, a vital legacy of homo ludens, which elements. This aspect of the cartography of signs, so prolific in
joins Clowneries and Cartomancie (1952, both), with Art: the images of visual poetry, began early with the avant la lettre
Vaccine Against Tedium, a performance by Paulo Bruscky and experiments of Vicente do Rego Monteiro, with his passion for
Daniel Santiago, or the cowboy shoot-out with super-8 e 16 poetry and publishing. Concrétion (1952), a book that surprised
mm cameras, in Duel (1975), by the same artists, a spirit that the concretists, when they became aware of it various decades
finds continuity in various ways in the works of José Patrício, Gil after its publication, or Cartomancie (1952), poems printed on
Vicente and Carlos Melo, for example, which lie beyond the playing cards that provide a different kind of visual lyricism
scope of this exhibiition but are consistent with it. influenced João Cabral de Melo Neto as a printer during his
9. We should also mention another pioneering work that addressed the issue of 10. Vicente do Rego Monteiro exacerbated the contradiction when he remarked in
hunger, Mário Carneiro’s feature film, Gordos e Magros (1977), which makes a private, “As a cubist, I am a constructivist”.
similar and, for the Brazilian political corpus, unusual statement.
stay in Spain, where he published Joan Brossa and later when whose graphic marks derive from a performance involving
he was involved in the experiments of O Gráfico Amador. This the projector, a semi-magical combination of ropes and light
may explain why, in this poetics of signs, this show includes that achieves a primeval sound-effect. In terms of poiesis, My
examples of the most rarely seen visual poems by Joaquim Brain Draws Like That I and II, in its two versions, 1976 and 2007,
Cardozo, a poet who always worked on the margins of the b&w and color, is a visual-sound archive, not only because
genre and deserves wider recognition, in part for reason of his of the soundtrack of encephalograms or Walter Smetak, but
pioneering work in different spheres, visual and sound poetry, as its own technological graphic design that combines polar
and artist’s books. This is also the case with Katia Mesel (whose opposites: notation/drawing and color, body and mind,
1970 jewel of graphic art, O Livro, with its clean pages of technology and ethics. There is even music in the three photos
spatial aphorisms, is included in this exhibition) and the books by Aloiso Magalhães (Cartema, 1979) included in the show, with
produced by Lula Côrtes. their photomontage, serial repetition of motifs, and harmonic
orchestration of images.
As if music were blind, many avant-garde experiments explore
other senses or synesthesia and many of these are based on José Cláudio’s brush and quill drawings on paper can also be
sheet music as the ideal support for the projection of graphic regarded as constellations of signs, but his work using stamps,
signs. The visually-attractive stave has always been a magnet hovering between visual poetry and drawing in the broad
for the graphic representation of music itself (be it random, sense, is an even better example of this. For the graphic marks
concrete, or electro-acoustic), for drawings that can translate of a new kind of sign writing, as refined as the structures of
the oscillations and inflections, rhythms and counter-rhythms, the process/poem, see also the work of Arnaldo Tobias, who
silences and gaps that music produces, but plastic art hides. was allied to this movement. In the 1960s, José Cláudio, who
The cut reliefs and kinetic objects of Abraham Palatnik can also was working as a civil servant at the time, produced various
be seen as scores or instruments of a music of silence. Music for situations involving stamps,13 which are random ensambles of a
the eyes is also provided by various works by Montez Magno kind, carefully woven compositions that simulate other possible
and Paulo Bruscky,11 in which the accents of shapes, signs and configurations of space, as if the need to invent the alphabet
colors work to produce a visual-graphic composition or, in the were part of this culture in which education has governed
case of Bruscky, commune in performance with sound poetry. history for an intensive period of time. It should also be noted
One example of this is Ele Está ou a Dor do Parto [He Is or the that it was in this part of the world that Paulo Freire launched
Pain of Birth] (1972), in which a mummy acts out onomatopoeic his pedagogical, intellectual and socio-cultural transformation
allusions, which was shown at the end of the exhibition along that has yet to be taken up in Brazil. It is also significant that
with other sound experiments of the time. there is art work (such as that of Aloisio Magalhães) that uses
school exercise books (and when, we may ask, does an exercise
Montez Magno has produced various works of this kind, book cease to be – as some of Magritte’s linguistic paintings
especially, Notesounds Album (1970-1992), which has the also suggest – a visual, semiotic poem). The examples in the
symbolic subtitle: Sonata for Eye and Ear. This is a series of show provide two contrasting interpretations: Daniel Santiago’s
compositions, chromatic calligraphies, seismographs and sign alphabets and Bruscky’s visual primer, both rooted in a world
mobiles on musical staves that explore the meaning of the of signs connected both to the sounds of music and its enigmas
visual annotation of sound, as the title proclaims, suggestions of and to the sound of the world and its contractual obligations.
a cosmic sound space of a rare beauty, as compositions, whose
lightness of touch and plastic structure are, in turn, echoed Vicente do Rego Monteiro’s 1955 series of monotypes contribute
in another key work, the 1964 Morandi series, with its unique to this hybrid vocabulary, their vast graphic diversity portraying
constructive lyricism, akin to that of Mira Schendel in her use of a grave labyrinthine universe, as Montez Magno does in his
the void as horizon and material, in which colors behave like 1958 pieces, in a more calligraphic and hedonistic way. These
the notes of a constellation fragmented in space. works form part of the range of graphic works this show aims
to present, as if as an underlying leitmotif, an extended visual
Works that present hybrid visual-sound worlds also include a seismography.
number of films that re-invent the medium, such as Ypiranga
Filho’s Dinâmica do Traço, I, II and III [Dynamics of the trace 1, 2
and 3] (1967), in which the broad gestures of the light drawing
are orchestrated into a score in movement. The same occurs
in Aépta (1982), yet another unclassifiable work by Paulo
Bruscky, in his role as an inventor, a Xerox film12 on super-8,
11. Hermeto Pascoal also forms part of this segment, for reason of the merits both of 13. José Cláudio is the author of the History of a Stamp series (1969).
his calligraphy drawings and his calligraphic scores (such as O Calendário do Som,
2000).
12. A work by Paulo Bruscky based on a sequence of xeroxes.
234-235 A POETIC OF SIGNS - Adolfo montejo navas PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
recife as center of the world - zanna gilbert
IV. A Different Experimental Vocabulary height of the military dictatorship. This is another caustic work
that became an artistic boomerang through the feedback of
Putting together a different experimental vocabulary does not responses and collaborations it received throughout Brazil,
just mean reviewing the repertoire established by language answering the call for interference and posting, which provokes
strategies seeking new realities and symbolic worlds being an open national self-analysis (Artur Barrio, Torquato Neto,
created, referents and symbolisms inscribed in the works – the Dailor Varela, among others). The work that features in
range of meanings that opens out as the work is built up. It Experimental Pernambuco swivels between text and image
requires another itinerary in which the creation of meanings and is a truly collective undertaking, produced by a plurality
goes beyond conventional artistic limits of reality. There is of voices, bridging diverse geographical regions and artistic
thus a need to link the presence of the city of Recife to the styles.
urban culture of the streets and also to register the presence
of its most popular side, the spirit of quick-fixes and gadgets Also urban, but more inward-looking and reflective, Montez
that imbues the city, traveling parallel to historical time, along Magno introduces a pioneering perspective with his models,
with the immemorial values of old (a combination of memory presenting a lateral constructivism, freely exploring simple
and the surroundings that is present both in Cícero Dias and materials. His Imaginary Cities (reminding us of Italo Calvino’s
Paulo Bruscky). The urban world of the capital of Pernambuco invisible ones) are a complex of small-scale sculptures that
thus becomes a co-author in various exciting art projects, inhabit the space in a different way, as a genesis that has
in a dynamics of public participation that is rarely seen. The more in common, in some cases, with the highly contemporary
interventions of Bruscky & Santiago, and Bruscky’s solo work construction-installations of Miguel Navarro – always as
are thus part of an immanent public art archive that is not a collection of architectonic-spatial cells whose minimal
restricted to sculpture gardens, if not quite the contrary. Some grammar merges micro and macro. The same feature is
of these actions number among the best Brazilian artworks of present in other architectonic adventures, The Egg and
the period – against the backdrop of the military dictatorship –, MMMausoleum projects (1969), and even the school pencil-
when a different relation between the city and the public began cases, in which the relation between space, time, color and light
to be established, one that extended beyond the confines of the is interdependently imbricated.15
white cube: a situationist artistic language contextualized in a
popular sense. In this broadened vocabulary, the photomontages of Aloisio
Magalhães included in the exhibition present a geometrical
There was also another kind of space, straddling the virtual structure which, different from the work of Geraldo de Barros,
and the real, generated by mail art. While there are some imbues shapes with irony, redundancy and repeated motifs.
early pieces by Vicente do Rego Monteiro that were moving in This results in freely playing kaleidoscopic works that demystify
this direction, no-one was so intensively prolific in this field as through their mutable composition. The three labyrinths
Paulo Bruscky. With his profusion of mail art, Bruscky succeeded included here are connected to another different but equally
in putting Recife on the world map, in a grand-scale flowing unique experience, since Jomard Muniz de Britto forms part of
together of cultures, and on the map of Brazil, with his idea of a this exhibition, not solely on account of his film work, but also
networked art that could evade the oppression of the era, with for reason of the high degree of critical reflection, in his films
the complicit participation of the post office. At the same time, and other work, bringing to them the artistic temperature of
in tune with the graphic legacy of previous ages, the envelope, the Agreste region, nothing fake or manufactured, putting the
internal and external correspondence, with its outside-of-the- visual at risk, at the limit, with images that are more friction
box content, was converted, in the conceptual 1970s, into an than fiction.
aesthetic tool capable of acting as the support for various kinds
of actions and interventions with various purposes. A true post There is a respectfully critical side to this exhibition,
office box, which, as transitional object, enables exploration of characteristic of an artistic vitality that does not wish to confine
a broader kind of visual poetry. The process poem, always as itself to a local or global aesthetic bell-jar. This tension that
much overlooked as resisted in Brazilian culture, was a bulwark drives Experimental Pernambuco, with its broad sweep of
of these acts of postal art, these truly collective works that play almost a century, demonstrates the meaning of the slogan
with the anonymous humus as if it were the final authorship/ “Brazil is my abyss”, adopted in a proclamation-piece by Daniel
identity. And we can see here the link between the Northeast Santiago that turns the most virulent jingoistic nationalism on its
(Natal, Recife) and this abyssal movement, rather than concrete head. It invites us to realize that there is always the possibility
poetry, which is more connected with Bahia, thereby explaining of a contextual art that pores over the abyss of language, in
the resonance of a unique piece by Raul Córdula, O País da so far as it experiments with new truths, different readings
Saudade [The Land of Longing] (1980s), produced during the of the world, in no particular order. However, “it is a margin
that does not aspire to be an axis, or a governing center.
Rather, a libertarian body of work, always on the margin”,16 as
epitomized by the aesthetics of Paulo Bruscky, suggesting that,
15. DINIZ, C. Desdobrar. A Obra de Montez Magno. In: Montez Magno. Editora Paés,
still today, is a considerable cultural achievement.
Recife, 2010, p. 28.
16. A. M. Navas, wall text, Sempre Margem (Ou a Iconografia Poética de P. Bruscky),
in Paulo Bruscky – Ver Vendo, Galeria Amparo 60, Recife, 2008. Rio de Janeiro/Foz do Iguaçu, May 2014
Recife as the CentER of the World: Rethinking
Regionalism Through the Mail Art Network’s Long
Distance Performance
Zanna Gilbert
When Cícero Dias inscribed his painting I Have Seen the That Recife became a hub for the international mail art network
World... And It Began in Recife (1926-1929) he signalled not is not incidental; the north-east’s strong cultural identity,
only his own journey as a painter, but also an audacious cosmopolitan history and artistic heritage meant constructing
regionalism supported by the writings of his friend, the pre- a cultural forum that was independent and removed from
eminent Pernambucan sociologist Gilberto Freyre. Fifty years the dominance – still effective today – of the Rio-São Paulo
later, Recife became a major hub for the international mail axis.4 While Moacir dos Anjos has pointed out the relatively
art network with the activities of artists such as Paulo Bruscky, recent construction of the north-east as a region, regionalism
Daniel Santiago, Unhandeijara Lisboa1, Ypiranga Filho, as a position that could be either pursued or challenged is
Silvio Hansen, and Leonhard Frank Duch. If an occasionally undeniable. However, this commitment to the local was not
defiant north-eastern regionalism marks the production of hermetic and in no way compromised the desire to reach
Pernambucan writers, artists and intellectuals throughout the beyond Brazil, often circumventing entirely the path through the
20th century, how would this cultural stance meet with the country’s acknowledged art centres. The Manifesto Tropicalista:
accelerated internationalisation of communication systems Porque Somos e Não Somos Tropicalistas (Tropicalist
that led to the formation of increasingly cross-national artistic Manifesto: Why We Are and Are Not Tropicalists), authored
networks? This essay explores how these concerns with the in Recife in 1968, laments the ‘cultural stagnation of the
immediate locality, registered through performance, urban province’, asking: “Why do we insist upon living 10 years behind
interventions and works that foreground the everyday life of the Guanabara, and a century behind London? For regionalist
city, intersected with bodies of matter – mail art works – that loyalty? For the love and defense of our traditions?’5 In the
travelled on behalf of the artist, transferring their bodies or second part of the manifesto published the same year, this time
their localities into varied worldwide contexts. These parallel subtitled ‘Inventory of our Cultural Feudalism’, the authors argue
activities were elementally conjoined both as expressions for ‘new creative processes’ and the use of the mass media
of the local and immediate and as displacements of these as a way of overcoming the aforementioned stagnation.6 If
experiences to other localities. They were also (but not only) Cícero Dias had earlier conceived of the world as ‘starting in
responses fraught with the tensions of living under military Recife’, by the early 1970s, artists in that city saw an opportunity
government, particularly after the Institutional Act 5 was to once again reinvent geographies by reconfiguring the
instituted in 1968, which effected a subsequent nulling of the structures of transmission of information, ideas and art
sphere of collective action and social resistance initiated in the through the mail. Recife’s port had already inauguarated the
1960s. city as a 20th century cosmopolitan hub, which moreover in
previous centuries had been defined by Dutch, English and
Networking Regionalism: into the Translocal French colonial incursions. With the examples of more recent
Pernambucan innovators in mind, such as Vicente do Rego
When, in 1925, Gilberto Freyre complained of the condition of Monteiro, Aloisio Magalhães, and Montez Magno, artists
visual art in the north-east of Brazil as a ‘tyranny of distance began working with performative experimental practices that
imposed on our eyes and our imagination’, he lamented brought diverse artistic influences to bear on Recife’s art scene.
the lack of specificity of artistic methods to respond to the
particularity of regional conditions.2 Freyre’s complaint of this Recife was a locality, then, always defined as much by the
‘cultural regime’ was particularly concerned with the special beyond as by the local. This characteristic is noted in Cícero
quality of light in the north-eastern region, but it also called Dias’s masterwork, in which he reserved some space in his
for an art that would present not only local subject matter exuberant canvas for a depiction of the hills of Rio, allowing
but an epistemological or methodological difference in its space for other elements of place to enter into his portrait of
approach.3 As one of the most important intellectuals in Brazil, Recife. Dias’s depiction of Rio asserts displacement, but also
the discourse of regionalism pronounced by Freyre became connectivity between two places. Rio becomes present, but
a debating point for Pernambucan artists seeking at once to also secondary to Recife, acknowledging the possibilities of
respond to their immediate locality and at the same time take differing, subjective vantage points, of a locality formulated by
part in artistic conversations further afield. As the twentieth various experiences of place. A mailing sent by Unhandeijara
century’s accumulating developments in printing, reproduction, Lisboa to Paulo Bruscky in 1977 proposes an even more radical
and communications technologies marched on, and the geographical vision, one in which mail art has drastically
resulting closure of distance between the ‘here’ and ‘there’, reconfigured the earth. This cubic globe is accompanied by
artists began to negotiate the increasing ability to communicate the message, ‘Hail! Hail! A Package from Recife!’. Lisboa’s map
beyond their immediate locations, and further engage the often recalls earlier surrealist distortions of the world map according
cosmopolitan aspects of regionalism. to the centres of surrealist activity or interest; he depicts a
1. Lisboa has always lived and worked in Paraíba, but he maintained a strong (...) political reaction to the dismantling of the sugar and cotton trades and a
dialogue and participation in mail art projects emanating from Recife. solution to the crisis faced together with the Brazilian provinces that depended upon
2. FREYRE, Gilberto. Algumas Notas sobre a pintura do Nordeste do Brasil. In: it.” He further points out that the crystallization of the region through the works of
FREYRE, Gilberto. et al. Livro do Nordeste, comemorativo do centenário do Diário de writers, musicians, novelists, essayists and painters solidifiedits legacy, and defined
Pernambuco: 1825-1925. Recife: Off. Do Diário de Pernambuco, 1925. it, along with Gilberto Freyre’s characterization as a centre that held the roots of
3. ibid Brazilian cultural traditions. Moacir dos Anjos, “Desmanche de bordas: notas sobre
4. The constructed cartography of the north-east and indeed, all symbolically-constructed identidade cultural no Nordeste do Brasil” in Clarissa Diniz, Gleyce Kelly Heitor &
geographies, is noted by Moacir dos Anjos: “Although at sometimes seems eternal Paulo Marcondes Soares (org.) Critica de Arte em Pernambuco, Escritos do Século
for Brazilians, the idea of the northeast is only a century old, its origin being the (...) XX, Azougue Editorial, 2012, p. 265-6.
236-237 recife as center of the world - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
decentralized and reconfigurable cuboid fragmented into These already established networks met with the
four moveable sections that demonstrate the multiplicity of internationalization of mail art, which was achieved through
connections and possibilities in mail art networks. Instead of a sharing of mailing lists of artists’ addresses in magazines and
unidirectional transmission of aesthetic norms from centre to between artists and poets.
periphery, mail art embraced the possibilities of multidirectional
exchange. This resulted in a veritable cacophony of influences, The connection between experimental poetry and the body
so much that the roots and genealogies of mail art are almost was exposed in the 1977 performance poem Poesia Viva (Live
impossible to trace. Poetry) a culmination and celebration of process poetry.
Organized by Paulo Bruscky and Unhandeijara Lisboa the
Urban bodies: Poema/Processo, Performance and the City performance asserted the body as the poem itself. In the text
distributed at the event, Lisboa stated: “we are the work itself,
Given the conservative attitudes of Recife’s cultural elite, we are the moving letter”.12 Each of the participants bore one
museums were generally closed to the new generation of the letters that spelled the title of the work, and throughout
of artists wishing to experiment with media and question the performance each of them helped form additional words
institutionalized values in the artistic and broader sphere. In by moving their bodies around. The body became the letter,
a move that was as much pragmatic as ideological, artists’ the letter fused with the body, and meaning was created
urban interventions became a strategy of insertion into the collectively through a symbolic recuperation of the relation
everyday of Recife’s public sphere. Differing somewhat from between language and the body, the collective’s answer to
body art actions that investigate the physical limits of the body breaking codified semiotic systems.
to existential ends, Recife artists’ use of the body was often
extrapolated to the social body, exploring divisions between The intersection between text and body is also notable in the
the popular and the erudite. The first action of the Bruscky- case of two comparable performance works, each by the
Santiago Duo, Exponáutica e Expogente [Exponautical and long-term collaborators Bruscky and Santiago. In the case of
Expopeople], (1971), took the beach as a space for exhibition Bruscky’s O que é arte, para que serve? [What is art, what is it
in place of the customary gallery space. The next year, at the for?, 1978], the work asks a literal question about the role of art
action Artexpocorponte [Artexpobodybridge] (1972), Bruscky in society. The question, like the letters borne by the participant-
and Santiago invited participants to communicate between two actors in Poesia Viva, was carried on Bruscky’s own body, by
Recife bridges by means of coloured cards invoking collective being displayed on a sandwich-board. The artist exhibited
action, participation and communication without language, himself in the window of the Livraria Moderna bookshop, then
and in the same year for Artemcágado [Artontortoise] (1972), physically distributing the message around the city. In 1982,
the pair invited people to adorn their pet tortoises for exhibition Daniel Santiago also employed his body and a text in the work
in the street. This posture of turning art into a collective and O Brasil é o meu Abismo [Brazil is my Abyss]. The title of the
popular activity built upon the development and subsequent work refers to a poem by Jomard Muniz de Britto, Aquarela do
repression of social movements of the 1960s that inflected the Brasil [Watercolour of Brazil], which is a dark commentary of
artistic sphere creating such initiatives as the Recife Popular the years of military dictatorship. The artist suspended himself
Culture Movement (Movimento de Cultura Popular do Recife, from the banister of the Galeria Metropolitana (today the
1960), the Ribeira Movement (Movimento da Ribeira, 1960), Museu de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães) holding a poster
and the Armorial Movement (Movimento Armorial, 1970) that with the words ‘Brazil is my abyss’ on the card. Hanging upside
were concerned both with collectivity and popular culture.7 down challenges norms of perception, and conjures up the
‘abyss’ of the artists’ personal response to the political situation
The formation of mail art network in Recife was both literary at that moment. Both of these literal and physical actions
and performatic – implicating the body – from the beginning. depended on the body as a support for text and an instigator of
Artists in Recife became involved in mail art initially through poetic action.
the movement Poema/Processo [Process/Poetry], which
developed some of the achievements of the concrete and visual Bodies of Matter: The Human Letter
poetry movements.8 Introduced by the artist Wlademir Dias-
Pino through the magazine Ponto in 1967, Poema/Processo The fact that mail art is a disembodied art practice did not
proclaimed a poetry focused on the ‘critical unleashing of prevent artists from experimenting with ways of making the
always-new structures’.9 Most crucially, Dias-Pino defines body the protagonist of their mailings. In 1975, for example,
process poetry in relation to the notion of games, scores and Leonhard Frank Duch sent a humorous ‘souvenir’ from a
activities – a poetry that emerges from the page into the social holiday to Itamaracá, a well-known beach destination on the
sphere.10 As Craig Saper observes:
5. Jomard Muniz de Britto et al, Manifesto Tropicalista: Porque somos e não somos
Process Poetry builds on the advances of concrete poetry and tropicalistas, Jornal do Commercio, Recife, 20 April, 1968.
6. Jomard Muniz de Britto et al, II Manifesto Tropicalista: Inventário do nosso
moves towards that tendency toward visual conceptual games, feudalismo cultural, first published for the solo exhibition of Raul Córdula at Oficina
scores and activities. Although these poems are not yet scores, 54, Olinda, 1968.
they do suggest a secret code system waiting for a reader to 7. Itamar Morgado da Silva, “Fissuras e Capilaridades: O individual e o coletivo na
formação da poética artística de Daniel Santiago”, MA Thesis, Universidade Federal
interpret or play.11 de Pernambuco, Recife, 2013, p. 33-4.
north-east coast. The postcard, instead of bearing picturesque Both works suggest that the envelope can contain, conceal
images of a typical beach town, carries Duch’s own burnt and transport the artist, as if the practice of mail art allows
skin, drawing attention to the body and flesh of the absent an escape or flight. These works then, show how the mail
sender. In mail art works, then, the mailing often acts as an work is able to displace the body of the artist to another
emissary, travelling as a proxy in lieu of the artist. Moreover, locale. Anthropologist Alfred Gell has argued that images and
the preoccupation with establishing more intimate interactions objects are not social others, but real physical “channels of
against the backdrop of dehumanising technological access” which are projections of human consciousness.15 These
communication and mass media meant to establish affective “envelope bodies” convert the envelope from its function as a
connections between one another. Amelia Jones ascribes container into a subject to be considered agents in themselves.
conceptual artists’ interest in the body to a reaction against This understanding of the mail art work as an agent, a body or
commodification, stating that in “pancapitalism, subjects an icon is variously employed by different artists’ engagement
become objects of the commodity system with its never-ending with the body in mail art. The mail art work can thus be seen as
processes of exchange.”13 However, while they were certainly a proxy for the artist’s body, and perhaps a means of ‘escape’
concerned with the rationalising processes of commodification for artists living under repressive regimes.
and mechanization, artists working in the context of
dictatorships extended the implications of featuring the body, Paulo Bruscky’s work helps us to understand the way that
or traces of the body in their work. artists transposed their concern with the presence of the
body in public performances, and how these ‘performances’
Another pair of works by Bruscky and Santiago explore how travelled and connected across distances through the
the possibility of corporal danger and physical punishment network of correspondents. His mail art works are laden with
demanded a visceral awareness of the somatic realm.14 indexical traces that establish immediate somatic references:
After he and Bruscky were imprisoned in 1976 for organizing photographic self-portraits, figures on exposed negative film,
an exhibition of mail art with some political content, Daniel x-rays, and fingerprints. Art historian Ian Walker points out
Santiago made a touching self-portrait accompanied by that the indexes’ physical relationship makes it a distinctive
the question, “What is it that I’m afraid of?”. The ink drawing kind of sign, since the extremely close connection between the
depicts the downcast artist, clearly profoundly affected by his sign and the object constitute a quality of realism, which in
treatment at the hands of the authorities. The three-quarter turn achieves the effect of immediacy in an image creating an
length portrait would be quite conventional had the artist not “extra authenticity and magical charge”.16 If artists embraced
replaced his shoulders and upper torso with an envelope, from the democratic potential of reproduction wholeheartedly, they
which his head and shoulders emerge. Santiago makes a direct also maintained a need for the artwork’s ‘magical’ quality,
link between his artistic pursuits and his somatic fear refer since through this immediacy they were able to figuratively
to the atmosphere of intimidation during his brief period of ‘touch’ the recipient. For example, the distortions Paulo Bruscky
incarceration. The question – a thought bubble implicating it as created by pressing the body against the photocopying
a private one – is rhetorical, but it could also be accusatory, or machine evoke an atmosphere of claustrophobic violence –
refer to impending self-censorship. The process of internalising the artist’s mouth is open in a silent scream which registers
structures and modes of behaviour imposed by dictatorship is the precise instant being recorded. In this case, the specificity
seen in action here, alongside the compromised opportunities of the moment conveys both the possibility of creating an
for free artistic activity presented by the mail art network. impression of immediacy through the mail by attempting to
Santiago’s self-portrait refers directly to the overt policing reduce the distance implicit in postal communication, as well as
of the body, and implicitly refers us to the indirect effects of the ultimate impossibility of direct contact (here registered by
censorship and a rigid societal order. Paulo Bruscky’s Cuidado the lack of sound in the scream and the sense of claustrophobia
com Violação [Careful with Violation, 1978], also alludes to the created by the trapped body). In his 1980 Xeroxperformance,
mailed work as a metaphor for the body. The violence that Bruscky literally translated his body-action onto paper,
might be exerted on Bruscky’s image as a careless recipient which was then mailed to recipients. The reproduction and
tears open the envelope equates with its fragility during transit. documentation of the image thus becomes an integral part of
Just as with Santiago’s work, the artist’s body merges with the the work itself, rather than with many performances, as a mere
medium of communication. The vulnerability of the body and document.
by extension the vulnerability caused by engaging in mail art is
addressed by both artists.
8. Like mail art, the movement was networked, arising in various cities at the same 9. Wlademir Dias-Pino, “Process: Project Reading” (Rio/Montevideo: Ponto/OVUM,
time, as noted by Neide Sá: “Process Poetry was founded as a movement in 1967, October, 1969). Cited by Charles A. Perrone, Seven Faces: Brazilian Poetry since
it happened simultaneously in various ‘points’ throughout Brazil: here in Rio, in the Modernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 66.
North-East in Natal and Recife, and in Minas [Gerais]. From 1967-1972, the Process 10. ibid. n.p.
Poetry movement came to have about 250 participating artists and poets. It was 11. Cited by Craig Saper, Networked art (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press,
open to new participants so that mail was intensively employed ... Many of those 2001), 19.
who now do mail art participated in Process Poetry.” Interview with Regina Célia 12. Statement issued as part of the performance, 1977. Paulo Bruscky Archive.
Pinto, undated, Museu do Essencial e do Além Disso website, accessed July 4, 2012, 13. Amelia Jones et al., The Artist’s Body (London: Phaidon: 2000), 21.
http://www.arteonline.arq.br/museu/interviews/neide.htm
238-239 recife as center of the world - zanna gilbert PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
DO you really want to know? - josé claudio
Embodied experience and knowledge, which can be traced Constructed notions of the local are redefined by the
through Merleau-Ponty and to some extent in the literacy intersection of multiple localities. Arjun Appadurai defines
method of Paulo Freire, understand the body as primary social locality as “a quality of social life that is constituted by a sense
agent. Writing about his masterwork, Cícero Dias commented of social immediacy brought about by certain forms of sociality,
that “the history of the whole of the north-east” had passed thus generating itself as a context”. Appadurai’s analysis of the
through his body.17 How then, does the mail art work act at a effect of electronic mass media on the formation of localities
distance, as a travelling body that is a locality unto its self? In reflects upon its ability to construct new realities that are not
this sense, the mail art work also becomes representative of necessarily geographically determined: locality is relational, not
a place, as both subject and object, moving from one place spatial.18 This is because “deterritorialised viewers” with access
to another, displacing contexts and creating problematized to globalised media create “communities of sentiment [groups]
definitions of space. Daniel Santiago’s works from the late that begin to imagine and feel things together”.19 The mail art
1970s that deal with famine and hunger in the north-east, such network, in its development of inter-subjective sociability, can
as Fome [Hunger] and Brazil Cream Cracker and Unhandeijara be defined as a “community of sentiment”; a locality in itself.
Lisboa’s Fome Hoje [Hunger Today] are precise responses to This translocality at once transgresses cartographic conceptions
urgent social problems which are then transmitted into other of space and enables an articulation of a multiplicity of
places as records of occurrences from where they are sent. localities, both those bound to place and constructed by
Paulo Bruscky AlimentAÇÃO [AlimentACTION, 1978] also deals distance, and those that are constructed in between spaces, in
with the question of food and hunger, as the artist seems to be this case, in channels of communication.
consuming his own body. However, the work further asserts that
the work can be taken to be the body itself, with the stamped As we have seen, Recife’s mail artists’ ideas about performance
‘Copy conforms to the original’. and the body were translated between presence and absence,
the local and the far away, matter and concept, and page
Regionalism and the Translocal to action. In these translocal interactions, experiences occur
in specific places (in the mail art work this is signified by the
Mail art is quite literally inscribed with translocality. It bears stamp, the address, the mail worker and the mailed work) and
the markers of place in the stamps affixed to envelopes and are transported to other places, creating virtual imaginaries
the addresses of sender and recipient, but importantly, it is through networking practices. Arjun Appadurai’s understanding
also beyond this place: it travels, or transports these markers of locality, developed in the 1990s, was based upon electronic
of their context into a different location. Thus mail art is both communication, now superseded and enhanced by the
rooted and contextual, a movement that responds to the internet. But what of earlier analogical communication in which
specific political and social conditions of place, while it also messages travel less quickly, allowing a gap between two
transcends those same conditions and categories. Despite this places to emerge? It is in this gap, this in-between space, that
animistic character, human experience, and the body itself, utopias can emerge, a space now compressed by a hyper-
must be codified in order to travel. In this in-between sphere, networked condition. Recife’s mail artists’ attempts to both
the body can also be conceived as a translocal entity, which engage and transcend their locality acted as a defiant critique
provokes questions about the limitations of what can travel and of cartographic conceptions of space and power in the local
be translated through communications media. As such what is and the national spheres; categories which continue to be
local might be thought of as presence and the trans through strongly codified. Art that is in flux, which defines itself through
degrees of absences, traces or indexes of that presence, the its passage through systems of circulation, by definition resists
body inscribed in the work itself. attempts to be definitively located. As Daniel Santiago often
stamped on his works: ‘Arte correio: onde quer que você esteja’
(Mail Art: Wherever it might be).
14. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body as the locus of perception can also be borne
in mind as it develops a notion of embodied knowledge that was influential for the
well-known artists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica.
15. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998).
16. Ian Walker, City Gorged with Dreams: Surreal Documentary Photography in
Interwar Paris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 12.
17. Cícero Dias, Eu vi o mundo: Cícero Dias, op.cit p. 83.
18. Ferdinand de Jong, “The Production of Translocality,” FOCAAL 30/31 (1997): 61
19. Ibid, 8.
Do You Really Want to Know? I
by José Cláudio
1948. the Cícero Dias exhibition had had on me when I saw it at the
Law Faculty, in 1948. It had left a lasting impression upon me. I
You have to see things from this point of view: a sixteen-year- even remember exactly where some paintings were positioned
old country bumpkin, knowing no-one in Recife, never having on the wall, arriving on the first floor and turning left in the
had anyone in the family who had anything to do with art or direction of the reading room. Papaya Tree or Dancer (1946),
literature and having spent the last five years, since the age of over three foot in height. I insist on viewing the “dancer” as
eleven, in the bubble of the Colégio Marista boarding school. female, even though the dancer in the original Portuguese
At school, the only escape valve was Brother Estanislau, the title is clearly male – because, even though I had never seen
drawing teacher, who gave kids a better grade if they adorned live ballet, I had seen papayas “wiggling their tits in the wind”.
the left-hand page, on which we were supposed to work out Please excuse the vulgar comparison between breasts and
the geometry problem given on the right-hand page, with fruit, which is already there in the title. At the time, breasts were
some kind of free-style drawing, especially if it was funny. But merely alluded to, at least in the schoolboy essays produced by
anything would do, a tree, an animal, caricatures of fellow- the students of the Colégio Marista, and even more pendulous
students. Sometimes I would do these drawings for half the ones. The prudishness of the local media was no different from
class. But this had nothing to do with painting, an art form I that which prevailed at the boys-only Colégio Marista. On one
knew about vaguely from history books, or from the Raphael occasion, I was shocked, as I walked along Conde da Boa Vista
on the cover of our drawing books. Later, as an adult, I found Avenue, which was then a side-street, and saw pretty girls
out that some schools in Recife employed painters – like sitting on the window-sills of their dormitories! I remembered
Balthazar da Câmara, Elezier Xavier, and Mário Nunes – as that we were no longer in the 1940s, boarding schools had
drawing teachers, and that may have been how I heard of ceased to exist and my own daughter could have been one of
this profession, but at Marista we learnt nothing about that. In the girls sitting on the window-sills. My wife had enrolled her as
faraway Ipojuca, where I was born, which is now practically a a student at Colégio Marista, possibly in my honor.
suburb of Recife, thanks to all the new highways, my godfather,
Othon Fialho de Oliveira, who was living in Recife at that time, To go back to Cícero, what a nerve he had comparing a
was a painter and a lawyer. He eventually gave up painting. papaya tree to a living human being. And not any human
But I managed to get one of his pieces, Cows in a River, from being, but a ballerina. You can clearly see the tutu used by
the Recife Law Faculty Collection, into the album Pernambuco ballerinas – those sublime female creatures, more at home in
Artists. I also included his pencil drawing, Portrait of Mário royal palaces, to whom we owe the same respect due to the
Nunes, which, at the time Pernambuco Artists was published, in Virgin Mary. In this way, and significantly so, the whole painting
1982, belonged to the Mário Nunes Collection. It was the kind was an irreverence the like of which our city had never seen.
of drawing of one of the country folk who passed through the Even the papaya tree, painted anyhow, for, and by, an imbecile
store that Othon would produce on the wrapping paper in my who has never seen a papaya tree and doesn’t know how to
father’s store, when he spent the holidays with us in Ipojuca. depict one. It was as if this supposedly Parisian Daddy’s boy
This fascinated me and I spent the rest of my time in Ipojuca had come here to tell us that we know as little about art as we
scrawling on the wrapping paper, even though my father do about caviar, that anything goes; as in the fable of the frogs
forbade me to do so. I hid the sullied sheets under others. I who want a king. They throw a stick into the lake and the frogs
vaguely remember a painting signed by Fialho, called Street start bowing down to it. It was said to be a question of public
Barber, that may have been inspired by the Sunday street health, a contagious disease, that measures should be taken
markets in Ipojuca. Many years later, when I was already by the authorities. How was it that, although here among us in
working as an artist, I painted a street barber I saw at the Pernambuco there had never been an art gallery and no-one,
market in Abreu e Lima, Itamaracá, or Itapissuma, based on so far as people knew, had ever bought a painting, how was
Othon Fialho’s painting. it that a painter, in full possession of his mental faculties, could
produce a painting about which he himself admitted that he
“Working as an Artist.” wasn’t sure whether it depicted a dancer or a papaya tree?
And neither did he keep this aberration to himself, but had the
How many years it took before I could say that! At 16, I didn’t effrontery to exhibit it in the most dignified place in the State
even know that you could be a painter. It was a profession from capital, the Law Faculty, the temple of Tobias Barreto!
the distant past. I remarked once to the film-maker Vladimir
Carvalho that painters, or at least most of them, could live off
their painting, while film-makers needed sponsorship. He had
recently been filming me in my home talking about the impact
240-241 DO you really want to know? - josé claudio PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
On one of the few occasions that I saw Cícero Dias, at Nara At the time, I was not fully aware of the miracle because I knew
Roesler and Renato Magalhães Gouvêa’s Artespaço Gallery, absolutely nothing about art or literature from anywhere. I
talking on the subject of “living off art”, he declared, “In the old did not even know that people still painted. The only works I
days, paintings were meant to be given and were difficult to had produced were the illustrations in my school colleagues’
produce”. It was difficult because the individual receiving the notebooks and it was these that accidentally triggered all my
painting was always wary of being conned, that the so-called dreams, hidden dreams that I didn’t even know about! One
painter would create some doubt or a tie with which the day, in 1952, I happened upon a former classmate from Colégio
recipient wasn’t comfortable. This reminds me of a birthday Marista, Ivan de Albuquerque Carneiro. He was not someone
present that an old man wanted to give a rich Jew who was a I had been particularly close to. He was a day-boy; he went
friend of Renato Gouvêa. It was a very expensive watch. The home after classes. I didn’t remember his name, nor he mine.
Jew looked at it and handed it back, saying, “We do not know But he stopped me and asked, “Do you still draw?” I was unsure
each other well enough for you to give me a present like this”. whether to say yes or no. It had been a long time since I’d
thought about it and I didn’t know what to answer. I was a first-
A Rooster or a Pineapple year law student, or repeating the first year (I don’t remember
which) at the same faculty where I had seen the Cícero Dias
Francisco Brennand told me this story. Don Quixote was riding exhibition four years earlier. I didn’t know what I wanted to do
along, when he came across a painter at work. Don Quixote with my life and I didn’t turn up for class that often. As I liked
stopped, had a look at the painting and couldn’t understand both reading and drawing, some people suggested that I take
it at all. “What are you painting?” he asked. “Whatever comes up engineering, others that I take up law. I chose law because
out”, the painter replied. I do not know whether Don Quixote I never liked math that much. It is said that everything depends
understood something of what it was about when the painting on the teacher and, frankly, I don’t recall ever having had any
was completed, but, to clear up any doubts, the painter wrote good math teacher. The best I could manage was the basic
above the painting: “This is a rooster”. René Magritte added the algebra. Reading The Man who Counted didn’t help much.
words “This is not a pipe” to a painting that depicted nothing
but a pipe. In 1948, I didn’t know Francisco Brennand, I hadn’t “I like drawing”, I answered. Ivan said that he was putting
read Don Quixote, and had never heard of René Magritte, or together a studio and – in response to my protestations that
surrealism, but my understanding of Rooster or Pineapple and I was a complete ignoramus on the subject – he added,
Papaya Tree or Dancing Girl was instantaneous. I could have precisely for people who knew nothing about painting. He
said when I saw them what Correggio said when he first saw a mentioned that each participant would need to pay no more
Rafael: “I too am a painter”. This did away once and for all with than a pittance to rent the space. I gave him some money,
all the mystique that surrounds the art of painting and, in fact, without expecting much to come of it. Not long after, Ivan
to this day, no-one has ever needed to teach me anything more reappeared. “We rented the place,” he said. It was very near
about painting, although it is true to say that I learn something where I lived; on the same street, in fact. I lived in Santa Cruz
every day. It was these paintings that enabled me to learn. and the studio was in Soledade. From that day on, I never
I was blind; Cícero, and you conferred the gift of sight upon set foot in law school. Now my day-to-day companions were
me. Or it may have been that the impression that it had on me Ionaldo Andrade Cavalcanti, Gilvan Samico, Abelardo da Hora,
was so powerful that it blinded me to any other kind of vision, Wellington Virgolino and his brother Wilton de Souza, Marius
preventing me from looking elsewhere. To parody the director Lauritzen Bern, and Reynaldo Fonseca, who was already an
of the New York Museum of Modern Art, I could say that, if accomplished painter. The leader of the group was Abelardo
it’s not Cícero Dias it’s not painting, just as he said, “If it’s not da Hora, the renowned sculptor, who had been a student
Picasso, it’s not 20th century art”. To be sure, even the strongest of Edson Figueredo at the Encruzilhada Technical School.
fanatics have their doubts and I have never seen myself as He strictly followed the party line of politically-engaged art.
anything ‘special’. Even Picasso, mother and father of us all, did At that time, almost every intellectual was a communist or
even those who lived centuries ago, because we only see Piero a communist-sympathizer. Art had to be accessible to the
della Francesca through what Picasso tells us, even Picasso. masses, not the preserve of a privileged elite. Experimental
The best thing I did in life was to visit New York to see the art was out. This is outlined in detail in Memoir of a Collective
monumental Picasso retrospective, at the MoMA, in 1980. But, Studio, a new edition of which has recently been published by
who knows, maybe the person who opened my eyes to be able Cepe (Companhia Editora de Pernambuco), with a preface
to see Picasso was Cícero Dias. Of course, if Cícero were alive written by Clarissa Diniz. Recife’s modernist painters—Aloisio
today, I would be ashamed to enthuse like this, but I know of Magalhães, Lula Cardoso Ayres, Cícero Dias, Joaquim and
no-one of his ilk: geniuses have no kin. We should declare that Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Francisco Brennand, Hélio Feijó—
geniuses have no kin, so that we can open our hearts, because were all bourgeois, upper-middle class, members of the elite.
even some deserved praise could be taken the wrong way: we Being a modern artist was enough to tar you as a communist
do not know each other well enough to give such a present. or an anarchist, whether you were or not, even if you were a
fascist or had no interest in politics. Hélio Feijó, for example,
was arrested, I heard. Anyone who didn’t flee Recife ran the risk Geraldo Vieira put it, to produce figures, people, animals,
of becoming a target. imaginary beasts, such as those of Marcelo Grassmann, but
drawing on the folklore of the Northeast, perhaps inspired
My relations with my family worsened when I decided to drop somewhat by cordel popular literature. On arriving in Italy,
out of law school. Worse still, to become an “artist”, which was in 1957, I started to leave this behind; though not so much my
viewed at the time as being tantamount to becoming a drifter apprenticeship in draughtsmanship which I maintained in my
or a bum. I left home with nothing but the clothes on my back. I drawings in the drawing notebooks that I took everywhere, with
wanted to make it clear that I had no wish to live at my family’s a quill and inkwell, to draw the pine trees of the Villa Borghese,
expense, but to be free to follow my own path. I also wanted to the ruins of ancient Rome and anything else that took my fancy.
explore other parts of Recife. I don’t want to dwell on this; the
story is told in detail in the little trilogy of books Viagem de um When I married and set up home for the first time, in 1960, I
Jovem Pintor à Bahia (1965), Ipojuca de Santo Cristo (1965) and moved onto larger 50 x 70 cm sheets of paper, taking a long
Bem Dentro (1968), which I would like to see new editions of, time over the work, with no fixed deadline, mainly because I
even as a facsimile, the cheaper way, I suppose. couldn’t find buyers, not because I wanted to be a martyr. I
think I sold at most two, one to Baccaro and another, when
The great breakthrough came when I met up with Arnaldo I was still at Sudene, in the 1960s, to the architect Moisés
Pedroso d’Horta in Bahia. In São Paulo, he was like a father Agamenon. While producing these pieces, I was not, at least
to me, guiding me through this world of art. I tried to forget not consciously, aiming to be figurative. That was “what came
my past and learn, breathing in the global climate of the out,” as with the painter Don Quixote came across. Nowadays,
biennales. I still owe Sérgio Milliet and Paulo Mendes de half a century later, when I am producing a detailed painting of
Almeida an account of the time I spent in São Paulo, akin to the foliage, in highly figurative landscapes, when I want the viewer
one I produced on my stay in Bahia, which they liked so much. to know even what tree it is – a cashew tree, a mango tree –
There was a group of former communists who advocated total I seem to be going back to the dark drawings or those dark
artistic freedom, including Lívio Abramo and the Pernambuco drawings seem to have sought to achieve the almost tactile
critic Mário Pedrosa, who were both friends of Arnaldo. Many sensation of the oil paint as a thick paste. Some also seem to be
of them were Trotskyites, a term that wasn’t tarred there with seen from above, influenced by the aerial photography work
the same taint of treachery as it was in Recife. Arnaldo and I that I did for Sudene.
never discussed politics. I was awarded a grant by the Rotelini
Foundation and spent a year in Rome and visiting and learning Also at Sudene, for the GEVJ, the Jaguaribe Valley Study Group,
from the great museums of Italy, France, Germany, Austria, on a river in Ceará, and the Morada Nova Project, a city in
Switzerland and Spain. After that, I was ready to return home. the same State, we urgently needed a series of drawings of
plants and the way they are laid out to show to the Israeli
Back in Recife, I got married and took a job as a technical ambassador. At that time there was no such thing as Letterset,
drawing assistant at Sudene (the Development Agency of the which you could just stick on. You had to draw the cashew-
Northeast of Brazil). I spent my free time passionately devoting tree or the coconut palm on technical drawing paper with the
myself to artistic drawing, often working through the night on greatest of precision. I remembered how, when I was child in
the pen-and-ink pieces, some of which are included in this Ipojuca, boys would carve their initials into rubbers, cover them
MAR Experimental Pernambuco show. These dark drawings in ink, and stamp their initials all over their exercise books. My
were the product of everything I had been through previously. father’s shop sold school materials and I destroyed a lot of
small rectangular rubbers, more or less the size of a matchbox,
These drawings are influenced by Arnaldo Pedroso d’Horta’s playing this game. I suggested using the method for the Sudene
quill drawings. He had long since given up painting, simply project maps and that is what we did. I cut the rubbers with
because he didn’t have the space to paint and preparing a scalpel used to scrape down China ink drawings, used a
canvases and buying paints and brushes was expensive – you Graphus pen and paper. We spilt a little China ink on a sheet
could say “out of convenience”. Fair enough. And, since Bahia, of glass or something similar, wetted the stamp and imprinted
for the same reasons, I had given up painting altogether, the image in the correct position. After this, the stamps no
contenting myself with watching others paint, assisting Carybé longer served any purpose, so, rather than throw them away,
and Mário Cravo. But I never stopped being a painter in my I brought them home. One Saturday or Sunday, at ten in the
imagination. In São Paulo, I staged an exhibition of drawings morning, I was visited, at my home on Rua do Bonfim, Olinda,
at the Little Club (Artists and Art Lovers Club) using Arnaldo by Jomard Muniz de Britto and Moacy Cirne and they caught
Pedroso d’Horta’s quill strokes, the “spider’s web”, as José me distractedly trying out these stamps. “That is process
242-243 DO you really want to know? - josé claudio PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
DO you really want to know? II - josé claudio
poetry!” Moacy exclaimed. “You are a process poet!” So I joined Still in the 1960s, I met Hermilo Borba Filho and, through him,
the process art movement. They sent me books. I was even Renato Magalhães Gouvêa, who got me out of Sudene and
included in a six-volume, very serious collection, Modernist hired me to work exclusively as an artist, as I was now totally
Poets, published by the Ministry of Education’s National Book committed to painting. I had achieved what I wanted: to earn a
Institute (Brasília, 1972). I look back fondly on the process poem. living as a painter. My life remained unchanged for the next ten
I would like to have met Wlademir Dias-Pino, Álvaro de Sá. years. The decisive change came with a telephone call from a
friend, with whom I had lost touch, who I knew through Arnaldo
I continued to produce during using stamps, sometimes Pedroso d’Horta: Paulo Vanzolini. He asked me whether I still
combining this with quill work. This was my farewell to drawing. wanted to visit Amazônia. They were setting off on an excursion
Arnaldo Pedroso d’Horta, who visited from time to time, on to one of the most interesting rivers, the River Madeira. I
occasions, spent two or three days with us, and once he saw describe the change that occurred on the River Madeira in
me drawing using stamps. He liked it so much that he tried out a beautiful book published by Cecília Scharlach at Imprensa
some small drawings of his own produced using a range of Oficial, São Paulo: José Cláudio da Silva/100 Paintings, 60 Days
materials as stamps, and chisels, gouges and scalpels. I now & A Travel Diary – Amazonas, 1975, if you want to read about
see these little drawings as his farewell gift. it in detail. To sum up. The boat was stopped everywhere by
the police. They thought we were guerrilleros or something.
I should say that all this happened without any deliberate Sometimes we were kept in custody for days on end. In the
intention of being avant-garde or experimentalist. It was the village of São Carlos, in the State of Rondônia, the chief of
same when I returned to painting, almost without wanting to. police, a guy called Felizardo, watched me painting all day.
When I was still living on Rua do Bonfim, Olinda, in 1967, I had a One day he said, “I want a painting”. “What kind of one,
dream while I was sleeping. I produced an oil painting entitled Felizardo?” I replied. “An Indian shooting a macaw with a bow
Dream (1967), which was sold at the Espaço Brennand Gallery and arrow.” I produced the painting. The guy was so pleased
last year. I wrote a short explanation of it that the gallery kindly with it that he took it home before the paint had dried and
printed along with a color reproduction of the painting. Here is let the boat travel on. That was when the penny dropped: the
an extract from it “I continued to draw, even when I returned to Collective Studio urged us to make art for the people, but we
Recife and got married, putting an end to my travels [meaning didn’t ask the people what they wanted us to paint. Back in
outside Recife]. During these years, I never touched a canvas Recife, I announced that, from that point on, I would paint on
or painted. Until, for no apparent reason, after 15 years not commission, the customer telling me what he or she wanted
painting, I had a very, very vivid dream that refused to fade me to paint. This was in 1975. Next year this will have been forty
over the following days. So I decided to buy a sheet of Eucatex, years ago: I have never wanted for customers. On the contrary,
had it fixed to a frame, prepared the surface, bought paints the problem now is that there is a waiting list and some people
and brushes and produced the painting exhibited here entitled get offended; they think some clients are given preference. So,
Dream. After this I picked up painting where I had left off at now my style is that of the client.
the Collective Studio. I don’t know what that means. You tell
me. I had never intended to. Now 46 years on from 1967, when Just one more story. When I started to do this—to bow to the
I produced the piece, people note the concept of perspective, will of the customer—I was talking one evening with the painter
the panorama, which gradually unwittingly took shape in Maurício Arraes, whose work I adore. It was on the terrace of
my painting, even though I had for a good part of this time his father’s house and we were alone. “Just when we have freed
distanced myself from the Dream painting. Not that I forbade ourselves from this servitude, you want to go back to it of your
myself look at it, but I hadn’t clapped eyes on it in a long while. own free will!” Maurício protested. At this point Miguel Arraes
Only now, looking at it again because of this exhibition, can I appeared, in pajamas and slippers. He had been smoking his
say how important it was for the subsequent development of pipe on a side terrace and had overheard the conversation.
my painting. The presence of the sea, for instance, that striking Maurício was lounging in a hammock and I was sat in a chair.
imposing sea, which appears for the first time in this painting, Meanwhile, Miguel Arraes appeared in pijamas and sat down
causing Neném Brennand [the gallery owner and daughter of in the chair opposite me. “Zé Cláudio is right”, he said. “When
Francisco Brennand], when I talked to her about it, to suggest Mao Zedong took power in China, he wanted to meet the
that I entitle this text The Model of All Seas. So I consider this my military commanders who had fought for him in distant regions,
first painting. And now (1 June 2013) it is being exhibited for the whom he only knew by name. One of these arrived and
first time.” introduced himself. Mao asked him to take a seat and inquired,
‘What is your religion?’ The comrade was somewhat offended,
thinking that Mao was accusing him of being ignorant. ‘Your
Excellency, I am a Marxist!’ he replied. Mao said, ‘That’s wrong.
If you do not have the same religion as your people, you will
never be able to understand them’.”
Do You Really Want to Know? II
by José Cláudio
Adão Pinheiro, a Pernambucan painter born in Santa Maria, The 1960s for me was a time of returning, beginning in the
Rio Grande do Sul, in 1938, wrote, in an article entitled “On previous decade, when I returned from Europe in November
the Calm Margins” (1987), that “painting in Pernambuco these 1958 after a year-long stay in the Old World. I must be succinct,
days is much more geared towards turning itself into a brand I know, which is difficult for a chatter-box like me: I start writing
or founding a tradition and less towards treading the path and I can’t stop.
of experimentation”. The article was about Ypiranga Filho
(Recife, 1936), an artist who dabbled in a variety of techniques, There are however things that I must tell. I arrived in Louvain,
ranging from engraving to sculpture. I recently wrote about Belgium, on a Sunday evening. I rang the doorbell of the house
an exhibition that included work by Ypiranga, along with that run by the Morrins for poor foreign students. I had enrolled and
of Paulo Dias and Suzana Azevedo, in which I cited Adão. was expected. But not with such euphoria as when a dark-
“This struggle has never flagged and seems to begin anew skinned lad about the same height as me, around 1.7 meters,
every day. Perhaps the two are one and the same thing.” jumped on me and gave me a huge bear hug as soon as I told
(“Engravers and Stationers”, for Continente magazine, Recife, him my name and cried out in Spanish, “We have just shown
May 2014). I wrote this three months after seeing Experimental those Europeans what we Indians can do!” When I did not react,
Pernambuco. While viewing this exhibition, I felt that it was a he added, “Brazil has just won the World Cup!” I thought it was
very special occasion and I remarked to my daughter, Maria appropriate to tell this story in this year when Brazil is hosting
Júlia, who had encouraged me to travel to Rio de Janeiro the World Cup. Unfortunately, Mexico hadn’t won and I could
and accompanied me on the trip that “it would be a good not return the embrace.
thing if everyone in Recife saw this exhibition”. I have always
opposed experimentalism, what Adão calls “forming a brand” Some time earlier, in Italy, the commissioner of the Spanish
or “a tradition”. To the point where I stopped thinking about pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Luís Gonzales Robles, had
it. But, walking through this show, seeing so many beautiful promised to put me up for a year in Madrid, where I was
things created by our artists, paintings you would never have going when I left Belgium. When got into her husband’s car—in
imagined, by Cícero Dias, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Lula which I travelled every day to Brussels—this time to leave for
Cardoso Ayres, even Ionaldo, whom I thought I knew, and so good, she, Mme. Morrin, who was an art lover, owned an
much more that I was not familiar with or had not been able to Utrillo and talked to me about art, came up to me holding out
see in this new way, free of preconceived ideas, I felt renewed a thick envelope. “For you to get to know Belgium a bit more”.
and I could say again: I was blind; Cícero Dias conferred the It contained a wad of dollars. I put off my trip to Spain and
gift of sight upon me. Or rather: I was blind; thank you MAR. travelled around Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, said
goodbye to France and, when I arrived in Madrid, no-one
had heard word of commissioner Robles. They said he had
moved to Peru. As Mme. Morrin’s money had by now run out, I
spent the night in despair and, before going to bed, in a shack
provided by a guy from Olinda called Félix Athayde, who I
happened to meet, I prayed to God to tell me what to do the
next day. If He didn’t, I would do anything, even rob a bank.
In the middle of the night, I heard a great shout go up, “Off to
Brazil today!” When I went to the sea travel company the next
morning, I found out that the Conte Grande, on which I had
arrived, had put into port the day before in Barcelona and
was due to set sail for Brazil the next day. Félix Athayde got
me a plane ticket. Various miracles occurred that day. But let’s
just not mention them. I disembarked in Santos, I got a job as
a reporter for the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, for which
I worked for a few months, but I really wanted to go home.
In Recife, I worked for Diário da Noite, and one day Ladjane
asked me to write something for his page. I wrote something
about local art. No-one bought any of my paintings or those of
anyone of my generation, it would seem. In 1960, I got married
and started work as a technical drawing assistant at Sudene,
the Northeast Development Agency. I became a Sunday artist.
For more than ten years.
244-245 DO you really want to know? II - josé claudio PE:EXP PERNAMBUCO EXPERIMENTAL
I had no contact with the most important artists, such as electricity and no candles at home, as in Buraco Doce, a small
Francisco Brennand, who received intellectual friends in Várzea, corner of Rio Vermelho, in Salvador, which no longer exists.
nor with Lula Cardoso Ayres, who I had never been close to, 1955. Incredible as it seems, the Uruguayan art dealer Cipriano
nor Cícero Dias, who lived in France, nor Vicente do Rego turned up with two drawings I had produced in Buraco Doce,
Monteiro, who had gone to Brasília after the coup; Hélio Feijó which, many years later, I exchanged for a painting. Children
was out of circulation because he was sick; Aloisio Magalhães playing naked in a tin bath with a wooden bottom, like people
passed through here, but I didn’t move in his circles either. This had in the old days to make use of old tin baths with holes in
doesn’t mean that I didn’t know anyone. I staged an exhibition them. The neighbor’s boys ate dirt. They were white, with fine,
of art using multiple materials at the city hall gallery1 run straight, very blond hair and pot bellies. The little girl couldn’t
by Abelardo da Hora, and another, I think, at the Rozemblit walk, so her mother sat her down in the tub.
Store run by Wilton Souza. Needless to say, I sold nothing. Art
was for giving away, as Cícero Dias put it. I lived in isolation To go back to Rome. There was one day in Rome when I felt
because of my style of life – though I didn’t stop drawing, and a great need to read something in Portuguese. That’s why
later, painting –, but few people knew I existed and I may Fernando Pessoa said, “My homeland is my language”. I went
have contributed to that, thinking that art was something very to every bookshop there was in Rome and couldn’t find a single
person and no-one else had anything to do with it. Then came book in Portuguese. It would be the same story in Munich,
the military coup. People started to fear each other. But the where I had to content myself with a little book in Spanish by
funny thing was that there was some idea going round about Miguel de Unamuno, Velázquez’s Christ. I was prepared to
me here in Recife, in rarefied artistic circles, that led someone bother Murilo Mendes to ask him to lend me a book. Someone
like Jomard Muniz de Britto or Moacy Cirne to drop in on me suggested I go to the Vatican library. I should at least find a
suddenly, even though I didn’t know them. Celso Marconi, a Bible there. The nun who worked there, walked around, came in
journalist who wrote about culture, art and cinema, also came and out of the stacks, until, visibly upset, she told me, practically
round one night, accompanied by Caetano Veloso wearing in tears, “This is absurd! Brazil is the most populous Catholic
a long green patterned skirt, his wife, and the businessman country in the world and we don’t have a Bible in Portuguese!”.
Guilherme, if I’m not mistaken, plus Rita Lee and two guys, The She went and got a Bible written in an invented alphabet that
Mutants, who played among themselves, while my wife and I had been created to spread the gospel in an African country,
and our children wondered what was going on. It was the age an illegible scrawl to us, showing how the Holy See took care
of tropicalism and I wouldn’t be surprised if some historian to ensure that there was a Bible in every language. She asked
regarded me as being a part of that movement. me to wait and after a short while a middle-aged Portuguese
priest arrived, saying that if I went to his church in the center of
I worked two jobs. I would clock in at 7:20 in the morning at Rome the next day, he would give me a book in Portuguese.
Rua da Concórdia, Recife, lived in Olinda, another city: I lost a The next day, he gave me Saint Augustine’s Confessions.
lot of time standing on the bus, stuck in a traffic jam. I arrived
home at night. That was my life. I had to react like the saints My knowledge of philosophy is summed up by those two
and wise men who lived in poverty, as if I could rise above the books. To find out more about Marcus Aurelius, I read Epicurus
vicissitudes of life. and Lucretius. As for the Bible, reading Saint Augustine is
tantamount to reading the Bible, which he cites constantly, as
One of the places I frequented in Rome during my travels was if he knew it by heart. But, don’t get me wrong, I’m an atheist.
the Capitoline Hill, both the museum and the square, which was Although my wife finds me annoyingly Catholic, apostolic,
usually empty, with those lines scratched in the pavement by Romish. These are points of view. In some ways I still have this
Michelangelo, and the pedestal of the statue of Marcus Aurelius Stoicism for difficult times today, even though in my case I can
on horseback which inspired every equestrian statue in the live, modestly, off painting of course. Back in the 1960s, on Rua
world. I looked at it so much that I was intrigued to find out who do Bonfim, where I painted Dream, I also produced drawings
Marcus Aurelius was. I read his Meditations – I Ricordi, in Italian using stamps and lots of black drawings. At one point, I finally
–, which is still one of my favorite books. asked myself why, as a boy, I had wanted to learn to paint. I
got the idea of painting the little square next to my house. “A
I discovered another author who came to be part of my life little ashamed of myself, I prepared a Eucatex canvas and,
in a quite unexpected way. I had always liked reading and, as soon as day broke, in the early hours of the morning, I sat
even during the most difficult of times, never stopped doing on the sidewalk, on the curbside, propped the canvas up on
so, even under the light of a street-lamp when there was no a box – or perhaps I already had the folding easel that João
1. Miguel Arraes, the Mayor of Recife, had been inspired by Abelardo da Hora to
have a little gallery, designed by Marcos Domingues, built on the banks of the river.
It was halfway up the bank of the River Capibaribe, where there is now a statue of
Capiba, if they haven’t demolished it, turning into Rua do Sol. A cozy little gallery,
always well-frequented and busy with good exhibitions. In the heart of Recife. But it
didn’t last long. It was swept away by a flood. I went there a lot and staged one or
two exhibitions. 1962.
Carlos Carneiro da Cunha, an extraordinary painter who needs
urgently to be rediscovered, had given me – and I went back
to the 19th century, painting in the open air. That small painting
was acquired by the writer Renato Carneiro Campos. I also
recall that I would have loved to have been able to paint the
birds I saw in the street-vendor’s cages in Ipojuca when I was
a boy – sayaca tanagers, Brazilian tanagers, seven-colored
tanagers, Campo orioles, red-cowled cardinals, copper
seedeaters, and many others. I filled the house with these
caged birds and others, even brown tinamous, which don’t
adapt well to captivity, violaceous euphonias, bananaquits,
and set to work. They were medium-sized paintings. I still
have some today. I painted anything I found beautiful. One
day I woke up to the sound of a band of revelers playing frevo
outside my door, Rosário’s Donkey, and I painted a 80 x 120
centimeter canvas, which now belongs to my sister Nena. It was
one of my first in acrylic, having been poisoned by oils. As so, to
this day, things spontaneously “come out”.
José Cláudio da Silva (Ipojuca, Pernambuco, 1932) Adolfo Montejo Navas (Madrid, Spain, 1954) is a poet,
discovered painting when he was still at primary critic, independent curator, translator and visual artist.
school watching his godfather, the former district He has been involved in various cultural publications in
attorney Othon Fialho de Oliveira, drawing portraits Spain and Brazil and has been a correspondente for
of customers on wrapping paper in his father Amaro the international art journal Lápiz, based in Madrid,
Silva’s stationery store. In 1952, he dropped out since 1998. He has curated exhibitions of work by Anna
of Law School in Recife and joined Abelardo da Bella Geiger, Victor Arruda, Regina Silveira, Wlademir
Hora’s Collective Studio group as one of its founder- Dias-Pino, Paulo Bruscky, Vera Chaves Barcellos,
members. In Bahia, he worked with Mário Cravo Liliana Porter, Iberê Camargo, Eduardo Haesbaert,
Júnior, Carybé and Jenner Augusto; in São Paulo, with and various group shows in Spain and Brazil. Apart
Di Cavalcanti, and studied engraving under Lívio from poetry, books of aphorisms and translations, his
Abramo. He received an award at the 4th São Paulo published works include Miscelânea Cortázar (Coleção
Biennale and won the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper’s Memorial de América Latina, 2009), A bola entre
Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art. He received a palavras (Ed. with Vanderley Mendonça, Annablume,
grant from the Rotelini Foundation to spend a year 2010), Regina Silveira (Charta Books, 2011), Victor
in Europe, in Italy and other countries. He currently Arruda (Casa da Palavra, 2011), O Outro Lado da
exhibits at the Espaço Brennand Gallery, in Recife. Imagem e outros textos - A Poética de Regina Silveira
(Edusp, 2012), Poiesis Bruscky (Cosac Naify/APAC,
Jomard Muniz de Britto (Recife, Pernambuco, 1933), 2013), Mário Carneiro – Trânsitos (co-author, MinC,
graduated in Philosophy at what was then called the Circuito, 2013). In 2009, he won the Joaquim Nabuco
University of Recife (the present-day Federal University Foundation’s Mário Pedrosa Contemporary Art and
of Pernambuco – UFPE). In the 1960s, he joined Paulo Culture Essay Prize. He is responsible for special
Freire’s team of adult literacy teachers. Under the publications at Limiar Edições.
military regime, he was arrested and removed from
his post at the UFPE, but continued to teach at the Clarissa Diniz (Recife, Pernambuco, 1985) is a critic
Federal University of Paraíba – UFPB until 1973, when and curator. She holds a Master degree from the
he was summarily ordered to stop teaching at this Post-Graduate Arts Program of the State University
institution also. He was reinstated at both universities of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and holds a graduated
after the amnesty. A lucid poet, a playful politician and degree in Plastic Arts from the Federal University
libertarian educator, who has published more than a of Pernambuco (UFPE). She is content manager
dozen books, Britto is still an active arts critic at the at the Rio Museum of Art and has curated various
Vigilanti Cura Cine Club, in Recife, and for the Jornal exhibitions at this institution, including, Experimental
do Commercio. In the 1970s, he became an active Pernambuco, Shelter and Land – Art and Society in
participant in the tropicalist movement, producing Brazil 1, with Paulo Herkenhoff and From Valongo to
an extensive body of work using super-8 film and Favela: Imaginary and Periphery, with Rafael Cardoso.
numerous performances. She was assistant curator of the Itaú Cultural Institute’s
Programa Rumos Artes Visuais 2008-2009, in São
Zanna Gilbert (Norwich, UK, 1980) is a postdoctoral Paulo, and has curated or co-curated various other
fellow at MoMA’s Department of Drawings and Prints exhibitions, such as Refrações – arte contemporânea
and holds a PhD from the University of Essex and Tate em Alagoas (Pinacoteca da UFAL, 2010), Zona tórrida
Research. She has taught postgraduate courses at – certa pintura do Nordeste (Santander Cultural -
the University of Essex and the National Autonomous Recife, 2012) , contidonãocontido (MAMAM, 2010) and
University of Mexico (Unam). Her research focuses Contrapensamento selvagem (Instituto Itaú Cultural,
on artists’ networks and the transnational circulation 2011). She has been editor of the Tatuí art criticism
of art through the mail. She curated the exhibitions journal, since 2006, and was a member of the São
Felipe Ehrenberg: Works from the Tate Archive (2009), Paulo Cultural Center’s Critics Group between 2008
Intimate Bureaucracies: Art and the Mail (2011), and 2010. Clarissa has authored or co-authored
Contested Games: Mexico 68’s Design Revolution various publications, including Crachá: aspectos da
(2012), Daniel Santiago: Brazil is my Abyss (Mamam, legitimação artística (2008); Gilberto Freyre (2010);
Recife, 2012; MAC-Niteroi, 2014) and Edgardo Antonio Montez Magno (2010); and Crítica de arte em
Vigo: The Unmaker of Objects (MoMA, 2014). Pernambuco: escritos do século XX (2012).
ARTISTAS [ARTISTS]
Abelardo da Hora
Acácio Gil Borsoi
Alexandre Bérzin
Aloisio Magalhães
Arnaldo Tobias
Ave Sangria
Benício Dias
Cícero Dias
Daniel Santiago
Débora do Rego Monteiro
Emílio Cardoso Ayres
Equipe Bruscky & Santiago
Flaviola
Francisco Du Bocage
Gilberto Freyre
Ionaldo Cavalcanti
João Cabral de Melo Neto
Joaquim Cardozo
Joaquim do Rego Monteiro
Jomard Muniz de Britto
José Cláudio
Josué de Castro
Katia Mesel
Ladjane Bandeira
Laílson
Leonhard Frank Duch
Luiz Nunes
Lula Cardoso Ayres
Lula Côrtes
Manuel Bandeira
Marconi Notaro
Montez Magno
Nelson Ferreira
Nuvem 33
O Gráfico Amador
Paulo Freire
Paulo Bruscky
Phetus
Pierre Verger
Raul Córdula
Roberto Burle Marx
Silvio Hansen
Tiago Amorim
Unhandeijara Lisboa
Vicente do Rego Monteiro
Vivencial Diversiones
Wilson Carneiro da Cunha
Ypiranga Filho
exposição exhibition Edição e revisão de textos Luiz Gonzaga Cardoso Ayres Filho
10/10/2013 > 30/03/2014 Edition and Proofreading Lula Wanderley
Ciça Corrêa Marcos Falcão
A exposição foi uma realização Maria do Carmo Nabuco de Almeida Braga
da equipe do Museu de Arte do Rio - Tradução Translation Marta e [and] Paulo Kuczynski
MAR, com a colaboração de VÃK Traduções - Renato Rezende Max Perlingeiro
The exhibition was a project of the Montez Magno
Museu de Arte do Rio - MAR’s staff Making of Museu de Arte Contemporânea da
with the collaboration of Luiz Guilherme Guerreiro Universidade de São Paulo (MAC/USP)
Museu de Arte Moderna Aloisio
Curadoria Curatorship Plotagem Plotting Magalhães (Mamam)
Clarissa Diniz ProfiSinal Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro
(MAM/RJ)
Consultoria Advice Fotografia e digitalização de imagens Paulo Bruscky
Paulo Herkenhoff Photography and image digitalization Rafael Rodrigues e [and] Joana de Paula
Breno Laprovítera Soares Iannibelli Hu
Coordenação de produção Raul Córdula
Production coordination Logística de transporte Roberta Borsoi
Bebel Kastrup Transportation logistics Rodrigo Braga
Al Consultancy Secretaria da Fazenda de Pernambuco
Produção Production Sergio e [and] Hecilda Fadel
Janaísa Cardoso (PE) Transporte Transportation Silvio Hansen
Juliana Notari (RJ) Alves Tegam Thomaz Lobo
Yasmine Sefraoui (RJ) Art3 Log Tiago Amorim
Tiago Araripe
Pesquisa Research Seguro Insurance Ypiranga Filho
Lorena Taulla Affinité
Agradecimentos Acknowledgments
Identidade visual Visual identity Colecionadores e acervos Amauri Cavalcanti
Raul Luna Collectors and collections Amélia Córdula
Almir de Oliveira Amim Stepple
Expografia Expography Arquivo Público Estadual Jordão Aruza de Holanda Cavalcanti
Bartira Ghoubar Emerenciano Avir Shamaim
Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e [and] José Bárbara Collier
Museologia Museology Mindlin Beth da Matta
Dulcineia Paz Rocha (SP) Biblioteca Pública do Estado de Carlos Alberto Gouvêa Chateaubriand
Heloisa Biancalana (SP) Pernambuco Carlos Carvalho
Pérside Omena (PE) Bolsa de Arte Cátia Louredo
Suely Deschermayer (PR) Camilla e [and] Eduardo Barella Cláudia Calaça
Suzana Omena (PE) Carlos Augusto Lira Cristiane Mabel Medeiros
Valéria Garcia Sellanes (RJ) Carlos Carvalho Cristina Gaio
Viviane Silveira Teixeira (RJ) Celso Marconi Daniel Maranhão
Clarice e [and] Solange Magalhães Daniel Roesler
Coordenação de montagem Coleção Roberto Marinho Elísio Yamada
Set up coordination Daniel Santiago Fátima Noronha
Jorge Pinheiro Flaviola Fernando Cardoso
Fundação Gilberto Freyre Filipe Coimbra
Montagem Set up Fundação Joaquim Nabuco Gilberto Chateaubriand
Carlos Alberto Goulart da Silva Fundação Pierre Verger Gina Ferreira
José Roberto da Silva Fundação Roberto Marinho Gustavo Neves
Valdeci da Silva Galeria Nara Roesler Hebe Gurgel Cavalcanti
Galeria Pilar Hélio Rozenblit
Museografia Museography Galeria Simões de Assis Henrique Miziara
Camuflagem Geneviève e [and] Jean Boghici Hermano Moura
Instituto Cultural Ladjane Bandeira Hugo Bianco
Automação Automation Instituto Ricardo Brennand Jamille Barbosa
32 Bits Ivo Pitanguy João Florentino
João Souza Leite Joel Coelho
Projeto de Iluminação Lightning project Jomard Muniz de Britto Juany Nunes
Artimanha - Julio Katona Jones Bergamin Leonardo de Siqueira
José Cláudio Leonel Kaz
Molduras Frames Katia Mesel Luiz Camillo Osório
Glatt Molduras Lailson Lydia de Santis
Lúcia Santos Maíra Braga
Luis Antonio Nabuco de Almeida Braga Marcelo Campos
Marcia Lira Fotografias Photographs Gerência de Conteúdo
Márcia Müller Breno Laprovítera Content Management
Marco Polo Guimarães Clóvis Masson Clarissa Diniz
Maria Clara Rodrigues Falcão Junior
Marília Bovo Lopes Luciano Oliveira Gerência de Educação
Marta Mestre Rafael Adorján Education Management
Myriam Barros Sérgio Guerini Janaina Melo
Nair de Paula Soares Thales Leite
Nara Galvão Gerência de Produção
Nara Roesler Versão em inglês English version Production Management
Paulo Rafael Paul Webb Daniel Bruch
Paulo Roberto Santi
Versão em português do texto original
Renata Casatti em inglês de Zanna Gilbert [Portuguese Gerência de Relações Institucionais
Rita de Cassia Araújo version from Zanna Gilbert’s English Institutional Relations Management
Roberta Guedes Alcoforado original text]: Camilla Cardoso
Roberta Rodrigues
VÃK Traduções - Renato Rezende
Rodrigo Cantarelli Equipe Staff
Roseana Diniz Alan Muller, Alex Ferreira, Alexandre da Rocha,
Revisão de textos Proofreading
Tadeu Chiarelli Alvenrindo Borges, Ana Carolina Ventriglia,
Ciça Corrêa
Tiago Araripe Ana Carla Fernandes, Ana Carolina Vigorito,
Kiel Pimenta
Verônica Cavalcante Ana Cristina Rodrigues, Ana Terra Rodrigues,
Virginia Kastrup Andrea Barboza, Andreia de Oliveira, Bianca
Impressão Printing
Waldir Simões de Assis Mandarino, Bruna Azevedo, Bruno Gonzaga,
Facform
Yuri Bruscky Bruno Kenji Yokoi, Carlos Rogério da Silva,
Zanna Gilbert Carolina Delavalli, Cassiana Silva, Cassio
museu de arte do Rio
Pereira, Catarina de Medeiros, Clara Szarvas,
catálogo catalog Crislane Rocha, Daniel Braga, Daniel Nogueira,
Conselho do MAR
Dayana Carvalho, Débora Leite, Diego da
MAR Advisory Board
Edição Edition Conceição, Fabiana da Silva, Fabio da Costa,
Márcio Fainziliber
Museu de Arte do Rio - MAR Gabriela Carneiro, Gleyce Heitor, Guilherme
Hugo Barreto
Instituto Odeon Porto, Gustavo Pereira, Helen Rodrigues,
Ronald Munk
Jô Nascimento, Ingrid Boiteux, Ingrid Melo,
Luiz Chrysostomo
Organização Organization Irlana Oliveira, Jaqueline Fonseca, Jessica
Pedro Buarque de Hollanda
Clarissa Diniz de Mesquita, Josecleiton Amaro, José Russi,
Josivan Ferreira, Juan Silva, Julia Baker, Karen
Conselho do Instituto Odeon
Gerencia de comunicação Gonçalves, Leandro Martins, Leonardo Alano,
Instituto Odeon’s Board
Communications management Leonardo da Silva, Leonardo Siqueira, Livia
Eder Sá Alves Campos
Hannah Drumond Pontes, Ludmila Costa, Marcelo Henrique Silva,
Afonso Henriques Borges Ferreira
Marcello Talone, Marcia Machado, Marcos
Edmundo de Novaes Gomes
Edição de conteúdos e produção editorial Meireles, Marcos Pereira, Marcos Ramos,
Eloisa Elena
Content edition and editorial production Marcos Vinicius Nunes, Maria Clara Boing,
Fernando Ladeira
Marco Aurélio Fiochi Maria Janaína Mesquita, Mariana Marques,
Monica Moreira Esteves Bernardi
Marília Palmeira Marília Palmeira, Marissol Sarmento, Marlon
das Neves, Mayra Brauer, Melina Almada,
Diretor-Presidente President Director
Produção Production Nahama Baldo, Natália Nichols, Nilton
Carlos Gradim
Barbara Collier Conceição, Pamela Cristina, Pedro Silva, Rachel
Cruz, Rachel Orlando, Raniere Dias, Regina
Diretor Cultural Cultural Director
Pesquisa e assistência de produção Barbosa, Renato Alexandre, Renato Dias,
Paulo Herkenhoff
Research and production assistance Rita de Cássia, Robnei de Oliveira, Rosinaldo
Lorena Taulla Oliveira, Sabrina Pacheco, Sandra Magalhães,
Diretor de Projetos e Gestão
Saullo Vasconcelos, Stella Paiva, Taiana dos
Director of Projects and Management
Projeto gráfico Graphic design Santos, Tamires Lima, Tiago Conceição, Vanda
Tiago Cacique
Raul Luna Batista, Vanessa Lima, Victor Ribeiro, Victor
Monteiro, Wagner dos Santos, Weverton do
Diretor Financeiro Financial Director
Textos Texts Monte, Willian Jardim.
Luiz Guimarães
Adolfo Montejo Navas
Carlos Gradim Na época da exposição Pernambuco Experimental,
Gerência Administrativo-Operacional integravam também a equipe MAR e trabalharam
Clarissa Diniz
Operational-Administrative Management diretamente em sua realização [During the period
Jomard Muniz de Britto of the exhibition Experimental Pernambuco, the
Roberta Kfuri
José Cláudio da Silva following former members of staff at MAR worked
directly towards its realisation]: Alan Correia,
Zanna Gilbert
Gerência de Comunicação Gabriela Alevato, Luciana Souza, Marco Aurélio
Fiochi, Silvio Borges.
Communications Management
Hannah Drumond Prefeitura do Rio de Janeiro / Secretaria de Cultura - Secult /
Secretaria de Educação - Seduc / CDURP.
Esta exposição contou com o patrocínio das Organizações Globo e da Vale por meio da Lei Federal de Incentivo à Cultura (Rouanet).
Coleção Pernambuco Assis Ângelo, Fredrico, Katia Bento, Laurindo, Greve (1989)
Experimental Carlos Caetano, Cláudia Martignago, Gastão Genotexto (1982)
de Magalhães, Vagner Dante Veloni, Anna Metamorfome (s. d.)
Pernambuco Experimental
Carolina, Maria da Piedade de Moura, Arlindo
Collection Kaibert, L.C.N, Jussara Almeida, Sócios na Silvio Hansen
Fantasia, Ramon, J.B.L., Aussí, M. Lila, H.G.O., Vide páginas [See pages] 117, 118
Coleção composta a partir da doação dos Marconi Edson, Valdir dos Santos, Chico Dantas,
fundos [Collection formed through the donation Suplício de uma Saudade (1987)
Leonhard Frank Duch, Bené Fonteles, Lauro Poema Lágrimas (2013)
of the following funds] Monteiro, Paulo Ró, Romildo Vallones, A. R. Os Comedores de Batatas (1987)
Condé, Sérgio Pinheiro, J. Medeiros, Brandão,
Arquivo Paulo Bruscky, Daniel Santiago, Alba Liberato, Olímpio Pinheiro, dentre outros.
Fundação Roberto Marinho, Jomard Muniz de O Gráfico Amador
Britto, José Cláudio, Lula Cardoso Ayres Filho, Vide página [See page] 127
Maurício Lissovsky, Montez Magno, Orlando Jomard Muniz de Britto Dez Sonetos Sem Matéria (1960),
Nóbrega, Paulo Bruscky, Paulo Herkenhoff, Raul Vide páginas [See pages] 46, 116, 131 de Sebastião Uchôa Leite
Córdula, Z Alto Nível Baixo (1977) Gesta e Outros Poemas (1960),
Esses Moços, Pobres Moços (1975) de Jorge Wanderley
e de doações de [and of the following Olho Neles (1982) As Conversações Noturnas (1954),
individuals and organizations] Ariel Aisiks, Bebel Toques (1975) de José Laurênio de Melo
Kastrup, CIFO, Luiz Guimarães. Uma Experiência Didática de Jomard Muniz de Macaco Branco: Fortuna e Pena desse
Britto (1974) Personagem no Reino do Futebol, Narradas
Vivencial I (1974) por Gastão de Holanda, 1955.
Artistas representados Memórias do Boi Serapião (1955), de
Represented artists José Cláudio Carlos Pena Filho
Vide páginas [See pages] 48, 88-89, 196-197 Mãe da Lua (1956), de José de Moraes Filho
Os Bichos da Roda (1966) Ode (1955), de Ariano Suassuna
Aloísio Magalhães Catende (1971) Revista do Gráfico Amador n. 2 (1961)
Vide página [See page] 49 Cadernos de Viagem à Amazônia (c. 1975) Rumeur et Vision, 12 poemas de Baudelaire,
Cédula de Cr$500 (1966) [projeto de aquisição (wishlist)] Mallarmé, Verlaine e Rimbaud (1957)
Cédula de Cr$1.000 (Barão do Rio Branco, 1978) Volante 1 - Receita de Mulher (1957), de
Cédula de Cr$5.000 (Castelo Branco, 1981) Vinicius de Moraes
Cédula de Cr$500 (Marechal Deodoro da
Montez Magno
Vide páginas [See pages] 55, 74 [projeto de Volante 3 - Pergunta (1958), de
Fonseca, 1981) José Laurênio de Melo
aquisição (wishlist)], 76, 83, 84-85, 114,115
Sem título (Da série Barracas do Nordeste, 1985) Azulejos Holandeses do Convento de Santo
Lula Cardoso Ayres Caixa de Música (2005) Antônio do Recife (1959), de
Vide páginas [See pages] 29, 35, 57 Sertão (1989) João M. dos Santos Simões
Caderno de desenho (s.d. e década de 1960) Do Áspero ao Suave (2009)
Cartaz do Congresso de Salvação do Nordeste Olhe (1973) [projeto de aquisição (whishlist)] Kátia Mesel
(1955) Dodeskaden (1977) Vide páginas [See pages] 138-139
Boi (1945) Série Cidades Imaginárias – Tesserato (1972) Folhas (1984)
ABC Pilar (1940) Série Cidades Imaginárias – Torres (1972) O Livro (1970)
Índias (1940) Câmara Escura (2002) Rarucorp (déc. 1970)
Mãe e Filho (1940) Dentro da Caixa, Cinza (1980) [projeto de aquisição (wishlist)]
Quando Dorme uma Consciência Tranquila Diwân de Casa Forte (1992)
(1922) Floemas (1978)
Ele: Que Vais Tocar? (1922)
Leonhard Frank Duch
Livro de Ouro (2006) Vide página [See page] 166
Bahia! Terra do Meu Samba (s.d.) A Véspera Metálica (2005)
Interior de Sobrado Patriarcal Urbano (s.d.)
Unhandeijara Lisboa
Equipe Bruscky & Santiago Vide página [See page] 170
Emilio Cardoso Ayres Vide páginas [See pages] 86, 162 Furo (1979)
Vide páginas [See pages] 24-25 Carta a Walter Zanini (documentação de obra
que integrou a exposição Arte Agora I / Brasil
Daniel Santiago 70-75
Vide páginas [See pages] 30, 51, 132, 134, 144, (MAM-RJ), 1976)
151, 152, 170 Carta aos artistas (documentação de obra que
Alfabeto Colorido (1988) integrou a exposição Arte Agora I / Brasil 70-75
Cartaz de Cabeça para Baixo (1982) (MAM-RJ), 1976)
Mingau Maizena #2 (1978)
Paulo Bruscky
Vicente do Rego Monteiro Vide páginas [See pages] 97, 98, 114, 119, 140,
Vide página [See page] 38 165, 173
Cartomancie (2ª edição, 1999) Documentação de visita de Hélio Oiticica ao
Recife (1972)
Raul Córdula Arte/Pare (1973)
Vide páginas [See pages] 110, 172 Artexpocorponte (1971)
Sem título (1965) Composições no Fio - Partituras Mutantes (1979)
Edson Luiz – Martírio no Calabouço (1968) Xeroxperformance (1980)
Série O País da Saudade (vide páginas 45, 102, Disco de artista (1982)
120, 149). Também integram a série obras de Alimento, Gente, Fome (1970)
Falves da Silva, Maurício Silva, Genilson Soares, Dedo (1978)
Chico Pereira, E.Z., Alex Flemming, Diva Buss, Meu Cérebro Desenha Assim #2 (2009)
títulos anteriores do
museu de arte do rio
O Largo do Paço
Textos de Pedro Vasquez e Ruy Souza e Silva apresentam
24 obras de fotografia documentária e gravura que
integraram a mostra Largo do Paço, precioso conjunto
de imagens da Praça XV doado ao MAR por Fátima
Zorzato e Ruy Souza e Silva. (Edição de Ruy Souza e Silva,
português e inglês, 64 p.).