Antonio Sergio Bessa, Editor

New York 2021

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First edition
CONTENTS
Posteverything—An Introduction Antonio Sergio Bessa 1

I 1. Architectural Mechanisms and Body Techniques: José T. Lira 11

The Experiências of Flávio de Carvalho
2. Form and Sensibility: Discursive Discrepancies in Concrete Michael Asbury 35
and Neoconcrete Art
3. The Bauhaus in Brazil: Pedagogy and Practice Adele Nelson 59
4. Grundlehre at the Ulm School of Design: A Survey of Basic Martin Mäntele 77
Design Teaching
5. Twisting the Modernist Curve: Mary Vieira’s Polyvolume: Luisa Valle 89
Meeting Point
6. Lina Bo Bardi and the Creation of the School of Visual Arts Claudia Saldanha 103
in Parque Lage

II 7. Tropical Reason: The Making of a Counterculture in Brazil Frederico Coelho 115

8. Epidermal and Visceral Works: Lygia Pape and Anna Claudia Calirman 127
Maria Maiolino
9. Word-Drool: The Constructive Secretions of Lygia Clark Antonio Sergio Bessa 145
10. Emil Forman: Removing the Silence of Things Fernanda Lopes 157
11. The Funeral of Brazilian Modernism: Glauber Rocha Marcos Augusto Gonçalves 181
and the Death of Di Cavalcanti

III 12. Favela Noh: Haroldo de Campos and Hélio Oiticica Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira 191
at the Chelsea Hotel
13. Retrieval of the Unreadable: Arno Holz and Sousândrade Simone Homem de Mello 209
Revisited by Augusto and Haroldo de Campos
14. The Wanderer, the Earth: Nature and History in the Work Eduardo Sterzi 225
of Sousândrade and Paulo Nazareth

Acknowledgments 247
List of Contributors 249
Index 253
POSTEVERYTHING—
AN INTRODUCTION
Antonio Sergio Bessa

On May 27, 1971, six months after moving to New York on a Guggenheim
Fellowship, neoconcrete artist Hélio Oiticica had the opportunity to meet with concrete
poet Haroldo de Campos, who was in town following a brief stay in Austin, Texas.
The two men met in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel where Campos was staying, and
there they recorded an interview published shortly after in the weekly Flor do Mal, a
broadside that for a short period was the voice of the Brazilian counterculture. Their
meeting was of particular relevance, as it seemed to put to rest the decade-old diatribe
that pitched concrete artists and poets against their neoconcrete counterparts. A
particularly important moment happened toward the end of the interview, as Oiticica
suddenly seemed to realize that pivotal moments in European culture had happened as
the “culmination of an intellectual refinement, differently of much that happens in Brazil,
which appears as if discovered for the first time.” Oiticica’s intuition of a discrepancy
between how modernism evolved in Europe and Brazil predates the more informed
thesis that sociologist Roberto Schwarz would put forth merely five years later in Ao
vencedor as batatas (The potatoes go to the winner), his startling charge that Brazil was
condemned by the “machinery of colonialism” to embrace liberal ideas impossible to
put in practice in a country still relying on slave work.1 The recording captures Oiticica
in a genuine moment of discovery, as if wondering about the forces that caused the
emergence of concretism and neoconcretism in Brazil; or, what exactly was the cultural
process that led to the flourishing of geometric art in the country during that period?
 Half a century later, Oiticica’s disquiet echoes in academic circles as historians
and critics look back at the postwar era in Brazil attempting to piece together
disparate elements into a cohesive narrative. For starters, how to account for the
fact that the “constructive project in Brazilian art,” to paraphrase Aracy Amaral,2
coincided with a brief democratic interlude folded in between two brutal dictatorial
phases?3 Although Ferreira Gullar—in his 1969 collection of essays, Vanguarda e
subdesenvolvimento: Ensaios sobre arte (The avant-garde and underdevelopment:
Essays on art)4—has already polemically approached the challenges in putting
forward a rigorous formalist program in a country still grappling with the colonial
machinery, the topic is still worth exploring. For despite the many lacunae and
contradictions, Brazil’s brief but intense constructivist period stands as an intriguing
episode in art history that conveys a more complex image of our global village,
particularly in regard to the reliance of European modernism on the colonialist
structure. With the benefit of hindsight, recent studies approaching the aesthetics
of concretism have attempted to break away from the polemics as a way to
establish a more productive narrative of the era. In The Object of the Atlantic:
Concrete Aesthetics in Cuba, Brazil and Spain, 1868–1968, for instance, Rachel Price
commended Gullar for his “keen” critique of concrete poetry. She noted, however,
that “in a populist turn, he opposed ‘realism’—understood as ‘committed’ and
appropriate to a nationalist project—to ‘formalism,’ which he claimed turned its back
on Brazilian reality and sought an irresponsible universalism.” Summing up her
argument, Price suggested that those early writings by Gullar (and Ronaldo Brito)
“missed the extent to which form was a theme of 1960s Brazil.”5
Form was not merely a theme but rather a developmental program that
aimed to correct in five years the erratic course set forth by an incipient republic.
This developmental zest was shared quasi unanimously among architects, artists,
writers, and intellectuals intent on restructuring the country (socially, culturally,
and politically) based on the exploration of new forms. In that context, the creation
of new forms also entailed the formation of a new individual. Not unlike the
European countries that inspired it, Brazil’s “constructive project” also carried with
it an educational component that, to paraphrase Mário Pedrosa, would prepare
children “to think correctly and to act with reason.”6 Considered in this context,
one could argue that the campaign inveighed against concretism in the late 1960s
and its critique of reason and technology strikes as a misunderstanding of that
pivotal moment in the aftermath of World War II when the outline of a global
village was being delineated. Indeed, with the proliferation of new media such as
portable typewriters, tape recorders, and photographic cameras, the means of
artistic production was bound to sacrifice regional characteristics as the price for
participating in the global dialogue.

2 | BESSA
 In his introduction to Vanguarda e subdesenvolvimento, Gullar pointedly asks
whether a European or North American concept of the avant-garde could be valid in
an underdeveloped country like Brazil.7 Aware of the economic and political pressures
exerted by international powers bent on controlling underdeveloped countries, Gullar
articulated the mechanics of cultural subjugation thus: “The old is the domination,
among us, of the past and also of the present, because our present is dominated
by those who bring the new. While we need industry and knowhow, which they
possess, with this industry and knowhow comes domination. Hence, the new for
us is, contradictorily, our freedom and our submission.”8 In face of such daunting
predicament in which the system seemed rigged from the start, navigating between
“the new” and “the old” was not merely a matter of aesthetics but tantamount
to crossing a cultural, political, and social minefield. The failure of our republic to
provide a sense of identity to the country weighs heavily in this equation. Founded in
1889 and constituted for the most part as a succession of military governments, the
Republic of Brazil came into being precisely at the same time when the main powers
in Europe were turning to design and art as tools for asserting national identity and
autonomy in a new landscape transformed by the industrial revolution. One need
only to consider the proliferation of new movements such as Arts and Crafts in the
England, Art Nouveau in Belgium and France, and later the German Werkbund—
movements that paved the way to modernist models such as the Bauhaus—to realize
that notions related to industry, knowhow, and market were aligned with national
politics and ideology. Indeed, the international modernist movement of the early
twentieth century was the product of the heated style wars in the late nineteenth
century among industrialized European countries—what Oiticica would call “the
culmination of an intellectual refinement.” As it happened, given the lack of a
strong visual arts tradition in Brazil, a productive dialogue with European models
of modernity could not be taken for granted, and our romance with the avant-garde
materialized rather through literature in the work of great precursors such as Joaquim
de Sousândrade. Nonetheless, mistrust of the avant-garde in Brazil was deep-rooted
regardless of one’s political affiliation, as can be attested in Roberto Schwarz’s 1987
analysis of Augusto de Campos’s “Póstudo” (Posteverything, 1985), in which he
mocked the poem’s conclusion (the word mudo, “mute”) as something futile and
inconsequent that registered “the failure and irrelevance of the cultural avant-garde
movements in our century that were nevertheless remarkable.”9
Playing with the militaristic origin of the expression avant-garde, literary
scholar Marjorie Perloff has suggested that Brazilian concrete poetry ought rather be
seen as part of the arrière-garde, the troops that in battles finish the job initiated by
the frontlines: “When an avant-garde movement is no longer a novelty, it is the role
of the arrière-garde to complete its mission, to ensure its success.”10 In sum, Perloff’s

3 | POSTEVERYTHING—AN INTRODUCTION
analogy allows us to analyze the outcomes of a specific cultural moment in relation
to the broader historical continuum to which it relates. If we are to agree with
Perloff, the emergence of concretism in Brazil in the early 1950s did not represent
“the new” but rather the culmination of a process initiated half a century earlier in
Europe. Of course, the idea of an arrière-garde is not unique to the so-called avant-
garde in underdeveloped environs; the same argument can be used to explain Max
Bill’s role as an artist, architect, and educator. Having studied at the Bauhaus for
one year, Bill was keen on hiring key Bauhaus instructors such as Josef Albers and
Walter Peterhans during his tenure as the director of the Hochschule für Gestaltung
in Ulm, Germany. We can also cite as branches of this arrière-garde the Illinois
Institute of Technology, led by Mies van der Rohe, and the Black Mountain College
under Albers. Considered in its broadest scope, the work proposed by the avant-
and arrière-gardes entailed first and foremost a restructuring of the educational
system, a project pioneered in the early nineteenth century by educators such as
Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel who proposed new models focused
on how sense perception leads to thinking. Their ideas, particularly Froebel’s work
on the role of play in early childhood, would eventually be reflected in some of the
most advanced educational experiments of the early twentieth century.
In Brazil, the search for continuity with the European modernist program,
as Perloff suggested, is best exemplified by the Noigandres poets’ systematic
engagement with the poetics of Ezra Pound, starting in the late 1940s (when they
took their name from a neologism found in Pound’s Canto 20) and culminating with
the translation of ABC of Reading in 1975. More importantly, they clearly outlined the
pedagogical drive of their enterprise in early theoretical texts that cited Guillaume
Apollinaire, Sergei Eisenstein, and Stéphane Mallarmé as precursors of a new mode
of reading.11 Indeed, for the pioneers of concretism in Brazil, whether from São Paulo
or from Rio, the main concern relied on understanding how one’s mind operates in a
new environment transformed by industry. But the aspiration to form new individuals
through education reform—Pedrosa’s ideal citizen who will not “applaud hysterical
dictators”— collapsed as the 1964 coup brought to a halt programs such as Paulo
Freire’s Plano Nacional de Alfabetização (National Literacy Plan).
Half a century after the demise of its constructivist project, Brazil still grapples
with issues related to nationalism and art as evidenced in the recent episodes related
to government support for culture. Early in the morning on January 17, 2020, a Twitter
post by Secretary of Culture Roberto Alvim announcing a $4.8 million investment in
arts programs sent out chills throughout the Internet. Widely disseminated through
social media, Alvim’s cultural vision for the country paraphrased an infamous speech
by Adolf Goebbels from 1933, calling for a new art free of sentimentalism to better Augusto de Campos,
serve the state aims: “a culture that doesn’t destroy, but one that will save our youth.” “Póstudo,” 1984.

4 | BESSA
Alvim’s appalling delivery prompted a widespread outcry and he was demoted from
his position by the day’s end. More importantly, his bizarre, dangerous flirt with Nazi
ideology laid bare the stakes culture play in society.

The fourteen essays that comprise Form and Feeling: The Making of
Concretism in Brazil tackle a number of key topics related to that unprecedented era
in cultural production in Brazil—from the emergence of concrete art in Brazil and the
groundbreaking art education initiatives that began in the late 1940s to the Brazilian
counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. The collection opens with an essay by
José T. Lira who takes a close look at the paradoxes in the work of the architect-artist
Flávio de Carvalho whose controversial career was launched following the upheavals
related to the Semana de Arte Moderna in the 1922. A larger-than-life figure who
experimented with different disciplines and media, Carvalho provides an important
link between the wave of experimentation that characterized Brazilian art in the 1960s
and 1970s and the strategies of early modernism. Michael Asbury (essay no. 2) offers a
thoroughly researched and pointed overview of the main events that helped solidify the
constructivist aesthetics in Brazil. Departing from a consideration on the “rift” between
São Paulo artists and their counterparts in Rio de Janeiro, Asbury offers insight on
foundational texts by Mário Pedrosa and Ferreira Gullar and identifies common traits
with ideas proposed by Herbert Read, Alfred North Whitehead, and Susanne Langer.
Adele Nelson (essay no. 3) probes the contradictions of importing the Bauhaus model
to Brazil and highlights the role of the first two museum-sponsored art schools in
negotiating claims on the German school and its pedagogy for the emerging Brazilian
postwar avant-garde. Martin Mäntele (essay no. 4) provides an overview of how the
Ulm School of Design came into being with support from the Marshall Plan as an effort
to promote reconstruction in post–World War II Germany. Mäntele offers a vivid account
of Max Bill’s tenure as the school’s first director and his efforts to put together a faculty
based on his experience as a student at Bauhaus. Luisa Valle (essay no. 5) approaches
the work of the elusive artist Mary Vieira, who, like Almir Mavignier, opted early in
her career to further her training at the Ulm School of Design under Max Bill. Valle’s
essay focuses for the most part on Vieira’s most iconic work, the interactive sculpture
Polyvolume, while also astutely situating the artist’s practice within the context of post–
World War II Brazilian art. Claudia Saldanha (essay no. 6) offers a brief overview of Lina
Bo Bardi’s effort to create an art school in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1960s. Given Bo
Bardi’s extensive list of accomplishments in the area of architecture and museology, it is
not entirely surprising that her efforts in the pedagogical area would be obscured over
the years. The fact that Rubens Gerchman asked Bo Bardi a decade later to participate
in the nucleus tasked with restructuring the school in the early 1970s indicates that arts
education played an important role in her holistic vision.

6 | BESSA
 Part II spotlights some key figures and moments of the Brazilian counterculture
of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Frederico Coelho (essay no. 7) considers the
dénouement of the heroic phase of the constructive project in Brazil at the end of the
1960s as it gradually gives way to a counterculture movement driven for the most
part through several publications that allowed young artists to follow from afar the
significant cultural changes fueled by sociopolitical unrest. Besides the appearance of
new voices and tendencies, the 1970s are also notable for how artists that emerged
under the constructivist paradigm responded to a new sociopolitical landscape
fostered by the military regime. Claudia Calirman (essay no. 8) examines a series of
works by Lygia Pape and Anna Maria Maiolino that reflect on the constructed identity
of women in Brazilian society. My “Word-Drool” (essay no. 9) explores a series of
texts produced by Lygia Clark in the early 1970s while undergoing psychoanalysis in
Paris. Curator Fernanda Lopes (essay no. 10) offers an insightful overview of the brief
career of Emil Forman, while also revealing the complex cultural landscape following
the heydays of the concrete/neoconcrete diatribe. Having studied under Ivan Serpa
at the Ipanema Research Center in the early 1970s, Forman was recognized at a
young age for works that dealt with his personal life as the son of Czech immigrants.
Marcos Augusto Gonçalves (essay no. 11) takes a fresh look at Glauber Rocha’s
infamous short documentary on the memorial for early modernist painter Emiliano di
Cavalcanti. A dazzling, anarchic tour de force, Rocha’s film is an unforgiving critique
of Brazil’s modernist ambition and a fitting closure to this group of essays.
The three essays in part III consider the resurgence of the Romantic poet
Joaquim de Sousândrade (1833–1902), half a century after his death, through the
critical work of concrete poets Augusto de Campos and Haroldo de Campos. Eduardo
Jorge de Oliveira (essay no. 12), focuses on the already mentioned encounter between
Hélio Oiticica and Haroldo de Campos in New York. Brazilian poet Simone Homem de
Mello (essay no. 13) provides a comparative analysis of German poet Arno Holz and
Sousândrade, whose productions had been dismissed by mainstream historiography
and reassessed by the Noigandres poets in the 1960s. And Eduardo Sterzi (essay no.
14) explores Sousândrade’s epic poem O Guesa in all its Pan-American breadth, vis-à-
vis the global spread of capitalism and the displacement of indigenous people.
While it might seem harsh to suggest that Brazil did not have a visual arts
tradition strong enough to account for the constructivist impetus of the 1950s, it is
undeniable that our experimental tradition is rooted in literature, as these essays on
Sousândrade indicate. Oiticica, who in his meeting with Campos at the Chelsea Hotel
seems eager to discuss Sousândrade’s period in New York, would dedicate a great part
of his years in New York to a kind of experimental writing that taps into this tradition.
His copious output, which has been approached insightfully by Frederico Coelho,
challenges us to reconsider the complex legacy of Brazil’s constructivist project.

7 | POSTEVERYTHING—AN INTRODUCTION
Notes (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Sergio Bessa and Odile
University Press, 2014), 185. Cisneros (Evanston, IL:
1/ Schwarz’s study Northwestern University
approaches the nineteenth- 6/ Mario Pedrosa, Press, 2007), 217.
century bourgeois romance “Crescimento e criação,” in
novel in Brazil as a “system Forma e percepção estética:
of ambiguities” that he Textos escolhidos II, ed. Otília
also detects in the Russian Arantes (São Paulo: Editora
romance: “In Russia also, da Universidade de São
modernity got lost in the Paulo, 1996), 71–79.
vastness of the territory and
the social inertia.” In an aside 7/ Gullar, Vanguarda e
he noted that it might have subdesenvolvimento, 19; my
been easier for the visual arts translation. In the original:
through the “adoring, citing, “Um conceito de ‘vanguarda’
parroting, sacking, adapting estética, válido na Europa
or devouring of manners ou nos Estados Unidos,
and modes that reflected, in terá igual validez num país
their failure, the kind of stiff subdesenvolvido como o
neck in which we recognize Brasil?”
ourselves.” Roberto Schwarz,
Ao vencedor as batatas: 8/ Gullar, 24; my
Forma literária e processo translation. In the original: “O
social nos inicios do romance velho é a dominação, sobre
brasileiro (São Paulo: Livraria nós, do passado e também
Duas Cidades, 1977), 26–28; do presente, porque o nosso
my translation. presente é dominado por
aqueles mesmos que nos
2/ Aracy A. Amaral, trazem o novo. Precisamos
ed., Projeto construtivo da indústria e do know-how,
brasileiro na arte (São Paulo: que eles têm, mas com essa
Pinacoteca do Estado, 1977). indústria e esse know-
how, de que necessitamos
3/ Brazil’s short para nos libertar, vem a
democratic period starts after dominação. Assim, o novo é,
the suicide of Gétulio Vargas, para nós, contraditoriamente,
who ruled the country almost a liberdade e a submissão.”
intermittently from 1930 to
1954, and ends in 1964, when 9/ Roberto Schwarz,
democratically elected João “Marco histórico” [Historic
Gulart is ousted by a military milestone], in Que horas são
coup. (São Paulo: Companhia das
Letras, 1987), 61.
4/ Ferreira
Gullar, Vanguarda e 10 / Marjorie Perloff,
subdesenvolvimento: Ensaios Unoriginal Genius: Poetry
sobre arte, 2nd ed. (Rio de by Other Means in the New
Janeiro: Editora Civilização Century (Chicago: University
Brasileira, 1978). of Chicago Press, 2010), 53.

5/ Rachel Price, The 11 / See “Pilot Plan for

Object of the Atlantic: Concrete Poetry,” in Novas:
Concrete Aesthetics in Cuba, Selected Writings of Haroldo
Brazil and Spain, 1868–1968 de Campos, ed. Antonio

8 | BESSA
ARCHITECTURAL 1
MECHANISMS AND
BODY TECHNIQUES
The Experiências of
Flávio de Carvalho
José T. Lira

From Madrid to Istanbul, from New York to Berlin, some of the works and
ideas of Flávio de Carvalho (1899–1973) have recently emerged on the international
art scene.1 A restless protagonist in the history of Brazilian modernism, he has been
the subject of a fair amount of studies over the years in Brazil.2 Whereas some earlier
studies tended to look closely at key aspects of his extensive work, most seem to have
fallen into the biographical trap of the “total artist,” the “romantic revolutionary,”
the “emotive cannibal,” and so on. More recent monographs have proposed new
approaches to Carvalho’s complex activity. Yet they too fail to look beyond this or that
specific field of interest: architecture, the visual arts, theater, fashion, performance,
design, and so on.3 None of the existing approaches, however, seem to grasp the
major paradoxes his work addresses.
Some of the most exciting readings of Carvalho’s work have focused on
his pioneering experiments in performance, namely, Experiência no. 2 (1931) and
Experiência no. 3 (1956). In Experiência no. 2, Carvalho marched in the opposite
direction to a Corpus-Christi procession in downtown São Paulo, wearing a hat and
challenging the emotional limits of the Catholic mass of worshipers around him.
In Experiência no. 3, he paraded through the streets of the city’s center wearing a
very unusual male costume, which he called a “new look for the summer.” Both
experiências received wide media coverage.4 The first performance thrilled the
local press and led, three months later, to the publication of the book Experiência
no. 2, realizada sobre uma procissão de Corpus-Christi; uma possível teoria e uma
experiência (Experience no. 2, undertaken across a Corpus-Christi procession;
a possible theory and an experience/experiment),5 which he illustrated with a
series of narrative caricatures. Experiência no. 3 entailed careful preparation as
Carvalho arranged for interviews and press releases; produced descriptive sketches,
pamphlets, and photographs to be published on prestigious magazines; rehearsed
a fully dressed public outing; and garnered the support of intellectuals, journalists,
and actresses as well as wide news coverage for the event, including the new
medium of television.
With respect to those two experiências, the Brazilian concrete poets Haroldo
de Campos and Décio Pignatari hailed Carvalho as the inventor of happenings in
Brazil,6 and several critics have recently stressed the anticipatory role of his work to
neoconcrete experimental exercises on freedom, rupture, and appearance of the late
1950s and the 1960s, as well as to nonobjective art, that aimed to synthesize mental
and sensorial experiences. Taking a closer look at Carvalho’s two experiências might
indeed offer a great opportunity to grasp a rather anticipatory discursive strategy that
Carvalho was to employ throughout his career—not only in these two performances
and within the performative arts (in dance, theater, scenography, and costume design)
but also as a procedure that was intrinsic to his approach to architecture, urban
planning, drawing, painting, sculpture, journalism, literature, and theory, as well as in
the development of his private life, body, and sense of self.
In this regard, the image on the front cover of the small personal portfolio
documenting his architectural projects between 1927 and 1929 is quite suggestive.
The image depicts a yellow steel beam in perspective supporting a thin white
concrete slab. The slab seems to be worked by two green mechanical hands, a sort
of a screwdriver, and a classical bust. The screwdriver seems to twist the iron grid
inside the slab, the bust is holding a compass and stands on top of a book: tradition
on one hand, workforce and the building site on the other. The ensemble sits on a
pile of drawing sheets, and we can read at its side the inscription: “Matter follows
reasoning.” In other words, if the preeminence of logic is seen as a pathway to
progress, progress itself refers to a rational or a spiritual force rather than to material
progress, thus requiring readiness for change and the exercise of new meanings and
domains of life.

RESHAPING PRIVACY

Indeed, Carvalho’s country home—Fazenda Capuava, which he designed and

built in the outskirts of São Paulo in the 1930s—is quite revealing in this regard.7

12 | LIRA
Often described as a site free of moral and social conventions, as a region of excesses
and devious behavior, the dwelling of this stubborn forty-year-old bachelor might
indeed be understood as a perfect arena for certain unusual kinds of domesticity—
contrary to nuclear, monogamous, stable, and moralized family and marriage—or
a sort of laboratory, if not a totemic machine, designed to bring eroticism back to
social life. In fact, his notoriety as enfant terrible in life, sex, and art, diving headlong
into a roaring sociocultural and emotional life was by no means accidental but the
result of a psychosocial self-elaboration. It was not by chance that in the early 1930s
he devoted himself to writing an unpublished manuscript, “Mechanism of loving
emotion,”8 in which he focused on the tumultuous world of human desires, base
instincts and emotions, sexual and love anxieties, the cyclical struggles between
men and women, and the ethical, psychic, and anthropological basis of matriarchy,
patriarchy, monogamy, adultery, and incest.
Finished in 1938, the house soon became his first residence and throughout
his life a private platform for socioerotic staging: “sumptuous, lubricious, and
dramatic,” “a mix of a temple and an aircraft,” and although rural, in no way could it
be described as a haven where to lament for “the loss of simplicity and ingenuity.”9
Conceived, inhabited, and animated by an avant-garde artist whose activity had been
informed by a strong modernist and anthropophagic sensibility and a high awareness
of the “principle of pleasure,” Carvalho’s house was entirely devoted to the art of
living: sensual life, feast, and festivity. The architect himself has emphasized the
project’s poetic tenor thus: “The conception of the whole house is a pure product of
imagination, trying to create an ideal way of living.”10
The house stands out in the landscape with the imposing trapezoidal
silhouette of its double-height main hall, almost hermetic, intercepted by the long
reinforced concrete pergola structures, covering two long lateral terraces. Sitting on
a small elevation, the property does not show itself in its entirety, lacking references
to human scale such as windows, parapets, or doors. Its basic design, albeit strongly
iconographic and perfectly symmetrical as often is the case in his projects, does
not easily conform to available classifications, such as modernism, classicism,
expressionism, or other -isms—not because of its references to different epochs
and cultures, but because of the way it appeals to them without embracing any
eclecticism of style. The design combines archaic allusions with current, unusual,
or exotic solutions, like the reference to a domestic program or the use of modern
technics and materials, the combination of machine aesthetics and primitivism, the
majestic scale of the main door, the profusion of indigenous hammocks, and so on.
Indeed the house is characterized by its generous living and hosting spaces:
in addition to the main hall and the large terraces and side patios in the front and
the six bedrooms placed in the opposite wing, there are three other rooms also

13 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

 Flávio de Carvalho, Fazenda
Capuava, ca. 1930s.
Photograph by José T. Lira.

opened to the back, including a library that would soon become his main studio and
an idiosyncratic “ancestral room,” a sort of Oedipal chapel, scenically set with the
family’s gloomy furniture, crocheted table cloths, worn-out pillows, velvet curtains,
his mother’s objects, and family portraits hanging on the walls. Rooms and bedrooms
are connected by a succession of halls and aisles that limit inner circulation as in a
labyrinthine itinerary, typical of libertine interiors,11 which provide autonomy to each
one of the rooms and direct escape to the outside.
The largest and liveliest part of the house—the huge trapezoidal main room,
which had no interior partitions and was informally decorated12—is both a living
and dining room, as well as a space for performances and recitals on the mezzanine
protruding on top of the dining table. On the ceiling, a vertical aluminum plate was
illuminated by colored lamps that ascended in clusters, also reflecting the cloth bands
curtain that covered the monumental main door (according to Carvalho, dancing
“in and out with the wind and the eventual rhythm of the music”).13 The use of the
inner space evidently changed over the years, but it seems to have always been
heavily invested of symbolism and emotional values. Be it from the point of view of
the subversion of Victorian domesticity or of the aseptic modernist interiors, every
element in Carvalho’s house exudes a lust for ornament. In the kitchen and bathrooms,
the walls and cabinets are lined with gleaming aluminum plates and their windows
protected by shutters of the same material, as if to accentuate its connotations
to machines. In the main hall, in turn, the walls are covered with slats of wood at
half a height and dark colors on top as opposed to the vivid colors of curtains and

14 | LIRA
upholsteries that brightened the room. One of its most notable elements is the main
fireplace, ingeniously planned to bring together the four elements of nature. Located
in the middle of the room, the wood burns in the semicircular cast-iron basket hanging
from the wall. Over the flames, a bright aluminum dome is connected to a small water
fountain lit by lamps of various colors. With the heating of the aluminum, the water
poured over the dome vaporizes the whole room with colored steam. Also in that hall,
the dining table could be mistaken for an altar: designed by Carvalho in chrome-plated
metal and a one-inch-thick Belgian crystal top, it was able to accommodate fourteen
people in comfortable armchairs of the same material. Spotlights beneath the table
produced unusual reflections of porcelain, cutlery, and crystals over the surfaces and
diners’ bodies, often obscuring the food they ate but allowing perfect view of their
legs and torsos. The strategy flirted with surrealistic investments in trompe l’oeil
techniques in domestic interiors. In fact, the visual treatment of the place of repast—a
first-rate cannibal theme, by the way—evokes Louis Aragon’s manifesto for the
réforme des habitations, with their “radiant tables for love.”14
Over the furniture and on the walls, there was a small, but carefully installed,
imaginary museum: a bric-a-brac of amulets, weapons, and other Indigenous
artifacts; ceramics from the Andes, the Amazonian, and the Brazilian Northeast
regions; sacred images and fine porcelain sets; a carved figurehead from a São
Francisco river boat; a Chinese mask; and a stuffed alligator head. Mixing up different
provenances, epochs, forms, materials, and social strata, combining the popular, the
modern, the bizarre, and the ritual, densely accumulated in space, the objects seemed
to interact with one another to create an atmosphere of displacement, sensuality,
buzz, and detachment. Everything staged as if those objects were the “bones of the
world,” as he referred to in the title of his 1936 book: some of them were inherited,
others were entirely new or found in the course of life, and arranged in a sort of
collection “as if to suggest comparisons and contrasts,” or to sustain, as fetishes,
spiritual bonds with individuals, as if belonging to the “morphology of the waste of
lost worlds.”15
Carefully planned to accommodate a reasonable amount of people—as well
as conflicting imaginaries and more or less informal, ritualized activities—from
beginning to end one finds clear psychological, ethical, aesthetic, and political
statements in the house’s role to resist the bourgeois family life model: pacified,
inviolable, austere, civilized. Far from being a place of seclusion, Carvalho’s house
would indeed be marked by an enormous social activity. It is significant that he kept
a guest’s album, which over the years accumulated autographs and messages from
visitors, and the photographs he took from his guests in and around the house with
his Rolleiflex camera. In his guest book, poet Murilo Mendes wrote: “Flavio’s house
was built under the sign of reason and imagination. I think it would please both

15 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

Flávio de Carvalho,
Experiência no. 3, 1956.
Photo by Norberto Esteves
and Jack Pires for Tribuna da
Imprensa. Collection of Hugo
Segawa.
Flávio de Carvalho,
Experiência no. 3, 1956.
Photo by Norberto Esteves
and Jack Pires for Tribuna da
Imprensa. Collection of Hugo
Segawa.
Descartes and Lautréamont.” From Oswald de Andrade: “Without glasses, I can only
see with the eyes of the soul—and I have always turned the eyes of my soul to the
cannibal Flávio de Carvalho.” Both men were there on September 4, 1949. Haitian
poet René Depestre noted shortly after: “A warm tribute to his talent for light. A
memory of a day in his house, where the taste for life, the delicious taste of being in
the world . . . animates the thrill of a long, mind-blowing kiss.”16 French ethnologist
Paul Rivet noted to have passed there “hours in the company of men and women
who love art and beauty. Thank you.”17 The house often welcomed reasonably
sized groups and small crowds of visitors, including fashion models, artists, poets,
intellectuals, actresses, politicians, architects, composers, singers, students and many
anonymous men and women, young and old, Brazilians and foreigners: Jean Lurçat,
Philip Goodwin, Aran Khachaturian, Henry Moore, Bruno Giorgi, Nicolás Guillén,
Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vinicius de Moraes, Roger Caillois, Gregori Warchavchik, Lasar
Segall, Gilberto Freyre, Alberto Cavalcanti, André Chamson, Sérgio Buarque de
Holanda, Caio Prado Jr., Georgia Gomide, Ruth de Souza, Maria Della Costa, Noêmia
Mourão, Maria Leontina, Darcy Penteado, Yara Bernette, Anselmo Duarte, Paulo
Mendes de Almeida, Geraldo Ferraz, Paulo Duarte, among hundreds of other guests
along the years.18 They came for cheerful wine receptions and lush feasts or longer
periods of stay and intense weekends featuring topless women and nudity parades.
It was not exactly a private Oikema—although his plan, like Ledoux’s, alluded to the
phallic form—nor an avant-garde Playboy Mansion, like Hugh Hefner’s (although
naked women would take a major role in the local atmosphere and décor).19 Indeed,
it was not a regular space for conviviality or for the regular standards of sociability.
There were days when, near the large swimming pool in front of the house, a red
flag would stand high on a metal mast to warn the farm workers not to allow anyone
in because of a special party with everyone naked. Nudism was actually a sort of
ritual, and the pool, where they eventually swam naked, would become the greatest
temple for these sensual practices. After all, the experience of the body in space was
at stake all throughout his career, in his theater, dance, and costume work, as well
as in his public performances. As I have pointed out, such a performative dimension
provides a privileged entry into one of the most intriguing aspects of Carvalho’s work
and thought process, which wavered constantly between constructive principles and
disruptive imaginaries; practical and delusional values; objectivity and fetishism;
logic-scientific persuasions and a radical investment on the unconscious; techno-
social convictions and an emotional, derisive, obscene, or, even, a perverse bias.

18 | LIRA
EXPERIMENTING ON THE URBAN HORDE

There are no records about an Experiência no. 1, but he eventually referred

to an “Experiência Number Zero.”20 One must not forget that Flávio de Carvalho
was trained as an engineer and first appeared in the Brazilian cultural landscape
as perhaps the most visionary of all Brazilian architects. Indeed, in 1922, soon after
his return from a ten-year period of study in France and England, he began to work
at Ramos de Azevedo’s office, the most prestigious architecture and construction
company in São Paulo between the end of the nineteenth century and the early
twentieth century. It is true that he didn’t seem at ease with the prevailing academic
canon there, but even after his break with the office in 1926, it was still through
architecture that he was identified as one of the most outstanding individual artists
in São Paulo’s growing liberal talent market. His rather unique entries to major
architectural competitions between 1927 and 1931 gave him enormous visibility and
a prominent role both within the architectural field and the arts and literary avant-
garde scene as a whole. He never won a single one of these design competitions,
but a few aspects of his proposals seem quite revealing in respect to a performative
attitude. Firstly, all his projects suggest a close tie to the early avant-gardes, drawing
upon architectural imageries based on futurism, expressionism, anthropophagia, or
even surrealism. Secondly, most of his projects, including the last, contain a strong
symbolic appeal either recurring to primary iconographies (of abstract, figurative,
contemporary, or archaic bonds) or launching into analogical or parody exercises on
programs, functions, customs, values, and norms. As such, they are often combined
to proposals on human moods, bodies, complexions, gestures, and behaviors.
Thirdly, all of his projects seem to aim at some kind of public amazement, shock,
admiration, or even scandal, not by accident activating and motivating significant
public debate and media strategies. Such emphasis on media as a proper arena for
public action has been highlighted as an artistic strategy he would often employ
everywhere as a performative device.21
We could perhaps think of his proposal for the São Paulo Governor’s Palace
competition, in 1927, as his undocumented Experiência no. 1. As customary, he
named the project Eficácia (Effectiveness), and it received extensive media coverage
because of its dazzling renderings and extravagant detailing with suspended forests,
huge elevators, civic halls designed as ballrooms, war paraphernalia such as cannons,
catapults, spotlights, and airstrips on the rooftop. But that first experiência could also
refer to the speech he delivered at the 4th Pan-American Conference of Architects, held
in Rio de Janeiro in 1930, titled “The City of the Naked Man,” where a new urban model
was outlined as a center for the “natural sublimation of human desires” and their
liberation from repetitive routines and mechanisms, scholastic philosophy, Christian

19 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

and classical dogmas, and other so-called taboos. Even before his presentation, the
press was trumpeting the speech as carrying a defiant theme. In advance of the event,
Carvalho himself visited newspapers in Rio to spread his ideas. On the day of the
speech, the auditorium was packed and, according to contemporary records, there was
a mood of outrage and disgust in the air. When he started reading, the audience burst
into protest and disruption. Entire groups left the space. In face of threats, the police
was called. After all, the speech aimed at the “exaltation of the Nietzschean biological
man” as he appeared in nature, wild, with all his desires and intact curiosity, calling
upon those present to withdraw “their civilized masks” and admit and endorse their
cannibal tendencies, repressed by their colonial and academic background.22
There is no doubt that both the Governor’s Palace project and the “Naked
Man” speech in their own ways confronted the hegemonic architectural and civilizing
values, deliberately bumping the audience’s aesthetic, epistemic and cosmological
impermeability. Oscillating between the spatial and the symbolical, the rational
and the erotic, the functional and the critical, the fact is that both the project and
the speech somehow operate on the limits of the discipline. More than that, as
they reinforce the links between design practice, social life, and emotional effects
(of surprise, displacement, disturbance, or rupture), they anticipate the idea of
performance as an artistic genre.23
By that time Flávio de Carvalho was aware of a whole set of avant-garde ideas
in art and thought. Since the period in England he seems to have read Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra, James Frazer’s Golden Bough, a tremendous bestseller after its
abridgment, and he was also familiar with some of Sigmund Freud’s books, including
Totem and Taboo and Mass Psychology, which one could find full of notes in his
personal library.24 Through his engagement starting in 1922 with the São Paulo–based
modernism and, after 1928, with the anthropophagia movement, he got in contact
with the most recent European art movements, particularly with expressionism,
Dadaism, cannibalism and surrealism. As a matter of fact, since 1929, when the
French writer, artist, and activist Benjamin Péret fled to Brazil to found Rio de
Janeiro’s chapter of the International Communist League, Carvalho reached out to the
French-based surrealists and a few years later published in São Paulo interviews he
had conducted with Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Man Ray, and Roger Caillois in Paris
in 1934, clearly collaborating on the effort to spread out their ideas in Brazil.25
The approach to the avant-gardes gained an institutional ally in São Paulo
with the establishment, in 1932, of the Modern Artists’ Club (Clube de Arte Moderna,
CAM). Flávio himself was elected its first president and opened up the club to
a whole range of avant-garde soirées, lectures, exhibitions, banquets, parties,
concerts, performances, and public readings, always marked by a clear sense of
engagement, irreverence, gaiety, and informality. The program included Käthe

20 | LIRA
Kollwitz’s first show in Brazil; exhibitions of Russian posters and of art of children
and the mentally ill; conferences by Osorio Cesar around psychiatry and art, by
Tarsila do Amaral on proletarian art, by David Siqueiros on politics and muralism in
Mexico, by Mário Pedrosa on art and Marxism, by Caio Prado Junior on the Soviet
Union, and by Oswald de Andrade on his play O homem e o cavalo (The man and
the horse)—all were very well attended. In 1933, the CAM became the seat of the
Teatro da Experiência, conceived and directed by Flávio de Carvalho himself, where
he premiered his Bailado do deus morto (Ballet of the dead god), a sort of Dadaist
musical, weaving Afro-Brazilian rites and interpreted by amateur black artists. The
play focused on human emotions related to god, from its mythical figures toward
monotheism and, finally, to its assassination by men. Not surprisingly, the play was
censored, and the venue was permanently closed by the police three days later.26
CAM wouldn’t survive much longer to the reactionary state of mind that took hold of
São Paulo’s cultural scene by 1934.27
There is a clear avant-garde commitment in Experiência no. 2. Recall the
postwar Barres Process performance of 1921 in Paris, in which the young Péret took
part as the “unknown German soldier.” The large and virulent Dadaist and Surrealist
public performances in Paris in the 1920s were clearly aimed at promoting public
turmoil and inciting outbursts of rage within the popular crowds. Many of them
indeed addressed politically relevant topics such as patriotism, Christian morality,
bourgeois society, and social taboos, among others. Their main support was also the
artists’ bodies themselves, motionless or moving, alone or collectively mobilized,
silent or vocally active, dressed or undressed, disguised, masked, travestied, or
ordinarily performed; in sum, just like Carvalho’s procession intervention in 1931:
“It was Corpus-Christi Day. The sun bathed the city. There was a festive mood
everywhere. Women, men and children were moving in brightly colored clothing;
old black women were wearing glasses and robes or something similar; black men’s
fraternities were holding banners and candles.”28 It is striking how focused he was
on the ways people dressed during the procession, his attention to colors, fabrics,
accessories, as well as the ritual objects they carried with them: crucifixes, candles,
rosaries, ribbons, torches, and flags which he would characterize in a heretic (or
“symmetrical”) point of view, as “fetish-objects.” After all, as Bruno Latour has
observed, being modern has a lot to do with the obsession with finding those objets-
fées/objets-faits everywhere but not in its own world of references.29 The whole scene
is depicted through the human bodies and their attributes—costumes, Christian
emblems, and insignia, human physical characteristics, faces, gestures, groupings,
either ritual or social, of race, sex, and age.
Carvalho probably wore a coat and tie like any other upper-class adult male in
Brazil at the time. But a missing piece would encourage him to go back home as soon

21 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

as he met the procession in order to perfect his outfit: a green velvet cap. He thus
dressed in an ordinarily respectful way except for the impious attitude of keeping his
hat on while following the pious procession. He didn’t much refer to the surrounding
urban landscape, except that the whole thing took place on the streets of the old São
Paulo city center, which he characterized as an extremely dense built environment. By
all means he was mostly interested in the psycho-anthropological landscape, starting
with the picturesque human scenery he described. In his own words, his experiment
meant: “To unveil the soul of worshipers through some kind of reagent that would
allow me to study the reactions on the faces, the gestures, the pace, and the eyes,
to finally feel the pulse of the environment, to psychically touch the tempestuous
emotion of the collective soul, to register the flow of that emotion, to provoke a
rebellion in order to watch something of the unconscious.”30
Against the religious cortege there emerges a scientific attitude, his own
experiência which he refers to as a sort of chemical experiment within a previous
social performance; thus, halfway between artistic practice and a political act, a new
dramatic form emerges as well as an intellectual one. This appeal to science is not at
all at odds with the kind of psychology and anthropology he had in mind—nor with
the anthropophagic ideal he held high. As a matter of fact, as he had pointed out
a year before: “[It] responds to the cry of the unconscious. It offers man a fantastic
mechanism, through which he may progress freely, with no embarrassment at
all. Anthropophagy intends to scientifically study the human soul and get to know
its biological inclinations. It intends to create to such inclinations a mechanism of
maximum performance, of maximum efficiency.”31
Following Freud’s belief that becoming a member of a crowd served to
displace the super-ego and unlock the unconscious mind, he would challenge the
crowd’s investment on the body of Christ—the Corpus Christi—as a charismatic
holder. Accordingly, the architect/performer inserted his body in the public flow of
bodies, or else, against the flow of the event, assuming the temptations and risks of
it for the sake of a desired empirical knowledge. He declares his action to aim for the
“pulsation” of the environment and of collective emotions, and that marching against
the procession could offer him the possibility to amaze and exasperate the masses
and at the same time to better watch their reactions. The experiência is carefully
depicted in its whole process, step by step, scene by scene, through the attitudes
performed by Carvalho (the march itself, his body gestures, visual connections,
flirting and “vamping” attitudes, some verbal exchanges and affront at the end)
and through the different effects (indifference, desire, repulsion, hesitation, anger)
produced over the procession and its side audience, male and female, young and
old, religious and secular. He was clearly in search of some sort of violent connection
with the crowd that would supposedly allow him access to the collective unconscious.

22 | LIRA
It is true that he didn’t succeed at first, but at some point, in face of a “mass of
people pushed to the extreme of hatred and wishing to devour” him, the experiência
became extremely dangerous, eventually growing into an attempt to lynch him: “An
immense rumor filled the space; a multitude of threatening arms with clenched fists
were shaking in the air; huge mouths shouted angrily: Lynch! Crucifixes and colorful
banners trembled in cadence according to the guidelines of hatred. There was a
unanimous wish: Grab! Kill! Lynch! Priests, elders, women, young people, they were
all vibrating with fury. The noise echoed everywhere. Everything was resonating.
I felt an immense volume of sound invading my ears.”32 When it comes to how he
managed to escape, the focus suddenly switches from his interactions with the
procession to an interior landscape, the impact on himself of the crowd’s attitudes
and expressions, the actual risks he faced and his own emotional and physical
distress finally took the foreground amid the great panic that takes hold of him. The
whole thing ended in the police department, where he was escorted to and arrested
for the day. His statements to the police and the press would amaze the public
opinion. Having described the whole episode and declared his scientific motivations—
“to approach the aggressive power of a religious crowd in face of civil laws, or to find
out whether the power of faith was stronger than the power of law and the praise
of human life”33—he would be taken as an eccentric maniac. Nonetheless, the huge
media coverage he gained would rank the whole thing as an experiência.
A second and significantly longer part of the book proposes a totemic analysis
of it: the religious mechanism of faith in an invisible leader, the worshiping of a dead
god; Christ’s monopoly of sex; the submissive role of women in that order and their
mechanisms of psychic self-preservation; the gregarious behavior of the Christian
horde; the mechanisms of fetish-objects, the narcissistic behavior in contemporary
Catholicism, and its emotional mechanisms toward other totemic organizations.
Regardless of the references to Frazer and Freud in his analysis, Carvalho does
not adopt a narrow concept of “totem”; rather he defines it as a vaguely symbolic
object or a general structure able to host the self and thus to work as an erotic holder
for narcissistic behavior.34 Such a conceptual move seems to allow him to redefine
the totem as a sort of machinery, a powerful operating object able to drive human
performances and emotions through certain directions, by the exchange of energies
with the environment and bodies around it.

THE NEW LOOK AS TOTEM

Twenty-five years later, in 1956, the subject matter of Experiência no. 3 does
not seem to have anything to do with religion. Or maybe it does, after all there is

23 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

another social taboo to be faced in public: the secular taboo of male dress codes.
Flávio de Carvalho is at the time fifty-seven years old, still very prolific, gray hair, a
public figure acclaimed as a pioneer of modernism in Brazil as well as an influential
chronicler, critic, and polemicist. He had personally organized, from 1937 to 1939,
three important contemporary art shows, including the Salões de Maio (May Salons),
widely considered the embryo of the São Paulo Biennial. The number of exhibitions
of his own artwork had also increased, including individual exhibitions at the Museu
de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MAM-SP), in 1948
and 1952, as well as participations at the first two editions of the Biennial in 1951 and
1953. He was therefore an established artist by that time, engaged on a much broader
scope of interests, activities, networks, and institutions.
The topic of wardrobe had become more central over the years as his
engagement with theater, dance, sets, and costume design had expanded. In 1944 he
started a vast research project on the history of fashion that led to the publication at
Diário de S. Paulo, seven months before his 1956 performance, of a series of thirty-
nine articles titled “A moda e o novo homem” (Fashion and the new man), which he
illustrated with one-hundred-and-nine drawings. The series was not at all meant for
encyclopedic use or for professional purposes. It was neither very scientific nor really
pedagogical.35 Based on a so called psycho-ethnographic method and on various
sources and iconographies and drawn from art history, anthropology, mythology,
literature, film, and news media, it was a clear attempt to think of fashion across
different epochs and cultures as marked by constant evolution, change, and variation
and referring to socially, biologically, and sexually based archetypes, dreams,
conventions, and dilemmas.
In the beginning of the year he started to develop a project for a new ready-
to-wear men’s outfit. It was meant to better correspond to the local hot and humid
weather. Several sketches clarify the effort to develop a prototype with wire frames
at the waist and shoulders in order to prevent contact between the tissue and
the body, thus allowing inner ventilation and perspiration. The model could even
contain blowing pipes to improve its performance. Comfortable and hygienic, it
should also be affordable, low maintenance (washing and drying), and available in
a variety of colors. After all, according to him, the joy of colors, practicality, and the
freedom of movement would positively affect the health and psyche of men and
“prevent wars and flu.”36
The project soon became a public campaign. Interviews were given and
dozens of supporters would soon appear, among them renowned artists, intellectuals,
journalists, architects, entrepreneurs, and politicians. By the end of March, one of
Brazil’s most prestigious men’s magazines, Visão (Vision), published a basic sketch
of a man wearing a puffy blouse and shorts. It was reminiscent of Flash Gordon’s

24 | LIRA
wardrobe but adapted to contemporary urban life, to which Visão added that the
“Brazilian ‘Dior’” would soon also develop other wears—for beach use, for the
countryside, for formal evening dinners, and for other seasons of the year, not just
summer.37 Indeed the reference to a New Look was humorously borrowed from
Christian Dior’s revolutionary women’s fashion of the postwar period.
Around that time, a rumor was spread about the idea of a collective parade of
men wearing his new costume. In interviews, Carvalho would even refer to a certain
choreography: the fashion parade would open with two vagabonds in their ragged
clothes; they would recite nonsensical monologues put together by the director of an
asylum.38 After all, those street dwellers, and other groups of lowest strata, “speaking
to imaginary audiences, lavishly dressed with ribbons, flowers and various cloths,”
had always mastered “the great imagination” as “supreme creators of fashion.” For if
fashion was “perfectly capable of containing, of calming and replacing the first signs
of mental imbalance,” men tended to “adorn their bodies” to restore themselves
when running out of control. Indeed, beyond its apparent futility, ornament worked
as a sort of “escape valve for regulating the pressure of the psyche.”39 In June, Time
magazine’s Latin American edition was boasting about such a “Brave New Look”:

Now Carvalho has taken to designing men’s summer clothing to replace “anti-functional, anti-
esthetic and anti-humane” traditional fashions, which he holds responsible for the younger
generation’s lack of imagination and general neurosis. . . . Carvalho’s brave, bright-colored
summer costumes consist of a blouse, long stockings, sandals and either shorts or a skirt.
Even a man bold enough to show himself in public wearing a skirt might well balk at the
Carvalho blouse, a balloon garment kept off the skin by an adjustable copper-wire frame.40

At some point, Carvalho hired the studio of Maria Ferrara, a renowned Italian
theater and dance clothier based in São Paulo since the city’s Fourth Centennial, to
execute the final version. After several adjustments to the original design, choice of
fabrics to be used, frame, sleeves, and collar, the prototype was finished: the new
look for the summer would be composed of a pleated cotton skirt (in fact a mini-
skirt), a vaporous blouse (with a pullout frilled collar, sewn on crystalized nylon, a
fabric recently created in the United States), a brimmed hat of the same material,
long fishnet stockings, and leather sandals. The iron frames of the blouse had been
replaced by plastic flippers in order to avoid rust. The first fitting was made in the
presence of MASP’s founder, Assis Chateaubriand, and was publicly shown at the
museum’s venues in a fashion show organized by the architect Lina Bo Bardi.41
Dressed in the outfit, Carvalho entered the public eye on the afternoon
of October 18, 1956. At the last minute, all of his supporters had disappeared,
surprised—as many declared—by the fact that the joke had materialized into a real
event. Accounts on what happened at the parade are quite diverse, but they all
identify an enormous excitement among the press and the crowd in general, both

25 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

eagerly looking forward for the New Look show. One of his biographers summarizes
Experiência no. 3’s multiple images projected by the media:

In the vicinity of his studio, on Barão de Itapetininga street, in the city center, TV, movie,
and radio trucks were parked, and there were news reporters from almost every powerful
newspaper in São Paulo, Rio, and even some correspondents from the United States,
Argentina, and Italy. . . . In the lobby of the building no. 297, where his studio was located,
there was virtually a chaotic situation: photographers and cameramen ran over each other
hysterically, livid and untidy reporters screamed and climbed the stairs and the elevators, film
and TV lighting paraphernalia were hastily assembled, and a huge audience of bystanders
crowded the sidewalks looking for a spot to watch the picturesque episode about to happen.42

In contrast to that bustle in the city’s center, the route taken by the artist was fairly
common. Carvalho went down Barão de Itapetininga Street and walked to a bar,
where he had a cup of coffee. Then he walked through several streets and, urged
by the audience, who knew that men were not allowed to go to the movies if not
dressed “properly,” he entered the Marrocos movie theater where the western
Tennessee’s Partner (ironically translated in Brazil as “Audacity is my law,” 1955,
with John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, and Ronald Reagan) was screened. Afterward
he headed to 7 de Abril Street, where the headquarters of Assis Chateubriand’s
newspaper Diários Associados as well as both MASP and MAM-SP were located.
In the newspaper lobby, Carvalho stood on a table, did some pirouettes for the
press, answered questions, and voiced useless philosophical considerations.
Inside the building, he changed his green skirt and yellow blouse for a white skirt
and a red blouse, and finally returned to the streets for a triumphal parade on top
of a convertible automobile. Everywhere he went, a multitude of strangers and
reporters, flashes and noise, followed the artist, who was marching solemnly, erect,
apparently calm, and indifferent to any stir or mockery, looking like an ordinary man
on a daily walk across the neighborhood.
On the next day, the newspapers published mixed expressions of
astonishment, disgust, and support about the event, and Carvalho gave a lecture
about it at the Artists’ and Art Friends’ Club. The club would host an “outfit of the
future ball” a week later, when a few other men would improvise similar outfits.
For months the experience would continue to make headlines. New exhibitions of
the outfit were organized. Two years later, the São Paulo newspaper Última Hora
noted an article recently published on Nature magazine by three Swedish scientists
at Stockholm University’s Institute of Radiophysics; the researchers maintained that
wearing skirts, instead of trousers, would prevent men from certain genetic mutations
and reproductive diseases.43 Carvalho’s New Look could even be endorsed by
scientific authorities for the welfare of the species and testicles.
In spite of its futuristic allusions, his new costume denoted a certain aesthetic

26 | LIRA
archaism. He himself didn’t look much at ease in it, a trait that is probably the essence
of elegance. Perhaps because of the eccentric situation, the crowd’s reaction (as
if facing a lunatic), or the exposure of arms and legs, his desire to craft an outfit
that ensures the body stays cool in the summer season could only be attained by
isolating the body from the fabric. The fact is that the new look for the summer
evokes a Roman centurion’s costume, in his armor, striped pteruges and sandals, or
an Ancient Egyptian skirt, or even a traditional Scottish kilt. Its stiff and severe aspect,
avoiding any modeling or compromise to the shapes and volumes of the human body
is actually quite traditional.44 Nothing could be more distant from Christian Dior’s
contemporary creations. But the costume’s formal aspects—its axes, colors, fabrics,
and mobility—and even its traditional background are only comprehensible if we
take into consideration its role as a performative or even a totemic device, that is, as
a system of public gestures acting socially and psychologically over highly dogmatic
and provincial macho values, playing down their universal claims, combining a clear
emphasis on the present to a voluntary anachronism,45 matching action and reflection
about action and thus highlighting ideas, ruptures, and infinite variations instead
of the object itself. In any case, the piece itself proves to take advantage of a rather
permissive technique, flexible, open, incorporating the unexpected, the paradoxical,
and even the risible, like the figure of pipes to be blown while marching.

ARCHITECTURE FOR/AS PERFORMANCE

Experiência no. 3 was built around the same time Flávio de Carvalho was
designing the International Music University. Set in the countryside of São Paulo,
near the border with Rio, the project was commissioned by Juventude Musical
Brasileira (Brazilian Music Youth), an organization founded in 1952 by his friend
Eleazar de Carvalho, the chief conductor of the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira,
who had played with samba masters Almirante, Donga, and Pixinguinha in a jazz
band. Eleazar de Carvalho was the mentor of several young Brazilian musicians,
including Nelson Freire, Cristina Ortiz, and Issac Karabtchevsky through the Youth
Concerts (Concertos para a Juventude) series he had launched in the 1940s.46
Inspired in Tanglewood, where the conductor had studied in 1946, Flávio’s plan for
the University proposed a similar infrastructure to Berkshire Music Center, including
a monumental stadium theater with a revolving stage, an amphitheater for thirty
thousand people, a five-thousand-seat auditorium, teaching studios, dorms for four
hundred students, restaurants, and a museum among other features. Composed of
eighteen different buildings, the institution was conceived to include seven different
departments: music, opera, dance, theater, humanities, electronic music, and visual

27 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

arts.47 Dedicated to the performing arts, its performative dimension would also be
present in its unique, dashing, ultra-modern architecture, appealing to a space age,
googie styling (akin to Oscar Niemeyer, Buckminster Fuller or John Lautner) through
a variety of structures,48 parabolic arches, geodesics, porticos, cupolas, sloping roofs,
suspended buildings of steel, concrete, and lots of glass.
As usual, Carvalho’s plan wasn’t executed; the whole idea was aborted under
Juscelino Kubitschek’s term as president of Brazil, while Brasilia was being built.
Nevertheless, it is probably more intriguing to find such a performative dimension
in a less noticeable or excessive project, to which the links between architecture
and performance rise on a different level. Consider the group of seventeen middle-
class houses he designed and built as a personal investment, from 1933 to 1938, at
Alameda Lorena in São Paulo. The ensemble is certainly appealing to an architectural
historian working with modernism in Brazil, but it is far from being an amazing design
achievement, like for instance the streets Robert Mallet-Stevens and André Lurçat
designed in Paris in the late 1920s. To a certain extent it is quite a conventional project.
For example, the way the whole group faces the urban scale in terms of individual
lots and single-family houses; its traditional brickwork, at a time when Brazil saw
tremendous development with concrete and reinforced concrete among other building
technologies; or its basic attitude toward the domestic program, with the typical
Brazilian middle-class four-bedroom home, including one for the housekeeper. In my
opinion, the most innovative aspects of the project are connected to its scenic effects.
On the one hand, Carvalho approaches the built environment as a provocative
device, breaking with the functionalist asceticism—hence, the volumetric animation of
the whole public vista by means of variation of planes, volumes, heights, silhouettes
and openings; the inclusion of almost scenic episodes as little exterior staircases
leading to roof-terraces, some of which are protected by concrete umbrellas; several
kinds of plaster and texture employed on vertical surfaces; and the animistic solution
of a few individual facades, like human masks or faces. The interior is no less relevant
scenically with its high-ceiling living rooms, long upstairs galleries, and freakish
elements, such as curtains acting as partitions.
On the other hand, the building exhibits a discursive agency, embodied in
its propaganda and in the very peculiar users’ manual, which should instruct their
renters on “how to use” their homes. It advertises, for instance, the houses as “new
models made for 1938 and 1939,” like a fashion collection or a certain car model.
They even take advantage of the architect’s celebrity on the presentation of his “latest
creations.” But it is surely the “How to use” pamphlet that seems to act as releasing
a system of actions. It is not only a set of instructions on practical ways of living, as
usual among modern architecture advertising but a performative gesture in itself. Its
content might be helpful in functional terms, even when it sounds not that useful, like

28 | LIRA
when describing how to fix “colored canvas curtains” in the solarium, “sloping as a
tent,” employing different colors of curtains according to the weather or the tenant’s
mood, or when suggesting the use of railings “to hang bird cages or vases” for
paper flowers. But the very fact of providing his eventual tenants with such “carefully
specified ‘directions for use’”49 implies a screenplay of sorts. Everywhere, then, the
architectural space is thought through “the signs of a world as theater.”50
What is at stake, therefore, is neither a specific setting nor a given scene, not
even a certain mis-en-scène in the traditional sense of representation. The center
is still the body in its organic, motor, mental, and emotional functioning, in its role
as a dwelling place in time and space. And in this process, thus, it is again his own
body the actual battlefield; in this case for a new spatial organization which would
only be complete through the development of new body techniques, that is, a new
way of ritualizing certain parts of the body, certain physical provisions, reactions,
and movements, certain environmental circumstances, certain everyday gestures
and current sensations, feelings, and experiences. In short, then, what is at stake
is another body technique, a fixation, as Mauss would say, under the conditions
of contemporary urban-industrial society, of certain physio-psycho-sociological
assemblies of series of acts related to dwelling, of a new tradition of making use of
our own bodies at home.51
Flávio de Carvalho knew that one of the very values of the mechanized
world was actually the possibility of emancipating man’s bodies to other social
gestures. Since at least 1937 he had insisted in several articles and radio lectures
on the “twentieth-century man’s house.” Entirely permeated by the machine
it should be redefined as a mere “point of passage, a resting place in the daily
routine,” increasingly enjoyed within the “city’s premises.” The house in general
and the workers’ housing in particular needed to be redefined in light of the
legitimate achievements of “mentalism” against the ancestral powers of emotions.52
Notwithstanding, those dirty and grotesque emotions, always in friction with each
other, continued to operate and required the overtaking of scientific knowledge by the
use of instinct and intuition in order to act effectively on the world. Irreducible to the
functionalist concept, such a “machine for living” would thus also operate as a kind
of totem. Offered to the sacred, its raison d’être passed by the celebration of tensions
between constructive powers and the unconscious drives in man. This seems quite
evident in a 1940 text, in which Carvalho advocated the refusal of the manorial idea of
the house as a defensive space, a place of fear. For him, a new domestic cosmogony
should be created in close and sensitive connection to life around it. That would be
both its fragility and strength, allowing the contemporary expansion of men’s “time
for action,” the “internationalization of their ways to perceive life,” the collective
enjoyment of “a new emotivity” and the occupation of streets.53

29 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

 It is true that the group of houses at Alameda Lorena does not entirely
materialize these ideas. And the numerous newspaper articles published at its
inauguration, often resulting from the architect’s media strategies, were surprisingly
almost always completely indifferent to such issues, mainly interested in its
functional proposals—indeed more appealing to its commercial purpose—and
leaving aside its most experimental aspects. One exception is a short article,
unassumingly titled “New Models of the Rental House,” in which the author relates
a conversation he had with the architect, whose project he would question if it
was about “houses or voodoo; architecture or fetish.” There, we find, for instance,
Carvalho placing those new models into the performative vein he would keep on
exploring all throughout his life: “I wish a thorough explanation of these rental
homes,” asks the reporter; “The idea is not mine. It’s Jules Verne’s. I do not adorn
myself with peacock feathers,” Carvalho answers; the reporter insists: “Flávio,
my Flávio, why are you so modest?”; to which Carvalho replies, “It is not a matter
of modesty. I don’t want people to call me crazy. I also did these houses as an
experiência. It is my fifth or sixth experiência. If it works, it’s my idea; if not, it is
Jules Verne’s.” He thus ascribes a broader role to architecture, much closer to
invention, utopia, and scientific fiction than solely a functional mechanism. Toward
the end of the interview he offers us a performative pearl: “On the day that I rent
one of these houses . . . either myself or the tenant is nuts.”54

30 | LIRA
Notes Carvalho (master’s thesis, sobre uma procissão de ossos do mundo (São Paulo:
FAU-USP, São Paulo, 1995); Corpus-Christi; uma possível Ariel, 1936), 42–49.
1/ Desvíos de la deriva: Valeska Freitas, Dialética teoria e uma experiência (São
Experiencias, travesías y da aoda: A máquina Paulo: Irmãos Ferraz, 1931). 16 / In the original: “Un
morfologías, May 5 to August experimental de Flavio de hommage chaleureux à
23, 2010, Museo Nacional Carvalho (master’s thesis 6/ Stigger, “Flavio de son talent de la lumière. Un
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, UFSC, Florianópolis, 1997); Carvalho.” souvenir d’un journée dans
Madrid; Form and Feeling: Luis Camilo Osório, Flavio de sa maison où le gout de la
The Making of Concretism, Carvalho (São Paulo: Cosac 7/ See José Lira, vie, le gout délicieux d’être au
February 8, 2016, Bronx and Naify, 2000); William “Modernismo, erotismo e monde . . . anime le frisson
Museum, New York; Are Golino, História d’O bailado domesticidade masculine: a d’un long et déréglé baiser.”
We Human?, October 22 to do deus morto: Uma radical casa Capuava de Flavio de
November 2016, 3rd Istanbul modernização do teatro Carvalho,” in Domesticidade, 17 / In the original: “des
Design Biennial, Istanbul; no Brasil (master’s thesis, gênero e cultura material, ed. heures dans la compagnie
The Bones of the World, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, José Lira, Joana Mello, Flavia d’hommes et femmes qui ont
September 7 to November 9, 2002); Carolina Pierotti Brito, and Silvana Rubino le culte de l’art, de la beauté.
2019, 11th Berlin Biennale for Rossetti, Flávio de Carvalho: (São Paulo: Edusp/CPC, Merci.”
Contemporary Art, Berlin. Questões de arquitetura e 2017), 283–312.
urbanismo (master’s thesis, 18 / Flávio de Carvalho
2/ Luiz Carlos Daher, EESC-USP, São Carlos, 8/ Flavio de Carvalho, Livro dos comensais, n.d., file
Arquitetura e expressionismo: 2007); Simone Aparecida de Mecanismo da emoção 2, Flávio de Carvalho Papers,
Notas sobre a estética do Oliveira, A poética radical amorosa (São Paulo, 1934). Centro de Documentação
projeto expressionista, o no modernismo brasileiro: A Alexandre Eulálio/
modernismo e Flávio de “Experiência no. 2” de Flávio 9/ Daher, Flavio de Universidade Estadual de
Carvalho (São Paulo: FAU- de Carvalho (master’s thesis, Carvalho, 153; Osorio, Flavio Campinas, Campinas-SP.
USP, 1979); Daher, Flavio de PUC-SP, São Paulo, 2008); de Carvalho, 29; Ishida,
Carvalho e a volupia da forma Ana Maria Maia Antunes, Desenho, desejo e designio, 19 / Beatriz Preciado,
(São Paulo: Ed. K, 1984); Rui Da contemporaneidade de 6. Pornotopia: An Essay on
Moreira Leite and Walter Flávio de Carvalho: Revisão Playboy’s Architecture and
Zanini, Flávio de Carvalho— bibliográfica dos principais 10 / Dulce Carneiro, “A casa Biopolitics (New York: Zone
Exposição retrospectiva (São estudos sobre o artista de de Flávio de Carvalho,” Casa Books, 2014), 110–111.
Paulo: Bienal Internacional 1979 a 2010 (master’s thesis, and Jardim, no. 40 (January–
de Arte, 1983); Sangirardi, Faculdades Santa Marcelina, February 1958): 37. 20 / Flávio de Carvalho,
Jr., Flávio de Carvalho, o São Paulo, 2012); Marco “Experiência número zero,”
revolucionário romantic (Rio Anselmo Vasques, Ideias e 11 / Michel Delon, Le Diário de S. Paulo, July 6,
de Janeiro: Philobiblion, práticas teatrais de Flavio de savoir-vivre libertin (Paris: 1943.
1985); Antonio Carlos Robert Carvalho (master’s thesis, Hachette, 2000).
Moraes, Flavio de Carvalho UFSC, Florianópolis, 2014); 21 / Rui Moreira
(São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986); Veronica Stigger, “Flavio 12 / The main room Leite,”Flavio de Carvalho:
J. Toledo, Flávio de Carvalho: de Carvalho: Arqueologia measured 54.125 feet (16.5 Media artist avant la lettre,”
O comedor de emoções (São e contemporaneidade,” meters) long, 24.5 feet (7.5 Leonardo 37, no. 2 (2004):
Paulo: Brasiliense/Campinas, Celeuma, no. 4 (May 2014). meters) wide and 26.25 feet 150–157.
Ed. da Unicamp, 1994); and (8 meters) high.
Rui Moreira Leite, Flávio 4/ The word experiência 22 / Flavio de Carvalho,
de Carvalho (1899–1973): in Brazilian refers to both 13 / Carneiro, “A casa de “Uma these curiosa,” Diário
Entre a experiência e a the ideas of an (artistic or Flávio de Carvalho,” 40. da Noite, São Paulo, July 1,
experimentação (São Paulo: scientific) experiment and a 1930.
PhD dissertation, Escola living, sensorial, and social 14 / Ghislaine Wood. “The
de Comunicação e Artes, experience. In that sense Illusory Interior,” in Surreal 23 / José Lira, “The
Universidade de São Paulo, we have opted to keep the Things: Surrealism and Anthropofagic Body and the
1994). original word in Portuguese Design, ed. Guislaine Wood City: Flávio de Carvalho,”
in this version of the essay. (London: Victoria and Albert in Are We Human? 3rd
3/ Americo Ishida, Museum, 2007), 2–15. Istanbul Design Biennial, ed.
Desenho, desejo e designio 5/ Flavio de Carvalho, Beatriz Colomina and Mark
na arquitetura de Flávio de Experiência no. 2, realizada 15 / Flávio de Carvalho, Os Wigley (Istanbul: Istanbul

31 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

Foundation for Culture and Reflexão sobre o culto fashion and particularly 46 / “Vida Musical da
Arts, 2016), 418–421. moderno dos deuses fe(i) women’s costumes as an Juventude Musical Brasileira,
tiches (Bauru, SP: Edusc, anthropological system of Ano I-outubro–novembro de
24 / A reasonable part 2002). signs, based on class, gender, 1955 no. 4,” cited in Fernando
of his private library, and psychological functions Menon, Jeunesses Musicales
as well as much of his 30 / Carvalho, Experiência and thus to be read as a e sua representação civil no
writings, correspondence, no. 2, 16. form of art on the crossroads Paraná: Juventude Musical
photographs, drawings, films, between the visual arts and Brasileira, 8a. Região PR/SC,
newspaper scrapbooks and 31 / “O ideal minor arts, like the arts of the setor do Paraná (master’s
more is kept in the Alexandre anthropophágico no IV body and of rhythm. See Gilda thesis, UFPR, Curitiba, 2008),
Eulálio Documentation Congresso de Architectos,” de Mello e Souza, O espírito 57.
Center at Campinas State O Estado de Minas, 9 July 9 das roupas: A moda no
University in Cedae, in the 1930. século dezenove (São Paulo: 47 / Mário Cabral,
state of São Paulo. Companhia das Letras, 1987). “Universidade Internacional
32 / Carvalho, Experiência de Música,” Tribuna da
25 / Flávio de Carvalho, no. 2, 35. 36 / Daniel Linguanotto, Imprensa, August 16, 1955,
“A Nova Forma Poética: “Flávio de Carvalho estreou 3; “Paisagens, paz e poesia
Conversa com Tristan 33 / “O ‘test’psychológico seu New Look—é de nylon e cercarão a Universidade
Tzara,” Diário de São do engenheiro não se repetirá de brim, acalma os nervos, Estadual de Música,”
Paulo, August 27, 1935; . . . Querendo conhecer a força evita as guerras, previne Ultima Hora, April 3, 1956;
Carvalho, “O Voluptuoso e da multidão, fugiu e acabou resfriados,” Manchete, “Isolada dentro do mundo
o Inesquecível: entrevista sendo preso.” Diário da October 27, 1956, 72–75. a Universidade de Eleazar,”
com Man Ray,” Diário Noite, June 8, 1931. See also, Tribuna da Imprensa,
de São Paulo, 31 August “Uma experiência perigosa: 37 / “Um novo figurino: September 6, 1956, 2; “Já
1935; Carvalho, “Sciencia cada qual com a sua mania.” Os homens usarão saiote,” foi entregue o projeto da
e lyrismo: Entrevista com Diário Popular, June 8, 1931; Visão, March 30, 1956, 72. Universidade Internacional
Roger Caillois,” Diário de São “Lyncha! Lyncha! Gritou a das Artes,” O Estado de
Paulo, September 10, 1935; multidão; e o psychologo 38 / “Saiote e blusão,” S. Paulo, September 20,
Carvalho, “Surrealismo: que durante a procissão de Tribuna da Imprensa, March 1956; “Transformação do
entrevista com Andre ‘Corpus Christi’ queria fazer 21, 1956, 7. Vale do Paraíba em Centro
Breton,” Cultura (February– uma experiência sobre a Internacional de Artes,” O
March 1939). psychologia das multidões, 39 / Flavio de Carvalho, Globo, November 23, 1959.
refugiou-se na Leiteria Campo “A moda e o novo homem,” See also Rossetti, Flávio de
26 / Flávio de Carvalho, Bello.” Correio do Povo, June Diário de São Paulo, March Carvalho, 242–250.
“A Nova Orientação: Um 8, 1931; “Experiência mal 31, 1956.
laboratório de experiências succedida: queria estudar a 48 / Alan Hess, Googie
para a arte moderna,” Diário psychologia das multidões 40 / “Playboy at work,” Redux: ultramodern roadside
da Noite, May 1, 1933; e o povo, indignado, Time, Latin American Edition, architecture (San Francisco,
Carvalho, “O caso do Teatro quasi lynchou o curioso June 25, 1956, 30 CA, Chronicle Books, 2004).
da Experiência (carta aberta engenheiro.” A Gazeta, June
ao Dr. Costa Netto, delegado 8, 1931. 41 / “Saiote e blusão,” 49 / Luis Martins, “Ar
de Costumes),” Diário da Tribuna da Imprensa, March condicionado,” O Estado de
Noite, December 8, 1933. 34 / Carvalho, Experiência 21, 1956, 7. S. Paulo, April 13, 1961, cited
no. 2, 56. in Rui Moreira Leite, “Flavio
27 / Paulo Mendes de 42 / Toledo, Flávio de de Carvalho: Modernism
Almeida, De Anita ao Museu 35 / In 1950, Brazilian art Carvalho, 516. and the Avant-garde in São
(São Paulo: Perspectiva, sociologist and critic Gilda Paulo, 1927–1939,” Journal of
1976), 76–78. de Mello e Souza—in her 43 / Toledo, 528. Decorative and Propaganda
PhD dissertation, “Fashion in Arts 21 (1995): 208.
28 / Carvalho, Experiência the nineteenth century,” in 44 / Mello e Souza, “A
no. 2, 15. which she analyzed Brazilian moda como arte,” in O 50 / Daher, Flavio de
literature and photography, Espirito das Roupas, 26–51. Carvalho, 61.
29 / A wordplay, something foreign travelers’ accounts,
like “Magic objects/Made and other historical 45 / Stigger, “Flavio de 51 / Marcel Mauss, “Les
objects.” See Bruno Latour, sources—would look at Carvalho.” techniques du corps,” in

32 | LIRA
Techniques, Technologies et
Civilisation (Paris: PUF, 2012),
365–394.

52 / Flavio de Carvalho, “A
casa do homem do século
XX,” Diário de São Paulo,
February 27, 1938.

53 / Flavio de Carvalho,
“A máquina e a casa do
homem do século XX.” Dom
Casmurro, March 2, 1940.

54 / “Novos modelos
de casa de aluguel: Flávio
de Carvalho e as suas
experiências; o homem que
fugiu de Deus para fazer o
diabo! Casas ou macumba;
arquitetura ou feitiço,” O
Governador, June 16, 1938.

33 | ARCHITECTURAL MECHANISMS AND BODY TECHNIQUES

FORM AND 2
SENSIBILITY
Discursive Discrepancies
in Concrete and
Neoconcrete Art
Michael Asbury

The advent of the neoconstructivist avant-gardes in Brazil during the mid-

twentieth century has become consolidated as a local art historical canon. As always,
canonization takes place at the expense of the complexities and even contradictions
of those movements and artists it celebrates. The denomination “local canon” may
itself be misleading, for in this particular case it has been to a large extent legitimized
internationally through the projection, reception, and collection of Brazilian art
abroad. More problematic still is the association between locale and a particular
form of discourse, one that is seen to belong to the character and “temper” of a
particular place. Nowhere is this more explicitly affirmed than in the so-called rift
between paulistas (São Paulo natives) and cariocas (Rio de Janeiro natives), through
art critical discourse pertaining to the concrete and neoconcrete movements. The
association between place and “artistic temper,” particularly when viewed from the
“outside,” becomes therefore all the more problematic. Writing from such a position
and, precisely because of this, aware of the dangers of essentializing such production,
I explore in this essay some of the inconsistencies within the respective discourses
in order to open new avenues for debate and (art) historical understanding. This
is therefore not a grand historical survey but a brief investigation into certain
discrepancies that were already present within contemporaneous critical discourse,
intent to escape the somewhat reductive light to which such movements have
become exposed.
 Reviewing the early São Paulo Biennials for a special edition of the Folha
de São Paulo newspaper in 2001, the concrete poet Décio Pignatari recalled the
controversy behind the national painting award at the occasion of its second edition
in 1953. Known as the Guernica Biennial, it surveyed the pioneering efforts of
European modernism, yet Pignatari’s focus was on the Brazilian participation. His
emphasis related to the consolidation of concrete art in Brazil, a movement that he
himself, together with poets Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, had become closely
allied to over the course of the 1950s. Pignatari’s choice to remember how Alfredo
Volpi came to share the national painting prize with Emiliano Di Cavalcanti may not
seem at first the most obvious subject for review by a concrete poet, yet precisely
because of this it is all the more revealing of the complex interconnections across
critical discourses in mid–twentieth-century Brazilian modern art.
It was in fact only natural that Pignatari would wish to undermine a painter
such as Di Cavalcanti, whose paintings had sought to represent the “Brazilian
people,” their customs and habits, in short, their character. A central figure in
the figuration versus abstraction debate, Di Cavalcanti had protested the wave of
abstraction that, in his opinion, had been uncritically imported and presented at
the first São Paulo Biennial in 1951. It may seem reasonable to assume that it was
not so much the manner in which Di Cavalcanti’s subjects were represented but
representation itself that bothered Pignatari. Yet at that moment, Volpi could hardly
be called an abstractionist himself. On the contrary, a self-taught painter of modest
background, his compositions of vernacular façades, festive flags, and buntings also
celebrated popular Brazilian scenes and were often wrongly interpreted as naïf. In his
review, Pignatari sought to repel the latter as a misguided conception:

At the 2nd Biennial, . . . the Jury was composed of a mixture of Brazilians and foreigners.
These, at the first edition, concerned themselves with the international prizes, taking little
notice of the national representation: the Brazilians were left to share their cake as their taste
demanded. Being as such the great prize had already been promised to Di Cavalcanti.

Yet the Brazilian group had not counted with the ethical integrity of Herbert Read,
that great name of art criticism and literature from England (also a poet), who is said to
have argued: “If there is someone here who should receive a prize it is Alfredo Volpi.” Utter
national shock. Read was ready to go to the press to denounce the plot. In the end, the prize
was conceded to both, with Read insisting that Volpi’s name appeared first. It was from that
point that the São Paulo concrete art group (to which I belonged), under the leadership of
Waldemar Cordeiro, became enamored with admiration for Volpi, who I audaciously and
polemically considered and still consider, as the “first and last great Brazilian painter” who
the ignorant, in the American fashion, call the “painter of buntings.”1

His reference to “the American fashion” might in fact have been a rhetorical means
of disassociating himself from the binary logic, articulated by the Modernistas
in their critique of the first Biennial, one that associated abstraction with North

36 | ASBURY
American cultural imperialism and representation with national identity and thus
cultural liberation. One could add that Volpi would himself disrupt other quite distinct
dichotomies, as will be discussed below.
Over the course of the 1950s, the concrete art group’s adulation of Volpi’s work
would contradict some of their own fiercely held premises. Such a contradiction is
somewhat camouflaged by the fact that Volpi, perhaps in response to the attention
he received, began to elaborate complex geometric compositions and motifs that
at first sight appeared increasingly concrete in nature. It is worth remembering that
the term concrete art had been created by Theo van Doesburg in 1930 as a way of
distinguishing a particular form of abstraction that drew directly from geometry to
create “concrete” forms, rather than abstracting from the observable world. In this
respect, Volpi’s geometric compositions never fully escaped the condition of being
abstractions from nature, given their undeniable relation to his former paintings
of buntings, facades, and rooftops, in short, to those themes he never entirely
abandoned and indeed would always return to.
Pignatari’s statement is thus somewhat discordant from the orthodox art
historical view that stresses the dichotomy between the mathematical basis ruling
concrete creation that the consensus sees as characteristic of the São Paulo–based
concrete art Ruptura Group (active from 1952) and that is juxtaposed with the intuitive
approach pursued by the Rio de Janeiro–based neoconcrete artists. The latter had
emerged toward the end of the 1950s out of the loose gathering of artists formally
associated with the Grupo Frente (established in 1954). Discrepancies such as this,
whether stemming from the discourse relating to São Paulo concrete art or the Rio
de Janeiro neoconcrete movement (officially established in 1959), are the subject of
this essay. It focuses on the figures of painter Alfredo Volpi in São Paulo and sculptor
Franz Weissmann in Rio de Janeiro, drawing on the respective critical discourses that
evolved around each of them.

THEORETICAL CONVERGENCE

There is a marked interest in Volpi’s work expressed by Mário Pedrosa

following the 1953 São Paulo Biennial painting awards, most notably in his
organization of a retrospective exhibition on the artist in 1957 when the art critic
described Volpi as the Brazilian master of his time.2 Later, Pedrosa would organize
a special gallery dedicated to Volpi at the 6th São Paulo Biennial in 1961 for which,
as director of the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, he acted as curator as was
then customary practice. Yet, it would be a little too simplistic to attribute Pedrosa’s
interest in Volpi as stemming purely from recognition and respect for the British critic

37 | FORM AND SENSIBILITY

Herbert Read. Indeed, it is possible to identify certain common traits and interests
from the writing of both art critics.
It seems quite clear that Volpi represented for Pedrosa a critical link between
contemporaneous art in Brazil, the theoretical paradigm he had been developing
since his studies on Gestalt psychology—exposed in his 1949 thesis, “The Affective
Nature of Form in the Work of Art”—and his political views on the nature and
the possibilities of art within modern societies. Within such a broad spectrum
of interests, Pedrosa attempted to articulate the notion of the autonomy of art,
or a scientific approach as he saw it, in the context of constructivist-orientated
abstraction. He understood this position in opposition to the excessive subjectivity
defended at the time by figures such as André Breton.
Projecting itself as universal, Pedrosa’s intellectual and aesthetic outlook
had the added requirement of combating the legacy reminiscent of socialist realism
that is present within the figurative modernist tradition in Brazil, a legacy that had
informed Di Cavalcanti’s attacks on abstraction during the Biennial in 1951.3 Being
himself a Trotskyist militant, it was important for Pedrosa to separate left-wing
politics from figurative art through a critical perspective that evaded the simplistic
binary formulation that had been conjured within the context of Cold War politics. For
Pedrosa, evidence for such a perspective would arise from quite unexpected quarters.
Invited by Almir Mavignier, Pedrosa had come into contact with extraordinary
examples of so-called outsider art. The art critic would articulate such work in relation
to notions of symbolic form and the universalist potential of abstraction.
Employed in the late 1940s at the National Psychiatric Hospital in the Engenho
de Dentro neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Mavignier, together with Dr. Nise da
Silveira, established art therapy workshops for the patients as an alternative to
medication and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Having witnessed the extraordinary
work produced by inmates, Mavignier invited artists Ivan Serpa and Abraham Palatnik
as well as art critic Mário Pedrosa to contribute to those workshops. Later, other
artists such as Lygia Pape and exhibition organizers such as Leon Degand, the then
director of São Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art, would also attend. Yet for the four
initial contributors (Mavignier, Serpa, Palatnik, and Pedrosa) the experience with the
patients would be particularly significant.
Mavignier, Palatnik, and Serpa also participated in that first edition of the
São Paulo Biennial in 1951, with the latter being awarded the young painter’s
prize. Palatnik, who became so impressed by the work of the patients, had by then
abandoned painting all together and submitted, with Pedrosa’s encouragement,
his first Kinechromatic apparatus. The artwork left the Biennial’s awarding jury so
perplexed that they could not categorize it under any of the running prizes (painting,
sculpture, or prints) and so it remained hors concours.4

38 | ASBURY
 Perhaps the most visually striking Catalog of Grupo Frente
second exhibition,1955.
proximity between concurrent avant-
Collection of the Museu de
garde practice and the work of the Arte Moderna do Rio de
psychiatric patients was the cover of the Janeiro.

first Grupo Frente exhibition catalog in

1955. It is undoubtedly significant that
in the years preceding that first Frente
Group show a number of high-profile
exhibitions by Engenho de Dentro
interns took place. Perhaps not so
coincidently, given Ivan Serpa’s leading
role within Grupo Frente, the cover for
its first exhibition catalog is somewhat
reminiscent of Artur Amora’s paintings,
one of the Engenho de Dentro patients
who approached painting through a
process of simplification of patterns
found in domino pieces.5
In 1949, through Mavignier’s intervention, the Museum of Modern Art in
São Paulo hosted what turned out to be a somewhat controversial exhibition of
work by Engenho de Dentro patients, selected by Leon Degand. For that occasion,
Pedrosa wrote an article entitled “Arte: Necessidade Vital” (Art: Vital necessity) that
refers to Dubuffet’s notion of Art Brut (of 1945). It is not clear whether, other than by
Pedrosa himself, such a term was known among the artists working at Engenho de
Dentro. However, according to Glaucia Villas Boas, Pedrosa from the outset of his
involvement with the psychiatric hospital possessed knowledge of Hans Prinzhorn,
who he later cites in his 1951 essay “Forma e personalidade” (Form and personality).6
Prinzhorn published Artistry of the Mentally Ill in 1922 based on his work on diagnosed
schizophrenics.7 Dubuffet’s own collection and articulation of Art Brut is said to owe a
great debt to Prinzhorn’s study. In relation to the latter, the artist affirmed, for instance:
“[The] innate necessity for expression could only be satisfied with the construction of
forms [, giving his theory] a universal character . . . by the admission that the art of the
insane could only be understood by the identification of pulsations towards the game,
the ornamental, order, imitation and symbolization. [As such] there was no reason
to discriminate the art of schizophrenics from the Fine Arts, except if considered by
a dogmatic and outdated attitude.”8 In 1947, reviewing an earlier exhibition of 245
works by Engenho de Dentro inmates at the Ministry of Education and Culture in Rio
de Janeiro, Pedrosa had already argued that “no one would deny that such works are
harmonious, seductive, dramatic, alive or beautiful, in short, true works of art.”9 In

39 | FORM AND SENSIBILITY

1949 however, Pedrosa was forced to paraphrase Prinzhorn’s argument in response
to accusations by the academic artist and art journalist Quirino Campofiorito, who
argued that such work could not be considered art but instead consisted of “simply a
means to provide the unfortunate creature an escape from the mental torments that
affect his normal equilibrium.”10 Pedrosa’s response to Campofiorito was blunt: “Worst
of all is that there really is an analogy and similarity between one art and the other,
as there is with that of children. This proves only that the reporter does not know
what art is and takes nudes and the conventional statues of the academics as artistic
expressions. . . . The artist is not that who has a diploma from the National School
of Fine Arts, otherwise we would not have artists amongst the primitive peoples,
including our native Indians.”11 Works from that 1949 exhibition were shown in 1950
at the Psychopathic Art exhibition in Paris during the 1st International Congress of
Psychiatry. Moreover, in 1957 Carl Jung inaugurated an exhibition of paintings from
Engenho de Dentro interns, archived within the then newly formed Museum of the
Unconscious, during the 2nd International Congress of Psychiatry in Zurich.12
A sense of wonder and timelessness was expressed by Dr. Nise da Silveira
upon her discovery of certain motifs found in the work of her patients which she
promptly associated with Jungian archetypes. Beyond their common, if unconnected,
correspondence with Carl Jung, Silveira shared with Herbert Read an intellectual
allegiance with the political ideology of anarchism, which in the case of the art critic,
informed his interpretation of the significance of such archetypal imagery.
We find in Read’s writing similarities with Pedrosa’s project for the affirmation
of the universal qualities of such works, despite the fact that Pedrosa never ascribed
to the Jungian archetypal repertoire.
In a similar experience to that of Silveira, Read, in what he described as
“something of an apocalyptic experience,” became “deeply moved . . . upon
immediately recognizing [in the drawing of a five-year-old girl, the figure of a]
‘mandala,’ an ancient symbol of psychic unity, universally found in prehistoric and
primitive art and in all principle cultures of history.”13
According to art historian David Thistlewood, the discovery would make
of Read “in all major respects, a follower of Jung” from the early 1940s onward.14
Moreover, for Thistlewood, the conversion would affect the way in which Read would
identify the practice of modern art with psycho-political patterns of creative power:

A fixing upon abstract unities; a collation of personality traits specifically outside of

the self; the celebration of maternity; an acknowledgment of belonging to the land—all
these projections-beyond-self, Read thought, were fundamentally anarchistic. Moreover,
objectified in creative works which he knew very well indeed—the mandala in Gabo’s
constructions; the Dark Shadow in his own novel The Green Child; maternal and terrestrial
forms respectively in Moore’s and Hepworth’s sculpture—they helped substantiate Jung’s
demand for a reconciliation of individuals and the group.15

40 | ASBURY
Perhaps it was precisely this combination 2nd São Paulo Biennial,
1953. Catalog cover design
of themes—the sense of belonging; the
by Danilo Di Prete. Fundação
rhythmic patterns, and the maternity Bienal de São Paulo / Arquivo
theme—which may have attracted Read Histórico Wanda Svevo.

to Volpi’s paintings at the Biennial in

1953. Another supposition would be
that he identified in Volpi’s themes and
style an approximation with the work of
Alfred Wallis, a self-taught painter from
St. Yves, whose work was discovered by
Ben Nicholson in the late 1920s.16
For Pedrosa, on the one hand, it
seems clear that Volpi would represent
a synthesis of both frontlines in his
aesthetic-ideological ethos. As Arantes
has argued: “returning his attention
to primitive art, [Pedrosa] mobilizes
knowledge that allows him to relate
those artistic forms with the ways of
life of archaic civilizations. Similarly,
comparing the child, the schizophrenic and the artist, he is obliged to pay attention
to the issues related to the unconscious.”17 Arantes describes Pedrosa’s gradual
incorporation of the psychoanalytical approach, arguing that although totally
discarded in 1949 due to its purely subjective emphasis (and here Arantes adds:
“which is incompatible with a concrete psychology”), by 1951, in his essay “Forma
e personalidade” (Form and personality), the debate revolves around the emotional
subtracts that could perhaps be behind aesthetic pleasure, even if the intent is to
prove that such a phenomenon escapes both Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytical
interpretations.18
According to Arantes, there is already a shift toward an interior model of
reasoning which is made all the more evident by the text’s emphasis on “the primitive
manifestation in art” which ultimately led Pedrosa to question the relation between
symbolic values and formal structures. Moreover, Arantes argues that it is through
his reading of Susanne Langer that Pedrosa (expressed in a paper given at the Fourth
International Art Critics Association in Dublin 1953, the very year of Volpi’s prize)
would finally loosen his position by recognizing that visual perception “is not merely
a sensorial and mental process of the surface” but comes from the unconscious
and crystallizes itself in consciousness after “a battle between several perceptive
layers.”19 Read’s response to Langer, on the other hand, seems strikingly similar to

41 | FORM AND SENSIBILITY

descriptions of concrete art: “The whole of Langer’s work . . . considered the work
of art as to be received as a vivid presentation of itself. It is not to be regarded as a
stimulus to spurious feeling, but rather as the symbolic form of a specific, extended or
heightened experience. Such finely articulated symbols might not be translated into
other modes of expression; and the pretense to interpret them discursively is vain.”20
Through Langer’s work—on Gestalt in “Presentational Forms” or “Life Symbols” and
its references to primitive abstraction, or indeed through other studies such as the
“Roots of Myth”—Read’s and Pedrosa’s views on the universalism of abstract form,
as well as the symbolic transformation and sensibility in art in the broadest sense
of the word, approach each other’s, at precisely the moment Volpi is awarded the
National Painting Prize.21
To consider Volpi as somewhat of an “outsider” was therefore a necessary
consequence of such a theoretical framework developed in parallel by the
respective art critics. It was however one that did not fully respect the actual
creative conditions of the artist himself. Tracing Volpi’s early trajectory, art critic
Lorenzo Mammi stated how the artist was not as isolated as Pedrosa implied but
that he had direct contact with events considered as historically significant within
Brazilian modernism. Volpi attended for instance the 1917 controversial exhibition of
expressionist paintings by Anita Malfatti as well as Fillipo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1926
public address in São Paulo. During the 1920s, as Mammi argues, Volpi had already
suppressed in his painting the desire to merely reproduce nature but was already
engaged with romanticist, impressionist, and later expressionist genres. Such work
earned him the gold medal at the 1928 Salão de Belas Artes Muse Italiche, at the
Palácio das Indústrias, São Paulo, for artists of Italian descent. Italian art from Giotto
to that of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, together with a working
class and lower middle-class network of Italian artists living in São Paulo constitute
Volpi’s broad art apprenticeship.22
The participation within the local salons continued with varying success and
in the 1930s Volpi integrated the circle of the Santa Helena group: a studio formed
by artists, many of whom were of Italian descent. Key protagonists of modernismo
would occasionally participate in meetings organized by the group, figures such as
Sérgio Millet, Bruno Giorgi, Lasar Segall, and Tarsila do Amaral. In 1938 Volpi had
the opportunity to see the work of Josef Albers, an artist he claimed to have always
admired. Several accounts also state how Volpi had absorbed the work of Cezanne at
the occasion of the exhibition of French Art “From David to Picasso” held in 1940 in
São Paulo. Volpi is also said to have been influenced by artists such as Oswaldo Goeldi,
considered as a unique figure of expressionist sensibility within Brazilian art. Lasar
Segall, the Lithuanian expressionist who became a central figure within the 1920s São
Paulo modern art movement, also held a significant role in Volpi’s artistic formation.

42 | ASBURY
2nd São Paulo Biennial,
1953. President Juscelino
Kubitschek, Francisco
Matarazzo Sobrinho, and
guests viewing Pablo
Picasso’s Guernica. Fundação
Bienal de São Paulo / Arquivo
Histórico Wanda Svevo.
 Such a brief summary of Volpi’s artistic trajectory prior to his “discovery”
by Herbert Read in 1953 suggests an artist with a solid foundation and awareness
of early twentieth-century movements with significant connections within the local
artistic milieu.
It is however one of Mammi’s remarks that would place Volpi more in relation
to the sophistication of a Ben Nicholson than the “outsider” character of a painter such
as Alfred Wallis. In the late 1930s Volpi began frequenting the coastal town of Itanhaém
where he came across the work of “naïf” painter Emygdio Emiliano de Souza. This
encounter became one of the sources for his stylistic shift which can be noted in the
paintings of house façades and later with the introduction of bunting motifs.23
Although it is difficult to trace a precise line of development, given that the
artist rarely dated his paintings, Volpi’s work did not progress in a linear fashion. It
also seems that several distinct themes and “styles” were worked on concurrently.
What is certain is that such shifts in Volpi’s technique and compositions—the switch
in technique from oil on canvas to tempera or the adoption of naïf-like motifs, after
his encounter with the works by Emiliano de Souza—were taken consciously, as
opposed to being merely stylistic whims of an untrained, intuitive artist.
Equally, within the transition from the painter of popular festivities and façades
to the celebrated concrete artist, the bunting in Volpi’s work assumed an iconic role: a
pivot through which the artist detached himself from figuration to become a producer
of geometric, if not entirely, concrete forms.
Pedrosa’s emphasis on Volpi’s progression from the craftsmanship of his
profession as a painter-decorator to that of the professional artist hints at a possible
reason for the concrete group’s interest in the artist from Cambuci—the working-
class and lower middle-class São Paulo neighborhood where Volpi lived for most of
his life.24 Waldemar Cordeiro, spokesman for the Ruptura Group, himself an artist of
Italian origin, drew on Gramscian Marxist theory to argue that the simplicity of the
concrete geometric visual language held a direct appeal that transcended erudition
and Volpi seems paradigmatic in this respect: “We believe with Gramsci that culture
only exists historically when it creates a unity of thought between the ‘simple
[people]’ and the artists and intellectuals. In effect, only within this symbiosis with the
simple does art rid itself from the intellectual elements and from its subjective nature,
and so becomes life.”25 However, if Volpi over the course of the 1950s transcended
erudition, he did so, arguably, by contradicting the very premises of the concrete art
movement. The figure of the bunting, the graphic mechanism through which Volpi’s
work integrates the concrete visual vocabulary, is at one and the same time the iconic
abstracted symbol that denies that association.
It is true that Volpi did produce work that to all intents and purposes could
be described as concrete art. Such is the case of Composição Concreta Branca e

44 | ASBURY
2nd São Paulo Biennial, 1953.
Awarded artists on front
row: Maria Martins, Tereza
d’Amico, Antonio Bandeira,
Arnaldo Pedroso D’Horta,
Alfredo Volpi, Di Cavalcanti,
José Fábio Barbosa da Silva,
Bruno Giorgi, and Robert
Tatin. Fundação Bienal de
São Paulo / Arquivo Histórico
Wanda Svevo.
Vermelha (Concrete Composition in White and Red) of 1955, one of the rare works
that is titled and dated, a work Pignatari described as follows: “The dynamic
structure in his extraordinary checkered painting in white and red, where a refraction
phenomenon takes place through the interference of the elements (that reconcile
themselves at the center of the rectangular picture: the incidence of the eye), confers
the same white two diverse qualities. This work is precisely a concretist work, even
if for Volpi, probably it does not matter which ‘ism’ it belongs to.”26 Other works
by Volpi from the second half of the 1950s present clear constructivist-oriented
compositions. Volpi’s participation in the First Exhibition of Concrete Art, held at the
Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo in 1956, which traveled to Rio de Janeiro the
following year, attests the level of his integration within that group. His inclusion
in that exhibition raises nevertheless some interesting issues with regard to the
consensual narratives on the concrete and later neoconcrete movements in Brazil.
Pignatari’s description of Volpi’s Composição Concreta Branca e Vermelha
is in this sense somewhat discordant with orthodox definitions of concrete art. By
dismissing the process through which the artist achieved the composition, Pignatari
inadvertently associates Volpi with what would become a central tenet within the
neoconcrete discourse: one that called for the sole critical focus on the finished work
rather than the process which led to it.27
As discussed earlier, the mathematical basis ruling concrete art production
is often placed in opposition to the intuitive approach pursued by the neoconcrete
artists. The divergence between the two groups is said to have emerged precisely
at the moment in which they were brought together at the occasion of the national
concrete art exhibition.
Volpi’s role within such an exhibition was ambivalent and therefore all the
more art historically significant. This fact did not escape the attention of Rodrigo
Naves who argued that:

Perhaps most of Volpi’s oeuvre within the constructive art’s sphere of influence is closer to
the aestheticism of concrete art. Several other works, however, feature solutions . . . which
imply a deeper involvement with neoconcrete art.

...

According to his output during the second half of the 1950s, Volpi seemed to
straddle the influence of both groups, and always because of his unique solutions. 28

For Naves the complexity of Volpi’s work, one that is evidenced through its
ambivalence with respect to the constructivist movements in Brazil, reveals the very
contradictions present within that optimistic moment of rapid industrialization of the
nation. His stubborn artisan processes that combined sophisticated colorist skills in

46 | ASBURY
2nd São Paulo Biennial, 1953.
Guided tour with Jayme
Maurício and Mario Pedrosa.
Fundação Bienal de São
Paulo / Arquivo Histórico
Wanda Svevo.
contrast with the most unpretentious themes and motifs, a personal incorporation of
the modernist tradition, would have a profound impact on the generation of artists
that followed—most notably, as Naves argued, among the neoconcrete artists.
Naves’s supposition is confirmed by a letter Ferreira Gullar sent to Mário
Pedrosa prior to the publication of the Neoconcrete Manifesto. The letter is dated
February 1959 and in it, after discussing some business about the forthcoming AICA
conference that would be held in Brazil later that year, Gullar states: “In short, we [the
neoconcretes] seek to put things back in their places: let us do away with this scientific
demagogy that only frightens the bourgeois and confuses the artist himself. Art is not
taught in school, and one need not be a doctor (rather, someone like Volpi) to make it.”29

DIVERGENCES BETWEEN SUSANNE LANGER

AND FERREIRA GULLAR

According to consensual art historical accounts, neoconcretism’s rejection of

mathematics as a premise for creation was at the heart of its reaction to the concrete
art group in São Paulo. Although this referred initially to poetry, specifically to Ferreira
Gullar’s abhorrence of the proposed “Plano piloto para poesia concreta” (Pilot plan for
concrete poetry), it was later applied, but arguably never fully elaborated, within the
overall neoconcrete critique.30 It is true that one of the most significant contributions
of neoconcretism was precisely the questioning of disciplinary distinctions within
cultural production. We witness for instance the close relation between neoconcrete
poems and works that required manipulation by the spectator, while Gullar’s “Teoria
do não-objeto” (Theory of the nonobject) brought the fields of painting and sculpture
together through a phenomenological understanding of their presence in space, in
the world.31 The neoconcrete manifesto, in this way, privileged the perception of the
finished work as an object (a nonobject as would be argued later), a unique apparition
within the world, over and above the process that led to its constitution: “It does
not matter what mathematical equations are to be found at the root of a sculpture
or painting by Vantongerloo. It is only when someone perceives and experiences
the work of art, that its rhythms and colors have meaning. Whether or not Pevsner
used figures of descriptive geometry as his starting point is without interest, if placed
alongside the new space that his sculptures give birth to and the cosmic-organic
expression which his works reveal.”32 Mathematics thus stood as “diametrically”
opposed to the organic, intuitive, and expressive act itself: qualities held dear by the
neoconcretists and that the São Paulo concretists are said to have avoided at all costs.
For Gullar, art that was constituted or perceived through mathematical premises
submitted the object to “the machine-eye” rather than the “body-eye.” Proposing

48 | ASBURY
Members of the international
jury gathered on December
12, 1953, to select the winners
of the 2nd São Paulo Biennial.
Participants included Herbert
Read, James Johnson,
Sweeney, Bernard Dorival,
Emile Langui, Max Bill,
Mario Pedrosa, Sandberg,
Hofenstaegel, Palluchini,
Brest, Pefeiffer, Sérgio
Milliet, and Santa Rosa.
Photograph Folhapress.
nothing less than a reevaluation of the legacy of modernism itself, the manifesto
therefore laid out a revisionist critique of works by European pioneers of modern art:

Neoconcrete art asserts the absolute integration of these elements and believes that the
‘geometric’ vocabulary it utilizes can render the expression of complex human realities as
proved by a number of artworks created by Mondrian, Malevich, Pevsner, Gabo, Sophie
Taeuber-Arp, etc. Even if these artists themselves mistook the concept of expressive form
for the notion of mechanical form, it must be clear that, in art language, the so-called
geometric forms totally loose the objective character of geometry to turn into vehicles for
the imagination. 33

This revisionist approach to historic works becomes the method for analysis for the
production of the neoconcrete group itself, and Franz Weissmann is perhaps the most
obvious example of such a posteriori theoretical procedure.
The very idea of the “organic,” heralded by Gullar through the image of the
object as “quasi-corpus” as a principle relation to geometry within neoconcrete
works, could be seen to have been explored, keeping in mind the specificity of
each case, by Herbert Read in his writing on Henry Moore. Such a coincident use of
terminology seems pertinent if only because Moore had been one of Weissmann’s
early references within his sculptural work over the course of the 1940s. Read in
1952 drew on D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form as an example of how
mathematics can describe form in nature stating that in “the organic type of art . . .
[it is] really a choice between applying the values of a particular formula or varying
the values of a general formula. It is only necessary to add that the artist, even if
he is a constructivist, proceeds by intuitive rather than calculative methods.”34 It is
clear that the notion of the organic invoked for Read, in this particular instance, the
idea of a process of abstracting from nature. Read’s analysis of Pevsner and Gabo is
quite distinct, however, which leads to the conclusion that he, like Pedrosa had done
concurrently, was in fact attempting to establish some sort of scientific analogy for
the understanding of art in general.

The particular vision of reality common to the constructivism of Pevsner and Gabo is derived,
not from superficial aspects of a mechanized civilization, nor from a reduction of visual
data to their “cubic planes” or “plastic volumes” . . . but from an insight into the structural
processes of the physical universe as revealed by modern science. The best preparation for
a true appreciation of constructive art is a study of Whitehead or Schrödinger. But it must
again be emphasized that though the intellectual vision of the artist is derived from modern
physics, the creative construction which the artist then presents to the world is not scientific,
but poetic. It is the poetry of space, the poetry of time, of universal harmony, of physical
unity. Art—it is its main function—accepts this universal manifold which science investigates
and revels, but reduces it to the concreteness of a plastic symbol.35

Read’s articulation of the relation between art and science within constructivist art
approaches the premises of neoconcretism not so much through what is said but

50 | ASBURY
by reference to Alfred North Whitehead and the notion of “the concreteness of the
plastic symbol,” which I would suggest, although not exactly analogous, approaches
Gullar’s idea of the art object as a “quasi-corpus.”
Gullar cited the philosopher Susanne Langer in his elaboration of the
theoretical premises of neoconcretism, yet in order to do so while simultaneously
maintaining a critical distinction from concrete art, he was obliged to ignore key
aspects of Langer’s thinking. While concentrating primarily on Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology, Gullar, in other words, ignored the principle conclusions Langer
drew from her PhD mentor, Alfred North Whitehead, namely what she defined as
“symbolic transformation” within nondiscursive forms of creation. Langer saw
mathematics as an island of abstract thought in the sea of positivistic empiricism,
which she described as dominating mid–twentieth-century thinking: “And so, a
scientific culture succeeded to the exhausted philosophical vision. An undisputed and
uncritical empiricism—not skeptical, but positivistic—became its official metaphysical
creed, experiment its avowed method, a vast hoard of ‘data’ its capital, and correct
prediction of future occurrences its proof.”36 Langer argued in 1942 that a philosophy
of reason that connects Descartes to German idealism had come to an end brought by
a particular form of positivistic empiricism that held a “naïve faith in sense-evidence.”
This submission of subjectivity within empiricism, through the scientific
equation of truth with fact, was exemplified by Langer in the efforts produced to align
psychology with scientific methods, and although not explicit within the text itself, we
could extrapolate this to include the Marxist rejection of idealism through historical
materialism. Published in the United States during World War II, Langer’s critique of
the faith in the objectivity of the scientific method, as the notion of Weltanschauung
(worldview) itself, transcended national and political divisions.
As such, can we not think of Langer’s critique in relation to the ideology of
developmentalism which swept through Brazil during the post–World War II era?
Is it not the case that such a scientific, technocratic culture, empirical yet arguably
positivistic (as in the understanding of Langer) in its approach, serves rather well
as a broad definition for the ideology of rapid industrialization during the Juscelino
Kubitschek government?
Is it a coincidence that neoconcretism claimed its “independence of artistic
creation in the face of objective knowledge (science) and practical knowledge (ethic,
politics, industry, etc.)”?37 Perhaps, since (if considered under Langer’s perspective)
this statement would suggest that at the crux of neoconcretism’s autonomy—its
a-political laboratory-like approach to cultural production, as Ronaldo Brito has
suggested—was the negation of a productive (positivistic) relation with society
at large. Was this negation not the very source of its innate political and aesthetic
tensions that would ultimately lead to its dissolution during the 1960s?38 If seen

51 | FORM AND SENSIBILITY

through Langer’s notion of symbolic transformation, we do not find rupture (other
than Gullar’s own defection from avant-garde practice in 1961 to become a Marxist
playwright) but continuity and autonomy or even detachment in an existential sense.39
The tension within neoconcretism outlined by Ronaldo Brito can perhaps
be traced to Gullar’s own reluctance to accept a reciprocal relationship between
author and reader. Underlying the development of the poem-object lies Gullar’s
frustration that a poem had not been read as the author had intended.40 It required
thus a mechanism to secure its “poetic” objectivity, that is, the disposition of the
poem over several pages so that its content could not be immediately disclosed but
revealed gradually according to the author’s intention. Symbolic transformation here
is discursive (in which the word Verde becomes, through repetition, Erva) rather
than open and subjective, particularly when compared to experiments carried out by
contemporaneous poets such as Wladimir Dias-Pino whose poem “Solida” (1956)
invited the readers themselves to determine the order of the word-signs.
Objectivity, claimed in the name of mathematics, was also not so straight
forward in the case of the presence of formulations within concrete art. If Langer saw
science as having been submitted to “practical knowledge” through a positivistic
agenda dictated by the ideology of technology and industrialization, mathematics
remained for her an exception within her philosophical enquiry into “symbolic
transformation”: “A mathematician does not profess to say anything about the
existence, reality, or efficiency of things at all. His concern is the possibility of
symbolizing things, and of symbolizing the relations into which they might enter
with each other. His ‘entities’ are not data but concepts.”41 Langer is referring to a
level of complexity within the mathematical field that transcended simple descriptive
geometry. However, given the metaphysical investment that Langer places on
mathematics as a nonpositivistic domain of symbolic formation, Mário Pedrosa’s
essay entitled “The Problematics of Sensibility” (which draws on Langer’s “Feeling
and Form”) is perhaps a better means of understanding the position held by
Weissmann’s organization of intuition through geometrical and later nongeometrical
abstract forms.42 As we shall see, mathematics in itself is still not sufficient as a
means of unravelling the nondiscursive, in short, semantically complex character of
the work, if perceived as process rather than finished object.
Weissmann’s relation to neoconcretism can only be understood as
retrospective since during the short lifespan of the movement itself (1959–1961)
the sculptor was in the midst of experimenting with nongeometric production.
The fact that he traveled to Europe almost immediately after the official launch of
the Neoconcrete Manifesto is conveniently ignored, possibly because during that
period he would turn to the Informel—that dreaded, hot bloodied, adversary of the
neoconcrete geometric yet intuitive expression. Weissmann is therefore a paradoxical

52 | ASBURY
figure, which makes him all the more interesting, being neoconcrete before
neoconcretism and Informel during much of the existence of neoconcretism itself.
If we admit that Weissmann’s neoconcrete work was produced before the
advent of the movement itself, then his relation to concrete art is also problematized.
We find clues to this through an analysis of what is usually considered his “first”
abstract geometric work, the Cubo vazado (Hollowed cube).
Weissmann’s own accounts of whether or not he had been aware of Max
Bill or Bill’s Tripartite Unity at the moment of conception of Cubo vazado (1951) are
contradictory as can be noted in the following statements:

The Cubo vazado was the definite severance with the figure. During this period, I liked Max
Bill’s work a lot. He stimulated me and from this stimulus Cubo vazado was born. I start off
with the cube as a three-dimensional element and the square as a flat element. The cube was
the original element which gave me the impulse to move on.43

And:

At that time, I didn’t know who Max Bill was. I didn’t know his work. . . . How did
the perforated cube [cubo vazado] come about? Perhaps due to a need to break with
everything. That madness. So, I wanted to invent the simplest geometric form. I thought
the simplest geometric form was the cube. Then I saw Max Bill’s work.44

Whatever the case, today one can affirm that Cubo vazado was a pivotal work in
Weissmann’s career as it relates to key concepts and works within the concrete art
movement in Brazil during the course of the 1950s while possessing (quite literally) at
its core what would become the artist’s own procedural logic within the construction
of geometric-based sculpture: namely, the configuration of space via the articulation
of lines and planes.
Among the busts, torsos, and feminine figures present in photographs of
Weissmann’s studio in Belo Horizonte in the 1940s are a plethora of constructions in
wire, metal plate, and string which clearly indicate the pressing necessity Weissmann
felt for a renewal in his formal research.
Among the early works in wire we find a work in the form of what he would
later call a “linear cube.” It is barely visible because of the fact that its void is denied
by a series of threads in the style of Pevsner or Gabo, that crisscross the three
planes established by the parallel lines within the six-sided structure. The Cubo
vazado formed by a line, rather than a more volumetric square cross-sectioned
strip, was therefore already present as a prototype circa 1948, and if linear virtual
volumetric construction was already present within the work, albeit in the form of
studies following Gabo and Pevsner, perhaps it also answers the ambivalent relation
that Cubo vazado has with the legacy of Max Bill. That is to say that an affinity was

53 | FORM AND SENSIBILITY

Abraham Palatnik,
Kinechromatic Device: First
Movement in Blue and
Purple, 1951. Rear view of
the work depicting electric
mechanism. Courtesy of The
Estate of Abraham Palatnik.
Abraham Palatnik,
Kinechromatic Device: First
Movement in Blue and Purple,
1951. Artist working on
electric mechanism. Courtesy
of The Estate of Abraham
Palatnik.
obviously recognized but not through directly referring to Bill but instead to the very
sources of European constructivism itself.
If Weissmann’s work with the line was achieved through a process of
abstracting, a moment of rupture must have occurred in which the point of departure
was no longer the figure but geometry itself. In this sense the line in Weissmann’s
work still holds a significant relation to concrete art.
The wire sculptures, in their invocation of geometric figures, suggest that
it is still possible to conceive the form a priori even if maquettes were used as an
initial means of intuitive experimentation, while the complexity of the geometric
progressions created from planes suggest that the form could only be achieved by
experimentation, as the artist himself admitted on several occasions. The former
would suggest the proceedings of a concrete artist, the latter the intuitive approach of
a neoconcrete artist. Yet, both these procedures occur concurrently with Weissmann.
The works in wire, in suggesting volumetric form by providing certain but not all
of the form’s outlines, can be considered to function within the domain of Gestalt
psychology, which shows how cognitive processes operate in order to “complete” a
suggested pattern. With the works from planes no such clarity is provided. In these
the form remains mysterious, even when its composition, after some consideration, is
deduced. When this ambivalence is combined with Weissmann’s transition to creative
procedures closer to the informel tendency around 1960, it becomes evident that his
work and intuitive approach to art making had more in common with Pedrosa’s broad
advocacy of abstraction than any position that the concrete/neoconcrete dichotomy
would allow. As Pedrosa, drawing on Langer’s Feeling and Form, argued:

However much the habit of extrinsic rationalism wants to make us believe that a gesture, an
action, a thought resulting from pure neutral cerebral effort attached to the rules of deductive
thinking to biological fatality, the primary sensory reaction, the spontaneous organizing force
of the perceptive apparatus, the awakening of sensitive memory, the interaction, after all,
of the entire psychic complex placed in movement do not permit this absolute separation
between logical discursive process in search of an abstract and transferable conclusion and
the subjective-emotive complex which is the ego. Not only the artist but also the philosopher,
the scientist, the politician are beings motivated by sensibility. As with all products of mental
activity, the work of art participates in the symbolic nature of human thinking. Only its
symbolic essence is very different from that of the discursive verbal symbol.45

56 | ASBURY
Notes catalog, translated into the Mentally Ill (New York: Brazilian Modern Art,” in
English by Steve Berg in Springer Verlag, 1972). Volpi: At the Crossroads of
This essay brings together Glória Ferreira and Paulo Brazilian Modern Art, ed.
certain themes that I have Herkenhoff, eds., Mário 8/ Villas Boas, 210. M. Asbury and C. Brunson
been working on during Pedrosa: Primary Documents (London: Cecilia Brunson
and since the Arts and (New York: Museum of 9/ Mário Pedrosa, “Ainda Projects, 2016), 7–15 (English)
Humanities Research Council Modern Art, 2015), 281–285. a Exposição do Centro and 61–69 (Portuguese).
(AHRC) funded my “Meeting Psiquiátrico” [Still the
Margins: Transnational Art 3/ See Michael Asbury, exhibition at the psychiatric 17 / Otilia B. F. Arantes,
in Latin America and Europe “The Bienal de São Paulo: center], Correio da Manhã, Mário Pedrosa: Itinerário
1950–78” research project Between Nationalism and February 2, 1947. critico (São Paulo: Cosac
that was run jointly by the Art Internationalism,” in Espaço Naify, 2004), 98.
History Department at the Aberto/Espaço Fechado: Sites 10 / Villas Boas, “A estetica
University of Essex and the for Sculpture in Modern Brazil, da conversão,” 206. 18 / Arantes, 98.
TrAIN research center at the ed. P. Curtis and G. Feeke
University of Arts, London. (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 11 / Villas Boas, 207. 19 / Arantes, 99.
A presentation at our final 2006), 72–83, exhibition
conference in 2011, at Tate catalog. 12 / For an insightful study 20 / Quoted in Thistlewood,
Modern in London, drew on of the relations between Formlessness and Form, 152.
many issues that I explore 4/ See Michael Asbury, the psychiatric hospitals in
here and which themselves “Some Notes on Abraham Brazil and the art historical 21 / See Susanne K. Langer,
were based on several papers Palatnik’s Kinechromatic reception of Brazilian art of Philosophy in a New Key:
published over the course Apparatus,” in Abraham the mid-twentieth century, see A Study in the Symbolism
of the project. Of particular Palatnik: A reinvenção da Kaira M. Cabañas, Leaning of Reason, Rite and Art
relevance here: Michael pintura (Brasilia: Centro from Madness: Brazilian (London: Oxford University
Asbury, “Franz Weissmann: Cultural Banco do Brasil, Modernism and Global Press, 1951 [1942]). At the
Mitos Vazios,” in Franz 2013), 61–77. Contemporary Art (Chicago: Meeting Margins conference
Weissmann: A síntese e a University of Chicago held at the university of
lírica construtiva (Rio de 5/ Mavignier upon seeing Press, 2018). For a detailed Essex in December 2010,
Janeiro: Centro de Arte Hélio the contemporary work of biographical trajectory of Suzana Vaz elaborated on the
Oiticica, 2012), 22–27. I have artist José Patricio at the 2008 Nise da Silveira, see Luiz significance of Jung within
since published an essay on ARCO art fair, again recalled Carlos Mello, Nise da Silveira: the work at the Engenho
Volpi that draws on sections Artur Amora. See Michael Caminhos de uma psiquiatra de Dentro Hospital, and
of this essay; see Michael Asbury, “José Patricio: rebelde, 2nd ed. (Rio de Sérgio Martins investigated
Asbury, “Alfredo Volpi: At Painting by Numbers/Pinturas Janeiro: Automatica, 2015). the articulation of Gestalt
the Crossroads of Brazilian Numerosas” (São Paulo: psychology and Merleau-
Modern Art,” in Volpi: At Galeria Nara Roesler, 2008), 13 / D. Herbert Read Ponty’s phenomenology
the Crossroads of Brazilian 1–10, exhibition catalog. Thistlewood, Formlessness within the historiography of
Modern Art, ed. M. Asbury and Form: An Introduction neoconcretism. A report of
and C. Brunson (London: 6/ Later published in to His Aesthetics (London: that conference was published
Cecilia Brunson Projects, M. Pedrosa, Arte, forma e Routledge and Kegan Paul, as a special dossier in Michael
2016), 7–15 (English) and personalidade (São Paulo: 1984), 112. Asbury, “The Popularization of
61–69 (Portuguese). Kairós, 1979), 83–118. Scientific Thought,” in Dossier
14 / Herbert Read’s Meeting Margins, Concinnitas
1/ Décio Pignatari, 7/ G. Villas Boas, “A Education Through Art had Journal, Instituto de Artes,
“Desvio para o concreto,” estetica da conversão: O been published in 1943. Universidade Estadual do Rio
Folha de São Paulo, Caderno atelier do Engenho de Dentro de Janeiro (2011), 14–23.
Especial 2, May 20, 2001. e a arte concreta carioca,” 15 / Thistlewood, 115.
Unless otherwise noted, all Tempo Social, Revista de 22 / See L. Mammi, Volpi
translations are mine. Sociologia da USP 20, no. 2 16 / For a discussion (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify,
(2008): 210. Hans, Prinzhorn, on the themes and issues 1999). See also M. Asbury,
2/ See Mário Pedrosa, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken surrounding Volpi and the “Alfredo Volpi,” in Asbury and
“Volpi, 1924–1957” (Rio (Berlin: Springer, 1922), 1953 Biennial prize, see Brunson, Volpi, 7–15 (English)
de Janeiro: Museu de Arte translated by Eric von Michael Asbury, “Alfredo and 61–69 (Portuguese).
Moderna, 1957), exhibition Brockdorff as Artistry of Volpi: At the Crossroads of

57 | FORM AND SENSIBILITY

23 / Mammi, Volpi, 105. documentary film, directed 37 / “Manifesto Venancio Filho, and Vanda
by Katia Maciel, produced by neoconcreto.” Klabin, Gávea, Revista de
24 / Pedrosa, “Volpi, N-IMAGEM (UFRJ, 2001). História da Arte e Arquitetura,
1924–1957.” 38 / Or, as Ronaldo Brito 14, no. 14 (September 1996).
31 / Ferreira Gullar “Teoria has argued, its condition Reprinted in Franz Weissmann
25 / W. Cordeiro, do Não Objeto,” Suplemento of representing the (São Paulo: Instituto Tomie
“O Objeto,” in Revista Dominical, Jornal do Brasil, apex and rupture of the Ohtake, 2008), 199, exhibition
Arquitetura e Decoração, no. December 19, 1959. For the constructivist tendency in catalog.
20 (December 1956); reprinted translated facsimile, see Brazil. See Ronaldo Brito,
in Aracy A. Amaral, Projeto Neoconcrete Experience, Neoconcretismo: Vértice e 45 / Pedrosa, “Problemática
Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte Gallery 32 (blog), 2009, ruptura do projeto construtivo da sensibilidade.”
(1950–1962) (Rio de Janeiro: http://gallery-32.blogspot brasileiro (São Paulo: Edições
Museu de Arte Moderna do .com/2010/02/neoconcrete- Cosac & Naify 1999.)
Rio de Janeiro, 1977), 75, experience-11-dec-2009-30.
exhibition catalog. html. 39 / Lygia Clark is perhaps
the most obvious example
26 / D. Pignatari, “A 32 / “Manifesto within this proposition
Exposição de Arte Concreta neoconcreto,” Suplemento of neoconcrete symbolic
e Volpi,” Suplemento Dominical, Jornal do Brasil, transformation, but Oiticica’s
Dominical, Jornal do Brasil, March 22, 1959. Facsimile transition from the 1950s
January 19, 1957. Reprinted translated at http://gallery-32. to the 1960s could also be
in Augusto de Campos, blogspot.com/2010/02/ understood within the context
Decio Pignatari, and Haroldo neoconcrete-experience-11- of continuous “metaphysical”
de Campos, eds., Teoria dec-2009-30.html. Note that enquiry through the artist’s
da poesia concreta: Textos although the manifesto is reading of Bergson. See
criticos e manifestos 1950– signed by members of the Michael Asbury, “O Hélio não
1960 (São Paulo: Livraria Duas Neoconcrete Group, including Tinha Ginga,” in Hélio Oiticica:
Cidades, 1975), 60. Weissmann himself, it is Fios soltos do experimental,
common knowledge that its ed. Paula Braga (São Paulo:
27 / Pignatari, 60. author was Ferreira Gullar. Perspectiva, 2007): 27–51.

28 / R. Naves, “A 33 / “Manifesto 40 / Gullar statement in

complexidade de Volpi,” neoconcreto.” Neoconcretos.
Novos Estudos 4 (July 2008):
150. 34 / Herbert Read, The 41 / Langer, Philosophy in a
Philosophy of Modern Art New Key, 19.
29 / Ferreira Gullar, letter to (London: Faber and Faber,
Mário Pedrosa, February 16, 1969 [1952]), 201. 42 / Mário Pedrosa,
1959. Reprinted in Ferreira “Problemática da
and Herkenhoff, Mário 35 / Read, 233. sensibilidade,” Suplemento
Pedrosa, 417. Dominical, Jornal do Brasil,
36 / Susanne Langer, July 11, 1959. Facsimile
30 / According to Gullar, Philosophy in a New Key: translated at http://gallery-32
the spokesman for the A Study in the Symbolism .blogspot.com/2010/02/
neoconcrete group, the initial of Reason, Rite and Art neoconcrete-experience-11-
disagreement emerged from (Oxford: Oxford University dec-2009-30.html.
a proposal from the brothers Press, 1951). For a greater
Augusto and Haroldo de insight into what Langer 43 / Artist statement made
Campos and Décio Pignatari, possibly imagined to be the in 2002, Franz Weissmann:
wishing to publish a plan transcendental potential of 1911–2005 (Rio de Janeiro:
outlining the next ten years mathematics, refer to Bertrand Edições Pinakotheke, 2011),
of concrete poetry along Russell, An Essay on the 217, exhibition catalog.
mathematical principles of Foundations of Geometry
composition. See statement (Cambridge: Cambridge 44 / Weissman, interview
by Gullar in Neoconcretos, University Press, 1892). by Paulo Sergio Duarte, Paulo

58 | ASBURY
THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL 3
Pedagogy and Practice
Adele Nelson

On seeing the recent Brazilian works on view as a juror at the 4th São
Paulo Biennial in 1957, Alfred H. Barr Jr. notoriously characterized them as
“Bauhaus exercises” and mere “diagrams.”1 Geometric abstract works by Lygia
Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Hermelindo Fiaminghi, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Luiz
Sacilotto, Franz Weissmann, and others prominently displayed at the exhibition were
undoubtedly the target of Barr’s dismissive remark.2 Instantly controversial in Brazil,
the remark was understood, then as now, as dismissive of Brazilian abstract art as a
latter-day, derivative replaying of the innovations of early twentieth-century European
modernism—by no one less than the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York.3 In his rebuke of Barr’s assessment, prominent Brazilian art critic Mário
Pedrosa noted the neocolonial attitude at work in the demand by foreign critics that
Brazilian art either parrot the currently favored style in New York and Paris, in this
case gestural abstraction, or literally include “flocks of parrots.”4
Barr was not wrong in identifying the German school and its philosophy of
design as an important reference for Brazilian artists, a relationship made all the more
vivid by the Biennial’s special exhibition dedicated to the Bauhaus. What he failed to
recognize or value were the ways artists in Brazil were engaged not in imitation but
in transformation. Barr judged the Brazilians with a suspicion similar to that evinced
by Peter Bürger in his 1970s analysis of the avant-garde, which viewed the neo-avant-
garde as depoliticized imitators of the historical avant-garde.5 However, as Barr’s
comments also make clear, artists working in a developing nation placed claims on
the history of European modernism in a context of particular contestation. Benjamin
Buchloh, in his critique of Bürger, has called for an investigation of “the actual
conditions of reception and transformation of the avant-garde paradigms” on the part
of the European and US postwar avant-gardes, a project equally crucial for study of
the postwar avant-gardes of Latin America and beyond.6 Engagement with Bauhaus
ideas, at the institutional and individual levels, proved a key forum for Brazilian actors
in the 1950s to articulate tactics of citation and adaptation and to assert nonderivative,
radical conceptions of modernism.7
In their respective landmark studies from the 1970s, Brazilian art historians
Aracy Amaral and Ronaldo Brito established that European constructivist
tendencies—including De Stijl, the Russian avant-garde, and the Bauhaus—found a
powerful resonance and redefinition in Brazil following World War II among concrete
and neo-concrete artists.8 The claims on the Bauhaus, in particular, are ripe for
reappraisal, as the manifold reinterpretations of the Bauhaus in the 1950s, in Brazil
and abroad, allow us to critically reflect on the postwar Brazilian avant-garde and its
relationship to European modernism. Scholars have analyzed individual Brazilian
artists’ transformations of the formal and conceptual ideas of Bauhaus students
and teachers, including Josef Albers, Max Bill, and Paul Klee.9 Others have drawn
attention to the effort in the late 1950s and early 1960s to create an art school in Rio
de Janeiro based on the Hochschule für Gestaltung (School of Design, HfG) in Ulm,
Germany (1953–1968)—an initiative that would result in the creation of the Escola
Superior de Desenho Industrial (School of Industrial Design) in 1963.10 Emphasis
on the figure of Bill and narratives of influence centered on Bill’s transmission of
concretism to Latin America, however, have overshadowed a nuanced interpretation
of the context and stakes of artists’ considerations of Bauhaus pedagogy and practice.
Yet important developments related to art education in the early 1950s, which had
little direct connection to Bill’s activities or were positioned in opposition to them, are
essential to understanding the conditions in which ideas about the Bauhaus became
relevant and useful for artists in Brazil.
To speak of the Bauhaus in the singular and to use the term both as a historical
reference and as an ostensibly stable and unified set of design and pedagogical
principles is, of course, inaccurate. Walter Gropius, the institution’s first director,
aimed not simply to provide an alternative to traditional art academies but to eschew
the notions of art for art’s sake and of design in the strict service of industry. Indeed,
the Bauhaus was to be an interdisciplinary and international school where creative
expression engaged the “practical work of the world.”11 Hal Foster and Barry Bergdoll
employ narrative metaphors—fiction and myth—to explain the capacities of Gropius’s
“Bauhaus idea” not only to assimilate the artists and principles of De Stijl and Russian

60 | NELSON
 4th São Paulo Biennial,
1957. Installation view with
works by Franz Weissmann
and Hermelindo Fiaminghi.
Fundação Bienal de São
Paulo / Arquivo Histórico
Wanda Svevo.

61 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

constructivism, the school’s historical contemporaries, but to endure and attract new
adherents.12 From its inception in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 and subsequent moves
to Dessau and Berlin (until its closure in 1933), to the permutations that its masters
and students developed—first while in exile in the United States and later in Europe
and Latin America after World War II—the Bauhaus was always multifaceted. Historian
Paul Betts has argued that in the 1950s, West German and US institutions in the
context of the Cold War stripped the Bauhaus of its historical socialist and communist
associations, rendering it a “bold yet innocent school of fine arts,” and understood
its design approach as a tool of capitalist development and an embodiment of liberal
humanism.13 In the Brazilian context, politicians and the leaders of a spate of new
modern art institutions, including the São Paulo Biennial, adopted discourses linking
artistic freedom, democracy, and capitalist “progress” in light not only of the Cold
War but also of rapid state-supported economic development and the country’s return
to democracy following the Estado Novo dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1937–1945).
Two art schools that opened their doors in the early 1950s at the recently
established museums in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were key interlocutors in
the negotiation of claims on the German school and its pedagogy for the emerging
Brazilian postwar avant-garde. The first was the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea
(Institute of Contemporary Art, IAC) at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo
Museum of Art, MASP), inaugurated by MASP’s director Pietro Maria Bardi in 1951, with
architect Jacob Ruchti as a key teacher. The second was the art school of the Museu de
Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, MAM-RJ),
which opened in 1952 with artist Ivan Serpa as lead teacher. The IAC was short-lived,
lasting less than three years in its original configuration, and Serpa’s courses at MAM-
RJ were suspended when he departed for extended travel in Europe in 1958.14
The schools offered instruction grounded in nonobjective abstraction and
immersed students in modern art history, alternatives to the training oriented by
naturalism, expressionism, and cubism at Rio’s Escola Nacional de Belas Artes
(National School of Fine Arts, ENBA), São Paulo’s Liceu de Artes e Ofícios (School
of Arts and Crafts), and the private schools in both cities. In this essay, I examine the
curricula of the new schools, highlighting the important roles of certain thinkers and
teachers, including Bardi and Ruchti at the IAC and Pedrosa and Serpa at MAM-RJ,
and works by artists trained at the respective schools, including an analysis of the
series of paintings by Clark that in part elicited Barr’s comments. The pedagogy and
practice that these artists and thinkers created, far exceeding exercises, reveal that
the Bauhaus served as a crucial point of both avowal and disavowal for the emerging
Brazilian avant-garde and its supporters, which they used to establish connections to
European modernism, assert a basis of art-making in nonobjective abstraction, and
proffer an ethos of research-based and materially grounded experimentation.

62 | NELSON
 Curriculum diagram for
the introductory course
at Instituto de Arte
Contemporânea, 1957.
Arquivo do Centro de
Pesquisa do Museu de Arte
de São Paulo.

INSTITUTO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA

The IAC opened its doors at MASP on March 1, 1951, the same day the
museum inaugurated a retrospective dedicated to Bill.15 In public and private
communications, the MASP and IAC leadership declared a relationship between
the new school and the Bauhaus.16 The Bauhaus was, at mid-century, an effective
shorthand for the ambition of Bardi and his collaborators to brandish the IAC as a new
form of education—international in orientation and distinct from the traditional fine
art academies and vocational training available to Brazilians. Design historian Ethel
Leon has argued that the repeated evocations of the Bauhaus (the Dessau Bauhaus,
in particular) and of the Institute of Design in Chicago, where László Moholy-Nagy
had sought in the late 1930s to establish a new Bauhaus, served strategic purposes
of legitimization and derived from a desire to forge a relationship with industry
over and above any fidelity to Bauhaus models.17 Although there is truth to Leon’s
analysis, the organization and execution of the IAC curriculum nevertheless evinces a
rigorous examination and adaptation of Bauhaus pedagogy and, in particular, of the
approaches of the self-declared inheritors of Bauhaus instruction in the United States.
In essays for local and international periodicals, Bardi and Ruchti stated
matter-of-factly that the school was modeled on the Bauhaus and, above all,

63 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

Chicago’s Institute of Design, which Ruchti had visited during an extended stay in the
United States in 1947.18 Like Moholy-Nagy in Chicago, the founders of IAC framed
their ultimate goal as creating designers and justified the school’s creation with the
material needs of the rapid industrial expansion of the city of São Paulo.19 In the year
before the school’s inauguration, Bardi contacted art and design schools in the United
States that had positioned their approaches, to varying degrees, as Bauhaus-based
and announced his museum’s intention to found an art school. He requested curricula
and reading lists, writing, “we should like to accomplish something similar of [sic]
what you are doing always in the same spirit of the Bauhaus.”20 While Bardi was
aware of the then-nascent plans for a new Bauhaus in Ulm and hoped that Bill would
teach as a visiting professor at the IAC, the HfG was not a model for the IAC. Bardi did
not request information from Bill about his plans, nor did the IAC leaders mention the
German institution in their representation of the IAC.21
The IAC founders adopted the Bauhaus preliminary course, albeit one revised to
the specific intellectual and economic conditions in Brazil and with particular attention
to Moholy-Nagy’s curriculum in Chicago. The course asserted the cornerstone of
Bauhaus pedagogy: that an experiential and abstract study of color, form, texture, and
materials was the foundation of visual expression. 22 A brochure for the IAC explained
the curriculum in two diagrams, the first of which detailed the preliminary course.23
The brochure quoted the well-known diagrams of the curricula of the Bauhaus from
1922 and the Institute of Design from 1937, without appropriating their distinctive
circular form. The IAC diagram instead maps, from left to right, the breakdown of large
subjects into specialized topics and, ultimately, long lists of materials. The privileged
term in the IAC diagram is not the field of study but the concept of form, and drawing
is understood as the principal means to study and theorize form. If the Bauhaus
and the Institute of Design diagrams suggested equality among the two- and three-
dimensional media in a training that culminated in the elevated fields of architecture
and urban planning, the IAC in its curricular diagram privileged two-dimensional
design and drawing. Industrial design—the burgeoning field for which Ruchti saw the
school preparing its students—is absent in the first-year curricular map.
Bardi and his collaborators followed Moholy-Nagy’s division of the
preliminary course into three units, describing them as “Teoria e estudo da forma”
(Theory and Study of Forms), “Conhecimento dos materiais, métodos e máquinas”
(Knowledge of Materials, Methods, and Machines), and “Elementos culturais”
(Cultural Elements). The first unit, however, dominated the curriculum, subsuming
elements that at the Institute of Design were divided between analytical and
constructive drawing and a basic design workshop. In contrast to the Institute of
Design’s emphasis on the physical and life sciences, the IAC instead underscored
“cultural elements” and offered courses in psychology and sociology—a focus in

64 | NELSON
 Antonio Maluf, poster for
1st São Paulo Biennial, 1951.
Fundação Bienal de São
Paulo / Arquivo Histórico
Wanda Svevo.

Josef Albers, Introitus

(Dedication) from the series
Graphic Tectonics, 1942.
Lithograph. The Museum of
Modern Art, gift of the artist.

concert with the widespread interest among intellectuals in postwar Brazil in visual
perception, Gestalt psychology, and psychiatry.
In the school’s first months of existence, three of the four studio courses were
devoted to drawing—a focus foretold in the “Teoria e estudo da forma” unit of the
preliminary course.24 Ruchti, instructor of IAC’s composition course, viewed Bauhaus-
based instruction in drawing as inseparable from the formation of designers, whom
he envisioned acting as technical experts and problem-solvers in the new Brazilian
economy.25 In a 1951 text on the school, he argued that drawing and design must
be understood as fundamentally intertwined as a “critical and analytical activity.”26
Ruchti saw the incorporation of intellectual and systemic analysis into the process of
creation as one of the key contributions of Bauhaus pedagogy.
The emphasis on drawing, and on drawing as a means of critical visual
analysis, can be seen in the design that Antonio Maluf, then an IAC student,
completed for the poster of the first São Paulo Biennial in 1951.27 In Maluf’s work,
concentric rectangles converge in a white rectangular void in the center right of the
composition. The Bauhaus “sources” are at least twofold. Maluf based the poster
design on a gouache drawing he had completed during his first month of study at the
IAC, likely in Ruchti’s composition class, where he learned about Vasily Kandinsky’s

65 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

precepts for creating dynamic equilibrium in a composition utilizing formal
organization and color theory.28 He also adapted the composition of a print from
Josef Albers’s Graphic Tectonic series from 1942, which he may have encountered
reproduced in a 1948 poster designed by Bill that was included in the artist’s 1951
retrospective at MASP.29
In the series, Albers gave the works titles that evoke sacred and ancient
spaces and arranged patterns of concentric rectangles—delineated in bands of
varying thicknesses that retain the crisp lettering pen profile of his preliminary
drawings—to suggest architectural and virtual spaces that simultaneously recede
and project. Maluf’s design retains the overall organization of Albers’s composition
in Introitus (Dedication), including rendering the sharp turns of Albers’s line in
the less amenable medium of gouache. Maluf, however, shifts the white void off-
center—carrying out a formal strategy encouraged by Kandinsky, emphasized
by Ruchti, and implemented by Albers himself in other prints in the series—to
create perceptional tension and a sense of a simultaneously recessional and
ascendant space. The two-dimensional text Maluf superimposes contradicts the
three-dimensional quality of the concentric rectangles. Maluf also introduces
color into Albers’s black-and-white scene, deploying red and yellow in a manner
that accentuates the qualities Kandinsky attributed to each color: the red type
lays “firmly on the plane,” while the yellow parallel lines seem to expand.30 The
final poster design is thus both Bauhaus-inflected and unorthodox, as the works
and ideas of revered artists became templates for the younger Brazilian artist’s
compositional play. If space compresses and shifts within Albers’s centered
composition, Maluf’s spatial registers—here architectonic, there graphic, here
cast shadows, there typography—seem to overlay and slide past one another.
Departing from Albers’s references to the monumental and the spiritual, Maluf’s
crisp geometric abstract design instead calls to mind speed and the cinema, effects
in keeping with the efforts, at the Biennial and elsewhere, to portray Brazil as a
modernizing state.

IVAN SERPA AT THE MUSEU DE ARTE MODERNA DO

RIO DE JANEIRO

Like the IAC, which sought to train designers through drawing, MAM-RJ
distanced itself from the notion of educating “fine artists.” In the case of MAM-RJ, the
archetypal student was not the designer of posters and products but a child dressed
in a smock with a paintbrush in hand. According to Pedrosa, Serpa’s approach to
the instruction of children, in particular, was a testament to the larger role that art

66 | NELSON
education should play in a democratic Ivan Serpa and Mário
Pedrosa, Crescimento e
society.31 In contrast to Bardi and Ruchti’s
Criação, 1955. University of
efforts to position the IAC as a successor Texas Library, Austin.
to the Bauhaus in Brazil, the teachers
at MAM-RJ did not purport to share a
unified approach. Local artists taught a
range of courses at the museum, but it
was the museum’s first teacher, Serpa,
whose painting classes for children and
adults captured the popular and critical
imagination of his contemporaries and
provided an identity for the new school.32
Having won the prize for best painting
by a young Brazilian artist at the first
São Paulo Biennial in 1951, Serpa had a
reputation as both an emerging abstract
artist and a children’s art instructor.33
At MAM-RJ, he taught a number of
burgeoning abstract artists—many of
whom, including Aluísio Carvão and
Oiticica, would soon fill the ranks of the mid-1950s avant-garde Grupo Frente (Front
Group), and later the neo-concrete movement.34
Contemporary commentators, historians, and Serpa alike often discussed his
pedagogy in terms of his openness to experimentation and freedom of expression.35
Although this is an accurate assessment—a hallmark of Serpa’s teaching was his
mentoring of both figurative and abstract artists—the rhetoric has overshadowed a
more nuanced account of his approach. Moreover, the vision of Serpa’s classrooms
as self-directed, unstructured spaces accounts neither for the rigorous study of
geometry, color, and materials evident in the visual production of students in his
painting class for adults nor for the degree to which Serpa’s instruction was informed
by Bauhaus pedagogy. If the IAC’s relationship to the Bauhaus was overdetermined,
Serpa’s incorporation of Bauhaus techniques in his teaching at MAM-RJ is a
conspicuous blind spot in both contemporaneous and historical accounts.
Pedrosa, Serpa’s most vocal advocate and interpreter, largely set the
parameters for our understanding of the artist’s teaching in texts from the late 1940s
through the mid-1950s. In Crescimento e criação (Growth and creation), the book-
length publication Pedrosa and Serpa produced in 1954, Pedrosa emphasized that the
artist synthesized experimentation with technical and compositional know-how. He
argued that Serpa countered “academic preconceptions,” but did so while improving

67 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

his students’ ability to manipulate materials and to organize forms and marks in a
composition.36 Focusing on Serpa’s instruction of children, Pedrosa cast Serpa as
an educator-cum-social-reformer participating in an international reimagining of
the education of youth.37 At the international level, the intellectual context for this
valorization of the creativity of children included the development-oriented discourse
of organizations such as the United Nations and UNESCO and the conception of
“visual thinking” by early- and mid-twentieth-century pedagogues and psychologists,
including Rudolf Arnheim, about whom Pedrosa wrote in detail in Crescimento
e criação. In Brazil, and specifically within Serpa and Pedrosa’s milieu, Serpa’s
classroom was understood to stand alongside the studio that artist Almir Mavignier
established in 1946 for psychiatrist Nise da Silveira’s mentally ill patients at the
Centro Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II (commonly referred to as Engenho de Dentro,
the neighborhood in which it was located) as a model for a reorientation of the
understanding of creativity. Never the exclusive domain of artists, art and creativity
were, according to Pedrosa, “universal acquisitions.”38
Pedrosa elected to understand Serpa’s approach in relationship to Arnheim
and theories of visual perception rather than suggesting parallels with the interests
in the creativity of children and outsiders by surrealists, members of the Bauhaus, or
the likes of Jean Dubuffet. It was not for lack of knowledge or contact—in fact, he was
related to surrealist poet Benjamin Péret by marriage and participated in art-critical
circles in France as well as Germany and the United States where he had resided in
the late 1920s and late 1930s through the mid-1940s, respectively.39 Pedrosa’s larger
intellectual project—orienting an inclusive conception of modernism on the art of
nonartists and providing a place for “autochthonous resistance to international
taste”—as well as his skepticism toward what he saw as a misconstruing of Bauhaus
principles, and Klee’s ideas in particular, as a basis for “solipsistic self-absorption”
among gestural abstract artists and their champions, made the likelihood of him
asserting a one-to-one lineage between Serpa’s teaching and the Bauhaus remote.40
Moreover, Bill’s presence in Brazilian artistic discussions in the early 1950s,
dating back to his aforementioned exhibition in São Paulo, and in particular the
substance of and controversy surrounding his visit to Brazil in May and June 1953,
meant that relating Serpa’s pedagogy to the Bauhaus was a decidedly unattractive
option for Pedrosa. Bill’s lectures at MAM-RJ, the occasion for his visit, are best
known for the scandal his critique of Brazilian architecture caused in the local artistic
and architectural communities.41 Yet he also spoke at length about his plans for the
new Bauhaus in Ulm, which would teach its first classes in August of that year.42
Bill acknowledged the significance of early Bauhaus instruction, particularly the
teachings of Kandinsky and Klee, but in his remarks he was more critical of that early
pedagogy than he had been in contemporaneous publications (where he emphasized

68 | NELSON
that the HfG in Ulm directly descended from the Bauhaus).43 In Rio, Bill explained
that he understood the approach at HfG to represent an advancement over what
he viewed as Kandinsky’s and Klee’s more rudimentary, less scientific theories. The
interpretation of the Bauhaus that Bill put forward thus differed significantly from
the interests of Serpa, Pedrosa, and their cohort of artists and thinkers for whom
consideration of the practices steeped in mathematics of mid-century artists such as
Bill’s did not supplant thinking about the work of Kandinsky, Klee, Kazimir Malevich,
Piet Mondrian, and other early twentieth-century figures, nor about the art of children,
untrained artists, and the mentally ill.
Although it does not appear that Serpa followed a structured curriculum
comparable to that of the IAC or some of his fellow teachers at MAM-RJ, Paulo
Herkenhoff, Mari Carmen Ramírez, and Irene V. Small have demonstrated that he led
his adult students in explorations of nonobjective abstraction focused on color theory,
application of materials, and modern art history, requiring his pupils to complete
an extensive number of works, often serial investigations of form and color.44 The
experimental and abstract studies of color, material, and form taught in various
iterations in the Bauhaus preliminary course were, undoubtedly, the source of many,
if not all, of the exercises Serpa employed. Ramírez has noted, for example, that
albums containing material and texture experiments displayed at the 1955 Grupo
Frente exhibition were likely an outgrowth of Serpa’s classroom.45 Pedrosa described
the albums as “containing the most varied experiments with textures, with every sort
of material from bobbin lace and typewriter letter keys to cheap wrapping paper”—
an account that distinctly recalls the texture and material studies in the Bauhaus
preliminary course.46
Grupo Frente’s material experimentation was not confined to the collectively
executed notebooks, a fact on display at the group’s second exhibition in 1955.
Hélio Oiticica and his brother César, who studied with Serpa in 1954 and possibly
in early 1955, exhibited mixed-media works, including experimental prints by Hélio
composed of carbon paper impressions and gouache on cardboard, in which the
artist ran an iron over elements of the composition.47 Carvão, a student of Serpa’s
since 1953, included a medium-format suspended sculpture constructed of thin,
painted slats of wood that resembled a mass of stacked matchboxes in various
states of disassembly.48 Members of the group who had not studied with Serpa
also contributed to the panoply of materials on display. Abraham Palatnik showed
furniture, and Pape and Clark, in addition to woodcuts and paintings, exhibited
jewelry and architectural maquettes, respectively.49
Pedrosa interpreted the Grupo Frente notebooks, as well as the new material
study evident in the artists’ practices, as being foundational for the creation of
enlightened design and art for an industrialized society that would be on a par

69 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

with medieval craftwork.50 The analogy between the modern and the medieval
is reminiscent of Walter Gropius’s conception of the Bauhaus as a “new guild of
craftsmen” in the mode of medieval masons’ lodges in all but name.51 Pedrosa’s
larger proposal that the group share not a style but an ethos of disciplined and
ethical experimentation, which he described as “the freedom of creation,” was
grounded in his observation of Serpa’s classroom.52 Without evoking the Bauhaus,
the vision Pedrosa proposed of an ethical, experimental postwar avant-garde
nevertheless corresponded with elements of the Cold War reinterpretation of
the German school: both share an understanding of creativity as a wellspring of
humanism and an optimism about the utility of a nonobjective, abstract artistic
training for industry. However, Pedrosa, a Trotskyist and active political activist,
believed that art must engage society and viewed the materially grounded
conception of art forged by Grupo Frente as revolutionary.

LYGIA CLARK AND THE 4TH SÃO PAULO BIENNIAL

Among the works on display at the 4th São Paulo Biennial (1957) were Clark’s
Planos em superfície modulada (Planes in Modulated Surface), a new series of low-
relief paintings begun that same year. Clark employed materials and methods that
were, at first glance, easily understood: industrial paint, plywood, and airbrush. Upon
closer examination, the work’s unusual construction comes into focus, namely actual
gaps between the elements of the painting. What first appear to be hand-drawn,
ruler-aided compositions—equivalents to Josef Albers’s crisply rendered and incised
Structural Constellations (1949–1958), engravings on laminated plastic—are, in fact,
assemblages that retain the jigsaw puzzle character of their preliminary collages and
foretell the articulation of three-dimensional space found in Clark’s hinged sculptures
a few years later.
The relationship between Clark’s own work and Albers’s was widely
commented on at the time by both the artist and critics. Pedrosa, in particular,
contested critics who viewed Clark’s works as indistinguishable from those of Albers.
While noting the importance of “the old Bauhaus master” to the Brazilian artist’s
recent series, Pedrosa underscored the innovation of the Planos em superfície
modulada, writing, “Lygia’s current painting reveals space to us as composed of
vectors that allow us to have a phenomenologically affective rather than a purely
sensorial awareness of it.”53 Whereas space in Albers’s works and the consequent
viewing experience remain solely optical, Clark integrated real space via the grooves
within her paintings and thereby created a tangible experience of space.54 Clark
similarly emphasized her interest in the multidimensional, ambiguous space Albers

70 | NELSON
created in his Structural Constellations, Lygia Clark, Planes on
Modulated Surface #5,
as well as her integration of “external
1957. Museum of Fine Arts
space” in the Planos em superfície Houston. Courtesy of “The
modulada.55 Clark and critic Ferreira World de Lygia Clark”
Cultural Association.
Gullar would later understand the
phenomenological orientation expressed
in this series as foundational to the
conception of neoconcretism.56
An equally radical component
of Clark’s series, however, is how the
artist points to the sequential variation
of geometric forms—a key operation of
Bauhaus pedagogy as practiced by Albers
and others—only to then undermine the
expectation of a mappable sequence or
formal evolution.57 In early texts, Clark
criticized works, including her own earlier
production, that depended on “serial form,” arguing that her work beginning in 1957
operated differently.58 Clark assembled differently scaled geometric shapes of sundry
types (triangles, trapezoids, rectangles, squares, parallelograms) into medium- to
large-format compositions of largely black, white, and gray. The result is a group of
works that range from sparse near monochromes to dense, multifaceted geometric
patterns. Moreover, she produced pairs of works that share identical compositions but
differ in dimensions or palette. For example, she created slightly smaller but otherwise
indistinguishable versions of several works, including Planos em superfície modulada
no. 5. As signaled by a myriad of seemingly simple, readily legible formal alterations
in the series, Clark builds the operation of repetition into her practice, and she marks
repetition as an act not of imitation, but of transformation.
Leah Dickerman has argued that “experience, not knowledge, was the
Bauhaus watchword,” and Eva Díaz has traced how “the rhetoric of experiment”
was central to the reception of the Bauhaus by artists in the US context.59 Pedrosa
articulated a nexus of terms—freedom and creation, ethics and discipline—for
pedagogical and artistic activities of the 1950s that point to the high societal stakes of
art making in mid-century Brazil. Pedrosa’s best-known slogan for the Brazilian avant-
garde—“the experimental exercise of freedom”—belies an unspoken relationship to
Brazilian interpretations of Bauhaus ideas.60 The expression dates to 1967, but it finds
its origins in what Pedrosa saw as the productive tension between instruction and
experimentation in Serpa’s pedagogy. On the continuum of experience, experiment,
and experimentation, Brazilian artists and thinkers positioned themselves as

71 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

inheritors and usurpers of European modernism. By 1959 the neo-concrete movement
would declare that artists operating in a developing nation more completely
fulfilled the ideas and praxis of the historical avant-garde than did the earlier artists
themselves. In the early and mid-1950s, by contrast, Clark, Maluf, and others
maintained an active tension between inheritance and usurpation in their works.
The potential for misrecognition as a form of derivation that was implicit in Planos em
superfície modulada and other series was, and is, a vital entry point into the artists’
tactics of citation and adaptation—and to their critical relationship with modernism.

72 | NELSON
Notes a Vice Provost for the Arts relation to postwar Latin Funarte, 1985). Portions of
Grant, and a Grant-in-Aid American avant-gardes, see Brito’s text first appeared in
Curator Regina Teixeira de for Research from Temple Andrea Giunta, “Farewell to the mid-1970s.
Barros commissioned this University supported this the Periphery: Avant-Gardes
article in conjunction with work. and Neo-Avant-Gardes in 9/ See, for example,
the Pinacoteca do Estado de the Art of Latin America,” Paulo Herkenhoff, “A
São Paulo’s publication, in 1/ C. A., “Conversa com in Concrete Invention: aventura planar de Lygia
2015, of a facsimile edition of Alfred Barr Jr.,” O Estado de Colección Patricia Phelps Clark—De caracóis, escadas
the landmark volume Projeto São Paulo, September 28, de Cisneros, Reflections on e caminhando,” in Lygia
construtivo brasileiro na arte 1957, Suplemento literário, Geometric Abstraction from Clark, ed. Paulo Herkenhoff
(1950–1962) of 1977. Because 7. Unless otherwise noted, Latin America and Its Legacy, (São Paulo: Museu de Arte
of funding constraints, the translations are mine. ed. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro Moderna de São Paulo,
essay was not published. I (Madrid: Museo Nacional 1999), 21–22; Mari Carmen
am grateful to the editors of 2/ IV Bienal do Museu de Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Ramírez, “The Embodiment
ARTMargins for reviewing the Arte Moderna de S. Paulo 2013), 105–117; and Sérgio of Color—‘From the Inside
present work and providing (São Paulo: Museu de Arte Martins, Constructing an Out,’ ” in Hélio Oiticica: The
a home for it. Portions of Moderna de São Paulo, 1957), Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil Body of Color, ed. Mari
this text were delivered at 58–70, 73–81, exhibition 1949–1979 (Cambridge, MA: Carmen Ramírez (London:
the Museum of Modern Art, catalog. MIT Press, 2013), 2–9. Tate, 2007), 37–38; and María
New York; the American Amalia García, “Max Bill
Comparative Literature 3/ For an analysis of the 7/ Pedrosa identified a on the Map of Argentine-
Association Annual Meeting; reaction to Barr’s remark in “radical attitude” toward Brazilian Concrete Art,” in
and Temple University. I Brazil, see Ana Cândida de modernism among Brazilian Building on a Construct: The
thank Gwen Farrelly, Claire Avelar, “Controversies of a postwar artists as well as Adolpho Leirner Collection
F. Fox, Esther Gabara, Jay Juror: Alfred Barr Jr at the Alexander Calder and Paul of Brazilian Constructive
Levenson, Peter Logan, and 4th São Paulo Bienal,” Third Klee, whom he saw as Art at the Museum of Fine
Heather Ann Thompson Text 26, no. 1 (January 2012): models for young Brazilian Arts, Houston, ed. Mari
for the invitations to speak. 29–39. artists. See Adele Nelson, Carmen Ramírez and
This essay is indebted to “Radical and Inclusive: Mário Héctor Olea (Houston, TX:
the thoughtful and critical 4/ Mário Pedrosa, Pedrosa’s Modernism,” in Museum of Fine Arts, 2009),
insights of Libby Hruska, “Brazilian Painting and Ferreira and Herkenhoff, 53–68. I discuss Oiticica’s
Jennifer Josten, and the International Taste” (1957), Mário Pedrosa, 35–43. evocations of Klee in my
two anonymous readers for in Mário Pedrosa: Primary Sérgio Martins and Irene contribution to Hélio Oiticica:
ARTMargins. I also thank Documents, ed. Glória V. Small use the notions of To Organize Delirium, ed.
Rhys Conlon, Emily Hall, Ferreira and Paulo Herkenhoff hijacking and destabilization Lynn Zelevansky, Elisabeth
and Paulina Pobocha for (New York: Museum of in their analysis of the Sussman, James Rondeau,
their suggestions. For their Modern Art, 2015), 192. Brazilian avant-garde’s and Donna De Salvo
research assistance, I am relationship to modernism. (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie
grateful to Ivani Di Grazia 5/ Peter Bürger, Theory of See Martins, Constructing Museum of Art, 2016).
Costa, Romeu Loreto, the Avant-Garde (1974), trans. an Avant-Garde, 2; and
and Bárbara Bernardes Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: Irene V. Small, “Pigment 10 / See, for example, Silvia
(Biblioteca e Centro de University of Minnesota Pur and the Corpo da Côr: Fernández, “The Origins of
Documentação, Museu de Press, 1984). Post-Painterly Practice and Design Education in Latin
Arte de São Paulo Assis Transmodernity,” October, America: From the HfG in
Chateaubriand); Elizabeth 6/ Benjamin Buchloh, no. 152 (Spring 2015): 82–102. Ulm to Globalization,” Design
Varela, Cláudio Barbosa, “The Primary Colors for the Issues 22, no. 1 (Winter
and Aline Siqueira (Pesquisa Second Time: A Paradigm 8/ See Aracy A. Amaral, 2006): 3–19; and Aleca
e Documentação, Museu of Repetition of the Neo- Projeto construtivo brasileiro Le Blanc, “Palmeiras and
de Arte Moderna do Rio de Avant-Garde,” October, no. na arte (1950–1962) (Rio Pilotis: Promoting Brazil with
Janeiro); Ana Paula Marques 37 (Summer 1986): 43. For de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Modern Architecture,” Third
(Arquivo Histórico Wanda extended considerations Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Text 26, no. 1 (January 2012):
Svevo, Fundação Bienal of Buchloh’s proposals 1977); and Ronaldo Brito, 103–116.
de São Paulo); and Daniela regarding the neo-avant- Neoconcretismo: Vértice e
Baumann (HfG Archiv-Ulm). garde, as well as those of ruptura do projeto construtivo 11 / Walter Gropius, “The
A Summer Research Award, Bürger and Hal Foster in brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Viability of the Bauhaus

73 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

Idea” (1922), in The Bauhaus: reestablished temporarily in 1951–53,” Design Issues 27, Cranbrook Academy of Art,
Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, 1957. no. 2 (Spring 2011): 116–119. March 10, 1950; and Serge
Chicago, ed. Hans M. Wingler Chermayeff to P. M. Bardi,
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 15 / Invitation, folder 14, 18 / Ruchti, “Instituto March 13, 1950, both to be
1969), 52. box 3, Exposição de Pintura de Arte Contemporânea,” found in folder 1, box 1, IAC,
de Max Bill (hereafter, Exp. 62; and Pietro Maria Bardi, Biblioteca MASP.
12 / Hal Foster, “The Bill), Biblioteca e Centro “Diseño industrial en São
Bauhaus Idea in America,” de Documentação, Museu Paulo,” Nueva Visión: 21 / The archival holdings
in Albers and Moholy- de Arte de São Paulo Assis Revista de cultura visual, no. at MASP include no mention
Nagy: From the Bauhaus to Chateaubriand (hereafter, 1 (December 1951): 9. On of HfG in Bill and Bardi’s
the New World, ed. Achim Biblioteca MASP); “Uma Ruchti’s trip, see Marlene copious correspondence
Borchadt-Hume (New Haven, escola e um centro de Milan Acayaba, Branco e regarding Bill’s 1951
CT: Yale University Press, atividades artísticas: Inicia-se preto: Uma história de design exhibition, although Bardi
2006), 92–102, 173–175; and amanhã o funcionamento brasileiro nos anos 50 (São did write to others of his
Barry Bergdoll, “Bauhaus do Instituto de Arte Paulo: Instituto Lina Bo e P. desire for Bill and other
Multiplied: Paradoxes of Contemporânea,” Diário M. Bardi, 1994), 34. international figures to teach
Architecture and Design de São Paulo, February 28, at the IAC. Bill was involved
in and after the Bauhaus,” 1951, folder 1, box 1, Instituto 19 / See, for example, “No in the planning of HfG by
in Bauhaus, 1919–1933: de Arte Contemporânea Museu de Arte: Instalação 1950, and he revised his
Workshops for Modernity, (hereafter, IAC), Biblioteca do ‘Instituto de Arte text “Beauty from Function
ed. Barry Bergdoll and MASP; and Jacob Contemporânea’: O belo and as Function” (originally
Leah Dickerman (New York: Ruchti, “Instituto de Arte a serviço da indústria— delivered as a lecture at
Museum of Modern Art, Contemporânea,” Habitat: Fundamentos no desenho,” the Swiss Werkbund in
2009), 40–61. Revista das artes no Brasil, Diário da Noite, February 1948) to include a mention
no. 3 (April–June 1951): 62. 8, 1950, folder 1, box 1, of Ulm when it appeared
13 / Paul Betts, “The IAC, Biblioteca MASP; and in the São Paulo magazine
Bauhaus as a Cold War 16 / Bardi’s collaborators Ruchti, “Instituto de Arte Habitat in 1951. Max Bill,
Weapon: An American- at the IAC (some of whom Contemporânea,” 62. On “Schönheit aus Funktion und
German Joint Venture,” taught at the school) included Moholy-Nagy’s pedagogical als Funktion,” Werk 36, no.
in Bauhaus Conflicts, the artists and architects goals in Chicago, see Foster, 8 (August 1949): 272–274;
1919–2009: Controversies J. Villanova Artigas, Lina “Bauhaus Idea in America,” Max Bill, “Beleza provinda
and Counterparts, ed. Philipp Bo Bardi, Eduardo Kneese 96–97, 101. da função e beleza como
Oswalt (Ostfildern: Hatje de Mello, Rino Levi, Jacob função,” Habitat: Revista
Cantz, 2009), 190–208. Ruchti, and Lasar Segall, 20 / Bardi wrote, in English, das Artes no Brasil, no.
who convened on March to directors and registrars 2 (January–March 1951):
14 / On the closure of 20, 1950, to discuss the at Black Mountain College, 61–64; Bardi to Cranbrook
the IAC in late 1953, see school’s curriculum. Cranbrook Academy of Academy of Art, March
Alexandre Wollner, Alexandre The archival holdings at Art, and Rhode Island 10, 1950; Paul Betts, The
Wollner: Design visual: 50 Biblioteca MASP only record School of Design, as well Authority of Everyday
anos (São Paulo: Cosac and Bardi’s organizational as at the Akron Art Institute Objects: A Cultural History
Naify, 2003), 72; and Ethel role in establishing the (now Akron Art Museum) of West German Industrial
Leon, “IAC, Instituto de Arte school, though scholars, and the Toledo Museum Design (Berkeley: University
Contemporânea: Escola de former participants, and of Art. Although Bardi’s of California Press, 2004),
Desenho Industrial do MASP contemporary accounts often correspondence to Serge 142–143; Karin Gimmi, “On
(1951–1953)” (master’s view Bo Bardi as Bardi’s Chermayeff, Director of Bill,” in Max Bill, Form,
thesis, Universidade de São primary collaborator. See, the Illinois Institute of Function, Beauty = Gestalt,
Paulo, 2006), 67–70, 158–78. for example, Zeuler R. M. de Technology—where, since ed. Brett Steele (London:
On Serpa’s European travels, A. Lima, Lina Bo Bardi (New 1949, the Institute of Design Architectural Association
see Vera Beatriz Siqueira, Haven, CT: Yale University had been based—is not London, 2011), 11.
“Insistently Current,” in Press, 2013), 47. preserved in the archive,
Ivan Serpa, ed. Fabiana Chermayeff’s reply, in which 22 / On the Bauhaus
Werneck Barcinski et al. (Rio 17 / Ethel Leon, he shared information on the preliminary course, see
de Janeiro: Silvia Roesler; “The Instituto de Arte institute’s curriculum and Rainer K. Wick, Teaching
Instituto Cultural The Axis, Contemporânea: The First recommended books, is. See at the Bauhaus (Ostfildern-
2003), 169–175. The IAC was Brazilian Design School, Pietro Maria Bardi to Director, Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2000);

74 | NELSON
Leah Dickerman, “Bauhaus 28 / The gouache, displayed in the 1951 “Artes plásticas: Aulas de
Fundaments,” in Bergdoll entitled Equação dos MASP exhibition. Max Bill, desenho e pintura,” Correio
and Dickerman, Bauhaus, desenvolvimentos em “Constatations concernant da Manhã, May 9, 1952, 7;
1919–1933, 15–18; and Hal progressões crescentes la participation de Max Bill and Museu de Arte Moderna
Foster, “Exercises for Color e decrescentes (Equation à la ‘Bienal de São Paulo,’ ” do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de
Theory Courses,” in Bergdoll of Developments in Zurich, August 2, 1951, folder Janeiro: Museu de Arte
and Dickerman, Bauhaus, Ascendant and Descendant 13, box 3, Exp. Bill, Biblioteca Moderna do Rio de Janeiro,
1919–1933, 196–199. Progressions), dates to MASP. Late in his life, Maluf 1967), n.p.
March 1951, when Maluf was related his poster design to
23 / The curriculum detailed enrolled in Ruchti’s class. Albers by casting the poster 33 / Serpa had taught
in the circa 1957 version Leon has published notes as a predecessor to Albers’s children’s art classes at his
is identical to a printed from Ruchti’s class (created Homage to the Square series home since 1947. Siqueira,
curriculum from 1951, except by Lauro Prêssa Hardt in (1949–1976). Antonio Maluf to “Insistently Current,” 159.
for the elimination of the August 1951) which replicate Adolpho Leirner, November
“Cursos complementares” a diagram and cite ideas in 23, 1998, folder 2005.1016, 34 / When Grupo Frente
(Complementary courses), Kandinsky’s 1926 Bauhaus Antonio Maluf Files, Adolpho first exhibited in 1954, five
which were to be taught book Punkt und Linie zu Leirner Archives at the of its eight members had
by visiting international Fläche (Point and Line to ICAA, Museum of Fine Arts, studied with Serpa. By 1955,
professors. See “Cursos,” Plane), a book held in the Houston. I am grateful to ten of its fifteen members
folder 1, box 1, IAC, Biblioteca Biblioteca MASP. See Vasily Mari Carmen Ramírez for the were Serpa’s former or
MASP; “Finalidades do I.A.C. Kandinsky, Punkt und Linie zu opportunity to access the current students.
no Museu de Arte: Pretende Fläche: Beitrag zur Analyse Leirner archives.
colocar os modernos métodos der Malerischen Elemente 35 / See, for example,
de produção a serviço da (1926), 2nd ed. (Munich: A. 30 / Vasily Kandinsky, Point “Pincel e calças curtas: O
arte contemporânea,” Diário Langen, 1928); Jacob Ruchti, and Line to Plane (1926), que é e como funciona a
de São Paulo, June 15, 1950, Composição: Notas de aula trans. Howard Dearstyne escolinha de Ivan Serpa—
folder 1, box 1, IAC, Biblioteca (São Paulo: Instituto de Arte and Hilla Rebay (New York: Horário sem rigidez e
MASP; “Programa,” folder 1, Contemporânea, 1951), in Solomon R. Guggenheim nenhuma obrigação—
box 1, IAC, Biblioteca MASP; Leon, “IAC, Instituto de Arte Foundation, 1947), 62, 65. Criança, artista inato,”
Ruchti, “Instituto de Arte Contemporânea,” appendix Tribuna da Imprensa, May 29,
Contemporânea,” 63; and a 5, 205–225; and Regina 31 / Mário Pedrosa, “A 1954, folder MAM-Cursos,
brochure in the box Relatórios Teixeira de Barros, ed., força educatora da arte” 1954 (hereafter Cursos
1957, IAC, Biblioteca MASP. Antonio Maluf (São Paulo: (1947), in Mário Pedrosa, 1954), Acervo Museu de Arte
Cosac and Naify; Centro Textos escolhidos, Vol. 2: Moderna do Rio de Janeiro
24 / “Cursos regulares Universitário Maria Antonia Forma e percepção estética, (hereafter Acervo MAM-
do Instituto de Arte da Universidade de São ed. Otília Arantes (São Paulo: RJ); Siqueira, “Insistently
Contemporânea, Museu Paulo, 2002), 12. Edusp, 1996), 61–62. For Current”; and Hélio Márcio
de Arte,” attendance book, an interpretation of MAM- Dias Ferreira, “Ivan Serpa,
folder 2, box 1, IAC, Biblioteca 29 / Scholars have not RJ’s education program Artist-Educator,” in Barcinski,
MASP; and Ruchti, “Instituto previously suggested that in light of discourses of Ivan Serpa, 201–207.
de Arte Contemporânea,” 62. Albers or his series Graphic democracy, see Aleca Le
Tectonic was a reference Blanc, “Tropical Modernisms: 36 / Mário Pedrosa and Ivan
25 / Ruchti, “Instituto de for Maluf’s poster design, Art and Architecture in Rio Serpa, Crescimento e criação
Arte Contemporânea,” 62. although the series was de Janeiro in the 1950s” (PhD (Rio de Janeiro, 1954),
widely reproduced at dissertation, University of reprinted as Mário Pedrosa,
26 / Ruchti, 62. the time and the formal Southern California, 2011), “Crescimento e criação,” in
parallels are evident. It is 180–232. Pedrosa, Textos escolhidos,
27 / Maluf attended possible that Bill’s poster 2:72.
the IAC from its opening for the exhibition Josef 32 / Serpa began teaching
in March 1951 until at Albers, Hans Arp, Max Bill courses at MAM-RJ on May 37 / Mário Pedrosa, “Arte
least June 1951. “Cursos at Galerie Herbert Hermann 10, 1952, and his classes infantil” (1952), in Pedrosa,
regulares do Instituto de Arte in Stuttgart in 1948—which in the early 1950s included Textos escolhidos, 2:63–70;
Contemporânea, Museu de illustrates Albers’s Introitus painting classes for children and Pedrosa, “Crescimento e
Arte.” (Dedication) —was among and adults as well as a theory criação,” 71–80.
the posters and books of painting course. See

75 | THE BAUHAUS IN BRAZIL

38 / Mário Pedrosa, “The HfG and the Bauhaus in do Rio de Janeiro, matrículas 1988, ed. Cornelia H. Butler
Vital Need for Art” (1947), private correspondence in dos cursos” (1954), folder and Luis Pérez-Oramas (New
in Ferreira and Herkenhoff, 1953. See Nicola Pezolet, Cursos 1954, Acervo MAM- York: Museum of Modern Art,
Mário Pedrosa, 105. “Bauhaus Ideas: Jorn, Max RJ; “Museu de Arte Moderna 2014), 56.
Bill, and Reconstruction do Rio de Janeiro, matrículas
39 / He also lived in Culture,” October, no. 141 dos cursos (segundo 56 / See, for example,
Paris later in his life, and in (Summer 2012): 100–101. semestre)” (1954), folder Ferreira Gullar, “Clark: Uma
Belgium and Switzerland as Cursos 1954, Acervo MAM- experiência radical,” Jornal
an adolescent. 44 / Paulo Herkenhoff, “Rio RJ. do Brasil, March 22, 1959,
de Janeiro: A Necessary suplemento dominical, 3; and
40 / Mário Pedrosa, City,” in The Geometry 49 / See Grupo Frente: Lygia Clark, “Lygia Clark and
“A Bienal de cá para lá” of Hope: Latin American Segunda mostra coletiva (Rio the Concrete Expressional
(1970), in Mário Pedrosa, Abstract Art from the de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Space” (1959), in Lygia Clark,
Arte: Ensaios, ed. Lorenzo Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, ed. Manuel J. Borja-Villel
Mammi (São Paulo: Cosac Collection, ed. Gabriel Pérez- 1955). (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni
Naify, 2015), 489, 491. See Barreiro (Austin: Blanton Tàpies; Marseille: MAC,
also Nelson, “Radical and Museum of Art, University of 50 / Pedrosa, “Grupo Galleries contemporaines des
Inclusive,” 35–43. Texas at Austin, 2007), 56–57; Frente,” in Ferreira and Musées de Marseille; Porto:
Ramírez, “The Embodiment Herkenhoff, Mário Pedrosa, Fundação de Serralves;
41 / Bill visited Brazil of Color,” 35–36; and Irene V. 270. Brussels: Sociéte des
twice in 1953, in May and Small, “Hélio Oiticica and the Expositions du Palais des
June (when he lectured at Morphology of Things” (PhD 51 / Walter Gropius, Beaux-Arts, 1997), 84.
MAM-RJ) and in December dissertation, Yale University, “Program of the Staatliche
(when he served on the jury 2008), 46n22. Bauhaus in Weimar,” 1919, 57 / On Albers’s approach
of the second Biennial). in Wingler, Bauhaus, 31. On to variation, see Eva Díaz,
For analysis of Bill’s widely 45 / Ramírez, “The Gropius’s use of medieval “The Ethics of Perception:
covered criticisms of Brazilian Embodiment of Color,” 35, allusions, see Charles W. Josef Albers in the United
architecture, see Valerie 71n43. To the best of my Haxthausen, “Walter Gropius States,” Art Bulletin 90, no. 2
Fraser, Building the New knowledge, researchers and Lyonel Feininger, (June 2008): 260–285.
World: Studies in the Modern have not located the Grupo Bauhaus Manifesto, 1919,”
Architecture of Latin America, Frente notebooks. I believe, in Bergdoll and Dickerman, 58 / Lygia Clark, “1957”
1930–1960 (London: Verso, however, the albums Bauhaus, 1919–1933, 64–67. (1957), trans. in Butler and
2000), 252–255; and Le Blanc, are partially visible in an Pérez-Oramas, Lygia Clark,
“Palmeiras and Pilotis,” installation view held by 52 / Pedrosa, “Grupo 56. See also Lygia Clark,
103–105. Acervo MAM-RJ: Pasta de Frente,” trans. in Arte “Ideas about Diverse Points”
fotografias: MAM-EXP: 29 contemporáneo brasileño: (1957), in Butler and Pérez-
42 / See “Artes plásticas: “Grupo Frente,” Arquivo Documentos y críticas/ Oramas, Lygia Clark, 57; and
A conferência de Max Bill,” Fotográfico, Acervo MAM-RJ. Contemporary Brazilian Art: Lygia Clark, “1957” (1957),
Correio da Manhã, May 31, Documents and Critical Texts, in Butler and Pérez-Oramas,
1953, 11; “Artes plásticas: 46 / Mário Pedrosa, “Grupo ed. Glória Ferreira (Santiago Lygia Clark, 57–58.
Max Bill esclarece pontos de Frente” (1955), in Ramírez, de Compostela: Artedardo,
vista e desfaz mal entenidos “Embodiment of Color,” 2009), 476. 59 / Dickerman, “Bauhaus
(I),” Correio da Manhã, June 71n43. Fundaments,” 17; and
7, 1953, 11; and “Max Bill: 53 / Mário Pedrosa, “Lygia Eva Díaz, “We Are All
Visita ao Brasil do famoso 47 / See my essay in Clark, or the Fascination of Bauhauslers Today,” Art
escultor modernista,” Zelevansky et al., Hélio Space” (1957), in Ferreira and Journal 70, no. 2 (Summer
Boletim do Museu de Arte Oiticica. Herkenhoff, Mário Pedrosa, 2011): 118.
Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, 287.
no. 9 (July 1953): 5–6, 8. 48 / Eric Baruch, Alusío 60 / Mário Pedrosa,
Carvão, João José da Silva 54 / Pedrosa, 287. “The ‘Silkworm’ in Mass
43 / See, for example, Max Costa, Elisa Martins da Production” (1967), trans.
Bill, “The Bauhaus Idea from Silveira, et al. to MAM RJ, 55 / Lygia Clark, “The in Ferreira and Herkenhoff,
Weimar to Ulm,” Architects’ January 5, 1954, folder Influence of Albers” Mário Pedrosa, 148.
Year Book 5 (1953): 29–32. Bill Cursos 1954, Acervo MAM- (1957), in Lygia Clark: The
also sharply distinguished RJ; “Museu de Arte Moderna Abandonment of Art, 1948–

76 | NELSON
GRUNDLEHRE AT THE 4
ULM SCHOOL OF DESIGN
A Survey of Basic
Design Teaching
Martin Mäntele

The Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG), also known as the Ulm School of Design
(1953–1968), was one of the most progressive educational institutions in the field of
industrial design and visual communication that emerged from the ruins of postwar
Germany. Located in the southern German city of Ulm, the school was cofounded by
Inge Scholl—sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were executed by the Nazis in
1943 as core members of the White Rose resistance group—and her future husband,
Otl Aicher, in collaboration with the internationally renowned Swiss artist and
architect Max Bill.
For both Scholl and Aicher, reconstructing Germany was not just a matter
of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure but also its educational institutions. In
the immediate postwar period, many of Germany’s intellectuals, among them
the writer Hans Werner Richter and the philosopher of religion Romano Guardini,
formed a group around Scholl and Aicher. In 1947 they founded an adult education
center, the Volkshochschule Ulm, with the aim of promoting Germany’s democratic
reconstruction. Out of their work with this center came the idea of establishing a
private university that focuses mainly on political education.
On a trip to Switzerland in 1948, Scholl and Aicher met with Bill—a former
student at the Bauhaus in Dessau—who proposed to them the idea of continuing
the progressive Bauhaus experiment in Ulm and whose contact with the former
Bauhaus director, Walter Gropius, could be helpful in realizing this ambitious goal.
In 1949 Scholl, through an American friend, met Shepard Stone, then assistant
director of Public Affairs for Occupied Germany and consultant to High
Commissioner of Germany John J. McCloy. Stone was so impressed by Scholl’s
plans that he procured a dinner invitation at the high commissioner’s residence in
Bad Homburg. The people she met on this occasion were daunted by her ambition
and promised financial support. A few days later McCloy spoke so highly of her at
a lecture in Boston, Massachusetts, that she made the news. The headline in the
German newspaper Die Neue Zeitung (January 30, 1950), edited under the auspices
of the Americans, read: “Ein Mädchen—Symbol für Deutschland” (A girl—Symbol
for Germany).
In the beginning of 1950 McCloy and Scholl forged a tacit agreement that the
reeducation fund of the Office of the High Commissioner in Germany would cover
half of the costs if Scholl would succeed in procuring the other half—in form of either
money or building materials—on the German side. But time was of the essence—on
July 1, 1950, the Americans expected an outline on which to base their request.
Scholl approached potential sponsors and partners, while discussing the
school’s scope, curriculum, and likely lecturers and drawing floor plans with Aicher.
Their plans and ideas also had to be discussed with Bill, who was busy with his
own projects in Zurich. Also, with the Cold War gaining momentum, the Americans
wanted to check the political leanings of the applicants as well. In a memorandum in
which he declared that he was not a communist, Bill also softened the leftist image of
the Bauhaus, stating that people at that time were looking full of hope to the East, but
most of them had since changed their minds.
However, the project suffered a serious setback in 1951, when a defamation
campaign claimed that Hans and Sophie Scholl had been communists and that Scholl
and Aicher were communist sympathizers. Bill had to change the building plans and
go with a concrete structure because the prospected donation of steel was withdrawn.
Almost an entire year would pass before they could convince all interested parties
that the rumors were unsubstantiated. Finally, in June 1952, the Americans handed
over a check in a ceremony at the Lord Mayor’s Hall in Ulm.

It took two years, from 1953 to 1955, to build the HfG. The finished campus
comprised the main school building, a students’ hall, and a couple of semidetached
houses for the lecturers. It was one of the first university campuses built in Germany.
In the process of writing this essay I read all of Bill’s letters which are held at the HfG
Archive. My goal was to find out how he developed the concept for his Grundlehre, a
basic design course. Because his concept was gradually evolving, the core ideas for
the Grundlehre can more easily be grasped in several brochures which were issued
by the Geschwister Scholl Foundation in 1950 and later years. More importantly,

78 | MÄNTELE
 Schematic teaching at HfG
Ulm.

Economics

Architecture Cinematography

Philosophy Sociology

Basic Course

Product
Information
Design

Visual
Communication
Psychology Politics

the letters provide important insight in how intensely the cofounders of the HfG
discussed every detail of the course.
In the first printed program from 1950, Bill insists that the basic design course
was supposed to shake up established ideas and assumptions. His intent was to
hire some former “Bauhäusler,” whom he considered to be up for the challenge. He
was particularly interested in Walter Peterhans, who had headed the photography
department at the Bauhaus from 1929 to 1933 but now lived and taught in the United
States, and Josef Albers, who had taught at the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1933. In fact,
Bill repeatedly asked Albers to leave the United States and join the HfG faculty, but
Albers refused as he did not want to give up his US citizenship.
Bill’s design for the HfG program, visualized in a schema using interlocked
circles, was included in the first printed brochure. It reminds one of a similar schema of
the Bauhaus with the major difference that the Grundlehre sits at the center, and in the
first year, students were supposed to take this basic course. Bill insisted that the course
should be compulsory. Although students could opt to join one of five departments—
Product Design, Visual Communication, Architecture, Information, and City Planning
(which was never established; in its stead a Film Department was added in 1961)—the
basic course assignments had no specific function: students were not yet given the
task of designing a product or building or creating an applied graphic design.

79 | GRUNDLEHRE AT THE ULM SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Josef Albers and Almir
Mavignier. Courtesy of HfG
Archive / Museum Ulm.
 After many letter exchanges and planning sessions, classes finally began
on August 3, 1953, with a three-month course in visual training with Peterhans as
instructor. Based on the Visual Training course he had conceived for the Architectural
Department at the Armor Institute (today’s Illinois Institute of Technology, where the
course is still taught), the course included numerous exercises that were regarded as
the foundation for the specialized work of designers. By using abstract tasks, students
were taught to develop sensitivity to proportional relations and achieve ultimate
precision, concentration, and discipline during process and execution. In his course,
Peterhans requested that students use equal size sheets of a certain kind of cardboard
paper, which, given its high quality are kept in excellent condition until today.

Until its closure in 1968, 640 students attended the Ulm School of Design,
including 278 international students. Among the foreign students, 30 were from Latin
America, including 10 from Brazil. Many historical links exist between the HfG and
museums and design schools in Brazil. In 1951 Bill won the grand prize for sculpture
at the São Paulo Biennial. In 1959 and 1960 Tomás Maldonado and Otl Aicher taught
at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro. The Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial
(ESDI) in Rio is often regarded as a Brazilian affiliate of the HfG. Maldonado devised
ESDI’s first curriculum on the basis of his experience in Ulm. In 1958, HfG graduate
Karlheinz Bergmiller moved to Brazil, and in 1963 he became a member of ESDI’s
founding committee. Alexandre Wollner, a pioneer of visual communication in Brazil,
also studied at the HfG and went on to teach at ESDI starting in 1963.
In November 1953 and from May to August 1955, Josef Albers was guest
lecturer at the HfG. Albers’s reputation had only grown since his days at the Bauhaus.
After his training as a teacher, he enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1920 and was asked to
join the staff in 1925. In 1939 he immigrated to the United States where he taught at
Black Mountain College until 1949. His influence on basic design and fundamental
training cannot be overstated. When Bill approached him, Albers was already
teaching at Yale. In 1958 Aicher taught a course there himself. Albers placed practical
experience at the center of his teaching. Students should learn to observe and
develop a visual vocabulary of expression. His basic course was divided into three
areas: design—drawing—color.
Brazilian sculptor Mary Vieira was one of the students attending Albers’s
Grundlehre course. Previously, she had been working with Bill in Zurich. Another
student from Brazil to become a renowned graphic designer and painter in Germany
was Almir da Silva Mavignier. Central to Albers’s teaching was color. Albers
conveyed the effect of colors and their mutual influence and dependence on each
other: the interplay between color and color, color and form, color and quantity, or
color and position.

81 | GRUNDLEHRE AT THE ULM SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Workshop in progress, 1955.
Photograph by Ernst Hahn.
Courtesy of HfG Archive /
Museum Ulm.

Josef Albers with students.

Photograph by Eva-Maria
Koch. Courtesy of HfG
Archive / Museum Ulm.
Josef Albers and students.
Courtesy of HfG Archive /
Museum Ulm.

Josef Albers with Otl Aicher

and student. Photograph by
Eva-Maria Koch. Courtesy of
HfG Archive / Museum Ulm.
 However, the instructor from Tomás Maldonado workshop.
Photograph by Ernst Hahn.
whom the students received the most
Courtesy of HfG Archive /
direct reference to the Bauhaus was Museum Ulm.
Helene Nonné-Schmidt. Formally trained
as a technical drawing and crafts teacher,
Nonné-Schmidt was involved in the
Bauhaus weaving mill and from 1928
concentrated on theoretical works as a
student of Paul Klee. Nonné-Schmidt
taught the basic course based on her own
notes on the courses on form and color
morphology by Paul Klee and elementary
design teaching by Joost Schmidt.
Bill thought that valid design
rules could be studied from works of art.
These rules could then be applied to design in general and therefore transmitted to
the way things are designed—be it the design of an electrical appliance or the layout
of a magazine. In his Grundlehre, Bill included elements of the Bauhaus-Vorkurs
(preliminary course), especially Johannes Itten, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Josef Albers.
Unlike at the Bauhaus, individual artistic development was not central to the HfG
program, whose Grundlehre encouraged a more objective and intellectual approach.
In April 1955 Johannes Itten was hired for one week to give an introductory
course on color theory. Similar to Albers, Itten engaged students in some relaxing
exercises at the beginning. It is rumored that Albers had warned that he would not
come back if Itten were given a second teaching engagement. And indeed, Itten was
never invited again. Along with Bill and Aicher, renowned figures such as Max Bense,
Hans Gugelot, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Alexander Kluge, and numerous
visiting lecturers from all over the world taught at the HfG.
Tomás Maldonado from Argentina gave the school a new direction, and his
work at the school had far-reaching consequences. He expanded the curriculum to
include theory to provide a theoretical basis for design work. When Maldonado joined
the staff in 1954, he was immediately given work within the Grundlehre course. His
focus was on the theory of perception and form, laws of symmetry, and topology.
He called his course Visual Introduction. The tasks were based on mathematics and
therefore differed from those of the Bauhaus pedagogy, which relied on systematic
and intuitive knowledge through self-experience. Maldonado conducted a series
of exercises into the design rules. The term design describes something whole,
with different attributes than its component elements. The rules of design describe
regulations, which are followed by perception.

84 | MÄNTELE
 Walter Peterhans and
student. Photograph by Eva-
Marie Koch. Courtesy of HfG
Archive / Museum Ulm.

One of the best works to illustrate the changes Maldonado implemented

in the curriculum of the Grundlehre course is a compilation of assignments by
Klaus Franck from the Grundlehre of 1955/56. Assignment 1 explained how a
Peano surface is constructed. Assignment 3 was very popular: Use black as a
color, meaning that within the whole composition black should not appear like a
void but like a color equal to the other colors. Assignment 4 was about symmetry.
And assignment 5 was again popular with Maldonado: Precision—Imprecision;
using precise means in order to achieve an effect of imprecision. With his interest
in higher mathematics and geometry, Maldonado implemented the scientific
requirements of the HfG.
Students also were asked to produce three-dimensional works in the
Grundlehre. Ulrich Burandt constructed a non-orientated surface as a prime example
of why topology was such an important subject. Topology studies those properties
of geometric forms that remain constant under certain transformations such as
bending or stretching. In the course of this highly dynamic development Maldonado
and Aicher proposed the “Ulm model.” To quote Aicher, “[The Ulm model is] a
design model that rests on technology and science. The designer is no longer a lofty

85 | GRUNDLEHRE AT THE ULM SCHOOL OF DESIGN

artist but an equal partner in the decision-making process of industrial production.”1
Maldonado summarized this viewpoint in the phrase: “Product design is not an art.”
He dissociated himself from the customary view of the designer as a brilliant artist
guided by intuition, thereby making it clear that despite the great achievements of
the Bauhaus it was time to say goodbye to Bauhaus ideals. Throughout its existence
the Bauhaus represented the view that creative tasks were best left to architects,
sculptors, and painters. In the 1920s, this was feasible. However, after World War
II technical and economic conditions had changed. Under the aegis of Aicher and
Maldonado the Ulm School of Design therefore set itself the task of feeding future
designers with the most progressive technical and scientific information available.
It devised the occupational profile for a designer and did so in accordance with the
principle “product design is not an art.”
Bill did not agree with this new direction; he believed that design and art
could not be separated and left the HfG in 1957. In 1958, in a lecture given at a design
congress in Brussels, Maldonado said: “The designer will be the coordinator. His
responsibility will be to coordinate, in close collaboration with a large number of
specialists, the most varied requirements of product fabrication and usage; his will
be the final responsibility for maximum productivity in fabrication, and for maximum
material and cultural consumer satisfaction.”2
After Bill’s departure, a younger generation of lecturers took command. In the
academic year 1960/61, the last general basic course was taught under a new name:
First Academic Year (Erstes Studienjahr). In the first quarter of the first year, students
now were taught a visual grammar that should be applied to find solutions to specific
design problems. Afterward, they were asked to engage with specific tasks in their
respective departments.
The assumption that there may be one general theory as a basis for creative
activity appeared too restrictive in the early 1960s. In the academic year 1961/62 the
general Grundlehre for all students was abandoned and then resumed separately
within the individual departments. All full-time faculty—including Aicher, Friedrich
Vordemberge-Gildewart, and Anthony Fröshaug—formulated exercises for the
“visual introduction.”
A special feature of the Ulm model was the inclusion of theoretical subjects in
the curriculum, such as cybernetics, mathematical operations analysis, the then new
field of semiotics, scientific theory, philosophy, among others. They were not only
viewed as providing fundamental knowledge for design work but to analyze the latest
technologies and intellectual issues of the day. In addition, these subjects were added
to the curriculum amid an enthusiasm for technology in the second half of the 1950s.
In 1957 Sputnik 1 was the first satellite to be launched into space. East and West
began a race against time to come up with cutting-edge technological developments.

86 | MÄNTELE
All this technological and scientific know-how, along with the philosophical schools
of thought at the time, is evident in the books in the school library, now housed in the
HfG Archive library.
In addition to teaching, the school took on commissions from the industry.
Teaching staff and students were involved in this work. Designs drawn up by
“development groups” provided a first-hand opportunity to collaborate with various
industries and gain practical experience. The best-known examples are commissions
done for Braun such as the SK4 radiogram, nicknamed “Snow White’s coffin.”
For his diploma project Hans (Nick) Roericht developed a system of stackable
tableware, which was produced by the German company Thomas and, in 1964,
acquired for the design collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The
production ran continually between 1961 and 2006, obviously it was a great success
and proved the validity of ideals of the school: to design sustainable products, helping
people improve their environment.
At the beginning of all these iconic designs stood the methodological
approach established by the Ulm School of Design, taught to the students from their
very first days at this institution, with the Grundlehre as the base for everything.
Sixteen years after the school’s founding the experiment came to an end.
Chronically short of funds, as a private college it had come to depend on repeated
grants from the state of Baden-Württemberg. Amid the inflamed atmosphere of the
1968 student revolts, the political masters were not prepared to continue funding this
college with its progressive approach to work. At the end of 1968, the Ulm School of
Design was forced to close.

87 | GRUNDLEHRE AT THE ULM SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Notes

1/ Otl Aicher, “Die

Hochschule für Gestaltung:
Neun Stufen ihrer
Entwicklung.” Architese
5, no. 15 (1975): 14; my
translation.

2/ Maldonado quoted
in D. Rinker, “‘Industrial
Design is not an art’: Tomás
Maldonado’s Contribution
to the Creation of a New
Professional Identity,” in
Ulmer Modelle – Modelle
Nach Ulm, ed. G Bonsiepe et
al. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz,
2003), exhibition catalog.

88 | MÄNTELE
TWISTING THE 5
MODERNIST CURVE
Mary Vieira’s
Polyvolume: Meeting Point
Luisa Valle

Born in São Paulo in 1927 and raised and educated in Belo Horizonte, Mary
Vieira studied at the Escola de Belas Artes do Parque Municipal (School of Beaux
Arts of the Municipal Park) under the supervision of Alberto da Veiga Guignard. As
a young artist, Vieira exhibited at the Edith Behring atelier in Rio de Janeiro in 1950
and, for a brief period, got involved in the ebullient atmosphere of the emerging
Brazilian concrete movement.1 After attending a Max Bill exhibition at the Museu de
Arte de São Paulo (MASP), Vieira started corresponding with the Swiss artist and, in
1951, decided to relocate to Europe. In 1953 and 1954, she attended the Ulm School
of Design, under Bill’s rectorship, and spent the rest of her career in Italy, Switzerland,
and Brazil. Although Vieira missed much of the development of concretism and
neoconcretism in Brazil, her public works from the 1960s and 1970s highlight
the proximity of her practice to a genealogy of postwar Brazilian art that merged
formalistic concerns with perception theories. If some of the distinctions between
concretism and neoconcretism rest on the contrast between individual and collective
experiences, passive contemplation versus active participation, Vieira’s public works,
produced in Switzerland and installed in Brazil, complicate these classifications, and
challenge nationalist narratives of Brazilian modernism.2
Among the most influential of the seminal public works that she produced
in that period is Polivolume: Ponto de encontro (Polyvolume: Meeting Point).
Commissioned in 1960 for the lobby of the Itamaraty Palace, the headquarters of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brasilia, the work is an exploration of the totemic
form that paradoxically challenges stability and authorship by engaging the viewer’s
direct interaction while also allowing for temporal transformation. In this essay I
offer a transhistorical account of this site-specific work, exploring the ways in which
Vieira’s work continues to negotiate our perception of concrete art, public art, public
space, and public history. Adopting Henri Lefebvre’s triad model for the production
of space as an organizational tool—designed, lived, and symbolic space—I approach
Vieira’s work as an ongoing interaction of social and spatial relationships, a process
of production rather than an autonomous object.3 Looking at the individual and
collective experiences proposed by the work, I also examine the political potency of
Vieira’s Polyvolume in negotiating public art and public space as both a constitutive
part of Brasilia’s utopian modernism and as evidence of its failure.

DESIGNED SPACE

Polyvolume: Meeting Point is composed of a central column of industrially

cut rectangular aluminum blades stacked horizontally onto a metal axis. The sheets
of metal are spaced apart by thin metallic washers. The separation allows for light
to pass through the blades and the viewer to see through the work and into the
98-foot-long free span of the 17,000-square-foot area of the Itamaraty Palace’s ground
floor. The gaps between the blades not only render the work visually lighter but also
indicate that its metal sheets can be moved by tactile manipulation. Arched marble
benches, designed as broken sections of two circles of different size, surround the
central column. The curved marble benches mark the perimeter of the work. The
broken circumferences allow for multiple points of access to the central column. The
seating arrangements invite viewers to gather around, meet, and socialize around the
work. At first titled just Polyvolume, the work was spontaneously renamed “meeting
point” by the workers overseeing the installation.4 The marble benches are the same
height as the circular pedestal upon which the artwork stands. Both the concentric
seats and the pedestal are slightly elevated from the floor, creating the illusion of
suspension, in contradiction to the weight of the material.5
A diagram detailing the development of the Polyvolume project indicates
that its design evolved from the rupture of a spiral progression composed of
several tangent circles, where the diameter of the smaller circles are equal to the
radius of the larger ones.6 Vieira followed a similar pattern of conception in many
of her two-dimensional, sculptural, and public works, such as Polivolume: conexão-
livre-homenagem a Pedro de Toledo (Polyvolume: A Free Connection Homage to
Pedro de Toledo), installed in 1979 at the Eisenhower Square, an extension of the

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Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo.7 From 1952 to 1953, Vieira executed a series of prints
in homage to Max Bill that gives insight into her design process, including into the
sculptural works that were to come.8 Zeiten einer Zeichnung (Times of a drawing),
is composed of two series of eight plates consisting of lines and curves that move
progressively from plate to plate and meet at the end of each progression. Upon
moving to Switzerland in 1951, Vieira joined Allianz, a group of local concrete artists,
and participated in their last exhibition in Zurich in 1954.9 Despite establishing a
close relationship with Bill and other members of the group, such as Leo Leuppi and
Camille Graeser, Vieira never considered herself strictly a concrete artist.10 Insisting
that her research started in Belo Horizonte in 1943, Vieira chastised her Swiss,
German, Belgian, Dutch, and English peers for “being interested only in the static and
univocal shapes, or in elementary colors in structural fields, not optically vibrating.”11
Diagrams of Itamaraty’s Polyvolume suggest that the work was designed in a similar
fashion to Vieira’s homage to Bill, in which geometric forms are deconstructed and
reconstructed anew.12 However, instead of following a single progressive pattern
established by the artist, the reconstruction process of Vieira’s Polyvolume is
contingent on viewer participation and social and spatial relationships.

LIVED SPACE

Polyvolume: Meeting Point offers the public multiple forms of circulation,

allowing viewers to linger or pass quickly, to sit down and meet friends, or to play
with the sculpture itself, changing the position of the blades and the shape of the
totem and in the process altering views of the environment and other people using
the space. Housing four major components—the spiral staircase designed by Milton
Ramos and Joaquim Cardoso, the bas-relief on the wall and the gridded floor
patterning created by Athos Bulcão, and Vieira’s Polyvolume—the ground floor of
the Itamaraty articulates a spatial, dynamic, and immersive experience. When people
access the space from the mezzanine using the stairs, the viewer’s perception of
space is altered at every step. The geometric relationships created by the overlay of
abstract shapes—the grid of the façade, the orthogonal lines on the floor and ceiling,
the trapezoid shapes of Bulcão’s wall relief, the curvature of the mezzanine’s edge,
of Vieira’s benches, the diagonal lines of the stairs, and the Polyvolume—together
generate the perception that the space is in constant flux. The viewer’s downward
descent together with the concatenated geometric elements of the space bestow the
Itamaraty lobby with what Vieira coined as the “optical vibrancy” typical of her work.13
From the ground floor, at eye level, the spiral staircase and Vieira’s Polyvolume
stand as vertical elements cutting across the free span of the lobby, mirroring and

91 | TWISTING THE MODERNIST CURVE

Mary Vieira, Polivolume:
Ponto de encontro, 1969–
1970. Permanent installation
at Itamaraty Palace, Brasilia.
Photograph by Matheus
Costa. Courtesy of Consulado
Geral do Brasil, New York.
feeding off each other. The viewer finds multiple paths around the marble benches
to approach Vieira’s column, and tactile engagement with the work creates the
possibility of infinite modulations of its blades. The viewer’s manipulation of the
metal sheets again activates the environment through the optical apparatus and
bodily movement around and through the gaps of the blades stacked onto the
Polyvolume’s centrifugal core. By turning the metal sheets, the viewer intensifies the
dialogue between Vieira’s column and the impression of movement suggested by the
spiral staircase. As multiple viewers walk around the Polyvolume, new perspectives
and vistas are created as eyes, touch, and bodily movement come together in creating
subjective and collective orthogonal, curved, and diagonal lines that cut through the
space and their outlook on each other.

SYMBOLIC SPACE

Vieira started her first kinetic investigations—such as in Formas

eletrorotatorias, espirálicas, a perfuração virtual (Electro-rotary Spiral Shapes to
Virtual Perforation), commissioned for and put on display at the 1948 exhibition of
the “producers class,” an organization of wealthy farmers from Minas Gerais—in
Belo Horizonte.14 The work consisted of a laminated metal structure that spun at
alternate times driven by an electric motor and producing a spiral effect.15 Vieira also
designed the exhibition space, creating a sculptural environment to surround her
work. Many years later, Vieira would again take on the role of exhibition designer
on the occasion of Brazil’s participation in the 1957 Interbau, Berlin’s international
architecture exhibition, where plans and projects for Brasilia, Brazil’s new modernist
capital were presented for the first time to the European public.16 Vieira designed the
exhibition space, entitled Brasilien baut Brasília, as well as the poster and catalog for
the exhibition. Understanding Vieira’s background is important to fully appreciate
how she came onto a constructive practice independently from the Rio-São Paulo axis
and preceding her relocation to Switzerland. Most important, Vieira’s early production
situated her in the middle of Belo Horizonte’s intellectual elite, whose close ties to the
region’s industrial economy gave her easy access to metal factories and specialized
labor essential to her sculpture.
In many ways, Vieira’s practice embodied the ambiguities that were typical
of Brazil’s official modernist architecture program. These ambiguities were most
apparent in the design and construction of Brasilia, a state-of-the-art urban
experiment developed in an uncharted area of the country. By the late 1950s, concrete
artists in Brazil had departed from the movement’s early adherence to the rationalist
principles disseminated through European manifestos and educational programs—

93 | TWISTING THE MODERNIST CURVE

mainly the Bauhaus and the Ulm School of Design in Germany.17 Brazilian concrete
art reappraised European models in terms of the modulation of time, space, and
movement. Modernist architecture in Brazil had also departed from the rationalist
postulates of Corbusian and Bauhaus architecture and had assumed an organic and
gestural quality early on, from Niemeyer’s dynamic design for the Pampulha Park
(1940) to the curves of Brasilia’s temporal monumentality (1960). In 1959, Ferreira
Gullar’s “Manifesto neoconcreto” (Neoconcrete manifesto) pushed the Brazilian
constructivist project into the realm of social relationships and phenomenology.18
Neoconcretism’s emphasis on subjective and collective experiences gestured toward
a worldwide questioning of top-down state mandates, such as the architecture/
everyday life dichotomy and the developmentalism associated with both concrete art
and modernist architecture in Brazil. Neoconcrete artists turned to the multifaceted
character of everyday life for rethinking the division of urban spaces. The construction
of Brasilia from 1955 to 1963 occurred at the same time as the rise of neoconcretism
in Brazil. Yet, works produced by neoconcrete artists were never considered for the
capital’s innovative program that aimed at the integration of art and architecture.
In 1959, the International Extraordinary Conference of Art Critics took place
in Brazil. Art critic Mário Pedrosa presented the theme of the first session, “The New
City—Synthesis of the Arts,” which revolved around Brasilia. Pedrosa identified the
new capital as both an architectural object and a work of art, calling attention to its
social, cultural, and artistic totality.19 Lúcio Costa’s dynamic pilot plan and Niemeyer’s
gestural architecture bestowed the capital with the character of a monumental work
of Brazilian concrete art. Pedrosa had imagined a synthesis of the arts for Brasilia
that included works derived from the Brazilian constructivist project, not the “stars of
easel painting in Brazil,” which he deemed “stripped from any spatial imagination.”20
He affirmed that Brazil’s new generation of spatial and constructivist investigators
was closer to the true synthesis of the arts. However, Brasilia’s urban modernism
included more figurative works by artists active since the 1930s who had worked with
Niemeyer and Costa on previous official projects—such as Bruno Giorgi, Candido
Portinari, and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti—than abstract works by artists such as Alfredo
Volpi and Athos Bulcão.21
A presentation by Costa at the International Congress of Artists in Venice,
organized by UNESCO in 1952, sheds some light on the disjuncture between the
constructive genealogy of Brasilia’s modernist architecture and the new capital’s
predominantly figurative visual arts program.22 Costa suggested that architecture
should itself have a plastic dimension and emphasized his preference for the term
integration with rather than synthesis of the arts in order to preserve the particular
aesthetic dimension of each discipline—thinking perhaps of Mies van der Rohe’s
Barcelona Pavilion of 1929 rather than in terms of the Gesamtkunstwerk of Victor

94 | VALLE
Horta, Charles Mackintosh, and Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus, for example.23 In a 1953
text called “Desencontro” (Yielding), Costa responded to Max Bill’s critique of the
decorative façade of the former Ministry of Education building in Rio de Janeiro. Bill
took issue with Portinari’s mural in particular.24 Costa’s response to Bill reinforced
his preference for an integration of figurative and abstract elements rather than a
synthesis of modernist architecture and abstract art.25
However, perhaps because the Itamaraty Palace was one of the last structures
to be built in Brasilia, its interaction with art is also one of the less figurative in the
capital. The building was raised late in the transition between what constituted
a national vocabulary in the visual arts in the 1940s (figurative art) and in the
1960s (geometric abstraction). The capital’s visual arts program holds a mix of
abstract and figurative works, a blend that indicates the resistance to abandoning
the figurative style while also foreseeing the impossibility of embracing only one
system of representation to translate the national identity. The Itamaraty’s art and
architecture belong mostly to a then established genealogy of Brazilian constructivist
investigation.26 Yet, on the ground floor of the Itamaraty, the nationalist claim lay in
both the synthesis and dynamism of its geometric postulates and the desire for a
participatory and socially produced space.
Polyvolume: Meeting Point was commissioned by Oscar Niemeyer and
Ambassador Wladimir Murtinho as a permanent artwork for the Itamaraty Palace
while the building was still under construction.27 In a lecture given in 1958 in St.
Petersburg, titled “The Contemporary City,” Niemeyer argued: “Cities will be modern
when they are not limited only to a grand display of technique and taste, but rather
when they will be cities of free and happy men, who would look to each other without
superiority or envy, as brothers and comrades of this harsh and short journey that
life offers them.”28 Polyvolume: Meeting Point embodied this urban vision. In a 1969
interview in Rio de Janeiro’s newspaper Jornal do Brasil, Vieira explained: “[My]
sculpture [was] made to give air to the viewer’s artistic, creative capacity. A menial
worker will perhaps be able to create something better than the president if both
are given the opportunity to touch the same art piece. . . . I am convinced that in
front of one of my art pieces, the worker, used to dealing with brick and cement,
will have fewer inhibitions to deal with its materials than a bureaucrat who has
always been limited to dealing with office work.”29 Niemeyer and Vieira both convey
the ambiguous nature of Brasilia, an authoritarian top-down project in search for
democratic participation, freedom, and social equality.
I would like to suggest that the ambiguous character of Brasilia’s project—
however symbolic a place it came to occupy in the national imaginary—can also be
found inside its buildings, such as in the role played by Vieira’s Polyvolume: Meeting
Point in the lobby of the Itamaraty Palace. Vieira was already living abroad when

95 | TWISTING THE MODERNIST CURVE

 Mary Vieira, Polivolume:
Ponto de encontro, 1969–
1970. Permanent installation
at Itamaraty Palace, Brasilia.
Photograph by Dammer
Martins, 2019. Courtesy of
Consulado Geral do Brasil,
New York.

Gullar’s “Manifesto neoconcreto” pushed the country’s constructivist investigation

toward the realm of social and spatial relationships. Yet Vieira had already been
exploring the neoconcrete themes of collective gathering, tactile manipulation, and
the participatory nature of art in her artistic investigation and pedagogical practice
leading up to the commissioning of Polyvolume, such as in the paper exercise of
constructing and deconstructing a cube in three sections, which she assigned in her
Structuring Space class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland, today’s
Basel School of Design.30 The exercise gave insight into how the production of space
was as much about structuring form as it was about the participation of the students
or, as Vieira suggested, the “times of motion in various directions.”31 Besides
fostering creative ways to build and split a solid, however, Vieira’s pedagogical
exercise, which derived from her polyhedric design studies, also demanded students
to achieve the “truth” or “beauty” of a predetermined form.32 Thus, unlike the
neoconcrete artists, Vieira never abandoned the rationalist postulates of a universal
techno-utopia central to the modernist project in Brazil and abroad. In addition, the
industrial character and orchestration of space of Vieira’s work gestured toward
principles of usefulness and efficiency being furthered by corporate modernist
projects that were challenged worldwide by the artistic and architectural avant-garde,
including neoconcretism.

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 Mary Vieira, Polivolume:
Ponto de encontro, 1969–
1970. Permanent installation
at Itamaraty Palace, Brasilia.
Photograph by Dammer
Martins, 2019. Courtesy of
Consulado Geral do Brasil,
New York.

Though living abroad, Vieira kept in dialogue with postwar Brazilian art
and architecture through shared exhibitions, and her work converged with those
of many artists with whom she shared space at exhibitions in Brazil and abroad:
the kineticism of Abraham Palatnik; the spatial practice of Hélio Oiticica, Franz
Weissmann, and Amílcar de Castro; the design inquiries of Almir Mavignier; and
the phenomenology of Lygia Clark and Oiticica’s participatory art. Questions
central to Vieira’s work include the use of industrial processes paired with freehand
manipulation, the leap into three-dimensional space, and the sensual and rational
engagement of the viewer with the artwork via object-body, sight-form associations.
While Vieira did not participate in the 1960s development of a new vocabulary for
the Brazilian avant-garde, her investigations of form and space are in keeping with
central ideas of both the concrete and neoconcrete programs and an integral part of
the genealogy of Brazilian constructive practice. Although Vieira’s work reflects the
constructive lineage of Brazilian abstract art, it departs as much as it converges with
the principles of both movements.
Because of delays in production and Brazil’s social and political instability after
the 1964 military coup, Vieira’s work was not installed at Itamaraty until 1970, almost
ten years after its commission and during the worst years of the dictatorship. In 1964
the military had appropriated the capital for its autocratic project, thwarting any of the

97 | TWISTING THE MODERNIST CURVE

capital’s surviving socialist aspirations.33 By the 1970s, Vieira’s Polyvolume: Meeting
Point was associated with the official developmentalism and authoritarianism of the
new regime. The “precision of [the Polyvolume’s] Swiss-produced industrial blades,”
as Pedrosa described it, was perceived as a corrupt form of forging an official
Brazilian avant-garde.34
The period of installation of Polyvolume: Meeting Point inevitably raises
questions about its designation as “public art.” What does the term public mean in
such a repressive context? Does Polyvolume: Meeting Point retain its democratic
intentions of accessibility, participation, inclusion, and accountability to the people?
How does it relate to its context in the Itamaraty Palace, an institution that arguably
never fully possessed the characteristics of an open, public place? Although
government employees circulate in the building, public access to the lobby, and
thus to Vieira’s sculpture, is limited—viewers need to take part in a guided visit.
Hence, Polyvolume: Meeting Point must be interpreted in the context of Niemeyer’s
architecture, Costa’s plan, and the government’s marshalling of vast resources
to build Brasilia—all top-down projects that never proposed accountability to the
general public.
Vieira’s industrially produced Polyvolume: Meeting Point concomitantly
embraced and rejected the ideal of permanence, timelessness, and aesthetic
essence that gives it independence from historical contingencies. The site-specificity,
usefulness, and durability of the work allowed it to be swept into the realm of
a transhistorical continuity and neutrality. The dictatorship led to a polarized
society divided between those who supported and those who resisted the coup.
Marginalized sectors of the society remained excluded from the political debate. A
now multifaceted Brazilian avant-garde questioned positions both of the left and of
the right by embracing the marginal, the amateur, and the absurd.35 Living abroad,
Vieira missed the Brazilian avant-garde’s deliberate process of “de-skilling” as a
form of resistance, the articulation of a new vocabulary that embraced utilitarian,
rudimentary, and precarious materials, popular culture, kitsch, parrots, palm trees,
bromeliads, the art of children, the insane, their accumulation and exaggeration.36
These “postmodern” systems of art making (as Pedrosa defined Oiticica’s project of
environmental anti-art in 1965, for example) challenged the elitism of the rationalist
principles of concrete art and official modernist architecture in Brazil.37 The new
vocabulary denounced Brasilia’s project by pointing to undemocratic theories both of
the left and of the right.
The new vocabulary of the 1960s Brazilian avant-garde opened art making to
history, politics, and everyday life. The 1960s avant-garde still built on the geometric
shapes and rationalist postulates of modernist architecture and concrete art as
tools in the struggle for social emancipation, active participation, and ongoing

98 | VALLE
codification of Brazilian cultural identity but now also challenged it.38 On the ground
floor of the Itamaraty, the rationalist principles of the country’s constructivist project
intersected with those of the country’s official modernist architecture. Yet, this
merger of modern architecture and concrete practices created an immersive and
participatory ensemble that challenged traditional breaks established in the history
of Brazilian constructive research, such as between concrete and neoconcrete art.
Thus, even though Polyvolume: Meeting Point contains within it all the possibilities
of Brasilia’s utopian project and the dream of cultural emancipation of Brazilian
concrete art, it also exposes all the contradictions, paradoxes, and frustrations of
these two projects.
Associated with official developmentalism and authoritarianism, the
“precision of Swiss-produced industrial blades” enabled Polyvolume: Meeting Point
to assume a transhistorical and political neutrality—a claim that can sadly be made
for the entire project of Brasilia.39 As Vieira proposed, her work searched for the
space where “the viewer conjugated the polyvolumetric verb.”40 Yet, the rationalism
of the geometric principles, industrial precision, and controlled participation that are
inherent to Polyvolume: Meeting Point came to represent the obsolescence of the
utopian dream it belonged to. In the 1970s, the verb that the avant-garde conjugated
to represent the national used a radically different vocabulary of precarious walls,
plugged-in television sets, and electric guitars, accumulation, and exaggeration.41
Authenticity and purity became myths. But have the form and feeling of Vieira’s
silver metal blades become mute? More than fifty years after Brasilia’s construction
and thirty years into the country’s process of redemocratization can we find new
ways to “conjugate the polyvolumetric verb”?42 Have we had enough time to look
back at the modernist curves of Vieira’s Polyvolume with the distance necessary
to reengage with the object outside nationalist frameworks of nostalgia or defeat?
Investigating past and present experiences of Vieira’s Polyvolume and the ambiguity
of its site may be an attempt at restoring the work’s process of production and its
potency in engaging with public art, public space, and public history.

99 | TWISTING THE MODERNIST CURVE

Notes 11 / Mattar, 25. Costa: Registro de uma 1969–January 1970): 560.
vivencia (São Paulo: Empresa
1/ Edith Behring taught 12 / Ferreira Gullar, das Artes, 1995), 270. 31 / Vieira, 560.
drawing at the Escola de Belas “Mary Vieira: Ideia e forma,”
Artes do Parque Municipal in Revista Continente, 23 / Discussions on the 32 / Vieira, 561.
in Belo Horizonte and left July 2005, http://www synthesis of the arts have
for Rio in 1950, where she .revistacontinente.com permeated the history of 33 / Mattar, Mary Vieira, 43.
studied printmaking with Axl .br/index.php/component/ art for centuries. In the
Leskoschek whose students content/article/165- nineteenth and twentieth 34 / Mário Pedrosa, “Da
included Ivan Serpa and traduzir-se/1930.html (site centuries, the idea of a dissolução do objeto ao
Almir Mavignier, two of the discontinued). Gesamtkunstwerk flourished vanguardismo brasileiro,”
founders of Brazilian concrete in the work of artist-architects in Acadêmicos e modernos,
movement. 13 / Mattar, Mary Vieira, 25. such as Victor Horta, ed. Otília Arantes (São Paulo:
Charles Mackintosh, Antonio Edusp, 1998), 363.
2/ The shift from 14 / Mattar, 22. Gaudi, Eliel Saarinen and,
individual to collective of course, Walter Gropius’s 35 / The social-political
experiences of artworks 15 / Mattar, 22. Bauhaus. Giedion and Sert role of the art workshop led
is a traditional mark in the also brought attention to the by Pedrosa and Dr. Nise da
transformation of the Brazilian 16 / Mattar, 27. collaboration of architects Silveira in a facility for the
constructive project in the and urbanists with landscape mentally ill in Rio de Janeiro
1960s. See Regina Teixeira de 17 / Aracy Amaral, Projeto designers, painters, and and Pedrosa’s workshop for
Barros, Arte construtiva na construtivo brasileiro na arte designers in their “Nine children at the Museum of
Pinacoteca de São Paulo (São (Rio de Janeiro: Museum of Points of Monumentality” in Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro
Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado Modern Art and São Paulo: 1943. in the 1960s, for example,
de São Paulo, 2014), 31. Pinacoteca do Estado, 1977). intertwined pedagogical,
24 / Costa, “Desencontro,” psychiatric, and aesthetic
3/ Henri Lefebvre, The 18 / Ferreira Gullar, “Neo- in Lucio Costa, 202. investigations.
Production of Space, trans. Concrete Manifesto,” in Art
D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: in Latin America, ed. Dawn 25 / Costa, 202. 36 / Hal Foster, Art
Basil Blackwell, 1991). Ades (New Haven, CT: Yale since 1900: Modernism,
University Press, 1989), 26 / Figurative sculpture Antimodernism,
4/ Denise Mattar, 335–337 by Bruno Giorgi punctuates Postmodernism (London:
Mary Vieira: O tempo do one of the gardens designed Thames and Hudson, 2004),
movimento (São Paulo: 19 / Mário Pedrosa, Mário Roberto Burle Marx for 531.
Centro Cultural Banco do Pedrosa: Primary Documents, the Itamaraty building, for
Brasil, 2005), 35. ed. Gloria Ferreira and Paulo example. 37 / Mário Pedrosa
Herkenhoff, trans. Stephen refers to Oiticica’s work
5/ Pedro Augusto Vieira Berg (New York: Museum 27 / Vieira Santos, as “postmodern” in “Arte
Santos, Preservação e of Modern Art and Duke Preservação e restauro das Ambiental, Arte Pós-
restauro das obras de Mary University Press, 2016), 365. obras de Mary Vieira, 67. Moderna, Hélio Oiticica,”
Vieira em espaços públicos Correio da Manhã, June
no Brasil (master’s thesis, 20 / Pedrosa, 366. 28 / Oscar Niemeyer, 26, 1966. Paulo Herkenhoff
School of Architecture and “Depoimento,” Módulo, no. 9 cites the article “Crise do
Urbanism, University of São 21 / Costa and Niemeyer (February 1958): 6. conhecimento artístico,”
Paulo, 2017), 45. had worked with these artists Correio da Manhã, July
before in official projects, 29 / Mattar, Mary Vieira, 30. 31, 1966, as yet another
6/ Vieira Santos, 70. such as the former building instance when Pedrosa
of the Ministry of Education 30 / Mary Vieira, referred to Oiticica’s art as
7/ Vieira Santos, 70. and Public Health in Rio de “ ‘La structuration de “postmodern.” Herkenhoff
Janeiro (1936–1945), today l’espace’ cours 1969 a la also reveals that Pedrosa
8/ Vieira Santos, 48. Palacio Gustavo Capanema. kunstgewerbeschule du repeatedly did so many
canton de bâle,” reprint from times over the years. See
9/ Mattar, Mary Vieira, 25. 22 / Lucio Costa, “O Graphis revue internationale Paulo Herkenhoff, “Rio de
arquiteto e a sociedade d’arts graphiques e appliqués Janeiro: A Necessary City,”
10 / Mattar, 25. contemporanea,” in Lucio anné 25, no. 146 (December in The Geometry of Hope:

100 | VALLE
Latin American Abstract
Art from the Patricia Phelps
de Cisneros Collection,
ed. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
(Austin: Blanton Museum
of Art, University of Texas,
2007), 61n49.

38 / Hélio Oiticica’s
environmental anti-art,
for example, deconstructs
traditional ways of art-
making and art-viewing
essential to previous
movements by dissolving
the polarity between artist
and viewer, low and high
culture, between art and life.
According to Pedrosa, these
represented crucial shifts in
the parameters that informed
Brazilian art until the 1950s.

39 / Pedrosa, “Da
dissolução do objeto,” 363.

40 / Mattar, Mary Vieira, 35.

41 / Oiticica’s architectural
environment Tropicália
(1967)—composed of
two Penetrables, narrow
corridor-like structures where
participants enter and walk
in, out, and around as they
please—was composed of
walls of plywood and textile.
Tropical plants and birds
were juxtaposed with written
signs inside the structure.
One of the signs reads
“Pureza é mito,” or purity is
a myth, which addressed the
inadequacy of the industrial
universalism of concrete art
and modern architecture.

42 / Vieira, quoted in
Mattar, Mary Vieira, 25.

101 | TWISTING THE MODERNIST CURVE

LINA BO BARDI AND 6
THE CREATION OF THE
SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS
IN PARQUE LAGE
Claudia Saldanha

During his brief tenure as director of the School of Visual Arts (1975–1979),
Rubens Gerchman was widely recognized for setting up a program of art classes
and events that met the demands of an emerging new art scene in Rio de Janeiro
a decade after the military coup of 1964. Extrapolating its role as an educational
institution, the school positioned itself as the city’s cultural beacon promoting the
work of young artists and connecting them with professionals from various cultural
backgrounds. Structured as a multidisciplinary space, the school offered regular
educational activities in tandem with a vibrant program of exhibitions, lectures, and
performance. These events—which included dance, theater, and art installations—
transformed the school into a cultural magnet that attracted a young audience that
yearned for connectivity and a sense of purpose. The genesis of the School of Visual
Arts, however, was a complex affair set in motion a decade prior to Gerchman’s
arrival, and this essay addresses the important confluence of events that made
possible the implementation of this important institution.
Brainstorming for the creation of the School of Visual Arts started in December
1964, when then Governor of Rio de Janeiro Carlos Lacerda extended an invitation
to Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992) to plan, organize, and manage an art
studies center for the city. He thus set the foundation for an ambitious program that
privileged innovation and experimentation, aiming to engage young artists and art
professionals. As for the site, Lacerda was successful in securing a palatial home built
in the 1930s that by 1957 had become city property. Commonly referred to as Parque
Lage, the eclectic-style building is perched in a 125 acres urban park in Rio’s upper-
middle-class Zona Sul (South Zone) area amid greenery and century-old trees on the
edge of the Atlantic Forest.1
In looking back at Bo Bardi’s architectural works realized in Brazil—more
specifically the works produced from 1960 to 1980, such as the Unhão Museum in
Salvador, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), the Pompeia Factory, and the
Oficina Theater—one is impressed by the architect’s extraordinary versatility in
adapting historic spaces or creating entirely new structures. The construction or
adaptation of existing spaces is punctuated by a great sensibility for preservation
and conservation of the original buildings’ characteristics and in proposing new
constructions to answer the need of new activities. Thus, a church and a warehouse
from the seventeenth century were transformed into an ocean-front museum for
modern art in Salvador; an old oil tank factory was transformed into a community
center to host and promote art forms and diversity in a São Paulo working-class
neighborhood; in a large lot in Avenida Paulista a new three-story building was
built to house Brazil’s largest art collection. In all these projects, Bo Bardi introduced
educational programs, seminars, exhibitions libraries, documentation centers, and
performance and other interactive spaces. Informed by her architectural training in
Europe and early collaborations with Gio Ponti and Bruno Zevi, Bo Bardi’s projects
aimed at not only to restructure the spaces but to redefine the cultural occupation of
those constructions as well.
Besides architecture and furniture design, Bo Bardi’s professional activity
also comprehended editorial projects, museology, curatorial work, and art criticism.
She was responsible for the editorial management of the Italian magazine A-Cultura
della Vita and the Brazilian Habitat, first published in 1950 as the catalog for MASP.
Together with her husband, Pietro Maria Bardi (1900–1999), she was responsible
for the magazine’s first ten issues focusing on articles related to art, architecture,
and matters related to art education. In 1947, the Bardis in collaboration with
fellow architect Jacob Ruchti created the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea as
an educational branch of MASP, one of the first schools in Brazil to train young
designers under a strong functionalist direction influenced by the Bauhaus. In her
introduction to Habitat 4 (1951), an issue dedicated to architectural projects for
schools, Bo Bardi wrote:

If anything must be done to “transform” mankind, the first step is to “form” them. And it is
natural that the process must start in the schools. To build schools is fine, a task that fits well
within the realm of abstract initiatives and resounding ministerial decisions; but the burning
intent, and the sense of urgency is lacking. It is necessary to dramatize the problem of the
schools and bring it to life, make it present, quotidian.

104 | SALDANHA
 What is a school? It is a place where one learns to read and to write, where one
learns to check one’s watch and to count time, where above all, one learns to be proud of
one’s country. At school, one also studies the progressive order of time, many disciplines,
infinite other things until the day when one graduates and this complex of learned things
forms a baggage, the means to start one’s voyage through humanity.

The premise for building according to school needs seems at first beyond the
problem of architecture, yet it is closely related. The forms that expand and that connect
with the exterior, the garden, the large windows, the foreboding atmosphere are the first
step for abolishing barriers. The school bunker—Gothic, Norman, or without style but with
the common denominator of a prison reminding the student that to study is an agonizing
endeavor—this kind of school has become antiquated and obsolete. Let’s start with the
schools, and above all, let’s start with architecture.2

The idea to invite Bo Bardi to spearhead research for the art center in Rio came from
the engineer and landscape designer Lota de Macedo Soares, a close friend of the
governor who at the time was in charge of the important structural urban redesign
for the city. Motivated not only by Bo Bardi’s capabilities as an architect but above all
by her vast cultural knowledge, Soares promoted a meeting between Bo Bardi and
Lacerda and suggested her appointment to run the newly created art center.
The concept of an art center in Parque Lage was part of a broader plan
conceived by Lacerda to restructure Rio de Janeiro’s complex urban layout and
optimize the use of public spaces. Soares’s successful experience of designing and
developing the Flamengo Park in a landfill area by the Guanabara Bay, with its high-
speed routes running through tropical gardens designed by Roberto Burle Marx,
had strengthened the bond between the engineer and the governor. Together they
discussed how Flamengo Park might be developed to include sports courts and the
new home for Rio’s Museum of Modern Art. Soares helped select architects, urban
planners, landscape designers, and technicians to collaborate in the creation of a
major urban work connecting Rio’s commercial center to its posh neighborhoods of
Zona Sul. In the early 1960s, such advanced understanding of urban design would
transform the region indelibly and propose a new benchmark in terms of how public
spaces in Rio could be used.
Hence the implementation of an art center in Parque Lage, whose property
had been incorporated to the state by Lacerda as a way to give public access and new
productive use to that portion of the Atlantic Forest. In August 1966, Lacerda created
a foundation with the charge for capturing funds to maintain the new arts center. Bo
Bardi’s responsibilities included the creation of a preliminary work project for Parque
Lage, setting budget plans, hiring staff, and overseeing renovation construction.
According to its initial plan, the purpose of the foundation was to create pathways
for youth to develop “a clear and constructive understanding of the issues affecting
the contemporary world,” to cultivate “their interests and individual talents in the

105 | LINA BO BARDI AND THE CREATION OF THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS IN PARQUE LAGE
 Lina Bo Bardi, Project for
a pavilion at Parque Lage,
1965. Pen, graphite and
China ink on vegetal paper.
Copyright Instituto Bardi /
Casa de Vidro.

field of the arts and of technique,” and to foster “a sense of community through the
exchange and dialogue with other universities and schools in Brazil and abroad.”3
Bo Bardi’s contribution to Brazilian culture remains the subject of continuous
study and is far from being understood in its broadest spectrum. With each new
project and venture, she implemented innovative ideas that revealed her keen
intelligence, versatility, and profound interest in Brazilian popular culture. Her vast
technical and theoretical knowledge about art, architecture, urban planning, and
design, together with her interest and respect for the vernacular, popular culture, and
craft, made her an key asset for Lacerda’s ambitious plans.
When she began working on the MASP project, she jotted down this note:

A remembrance place? A mummy tomb for the noteworthy? A warehouse or a collection of

artworks made by people for people, already obsolete and must be managed with a sense
of pity. None of that. The new museums must open their doors; let fresh air and new light
pour in. Between past and present there is no continuity solution. It is necessary to intertwine
modern life, unfortunately melancholic and distracted by all kinds of nightmares, in its new
grand art trend.

And also:

The museum’s mission is to create an atmosphere, a visitors experience that helps

them comprehend art and make no distinction between ancient or modern art.4

Since its inception, the MASP educational programs followed directives set forth

106 | SALDANHA
 Lina Bo Bardi, Project for
a pavilion at Parque Lage,
1966. Watercolor, graphite
and China ink on paper.
Copyright Instituto Bardi /
Casa de Vidro.

by UNESCO, which understood museums as cultural formation centers of pivotal

relevance to their visitor’s education. The International Museum Council (ICOM),
a UNESCO branch, was created following the need to establish norms for modern
museums. In an article published in the first issue of Habitat, Bo Bardi addressed the
didactic activities at MASP citing the special classes of drawings from nature, music
history, printmaking, photography, and a dedicated space for children—the Children’s
Art Club, which offered painting, music, and dance classes. Articulated on the premise
of a modern concept of museum, MASP became a dynamic center, engaging large
audiences through culture and art education.
In a 1975 thesis presented in Mexico, art critic Mário Pedrosa reflected on the
roles of art institutions of that period, arguing that only a modern art museum could
understand and value art in its proper nature and the museum’s role in promoting it.

Different from the ancient and traditional museum, the one that keeps masterpieces in static
positions, today’s museums are above all a home for experiences. A “paralaboratorio.” Inside
it one understands what experimental art is. And these days, a place where the contemporary
critics can assimilate the blending of all art genres. Sculpture turns into painting, painting

107 | LINA BO BARDI AND THE CREATION OF THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS IN PARQUE LAGE
 into sculpture, and so on. Another characteristic of contemporary activities is the unlimited
attention to research, experimentation, and invention. . . . The modern museum’s role fits
right here: it is the privileged ambience where this experience should take place.5

Bo Bardi’s ideas for the structuring of MASP education outreach were essential for
the creation of the Center of Studies Foundation at Parque Lage. Although her project
was never fully implemented because of the lack of incentive and resources, she
was able to outline basic ideas that Rubens Gerchman would later use to create the
School of Visual Arts.
Given this background, it is not surprising that Gerchman would invite Bo
Bardi to join the planning group in charge of restructuring the School of Visual Arts.
Besides contributing to the creation of a new curriculum, Bo Bardi proposed, in
collaboration with set designer Hélio Eichbauer, the first course under Gerchman’s
tenure, titled Multidimensional Workshop. The course was offered in the summer
of 1976, with Eichbauer as instructor. Because of her hectic schedule during the
completion of MASP, Bo Bardi was unable to teach. However, her collaboration with
Gerchman extended for a significant period, and her proposal for the foundation,
titled Academia, included notes on activities such as the following:

Seminars; production of documentary movies with a scientific angle (human sciences and
facts) produced by specialists; documentation center (documents, exhibitions, recorded
material and publications exclusively about Brazil); library (from the beginning subscribed
magazines and bibliography services); publication of a monthly newsletter; national forum
covering Brazilian issues; occasional participation of foreign guest contributors; public issues
exhibitions; coffee shop and restaurant; an art gallery in the plant nursery and concerts;
theater for 300 guests.6

In the project sent to the foundation in charge of creating the Arts Studies Center,
Bo Bardi emphasized the need for a vast curriculum for the formation of artists and
art professionals. Beyond the program’s interdisciplinary character, she also insisted
on the creation of a project that included the restoration of the entire estate (the
mansion, its stables and gardens) as well as changes to the buildings’ interiors to
better suit the new school. And she stressed her priorities in a terse list of directions:
“The relationship between intellectual and industrial work; avoid dilettantism and
improvisation, against verbiage and self-aggrandizing; all work must be clearly
stated in WRITING, criticism also must be conveyed in writing; against prolixity;
against ‘folkloristic’ concepts of a moral, social, and political order.”7 Furthermore,
Bo Bardi’s proposals such as forums, seminars, festivals, exhibitions, documentation
center, library, auditorium, newsletter, invitations to foreign art professionals, and
hosting of nonresident professors demonstrated the cosmopolitan philosophy
on which the Parque Lage art center was built. The program departs from the
intellectual and artistic production honed in workshops, studios, classes, and

108 | SALDANHA
seminars and culminates in the dissemination of this production through exhibitions
and publications, a production that was further solidified through artist-to-artist
exchanges and international residence programs.
In “Cinco anos entre os brancos” (Five years among the whites), an article in
which she talks about the time she lived in Salvador and created the city’s Museum of
Modern Art, Bo Bardi wrote:

The Modern Art Museum is a phenomenon typical of a new country where the word museum
has a meaning other than preservation. The old-world countries create museums based on
their relevant collections; there are no museums with reduced or no collections. Salvador’s
Museum of Modern Art wasn’t a traditional museum: given the state’s low budget, it could
hardly “preserve.” Its activities were geared toward the creation of a cultural movement
that embraced the values of a historically poor culture that could overcome Western
historical standards. Supported by a popular experience (distinct from folklore), the museum
penetrates a modern culture world, with the craft, methods and strength of a new humanist.8

Bo Bardi’s 1966 program for the Parque Lage Studies Center reflected the same
ideas that punctuated almost all her previous projects. To the recovery of existing
spaces she added the need for new ones, to fulfill the new activities. In that sense,
an art school would assume the relevance and function of a museum—“The
museum’s mission is to create an atmosphere, an environment to enable the visitor to
comprehend artworks, where there is no distinction between ancient or modern art.”
Both in renovation projects such as the Unhão Museum and the Pompeia Factory
and in new constructions such as MASP, Bo Bardi allowed for new-use plans. For the
Unhão she created an adjoining building for workshops and arts and crafts courses;
for the Pompeia Factory she changed a creek’s course and built a fireplace for the
community space as well as a library and restaurant; for MASP she built an enormous
open space under the museum for shows and large public gatherings. For Parque
Lage, she designed external wood pavilions covered in palm tree fronds to house
workshops and open-air exhibitions. In designing the pavilions, Bo Bardi connected
the typology and technique proper to storage warehouses to a new concept of
workspace. As the sketches for the pavilions demonstrate, Bo Bardi was keen in
establishing connections with the environment: the stone floors and the fence of tree
logs would create a transition between the mansion and the park’s vegetation.
One cannot ignore the similarities to her various projects: “I chose a simple
architecture that could immediately communicate what in the past was called
‘monumental,’ meaning in the sense of ‘collective,’ of civil dignity. I used my previous
experience of five years living in Brazil’s Northeast region, the exposure to folk
popular culture, not with a romantic folklore angle, but with a simplifying experience.
Through that experience I landed what one could call ‘poor architecture.’ I insist,
not from an ethnical point of view.”10 Bo Bardi’s contribution was fundamental for

109 | LINA BO BARDI AND THE CREATION OF THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS IN PARQUE LAGE
Gerchman’s restructuring of the School of Visual Arts in 1975. Although Gerchman
surrounded himself with highly qualified collaborators who promoted debate and
reflection on a daily basis, it was inevitable that a great portion of the teaching
structure still followed outdated practices in the studios and workshops. In the
school’s inaugural brochure several courses revealed a sense of sameness as in
any art school. This impression that nothing had changed could be erroneous and
overshadow the relevance of one of the most innovative experiences in Brazil.
Art critic Wilson Coutinho said: “Rubens Gerchman got to this month of
August 1970 with a few special characteristics. He had seen the ousting of president
João Goulart, witnessed the ascension of the military junta to power . . . participated
in progressive movements in the 1960s and lived in the United States—center of
progressive ideas, replacing Paris—and therefore, due to his credentials, he is the one
best suited to champion the changes at Parque Lage.”11 Throughout the years of its
existence, the School of Visual Arts was shaped in various configurations. It hosted
transformations in the art field and important debates promoted by society in general.
Lately, various issues faced by the School of Visual Arts have limited its resources for
the advancement of education and cultural center. The opening of other schools, free
courses, and postgraduation programs in art transformed the art and cultural scene,
necessitating the implementation of a new management model and an education
program complemented by exhibitions and other activities that restructure the
relationship between the three pillars since 1975: education, exhibition, and circulation
of its artistic and intellectual production. While the education deficiencies have been
evident, the School of Visual Arts plays a prominent role in Brazil and has been on the
radar of artists, curators, art critics, and other art professionals worldwide.

110 | SALDANHA
Notes 10 / Bo Bardi. “Cinco anos
entre os brancos.” 4.
1/ The area had been a
private orchard since 1811 11 / Wilson Coutinho, “O
and after several iterations jardim da oposição” [The
a mansion was built on opposition garden], in O
the site by Henrique Lage, jardim da oposição, ed. Helio
an industrialist married to Eichbauer, Heloísa Buarque
Gabriella Besanzone, a Italian de Hollanda (Rio de Janeiro:
opera singer. Around 1936, Escola de Artes Visuais
the house was the center for 1975–1979, 2009), 26–29.
Brazil’s Lyric Theater Society,
and in 1957, the family used
the property to settle debts.

2/ Lina Bo Bardi,
introduction to Habitat:
Arquitetura e artes no Brasil,
no. 4 (São Paulo: Habitat
Editora Ltda., MASP, 1951).

3/ Lina Bo Bardi,
unpublished manuscript,
collection of Instituto Lina Bo
Bardi.

4/ Lina Bo Bardi, “Cinco

anos entre os brancos,”
in Mirante des Artes (São
Paulo: Serviço Social do
Comércio [SESC], Instituto
do Patrimônio Histórico e
Nacional [IPHAN], 2015), 4.

5/ Mário Pedrosa, “Arte

culta e arte popular” [Erudite
Art and Popular Art], Arte em
Revista, no. 3 (1980): 22–26.
The thesis was first presented
at the Popular Art Seminar,
México City, 1975.

6/ Bo Bardi, unpublished
manuscript.

7/ Bo Bardi, unpublished
manuscript.

8/ Bo Bardi. “Cinco anos

entre os brancos,” 4.

9/ Bo Bardi, unpublished
manuscript.

111 | LINA BO BARDI AND THE CREATION OF THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS IN PARQUE LAGE
TROPICAL REASON 7
The Making of a
Counterculture in Brazil
Frederico Coelho

In his memoir, Verdade tropical,1 Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso

suggested that certain groups of artists connected to the late 1960s Tropicália
movement—which he cofounded with Gilberto Gil, Torquato Neto, and others—owed
their successes to a productive tension between two extremes in Brazil’s complex
artistic traditions that pitched rationalism against intuition. The first group was made
up of artists and intellectuals involved in 1950s constructivism, teetering on the edge
of the modernist avant-gardes, such as the concrete artists and poets, the composers
and conductors associated with the Música Nova movement,2 as well as some of
the neoconcrete artists. The second group featured artists and intellectuals engaged
with the Brazilian counterculture of the 1960s.3 And the third group—which included
artists such as Torquato Neto, Jorge Mautner, Rogério Duarte, José Agripino de
Paula, Waly Salomão, and Julio Bressane, among others—explored transgressive
forms of aesthetic experimentation. In his remarks, Veloso was hinting at the pivotal
chasm that happened in the late 1950s, when a group of artists based in Rio de
Janeiro formulated a response to what they perceived as the rigid rationalism of the
concretist program set forth by Max Bill and his followers.
Veloso traces a historical arch that roughly spans from 1951, the year of the first
São Paulo Biennial (the most thorough genealogy of the constructivist movements
of the era), to 1968, the official end of the Tropicalismo and Arte Marginal (outsider
culture) movements4—or from the high modernism of the 1950s avant-garde and its
Haroldo de Campos, Décio
Pignatari, and Augusto de
Campos. Photograph by Ivan
Cardoso.
interest in rationalism, geometry, architecture, design, and poetry to the “postmodern”
counterculture movement of the late 1960s which comprised pop, psychedelia,
hedonism, mass culture, popular music, television, cinema, and the desecration of
the literary code. The same artists (the brothers Augusto and Haroldo de Campos and
Hélio Oiticica, for instance) that had helped shape the constructivist avant-gardes of
the 1950s reunited some ten years later, this time around popular music and related
events. As Veloso points out, however, the groups converged in different ways.
What distinguished the artists and intellectuals of the late 1960s from those
of the 1950s, according to Veloso, could be summed up in one word: reason (or lack
thereof). Why would these two seemingly disparate groups—the “high modernists,”
or “rationalist,” of the 1950s and the “postmodernists,” or irrationalists, of the
1960s5—forge an alliance amid the last modern avant-gardes in Brazil? What caused
the concrete poets to move away from their strong rational-mathematical premises
in the 1950s and embrace the chaos of language at the limits of prose as Haroldo
de Campos did in his Galáxias?6 What brought the crisis of form in the work of
neoconcrete artists closer to the crisis of the word in the work of, for example,
counterculture poets such as Waly Salomão, Rogério Duarte, and Torquato Neto?
What led Hélio Oiticica to bring together culture and madness in the same flash of
ideas, as he did in a seminar presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio in 1968?
Is it the tropical climate that debunks occidental reason in favor of folly? Or can we
embrace the “Tropical Cartesianism” suggested by Max Bense as a paradigm for this
meeting of forces?7 What leads a reader of constructivist theories, such as Oiticica, to
embrace the delirium of language and of the body?
The convergence stressed by Veloso unfolds beyond the short Tropicalist
moment (1967–1968) and consolidates in the early 1970s, mainly through
independent magazines. Two of them stand out as historic objects: the legendary
Navilouca, a single-issue magazine that the poets Torquato Neto and Waly Salomão
began to put together in 1972 and published in 1974, and Pólen, published in 1974
by Duda Machado and Susana de Moraes (in collaboration with the poet Mauricio
Cirne and the visual artists Antonio Dias and Iole de Freitas). The pages of Navilouca
featured works by Haroldo and Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari, Lygia Clark,
Hélio Oiticica, Duda Machado, Luis Otavio Pimentel, Caetano Veloso, and Rogério
Duarte as well as an innovative layout design by Oscar Ramos and Luciano
Figueiredo. The connection between the 1950s avant-garde and the generation
that embraced the 1960s counterculture zeitgeist in their personal lives and work
found in Navilouca an ideal platform for expressing the experimental format and
performative character that characterized the encounter between the “rationalists”
and “irrationalists.” In contrast, Pólen created a bridge between the visual artists
that went beyond the generation of neoconcrete artists. Many of the artists that

117 | TROPICAL REASON

were published in Navilouca also appeared in Pólen, but the editors also featured
Carlos Vergara, Waltércio Caldas, Antonio Risério, and Rubens Gerchman, among
others. The permanence of the Campos brothers, Oiticica, Veloso, Waly Salomão,
and Torquato Neto denotes how the alliances and partnerships of the Tropicalist era
unfolded and brought to an end the destructive polemics that pitched neoconcrete
artists against their concrete counterparts.

Beyond the media exposure afforded by the Tropicalista pop stars, what
caused these two productive forces of Brazilian art of the 1950s and 1960s to
converge? Granted, between 1968 and 1972, those who were excluded from the
debate about what direction the country might take—whether to adopt school-taught
Marxism, socialist realism, or militarized conservatism—formed a political and an
aesthetic alliance. But which threads exactly caused this web of relationships and
discourses to form? Was it Oswald de Andrade’s risks and writings to rethink Brazilian
culture?8 Were intellectual affinities and aesthetic compromises converging toward
a cosmopolitan and transgressive strategy of cultural debate? And why does Veloso
invoke reason as the basis for his analysis?
My hypothesis is that the “rationalists” and “irrationalist” shared a common
perspective. The creative tension among the constructivist artists of the 1950s and
the experimental artists of the 1960s and 1970s lies between reason and madness
(or rationalism and irrationalism, to use Veloso’s terms). For the country’s cultural
tensions at that moment reenacted the clash between societal boundaries based on
mathematically rational aesthetic principles and lives whose embrace of delirium
opened new perspectives on art. How can we reconcile the fact that at the same time
that young poets in São Paulo dedicated themselves to the rigorous foundation of
a new creative paradigm for Brazilian and world poetry, a group of artists in Rio de
Janeiro had become involved with inmates of a psychiatric hospital and accepted
madness not as a defect of the brain but as an aesthetic possibility? What were the
implications of “the positivity of madness” in the context of Cartesian control of the
mind over the creator-body?
The presence of visual artists dedicated to constructivist research at the
Engenho de Dentro hospital under Dr. Nise da Silveira’s leadership produced a
node in the narrative line of Brazilian constructivism. Recent research on the subject
suggests that one cannot understand the specificity of the neoconcrete experience in
Rio without mentioning the impact that Silveira’s work exerted on the artistic milieu
in Rio in contrast to the primacy of mathematical rigor among São Paulo concrete
artists and poets. This, perhaps, opens the door for a possible understanding of how
madness—and its impact on art—was able to foster unexpected connections among
artists of different generations in Brazil.

118 | COELHO
Torquato Neto. Photograph
by Ivan Cardoso.
 The feud between concrete Navilouca, 1974. Front cover
design by Óscar Ramos and
and neoconcrete poets and artists was
Luciano Figueiredo.
prompted by the critique raised by
the latter onto the former’s dogmatic
application of rationalistic-mechanistic
principles. The articles and debates
that circulated in the press at that time
focused on how the poet and art critic
Ferreira Gullar was keen on emphasizing
their distinct perspectives. The first
sentence in his “Manifesto neoconcreto”
(1959) already refers to the “rationalist
exacerbation” of the concrete art
practiced then. He also uses expressions
such as “experiment” and “expressive
possibilities” and underscores the
critical aloofness of the rationalist
approach, accusing it of stealing “all
autonomy” from art by subjecting it to a
“mechanical objectivism.”
Two years earlier, in 1957, when the term neoconcrete had not yet been
coined to distinguish between the São Paulo and Rio factions, Gullar, Oliveira Bastos,
and Reynaldo Jardim (three poets and critics connected with the group of artists in
Rio) published “Poesia concreta: Experiência intuitive” (Concrete poetry: Intuitive
experiment) in the Sunday supplement of Jornal do Brasil. The article was written
in response to an essay published in the same newspaper by Haroldo de Campos
titled, “Da fenomenologia da composição à matemática da composição” (From the
phenomenology of composition to the mathematics of composition).9 The intention
on the part of Gullar et al. was to demarcate to what extent reason could dominate
over poetic intuition—in their minds, one of the radical principles informing the
production of the São Paulo group at that time.
What Campos proposed as “mathematical operation,” a key innovation in
concrete poetry, entailed a process no longer based on “word-draws-word” (a term
used by Campos to exemplify the traditional method of writing) but rather one taking
into consideration the poem’s structure as a formal possibility for calculating space-
time—a proposition that would plunge poetry deeper into “the realm of constructivist
rationality.” In Gullar, Bastos, and Jardim’s text, however, the use of the term “intuitive
experiment” is a direct retort to Campos’s deprecating phrase “intuition availability.”
They defended as “concrete” principles the contingency of actions and the capacity

120 | COELHO
to apprehend the world beyond rational and verifiable procedures. They assumed the
reader has a crucial role in completing the poetic work rather than just treating it as an
object, an isolated form, admired for its internal mathematical perfection.
In addition to stirring the public debate about the term concrete, their text would
signal a definitive break with the rationalist paradigm by deriding it as a “scientific
misunderstanding,” stating: “The alleged submission of poetry to mathematic
structures has all the hallmarks of this misunderstanding.” Concrete poetry, for the Rio
group, should count as a daily experience—affective, intuitive—so as not to become
mere illustration, in the field of language or of catalogued science laws.
The rupture between art and science, between rational technique and intuitive
technique, between man-machine and man-experiment might relate to situations
that, somehow, take us back to the contact between those art critics and artists and
Dr. da Silveira’s research. Many of her patients throughout the late 1940s and 1950s
took classes with Almir Mavigner, who, as has been amply documented, brought
Ivan Serpa, Mário Pedrosa, and Abraham Palatnik among others to the Hospital
Psiquiátrico in Engenho de Dentro. Already in 1949, the São Paulo Museum of
Modern Art held the exhibit Nove artistas de Engenho de Dentro (Nine Artists from
Engenho de Dentro), although it was never mentioned in any documents or official
timelines as an event important to the São Paulo concrete group.
In Rio, Dr. da Silveira’s work reached the principal players of critical and artistic
production. Mário Pedrosa, the most important art critic at the time, had witnessed
firsthand the art workshops in progress at Engenho de Dentro and even discussed
the quality of their work with other critics. Based on that debate, Pedrosa, in 1951,
wrote an essay titled “Forma e personalidade” (Form and personality) that focused
exclusively on the relation between art and its critical limits vis-à-vis the so-called
nonartistic creations (in primitive cultures or by children and schizophrenics).10 The
essay is clearly influenced by his visits to the hospital atelier and the exhibitions he
had helped organize.
Pedrosa and Léon Degand had organized the 1949 exhibition Nove artistas de
Engenho de Dentro at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art which sparked a long
study by Pedrosa that already presented ideas that would later overlap with Gullar’s
texts. (Incidentally, Pedrosa and Gullar shared an apartment from 1954 to 1960, the
period in which the Grupo Frente and neoconcretism emerged.) Indeed, Pedrosa
uses the expression “creative intuition” in his 1951 essay, already countering the
rigid rationalist/scientific parameters in art criticism. Pedrosa posits the question of
intuition, thus countering the rigid rationalist/scientific parameters in art criticism.
Pedrosa would revisit the theme of intuition again in his 1960 essay, “Das formas
significantes à Lógica da expressão” (From signifying forms to the logic of
expression), in which he elaborates on the term based on his readings in continental

121 | TROPICAL REASON

philosophy by Henri Bergson, Ernest Waly Salomão (Sailormoon),
Me segura qu’eu vou dar
Cassirer, and others.
um troço, 1972. Front cover
In 1958 Gullar approached the design by Oscar Ramos and
theme Pedrosa had examined in the Luciano Figueiredo. Courtesy
of Marta Braga.
two aforementioned articles. In his
article “Louco faz arte? A propósito
de um debate” (Do the insane make
art? Apropos of a debate),11 Gullar also
opposed the negative reaction by critics
to the art produced by Engenho de
Dentro’s patients Emygdio de Barros, and
Adelina and Fernando Diniz. Denoting
close familiarity with Pedrosa’s thoughts,
Gullar brought up Gestalt theory and
Cassirer to substantiate the “reevaluation
of the individual and the latent forces of
individual expression.” Gullar’s article
was published around the same time as
his reflections on nonobject theory and
on Lygia Clark’s art. This alignment with
the experimental and intuition as escape
routes to the rationalist/mathematical
dogma of São Paulo constructivism profoundly influenced the work of Hélio Oticica,
Lygia Clark, and Lygia Pape—three artists who had professional and personal
connections with the two art critics. The individual works of Pedrosa and Gullar, and
their brief experience living together during the neoconcrete era stresses the role of
the individual, the inclusion of the viewer/reader as an active part of an artwork.
Of course, it is not prudent to leap from the crises of rationalism among
constructivist artists to the crisis of language in the art of schizophrenics as proof of a
connection between the “rationalists” and “irrationalists.” Still, we can point to certain
aspects that indicate that word and image are unstable concepts in Brazil in the 1960s.
The national dream of a defined path toward national development with the help of
the most modern techniques of industrialized society (advertising, cybernetics, design,
visual poetry, and more) shipwrecked before the excesses of Tropicalismo and the
primacy of the body as a space of experimentation and rupture—political, existential,
and aesthetic. The body that insinuated itself into Gullar and Pedrosa’s texts as a
counterpoint to the Cartesian reason of concretism becomes symptomatic of this crisis
of language, in which the word is subsumed by sensations and the mechanical control
of the body empties into experiment-limits and new significance in its use in arts.

122 | COELHO
 In the 1970s, the asylum at Waly Salomão (Sailormoon),
Me segura qu’eu vou dar
Engenho de Dentro was once again the
um troço, 1972. Back cover
focus of attention in Rio de Janeiro, albeit design by Oscar Ramos and
not as a center for patient-artist interaction Luciano Figueiredo. Courtesy
of Marta Braga.
but rather as a shelter for psychiatric
help. Graphic designer Rogério Duarte
and poet Torquato Neto—two of Oiticica’s
closest friends and, like Veloso, key
figures in the Tropicalismo movement—
checked themselves into the hospital in
1970 and 1971, respectively.12 Both men
were multitalented intellectuals equally
at ease in music, journalism, cinema,
poetry, criticism, and art; and both faced
personal situations that bordered on
“critique and clinic” to paraphrase the
title of Gilles Deleuze’s final work.13 These
extreme episodes unfortunately were not
isolated cases for the generation that, in
the aftermath of the Tropicália movement,
assumed a degree of radicalism that
Veloso deemed “irrational.”
The “irrationalists,” that is, the outsiders of Brazil’s cultural mainstream, found
in madness and its philosophical and aesthetic unfoldings a constant theme. It is
not by chance that Antonin Artaud’s work arrived in Brazil with such force through
the efforts of this younger generation, through the alternative press, and through
intellectuals such as the journalist and philosopher Luiz Carlos Maciel. The author of
a column titled “Underground” in the weekly O Pasquim, Maciel published insightful
essays on the widespread debate about antipsychiatry, drawing a parallel between
artists such as Artaud and the chronic problems of mental health assistance in Brazil
and abroad. Around the same time, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus
(1972) was published in Brazil. It became clear in this context that Dr. da Silveira’s
successful experiment in the early 1950s pioneered the productive nexus of art,
madness, and alternative treatments of mental problems that intellectuals such as
Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault were to explore two decades later.
The relationship proposed by Deleuze between the critical (mediated by
productive reasoning, which enables us to achieve a minimum of creative discipline
in the middle of chaos) and the clinical (whose creator succumbs to language and
does not produce “sense”) allows us to think about how to situate works that oscillate

123 | TROPICAL REASON

between these two poles. The title of Neto and Salomão’s magazine, Navilouca, is a
reference to the medieval ships that collected the mad from coastal cities and took them
to an unknown destination.14 Launched in 1972, the same year that Michel Foucault visited
Brazil for a series of lectures at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Navilouca
was published around the same time as the work of one of the principal scholars on the
theme of madness in the West. To quote Salomão, it was an era that radically proposed
“the obliteration of the former separation between the individual and the object.”15
Torquato Neto clearly demonstrated this in his journals written during his voluntary
confinement at Engenho de Dentro. Little by little, his texts suggested his abandonment of
what he called his “faith in words.” He found the word, prime material for poets—and for
reason—to be at an insoluble impasse. The coda of his artistic discourse was conditioned
by this bankruptcy of the word. Torquato Neto was a young intellectual devotee of the
idea of concrete paideuma (the tangle of precursors that inform our present). A reader
of the São Paulo poets, he also followed the work of the masters they promoted (Pound,
Joyce, Mallarmé) and mastered the production of his own poems as if in dialogue with
the concrete school. His personal life, however, dragged him little by little to a space
where reason could no longer resist delirium. The critical became clinical.
My thoughts are but embryonic ideas about the relations between Cartesian
aesthetic principles in a country such as Brazil and their limits through the presence
of a conjunction of discourses and practices that dislocate from mathematics to the
disordering of forms. In some of Oiticica’s, Clark’s, and Pape’s works, the body takes on the
preponderant role of invention of other principles (intuitive, experimental) that escaped
the dogmas of the country’s first constructive moment. In reclaiming a subject and a body
open to the chance of experience, the dialogue with artworks, authors, and events linked
to the boundaries of language and the discourses guaranteed by reason—schizophrenics,
marginal people, immigrants, women, Brazilian natives, blacks—is permanent. The critical
and the clinical walk hand in hand, even when sometimes the clinical swallows the critical
in a country that alleviates a crisis of language with a political crisis.
If in the 1950s the concrete and neoconcrete groups had to stake out antagonistic
positions in search of a relation with European constructivist models, in the 1970s a
reencounter was possible because of the degree of compatibility that came to exist in their
work. The new approach of Oiticica and the Campos brothers during their time together
in Manhattan is proof that even if principal constructivist artists were still deeply rooted
in the work of the São Paulo poets, rather than the work of the poets from Rio, fidelity
to the Poundian paideuma of invention connected them all. Rationalists or irrationalists,
mathematicians or hedonists, tenuous creative lines were traced so that the avant-garde
contributed a specific profile to the Brazilian counterculture—and new life to the concrete
poets and their theoretic texts.

124 | COELHO
Notes used to include alternative Tropicalia, and the Brazilian 15 / Waly Salomão,
movies, poetry, and music. counterculture. Armarinho de miudezas (Rio
1/ Caetano Veloso, See Frederico Coelho, Eu, de Janeiro: Rocco, 2005),
Verdade tropical (São Paulo: brasileiro, confesso minha 9/ Both essays were 63. In the original: “Época
Companhia das Letras, 1997). culpa e meu pecado—Cultura published side by side in de obliteração da anterior
marginal no Brasil em 1960 Suplemento Dominical do distância sujeito-objeto, o
2/ Grupo Música Nova e 1970 (Rio de Janeiro: Jornal do Brasil, June 23, próprio poeta sendo o corpo
was a Brazilian musical Civilização Brasileira, 2010). 1957. da poesia, o poeta sendo o
movement dedicated to poema.”
promoting modernist 5/ “High modernists” 10 / Mário Pedrosa, “Forma
classical music founded in and “postmodernists” e personalidade,” in Arte,
1963. The original members are terms used by literary ensaios: Mário Pedrosa, ed.
were composers who had scholar Gonzalo Aguilar. Lorenzo Mammi (São Paulo:
studied in Germany: Gilberto See his Poesia concreta Cosac Naify, 2015), 160.
Mendes, Willy Corrêa de brasileira—As vanguardas da
Oliveira, Damiano Cozzela, encruzilhada modernista (São 11 / Suplemento Dominical
Rogério Duprat, and Júlio Paulo: Edusp, 2005). Jornal do Brasil, April 20,
Medaglia. 1958.
6/ Haroldo de Campos’s
3/ The Brazilian version of Galáxias is an experimental 12 / Although happening
the international phenomenon book of poetry which around the same time, these
known as the counterculture consists of fifty fragments dramatic episodes in the
gained steam after 1968, written between1963 and lives of Rogério Duarte and
emulating the concepts and 1976. The first fragments Torquato Neto are unrelated.
fashions of American hippie (each a one-page prose On April 5, 1968, Rogério and
culture. The outlandish poem) were released in his brother, Ronaldo, were
look and antiestablishment avant-garde magazines arrested by the State Police
behavior displayed by its around the world. The (DOPS) and tortured over the
followers immediately collected version was finally period of a week on a military
garnered the attention of published in Brazil in 1984. base in Rio de Janeiro.
the mainstream press, for it After his release, Rogério
exposed a rift between a new 7/ German philosopher suffered a series of emotional
generation and the military Max Bense visited Brazil and professional setbacks
rule. Standing against mass several times during which required successive
culture and in its process of the1960s. His memoir of psychiatric assistance. Neto,
globalization, the image of his travels—Brasilianische on the other hand, expressed
the hippie rebel, was also Intelligenz (1965)—was suicidal tendencies early
a sign of transgressions published in Brazil as on, in addition to struggling
vis-à-vis conservative Inteligência brasileira (São with alcoholism. According
ideology—both on the right Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2009). to his diaries, the psychiatric
and the left. See Christopher internments were his efforts
Dunn, Contracultura— 8/ A poet, journalist, to overcome the symptoms
Alternative Arts and playwright, and polemicist, related to these chronic
Social Transformation in Oswald de Andrade was one ailments.
Authoritarian Brazil (Chapel of the founders of Brazilian
Hill: University of North modernism. As the author of 13 / Gilles Deleuze, Critique
Carolina Press, 2016). the Manifesto antropofágico et clinique (Paris: Les Édition
(Cannibalist manifesto), du Minuit, 1993).
4/ “Outsider culture” or his philosophical ideas and
“outsider art” were some aesthetics have played a 14 / Waly Salomão came up
of the terms used to denote major role in the rethinking with the idea for the title after
some experimental or of Brazilian culture, reading Michel Foucault’s
alternative art works created influencing the generations Histoire de la folie à l’âge
between 1968 and 1972 in that succeeded him, claissique, also released in
Brazil. The terms were later including concrete poetry, 1972.

125 | TROPICAL REASON

EPIDERMAL AND 8
VISCERAL WORKS
Lygia Pape and
Anna Maria Maiolino
Claudia Calirman

As feminism gained ground in the United States in the 1970s, its terminology
was called into question by many leading artists in Brazil.1 Lygia Pape (1927–2004),
one of the most prominent female Brazilian artists of the twentieth century, was
among those who rejected the nomenclature, stating she was not interested in “any
ideological feminist discourse.”2 The work of Anna Maria Maiolino (b. 1942) from
the 1960s seemed to be motivated by experiences such as women’s daily lives. She
recalls that many critics considered these themes prosaic, banal, and obvious.3 Both
critics and the public had long disallowed such domestic subjects in women’s art
and to a large extent continue to do so today. Although adamant about rejecting the
feminist label, both Maiolino and Pape were engaged in questioning and redefining
constructions of women’s identity, a central feminist pursuit.
Despite their professed lack of allegiance to feminism as a cause, both artists
contributed seminal works to the feminist canon. Although both Pape’s and Maiolino’s
artistic practices were rooted in the Brazilian neo-concrete movement from the 1950s
and 1960s,4 my focus here is on these artists’ later “contaminated” production, their
so-called “epidermic” or visceral works which address the abject and the sensorial.
Through these themes, they were able to question traditional gender roles
and introduce topics related to women’s constructed identity in Brazilian art without
any overt engagement with the discussion of gender. This separation, albeit subtle,
likely represented an important tactical gambit: in Brazil and elsewhere, women
artists who addressed feminist issues frequently found themselves pigeonholed
or critically lambasted. “It seems quite clear to me,” writes Aracy Amaral in 1993,
“that, at the moment, any artist who represents social problems in his or her works
will always be discriminated against in Brazil by the country’s formalist critics.”5
These critics have also dismissed the multiculturalism that has permeated visual art
criticism since the 1990s, accusing it of being an imported fashion from the United
States, and disdaining it as part of the minority quotas program and the politically
correct mindset.
Despite their lack of embrace of feminism, women artists have enjoyed a
predominant role in Brazilian society since the advent of what is known in Brazil as
modernismo. In 1917, Anita Malfatti (1889–1964) was instrumental in introducing
expressionism to Brazil. In the 1920s, Maria Martins (1894–1973) explored surrealism,
and Tarsila do Amaral’s (1886–1973) paintings powerfully evoked the notion of
anthropophagia, or cultural cannibalism, as described by her partner, the poet
and writer Oswald de Andrade, in his “Anthropophagite Manifesto” (1928).6 The
1960s saw a veritable explosion of prominent women artists, including Lygia Clark
(1920–1988), Lygia Pape, Anna Bella Geiger (b. 1933), Anna Maria Maiolino, and
Regina Silveira (b. 1939), among others.7 In more recent generations, Jac Leirner,
Beatriz Milhazes, Rosangela Rennó, and Adriana Varejão—all born in the 1960s—
have gained marquee status in the international art market and in global exhibitions.
The discussion in Brazil has never been based on the same issues raised by Linda
Nochlin’s influential 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,”
because women artists have had a seat at the table for over a century. A more
compelling question, then, is why so many leading women artists so vehemently
rejected feminist discourse, even as their works addressed the same issues tackled by
their feminist counterparts in the United States and elsewhere.
For the art critic Paulo Herkenhoff, Brazilian artists, regardless of gender,
have always striven not to be considered derivative of hegemonic centers of artistic
production; therefore, the discussion of center versus periphery has always been
more salient than the debate on gender issues. Herkenhoff points out that artists from
Latin American countries are “constantly being pressured with the burden of proving
that they are not mirrors but full individualities, perfectly capable of participating in
the contemporary system of symbolic exchanges.”8 From this perspective, the desire
to bridge the confining territory of “Latin American art” and to participate as “equals”
on the international scene was always a more important issue for these artists than
inwardly focused discussions of identity politics. As Lygia Pape said, “I think it is
outrageous that an exhibition can still be titled Latin American Art. . . . This is self-
discriminating, it is very reductive.”9 The art critic Guy Brett concurs: “No European
artists are asked that their work give proof of their European identity, but this is

128 | CALIRMAN
always the first thing expected of a Latin American.”10 Brazilian artists constantly
sought to singularly define themselves by the quality and innovation of their work,
independent of any specific context or culture.
However, as the cultural theorist Nelly Richard astutely claims, “The
judgment of ‘quality’ seeks to make itself trustworthy (equitable) by pretending
to rest on the neutral institutional recognition of women and men with works of
equivalent merit. But how can we not doubt this judgment when we know that
the formalist category of quality is not neutral (universal) but rather forged by a
prejudicial culture that defends among other interests, masculine supremacy as the
absolute representative of the universal?”11
As Latin Americans, then, women artists in Brazil already faced certain
unwanted and unwarranted expectations about what their art would stand for;
to adopt a feminist identity in their practice would only add another, potentially
narrowing, stamp. In attempting to avoid any specific label, many women artists
understandably opted out of feminist discourse. In time, discussion of feminist art in
Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America became all but taboo.
Amaral suggests an additional explanation for the lack of feminist interests in
Brazilian art, writing: In reality it is necessary to recognize the practical reason why
women in Brazil had so much availability to dedicate themselves to the arts. The
presence, even today, of one or more domestic helpers in the household providing
services for the middle class and the upper middle class always gave Brazilian
women the possibility to dedicate themselves to the arts, a condition that their
North American counterparts could not afford in contemporary times.12 Although
this argument does not explain the phenomenon, it does raise an interesting point
about the discrepancy of class in Brazilian society. It was not until 2014, in light of the
then recent massive street demonstrations in Brazil in response to the government’s
lavish expenditures to host the 2014 World Cup, that this gross social and economic
inequality had been being publicly challenged.
A complete account of the lack of interest in gender issues in Brazil throughout
the 1970s must also take note of the country’s history of brutal social and political
realities. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Brazil was in the midst of the most repressive
years of a military dictatorship that came to rule the country for twenty years (from
1964 to 1985). In December 1968, the military regime decreed the Institutional Act #5
(AI-5), which abolished civil rights in the country, instituted censorship of the media
and the arts, and implemented torture as a practice of the state.13 All attentions
were turned toward the struggle against the repression and censorship imposed
by the military regime, overshadowing other important debates such as gender
differences, social inequalities, and racial discrimination. In the wake of globalization,
Latin American artists became better known, yet for the most part, the work of Latin

129 | EPIDERMAL AND VISCERAL WORKS

 Anna Maria Maiolino, Estado
escatológico (Scatological
State), 1978. Installation for
the exhibition Mitos vadios,
São Paulo, Brazil. Courtesy of
Studio Anna Maria Maiolino.

American women artists from the late 1960s and 1970s—a period characterized by
both artistic innovations and political repression—remains largely unexamined.14
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Lygia Pape participated in the seminal 1967 exhibition
Nova objetividade brasileira (New Brazilian Objectivity) organized by Hélio Oiticica
at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (Museum of Modern Art of Rio
de Janeiro, MAM-RJ). Pape contributed two sculptures to the exhibition: Caixa de
formigas (Box of ants) and Caixa de baratas (Box of cockroaches), both from 1967.
In Caixa de formigas, an acrylic box encloses a piece of raw meat, placed on top
of a mirror at the bottom of the box, that is being devoured by live ants. Inside the
box, three painted circles bear the inscription “a gula ou a luxúria” (gluttony or lust).
Caixa de baratas is also an acrylic box with a mirror affixed to the bottom—this one
containing a grid of dead cockroaches, with the larger ones glued to the bottom
of the box.
At the time, these sculptures were interpreted as a critique of museums and
the stagnant, “dead” art contained therein. In retrospect, however, Caixa de formigas
and Caixa de baratas were also significant in their attempt to break with the reigning
constructivist order promoted by the concrete movement. By provoking disgust
and repulsion in the viewer—whose face is reflected among the dead cockroaches
in the mirror at the bottom of the box—these works offer a stark repudiation of the

130 | CALIRMAN
rationality promoted by geometric Anna Maria Maiolino,
Monumento à fome
abstraction. For Herkenhoff, “These
(Monument to Hunger), 1978.
works contaminated the aseptic Installation for the exhibition
constructivist project, through the Mitos vadios, São Paulo,
Brazil. Courtesy of Studio
parochial female fear of cockroaches and Anna Maria Maiolino.
its scatology.”15
A year later, Pape participated
in the happening “Apocalipopótese”
(a play on the words “apocalypse” and
“hypothesis” in Portuguese)—a weekly
series of outdoor artistic interventions
at Aterro do Flamengo, in the gardens
of Museum of Modern Art of Rio de
Janeiro.16 At this event, Pape performed
O ovo (The egg) (1967), which centered
on metaphors of birth and destruction.
O ovo incorporated a series of giant
wooden cubic structures (not ovoid-
shaped, as the title might suggest) covered with colored plastic. From inside these
breakable boxes, members of a samba school burst out dancing and playing music
in a clear analogy to a birth.17 The surface of the cube, which was made of a thin
plastic material, acted like a second skin or epidermis, and was easily torn apart by
the dancers in a visceral act. The violence and spirit of transformation implicit in the
act also referenced the political repression of the times, and the need to break free.
Like Caixa de formigas and Caixa de baratas, O ovo also functions as a critique of
geometric abstraction, since the participant has to break the box, violating the cube to
be “reborn.”
The sensorial experience of breaking through a surface to create a
transformative state was similarly promoted by Pape’s Divisor, which premiered in
1968 and has since been performed several times in multiple venues. Divisor consists
of dozens of people poking their heads through gridded holes made in a large sheet
of white cloth. The piece is a collective and amorphous moving body, a kind of
expanded ghost figure moving in space, with multiple heads and openings not unlike
the serpent-like Learnaean Hydra in Greek mythology. Speaking simultaneously to
the one and the many, Pape’s Divisor resonates with Antonio Negri and Michael
Hardt’s notion of the “multitude,” which they describe as an organization based on
the free singularities that converge in the production of the common.18 The multitude
is neither fully a collective agent nor a collection of individual agents—it takes shape
mainly as agency, a “productive potential” of human life for those who perform

131 | EPIDERMAL AND VISCERAL WORKS

 Anna Maria Maiolino,
Entrevidas (In Between
Lives), 1981. Courtesy Studio
Anna Maria Maiolino.

132 | CALIRMAN
through or within it. The symbolic meaning of Pape’s Divisor changes every time it is
performed and shifts based on the viewer’s individual experience; this is intentional,
as the artist was more interested in proposing ideas than authoring a finished work of
art. Divisor has a transformative power, suggesting a change of perception once the
participant is immersed in its collective experience.
The work comes to life, sharing a sensibility with Mikhail Bakhtin’s description
of “grotesque realism”—a grandiose, exaggerated body that is not individualized
but rather hybrid and social.19 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White suggest: “[In
order] to complete the image of the ‘grotesque realism,’ one must add that it is
always a figure in process, it is always becoming. It is a mobile and hybrid creature,
disproportionate, exorbitant, and outgrowing all limits, decentered and off balance,
a figural and symbolic resource for parodic exaggeration and inversion.”20 For
Bakhtin, the grotesque realist body violates classical aesthetics, which favors a
unique, individualized, autonomous, closed, polished, proportionate, and symmetrical
body.21 If anything, Divisor, like her earlier works Caixa de formigas and Caixa de
baratas, also represents a contamination of the classical order, a bold challenge to the
prevailing claim of formalism and modernist autonomy in the visual arts in Brazil.
In her influential film Eat Me (1975),22 Pape once again provoked sensations
of attraction and repulsion. Here the viewer is confronted by a close-up of a female
and a male mouth, suggestive of a vagina, sucking and expelling objects, partially
inviting and partially threatening. In one shot, a mustached, lipstick-covered mouth—
incidentally belonging to the artist Artur Barrio—fills the entire screen. It sucks a
red stone (actually an object made of plastic), which soon changes color, becoming
blue. This image cuts to a female mouth sucking on a sausage smothered in ketchup,
and then goes back to the cavity of the man’s mouth. Male and female mouths are
alternated among voices in different languages rhythmically uttering the phrase “a
gula ou a luxúria?” (gluttony or lust?).23
The growing sound of female groans, sexual in nature, culminates with a
scream, creating an unsettling experience for the viewer. At the end of the film, an
abrupt transition to the sounds of an advertisement suggests an interrupted sexual act.
Playing even further with notions of bad taste, debauchery, and kitsch, the
following year Pape created the installation Eat me: A gula ou a luxúria? (Eat Me:
Gluttony or lust?, 1976), which referenced and strongly criticized the idea of women
as both objects and agents of consumption.24 Tents containing small white paper
bags carried the inscription “objects of seduction.” Inside the bags were kitschy
objects—calendars with naked women, pubic hair, aphrodisiac lotions, peanuts, and
mirrors. She stamped the bags, kissed them with red lipstick, and then signed them.
Everything could be bought by the audience at the bargain price of one cruzeiro—the
Brazilian currency at the time. 25

133 | EPIDERMAL AND VISCERAL WORKS

 When the installation was later recreated at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio
de Janeiro, viewers were once again invited to inspect and purchase vulgar objects of
desire—dentures, wigs, eyelashes, apples, miniatures of fake female breasts bearing
the word “darling,” red lipsticks with the inscription promessa (promise). Pape
defined these items as instruments from daily life and offered them to the public as
a critical vision of debauchery and consumerism.26 By mimicking salacious trinkets
sold by street vendors, Pape sarcastically exposed female strategies of seduction,
unmasking false promises of ideal female beauty in society.
This installation is even more striking when considered within the context
of the “economic miracle” that was underway in Brazil at the time, with sales of
consumer goods for the lower middle class soaring even as the military regime was
at its most repressive. Pape points to the impoverished aesthetic of kitsch pervasive
in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, stressing issues of class difference and inequality
through the cheapness of the objects and their discarded quality.
Summoning the comic-tragic, Pape’s installation offers a sardonic view of
the beautification of women both as objects to be desired and as avid consumers of
objects of seduction. In 1976, a version of the project Eat me: A gula ou a luxúria?
was published in the second issue of Malasartes, a celebrated (albeit short-lived)
journal in Brazil that disseminated theoretical and visual projects by artists.27
In the pages of Malasartes, Pape elaborated on the concept of epidermização
(epidermization), emphasizing the sensorial aspect of her work as opposed to a
rational one. She wrote: “It is not a discourse or a thesis. I unfold the project at the
level of an epidermization of an idea, the sensorial as a form of knowledge and
consciousness.”28 Pape’s “epidermal” works dealing with the body through notions
of the abject and contamination, the breaking of the cube/skin, and the consumptive
desire to go beyond the discussion of women’s construction of identity in society. Her
feminist legacy, even if she did not intentionally embrace it, belongs to a larger critical
project—one that reminds us that consumerism and mechanisms of seduction can
unleash but never fulfill desire.

For Anna Maria Maiolino, as for other artists enduring the climate of fear and
censorship under military rule in Brazil, the notion of the “visceral” was a poignant
and common theme: works dealt with body parts, viscera, and the fragmented
and dilacerated flesh. According to Herkenhoff, “In the Brazilian art milieu the
words ‘visceral’ and ‘viscerality’ were used [by many artists] to indicate the body’s
expressive intensity; as well as the organic production of meaning.”29
In Maiolino’s work from the 1960s, this concept of the “visceral” came through
references to food and excrement. In one of her earlier works, the soft sculpture titled
Glu, Glu, Glu . . . (1966) which is made of upholstery stuffing, a male torso above

134 | CALIRMAN
bears the inscription Glu, Glu, Glu. In the lower section, padded volumes depict
digestive organs, including the stomach and the intestines. These body parts, nakedly
protruding in space like overexposed viscera, supposedly alluded to the torture
inflicted on political prisoners during the military regime in Brazil.
Born in 1942, in wartime Italy, Maiolino immigrated with her family to South
America at age twelve. The family first lived in Venezuela and then moved to Rio
de Janeiro in 1960. Like many European artists from her generation, Maiolino lived
through the experience of war, exile, and the need to adapt to new environments.
From 1968 to 1971, she lived in New York City, where she felt once again like a
displaced immigrant, writing, “Without a green card, without anything, I am but one
more ‘illegal’ in the American paradise.”30 Also during this time, overburdened by
household tasks and the obligations of motherhood, she produced no new work.
Eventually, following a suggestion by Oiticica, she began taking personal notes and
commenced a fertile period of writing poetry. In her interviews about those years,
there is a sense of silently bearing the unspeakable, deprived of her personhood and
her voice. Of this difficult yet formative period, Maiolino wrote: “The words, with their
weight and meaning, originated metaphors of sentiments, in angst to find answers to
the many questions from my personal life and also to constitute a way to elaborate
my reencounter with the military dictatorship upon my return to Brazil.”31
In 1978, back in Brazil, Maiolino was invited by Oiticica and Ivald Granato
to participate in the happening “Mitos vadios” (Vagrant myths) in a vacant lot in
Rua Augusta, in São Paulo. The title was a direct response to the I Bienal Latino-
Americana de São Paulo, which was one of the first important international cultural
events held during Brazil’s transition back to democratic rule. The I Bienal Latino-
Americana was called “Mitos e magias” (Myths and magic), an allusion to the
predominance of magic realism and surrealism in Latin America, a trend frequently
pilloried by many artists as regionalist.
Maiolino participated in this happening with two installations: Monumento
à fome (Monument to Hunger) and Estado escatológico (Scatological State).
Monumento à fome consisted of two sacks, one filled with white rice and the other
with black beans. The sacks were tied together with a ribbon and placed on a table
covered by a black cloth. In this work, Maiolino addressed the food staple of the lower
class in Brazil: rice and beans. In Estado escatológico, she displayed various types
of toilet paper on the wall, arranged from the cheapest to the most expensive, and
humorously included a newspaper and a plant leaf. With these two works, Maiolino
connected the ends of the digestive system—ingesting and excreting food. She
implied that what enters the body must subsequently be eliminated. In associating
food to excrement, she comments on the masses of flotsam and jetsam, the
discarded items—or in this case, people—left adrift at the margins of society.

135 | EPIDERMAL AND VISCERAL WORKS

Anna Maria Maiolino, Muitos
(Many), 1995. Installation
at Kanaal Art Foundation,
Kortrijk, Belgium. Courtesy of
Studio Anna Maria Maiolino.
Anna Maria Maiolino, Mais
de mil (Over One Thousand),
1999. Installation at the
Institute for Contemporary
Art, Boston. Courtesy of
Studio Anna Maria Maiolino.
 Likewise, her 1979 installation Arroz e feijão (Rice and beans), remade
for the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), also addressed disparate social access to
consumerism, discriminating high from low, those with means from those who are
disenfranchised from consumer society. It consists of a large table covered with a black
cloth set up for a meal. Seeds of rice and beans germinate from white plates filled with
soil. Hope and hunger are intertwined. The art critic Frederico Morais ironically noted
that it is precisely in the excremental function of the body that low and high meet
indiscriminately, with no class distinction.32 Maiolino’s work draws on the notion of
abject art: the abject occupies the place of unfulfilled desire. She writes, “The intestine
is a cavity that we never can fill in, in the same way that we can’t fulfill desire.”33
From the mid- to late 1930s, Georges Bataille wrote about the abject in a
group of unpublished texts titled “L’Abjection et les formes misérables” as a way
to describe attraction to the rotten and the wasted.34 For Bataille, “What the system
cannot assimilate must be rejected as excremental.”35 In examining Bataille’s writings
on the abject, Rosalind Krauss pointed out their association not necessarily to bodily
abjection but instead to social exclusions. According to Krauss, “These texts identify
social abjection with a violent exclusionary force operating within modern State
systems, one that strips the laboring masses of their human dignity and reproduces
them as dehumanized social waste.”36
Krauss claims that much of abject art is founded in the multiple forms of the
“wound,” which is always the place of the feminine. She asserts that “whether or not
the feminine subject is actually at stake in a given work, it is the character of being
wounded, victimized, traumatized, marginalized that is seen as what is in play within
this domain.”37 Indeed, underlying Maiolino’s practice is a pervasive sense of the
precarious, the fragile, the visceral, and the sensorial: for better or worse, all qualities
traditionally related to the female body.
The feminine struggle against the male, patriarchal, and univocal sense of
order is also played out in Maiolino’s work through language (or better, the lack of
proper language). Maiolino attests to the utterance of language as an impossible
task, an unfinished business, in her Super-8 film In-Out (Antropofagia) (1973–1974).
Two mouths, one female and one male, alternately occupy the full screen. At the
beginning, a black adhesive tape covers the mouth on screen, like a censor box,
making the act of speech impossible. The mouth then tries to convey some sound, to
formulate a sort of speech, to no avail. In subsequent shots, nonlinear images unfold:
menacing teeth, a mouth ingesting a long black thread, lips spilling colored filaments,
a mouth holding an egg.
Despite their articulation of different bodily motions such as eating, talking,
and arguing, ultimately, these mouths are stripped of an important function: the
ability to articulate cohesive linguistic meaning. There is nothing epic about these

138 | CALIRMAN
mouths’ movements; on the contrary, they are banal, noneventful, mere exercises
in space. They attest to the failed attempt to communicate through language. The
anthropophagic act of cultural cannibalism is also evoked through word (the title) and
image (the mouth).
As in Pape’s 1975 film Eat Me, the mouth devours and swallows, appropriates
and regurgitates, thus creating symbolic meanings. The verbal and the preverbal,
nature and culture, images and words are intertwined in a disruptive way. Both
films generate a state of chaos and confusion undermining qualities predominantly
associated with masculinity, such as efficiency and clarity. They also allude to the
mouth as a means for consumptive unfulfilled desire which relentlessly cannibalizes us.
Also, like Pape’s 1967 O ovo, Maiolino’s 1981 installation Entrevidas (Between
lives) tidily knits notions of birth and destruction. Consisting of a floor dotted with
hundreds of eggs, which the audience is invited to walk through, this fragile egg
carpet acts as a minefield potentially charged with the possibility of birth and
annihilation. The eggs also represent the passage from nature into the symbolic
order existing in a transitional space. According to Herkenhoff, this work occupies
an area “between the preverbal (the egg as a metaphor for life before birth), and the
nonverbal (the growing fear of experiencing a space of insecurity and alienation).”38
It is a visual poem alluding simultaneously to fear and censorship, to fragility,
precariousness, and temporality.
In the early 1990s, Maiolino further explored the notion of banality, repetition,
and the tedious manual labor of women’s daily domestic tasks: waiting, passing time,
knitting, cooking, and preparing food. She adopted handmade unfired clay as her
main medium. Abandoning the mold and shaping forms with her own hands, she
worked with large amounts of clay, manipulating them onsite and letting them dry out
without firing them. In the 1995 installations Muitos (Many) and Mais de mil (More
than one thousand), both from the series Terra moldada (Modeled earth), Maiolino
repeatedly emphasized the gesture of creation. Produced in succession, each of these
objects bears the mark of the artist’s hands, what the art critic Paulo Venâncio Filho
called “The Doing Hand.”39
In a 2002 interview, Maiolino stated: “The installations of unfired clay were the
result of the desire to make sculptural works with more hand-molded parts in less
time, thus enabling a greater accumulative potential, greater entropy. Once formed,
the clay does its natural duty: it dehydrates, petrifies, goes back to the state of being
potential dust.”40
Maiolino’s thousands of handmade pieces made of raw clay, called Rolinhos
e cobrinhas (Little rolls and little snake-shaped coils, 1993–2007), are unformed,
fluid, and amorphous. At the 2012 dOCUMENTA in Kassel, the artist filled a small
house with myriad unfired clay pieces in different shapes. The installation Here &

139 | EPIDERMAL AND VISCERAL WORKS

There exuded the same sense of precariousness and fragility from her early works.
These multiple little coils and rolls were taken as reminiscent of food or excrement—
handmade pasta from her childhood memories or simply waste. Food and intestines
were again entwined.
Although gender difference was not a priority, it is time to revisit the
prevailing idea that there was no feminist art coming from Brazil. The works
presented here by both Pape and Maiolino incorporate the notions of “viscerality”
and “epidermization” through their insistence on ingestion and its expulsion,
contamination, failed attempts to communicate through language, metaphors of
birth and destruction, and through the vulnerable and the precarious. These works
bring an exquisite (dis)order and debasement to the prevailing masculine logical
discourse, becoming, despite their utter negation, a hallmark of Brazilian artists’ take
on feminism in their own terms during this period.

140 | CALIRMAN
 Anna Maria Maiolino, In/Out
(Antropofagia), 1973–1974.
Film still, Super 8 transferred
to DVD, black and white and
color, sound. Courtesy of
Studio Anna Maria Maiolino.

141 | EPIDERMAL AND VISCERAL WORKS

Notes and Beatrice Ellen Stammer Amaral: Gender, Brasilidade Practices of Difference(s),
(London: Verlag für moderne and the Modernist trans. Silvia R. Tandeciarz
This article was originally Kunst Nürnberg and Live Art Landscape,” Woman’s Art and Alice A. Nelson (Durham,
published in Woman’s Art Development Agency, 2014), Journal 34, no. 1 (Spring/ NC: Duke University Press,
Journal 35, no. 2 (Fall/ 28–37. Summer 2013): 30–39. 2004), 30.
Winter 2014): 19–27. We
thank the journal’s editors for 2/ Denise Mattar, Lygia 7/ A few recent exhibitions 12 / Aracy Amaral, “A
permission to reprint it. Pape: Intrinsicamente have cast light on prominent Mulher nas Artes,” in Textos
anarquista (Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian women artists from do Trópico de Capricórnio,
1/ Publications that Relume Dumará, 2003), 85. the 1960s, including: Mira Artigos e Ensaios (1980–
have included the work Schendel at Tate Modern, 2005) (São Paulo: Editora 34,
of some historical Latin 3/ Helena Tatay, “Helena London (September 2013– 2006), 3:222; my translation.
American women artists Tatay conversa com January 2014); Lygia Clark:
include: Aracy A. Amaral Anna Maria Maiolino,” in The Abandonment of Art, 13 / For a detailed
and Paulo Herkenhoff, Anna Maria Maiolino, ed. 1948–1988 at the Museum discussion on the artistic
eds., Ultramodern: The Art Helena Tatay (São Paulo: of Modern Art, New York responses to the military
of Contemporary Brazil Cosac Naify, 2012), 37; my (May–August 2014), with an regime, see Claudia
(Washington, DC: National translation. accompanying retrospective Calirman, Brazilian Art under
Museum of Women in the of films and videos “On Dictatorship: Antonio Manuel,
Arts, 1993); Catherine de 4/ Lygia Pape was a major the Edge: Brazilian Film Artur Barrio, and Cildo
Zegher, ed., Inside the Visible: exponent of the neoconcrete Experiments of the 1960s and Meireles (Durham, NC: Duke
An Elliptical Traverse of movement, along with Hélio Early 1970s” (May–July 2014) University Press, 2012).
20th Century Art In, Of, and Oiticica (1937–1980) and featuring works by Anna Bella
From the Feminine, 2nd ed. Lygia Clark (1920–1988). The Geiger, Sônia Andrade, and 14 / In 2017 Cecilia Fajardo-
(Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1996); neo-concrete artists moved Leticia Parente; Anna Maria Hill and Andrea Giunta
Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda away from the finished Maiolino: Between Senses organized a long overdue
and Paulo Herkenhoff, eds. object of art and embraced at the Hauser and Wirth exhibition on Latin American
Manobras radicais: Artistas the idea of art as process or Gallery, New York (May–June women artists at the Hammer
brasileiras (São Paulo: Centro experimentation. Based on 2014); and a solo project by Museum in Los Angeles:
Cultural Banco do Brasil, the “Manifesto neoconcreto” Regina Vater organized by The Political Body: Radical
2006); Cornelia Butler, ed., written by Ferreira Gullar São Paulo’s Galeria Jaqueline Women in Latin American Art,
Wack! Art and the Feminist (1959), they moved away Martins at Frieze Art Fair, New 1960–1985. The exhibition
Revolution (Los Angeles: from the rigid geometric York (May 2014). was part of the Getty
Museum of Contemporary Art, abstract forms of the São Foundation’s Pacific Standard
2007); and Camille Morineau, Paulo concrete group, creating 8/ Paulo Herkenhoff, “The Time: Los Angeles/Latin
ed., Elles @centrepompidou: a more tactile, perceptual, Contemporary Art of Brazil: America initiative and broke
Artistes femmes dans la and sensorial art. See Theoretical Constructs,” in new ground in the study of
collection du musée national Ferreira Gullar, “Manifesto Ultramodern, 108. feminism in Latin America.
d’art moderne, centre de neoconcreto,” Jornal do
création industrielle (Paris: Brasil, Suplemento Dominical, 9/ Lúcia Carneiro and 15 / Buarque de Hollanda
Centre Pompidou, 2009). “Re. March 22, 1959; and Ronaldo Ileana Pradilla, Lygia Pape: and Herkenhoff, Manobras
act.feminism—A Performing Brito, Neoconcretismo: Entrevista a Lúcia Carneiro radicais, 77.
Archive” is a comprehensive Vértice e ruptura do projeto e Ileana Pradilla (Rio de
archival website and construtivista brasileiro Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1998), 16 / “Apocalipopótese” was
traveling exhibition for [Neoconcretism: Vertex 60; my translation. From the coordinated by Oiticica and
women performing artists. and rupture of the Brazilian series Coleção Palavra do featured the participation of
Its companion book includes constructivist project] (Rio de Artista. several artists. It was born of
an essay by performance Janeiro: Funarte, 1985). the artist’s desire to break the
theorist Eleonora Fabião: 10 / Guy Brett, “Border boundaries between the work
“Performing Feminist 5/ Aracy Amaral, “Brazil: Crossings,” in Contemporary of art and the public.
Archives: A Research-in- Women in the Arts,” in Art in Latin America (London:
Process on Latin American Ultramodern, 23. Black Dog, 2010), 189. 17 / Lygia Pape et al.,
Performance Art,” in Re.Act. Lygia Pape (Rio de Janeiro:
Feminism—A Performing 6/ See Gillian Sneed, 11 / Nelly Richard, Funarte, 1983), 46.
Archive, ed. Bettina Knaup “Anita Malfatti and Tarsila do Masculine/Feminine:

142 | CALIRMAN
18 / Michael Hardt and became one of the most Bataille, Erotism, Death
Antonio Negri, Multitude: celebrated artists’ journals and Sensuality: A Study
War and Democracy in the published in Brazil during the of Eroticism and Taboo,
Age of Empire (New York: mid-1970s. trans. Mary Dalwood (San
Penguin, 2004), 211. Francisco: City Lights Books,
28 / Malasartes, no. 2 1986). See Georges Bataille,
19 / Mikhail Bakhtin, (1976): 22–23; my translation. Ouevres complètes (Paris:
Rabelais and His World, Gallimard, 1970), 2:217–21.
trans. Hélène Iswolsky 29 / Paulo Herkenhoff, “A
(Bloomington: Indiana Trajetória de Maiolino: Uma 35 / Georges Bataille,
University Press, 1984), 19. Negociação de Diferenças,” “The Use Value of D. A. F. de
in Anna Maria Maiolino, ed. Sade,” in Visions of Excess:
20 / Peter Stallybrass and Catherine de Zegher (New Selected Writings, 1927–1939,
Allon White, The Politics York: Drawing Center, 2002), trans. and ed. Allan Stoekl
and Poetics of Transgression 328. (Minneapolis: University
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell of Minnesota Press, 1985),
University Press, 1986), 9. 30 / Herkenhoff, 264. 91–102.

21 / Bakhtin, Rabelais and 31 / Tatay, “Helena Tatay 36 / Rosalind Krauss,

His World, 25. conversa com Anna Maria “Informe without
Maiolino,” in Tatay, Anna Conclusion,” October, no.
22 / Eat Me (1975) was Maria Maiolino, 42; my 78 (Fall 1996): 89–105.
originally shot in 16 mm and translation. Reprinted in Zoya Kocur and
later transferred to 35 mm, 10 Simon Leung, eds., Theory
minutes, and in color. 32 / Frederico Morais, Do in Contemporary Art Since
corpo à terra: Um marco 1985, 2nd ed. (London: John
23 / Eugênio Puppo, ed., radical na arte brasileira, Wiley and Sons, 2013), 119.
Cinema marginal brasileiro: n.p. In an audiovisual work
Filmes produzidos nos anos from 1970, Morais relays a 37 / Krauss, 121.
60 e 70 (São Paulo: Heco quote from the head of the
Produções, 2004), 135. Buckingham Palace garbage 38 / Herkenhoff,
collectors, justifying their Ultramodern, 63.
24 / Eat me: a gula ou a five-week strike in London:
luxúria? (Eat Me: Gluttony “The garbage of the Queen 39 / Paulo Venâncio Filho,
or Lust?; 1976) was first is like everybody else’s: if it “The Doing Hand,” in Tatay,
exhibited at Galeria Arte is not quickly collected, it will Anna Maria Maiolino, 284;
Global in São Paulo. start smelling badly.” my translation. Reprinted in
Zegher, Inside the Visible,
25 / Denise Mattar, Lygia 33 / Tatay, “Helena Tatay 441–444.
Pape: Intrinsicamente conversa com Anna Maria
anarquista, 84. Maiolino,” in Tatay, Anna 40 / Holly Block, “A
Maria Maiolino, 39; my Conversation between
26 / In the outdoor space translation. Holly Block and Anna Maria
of Museum of Modern Art of Maiolino,” in Tatay, Anna
Rio de Janeiro, a film showed 34 / Bataille also wrote Maria Maiolino, 353–354.
the artist seductively inviting on the abject in some of
the viewers to enter the his essays first published
installation. (posthumously) in English
as Death and Sensuality: A
27 / Despite the brevity Study of Eroticism and Taboo
of its existence (only three (New York: Walker and Co.,
issues between September 1962). Originally published
1975 and June 1976) and its as L’Erotisme (Paris: Les
relatively small run of five Editions de Minuit, 1957) and
thousand copies, Malasartes later published as Georges

143 | EPIDERMAL AND VISCERAL WORKS

WORD-DROOL 9
The Constructive
Secretions of Lygia Clark
Antonio Sergio Bessa

When Lygia Clark returned to Brazil in 1976 after an eight-year stay in

Paris, the country she found was a far cry from the ebullient environment she had
left behind in 1968. By then a new government-sponsored cultural program that
privileged entertainment for the masses had radically supplanted the atmosphere
of experimentation, dialogue, and investigation that Clark and her fellow Grupo
Frente artists helped articulate in the early 1950s. And as if to corroborate the drastic
changing of the guard, the years before and immediately following Clark’s return to
Rio were marked by upheaval and the death of some of the key figures who, like Clark
herself, helped shape Brazil’s modernity in the postwar period.
In 1976 the dramatic deaths of former Brazilian presidents Juscelino
Kubitschek and João Goulart, two major civil leaders closely identified with the
progressive agenda of the 1950s, seemed to effectively seal the end of an era.1 More
specifically to Brazilian culture, the sudden death of Ivan Serpa in 1973, with the
consequent closing of his Centro de Pesquisa de Arte, seemed to erase any vestige of
continuity with the concretist tradition.2 As the decade came to a close, the regressive
climate only intensified, with tolerance for the avant-garde at an all-time low and once
highly regarded artists such as Hélio Oiticica, Glauber Rocha, Júlio Bressane, and
Rogério Sganzerla, among others, often characterized as out of touch with reality.
The new reality was dire. In 1975, when poet Ferreira Gullar returned to
Rio after living in exile for six years, he could only find work as a scriptwriter for
Lygia Clark, Meu doce rio,
1984. Published by Galeria
Paulo Klabin. Courtesy of
“The World de Lygia Clark”
Cultural Association.
televised soap operas. Art critic Mário Pedrosa, also returning from exile in 1980,
turned his attention to indigenous feather art, disheartened by the cultural scene
he encountered.3 The most alarming indicator of the state of affairs, however, was
the tragic 1978 fire at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio, once the vibrant site of
groundbreaking exhibitions and educational initiatives.4
Against this backdrop, the stature (or influence, for that matter) of Lygia Clark
among young artists at that particular moment is difficult to gauge. One must consider
Clark’s self-imposed anonymity, for not only had the work she conducted at the
Sorbonne from 1972 to 1975 gone largely unnoticed by Brazilian audiences, but the
new work she developed in Rio consisted primarily of one-on-one sessions held in her
Copacabana apartment. In the broader international context, with the advent of the
Reagan-Thatcher era a few years later, a new conservative agenda would find cultural
equivalence in a renewed interest in traditional painting. In Brazil, that new tendency
was acknowledged in the 1985 São Paulo Biennial with the installation of A Grande
tela (The Great Canvas), which featured large-scale neo-expressionist paintings by
local and foreign artists hanging side by side in a long hallway. As early as 1969 Clark
had written to Oiticica, “The crisis is widespread and terrible,” already detecting that
the era of experimentation they helped launch was about to come to an end.5
It was amid such adverse conditions that in 1984 Clark agreed to develop
a new project in collaboration with collector and art dealer Paulo Klabin. Working
again in an art gallery context might not have been an easy decision for Clark, as it
reversed her gradual distancing from the art system over the previous two decades.
The exhibition, it turned out, became a testament of sorts to Clark’s entire oeuvre: its
centerpiece, Livro-obra (Book-work), consisted of a special-edition book surveying
her career through miniature replicas of some of her most iconic works, accompanied
by her own commentaries. In addition to Livro-obra, the gallery also issued an odd
artifact for the occasion: Meu doce rio (My sweet river), a chapbook edition of texts
Clark wrote in Paris while undergoing psychoanalysis. The lack of attention by Clark
scholars to this particular moment in her career is in keeping with the very narrow
focus through which her work has been examined since her death, often developed
along the lines of neoconcretism, or of an ill-defined branch of art therapy. The
recurring focus on these two aspects of Clark’s career has obscured the broader scope
of her enterprise, which the text of Meu doce rio complicates further.6
Throughout her life Lygia Clark used writing—whether in published texts,
journal entries, or letters—with a high degree of precision, to exhaustively examine
every new step in her development as an artist and its concomitant existential
stakes. Clark’s writings offer the rare opportunity to explore her visions based on the
most lucid account of the processes that made them unfold. By closely following
her writing, and Meu doce rio in particular, we can discover the person that Clark

147 | WORD-DROOL
endeavored to rescue from cultural constraints.
Clark often alluded to the deepening of an emotional and psychological crisis
in her correspondence with Hélio Oiticica. Initially the crisis seemed to be projected
outward, often conveying a sense of cultural bankruptcy. It grew increasingly
personal, however, as she underwent psychoanalysis with Daniel Lagache and then
Pierre Fédida. Hence in 1968 we read, “I am having dramatic experiences: I see an
all-encompassing darkness and man at the beginning of things, like a primitive,
capturing his own body, recomposing it, rediscovering gesture, the act, the world
as another selvage planet.”7 And in the following year she writes, “Many problems
as always, but I have grown, so much so that I no longer bite my nails, after having
done so for forty-four years, yay.”8 Another important communication from October
1970 details a hallucinatory experience in Carboneras, Spain, in which she detects an
“imperious and profound interior process” unleashing from the unconscious. Most
tellingly, the same letter closes with a direct reference to patients from the Centro
Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II, often referred to as Engenho de Dentro: “I am sick
of straight people; I’d much rather be in a place like Engenho de Dentro where the
fabulous Rogério Duarte checked in; where someone like Emygdio expressed himself
or someone like Raphael eats pencils and shit, but what a wonderful character, and
how magisterial his production is!”9
By 1971 the psychoanalytical process had unleashed painful memories of
childhood as Clark rediscovered her own sense of self upon giving up being “the
other.” A letter dated May 17, 1971, details a painful relationship with her father and
memories of abuse. In July 1974 she writes to Oiticica that analysis “has been one of
the most creative and mythological things I have lived through to this date. One day
I will tell you and will have a fantastic magic mythic world to put in a book with all
this experience and my work, which at the bottom are the same.”10 And further on in
the same letter she speaks of “a phase of great creativity writing sentences in which
the body speaks through its parts. As if the body is being stitched together, which is
the phase I am at in my analysis.”11 Oiticica replies with excitement, fully aware of
the importance of her statements: “The vibration of the letters that you pull off your
typewriter and your euphoria woke me up when I was about to fall asleep (and I have
been up for three days since!).”12 The sense of imminent danger and overwhelming
symbolism in Clark’s letters throughout this period bring to mind the work of Henry
Darger, whose voluminous saga The Story of the Vivan Girls shares a thing or two
with the slim narrative of Meu doce rio, as both texts seem to belong to the category
of personal writing not intended for the general public. Access to texts such as
these—posthumously released in Darger’s case, a melancholic last gesture for Clark—
is met with a sense of unease, as if we are breaking into someone else’s privacy, our
engagement with the writer being less of an aesthetic order.

148 | BESSA
MEU DOCE RIO

At fifty-six pages, Meu doce rio is a condensed compilation of copious drafts

produced around 1975. The large quantity of typewritten pages related to this subject
in Clark’s archives seems to indicate the greater scope of the work as well as its
experimental nature. Those manuscripts contain numerous pages crossed out by pen
or the same scenario rewritten in different versions. In this section I offer a formal
analysis of the published version of Meu doce rio, without any attempt to interpret it
as a finished work of literature (or art).
The text of Meu doce rio is divided into two parts. The first part tries to
maintain a sense of narrative, but it seems reasonable to infer that each paragraph
was written individually, at different times and on the spur of the moment. In the
second part the paragraphs become terser, with a small cast of characters combined
in different situations, the narrative progressing as a set of equations.
The first part follows the adventures of a character referred to as “the
virgin,” in a fantastic landscape in which dragons, lions, bees, serpents, and eagles
continuously spar, often devouring or transforming into each other. Throughout,
basic ideas that informed Clark’s work come through in different guises. Hence, in the
fable, the world is a gigantic beast (“o mundo era um grande bicho”) whose body
movements dictate the everyday activities of those who inhabit it. The beast’s piss
is the river, and when it changes position it is tantamount to an earthquake. In this
text new concerns are hinted at, such as the longing for a primeval body (“man’s
longing to be surrounded, unified in the greater body”).13 Important works that
Clark developed during the sessions at the Sorbonne, such as Baba antropofágica
(Anthropophagic drool, 1973), Cabeça coletiva (Collective head, 1975), and elements
of her Objetos relacionais (Relational objects, 1976), are alluded to and woven
through the narrative. Drooling (baba), or vomiting, represented the formless content
that Clark needed to excise in some structured way. Structure in this case seems to
have been provided by the writing process itself. In that regard, it is worth noting
that Ferreira Gullar, in recalling the gestation of his “Poema sujo” (Dirty poem),
explained his process in these terms: “I imagined myself vomiting up my past,
creating a meaningless magma out of which I would construct the poem. I would first
vomit a universe of words with no order whatsoever, and little by little I would begin
extracting the poem from the original magma.”14
Once the premise is set in the first paragraphs, the narrative switches tone to
become a hectic adventure in which the virgin is carried down a river in a makeshift
canoe (piroga). She has a gigantic head, like a tree, filled with objects, and before
the journey starts it must be emptied out. The next phase is an exploration of the
body, in which one part talks to the other (“the tear tells the eye: I am a falling

149 | WORD-DROOL
star”).15 For the most part passive, the Lygia Clark, Meu doce rio,
1984. Published by Paulo
virgin witnesses a series of clashes
Klabin Galeria.
between animals, until another fablelike
character, an ogre, appears, with the
task of rousing the virgin from her
catatonic state by opening her vagina.
This episode prompts an image of
the mythical mother from whom
everything flows, and the text unfolds
into images of fertility. All the while,
body parts converse with each other,
and the section ends with a flood that
exterminates all beings. The virgin
then repopulates the world with the
eggs inside her body. At this moment
she ascends into space and a series of
actions culminates in her discovery of
the line, here considered as emanating
from a spider.
After the discovery of the line
(and of writing), the virgin sees her
reflection in the waters of “her sweet river” and sees herself as an old woman: “Her
image projected on the water, deformed, looks like a thousand-year-old woman,
her skin flaccid, the bones twisted underneath. The reflection says to the image: I
prove your existence. To which the image replies: You owe me yours.”16 This scene
is followed by a fantastic sequence involving a serpent stealing eggs from a bird’s
nest, and ends with a poetic dialogue between the virgin and the moon: “The virgin
pointed her index finger in the direction of the moon, a new dialogue in which the nail
says to the finger: ‘You point to the moon, but it is in me that the moon ascends.’ ”17
Further on, the virgin becomes aware of geometry through the movements of her
body: “The virgin raised her legs, folded her knees, thus prompting the dialogue
between them and geometry: To kneel down is to discover the right angle. The head
pondering: Geometry is born from the reflex of the body projected on my mind.”
As the first section comes to a close, Clark reveals her sources in the world of
myth, fairy tale, and fable, from Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, and Aladdin, to Greek
mythology and La Fontaine, ending with author Monteiro Lobato, who endeavored
to create a national imaginative literature for children based on Brazilian legends and
folklore. Clark’s closing words also reflect her discovery of her own breasts and the
act of sucking: “The virgin was possessed by intense pleasure, and discovered that to

150 | BESSA
suck was paradise, and that the palate [céu da boca] was a perfect name, and into this
heaven she allowed herself to enter.” In a state of abandon, the virgin seems to be
protected by creatures and forces of nature, betraying Clark’s deep identification with
the natural order.
The second part of Meu doce rio features a remarkable change of pace, with
the action now centered mostly on the virgin and the ogre. Although other characters
appear, the narrative focuses on the tense relationship between these two, its tenor
moving from the scatological, to cannibalism, to suggestions of copulation toward the
end. It begins with the virgin exploring her anus and discerning between “bad shit”
and “good shit,” a discovery that leads her to “establish the relationship subject-
object.” This initial sequence is followed by a series of images of cannibalism mixed
with sexual fantasies (“From the virgin’s sex a cannibalistic flower blossomed”). After
a sequence of exalted violence against the ogre, the virgin screams until her throat is
dry. Her mouth still drools, but she is no longer passive, and her body seems to have
finally been awakened: “The virgin’s body de-petrifies and turns into flesh. The ogre
crouches over her, trembling, and the virgin also trembling feels the man.”18

ARTS AND LETTERS

Understandably, Meu doce rio might easily be dismissed as merely a fantasy.

However, a memoir written by Clark’s older sister, Sonia Lins, indicates that the
drive behind Clark’s entire oeuvre had deeper roots than the concrete/neoconcrete
framework that has informed most of its critical reception—roots that are somehow
encoded in the text of Meu doce rio. Equally important to a thorough evaluation
of Meu doce rio are the letters Clark exchanged with family and friends during the
period of its composition.
Ambiguously titled Artes, Lins’s memoir suggests that Clark’s trajectory as an
artist had its start in the mischievous games (artes) they played as children growing
up in Belo Horizonte. A gifted storyteller, Lins weaves recollections of family life
with sharp considerations of various phases of Clark’s work. Although invested with
different emotional content, many of Lins’s recollections elucidate crucial passages
in Clark’s texts. For instance, Lins describes their father as an aloof, matter-of-fact
character obsessed with cockfighting, traits also confirmed by Clark in her letters, but
with devastating implications. Most revealing, Lins’s account of Clark’s birth and early
childhood brings new insight into the analysis she developed under Fédida as well
as the works she created with students at the Sorbonne. According to Lins, by the
time Clark was born their mother could no longer breast-feed, and the baby screamed
for days until a wet nurse was found. Indices of residual memory of this fact abound

151 | WORD-DROOL
in both Clark’s work and her writings. In a letter dated June 11, 1974, she wrote to
Oiticica that a wish to grow “breasts the size of Sugar Loaf” marked the ending of an
“androgynous phase” in her analysis.19 And six months later she communicated the
end of yet another important phase, that of the “primitive mother.”

I learned to suck on my arm, for I never knew my mother’s breast . . . and discovered
wonderful things . . . the palate is what connects the sensation of sucking to a cosmic
sensation. My breasts, which had no sensation since the start of this analysis, are now
supple as if my body were delineating its geography; my derrière has taken shape and
the holes in my body have become more specific: I have discovered that the mouth is for
ingesting and that the anus is to expel. I no longer vomit, which happened throughout the
whole analysis. My tongue has taken shape and became a plug for the stomach; my teeth
are now solid. Isn’t it fantastic? I never thought breastfeeding was this whole world, and
who was the genius who gave the name palate [céu da boca, the roof of the mouth, with
céu also meaning “sky” and “heaven”] without knowing any of this?20

Lins and Clark seem to have shared a strong bond, the older sister keeping
a benevolent, if startled, watch on the fragile sibling, “daughter of a wild cat,” who
would be caught eating dirt, licking the whitewashed walls, or biting her nails.
For Clark, however, there seems to be no doubt that childhood was a terrifying
experience. With the help of analysis, she hoped to catch up with her actual age
and become a functioning adult. But the process was demanding and memories of
childhood excruciating. In a heartbreaking letter dated May 5, 1971, she painted a
painful picture of growing up feeling like an outcast. In a quick succession of images,
Clark recalls the milk bottle that replaced breastfeeding, and sets off on a course to
recreate her own birth. The letter also alludes to the image of an archetypal “couple”
destroyed in childhood, which she blames for her inability to sustain a relationship.
Most strikingly, she refers to her memory of being dragged to a mental hospital for
treatment, recalling “dramatic images of childhood such as being pushed in the
asylum shower together with other patients, or being thrown in a bathtub with cold
water in the middle of the night while still asleep.” This episode does not appear
in Lins’s memoir, and therefore we are unable to determine if it actually occurred
or whether it was merely Clark’s fantasy. It is noteworthy, nevertheless, that this
fleeting remark is found amid a sequence of recollections that mirrors Lins’s own
narrative. But what Lins offers as bucolic and picturesque Clark invests with menacing
connotations: the father’s wine cellar is dark and infested with spiders; little Lygia
helps the father pluck feathers from the roosters’ necks and witnesses with horror a
cockfight in which a rooster’s eye is punctured; she has nightmares about drooling a
vital substance; she bites her nails to the root, despairs at feeling ugly and unwanted,
and runs away from home; and finally, there is an allusion to being raped as a child.
Clark sums up thus: “An entire life to recover or construct a personality that never
becomes full, an enormous gap between interior and exterior.”21

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 Relief from such a risky environment was often found in the fantastic stories
her grandfather told during occasional visits to his son’s family. Mixing local
lore and fairy tales with bits of Greek mythology, and related in “crude and real
language,” Grandfather Lins’s stories would cast a long and deep influence, as Clark
acknowledged in a letter to her sister dated May 24, 1973: “I never realized how
many monsters I absorbed thanks to all the mythology told by Grandfather Lins: I
feel incredible symptoms, forms are expelled from the holes in my body and become
terrifying octopi or huge black spiders.”22

BABA-WRITING

However harsh the critical response to this text might be, Meu doce rio
deserves its place among textual anomalies unbound by aesthetic concerns, the kind
that over time play a role in loosening up the strictures of writing. For this text is like
the baba that Clark refined into key elements of her later work, exposing the messy,
emotionally overwhelming personal stakes of her process. Produced at a time of
great fluidity between the visual arts and writing, Clark’s text fits comfortably into
the category of artist writings that deal with the body, subjectivity, and otherness.23
But more important, its fantastic imagery and boundless sense of narrative tap into a
vigorous vein in Brazilian modernist literature exemplified by classics such as Mario
de Andrade’s Macunaíma and Raul Bopp’s Cobra norato, narratives that, like Clark’s,
also address the dissolution of the subject amid the wilderness.24
“Madness is a strange reason in twentieth-century Brazilian culture, opposing
rationality in panic to its excesses,” Paulo Herkenhoff pointed out in his incisive essay
for Clark’s retrospective in Barcelona.25 He went on to sketch out a brief network of
authors and artists who addressed the clash between reason and madness, starting
with Machado de Assis’s short story “O alienista” and continuing through the
modernist era, up to the work developed in the 1940s by Nise da Silveira with inmates
at the Centro Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II. For Herkenhoff, the “geometric art of
Rio de Janeiro has a distant root” in Silveira’s pioneering work, which she developed
with the assistance of Almir Mavignier. In the mid-1950s, the increasing polarization
between concrete and neoconcrete artists somehow obscured Silveira’s contribution
to the cultural debate, and Clark’s encounter with the unconscious wouldn’t take
place until well into the 1970s. When it finally occurred, though, she seemed to fully
connect not only with her own memories but also with an entire tradition in Brazilian
culture that “like certain waters, is deep, free and immense.”26

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Notes 3/ For an insightful look at request a number of key 1971, in Cartas, 191.
Pedrosa’s last years, see the people involved in the
This essay was originally last chapter in Otília Beatriz production of Clark’s last 10 / Clark to Oiticica, July 6,
published in Lygia Clark: The Fiori’s well-researched Mário exhibition, also sharing with 1974, in Cartas, 221.
Abandonment of Art (New Pedrosa: Intinerário crítico me her own copies of Livro-
York: Museum of Modern Art, (São Paulo: Editora Cosac obra and Sonia Lins’s Artes. 11 / Clark to Oiticica,
2014). We thank the Museum Naify, 2004). 222–223.
of Modern Art, 2014, for 7/ Clark to Oiticica,
permission to reprint it. 4/ The Museu de Arte October 26, 1968, in Cartas, 12 / Oiticica to Clark, July
Moderna (MAM) was created 59. All translations from the 11, 1974, in Cartas, 226.
1/ Widely regarded as the in 1948, first occupying a Portuguese are mine.
most progressive presidents room at Banco Boavista. 13 / Lygia Clark, Meu doce
to rule Brazil in the twentieth It was there that in 1949 8/ Clark to Oiticica, rio (Rio de Janeiro: Galeria
century, Kubitschek and Mário Pedrosa organized November 9, 1969, in Cartas, Paulo Klabin, 1984), 8.
Goulart developed their an exhibition of artworks 126.
political careers in between by patients of the Centro 14 / Ariel Jiménez, Ferreira
two dictatorial periods. It Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro 9/ Clark to Oiticica, Gullar in Conversation
was during Kubitschek’s II. In 1952 MAM occupied October 22, 1970, in Cartas, with Ariel Jiménez (New
presidency (1956–1961) that the ground floor of Palácio 182. In this letter, Clark York: Fundación Cisneros/
the new capital Brasilia was Gustavo Capanema, the mentions two patients from Colección Patricia Phelps
planned and constructed. famous modernist building the Centro Psiquiátrico de Cisneros, 2011), 111. Also
He died in a car crash on that launched the career of Nacional Pedro II, Raphael worth noting is Rubens
August 22, 1976. Goulart took Oscar Niemeyer. In 1967 Domingues and Emygdio Gerchman’s recollection of
over the presidency in 1961 the museum opened its de Barros, known for their Clark’s first meeting with
after the resignation of Janio official site at the Aterro accomplished artwork. The Fédida: “When she got next
Quadros. In 1964 the military do Flamengo, designed by graphic designer Rogério to him, she was so moved
junta that would remain Affonso Eduardo Reidy. Duarte, a close friend of that she couldn’t utter a word
in power for the next two Oiticica’s, worked for film . . . she muttered, she wanted
decades deposed of Goulart, 5/ Clark to Oiticica, director and writer Glauber to speak, and suddenly she
who lived in exile in Uruguay undated, in Lygia Clark and Rocha and for the musicians started drooling. There was
and Argentina until his death Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark: in the movement known as this dribble coming out of her
on December 6, 1976. Hélio Oiticica—Cartas 1964– Tropicália. In 1968 Duarte was mouth, and he said: ‘Madam,
1974, ed. Luciano Figueiredo, arrested for his involvement this is a great start.’ Because
2/ Ivan Serpa studied with a preface by Silviano in the student movement and she’d brought out the
art with Axl Leskoschek, Santiago (Rio de Janeiro: was subjected to torture. After deepest in her. And the word
an Austrian immigrant Editora UFRJ, 1996), 34. his release from prison, he didn’t form itself.” In “Archive
who set up a printmaking was interned at the Centro for a Work-Event,” Manifesta
studio in Rio. In the early 6/ In the process of Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro Journal 13, no. 9, http://
1950s Serpa created Grupo researching for this essay, I II with severe depression. www.manifestajournal.org/
Frente, in which Lygia Clark was fortunate to receive the Duarte was later able to issues/fungus-contemporary/
was a participant. He was support of many colleagues resume his design work and archive-work-event-
an essential collaborator of and friends to whom I am became a professor at the activating-bodys-memory-
Nise da Silveira at the Centro deeply indebted. Álvaro Clark Universidade de Brasilia; he lygia-clarks-poetics-and-its
Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro and his daughter Alessandra currently lives in Salvador. In (site discontinued).
II, and also the founder of Clark generously shared another letter, Clark mentions
the educational program at Lygia Clark’s manuscripts that being invited to work at a 15 / Lygia Clark, Meu doce
the Museu de Arte Moderna are the source of Meu doce clinic in the Loire: “If it works rio, 13.
in Rio. Later he founded the rio. Moreover, conversations out it will be my salvation,
Centro de Pesquisa de Arte, with Alessandra Clark and which is a paradox, for 16 / Clark, 24.
in collaboration with Bruno art historian Paulo Venâncio someone like me who makes
Tausz. As an educator, Serpa Filho were crucial in helping art to escape the asylum, to 17 / Clark plays with the
had an important role in the me situate Meu doce rio in end there is incredible! But meaning of lunula (little
formation of Hélio Oiticica, its proper context. Simone there is no place for me in moon), the white base of the
Waltércio Caldas, Raymundo Klabin, widow of Paulo the world of normal people”; nail shaped as a crescent
Colares, and Emil Forman. Klabin, interviewed at my Clark to Oiticica, March 31, moon.

154 | BESSA
18 / Clark, 45–54. Pense-Bête, see Gloria Moure,
ed., Marcel Broodthaers:
19 / Clark to Oiticica, June Collected Writings (Barcelona:
11, 1974, in Cartas, 247. Ediciones Poligrafa,
2012). For an English
20 / Clark to Oiticica, translation of “Müüüüüm
November 11, 1974, in Cartas, and the Megaphones,”
256–257. see zingmagazine 2, no.
6 (Summer 1998). For the
21 / Clark to Oiticica, May 5, complete text of Parts of
1971, in Cartas, 209–10. a Body House, see Dick
Higgens and Wolf Vostel, eds.,
22 / Sonia Lins, Artes Fantastic Architecture (New
(Ghent, Belgium: Snoeck York: Something Else Press,
Ducaju and Zoon, 1996), 28. 1969).

23 / Clark’s vivid 24 / The important

explorations of her body in contributions of Mario de
Meu doce rio share similarities Andrade and Raul Bopp to
with textual experiments by modern Brazilian literature
several of her contemporaries. have been obfuscated over
For instance, Marcel the years by the dazzling
Broodthaers’s texts in Pense- polemics of Oswald de
Bête, despite their acerbic Andrade’s manifestos. That
tone and bleak humor, betray these fantastic narratives
the same sense of unease take the form of fables, or
Clark experienced. Of special tales, is highly relevant to
interest to this discussion is our understanding of Clark’s
his play on the word moule, story. Indeed, a careful
which can alternately be reading of those books will
translated as “mussel” or add a new dimension to our
“mold.” An equal sense of understating of what the
estrangement is conveyed by modernist program entailed.
Öyvind Fahlström in his early For at the basis of both
poem “Müüüüüm and the works is the rescue of an
Megaphones,” which leads entire folk tradition whose
the reader into a scatological roots extend to a precolonial
ride down a character’s Brazil, but which also points
gastric tract. Noteworthy to the structuralist bent of
also is the fact that all these the postwar generations,
texts are based on the fable a bridging best illustrated
model common to children’s by concrete poet Haroldo
books, in which simple verbal de Campos’s reading of
articulations (baba, müüüüüm, Macunaíma based on the
moule, bête, bicho) prompt theories of Vladimir Propp,
associations with the fantastic. in his study Morfologia de
Most remarkably, Carolee Macunaíma (1967).
Schneeman’s artist book Parts
of a Body House, published 25 / Lygia Clark (Barcelona:
in 1969, echoes Clark’s Fundació Antoni Tàpies,
O casa é o corpo, a work 1998), 47, exhibition catalog.
she exhibited the previous
year at MAM in Rio and at 26 / Clark and Oiticica,
the Venice Biennale. For a February 2, 1971, in Cartas,
complete reproduction of 185.

155 | WORD-DROOL
EMIL FORMAN 10
Removing the
Silence of Things
Fernanda Lopes

As a young woman, Antonietta Clélia Rangel Forman’s poise and charm was
the pride of her family. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1918, she distinguished herself
from most of the women of her generation. As early as 1939, at age twenty-one,
she enrolled in flight classes at the Department of Aviation at the city’s yacht club,
which had a hangar for seaplanes. She was one of the first women in Brazil to earn
an aviation license, causing a stir whenever she would fly to Cabo Frio, an exclusive
resort town outside Rio. Revisiting her past through photographs, we recognize her
interest in gymnastics and sports. She practiced yoga early on before it became
fashionable. She also practiced riding at the Sociedade Hípica Brasileira and won
several jumping competitions. As the years went by, she put aside her sporting life
to dedicate more time to her four children. At old age she was known as Dona Nieta,
the mother of Clélia, a chemical engineer; Dora, a psychologist; Hugo, an engineer,
and Emil, her youngest son. Another picture reveals she also had two grandchildren:
Christiano and Daniel, sons of Dora.
It was Emil who, in August 1975, presented an extensive and unusual
“portrait” of this fascinating woman, in a room on the third floor of the Museu de
Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ). The installation Pictures of Antonietta
Clélia Rangel Forman was a compilation of all the photographic documentation the
artist could gather about a single person. “The material to be presented could not
be perceived as a closed set (a dead individual) or even a crystallized one (an old
person). It was necessary to choose someone who, having lived a long period of time,
had not yet reached its definitive image. Antonietta Clelia Rangel Forman, born in Rio
de Janeiro during the 1910s, was chosen for being an ordinary person, and for having
lived in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) most of her life,” explained the artist in the gallery text
that presented the exhibition.
Visitors to the exhibition found themselves surrounded by walls busy with
over one thousand images registering the span of over six decades, related not
only to the life of an individual but also, possibly, to a period in the history of the
city of Rio de Janeiro in the twentieth century, from the early days of modernism
to the years of the military regime. The installation also included photographs
from the collections of friends and relatives. Unaware of the exhibition plans until
the end of December 1974, Antonietta continued to be photographed as usual in
familiar situations. Once informed about the project, she actively participated in its
production suggesting certain poses or situations, a kind of interference that was
welcomed by the artist.
The installation was an investigation of a person, but it was also about the
possibilities of photography. The set included studio portraits, photos taken by
street photographers, travel photos, photos for identity cards and passports, contact
sheets, features in newspapers and magazines, slides, radiographs and 8mm and
16mm films. No technical or aesthetic concerns were taken into account in selecting
the materials: some photos were of poor quality, difficult to identify, blurred,
overexposed, faded, or double-exposed. In these images, Antonietta appeared alone
or with groups of other people, close up or from afar, on her back or even only
partially—her forehead, one arm, the tip of her foot. Photos of photos and all kinds of
duplicates were also included.
Two photographs showed a friend painting and holding in her hands a photo—
now lost—where we could see Antonietta laying in a hammock, in the same pose that
generated many duplicate photos. Despite the difficulty in seeing the watercolor, the
clash between the two forms of representation produced an interesting effect. There
was also a photo taken with a friend after a snow blizzard in New York City in which
only their shadows appear: the classic way of denoting presence without showing
the subject. With the exception of texts or subtitles in clippings of magazines and
newspapers, and the occasional writing in the albums or in photos, the information
contained in the documents was withheld.
In the text written for the exhibition brochure, Forman noted that “people
nowadays have their lives documented by photography in various and frequent
situations . . . the simultaneous presentation of all existing material about a person
enables a wider view of the extent that this documentation can reach.” The exhibition
was not exclusively focused on the past, as the most recent material had equal

158 | LOPES
import in the reading of the ensemble. Overall, Forman’s installation was a surprising
homage to photography and memory, intriguing in its obsessive and thorough
method. More to the point, it faithfully mirrored Forman’s personality, temperament,
and work process.
Emil Forman was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1954. He studied under concrete
art pioneer Ivan Serpa at the Centro de Pesquisas de Arte (Center for Art Research),
in Ipanema, from 1971 to 1973. Under Serpa’s guidance, he developed an obsession
for method and rigor, without allowing it to disrupt the experimental side of his
creativity. Alongside the systematic practice of drawing, Forman developed his
first works related to accumulation and photography, including The Cabinet (1972),
an installation in his house coatroom that featured obsolete family objects, and
Concrete Marigold (1973), an extensive series of photographs about the same object
of consumption. At the Centro he also presented his first individual exhibition in
1973. Around that same period he began his series of photographs of social events,
registering weddings, birthdays, meetings, and exhibitions that he was invited to, a
series that he would continue to work on until 1977.
The artist Jozias Benedicto met Forman in Serpa’s classes and wrote about
their dynamic in his blog:

Emil was always late for Ivan’s classes. Very young, he was then twenty years old, but already
with a strong personality and well defined work; very pale, blond, tall, always in dark clothes;
his tone of voice was low, but assured, no coyness about it; a gentleness, a certain aloofness
that was always characteristic; but under the quietness there was a strong, determined, and
precocious person; he was heir to the wreck of a traditional family, very rich, part of the Rio
aristocracy in decline due to the economic changes of the previous decade. The class would
be halfway through when he arrived, with a portfolio under his arm. Ivan would ask, “Have
you done work, Emil?” He would smile as if embarrassed and say, “I did some drawings on
the bus.” Then he would open the folder and show dozens and dozens of drawings made
with hydrographic pen possibly created on the seat in the back of a bus that would bring him
from Praia do Flamengo to Ipanema.1

Art critic Ileana Pradilla Cerón, curator of a posthumous exhibition of the artist
in 2006, also wrote about Forman’s early years:

As a teenager, Emil Forman used spaces in his home to set up his imaginary universe.
Accumulations and nonsense assemblages of objects found or appropriated invaded his
room and other surroundings of the family’s apartment, altering places usually devoted to
domestic privacy. Similarly, with his first solo exhibition in 1973 at the age of 19, Emil began
to occupy the public space of art with his private world, exhibiting familiar objects, images of
his own room, photographs of his mother, in sum his intimacy eclipsed of privacy.2

Forman’s first solo exhibition in 1973 provoked shock and irritation not
only because of the way it was installed but also because of its content, and it was

159 | EMIL FORMAN

unanimously referred to in the newspapers of the day as “a curious exhibition.” In
one of these articles, the artist addressed the project thus:

I’ve always been impressed with how people love to keep things throughout their lives. The
best way to convey this kind of commitment would be to present all the objects belonging to
one person and accumulated throughout her/his life. This was possible to achieve with Ms.
Maria Ferreira dos Anjos by recovering all her objects and personal belongings. This woman
was born in Vila do Chã, in Portugal and arrived in Brazil in 1919. In May 1920 she was hired
by M. A. Rangel, in whose house she remained until her death (April 8, 1973).

Maria dos Anjos preserved, stored, and accumulated all her personal possessions
and objects with extreme care. She must have been influenced by the people in the house
where she worked and lived at—she was the housekeeper—who had the same habit of
keeping everything. In 1967, when she went to visit one of her brothers in Portugal, she took
with her six chests full of stuff—here in Rio, she kept only the things that were dearest to her.
It is from these things that I made this exhibition.3

The 1973 exhibition titled Objects of Maria dos Anjos Ferreira resembled
very little of what had been produced in Brazil until then. It was in fact “a curious
exhibition.” Vitrines and drawers installed against a flat backdrop displayed objects
left by the family housekeeper, who had died shortly before the show was produced.
In an interview to art critic Roberto Pontual,4 Forman pointed out that his main
interest was to indicate when a personal collection comes to a closure; an impetus
common to us all, that in his exhibition came to a full cycle. Once someone dies, other
objects could not be added to her/his personal collection.
In the catalog produced for Forman’s first posthumous survey, art critic
Frederico Morais offered an interesting analysis of the exhibition in his testimony
about the artist:

Emil Forman’s first solo exhibition, held at the art gallery in Ivan Serpa’s Research Center, had
an impact. I did not know the artist yet and was impressed by the fact that for his first solo
exhibition, he came up with a work so well structured and self-assured while at the same time
of great emotional impact.

The exhibition bothered many people. The invitation to the vernissage was conceived
as a funeral memorial card, and many people upon receiving it, reacted negatively, disliking
the exhibition even before visiting it. They saw Forman’s decision to expose personal objects
of Dona Iá, his family’s Portuguese governess, as a violation of her private life, an intrusion
into her privacy.

However, I perceived it in exactly the opposite way, that is, as the manifestation of a
profound love for life, and admiration for a person who, throughout her long existence, knew
how to protect her solitude by creating a world of her own, absolutely coherent, holistic. And
what brought coherence to this world and gave meaning to Dona Iá’s life were these objects.
All of them perfectly banal, without any economic value, but impregnated with the aura of the
subject, biographical objects, Violet Morin would say, true objects-subjects Gaston Bachelard
added. Objects that aged alongside the owner, repositories of her memory, connoisseurs of

160 | LOPES
 her idiosyncrasies and virtues, in short, objects closely linked to the individual, (the owner) in
a relation of mutual dependence.

But what Emil Forman took to the gallery, in the form of an installation, was not
only the objects patiently collected by Dona Iá throughout her solitary existence. He took, to
use an expression of Jean Baudrillard, an “arrangement structure.” As we know, a simple
quantitative survey of the objects proper to a room in 1900 or in a 1960s living-room allowed
Abraham A. Moles to draw important conclusions on the socioeconomic and cultural
behavior of their owners. Baudrillard went beyond this kind of demographics and analyzed
the way objects are distributed in the space of the house, the hierarchy that is created
between them; he raised a kind of morality of objects, and wanted to know how objects are
experienced, what other desires exist besides functional ones. This is what Emil Forman
did, recovering not only the objects left by Dona Iá, but the way she related with them, how
she kept them (protected them) in her corner; small objects inside small boxes, small boxes
Inside larger boxes, inside chests, inside the furniture. With these objects and in the way she
organized them, Dona Iá built her dream house, her protective nest.5

After visiting the exhibition, art critic Antônio Bento nominated Forman to
the 9th Paris Biennale of 1975, where he presented an audiovisual about Iá’s objects,
a record of his first show at the Art Research Center. That same year he opened
the exhibition Pictures of Antonietta Clélia Rangel Forman at the MAM-RJ. The
exhibition, which had 3,739 visitors during its first twenty-one days, inaugurated Área
experimental, a series of exhibitions dedicated to contemporary art at the museum.
“A different exhibition”; “An exhibition difficult to understand if the public does not
know the artist’s thoughts”; “With materials never before thought to be used in an
art show”—these were some attempts to define the exhibitions that went on display
starting in August 1975 under the Área experimental umbrella. The exhibitions were
housed in one or more galleries on the museum’s third floor, which focused on
projects by young Brazilian artists, and lasted from thirty to forty-five days each.6
Selected from proposals submitted by artists or commissioned by the
Cultural Planning Commission, rather than based on work and portfolio reviews, the
exhibitions presented an extremely wide range of responses to the question, “What
is experimental?” This variety mirrored the fact that the artists selected for Área
experimental, as well as those participating in the selection commission, bridged
different generations, with artistic productions marked by an array of new references
and possibilities, not only in regard to the concepts presented but also in relation to
the materials and media chosen by the artists.
The exhibitions were promoted by the MAM-RJ as “presentations of
Brazilian artists linked to experimentation,” “exhibitions related to research and
experimentation,” or exhibitions by Brazilian artists “dedicated to research and
new creative forms,” “involved in research and new artistic proposals,” or “linked
to new research on language and artistic concepts”; artists whose works “critically
address issues related to the art system at production and consumption levels,”

161 | EMIL FORMAN

Emil Forman, Pictures of
Antonietta Clélia Rangel
Forman, 1975. Courtesy of
Dora Forman.
Emil Forman, Pictures of
Antonietta Clélia Rangel
Forman, 1975. Courtesy of
Dora Forman.
Emil Forman, Pictures of
Antonietta Clélia Rangel
Forman, 1975. Courtesy of
Dora Forman.
Emil Forman, Pictures of
Antonietta Clélia Rangel
Forman, 1975. Courtesy of
Dora Forman.
“critically investigate the system of production and consumption of art,” “react
and make us think of the current trend in the arts circuit (including artists, galleries,
museums, market, etc.),” or artists “whose production is linked to new aesthetic
experiences and research, whether in the field of object, photography, audiovisual,
or videotape.”7
At Área experimental, other installation projects—by Cildo Meireles, Umberto
Costa Barros, and Waltércio Caldas, for example—dealt directly with space in its
physical and institutional dimensions, especially taking into account its limitations.
Other proposals such as those by Regina Vater, Anna Bella Geiger, Lygia Pape,
Carlos Zilio, Ivens Machado, and Paulo Herkenhoff questioned not only the limits of
conventional categories and artistic procedures but also the passive attitude of the
public in relation to the work of art. And projects such the ones presented by Letícia
Parente, Fernando Cocchiarale, and Emil Forman—which were informed by a more
conceptual outlook—departed from processes related to cataloging, evaluation,
measurement, and classification while questioning their reductionist character, and
their value as methods.
An analysis of the list of participants and projects presented in Área
experimental makes evident the program’s three-part structure (with internal
variations in each of them) that correspond to attempts to think new paths for
Brazilian art at that particular time.8 One of these possible paths grouped artists
interested in possible new readings and developments linked to neoconcrete
experimentalism (in some cases, establishing dialogues with more recent
productions, such as conceptual art, art povera, and minimalism); another path,
more internationalist in tone, featured artists connected to video experimentation
and language-based art; yet another path stood in opposition to the other two while
remaining tied to a more formalistic position.
Art was no longer considered as merely a historical sequence, in which one
reference replaces the other, but rather as a complex of relationships in which the
most diverse references are placed on the table, on equal footing, at the same time. It
was necessary to make choices. And the lack of consensus on what was experimental
for the MAM-RJ project meant keeping that possibility open. By not to restricting
the experimental to a single artistic definition—such as video art, installation art,
painting, drawing, or any other medium— Área experimental challenged how to
rethink art practices. Regardless the specificity of media or technical support, the idea
of experimentation would have to be rethought in the critical sense, bringing into
question the very idea of artistic space, and the terms upon which society and other
power systems were structured and managed. At that time in Brazil, it was necessary
to expand or reinvent the space of discussion, of debate, and not only in regard to
art. Art production at the time was confused with the need to create spaces for the

166 | LOPES
production of art, and in the Área experimental, the proposals were presented as
projects, which involved the idea of assuming a risk: “Here in this place, we are trying
something that one does not know where it will lead to. And that’s alright.”9
In his project for Área experimental, Forman embraced all the risks that the
program aimed to address. Slender, pale, with an aristocratic demeanor, Forman was
the unassuming star of Brazil’s new avant-garde. The quiet character of his work,
seemingly dissociated from the political upheavals of the 1970s, denoted a personal
clash with the ongoing massification of the individual through popular culture and
her/his relations, as Ileana Pradilla Cerón points out:

Apparently oblivious to the transgressive movements of the counterculture that marked the
decade of the 1970s; and also far from the noisier attitudes of protest against the country’s
political situation at that moment, these operations of displacement and grafting of public
and private spaces proposed by Emil, were nevertheless disturbing commentaries and
procedures on the established order. Although not necessarily innovative (dislocations in art
has happened at least since Duchamp and Dadaism) they were sufficiently forceful, however,
to create estrangement in a world hardly vulnerable to aesthetic surprise.

In the installations, photographs, and audiovisuals that the artist made between 1973
and 1975, the urge to instill art with life and vice versa was paramount. Paradoxically, at least
if contrasted with propositions related to the dissolution of frontiers between art and life
promoted by avant-garde artists early in the twentieth century (including the constructivist
developments in Brazil in the 1950s), Forman’s works was not an affirmation of the present,
they rather inventoried fragments of the past, as in a search for lost meaning.

...

Forman, however, was a voyeur furtively registering what he saw. But perhaps
for seeing the world without filters, with the brutal cruelty with which it presents itself,
everything seemed to acquire, in the works of the artist, certain unrealism. His lenses turned
the everyday into Fellini-like scenes, where everything and everyone, under the weight of
excessive reality, became strange fictional characters.10

Paulo Herkenhoff, on the other hand, situates Forman’s production, especially

the exhibition held at the MAM-RJ, within the very discipline of photography and its
multiple aspects.

The exhibition at MAM inscribes itself in the history of Brazilian art as one of the most
profound inquiries about the status and meaning of photography. As important as the turn
of the century photomontage of Valério Vieira, the collages of Jorge de Lima (Panic Painting,
1943)11 and the experimental photography of Geraldo de Barros, José Oiticica Filho, and
Athos Bulcão in the 1950s, Emil’s work takes us to a discussion about photography, beyond
issues related to photojournalism, documentation, or aesthetics (angles, tones, etc.). Emil’s
work anticipates or coexists with the photography of Artur Omar, Alair Gomes, Hugo Denizart,
Pedro Vasques, Vera Chaves Barcellos, Miguel Rio Branco, Iole de Freitas, Essila Paraíso, Ana
Vitória Mussi, and Mario Cravo Neto: the radical point of constitution of contemporaneity
of this language and the expanding of its hypotheses as images, matter, light, time, space,
process, tradition, and practice.

167 | EMIL FORMAN

 ...

In this work, Emil’s interest is focused in the individual and the language of light.
Photography, cinema, x-ray, typographic cliché—images of a world where one no longer has
enough time and that he wants to capture. One’s life is what photography preserves. Records
of moments/facts. What is written is no longer worth anything. What is photographed has
worth. This cold and dramatic, curious and insipid, unique, and banal representation is
the life of us all, twentieth-century creatures. Industrial societies have turned their citizens
into image junkies. What for? Who took these hundreds of photographs? I, you, he, we all,
nonphotographers hopelessly doomed to practice the “middle-brow art” of Pierre Bourdieu.

...

Emil was not a photographer, yet he was able to confer meaning to it. An innocent
photo, banal or beautiful, was a tool to demolish the idealized world. Its transcendent
meaning allowed to flow freely from the isolation and pragmatic side of things. The
intellectual gesture of organizing things broke their silence.12

Few works by Forman gained public notice—not only during his lifetime but
unfortunately to this day. The production he left behind is marked by heterogeneity,
denoting his curiosity for different media, as was often the case in Brazilian art in
the 1970s. Looking back at his production as a whole, it is possible to say that there
seemed to be no hierarchy among the images that he appropriated (photographs not
taken by him and objects not collected by him, for example) and the ones he crafted
himself. There was a powerful and elegant balance between the conceptual universe
that was beginning to be explored by young Brazilian artists in the 1970s, and the
belief, still prevailing today, in the power of visuality, in the plastic possibilities of
each work, which had its dimension as object carefully thought out.
In addition to photography, which occupied a special place in his work,
drawing was Forman’s language of choice. His relationship with the two media
recalls a phrase by Man Ray: “I photograph what I do not want to paint, and I paint
what I do not want to photograph.” Forman seems to have worked the same way. He
made thousands of drawings of situations that he did not want to photograph and
used photographs of people and things he did not want to draw. Forman pursued
drawing from a very young age, exploring its possibilities exhaustively. Talented
and compulsive, he produced graphic work linked to a strong expressive and critical
heritage, which straddles an evolution going back to the caricatures of Honoré
Daumier to contemporary comics. Ileana Pradilla Cerón commented on the impact of
Forman’s drawings thus:
On the following pages:
Looking at them for the first time, these drawings might surprise with their understated
directness. With quick and precise lines, they also remind us of illustrations in children’s Emil Forman, Untitled,
books. However, as we penetrate this universe, we realize that what first struck us as candor 1974-1977. Courtesy of
is actually a finger in the wound. Shoes, which appear in myriad ways, the eroticized and Dora Forman.

168 | LOPES
 masculine-looking women, and the obsessive cashew fruits—to name a few of the recurring
elements in his drawings might struck us as an exaltation of banality, as some have deemed
Andy Warhol’s canvases and drawings. And Forman, no doubt, engaged in a discreet
but profound dialogue with pop art, and especially with Warhol, a descendant of Eastern
European immigrants, like him. This dialogue was not, to be sure, with the anonymous and
impactful pop aesthetics borrowed from advertising. In comparison, Emil’s work would
be the opposite of this aesthetics: intimate, silent, self-referential. His identification with
that movement comes through in the disenchanted attitude that pop art reveals. Certainly,
Forman’s works have nothing banal about them, but they point, as pop art does, to the
banality of the world and its immediate surface.

As in the photographs, the characters in Forman’s drawings are also caricatures,

masks, surface, conveyed in a light and refined line. Paradoxically, these humorous drawings
carry equal doses of purity and consciousness: the humor and fertile imagination of fairy
tales contrasted with the realization of a lack of meanings in our contemporary world.13

Photography and drawing accompanied Forman’s career from the beginning,

practices that he maintained even after leaving Brazil. After presenting his exhibition
at MAM-RJ in 1975, he returned to Europe, where he stayed until the end of 1978,
dividing his time between Paris and London. During his stay in Europe, he produced
numerous drawings, including a series of posters for a musical in 1977 as well as
several photographic series, many registering shop windows. In 1976 he participated
in The Venetian Tools Project, which was organized by the Swiss Écart Group
(cofounded in Geneva by John Armleder, Patrick Lucchini and Claude Rychner) and
presented at the 37th Venice Biennale. Also in 1976, he published in the Brazilian
magazine GAM (issue no. 38) four photographs from the series Marriage Lunch, and
the following year he was part of the traveling exhibition Salon Magazine, presented
at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany, and at the t’Venster in Rotterdam.
In 1979 Forman relocated to New York and participated in the audiovisual
exhibition Life Styles—ICA Films at the ICA Arts Center Cinema, where he presented
Films and Slides of Family and Friends in Brazil, a selection of images from his
series on social rituals. In New York, he dedicated more time to drawing, producing
numerous small works of great wit and irony in which subtle word play was matched
with surreal imagery. With little interest in the mainstream art system, he sought
work in parallel areas. To make a living, he worked as assistant to Fabiano Canosa,
then film programmer at the Public Theater, helping him organize his film archive.
He also assisted the Museum of Modern Art curator Kynneston McShine on a book
about Joseph Cornell, whose collages and assemblages of objects had impacted
Forman’s work.

The series of drawings made in the final years of his life in New York, a commentary of sorts
on his daily activities, address the unstable game between word and image. The drawings are
packed with cultural references, and strangely enough, they seem to emerge from the artist’s
immediate moment. It’s as if the frantic New York City, with its excess of information, and the

177 | EMIL FORMAN

 oppressive presence of advertisement, had swept Emil away from a nostalgic Parisian-like
atmosphere and dropped him, not without violence, in the actuality of the present.

In terms of art, this present means the resurgence of painting in the early 1980s,
which with its hedonistic discourse challenged the conceptual rigor and experimental taste
of the previous two decades. It also meant, in sociological terms, the rise of the Yuppie
generation, which, with its conservative mentality and dubious taste, helped create market
value, through capital investments, for the new pictorial production.14

In 1983, at age twenty-nine, Forman was found dead of unknown causes at

Playhouse by the River, a theater in Pennsylvania. The following year, artists Antonio
Manuel and Luiz Ferreira, together with Forman’s sister Dora Forman, organized a
retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio. Like most artists of his
generation, Forman sought to stay away from the commercial art system that was
emerging in Brazil in the 1970s, refusing to sell his works. Perhaps this, coupled with
the fact that he had moved out of Brazil shortly after his first solo shows, made his
work stand at the margin of our recent art history, little seen by both artists of later
generations and researchers and art critics.
Ironically, the topics that he was devoted to and that informed his work such
as memory, autobiography, inventories, and inquiries about the nature of the image
are gaining more and more attention among today’s young generation. This presents
a propitious context to bring to the public the formidable production of Emil Forman
almost half a century after he first appeared on the scene. Showing his work now
would contribute, above all, to make our universe of references more complex and
diversified and fundamental for our understanding and critical rereading of artistic
production in Brazil in the last decades.

178 | LOPES
Notes 7/ All quotes from (Painting in panic), featuring
editions of the MAM Bulletin forty-one photomontages,
1/ Jozias Benedicto, published between 1975 each accompanied by a
“Lembrando Emil Forman,” and 1976. Original editions sentence or verse. The lack
blog post, August 23, 2009, available at the Center for of page numbers allows
http://joziasbenedicto Research and Documentation the reader to freely peruse
.blogspot.com.br/2009/08/ of the Museum of Modern Art the sequence in a nonlinear
lembrando-emil-forman.html. of Rio de Janeiro. manner. In the preface, poet
Murilo Mendes (1901–1975)
2/ Ileana Pradilla Cerón, 8/ Between 1975 and connects Lima’s work to
Emil Forman: Inventário 1978, the Área experimental surrealism, particularly to
(Recife: Museum of Modern presented works by thirty- Max Ernst.
Art Aloisio Magalhães, 2006). four artists and one group
Catalog for the exhibition exhibition: Emil Forman, 12 / Cerón, Emil Forman:
held at Aloisio Magalhães Sérgio de Campos Mello, Retrospectiva, 9–11.
Modern Art Museum, from Margareth Maciel, Bia
May 11 to July 9, 2006. Wouk, Ivens Machado, 13 / Cerón, 12–14.
Cildo Meireles, Gastão de
3/ Artist statement Magalhães, Anna Bella 14 / Cerón, 12–14.
published in the exhibition’s Geiger, Tunga, Paulo
brochure. Herkenhoff, Carlos Zilio,
Mauro Kleiman (two shows),
4/ Roberto Pontual, Lygia Pape, Yolanda Freire
“Bienal de Paris— (two shows), Fernando
Brasileiros,” in Jornal Cocchiarale, Regina Vater,
do Brasil, Caderno B, 1, Waltercio Caldas, Sonia
September 18, 1975. Andrade (two shows),
Amelia Toledo, João
5/ In Antonio Manuel Ricardo Moderno, Ricardo
and Luis Ferreira, eds., Emil de Souza, Luiz Alphonsus,
Forman: Retrospectiva (Rio Reinaldo Cotia Braga, Jayme
de Janeiro: Funarte, 1984). Bastian Pinto Junior, Dinah
The publication cataloged Guimaraens, Reinaldo Leitão,
the traveling exhibition Lauro Cavalcanti, Dimitri
organized by the Museum of Ribeiro, Orlando Mollica and
Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro Essila Burello Paraíso, as well
and Espaço Arte Brasileira as Beatriz and Paulo Emílio
Contemporânea from Lemos, Murilo Antunes and
September 27 to October Biiça, Luis Alberto Sartori,
28, 1984. The exhibition Jorge Helt, and Maurício
was also presented at the Andrés who participated
Universidade de São Paulo in the group exhibition
Contemporary Art Museum Audiovisuais mineiros.
in São Paulo, from November
5 to December 8, 1984. 9/ Interview with
Waltércio Caldas, in Lopes,
6/ For more information Área experimental.
on this subject see Fernanda
Lopes, Área experimental: 10 / Cerón, Emil Forman:
Lugar, espaço e dimensão Inventário, 12–14.
do experimental na arte
brasileira dos anos 1970 (Rio 11 / In 1943 Jorge de Lima
de Janeiro: Figo Editora, (1893–1953), a poet from
2013). Alagoas, published in Rio de
Janeiro A Pintura em Pânico

179 | EMIL FORMAN

THE FUNERAL OF 11
BRAZILIAN MODERNISM
Glauber Rocha and the
Death of Di Cavalcanti
Marcos Augusto Gonçalves

On October 27, 1976, film director Glauber Rocha stormed into the lobby of
the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro as an open-casket ceremony
was underway to pay homage to Emilio di Cavalcanti, a central player in Brazilian
modernism who had died the night before from liver complications. An article in
Jornal do Brasil describes Rocha breaking into the scene “disheveled in navy blue
sports pants, light blue jacket, gingham shirt and brown shoes.” Accompanied by
photographer Mário Carneiro he approached the coffin and commanded: “One, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . . Cut! Now get me a
close up on his face.”
According to the news coverage published on the following day, Rocha’s
intervention—“to everyone’s shock, and revulsion from family and friends”—would
only come to an end one hour and twenty-three minutes later, at the São João Batista
Cemetery in the Botafogo neighborhood. Asked by a reporter about his motivation
for filming the funeral, Rocha answered that the same way the press was covering
the event, he also felt obliged to register it. And who would the audience be? “For no
one,” he replied. “For the museum to have a documentary of Di Cavalcanti’s funeral.
It is a documentary. I am not sure if it will work out. It is for myself.”
The eighteen-minute film Di Cavalcanti was shown to the public for the first
time on March 11, 1977, at the MAM Cinémathèque, and it won the Jury Special Prize
at the Cannes Festival that same year. In 1979, the painter’s daughter Elizabeth Di
Cavalcanti obtained a legal injunction prohibiting any further screenings. The court
order is still in place, however innocuous as bootleg copies of the work can be easily
screened on YouTube. The documentary starts with a traveling shot of the museum’s
façade that immediately takes the viewer back to the stifling military era of Brazil
in the 1970s under General Ernesto Geisel. Two years prior, the moviemaker had
surprised the country’s political left by vouching for the “gradual and sure” process
of political disengagement promised by Geisel and General Golbery do Couto e Silva,
the junta’s strategist whom Rocha nominated the “genius of the breed.” The question
“Is the moviemaker mad?” resonated in the left-leaning intellectual and cultural
circles at the time, many answering with “yes,” others denying it. To make things
worse, his performance at the funeral ceremony for Di Cavalcanti just provided more
fodder for the polemics.
By 1976, despite his remarkable role as a formal innovator during the first
half of the twentieth century, Di Cavalcanti’s work was no longer indicative of the
“evolutionary line” of Brazilian modernist movement, which had prompted the
careers of Tarsila do Amaral, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Mário de Andrade, and Oswald de
Andrade. Bohemian and affable, he had remained an admired figure whose work had
grown stale (colorful paintings of mulatto women) amid a new environment ruled
by geometric abstraction. His name was often associated with a cultural-political
faction known as “national-popular” that had projected itself decades earlier under
the ideology of the Communist Party, considered with caution by the younger left
because of its conciliatory politics, antiquated codes, and narrow nationalism.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Brazil underwent a cultural revolution of
sorts as a constructivist bent in the areas of the visual arts and poetry culminated in
the concrete and neo-concrete movements. The architecture and urban planning of
Brasilia had become recognized worldwide, and following the international explosion
of bossa nova, new talents such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were proposing
Tropicália. In the area of cinema, a new generation of “marginals” was fast replacing
the aesthetics of Rocha’s Cinema Novo. Whatever remained in scene from the 1920s
wave of modernism, derived more vitally from the ideas and works of Oswald de
Andrade, author of the 1928 “Manifesto Antropófago.”
After a period of ostracism, in the early 1950s, the São Paulo concrete poets
reclaimed Andrade’s work and presented it to a younger audience now informed
by Tropicália. The Teatro Oficina presentation of Andrade’s play O rei da vela (The
candle king) in 1967, under the direction of José Celso Martinez Corrêa, was a
landmark event. Andrade’s work also became a point of reference in the work of
young tropicalistas such as Veloso and Gil, moviemakers such as Julio Bressane
and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, and Hélio Oiticica. In the charged post-1964 cultural
landscape, the figures of Oswald de Andrade together with Villa-Lobos and Mário

182 | GONÇALVES
de Andrade represented the energy and dare of early modernism in Brazil, as their
works were eagerly debated in academic circles as great cultural treasures of the
twentieth century.
The 1922 Week of Modern Art in São Paulo was an event organized by a
group of artists, journalists, critics, and polemicists with the full support of the elite’s
progressive sector who sought to capitalize on the event as a modern carte de visite
of the city to be presented to the rest of the country. They wished to show São Paulo
as a city in the quick process of expansion because of the wealth accumulated by the
coffee cycle and its financial, commercial, and industrial ramifications. For although
São Paulo’s economy was the most powerful engine in the country, Rio de Janeiro,
the capital, had over one million inhabitants, double the population of São Paulo, and
was seen as the most important intellectual and cultural center. It was in opposition
to this hegemony that the São Paulo elite presented themselves as the purveyors of
futurism and of the new art of the twentieth century.
In the 1910s, the traditional society of coffee farms—previously developed
through slave labor but since the turn of the century a magnet for immigrant workers
from Europe—was about to acquire an urban interface. Families from the countryside
were moving to the capital where old estates were being replaced by elegant
buildings following an eclectic fashion that mixed Swiss chalets with Brittany and
Italianate vernaculars. In tandem, the fast-paced rhythm of foreign migration was
transforming São Paulo into a new Babel of dialects and idioms.
In contrast to Rio, once the center of the royal court where artistic
production was already organized among institutions and with advanced means of
dissemination, the cultural ambient in São Paulo still lacked structure and demanded
private initiative to come to the scene. That is what happened at the turn of the
century. In association with local government, or in its name, the so-called coffee
barons dedicated themselves to the creation of educational, scientific and artistic
institutions. In this scenario, either directly or indirectly, through private sponsorship,
or by state subvention, the “green gold” financed the realization of concerts,
exhibitions, and theater productions, besides expanding the movie house circuit. In
what relates to the visual arts despite the lack of commercial galleries, premodernist
São Paulo kept a relatively active calendar as it relates to production, exhibitions,
and active market. Throughout the 1910s, there were over two hundred exhibitions in
town. With only one museum in the city, the Pinacoteca do Estado, artists organized
exhibitions in commercial shops and the salons of private mansions.
It was in one of these mansions in 1917 that Anita Malfatti, who had spent the
last few years studying in Germany and the United States, organized a much talked
about exhibition. Titled Exposição de pintura moderna, it displayed expressionist-
leaning works that Malfatti produced while studying under Lovis Corinth in Berlin

183 | THE FUNERAL OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM

and Homer Boss in New York and Maine. The polemic exhibition was nevertheless
successful in enticing young São Paulo artists unsatisfied with the traditional,
academic character that dominated the local scene.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1897, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti was a journalist when
he moved to São Paulo in 1917, where he had many family connections. Interested
in art, he befriended Malfatti and encouraged her to exhibit her work. Opening
to the public in December of that year, Malfatti’s exhibition caused quite a stir
and paved the way for the city’s modernist movement. Five years later, Semana
de arte moderna would take place at the Theatro Municipal, featuring the work
of writers, musicians, architects, painters, and sculptors. Again, Di Cavalcanti
played an important role, as it was his idea to organize this “futurist” festival, as
the press referred to it. Cavalcanti suggested the idea to Paulo Prado, a cultivated,
cosmopolitan man and heir to the state’s wealthiest family.
The modernist group, which Malfatti joined shortly after the events of the
Semana, kept active and prominent until the end of the decade, despite the frequent
trips of its members to Paris. With the 1929 Wall Street crisis that impacted the coffee
trade, Brazil’s standing as a thriving nation would change drastically in the following
decade. That was the Getúlio Vargas era, the great populist who, at once a political
reactionary and a modernizer in many aspects, became known as the “father of
the poor” for his role in implementing labor reforms that protected a fast-growing
working class. The 1930s was a period marked by political antagonisms in which
social issues with nationalist tinges became apparent in the cultural scene. Among
the modernists, there was an emphasis on works devoted to popular culture that
depicted the “Brazilian man” in his struggles and aspirations. Particularly in painting,
one would notice the influence of Mexican revolutionary art in the work of Di
Cavalcanti and Candido Portinari, who in the mid-1950s would contribute two murals
for the United Nations headquarters in New York.
In the aftermath of World War II, new artistic developments would culminate in
the creative explosion of the 1950s, when a new wave of modernism seems to have
picked up where the 1920s avant-garde had left off. The strong focus on form that
is predominant in that era was developed in an atmosphere charged by an intense
political process. Despite the utopian, egalitarian-leaning spirit that prevailed on the
scene, there was disagreement about up to what point our populist heritage, with
all its good intentions, should be tolerated. In many areas, there was a proliferation
of art inspired by narratives of pronounced nationalist and sentimental character
that, echoing clichés of the era, explicitly called for the emancipation of the masses
from the grip of capitalism and imperialism. Di Cavalcanti was a sympathizer of this
segment, as the debate about “form versus content” progressed and attained more
focus after the military coup of 1964.

184 | GONÇALVES
 Glauber Rocha entered the scene in the most original and creative manner,
through radically engaging with politics and language. Politically speaking,
Rocha was a leftist intellectual, a Third World anti-imperialist thinker motivated
by the visionary perspective that Brazil, the only Portuguese-speaking country
in the Americas, had the potential to stir a popular and creative revolution that
would change the course of world history. Such a project would require specific
characteristics related to his own choice of medium, for cinema was not made with
a typewriter or canvases and paintbrushes. By definition, cinema is an industrial
art that entails complex operations, specialized labor, distribution channels, and
marketing strategies structured in a context rigged by Hollywood. The task, as Rocha
saw it, was not only to defy Hollywood’s industrial and commercial apparatus, but its
formal artillery as well; its language patterns that were almost universally accepted
as the standard for a “well-made” film. It was not enough for Brazilian cinema to
merely copy Hollywood’s formal and narrative paradigms, as had been attempted
with capitalist investments in São Paulo. Nor was it a matter of redressing its models,
in a schematic manner, with recognizable national scenes and “social” plots about
local lives. It was not a matter of acclimating Hollywood to the tropics; rather it was
a matter of fostering a new cinematographic language and setting up a production
structure accessible to the Brazilian reality, which had been politically alienated in
the face of the hegemony of American cinema: a herculean—and utopian—task for
which Rocha fought systematically and methodically for most of his life. A brief
consideration in this regard is clearly stated in his 1968 text “O cinema novo e a
aventura da criação” (Cinema Novo and the adventure of creativity):

By refuting the cinema of imitation and choosing another language, Cinema Novo also
contested the easy path of an “other language.” This other language, typical of the so-
called nationalist arts, is “populism.” Reflex of a political attitude very much ours. Like the
dictator [caudilho in the original], the artist sees himself as the father of the people: the call
to order is “let’s speak simple things that people can understand.” I consider disrespectful
to our audiences, as underdeveloped they may be, “to make simple things for simple
folks.” Firstly, people are not simple. Sick, hungry and illiterate, people are complex. The
paternalist artist idealizes simple folks as fabulous individuals that even in misery have
their philosophy, and poor folks, all they need is “political consciousness” so that, all of a
sudden, they can invert the historical process. This disingenuous concept is most harmful
than the art of imitation because the art of imitation justifies the industry of artistic taste
with the clear aim of profit. Populist art, on the other hand, justify its baseness as “good
consciousness.” The populist artist often will say: “I am not an intellectual, I am with
the people, my art is beautiful because it communicates etc.” But communicates what?
Generally speaking, it communicates folks’ own alienation. It communicates to people its
own illiteracy, its own vulgarity born out of a miserable situation that leads us to face life
with contempt.1

185 | THE FUNERAL OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM

 Counter to this strategy, Rocha’s Cinema Novo program proposed a tabula
rasa approach (falar do zero) and called for a cinema “with a different script, different
acting, different image, different rhythm, different poetry.” To make all this materially
viable would allow audiences to see films “technically imperfect, dramatically
dissonant, poetic revolting and politically aggressive” while still “unsure like the very
political avant-gardes in Brazil.”
The six years that followed the publication of Rocha’s text, from 1968 to 1974,
represented the most terrifying and somber phase of the military government. While
radical factions of the Left embraced armed guerrilla fight, the generals’ regime
closed in on what they deemed the “enemy within.” Political persecution, summary
executions, torture, and exiles (official or voluntary) marked the era.
The political and cultural disarticulation, and the advance of a cultural industry
of fascist overtones for the masses left few paths open, and alternative (also deemed
marginal) strategies became an option for the intellectual and artistic milieu. The era
was marked by a certain individualist, while also tribal, irrationalism influenced by the
American counterculture with its existential, philosophical, and lysergic incursions.
Thus, the Cinema Novo program as well as the movements that had appeared in the
last two decades came to an end in a brutal fashion.
In 1971, after releasing O dragão da maldade contra o santo guerreiro, Rocha
left Brazil in an exile that never came to a lasting end. During those lacerating years,
he produced a series of difficult films such as Cabeças cortadas (1970) and O leão de
sete cabeças (1970). By the time of Cavalcanti’s death in 1976, Rocha no longer fit the
part of the prophet of his own utopias, a problem that was certainly not his to own.
Cavalcanti’s death said something about the longevity of the very project to which the
filmmaker had dedicated his life. Made “for no one,” as he suggested to the Jornal
do Brasil reporter, Rocha’s Di Cavalcanti can be seen as an allegory of the funeral of
Brazilian modernism.

186 | GONÇALVES
Notes

1/ Interview with Zuenir

Ventura, “O Cinema novo e
a aventura da criação,” in
Glauber Rocha, Revolução
do cinema novo [Revolution
of Cinema Novo] (Rio
de Janeiro: Alhambra/
Embrafilme, 1981), 100.

187 | THE FUNERAL OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM

FAVELA NOH 12
Haroldo de Campos
and Hélio Oiticica at
the Chelsea Hotel
Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira

This essay focuses on the historic meeting between poet, scholar, and
translator Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003), one of the founders of the concrete
poetry movement in Brazil, and Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980), the visual artist whose
work has become fundamental to a thorough understanding of the dynamics in
effect in Latin America throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The meeting took place in
1971 at the Chelsea Hotel in Lower Manhattan. Earlier that year, Campos had been
lecturing at the University of Texas at Austin, and when he heard that Oiticica was
awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed the artist to settle in New York
City for a longer period of time, Campos extended his trip to New York to meet with
Oiticica. Since Campos had booked a room at the Chelsea Hotel, Oiticica seized the
opportunity to record their meeting in the famed hotel’s lobby in a mix of journalism
and performance. Their conversation is one of the most important documents about
Brazilian culture produced in the 1970s.
The conversation between these two important Brazilian artist-intellectuals
took place over a period of two days, from May 27 to 28, and was later published in
issues 3 and 4 of the underground periodical Flor do Mal (Flower of evil).1 Campos
and Oiticica explored several shared interests, including poetry, translation, and
Japanese Noh theater. They discussed the genesis of Campos’s book of poetry
Galaxies (defined by the poet as a “book of essays”), Oiticica’s installation Tropicália
(described as a “critical museum from the tropics”), and even chatted about The
Wall Street Inferno, Joaquim de Sousândrade’s groundbreaking poem written in
New York circa 1870. Their discussion began with the aesthetics of Noh theater
and its ritualistic emphasis on wardrobe, most famously the feather mantle in
Hagoromo, and then continued with Oiticica’s nest (ninhos) work and his series of
performance capes known as parangolés. Their encounter represents a point of
intersection between the concrete and neoconcrete movements, often seen as polar
opposites: whereas concrete and constructivist artists valorized the rational and the
formal, the neoconcrete movement emphasized the sensory, the experiential, that
which exceeds form. The relationship between these two orientations, however, is
much more complex. The conversation at the Chelsea Hotel between a poet often
identified with concretism and an artist commonly associated with neoconcretism
allows us to spotlight the differences between these two movements and their
approaches to artistic practice and better identify their points of interaction, contact,
and transfer. Indeed, because of the format of their meeting—a conversation, which
inadvertently allows for improvisation and spontaneity—the exchange appears less
between two individuals and more between two styles of thought and practice that
interrogate each other.
For context, upon arriving in New York in January 1971, Oiticica started
working on a series of texts titled conglomerado newyorkaises that he considered
an interminable task. Indeed, he never managed to finish these projects, which he
hoped would become a book drawn from his experience of living in Manhattan
(1971–1977). Organized by Frederico Coelho and César Oiticica Filho, the collected
texts were finally published in 2013, and a careful reading of this material confirms
the importance of his meeting with Campos in the further development of his
artistic vision. For example, in “BODYWISE,” written between June and October
1973, Oiticica wrote on the masthead: “for BODYWISE following the excerpt by H.
Campos Hagoromo (last episode).”2 The text continues with a collage of fragments
from Ezra Pound’s translation of Hagoromo. In another fragment scribbled on the
pages of a notebook (May 28, 1974), Oiticica wrote: “Branco sobre branco/White on
white.” The manuscript references Kasimir Malevitch, Stéphane Mallarmé, Haroldo
de Campos, García Lorca, Joaquim de Sousandrade, and Antonin Artaud. And a
reference to Noh theater directly connects the artist to the poet: “I-Haroldo/Haroldo-
Noh.”3 These texts document Oiticica’s exploration of New York, which assumes a
prominent character in his writing.4
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Campos’s work seems to have exerted no
influence on Oiticica’s creative process. In the early 1970s, however, as Campos
was working on Galáxias—a work that would become a watershed in Brazilian
poetry because of its remarkably neo-baroque swerve—a meeting of the minds was
bound to happen. The interview conveys the sense that whatever Oiticica absorbed

192 | OLIVEIRA
about Galáxias during their conversation would have a decisive effect on his own
relationship to writing. If we take into consideration the analyses advanced in
Livro ou livro-me, Coelho’s seminal study of Oiticica’s writing, we might indeed
imagine that Oiticica’s relationship with writing was, in his own way, galactic,
expansive, nonlinear; and that, after his meeting with Campos, he also drew on the
concept of the “bioscriptural drive” that animates Galáxias, taking it to the limits of
his life experience.5
Both Campos and Oiticica shared an affinity for the baroque legacy in
Brazilian culture. Many critics noted the baroque inflection of his poetry when
Campos published his first book, Auto do possesso (1949), describing it as
Babylonian writing. Literary critic Fausto Cunha, for example, described the work
as a “poetic mimesis that abuses Babylonian motifs,” whereas poet Sérgio Milliet
remarked that there was an excess that disturbs the transition of emotional power,
something he found formally pleasing. In view of that auspicious beginning, one
is not entirely surprised to realize that the fifty texts that compose the Galáxias
constitute a baroque and Babylonian operation par excellence. The same can be said
of Oiticica’s experiments with writing and his pursuit of excess, mixing Portuguese
and English and also incorporating French and Spanish words. “Barnbilônia,” for
example, a text that is in dialogue with Lorca’s poetry while also establishing a
dialogue with poetry and rock: “rimbaud-hendrix.” Indeed, their mutual interest in
Noh theater provided them with a springboard for discussing their common interest
in Babylonian and baroque forms.

THE A-SIDE

Campos and Oiticica’s conversation starts with a discussion of the Japanese

Noh play Hagoromo (The Feather Mantle),6 which Campos had translated into
Portuguese based on the English translation by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound,
in “Noh” or Accomplishment: A Study of the Classical Stage of Japan (1916).7
Campos mentions a specific image from Hagoromo in connection with something
he had seen when leaving Oiticica’s New York studio: the feather mantle. This image
represents the formal link between the importance of wardrobe in Noh plays and On the following pages:
Oiticica’s parangolés, ritualistic cloaks designed for samba dancers that accentuate
Haroldo de Campos,
the rhythms of their movements. In the Hagoromo, an angel-woman leaves her
“Heliotapes” 1, Flor do Mal,
feather mantle on a tree where a fisherman finds it and will only return it if she no. 3.
performs the “moon dance.” When she gets her mantle back, she returns to the
Haroldo de Campos,
clouds. The ending of Hagoromo, the juxtaposition of white (the cloak) on white “Heliotapes” 2, Flor do Mal,
(the clouds), 8 reminds Campos of the work of Russian suprematist artist Kazimir no. 4.

193 | FAVELA NOH

Malevich. In his own work, Campos Fernando Luis Guimarães
wearing Hélio Oiticica’s
also pursues white, but of another
Parangolé Cape 23, M’Way
nature, one that eschews references Ke, New York, 1972.
to suprematism. For Campos, the Photograph by Hélio Oiticica.
Courtesy Projeto HO.
translator-poet struggles between two
kinds of white and ends up developing
one that cannot be considered as pure
color but rather evokes the body and
its fluids, which are viscous or sperm-
like. Even the white of the paper is
described as losing its purity: the
“carcass-paper smells of bone white”
(“papel-carcaça fede-branco osso”), 9
as he wrote in Galáxias. Campos sees
this chromatic impurity at work in
Oiticica’s parangolés, which he thereby
differentiates from the Noh play he had
first compared them to.
The question of impure color
would become important in Campos’s
Galáxias, which was in gestation around
the time of the Chelsea meeting. As diverse passages in the book demonstrate,
colors convey the various states of decomposition of matter, be that of the body,
places, or objects. Indeed, chromatic stimuli in Galáxias are very important,
producing not only synesthesia, far from Baudelairean correspondences, but also
the symptoms of the sick body. For example, the most recurrent color in Galáxias
is yellow, the yellow of bile and urine, denoting how Campos corrupts the purity of
yellow as a pigment.
Having subverted the abstract whiteness of suprematism, Campos will
then start a movement in the reverse direction, in a manner similar to Oiticica’s
parangolés, in which he takes the impure colors of Oiticica’s work as a point of
departure to elevate color but without any suprematist aspirations. Indeed, in his
subsequent work, the nature of yellow becomes not so much the color of sickness
but of the sun. This is the case in the 1985 poem he dedicated to Oiticica, entitled
“Parafernália para Hélio Oiticica” (“Paraphernalia for Hélio Oiticica”):

196 | OLIVEIRA
 1.
reticles
nets unnets
reticulairs airs areas
snares resnares nets
areas
reticulairs
reticularia
necklaces of small squares
beads cubicles
areas airs
snares resnares
disarticularia
of real areas
the face implodes
kaleidoscopichamelon

2.
yellow
the bellow of yellow
red
the reflections of red
green
the resonance of green
blue
the nudes of blue
the meadows of yellow
the roads of red
the schemes of green
the nude zulus of blue
the white elephants of white

3.
helios, the sun, does not exceed

4.
(cinetheater noh: piscoset-designed by sousândrade
with ideogramic script by eisenstein):
where you read Hagoromo, read instead parangolé
where you see mount fuji, see instead hillside of mangueira
the parangonome
pluriplumes
heliexcels
helliphant
cellucinary
until
dissolskying itself
in the sky
of skies

5.
helio mounts the zeppelin of colors
powered by parangol’helium
and dissolves in the sky’s sun10

197 | FAVELA NOH

In the poem, Campos describes the artist experiencing different colors until
eventually disappearing into the sun (helios is a play on Oiticica’s first name).
Oiticica here seems to occupy the place of the angel-woman who ascends into the
sky in Hagoromo, but in Campos’s formulation this ascension no longer operates
in order to affirm total power but rather serves to make the individual disappear,
becoming color itself.
Campos’s poem also registers Oiticica moving away from painting and
representation and his growing investment in a corporal and spatial experience of
color. Indeed, this poem describes with remarkable precision the experience of color
in Oiticica’s work, in which light acts to create and dissolve color. Oiticica’s approach
to body and space led him not only to create wearable artworks (the parangolés) but
also to rethink how we inhabit space on different levels. Even though the parangolés
can be seen as new forms of clothing, it is the dance to be performed while wearing
these clothes that truly matters.11 On another level, however, Oiticica also developed
architectural follies (the penetráveis [penetrables]) inspired by vernacular forms such
as we find in the favelas. While these works can be seen as praising the do-it-yourself
spirit of survival necessary to live in the hills around Rio, they also seem to explore
the liminal space that the favela marks between the urban and the rural.
At some point in their conversation, Oiticica confesses his disappointment
with how his idea of Tropicália (an installation he developed in 1967) had been diluted
by a group of musicians who appropriated the term to promote a pop movement
named Tropicalism. Nevertheless, Campos argues that the term Tropicália remains
a useful critical tool, and merits development in and of itself. He suggests that the
term Tropicália be used instead of Tropicalism, because the suffix (-ism) transforms
the term into a dictionary form to be catalogued by encyclopedias, universities, and
museums. By dropping the suffix, Tropicália sides with spaces outside institutions.
Their discussion about Tropicália is extremely relevant as it leads Campos to imagine
environments in terms of mazes, places that might constitute a “critical museum of
the tropics,” a “live museum” or even an “anti-museum.”12 He also says the term
Tropicália better renders the idea of “paraphernalia.”
After their discussion of Tropicália, Campos brings up his work on Galáxias,
a project he sees as the result of a number of positions he had adopted concerning
language, poetry, and art more generally. In his opinion, after Joyce, epic poetry is
no longer possible. Epiphanies are the only ones that can now be used.13 The notion
of epiphany allows Campos to overcome the opposition between prose and poetry,
a subject gleaned from his close readings of Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés, which he
had translated. In Galáxias, he also abandoned the subject of poetry in order to take
writing as the subject itself. Another motif that he stakes in Galáxias is the importance
of travels. He takes this idea from Goethe’s notion of Bildung. In German, the term

198 | OLIVEIRA
means “education” and “formation.” It is a key term in Campos’s vocabulary, as we
find discussions about form in movement in his work which is always in progress.
In their conversation, Campos provides an outline of his process in Galáxias:
(1) the creation of paratactic constellations of daily life events; (2) exploring sounds
produced when different words are brought together in order to create new effects;
(3) parody; and (4) the deliberate use of other languages, such as German, Italian,
French, and English, in addition to Portuguese. These strategies, explored in Galáxias,
are still being used by poets today,14 and we can see them in use in this reference to
the Hagoromo image of the feather mantle in fragment 41: “the erotic blades that
cut without cutting, thin as feathers.” In this line, a tension is created between two
different materials: a blade and a feather. In fact, the text begins with references to
needles and blades before the cut to the feather. Puncturing occurs on two levels:
the text describes needles and blades which cut the skin like the Chinese martyr’s, an
operation that is also performed by the text, which cuts and pierces the words used.
Campos reads this fragment aloud to Oiticica and mentions he would dedicate it to
him, but he did not; the poem he actually dedicated to Hélio was “Paraphernalia to
Hélio Oiticica.” The tape’s A-side ends with Campos reading fragment 41.

INTERLUDE: EPIPHANY AS METHOD IN GALÁXIAS

Galáxias is a book of fifty fragments (or formants) written between 1963 and
1976 and published in its entirety in 1984. Some fragments were published previously
in journals and magazines and a small selection was included in Campos’s 1976
anthology Xadrez de Estrelas: Percurso Textual, 1949–1974 (Star Chess: Textual
Pathway). In a statement about the book’s innovative mixing of prose and poetry,
Campos affirmed: “I wanted to experiment with poetic form, to abolish the limits
between poetry and prose, to make it more porous, not exactly in the epic (narrative)
sense but in the sense of an epiphany (a vision). In what relates to the microstructure
of each of the fifty galactic texts, I made use of composition techniques such as
paronomasia, permutation, phonic proliferations, proper of concrete poetry.”15
From that ensues that concrete poetry ought to be considered as the prescription
of techniques for the renewal of poetry, criticism, and translation. Campos himself
seized that moment in which concrete poetry inserted itself in Brazilian literary
history to push the boundaries with his Galáxias despite the fact that it was only
published as a whole after the heroic phase of concretism. With Galáxias, Campos
complicated the legacy of concrete poetry by adopting procedures such as the use of
“formants,” a term borrowed from the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez that
indicates the linguistic and acoustic tonic sound of each word (also understood as a

199 | FAVELA NOH

semantic vertebra around which words align in an autonomous process). Through
paronomasia, Campos creates simultaneously a flow and friction between each
separate word (each word a vertebra), and yet, through this friction, the poet recreates
a flow (the text as a spinal column). Campos defines this flow as “bioscriptural drive
in galactic expansion,” made possible by action writing, which allows the poem to
abandon historical poetic conventions, be they epic poetry or epiphanies. In contrast,
action writing organizes images of daily life into immanent constellations.16
After the first page, which weaves various endorsements together like a map,
comes the title page, followed by a frontispiece that features a line from Mallarmé:
La fiction affleura et se dissipera, vite, d’après la mobilité de l’écrit (Fiction will
brush up and dissolve, quickly, following writing’s mobility). Likewise, in Galáxias,
the “fictus,” the “fingere” (“pretense”) of poetry loses its allegorical, mythical, and
even imaginary quality, transforming writing into an approximation of the “real,” in
the Lacanian sense of the term, that is, the unattainable that gives writing its energy
in movement. Writing therefore leaps from one kind of meaningfulness to another,
scrutinizing its objects, emptying them of meaning until the “concretion” of language
acquires another status, one that allows language to accompany the real. What is at
stake here is the Prägnanz, the meaningfulness (or significance) of a sign. It is from
this perspective that the poet calls Galáxias a “book of essays”— the poem solicits
historical, circumstantial forms, while the essay uses the poetic imagination, critically
participating in the real or in the writing of the real. In this sense, his analysis of
Sousândrade may be applied to all the formants of Galáxias: “After the denotative
function is atomized, minimized and crumbled, all happens now in the region of
the meanings, in whose chain, as Lacan said, the sense insists, although none of its
elements consist in the sense of what it is capable of in the given moment.”17 Indeed,
the effect of bioscriptural drive is to break with the “fingere” (pretense). Fiction loses
its referentiality and writing occupies, in turn, a space cut off from subject and object,
a space in which generic distinctions no longer hold. In other words, Galáxias has no
subject and it is not a book of poetry. Rather “the whole book is an essay book of book
trials . . . the grasping story doesn’t eat me doesn’t consume me doesn’t bell jar me.”18
Fiction disappears, and even the notions of the “book” and of “travel,” which might
seem at first glance to be the possible themes, dissolve into necessary, pulsating
forces, in order to obtain the plasticity of writing that so amazes Oiticica.
Oiticica nevertheless finds this plasticity of consciousness linked to historical
knowledge in Campos’s writing, because there’s a history of art in the poet’s work,
albeit of a very singular kind. His way of telling art history is marked by anecdotes
and recycled signifiers in order to invest these artistic references with particular
meanings. In Galáxias, we find Cranach’s Lucrecia’s dagger in fragment 6, the
anonymous graffiti of Pompeii appears in fragment 11, Giacometti and Etruscan art

200 | OLIVEIRA
figure in fragment 14, Brancusi and the infinite column in fragment 21, Yves Klein’s
anthropophagy in fragment 30, and Monet’s water lilies in fragment 39, to mention
only the most obvious references. These references are allusive, there is no ekphrasis,
and the connotations of the art works’ titles or motifs are foregrounded. For instance,
Lucrecia’s dagger is doubled up by a brief news story that refers to the death of a
young Brazilian prostitute that made the headlines of a Geneva newspaper. This
doubling effect gives the fragment a real sense of the quotidian (“daily coitus”),
denoting the fact that anecdotes construct a very sensual galaxy of art history.
This sensual galaxy also has aspects of parody. Campos develops his
conception of parody as a parallel chant (from the Greek pára odé) in Deus e o
Diabo no Fausto de Goethe (“God and the Devil in Goethe’s Faust”). Hence his use
of anecdotes, and various versions of stories: the more they proliferate the less a
story is fixed. In Galáxias, a group of anecdotes mixes well-known historical figures
with unknown folk artists. Thus we find Schiller’s joke on the word red, taken from
Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles’s Antigone (which he calls a “pigment-joke”) and
Brancusi kicking the femme folle out of his atelier, alongside the music sung “in the
gut of poverty,” a music that Campos claims to have heard at a countryside fair, in
the Brazilian northeast.19 This gesture also reconnects with the German Romantic’s
interest in folk culture. By juxtaposing well-known and unknown creators on the
page without hierarchy, Campos uses the text as a kind of surface that balances out
heterogeneous elements.
This notion of the surface of the text leads us to consider another attribute in
Campos’s notion of “bioscriptural drive,” mainly his references to “skin” throughout
Galáxias in images such as: “mar pele de fera” (beast skin sea), “cetim de fera”
(beast satin), “mar polipantera” (poly-panther sea), “twisting sensual muscles under
the stars,” “fruit skin,” “pelepregas” (skin folds), “words like skin under deep water,”
a “book that is skin.” In this regard, Galáxias is a conjunctive, epidermal set. Didier
Anzieu defines skin most acutely as a peripheral brain.20 It is in this skin tissue that we
find the poem’s katabasis and its anabasis. The poem goes up and down, and we can
hear the rhythm of the things in the world through the surface of the skin, such that,
in Fernando Pessoa’s terms: “what in me feels is thinking.” Galáxias therefore has a
sensual, heterogeneous materialism. It absorbs what was possible until it was itself
absorbed by the homogeneous world of literary systems and typologies.
When Campos goes into the details of the skin and the sensuality of the
body, his work gives rise to an abject constellation, in which the skin is punctured
and traversed as well as being a continuous surface. He thereby brings together
raw, viscous, sperm-like matter, the strong smell of urine, blood, vomit, rheum,
aureate anus, venereal nests, molds of pubes, gangrenous legs, and all the odors
emanating from sewers. Galáxias evokes these odors as excess and suffering (as in

201 | FAVELA NOH

the example of circuladô de fulô). Through the poet’s mobile exploration of skin and
the abject, Galáxias entails an “education of the five senses,” to paraphrase the title
of the book that Campos published in 1985, the year after Galáxias came out. History
itself, says Campos, a reader of Walter Benjamin, becomes the malleable matter of
desire. This plasticity is to be understood in the sense Nietzsche gave to the term
Hegel invented.21
To conclude, I would suggest that Campos’s reflections on skin undermined
the distinction between the rational and the emotional (or sensorial) that underpins
the concrete and neoconcrete divide. Skin thereby is the meeting point between
the two movements, for it is malleable, mobile, and material in nature. This notion
of plasticity allows us to read in the “feather mantle” another version of the skin,
a locus in which the concrete and neoconcrete are not opposites but, once again,
find a meeting point. For indeed, Campos and Oiticica’s encounter at the Chelsea
Hotel transforms the way we consider the relationship between the concrete and
neoconcrete movements, allowing us to take a certain distance from museum
discourse and diachronic literary history.

THE B-SIDE

On the tape’s B-side the conversation between Campos and Oiticica ranges
from Galáxias to a discussion of Joaquim de Sousândrade’s poem O Guesa errante
(The wandering Guesa), in particular, the section titled “Inferno de Wall Street.” Long
before Lorca or Mayakovski, while residing in New York in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, the Brazilian poet and journalist Sousândrade saw the hectic city
in terms of a collage of the news he read in local papers, and in the section about Wall
Street he created what is possibly the first collage poem, built entirely of references
cued from the newspapers of the time. The collage aspect of Sousândrade’s poetry
was inspiring to both Campos and Oiticica. More importantly, Campos and his
brother Augusto were among the first poets to call for a reenvisioning/revision (re-
visão) of Sousândrade’s heritage in a volume published in 1964. Campos and Oiticica
also drew on Sousândrade’s poetry as a source of inspiration for their own work. In
his 1971 conversation with Oiticica, Campos describes Sousândrade’s practice in the
following terms: “What he saw in newspapers, such as the news of a certain crime
that took place in the park, he took quotes of the events of that time and involved
them with historical, mythological quotes. Such a process places the news in the
constellate mosaic that is the modern newspaper.” Both Oiticica and Campos adopt a
comparable relationship to fait divers, taking events or images read in newspapers as
the raw material for poetic creation. Consider, for example, Oiticica’s Bólide caixa 18,

202 | OLIVEIRA
“Homenagem a cara de cavalo” (1966), which juxtaposes a newspaper photograph
and a text memorializing the death of an infamous criminal (Cara de cavalo [Horse
face]). Consider also that in 1964, Campos used a similar strategy in fragment 8 of
the Galáxias, about the death of a prostitute from Paraiba (in the Brazilian northeast)
making the headlines in Geneva: “il mondo signorina stromboli or the little prostitute
from Paraíba opening the headlines in Geneva’s newspapers like the blood spilled
from an open throat in a cubicle smelling of urine. And this one is that one and
that one is this one.” In their conversation, Campos describes the journalistic
collage procedure pioneered by “Inferno de Wall Street,” which he used in the
aforementioned fragment, as a “brutal montage of macro-raw pieces of reality.” In
this collage, the new organization of material invites us to use not so much the term
“transposition” to describe the relationship between the newspaper and the poem,
but rather that of “renewing connections.”
Another way of thinking about literary history and the relationship to be
established with other artistic movements is expressed in terms of a seismic
metaphor: during their conversation, Campos describes historiography “as the
seismic graph of subversive fragmentation rather than the tautological homologation
of the homogeneous.”22 But all forms of fragmentation in these artistic projects are
counterbalanced by a movement of construction. This movement of construction can
be understood as a dynamic morphology, in which forms are constantly becoming
other, taking the risk of building up as well as breaking down. For both Campos and
Oiticica, the backdrop for all their work is a complex tradition drawing on historical
art practiced in Europe and what Campos refers to as the codes of “professionalism
conditioned by the gesture of consumption” in America. Their practices of
decomposition and recomposition are to be set in relation to this backdrop.
Their conversation itself also enacts the dynamics of their relationship.
Consider, for example, their mutual interest in Hagoromo: attributed to Motokiyo
Zeami (1363–1443), the play was a source of fascination to poets like William Butler
Yeats and Ezra Pound before coming to Campos’s and Oiticica’s attention. Their
idiosyncratic appropriation of this play during their conversation might be understood
as concocting a “paran-galactic” axis that merged Oiticica’s production of parangolés
with Campos’s ongoing work on Galáxias. We see in this merging the simplicity of a
Japanese aesthetic meeting the precariousness of life in the hills in a Brazilian slum,
the Japanese moon dance merging with the Brazilian samba, each form opening onto
new forms. The movement of the samba brings with it the idea of performance set in
a particular landscape, which in turn conjures up the question of environmental art,
which then interrogates the experience of the ordinary, the everyday. In this fashion,
the morphology of forms brings us back to the question of experience, to the nexus
between the formal and the experiential. Where Campos emphasizes form, Oiticica

203 | FAVELA NOH

emphasizes lived experience. Ultimately, what united them is what Campos refers to
as a common “underground,” simultaneously constructivist and experimental.
This tension between the construction and fragmentation of forms in art
and life adds to the reflection on “formation”—the construction of one’s self—that
is characteristic of Brazilian political, social, and poetic thought. In “Anatomia da
formação” (Anatomy of formation)—published in Folha de São Paulo on September
7, 2014—Silviano Santiago traced the history of the term from Joaquim Nabuco’s
Minha formação (My Formation, 1900), in which the formation of individual
intellectuals could not be transmitted to others, rather their education was a
fundamental and exclusively individual process. In the 1950s, the term formation
evolved and acquired an economic connotation, with the publication of Celso
Furtado’s Formação econômica do Brasil.23 By the end of the 1950s, Antonio Cândido
had published Formação da literatura brasileira: momentos decisivos (Formation of
Brazilian literature: Decisive moments). This is the context in which the relationship
between life and form comes up in the conversation between Campos and Oiticica,
two intellectual artists who had traveled and sought to deconstruct their own
positions in relationship to their work and their sociohistorical moment.24
In the case of Campos and Oiticica—as with many writers, intellectuals, and
artists—engagements with form took place outside institutions such as universities
and museums. In these extra-institutional locations, the work of formation never
ends. Even when works come into being, they are still in formation. In “Brasil
diarréia” (1973), Oiticica wrote: “Personal experience: my formation, the meaning of
everything I’ve tried and try, took me in one direction: the Brazilian condition, more
than merely marginal within the world, is underground, i.e., splits and must rise up
as something specific still in formation”25—“still in formation”: it is shapeless, in
metamorphosis. The experimental as it is imagined in their work is simultaneously
sensual and constructive.

A RIGOROUS ANARCHOPEDIA

After Campos and Oiticica’s meeting at the Chelsea Hotel, the clash between
concretism and neoconcretism ought to be seen as an overly simplistic categorization
masking a rather more complex reality of Brazilian literary and artistic production, in
which the points of correspondence and transfer between the supposedly opposing
approaches to art run much deeper. If we examine the works together, the points of
friction are not where academic, institutional distinctions might have us believe. The
experiments of Campos and Oiticica do not amount to a systematic encyclopedia
of contemporary Brazilian socio-politico-cultural life, which would allow for

204 | OLIVEIRA
classification, but rather to an “anarcopedia of forms” (Galáxias, fragment 36), from
which, nevertheless we can learn a thing or two.
Likewise, the 1971 meeting between Haroldo de Campos and Hélio Oiticica
might be described as an “anarcopedia.” Both form (which concretism foregrounds)
and feeling (which neoconcretism insists upon) are enacted in their conversation,
giving rise to a new “education of the five senses.” The work of each artist thereby
continues to interrogate that of the other.

205 | FAVELA NOH

Notes of news cued from the local ed. Ana Chiara, André have disappeared from
newspapers related to the Masseno, Daniele Ribeiro our Western stage; that is,
1/ Flor do Mal was a New York Stock Exchange. Fortuna, and Marcelo dos morality plays, religious
tabloid-format periodical The literary constellation Santos (Porto Alegre: Editora mysteries, and even
published by the journalist shared by Campos and Sulina, 2018), 43–61. dances—like those of the
Luiz Carlos Maciel in the late Oiticica during their meeting mass—which have lost what
1960s. It folded after five at the Chelsea Hotel would be 6/ Campos produced we might call their dramatic
issues. I thank the Núcleo de the basis for Oiticica’s 1972, a performance of significance.” Ezra Pound
Estudos Literários & Culturais Agrippina é Roma Manhattan, Hagoromo —o manto de and Ernest Fenollosa, The
(NELIC) at Universidade a sixteen-minute film was plumas in 1994 at Centro Noh Theatre of Japan: With
Federal de Santa Catarina shot in Super 8 on location Cultural São Paulo. The Complete Texts of 15 Classic
(UFSC) for allowing me at the steps of the New play was directed by Alice Plays (New York: Dover,
access to magazine archives. York Stock Exchange. The K., who also played the 2004), 5, 18.
scenario mixes references role of Tennin. According
2/ César Oititica Filho to Sousândrade (the title is to the performer, the use 8/ Gonzalo Aguilar, Hélio
and Frederico Coelho, eds., taken from his poem Guesa of Oiticica’s parangolés Oititica: A asa branca do
Helio Oiticica: Conglomerado errante) and Mallarmé in (Hagoromo) was made extase—Arte brasileira 1964–
Newyorkkaises (Rio de a scene in which Brazilian impossible because of 1980, trans. Genese Andrade
Janeiro: Azougue, 2013), 27. visual artist Antonio Dias the two-month run of the (São Paulo: Anfiteatro, 2016).
plays dice with Andy Warhol spectacle. From a private
3/ Oiticica, 69. superstar Mario Montez. e-mail exchange with the 9/ See fragment 48 in
performer on January 24, Campos, Galáxias.
4/ Oiticica’s experience 5/ The expression 2016.
of New York was influenced “bioscriptural drive” (pulsão 10 / Haroldo de Campos,
by the fact that the city bioescritural) appears at the 7/ “Noh” or Novas: Selected Writings, ed.
seemed to literally overlap end of Galáxias : “pulsão Accomplishment was Antonio Sergio Bessa and
art with a literary dimension. bioescritural em expansão republished in 2004 under a Odile Cisneros (Evanston,
In that sense, Lorca and galática entre esses dois new title: The Noh Theatre IL: Northwestern University
Sousândrade represent two formantes cambiáveis e of Japan: With Complete Press, 2007), 119–120;
distinct poetic sensibilities cambiantes (tendo por Texts of 15 Classic Plays. The translated by Micaela Kramer.
that find a common motif in ímã temático a viagem introduction includes two
Wall Street. See Frederico como livro ou o livro como remarks about Japanese 11 / In Conglomerado
García Lorca, Poesía viagem, e por isso mesmo theater aesthetics that so Newyorkaises, written
completa (New York: Random entendido também como fascinated Campos and between July 26 and
House, 2012), 412: “Lo um ‘livro de ensaios’) Oiticica: “The art of allusion, December 26, 1972, Oiticica
impresionante por frío y por [bioscriptural drive in or this love of allusion in seems to hint at a new
cruel es Wall Street. Llega galactic expansion between art, is at the root of the Noh. definition of his practice
el oro en ríos de todas las these two exchangeable These plays, or eclogues, in “Parangolé-síntese.”
partes de la tierra y la muerte and exchanging formants were made only for the few; He wrote: “Inventions
llega con él. En ningún sitio (having as thematic compass for the nobles; for those are extensions of man’s
del mundo se siente como allí the voyage as a book or the trained to catch the allusion. energy” and “perform
la ausencia total del espíritu: book as a voyage, hence In the Noh we find an art built doesn’t become preform,”
manadas de hombres que understood as a ‘book of upon the god-dance, or upon which seem to denote a
no pueden pasar del seis, essays’)].” Haroldo de some local legend of spiritual new position concerning
desprecio de la ciencia Campos, Galáxias (São Paulo: apparition, or later, on gestes the Parangolés. Here he
pura y valor demoníaco del Ex-Libris, 1984), n.p. For of war and feats of history; suggests that the Parangolé
presente. Y lo terrible es more about this concept, see an art of splendid posture, of is a “concretion” (concreção).
que toda la multitud que Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira, dancing and chanting, and of Concretion here is to be read
lo llena cree que el mundo “A pulsão bioescritural acting that is not mimetic.” neither in the concrete nor in
será siempre igual, y que como método: as Galáxias The second citation entails the neoconcrete acceptance
su deber consiste en mover de Haroldo de Campos,” a synthesis concocted by of the word but in reference
aquella gran máquina día in Bioescritas/Biopoéticas: Pound: “As the tradition of to a form that seeks to create
y noche y siempre.” As for Corpo, memória e arquivos Noh is unbroken, we find in an inversion of the myth.
Sousândrade, an entire canto (Biowriting/Biopoetics: the the complete performance In the words of the artist:
of his Guesa was composed body, memory and archives), numerous elements which it is “play-concreção.” See

206 | OLIVEIRA
Oititica, Conglomerado in the air. He created actual Catatau (1975) and Waly de-fome da estória não me
Newyorkaises, 21–25, in environments, actual galactic Salomão’s Me segura que come não me consome não
passim. dwellings where these eu vou dar um troço (1972), me redoma.” Excerpts from
objects—in-between objects, as well as works by Josely the first fragment of Galáxias,
12 / In a 1987 interview trans-spatial inventions— Vianna Baptista and Ricardo n.p. I thank Hellen Guareschi
with Lenora de Barros, could find shelter and be Aleixo, among others. for her translation.
Campos described Oiticica’s enjoyed, used, and savored,
work as “organized delirium.” so to speak, because the 15 / Haroldo de Campos, 19 / This episode is
He also addressed Oiticica’s spectator could also find Depoimentos de oficina (São narrated in fragment
mazes: “What are Hélio’s a pleasurable element in Paulo: Unimarco, 2002), 49. 15, often referred to as
mazes? They are scopes he this artistic practice, thus “circuladô de fulô,” which
constructs and deconstructs, becoming a partaker of this 16 / Curiously, one such became a popular hit
in which his particular apparently inconclusive constellation is found in the recorded by Caetano Veloso
inventions find their natural elaboration and initiative, series of blurbs praising and best illustrates the close
home ground, such as in a the completion of which, the book (by Guimarães relationship between music
Japanese house, entirely i.e., its unwinding, assumed Rosa, Caetano Veloso, and poetry after Tropicália.
planned and looking like the presence and the desire Octavio Paz, Severo Sarduy,
some sort of reverberation of the other: it assumed the Benedito Nunes, Andrés 20 / Didier Anzieu, Le moi-
of a Mondrian painting: an alterity, the participation of a Sánchez Robayna, João peau (Paris: Dunod, 1995).
essential home from the manipulator as a pleasurable Alexandre Barbosa). Each
tatami to the floor mat, enjoyer of these inventions, individual blurb is also a 21 / Catherine Malabou
passing through the objects, this faery plasticity which cut, an opening in time, draws the neologism
the vase to drink water, the Hélio’s imagination was ever an eye from another text, plasticity from the preface of
bowl to eat, the chopsticks capable of configuring in imposing a reading tempo Hegel’s The Phenomenology
to grab the food, everything kaleidoscopically different that invites us to consider of Spirit. This word is
oriented to obey the same manners.” See Haroldo de tradition not as static but officially incorporated into
general project of beauty. Campos, “Hang-glider of as ecstatic, bringing two the German lexicon during
In Hélio’s case, the maze is Ecstasy,” in Hélio Oiticica or more different texts into the transition from the
the scope where his birdless (Minneapolis: Walker Art neighborly relation (punti eighteenth to the nineteenth
‘nests’ hover naturally, Center, 1993), 217. luminosi). century. According to
while, due to the bird’s Malabou, it is rooted in the
absence, simultaneously 13 / It is worth noting 17 / The complete quote in Greek etymon plassein,
call for a flight he would that this movement is Portuguese is: “Atomizada, “shape, fashion, form”
later restitute to the nests the opposite of the one minimizada, esfarelada a and has two meanings: to
through the parangolé; a Joyce’s work follows. See, função denotative, tudo se receive and to give shape.
place where the absent bird for example, Jean-Michel passa agora na região dos However, the term can also
gains wings to disembarrass Rabaté, James Joyce (Paris: significantes, em cuja cadeia, refer to the power to void
its flight; ultimately, the Hachette, 1993), 11–17. como diz Lacan, o sentido the shape of its contents. For
several types of objects or insiste, embora nenhum dos Hegel, plasticity describes
deconstructions he used 14 / In the 1970s, many elementos dela consista no a movement in formation.
to make, which required young poets in Brazil sentido de que é capaz no Textually, plasticity implies
palpation from the observer found in the aesthetic instante.” Campos refers the structure of a phrase that
or visitor of this space, are paths opened up by to Lacan’s “L’instance de can be split into subject, verb,
then present one way or Galáxias new possibilities la letter dans l’inconscient and predicate, which we
another, at times even in to experiment. Leaving ou la raison depuis Freud,” can call object. That is what
metamorphic variants, such aside the prickly issue of published in Écrits. See Catherine Malabou describes
as a given floor you need to influence, I propose to see Augusto de Campos and in the “plasticity” entry of the
move through barefoot in these new developments Haroldo de Campos, Re visão Dictionary of Untranslatables:
order to feel a certain kind as a constellation that de Sousândrade [Revision A Philosophical Lexicon.
of tactual sensation; a wet connects the counterculture of Sousândrade] (São Paulo: In his second Untimely
surface you need to cross to of the 1970s with the work Perspectiva, 2002), 526. Medidation, Nietzsche
reach through another space, developed by the concrete evokes a “plastic power” of
where you get sensitized poets since the early 1950s. 18 / In the original: “todo regenerative nature (hence,
by the presence of nearly We can include in this livro é um livro de ensaio de of healing potential, the same
arachnoid threads hanging network Paulo Leminsky’s ensaios do livro”, “a unha- term employed by Hegel)

207 | FAVELA NOH

not only for the individual linear evolution or progress “Dialética da malandragem”
but for people in general but rather as a place where (The dialectics of roguery,
and for civilization as a a baroque background can 1970)—in which he identifies
whole, thus also allowing resurge, irrupting into the the figure of the rogue
the transformation of past present without continuity as a central character
and foreign things. For the or systemic development. in the Brazilian literary
complete text see Catherine This position therefore imagination—remains
Malabou “Plasticity,” in informs the relationship very important. This text
Dictionary of Untranslatables: each of the two artists provides us with a useful
A Philosophical Lexicon, ed. maintain with history: history prism through which to
Barbara Cassin (Princeton, is what emerges through read Oiticica’s work. Indeed,
NJ: Princeton University experiments with form, Campos recognizes and
Press, 2014), 788. understood in both social appreciates the pertinence
and poetic terms. We could of Cândido’s idea of the
22 / Malabou, 162. visualize a “meta scheme,” rogue for analysis of Brazilian
to use Oiticica’s term, of a literature.
23 / Celso Furtado, The baroque underground in
Economic Growth of Brazil: Brazilian literature, one that 25 / Hélio Oititica, “Brasil
A Survey from Colonial to emerges on the surface in an diarréia,” in Arte brasileira
Modern Times (Berkeley: irregular and unpredictable hoje, ed. Ferreira Gullar (Rio
University of California Press, fashion. In this underground, de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1973),
1971). a battle is waged between 151.
different forms of experience
24 / One important aspect that do not depend on
of this deconstruction is the Cândido’s author-reader-
recuperation of the baroque producer circuit as the
from the place Cândido regulatory force in a national
had relegated it to, that of literature. Even though it was
the invisible margins of published later, Campos’s
Brazilian literary history. O sequestro do barroco
Indeed, Cândido excluded the na formação da literatura
baroque from the Brazilian brasileira: o caso Gregório
literary tradition, which, in de Matos (Disappearance
his narration of this history, of the Baroque in Brazilian
begins with Romanticism. Literature: The Case Gregório
Campos takes issue with de Matos), through the use
this reading and attempts of poetic and metalinguistic
to rehabilitate this silenced functions of language, argues
aspect of Brazilian heritage. for the reappropriation
The dynamic morphology of this latent baroque
so important to Campos’s undercurrent in Brazilian
own aesthetic obviously history in order to break
plays a critical role in this with the idea of the concept
project of rehabilitation. as substance and with
Both Campos and Oiticica’s the biological-evolutional
work represents a kind of movement of historiography
morphological persistence that underpins Cândido’s
of the baroque at a time in method. Nevertheless,
which other artists were in spite of the polemical
turning their backs on the opposition over the status
baroque. Their exploration of Brazilian literary history
of bioscriptural motifs is part that arose between Cândido
of this project, which also and Campos, Cândido’s
understands literary history publication of a seminal
not so much in terms of text on Brazilian literature

208 | OLIVEIRA
RETRIEVING THE 13
UNREADABLE
Arno Holz and
Sousândrade Revisited
by Augusto and
Haroldo de Campos
Simone Homem de Mello

One intriguing aspect of Brazilian concrete poetry spearheaded by the

Noigandres group is the discrepancy between its search for the most immediate
visual-textual directness, clearness, and pithiness and its founders’ seemingly
anachronistic interest in reassessing authors whose works were excluded from
the literary mainstream for being considered illegible. By doing so, Noigandres
endeavored to retrieve the lineage of trobar clus (“closed form” in Occitan), the
obscure, highly ciphered and nontransparent form championed by Provençal
poets. This discrepancy not only provides important clues as to the different paths
the founders of concrete poetry would take after the programmatic phase of the
movement, but it also reinforces their concept of reading as an active practice of
deciphering, as if the text would be a gestalt, a foreground figure to be recognized on
a background of semantic noise. In this context, I will focus on the reevaluation of the
work of the Brazilian poet Joaquim de Sousândrade (1833–1902) and the German poet
Arno Holz (1863–1929) by the poets Augusto de Campos and Haroldo de Campos.
It is remarkable that the literary paradigm that the Noigandres group—founded
by the Campos brothers and Décio Pignatari in 1952—referred to was not, in its first
manifestos, the tradition of figural poetry, which inadvertently could be considered
to correspond to their programmatic proposal of a “verbivocovisual” approach to
poetic language. In the manifestos published from the mid-1950s on, they were
pleading for a poetry that would cope with the short attention span of newspaper
headline’s readers.1 One of the virtues of the concrete poem would be to “establish a
quick communication”;2 more specifically, the poem should be organized “in precise
consonance with the urgency for a more rapid, direct, and economic communication
. . . which characterizes the antidiscursive and objective contemporary mind.”3
According to them, concrete poetry should “place itself in position of absolute
realism.”4 This new form would “prefigure the reintegration of the poem into daily
life—analogously to what Bauhaus had proposed for the visual arts: as a vehicle for
commercial advertising (newspapers, billboards, TV, movies, etc.), as an object for
pure fruition . . . and with an array of possibilities analogous to the art object—and so
it would substitute the magical, the mystical, and the maudit for the USEFUL.”5
However, all these postulates would not lead the Noigandres poets to
acknowledge without reservation certain poetic traditions of visual immediacy and
easy apprehension as a decisive reference to their works. They scarcely mention
figural poetry,6 probably because they tend to dismiss the figurative representation
of objects through a certain typographic disposition—including Apollinaire’s
Calligrammes—as merely ornamental. In concrete poetry, the “word should be
used in its integrity and not mutilated by a biased reduction to descriptive music
(Lettrism) or to decorative pictography (calligrammes or any other graphic-hedonistic
arrangement).”7 Apollinaire’s Calligrammes as well as Dadaist and Futurist poetry
were recognized with a certain reserve only as secondary references to the new
procedures.8 Apollinaire has been taken into consideration for his statement about the
“ideographic poem,” according to which “it would be necessary that our intelligence
become accustomed to read synthetically-ideographically instead of analytically-
discursively.”9 In fact, the French poet was more appreciated for his early insight
on language as ideogram than for the realization of his calligrammes properly,
which were considered to be “a mere figurative representation of the concept,”10 or
“pointless décor”11 As far as the works of the Futurists and Dadaists are concerned,
some of their procedures could be reappraised by concrete poets, such as “neo-
typography,” “parole in libertà” (Marinetti’s “words-in-freedom”), “imagination
without strings,” “simultaneism,” and “sonorism”—albeit exclusively “in function of
an OBJECTIVE or CONCRETE poetic expression,” “in function of a phenomenology
of composition (and not only a psychology of composition).”12 Futurists and Dadaists
were criticized for their “descriptive kinematics,” for their “frenetic subjectivism,” and
for “hypostatizing [a kind of] ultra-romanticism”; but above all, the Noigandres poets
felt the lack of a “constructive organization” in most Futurist and Dadaist works.13 So
it is the destructive impetus of modernist avant-garde poetry or—to use an expression
of Augusto de Campos—“the early [twentieth] century’s various pugil/isms” which is
pointed out as problematic, especially because it “overshadowed the importance” of
Stéphane Mallarmé’s “great typographic and cosmogonic poem,” Un coup de dés.

210 | HOMEM DE MELLO

 Instead of associating concrete poetry with a modern tradition of poetic
immediacy, the Noigandres poets included in their canon authors who notoriously
played with readability, indirectness, and extensiveness, being sometimes considered
even inscrutable (such as Mallarmé, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce). As translators and
introducers of a new poetry translation concept, Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari,
and Haroldo de Campos “recreated” some poets of this tradition in Portuguese. One
of their main references was Ezra Pound, with his call to continually update the world
literature tradition by means of poetry and to constantly renew the literary language
by continuing to write. In 1955, Haroldo de Campos synthetized their adhesion to
the Poundian make-it-new principle as follows: “the art of poetry has no experiential
value as a function of history and is founded rather on a metahistorical continuum that
makes Homer and Pound, Dante and Eliot, Góngora and Mallarmé contemporaries—
not in the sense of a world hierarchy but rather as a vectoral metamorphosis, a
qualitative transformation, a cultural morphology.”14
Their understanding of literary tradition as a network of nonlinear and
nonhierarchical relationships between authors from different cultures and periods
to whom contemporary literary production shows affinities allowed the Noigandres
poets to reassess writers that had been dismissed by mainstream historiography as
well as to identify similarities between authors who were not connected historically
or through mutual influence. This is the case for the Brazilian poet Joaquim de
Sousândrade, widely considered to belong to the second Romantic generation in
Brazilian literature, and of the German poet Arno Holz, founder of naturalism and a
pioneer of modern avant-garde poetry in Germany.
Both poets had dedicated over three decades to the production of one long
poem, which came to be their life’s work—O Guesa errante (1858–1888) and Phantasus
(1885–1929). Both poets had their work ignored by their contemporaries, who
dismissed them at best as having written for the future.15 Both Sousândrade and Holz
dedicated themselves to the genre of the long poem and anticipated concepts and
poetic procedures that would be fundamental in later movements such as imagism.
What attracted the attention of the Campos brothers was primarily the poets’ affinity
to literary procedures that focus on the materiality and concreteness of language
and their search for poetic innovations, which on occasions have been considered
pathological by some critics. In some of their articles published between 1957 and
1962,16 the Campos brothers would reevaluate Arno Holz not only because of his
penchant for neologisms and of his significant use of typographic resources (at the
same time as Mallarmé in France) but also because of his affinity with the baroque.
They would also recognize and emphasize both of these tendencies in Sousândrade’s
work, which they rescued from obscurity with their 1964 critical anthology Re visão
de sousândrade, which they would continue to expand in subsequent editions until

211 | RETRIEVING THE UNREADABLE

Joaquim de Sousandrade,
O Guesa. Frontispiece of the
Cooke and Halsted edition,
n.d. Courtesy Biblioteca
Brasiliana Guita e José
Mindlin—PRCEU/USP.
2002 to include articles the authors had published after 1964. In recontextualizing
Sousândrade’s poetry, they associated it with daring techniques and procedures of the
modern avant-garde while also identifying a certain “baroquism” in the sense of an
abstract style designated as “trans-epochal.”17
In “Arno Holz: Da revolução da lírica à elefantíase do projeto” (Arno Holz:
From lyrical revolution to project elephantiasis, 1962), Augusto and Haroldo de
Campos introduced the German poet to the Brazilian readers through two translations
from the 1925 version of Phantasus: “Mondabend”/“Noite de Lua” (by Haroldo de
Campos) and “Barocke Marine”/“Marinha Barroca” (by Augusto and Haroldo de
Campos). Their translations succeed in recreating the most innovative aspects of
Holz’s poetry, above all his neologisms, which are frequently depicted as periphrastic
expressions in other translations.18 The essay—as well as a second text on Holz
which the brothers wrote two years later, “De Holz a Sousândrade” (From Holz to
Sousândrade)—outlines the position of Holz as an avant-garde poet who had been
rediscovered by the youngest German-speaking authors involved in the concrete
poetry or visual poetry movements in the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, authors such as
Eugen Gomringer, Franz Mon, and Ferdinand Kriwet were interested in Holz mainly
because of the lexical transformations implied in the neologisms of Phantasus and
because of his proposal of a poetry conceived in terms of spatiality.19 The latter
aspect led the Brazilian poets to see a striking parallel between the position of Arno
Holz’s Phantasus in German modern poetry and the position of Mallarmé’s Un coup
de dés in modern French poetry.20 What evidently interested the Campos brothers,
as cofounders of concrete poetry, was Holz’s contribution to a certain lineage of
literary avant-garde as well as his ideas toward a synthetic codification in poetry,
such as his conception of the poem as a typographical music score. At the same
time, they stressed the baroque aspect of Phantasus, choosing to translate one of
the most inventive fragments of the 1925 edition—“Barocke Marine”—which plays
with the baroque opulence of imagery and verbal profusion and contains complex
portmanteau words, as the first two strophes of the poem show:

Barocke Marine

See,
See, sonnigste See,
soweit
du . . . siehst!
Über die rollenden Wasser hin,
lärmend, jauchzjolend, wonnejubelnd, lustlachend, schwärmend,
sich grunzwölternd, sich wälzwerfend, sich
rückenschleidernd,
sich
wärmend,
sich hohlhandzurufend, sich hohlhandzuschreiend, sich

213 | RETRIEVING THE UNREADABLE

Arno Holz, Phantasus.
Frontispiece of the 1916
edition published by Im Insel
Verlag zu Leipzig, 1916.
 hohlhandzugröhlend,
tanggrünhaarig, schuppenglitzleiberig, störschwanzflossig,
schwimmtauchblinkend, schwimmfauchflinkend,
schwimmpustpfasend
wie
rasend, Drommetenschneckenhörner blasend,
tausend . . . Tritonen!
[. . .]
Mar,
mar, o mais solar,
mirar o
mar!
Sobre águas rolantes, eis
bramantes, jubilogritantes, alacreberrrantes, lubrigargalhantes,
estuantes, grunhesponjando-se, voltevolteando-se,
retrolançando,
se
ensolarando,
mãos-em-concha-rugindo, mãos-em-concha-clamando,
mãos-em-concha-ululando,
algaverdecomados, escamiventreprateados, esturjãocaudulantes,
nadimergulímpidos, nadirresfolfúlgidos,
nadibufsoprando
como
loucos, soando buziocôncavastrompas,
trilhões de tritões! 21

In reference to this poem, Augusto and Haroldo de Campos identified an

“appeal for the hypertrophic exploration of the ornamental” and a tendency to the
“baroque farce.”22 Holz’s Phantasus, as a work-in-progress that combines lexical
compression with syntactical expansion—in both tendencies toward condensation
and prolixity—questions our ability to read, an issue also problematized by the
Brazilian founders of concrete poetry in their programmatic poems.
In their appreciation of Sousândrade’s poetry, Augusto and Haroldo de
Campos attributed the historiographical undervaluation of his work to the prejudice
of Brazilian literary critics against baroque literature, which has been dismissed as
extraneous to the Brazilian literary tradition.23 The “baroquizing manifestations” in
Sousândrade’s work were misunderstood as mere “preciosity,”24 and his rupture
with the Romantic canon has not been grasped as it should, that is, as an anticipation
of central modernist issues, such as “the rupture with the genius of the Portuguese
language (disturbed by his syntactical and lexical innovations) and with the linearity
and discursivity of the Western pattern of logical thinking.”25 Besides analyzing
Sousândrade’s work as part of concrete poetry’s paideuma, Augusto and Haroldo
de Campos have contributed greatly to make him accessible to the contemporary
Brazilian reading public, for it is because of their anthology that this unclassifiable
author has come again into circulation.

215 | RETRIEVING THE UNREADABLE

 The title of Sousândrade’s long poem refers to a pre-Columbian legend about
an Incan ritual in which a kidnapped child is brought up under strict priestly protection.
After a period of pilgrimage, the priests eventually sacrifice the youth at the age of
fifteen. In Sousândrade’s poem, the tale of the guesa becomes an image of the poet
as a nomad displaced in the contemporary industrial and capitalistic world. The tale is
also an image of the destiny of all pre-Columbian Pan-American populations after the
arrival of Europeans in America. In its criticism of capitalism and colonialism, O Guesa
errante mingles myth and history, denoting the clash of both narrative modes. This
clash also implies an upheaval of language, to which some poem’s episodes culminate.
In the section of Canto Tenth, often referred to as “The Wall Street Inferno,” the world
of finances is configured in a sequence of limerick stanzas in which information taken
from New York newspapers is gathered in a montage of rapid cuts; its accelerated
and elliptical language sounds mantric and ritualistic. The same montage technique
happens in the episode “Tatuturema,” in Canto Second, in which Portuguese is mixed
with Brazilian indigenous languages and Latin phrases into a complex hybrid. Through
these and other means, O Guesa errante imposes upon the reader an unusually cryptic
language and the question of reading as an act of decoding.

O Guesa errante (1876)

Canto X: “O Inferno de Wall Street”

(O Guesa, tendo atravessado as Antilhas, crê-se livre dos Xeques e
penetra em New-York-Stock-Exchange; a Voz dos desertos:)
—Orfeu, Dante, Æneas, ao inferno
Desceram; o Inca há de subir . . .
= Ogni sp’ranza lasciate,
Che entrate . . .
—Swedenborg, há mundo porvir?
(Xeques surgindo risonhos e disfarçados em Railroad-managers,
Stockjobbers, Pimpbrokers, etc., etc., apregoando:)
—Harlem! Erie! Central! Pennsylvania!
= Milhão! cem milhões!! mil milhões!!!
—Young é Grant! Jackson,
Atkinson!
Vanderbilts, Jay Goulds, anões!
(A Voz mal ouvida dentre a trovoada:)
—Fulton’s Folly; Codezo`s Forgery . . .
Fraude é o clamor da nação!
Não entendem odes
Railroads;
Paralela Wall-Street à Chattám . . .
(Corretores continuando:)
—Pigmeus, Brown Brothers! Bennet! Stewart!
Rotschild e o ruivalho d’Astor!!
= Gigantes, escravos
Se os cravos
Jorram luz, se finda-se a dor! 26

216 | HOMEM DE MELLO

 Analogously to Sousândrade’s Guesa, Holz’s Phantasus conveys a similar view
of modernity and the difficulty in grasping the multiple and simultaneous phenomena
in modern life, putting into question our ability of representing the complexity of
the world by means of communicative language. Derived from Greek mythology,
the title Phantasus refers to one of Hypno’s sons, one of the three gods of dreams
(Morpheus and Phobetor being the other two), capable of transforming himself into
inanimate things. The whole poem—which in its last (and still unfinished) version
(Holz had been working on it up to his death in 1929 and the poem was published
posthumously not until the early 1960s) has around forty-five thousand verses—also
addresses the poet’s feeling of displacement and his search for a refuge in language.
Written under the influence of the newest scientific developments such as Charles
Darwin’s evolution theory, Phantasus enacts the progress of the human being along
the evolution of species, throughout history, throughout the individual life phases and
the seasons of the year. The following Phantasus strophe, for instance, depicts one of
the stages of evolution as a metamorphosis of the self:

Als mißgestalteter Schuppenlurch,

mit eklem, breitrund zähnebespicktem Kaulquappenmaul,
plattem, stumpfem Ruderschwanz und fetten, quabbligen Fünffingerzehen,
halb noch aus Kiemen, halb schon aus Lungen atmend,
jagte ich,
unter cylindrisch storren, besenbüschligen Sigillarien, gigantischst kandelaberartig sich
verästelnden Bärlappbäumen
und steilen, kirchturmhohen Schachtelhalmen,
zwischen schwimmenden Algen und Kletterfarnen,
in einem ewig nebelheiß brodelnden,
fast ununterbrochen von prasselnden, peitschenden, wirbelnden
Regensturmgüssen, rollenden, krachenden Donnerschlägen und zuckend wolkenzerreißenden
Blitzen durchtobten,
beständigst triefendsten Steinkohlenwald,
nach Schaben, Grillen, Tausendfüßern, Skorpionen, Spinnen, Gespensterheuschrecken
und meinesgleichen! 27

Beginning with the 1916 edition, the poem was conceived as an encyclopedic text
which—by means of intense word enumeration, neologisms, and labyrinthine
syntax—tracks the history of mankind as a sequence of power struggles, wars, and
slaughters. The all-encompassing movement of the poem, which grows significantly
along the years, culminates with the collapse of representation rendering its
enormous fragmentary text almost unreadable in its totality.
Establishing similarities between Sousândrade and Holz was a most
unexpected and sagacious insight in the Campos brothers’ project to remap literary
history. In addition to identifying parallels in their early essay “Arno Holz: Da
revolução da lírica à elefantíase do projeto” (1962), they also uncovered elements
about the Brazilian poet in Re visão de sousândrade that could also be applied to

217 | RETRIEVING THE UNREADABLE

Holz. They asserted, on one hand, that Sousândrade had recovered elements of a
baroque tradition (notably in his use of “lexical and syntactical cultisms,” in “the
metaphorical process,” in the extensive use of “figures of rhetoric” and “sound
texture,” as well as in “idiomatic hybridisms”), while, on the other hand, prefiguring
the conciseness and transparency in poetic images that its clarity and pithiness
brought to mind Pound’s idea of phanopoeia.28 This convergence of traditions of
verbal proliferation and conciseness also occurs in Holz’s Phantasus project. Having
published in 1904 a parody of baroque poetry, Dafnis—Lyrisches Portrait aus dem
17. Jahrhundert (Dafnis—A lyrical portrait from the 17th century), Holz is one of the
very few German poets to whom baroque and modernism are not in contradiction.
His Phantasus version published in 1916—mocked as “Elephantasus” by his
contemporaries because of the book format (44cm x 33cm) and the poem’s length
(336 pages)—combines prolixity with uttermost lexical condensation.
Even though his concept of modern literature did not shun overflowing
discursive excesses, Holz was perceptive to the propagation of Japanese aesthetics
in the European art scene at the end of the nineteenth century and its clear tendency
toward reductive media and forms. His interest in Japanese woodcuts and haiku
dates back to the turn of the century, when the first version of Phantasus was released
in two booklets (1898/99).

Phantasus

In meinem schwarzen Taxuswald

singt ein Märchenvogel—
die ganze Nacht.
Blumen blinken.
Unter Sternen, die sich spiegeln,
treibt mein Boot.
Meine träumenden Hände
tauchen in schwimmende Wasserrosen.
Unten,
lautlos, die Tiefe.
Fern die Ufer! Das Lied . . . 29

Even in subsequent extended versions of these poems, Holz keeps the paratactic
superposition of clearly delineated scenes and imagery insights that characterize this
genre of Japanese poetry.
In Sousândrade’s Guesa, Augusto and Haroldo de Campos also reveal a kind
of “imagism of movie shots that operate with the immediacy of a haiku.”30

. . . vede a tremente
Ondulação das malhas luminosas
Num relâmpago, o tigre atrás da corça. 31

218 | HOMEM DE MELLO

 At the same time, they characterize the “Tatuturema” episode in the Guesa
as a Faustian Walpurgisnacht: a “burlesque timeless masquerade, in which fictitious
characters and historical or mythological events alternate and superimpose, not in a
logical narrative but according to an “analogical, synthetic-ideogrammatic order”—
recalling Apollinaire’s quote included in the concrete poetry manifesto.32 As a matter
of fact, the Walpurgisnacht in Goethe’s Faust II (a work into which Haroldo de Campos
read baroque features in a “transepochal” sense33) was also a point of reference in
Holz’s “Moderne Walpurgisnacht—Kein Misterium” (1899),34 later incorporated in his
play Die Blechschmiede (1902–1921), a work-in-progress that, along with Phantasus,
could be considered his most innovative and radically modern creation.
Sousândrade’s O Guesa errante and Holz’s Phantasus share other common
traits and thematic correspondences, such as the conception of the long poem as a
transcontinental periplus or a transformation process, presented by the Brazilian poet
as an initiation rite and by the German author as a manifestation of evolutionism and
transmigration. Another aspect common to them both is the concept of the poem as
discourse in metamorphic process, in which the act of (re)writing leaves its marks.
Moreover, they seemed equally concerned with the formal aspect of poetic language,
a topic that the Noigandres poets recognized as intrinsic to their own verbivocovisual
project: “We could say that Sousândrade succeeded in finding the difficult balance
between revolutionary content and revolutionary form, achieving at his time the ideal
Mayakovsky would plead for, in our days, for the sake of a committed avant-garde
poetry: ‘without revolutionary form there is no revolutionary art.’ ”35 Mayakovsky’s
motto, taken from a letter written on September 1, 1922,36 echoes Arno Holz’s claim
for the language renovation in German poetry thirty-six years earlier: “Without form,
the best ideas have no use in art.”37
In their long poems-in-progress, which were left unfinished after a
period of at least thirty years, both Sousândrade and Holz laid bare the clash of
discourses, oscillating between myth, historiography, and science. By means of
extensive writing, they endeavored a poetic form able to encompass all discursive
discrepancies, ranging from the conversational register to the highly artificial. And
out of the noise of the many voices—which manifests itself in techniques such as
text collage, multilingual strategies, hybrid composite words, among others—the
authors searched for form through writing, in a process that eventually turned out to
be endless, the remaining text-form as a trace of the impossibility to find a definite
form. This never-ending search for form also turns out to be the reader’s search. The
fruition of poems such as O Guesa errante and Phantasus has primarily to do with
deciphering or decoding; with finding the figure in the midst of mixed discourses
and messages, so that misreading/misunderstanding turns to be an essential part of
the aesthetic experience.

219 | RETRIEVING THE UNREADABLE

 In reference to Sousândrade’s later poem Harpa de oiro (1889–1899), finished
in the same year Holz published the second booklet of his first Phantasus edition,
Haroldo de Campos commented on unreadability as a link to modernity:

We feel confronted with an Icarus protocol that registers the characteristics of falling
rather than those of the flight. That does not prevent us from recognizing the radical
tenure of Sousândrades’s gesture, whose accomplishment had already stood out in its
exuberance in previous poems. This gesture consists of systematically disrupting the
discursive representation order; of weaving a synthetic, hieroglyphic, cryptic language
across the grain of discourse, undermining it deeply; of introducing unreadability where
once prevailed the legible platitude of Romantic and Parnassian poetic discourse (the
unreadability that would be proposed again later, in the modern era, as the only possibility
of the readable, as far as that previous effortless readability of our Romanticism and
of our Parnassianism eventually expired and lapsed). . . . The “falling outs” (the loss of
control over the productive activity released by the violence of the destructive movement)
correspond to silence or to its compensation figure, chaos, entropic and indifferent
disorder of elements, like in the “white noise” of experimental music, a sort of background
noise that follows the placental displacement of language. 38

That is also the question of readability that interests concrete poetry in its proposal
of a new poetic form in mixed media. The most programmatic concrete poems
asked that the reader find—even at the most primary optic level—his/her way in a
multidirectional text. If linearity is chosen as a constitutive element of the poem, it is
often in order to show how linear order can also lead to semantic misconstruction.
Since the emphasis of concrete poetry falls on the materiality of language, so that
letters are treated as images, sometimes the poem plays with the variable distance
between the reader and the text, often in order to explore possible ambiguities in the
process of reading.
Other strategies for creating ambiguity relate to the discrepancies (or the
clash) between the acoustic and the visual aspects of language, as well as the framing
of the text and the distribution of words on the page—the way we splice language
together to create other levels of reading. Sometimes, the configuration of letters and
words has also the function of composing a scenic scheme, so that the text is read not
only as a discourse flow but also as a diagram in which the order of words suggests
a certain distribution of things in space. The concrete poem is often conceived as a
constellation of words that sometimes reveals a regular pattern, with symmetrical or
mirrored structures, and at other times grows irregularly into more unstable forms.
Other procedures (such as permutation, anagrammatic variation, superimposition of
text layers) and the use of borrowed arrangements (as crossword puzzle, emblems
or logograms, among others) lead to the central question of reading as an active and
continuous decoding process.
All these textual practices date back to the programmatic phase of concrete
poetry in the 1950s and 1960s. From the 1970s on, the Campos brothers followed

220 | HOMEM DE MELLO

different paths, but the question of decoding and readability has remained an
underlying poetic concern until their later work. Augusto de Campos has never
abandoned the core tenets of concrete poetry—such as emphasis on the visual
property of language, brevity, and condensation—and he has gone even further in
this direction since the 1990s, as he started to use digital technology in conceiving
or producing poems. One might say that concrete poetry anticipated—with by
today’s standards low-tech means—a kind of hypertextuality that would become
more easily achievable half a century later through electronic media. The limited
resources with which authors of concrete poetry had to cope with sixty years ago led
them to create highly inventive effects of textual spatiality and multidirectionality,
in order to release the poem from the restraints imposed by the book format. The
access to digital technology, on the one hand, has opened the way to several new
resources, but, on the other hand, it has facilitated the merely decorative employment
of visual effects, which the Brazilian inventors of concrete poetry resolutely rejected.
However, in adhering to digital technology, Augusto de Campos has not neglected
his poetic roots, including the conception of the poem’s spatiality as a function of the
temporality of reading and as a problematization of readability.
As far as Haroldo de Campos is concerned, the “verbivocovisual” approach
of his poetry changed radically starting in the late 1960s. In comparison to his early
concrete poems from the 1950s, his book Signantia Quasi Coelum—Signância Quase
Céu (1979) shows a less strictly functional use of spatiality; the sparse distribution of
words in this book’s poems is less diagrammatic than rhythmic, suggesting a more
subtle presence of silence in the text. From the 1980s on, Haroldo de Campos has
definitely reduced the emphasis on graphic layout, keeping, however, the highly
elaborated melopoeia of his earliest poems. Although important issues of concrete
poetry still underline his later works, especially the ambiguities promoted by textual
segmentation and textual accumulation, his affinity to baroque logopoeia has
increasingly shaped his diction from Galáxias (1964–1984) until A Máquina do Mundo
Repensada (2000), just to mention his more extensive book projects. Along with the
change of Haroldo de Campos’s approach to “verbivocovisuality,” it is possible to
notice that the focus on textual density—constitutive of concrete poetics, in affinity
to Ezra Pound’s definition of “great literature [as] language charged with meaning
to the utmost degree”—has changed from formal reduction to verbal expansiveness
coupled with referential stratification. It is this kind of poetic intensity—inseparable
from Haroldo de Campos’s role as a translator and theoretician—that reposes the
question of readability in his later works.
To investigate the question of readability in the work of the Campos brothers
can be a relevant key to understanding the apparent contradiction between
the programmatic concrete poetics of the Noigandres poets, with their call for

221 | RETRIEVING THE UNREADABLE

perceptual immediacy and direct textual apprehensibility, and their tendency to
include in their “paideuma” authors of remarkable literary opacity, among whom
Holz and Sousândrade could be considered especially radical and displaced in their
lifetimes. Moreover, it can offer a broader view of the development of concrete
poetics into very different literary lineages and help to investigate the connection
between the baroque and modernist avant-garde which seems to be especially
familiar to Latin American literature. Finally, it can lead to the perception of lines of
continuity in the history and legacy of the concrete avant-garde, which tends to be
characterized as an isolated moment of rupture.
The word Noigandres—which Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari, and
Haroldo de Campos chose to name their group and their first literary magazine in the
early 1950s—is already an undeciphered sign. Taken from a poem by the Provençal
troubadour Arnaut Daniel (1150–1200), the word, whose meaning was supposedly long
disputed by philologists, is mentioned in Ezra Pound’s “Canto XX” in the context of a
conversation with the German scholar Emil Lévy, who ends up saying, “Noigandres!
NOIgandres! / You know for seex mon’s of my life / Effery night when I go to bett, I say
to myself: / Noigandres, eh, noigandres, Now what the DEFFIL can that mean!”39

222 | HOMEM DE MELLO

Notes 6/ In “Ovo Novo No 14 / H. de Campos, 43. are poetically much more
Velho,” Décio Pignatari traces radical and challenging, some
1/ Décio Pignatari, a parallel between Augusto 15 / In “Memorabilia” fragments were published
“Nova Poesia: Concreta de Campos’s poem “Ovo (1877), introduction to the in English (1961 postumous
(manifesto),” in Teoria da Novelo” and a poem by seventh Canto of the New edition, translated by
poesia concreta: Textos Symmias of Rhodes, referring York edition of his Guesa, David Dodd in 1996 and
críticos e manifestos to the contributions of the Sousândrade affirms he got revised in 1999), in Italian
1950–1960, ed. Augusto de Greek Anthology (Antologia sad as he heard twice that (1925 edition, translated by
Campos, Decio Pignatari, and Graeca) to the optic poetry. his book would just be read Donatella Casarini and Enzo
Haroldo de Campos (Cotia: fifty years later, declaring Minarelli and published in
Ateliê Editorial, 2006), 56. 7/ H. de Campos, “Poesia himself upset for having 2015), Portuguese (1916 and
Originally published in Ad: concreta,” in Campos, written it fifty years too early. 1925 editions, translated by
Arquitetura e Decoração, no. Pignatari, and Campos, Teoria See Augusto de Campos and Augusto de Campos and
20 (November–December da poesia concreta, 110. Haroldo de Campos, Re-visão Haroldo de Campos in the
1956). Translations are mine de Sousândrade (São Paulo: 1960s and 1990s). There
unless otherwise noted. 8/ A. de Campos, “Poesia Editora Perspectiva, 2002), is also a Polish translation
concreta (manifesto),” in 24. Analogously, in a letter by Krzysztof D. Szatrawski,
2/ Haroldo de Campos, Campos, Pignatari, and to Prof. Liebmann dated which was published in 2013.
“Poesia concreta— Campos, Teoria da poesia January 17, 1916, Arno Holz As far as Sousândrade is
linguagem—comunicação” concreta, 71. shows himself convinced concerned, the Guesa errante
[1957], in Campos, Pignatari, of his role as an avant- episode “The Inferno of Wall
and Campos, Teoria da poesia 9/ Augusto de Campos. garde poet, considering Street” was translated into
concreta, 119. Originally “Pontos—Periferia—Poesia himself “ahead of his time” into Spanish by the Peruvian
published in “Suplemento Concreta” [1956], in Campos, and misunderstood by his poet Reynaldo Jimenez
Dominical,” Jornal do Brasil, Pignatari, and Campos, contemporaries, because of (libros de la resistencia, 2015)
April 28, 1957. Teoria da poesia concreta, his “aberrant achievements.” and into English by Robert E.
37. Originally published in Arno Holz, Briefe (Munich: Brown. Campos and Campos,
3/ Haroldo de Campos, “Suplemento Dominical,” Piper Verlag, 1948), 211. Re-visão de Sousândrade,
“Aspectos da poesia Jornal do Brasil, November To this day, Sousândrade 583–624.
concreta” [1957], in Campos, 11, 1956. and Holz are not part of the
Pignatari, and Campos, mainstream literary canon 16 / Haroldo de Campos:
Teoria da poesia concreta, 10 / A. de Campos, 38. in their respective countries. “Avolução das formas: Poesia
142. Originally published in Holz is scarcely translated concreta” (1957); Haroldo
Diálogo, no. 7, São Paulo, 11 / A. de Campos, 38. into other languages: de Campos, “Contexto de
July 1957. Décio Pignatari, “Poesia English translations were uma vanguarda” (1960);
concreta: Pequena marcação published in some avant- Augusto de Campos and
4/ Augusto de histórico-formal” [1957], garde magazines in the Haroldo de Campos, “Arno
Campos, “Poesia Concreta in Campos, Pignatari, and 1910s and 1920s—as Holz: Da revolução da lírica
(manifesto)” [1956], in Campos, Teoria da poesia The Egoist (London) and à elefantíase do projeto”
Campos, Pignatari, and concreta, 97. Originally Poetry (Chicago)—and in (1962; the article includes
Campos, Teoria da Poesia published in Ad: Arquitetura anthologies for contemporary the translation of Arno Holz’s
Concreta, 71. Originally e Decoração 4, no. 2 (March– poetry in the same period; “Barocke Marine”); and
published in Ad: Arquitetura April 1957). complete translations of Augusto de Campos and
e Decoração, no. 20 the first Phantasus version Haroldo de Campos, “De Holz
(November–December 1956). 12 / H. de Campos, “Olho (1898) were published in the a Sousândrade” (1962).
por Olho,” in Campos, last fifteen years in French
5/ Haroldo de Campos, Pignatari, and Campos, (by Éd. Comp’act in 2003, 17 / Haroldo de Campos,
“Olho por Olho a Olho Nu Teoria da poesia concreta, 75. translated by Huguette Deus e o diabo no Fausto de
(manifesto)” [1956], in Radrizzani and René Goethe (São Paulo: Editora
Campos, Pignatari, and 13 / H. de Campos, Radrizzani) and in Italian (by Perspectiva, 1981), 128. On
Campos, Teoria da poesia “Aspectos da poesia Campanotto Editore, Udine, the certain abstract style, see
concreta, 76. Originally concreta,” in Campos, 2008, translated by Donatella Campos and Campos, Re-
published in Ad: Arquitetura Pignatari, and Campos, Teoria Casarini and Enzo Minarelli); visão de Sousândrade, 32.
e Decoração, no. 20 da poesia concreta, 139. from the subsequent
(November–December 1956). Phantasus versions, which 18 / See David Dodd’s

223 | RETRIEVING THE UNREADABLE

tendency to substitute Novas: Selected Writings bluemtn?a=d&d=bmtnabe189911-
neologisms by periphrases in of Haroldo de Campos 01.2.14&e=-------en-20--1--txt-
his translation of a fragment (Evenston, IL: Northwestern txIN-------#.
of the posthumous Phantasus University Press, 2007).
edition, http://artsites.ucsc 35 / Campos and Campos, Re-
.edu/GDead/agdl/holz.html. 24 / Campos and Campos, visão de Sousândrade, 123.
Re-visão de Sousândrade,
19 / Haroldo de Campos, 536. 36 / Campos and Campos, 124.
“Arno Holz: Da revolução
da lírica à elefantíase do 25 / Campos and Campos, 37 / Holz, Briefe, 72.
projeto,” in O arco-íris branco 522.
(Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1997), 38 / Campos and Campos, Re-
76–77. 26 / Campos and Campos, visão de Sousândrade, 528–529.
343–344.
20 / H. de Campos, 76–77. 39 / “And I went to old Lévy, and
27 / Arno Holz, Phantasus it was by then 6:30 / in the evening,
21 / H. de Campos, 87, 90. (Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1916), and he trailed half way across
22. Freiburg / before dinner, to see
22 / Campos and Campos, the two strips of copy, / Arnaut’s,
Re-visão de Sousândrade, 28 / Campos and Campos, settant’uno R. superiore
509. Re-visão de Sousândrade, 33. (Ambrosiana) / Not that I could
sing him the music. / And he said:
23 / In the 2001 29 / Arno Holz, Phantasus ‘Now is there anything I can tell
article “A Peregrinação (Berlin: Sassenbach, 1898), you?’ / And I said: I dunno, sir, or
Transamericana do Guesa n.p. (34). ‘Yes, Doctor, what do they mean
de Sousândrade” about by noigandres? / And he said:
the influence of Alexander 30 / Campos and Campos, ‘Noigandres! NOIgandres! / ‘You
von Humboldt’s naturalistic Re-visão de Sousândrade, 35. know for seex mon’s of my life /
studies on Sousândrade’s ‘Effery night when I go to bett,
Guesa, Haroldo de Campos 31 / Campos and Campos, I say to myself: / ‘Noigandres,
restates his disapproval of 35. eh, noigandres, ‘Now what the
the sociohistorical literary DEFFIL can that mean!” See Ezra
criticism in Brazil, which used 32 / Campos and Campos, Pound, “Canto XX,” in The Cantos
to exclude the baroque from 56–57. (London: Faber and Faber, 1994),
its historiographical view 89.
because this movement, 33 / H. de Campos, Deus e o
having preceded the Diabo, 128.
Brazilian independence
from Portugal, could not 34 / Arno Holz, “Moderne
be said to have contributed Walpurgisnacht,” Pan1
to the constitution of the (November 1899), http://
local literary system as an bluemountain.princeton
expression of the “national .edu/bluemtn/cgi-bin/
spirit.” Campos’s O sequestro
do barroco na formação
da literatura brasileira
already argues against the
dismissal of the baroque in
the literary criticism tradition
represented by Antonio
Candido de Mello e Souza
and his followers. The essay
was translated to English as
“Disappearence of Baroque
in Brazilian Literature,” in

224 | HOMEM DE MELLO

THE WANDERER, 14
THE EARTH
Nature and History
in the Work of
Sousândrade and
Paulo Nazareth
Eduardo Sterzi

Sousândrade opens his great poem O Guesa (written between 1858 and 1888)
with what would look like a quintessentially Romantic invocation, an exclamation that
determines and immediately marks, already in the poem’s first line, an interruption—a
decasyllable cut in two quasi-verses.

Eia, imaginação divina!

Os Andes

And the strophe continues:

Volcanicos elevam cumes calvos,

Circumdados de gelos, mudos, alvos,
Nuvens fluctuando—que espetac’los grandes!
Lá, onde o poncto do kondor negreja,
Scintillando no espaço como brilhos
D’olhos, e cae a prumo sobre os filhos
Do lhama descuidado; onde lampeja
Da tempestade o raio; onde deserto,
O azul sertão formoso e deslumbrante,
Arde do sol o incendio, delirante
Coração vivo em céu profundo aberto!1

[Eia, divine imagination!

The volcanic Andes,
bald peaks raising,
 Surrounded of ice, silent, blank,
Fluttering clouds—what a great spectacle!
There, where the condor is a black point,
Scintillating in space like sparkles
of eyes, preying on the offspring
Of the inattentive llama; Where flashes
Lightning amid the storm; Where deserted,
The blue hinterland handsome and dazzling,
Burning the delirious, fire of the sun,
Living heart in deep open sky!]

The internal rupture of the first verse anticipates a deeper scission between
the poem’s first strophe—the sublime vision of nature—and the one that follows.
For if it was necessary, in the poet’s eyes, for a “divine imagination” to conceive of
the Andes in all its grandeur, only an earthly imagination would account for what
follows as the poem progresses: the remembering of the massacre of natives by
the Spanish conquerors. And it will be earthly imagination at work that we will
witness along the entire poem, in constant oscillation with what has been named
here “divine imagination.” Augusto de Campos called attention to the “semantic
unraveling” (esgarçada semântica) in O Guesa, resulting from its “fragmentary style”
that alternates “images of nature with lyrical-biographical experiences.”2 As a matter
of fact, Sousândrade does not discern between the two approaches, as O Guesa
proposes an unsettled and unsettling experience of a nature hopelessly submitted to
the ills of colonization. In the poem, images of an untouched primeval nature appear
only in contrast with the ubiquitous destruction; and even those images of pure
nature seem abated by the earthly imagination that produces allegories of horror—
note in the previous excerpt the stress given to the scene of a condor menacing a
llama offspring at the same time that the “living heart open in the deep sky” (an
extraordinary image of the sun) refers to the extricated heart of the guesa mentioned
in the poem’s epigraph. Nature, for Sousândrade, is history. Hence the poet often
refers to natural landscapes as human construction, or architecture.

Guesa is the one who listens not only to the echoes of extinguished tribes,
but to nature as a whole. And he not only listens but invites us to listen together with
him, and pay attention to that endangered universe:

Oiçamos . . . o fervor de extranha prece,

Que no silencio a natureza imita
De nossos corações . . . aquem palpita . . .
Além suspira . . . além, no amor floresce . . .
Porque eu venho, do mundo fugitivo,
No deserto escutar a voz da terra:
—Eu sou qual este lírio, triste, esquivo,
Qual esta brisa que nos ares erra. 3

226 | STERZI
 [Let us listen . . . The fervor of strange prayer,
That in silence nature imitates
From our hearts . . . palpitating . . .
sighing . . . and, blossoming in love . . .
For I come from the furtive world,
to hear the voice of the earth in the desert:
—I am like this lily, dismal, elusive,
Like this breeze that err in the air?”]

Therefore, the poet is the one who “listens to the voice of the earth”: earthly
imagination is, above all else, the imagination of earth (imaginação da terra). And
rhyme is no minor matter here for in O Guesa erra is the preferential rhyme for terra;
which strikes me as an indicator that terra (earth) evokes, for Sousândrade, above
all else, errância (wandering) and not belonging (or, at least, not any simple kind
of belonging). This wandering—this non-belonging—inscribes itself in the guesa’s
very identity. Although the guesa originates from the Muisca people, Sousândrade
conceives of him as a composite figure with elements borrowed from the Inca and
others from Amazonian natives. Furthermore, he gives to his character his own
history to some extent, although as the guesa tours throughout America, his identity
becomes fluid. Sousândrade is a propitious author to those who, like Marília Librandi-
Rocha, propose to “examine all that in Brazil extrapolates its boundaries, crosses
frontiers and leave territorial borders.”5 That which does not shy away from an “ex-
centric” position. It’s a matter of “thinking in terms of a multiplicity of relationships
rather than of a plurality of identities.”6
In Sousândrade’s poem, the guesa, besides Muisca, “is at the same time Inca,
Tupi, Araucano, Timbira, Sioux, and is himself Sousândrade, a wanderer, homeless,
and thus, without a nation.”7 In sum, “a metamorphic character, multiethnic,
transcontinental, American.”8 Guesa is “not a dead ancestral Indian, transformed
into original hero of the Brazilian nation, but rather a living anti-hero made symbol
of a Pan-American world.” In other words, a survivor anti-hero, a resistant character
defying the avowedly inevitable extinction of the tribes; defying the massacre of the
indigenous people.9
By taking his concept of Pan-Americanism to the extreme, Sousândrade
unveils, as few other Brazilian authors and thinkers, the global dimension of any
action after the consolidation of capitalism.10 The imaging of earth both as element
and ground, which ends up being the imagination of Earth as planet and dwelling, is
political imaging par excellence. Which does not eliminate the municipal or provincial
dimensions of its reach, but rather sets up a new, broader perspective: not by
accident, in returning to Brazil after a decade abroad, Sousândrade became the mayor
in his native São Luis do Maranhão; he also worked on a plan to open a university,
which he would name Atlantis or New Athens and that would have a chair of Indian

227 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

Law. The connection between local spheres and O Guesa’s all-encompassing master
plan is evident in sequences of infernal moments that speak of the degradation of
indigenous cultures through colonial exploration (in the “Tatuturema” sequence in
Canto Second), or that outline the risks of financial capitalism through the submission
to the god Mamon (in “The Wall Street Inferno” section of Canto Tenth)—an intuition
that we find updated in a recent claim by Giorgio Agamben who said “God is not
dead, he became Money.”11
After the torture and killings at Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada,
(Buenos Aires) after the massacres at Candelária (Rio de Janeiro), Carandiru (São
Paulo), and Eldorado dos Carajás (Pará), after Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), after the
endless massacres whose names form a dark constellation in the sky of modernity—
we can see that the anticipatory aspect of Sousândrade’s oeuvre surpasses any of
the formal strategies that announced the avant-gardes. Indeed, his work diverts such
strategies (born from his singular assimilation of Brazilian and English Romanticism)
toward a new reading of modern history as the intersection of capitalism and
massacre. It is a matter of vision, as Luis Costa Lima first noted.12 Lima points out
that, in contrast to the “nature-devouring” characteristic in Brazilian Romanticism—
the conversion of “experiencing the world” into an experience of consumption,
through which “all reality, nature, the elements, the stars was sacrificed in favor
of the I”—Sousândrade initiated a “poetics of concreteness, open to the world.”13
Against the “description . . . of emotional states” of conventional Romanticism, he
proposes to open poetry to “an ontological dimension.”14 Opening up to the world
entails that voyage becomes a form of poetry, instead of merely its subject. Costa
Lima stresses in Sousândrade the importance of physical contact with reality for the
kind of expression that he is after, which would become clear in comparing the artistic
achievements of “The Wall Street Inferno” to the supposed failure of Harpas de oiro:
“the visualization of reality is the a priori condition for the artist’s discovery of the
aesthetic correspondent.”15 Hence, the voyages of the guesa are also Sousândrade’s
voyages, albeit reconfigured.
Not by chance, Sousândrade, in his epigraph extracted from Stanislas
Marie César Famin, sees himself as the “Guesa, or the wanderer, i.e., the homeless
being”16—as some kind of indigenous version of the homo sacer (sacred man), to
refer to that obscure figure of Roman jurisprudence in which Agamben found the
paradigm of modern and contemporary political life.17 Which means that from the
very start—through his epigraphs—Sousândrade places the poem under the sign
of sacrifice, or more importantly, under the sign of extermination. This is, however,
a poem of resistance to sacrifice—self-sacrifice as well as sacrifice of the other—
personal and collective, dedicated to any god, including the god of money, Mamon.
He who listens to the voice of earth will inevitably end up listening to the voices of

228 | STERZI
those whose bodies, many never identified, never duly memorialized, lie on earth.
And will strive to become one with this voice—as the Portuguese poet Ruy Belo wrote:

My supreme ambition, my ideal—unattainable as any ideal, but always present as limit— . . .

is to become mineral, impassive in its adherence to the earth, to which I will return not only
by condition but by a profound, ever felt desire that will only be satisfied the day my voice
becomes one with the voice of earth, more important than all the words that I have been
allowed to proffer on its surface throughout my more or less short life, but ultimately always
short, if seen from the perspective of man’s destiny as species and the life of the planet as his
ambient as ever and forever.18

Sousândrade sets off the guesa’s voyage following the death of the parents, that is to
say, upon the erasure of origin, as well as on the infinite regret of this erased origin
that is made into absence and, above all, a phantom (and this will be all along, a
poem of phantoms):

Passa uma sombra diaphana e tão pura

A extinguir-se através da noite etherea,
Das grandes sombras na distancia obscura . . .
Passa outra sombra, longe da primeira.
—Ora, de terra em terra o sempre ausente,
Sem mais vêr patria alguma que o contente,
Ledo incanta-se aos mimos da belleza
E d’elles desincanta-se—ai do Guesa!
Ai quem do mundo assim, e seu mau grado,
Correndo as zonas for, qual em procura
D’outro amor, d’outros homens, d’outro estado,
Ou d’outro sol, ou d’outra sepultura!19

[A shadow diaphanous and pure passes

And extinguishes into the ethereal night,
From the great shadows in the obscure distance . . .
Another shadow passes, far from the first.
—Now, from land to land, the ever absent,
Without devising his country any more than the content,
Foolishly in love with beauty’s snares
Only to reject them—poor Guesa!
Woe those who run the ends of this world
Against all odds, crossing all zones
In search of other love, other men, other state
Or of other sun, or another tomb.]

In Sousândrade’s cosmic-political imagination, dawn means the awakening of earth

itself, which he contrasts with the melancholy of the native robbed of a future by the
colonizer’s violence:

Acorda a terra; as flores da alegria

Abrem, fazem do leito de seus ramos
Sua glória infantil; Alcyon em clamos

229 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

Paulo Nazareth, Untitled.
From the series Notícias de
América, 2012. Photo printing
on cotton paper. Courtesy
Mendes Wood DM.
 Passa cantando sobre o cedro ao dia
Lindas loas boyantes; o selvagem
Cala-se, evoca d’outro tempo um sonho,
E curva a fronte . . . Deus, como é tristonho
Seu vulto sem porvir, em pé na margem! 20

[The earth awakens; the joyful flowers

open, and make from the bed of their branches
Her puerile glory; Alcyon in flames
Singing by the cedar to no one
Beautiful fluid songs; The native
Becomes mute, and recalls a dream from another time,
And bows the forehead . . . God, how depressing
His figure without future, standing on the bank!]

Sousândrade is ambiguous about the dances performed by natives that, even though
already in process of “degradation,” keep the “memory of grander times;” the
horizon here, is the destruction of the peoples, more specifically, the minor peoples:

Selvagens—mas tão bellos, que se sente

Um barbaro prazer n’essa memoria
Dos grandes tempos, recordando a historia
dos formosos guerreiros reluzentes:
Em cruentos festins, na vária festa,
Nas ledas caças ao romper da aurora;
E à voz profunda que a ribeira chora
Enlanguecer, dormir saudosa sesta . . .
A voz das fontes celebrava amores!
As aves em fagueira direcção
Alevantando os voos, trovadores
Cantavam a partir o coração!
Selvagens, sim; porém tendo uma crença;
De erros ou bôa, acreditando n’ella:
Hoje, se riem com fatal descrença
E a luz apagam de Tupana-estrella.

Destino das nações! um povo erguido

Dos virgens seios d’esta natureza,
Antes de haver coberto da nudeza
O cincto e o coração, foi destruído:
E nem pelos combates tão feridos,
Tão sanguinarias, barbaras usanças;
Por esta religião falsa d’esperanças
Nos apostolos seus, falsos, mentidos
Ai! vinde ver a transição dolente
Do passado ao porvir, n’este presente!
Vinde ver do Amazonas o thesoiro,
A onda vasta, os grandes valles de oiro!
Immensa solidão vedada ao mundo,
Nas chammas do equador, longe da luz!
Donde fugiu o tabernac’lo immundo,
Mas onde ainda não abre o braço a cruz! 21

231 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

 [Wild natives—but so beautiful, that one feels
a barbaric pleasure in the memory
of great times, remembering the history
of galant gleaming warriors:
In bloody feasts, in various feasts,
In lazy hunts at the breaking of dawn;
And with the deep cry of the river voice
To languish, to sleep forgetful naps . . .
The voice of the fountains celebrated loves!
The birds in friendly direction
taking flights, troubadours
singing from the heart!
Savages, yes; but with faith;
rights or wrong, believing in her:
Today, one laughs with fatal disbelief
and the light goes out in Tupana-star.

Fate of nations! A people borne

of nature’s virgin entrails,
Before having covered from nudity
The girdle and the heart were destroyed:
And neither by the fighting so wounded,
So sanguinary, barbaric uses;
For this false religion of hopes
In its apostles, false, lying
Aye! Come see the slow transition
From the past to come, in this present!
Come and see from Amazonas the treasure,
The vast wave, the great valleys of gold!
Immense solitude blind to the world,
In the flames of the equator, away from the light!
From where the unclean tabernacle fled,
But where the arm does not yet open the cross.]

According to Sousândrade, the destitute native is the remnant of a natural world,22

and in “Tatuturema,” we hear the guesa speak:

—Eu nasci no deserto,

Sob o sol do equador:
As saudades do mundo,
Do mundo . . .
Diabos levem tal dor! 23

[I was born in the desert,

Under the equatorial sun:
Nostalgias of the world,
Of the world . . .
The devils take this pain!]

The expression “nostalgia of the world” (saudades do mundo) can be read in two
ways, and neither invalidates the other: initially it is an allusion to the natural world

232 | STERZI
from which the guesa originates, referred to in the first two verses (the equatorial
desert); but we can also read world in a broader sense without losing sight of its
strict meaning, whereas “nostalgia of the world” becomes the very propeller for
the hero in his voyages; the object of his search is nothing less than the world itself,
perceived as lost at that very moment. He goes out in search of the world from
which he himself is a survivor.
The survivors of a disappearing world are called “witness people” by Brazilian
anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro.24 Notions of survival and witnessing,25 however, acquire
thoroughly critical and political values only when read under the perspective provided
by anthropologist Eduardo Viveros de Castro in an interview to poet and law scholar
Pádua Fernandes: “native-hood is a project for the future, not a memory of the past”;
or “being a native is not a concept that remits us only and mainly to the past—we
are natives because we were natives—but rather a concept that also remits us to the
future—it is possible to become a native again.”26 In short, as Viveiros de Castro and
Déborah Danowski propose elsewhere, natives are a “figuration of the future” not a
“remnant of the past.”27
Literature plays a decisive role in this project that attempts to exact revenge for
the vanquished tribes—a term coined by Machado de Assis in an essay on the instinct
of nationality, published in the New York Republican newspaper O Novo Mundo,
for which Sousândrade served as secretary and contributor. Assis wrote: “Certainly
Brazilian civilization is not connected to the indigenous element nor has it been
influenced by it; and that suffices to prevent us from searching amid the vanquished
tribes the titles of our literary personality.”28 A few lines later in the same text,
however, overwhelmed by the diagnostic of a total massacre, Assis attempts to base
poetry on a sentiment of piety for the supposedly disappeared natives, now merely
traces on the brink of erasure from a tradition that confuses itself with antiquity, thus
isolating itself in a past that cannot be retrieved:

The native tribes, whose traditions and mores João Francisco Lisboa found similar to those
of the ancient Germanic people related in Tacitus book, certainly disappeared from the
region that for long belonged to them; but the conqueror that surveyed the area collected
precious information and transmitted them to us as veritable poetic elements. Piety, as other
arguments of greater value diminish, should at least incline the poets’ imagination toward the
people that first absorbed the airs from these regions, rescuing in literature those killed by the
fatality of history.29

If the fatality of history generates piety, the acknowledgment of survival and the
determination of resistance—against everything and against all—take the shape of
vengeance as an affirmation of life where only desolation was expected (vengeance
not only as retribution but also as an act of resistance against any adverse
expectation). This kind of revenge is active not only in Sousândrade but also in some of

233 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

Paulo Nazareth, Untitled.
From the series Notícias de
América, 2011/2012. Photo
printing on cotton paper.
Courtesy Mendes Wood DM.
the best moments of our Romantic literature dedicated to the figuration of the native,
as well as in Mario de Andrade’s Macunaíma; in the cannibalism (anthropophagia) of
Oswald de Andrade and Raul Bopp; in a few poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade
such as “Pranto geral dos índios” (The natives’ general plaint), “Kreen-Akarore,” and
“Adeus a Sete Quedas” (Goodbye to seven falls); and more recently in Alberto Mussa’s
Meu destino é ser onça (My destiny is to become a panther), Josely Vianna Baptista’s
Roça barroca (Baroque orchard), and André Vallias’s Totem, among others.

What is the meaning of Sousândrade making himself into guesa, making

himself a native? As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari observed in regard to Martin
Heidegger,30 in poetry, a “people to come” is always in question.

For the race summoned forth by art or philosophy is not the one that claims to be pure but
rather an oppressed, bastard, lower, anarchical, nomadic, and irremediably minor race—the
very ones that Kant excluded from the paths of the new Critique. Artaud said: to write for the
illiterate—to speak for the aphasic, to think for the acephalous. But what does “for” mean? It
is not “for their benefit,” or yet “in their place.” It is “before.” It is a question of becoming.
The thinker is not acephalic, aphasic, or illiterate, but becomes so. He becomes Indian, and
never stops becoming so—perhaps “so that” the Indian who is himself Indian becomes
something else and tears himself away from his own agony. Becoming is always double, and
it is this double becoming that constitutes the people to come and the new earth.31

In this passage, Deleuze and Guattari evoke a short text that Kafka included in his first
book, Contemplation. The story is titled “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” (“Wunsch,
Indianer zu werden”): “If we were only Indians, instantly alert, on the racing horse,
leaning into the wind, always jerking with brief quivers on the quivering ground,
until the spurs are shed, for there are no spurs, until the reins are thrown away, for
there are no reins, and the land unfolding before one’s sight is shorn heath, already
without horse’s neck and horse’s head.”32 If this desire to become native, this pursuit
of the savage as singularity and not identity, bridges the distance by means of
images of literature or of cinema, in a Brazilian such as Sousândrade (or later, Oswald
de Andrade), the question becomes immediately political. Consider, for example,
Andrade’s short essay titled “To Become Indian”:

The professor closed the book, scratched his head and appallingly announced to his family:

—Today I’ll buy a bow and arrow and board the train to Sorocabana. At least for this
plan Brazil might work my way. I will lose myself in the great jungle and shall never return.
I bought life insurance of which you are all beneficiaries. You don’t need me anymore. And
I cannot take this any longer! Philosophers, politicians, and sociologists all agree that this is
the fall of a class, the debacle of the bourgeoisie. What about the Nuremberg trial? Did the
bourgeois act as Hitler’s obedient dogs in Buchenwald’s gas chambers? Those were common
folks! The human race is decomposing, carrying with it all the social classes! Pay attention to
what is going on in high society.

235 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

 ...

And what about politics? Have you noticed what happened in our paradisiacal
corner? What about free and honest elections? Our cities are inundated by stupefying
propaganda, while in the countryside electors are hounded by campaign managers like
inmates marching to a concentration camp; locked up in warehouses and fired from their
farm jobs the next day for disobeying directions and changing party. And how do these
people live, in shanty towns with no furniture, eating unsalted beans, manioc, and porridge;
debilitated elders dying, children’s bellies infested with vermin. In the prosperous areas,
where to find schools and hospitals? Almsgiving still prevails in its most humiliating
semblance. And as for the idealists, they are selling their consciousness by the pound! I am
out of here. Radars already established contact with the moon, sparkling the lightest hope
that soon man will be leaving this planet. Until that day comes, until I am able to board on
the first rocket to the moon, like Lucian de Samosata envisioned in the first century, leaving
behind the tragic roofless homes—I am becoming an Indian.33

Impossible not to recall here the idea of a flight to the interior, proposed on several
occasions by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro:

I embraced ethnology to run away from Brazilian society, the purportedly compulsory subject
of any social scientist in Brazil. Running away from Brazil was a method to arrive in Brazil
by detour. Circumnavigation. It’s important that the Brazil where we would arrive was the
other, the other side of the Brazil we departed from. Certainly, it was not about running away
from Brazil to vacation in Europe. It was about running away from Brazil, but to arrive in
another more interesting place that had not been weighted, counted, and measured by these
European categories, as Jorge Luis Borges noted—a place more interesting than the “Brazil”
of the powerful. The indigenous as an antidote to the idea of Brazil.34

Equally important is the heuristic excess proposed by Viveiros de Castro when

he maintains “in Brazil, everybody is indigenous, except those who are not.” The
problem is, he suggests, “who is not Indian”:35 “Darcy Ribeiro insisted on the fact
that ‘Brazilian people’ is much more indigenous than one suspects or supposes.
The man freed from slavery, to use the language of Maria Silvia Carvalho Franco,
is an Indian. The hillbilly is an Indian, the coastal man (caiçara) is an Indian, the
mixed-race (caboclo) is an Indian, the peasant from the Northeast hinterland is an
Indian. In what sense? For starters, they are genetically Indian, although that is
irrelevant.”36 Irrelevant because more than genetics, it is the political Indian that
matters: “I maintain that the groups of coastal peoples, mixed-races, peasants and
Indians are Indians (and not 33 percent Indian) in that they are the product of a history
of a systematic process of cultural destruction, of political subjugation, of ‘social
exclusion’ (or worse, of ‘social inclusion’), a process that is obviously endless.”37 To
become Indian is to incorporate in oneself—in the body and in the culture—resistance
(life, and not only survival) as well as an image of desire:

236 | STERZI
 However successful the process of acculturation (set forth by catechesis, missionary zeal,
modernization, and nationalization) was or has been, it is impossible to annul history and
suppress all memory. Human collectives exist crucially and eminently at the moment of
their reproduction, in the intergenerational passage from that relational mode, which is
the collective, and unless those communities are physically exterminated, expatriated,
deported, it is extremely hard to to entirely destroy them. And even when they are destroyed,
or reduced to their individual components, apart from the relations that constituted them,
as it happened to the African slaves, these components reinvent a culture and a way of
life—a relational world that, however constrained by local adverse conditions, is as valid an
expression of human life as any other. There are no unauthentic cultures, for there are no
authentic cultures. There are, by the way, no authentic Indians. Indians, Caucasians, Afro-
descendants, or whoever—for authenticity is not a prerogative of humankind. Or perhaps it is
something that only whites can be (to their detriment).38

Viveiros de Castro positions himself firmly against the identity-obsessed

posture that characterize the Westernized reaction to our endlessly mutable world
in which everything and everybody always seem to be on the verge of becoming
something other, even another humanity. “Very badly comparing—and I say badly
because the comparison risks rekindling old and grotesque stereotypes, it can be
said that being Indian is like what Lacan said about being crazy: it is not who wants
to be. Nor who just says it so. For only an Indian is granted to be so.”39 An endless
metamorphic transitivity without limits, neither internal nor external.

Our theoretical and political goal, as anthropologists, was to establish once and for all that to
be an Indian is not a matter of adorning oneself with feathers and body paint, carrying a bow
and arrow; not some stereotypical visual signifier but rather a matter of a “spiritual state.”
Not only a look but a way of being. Indeed, something more (or less) than a way of being:
Indianhood meant to us a certain mode of becoming, something essentially invisible, but no
less effective: an infinitely continuous movement of differentiation, and not a massive state of
preestablished “difference,” that is, an identity. Our struggle, therefore, was for a conceptual
fight: to make the word still in construction such as “these people are still Indian” (or, “are
no longer Indian”) lose its meaning as “state of transition,” or “phase to be overcome.” The
idea being that Indians still have not been defeated, nor will they ever be. They (will) never
cease to be Indian. In short, the idea was that the Indian could not be seen as a phase in
the progressive march to the enviable state of becoming “white” or “civilized.” We haven’t
succeeded but I believe one day we’ll get there.40

Those who walk across the world in search of a world, recognizing themselves in a
process of becoming, cannot aspire for a direct route. The feeling of regrets—in the
plural, as we find in Darius Milhaud’s Saudades do Brasil, and later in Claude Lévi-
Strauss’s photographic memoir—are not merely the nostalgia that takes us back
(to that which no longer exists) but rather something that propels us forward and
outward (toward that which still does not exist). Otherwise, what’s been put into
question is precisely an integral disassembling of the philosophical categories that in
the past organized our experience of the world, beginning with the idea of linearity of
time, and of history:

237 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

Paulo Nazareth, Untitled.
From the series Notícias de
América, 2012. Photo printing
on cotton paper. Courtesy
Mendes Wood DM.
 Just as we once had a horror of the vacuum, today we are disgusted at the thought of
deceleration, regression, retreat, limitation, braking, decay, descent-sufficiency. Anything
that reminds one of these movements in search of an intensive world-sufficiency (rather than
an epic “limit” overhaul of a hyper-world) is readily accused of naive localism, primitivism,
irrationalism, bad conscience, guilty feeling, or even, without flair, of fascination. For almost
all the forms assumed by today’s dominant thought among “we,” only one direction is
thinkable and desirable, that which leads from the “negative” to the “positive”: from less
to more, from little ownership to ownership of much, “subsistence technique” to “state-
of-the-art technology,” from the Paleolithic nomad to the modern cosmopolitan citizen,
from the savage Indian to the civilized worker. Thus, when peasant communities “in the
process of modernization” decide to return to being indigenous, demonstrating in court their
historical continuity with officially extinct native peoples, as so many rural settlements have
been doing in Brazil since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution—which gave collective
rights of possession of the land to the Indians and descendants of slaves implanted in the
countryside—the shocked and furious reaction of the ruling classes has been a spectacle not
to be missed. Unfortunately, one cannot find grace for a long time from those who continue
with the whip in their hands; the fury, along with greed, of those who need the inexistence of
otherness is translated into a concerted offensive, by legal and illegal means, legislative and
criminal, of the great landowners—and their partners, and their clients, and their bosses—
against the Indians and other traditional peoples of the country. Thus, it is only possible
(and desirable) that an individual or community cease to be an Indian, it is impossible (and
repulsive) to be an Indian again: how can one wish for a future as a backwardness? Well,
maybe the scandal has its reason: maybe it’s impossible to go back historically to be an
Indian. But it is quite possible, more than that, that an Indian-local, a local as a global, a
particular as a general, an incessant becoming-again-Indian is taking over important sectors
of the Brazilian “population” in a completely unexpected way. This is one of the most
important political events that we witness in Brazil today and that is gradually contaminating
many other Brazilian peoples besides indigenous peoples.41

Above all, the main change is in discerning the placement for each creature and each
object (thing) in this world (or more radically, the discernment of different worlds
coexisting, not often peacefully, in the same places).
J. M. G. Le Clézio’s Haï—translated in Portuguse as Índio branco (White
Indian)—stresses the modernity of the encounter with the Indian world, while also
correctly interpreting it as a matter of survival: “Today, the encounter with the Indian
world is not a luxury. It has become a necessity for those who wish to understand
what is going on in the modern world. It’s not enough, however, to merely try to
understand it; but rather of trying to go to the end of all obscure galleries, of opening
some of its doors—ultimately, of trying to survive.”42

The guesa’s journey has been mapped out by Augusto de Campos thus:

Cantos I to III: the descent from the Andes until the source of the Amazonas River; Cantos
IV and V: interludes in Maranhão; Canto VI: trip to Rio de Janeiro; Canto VII: studies in
Europe and trips to Africa (incomplete Canto); Canto VIII: new interlude in Maranhão; Canto
IX: travels through Antilhas, América Central, Golfo do México, and to the United States;
Canto X: Guesa arrives in New York and travels across the United States; Canto XI: Pacific
Ocean, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru; Canto XII: along the Pacific Ocean and toward

239 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

 Argentina, the Andean cordilleras, with incursions into Bolivia and Chile; Canto XIII: returns
to Maranhão (incomplete Canto).43

Sousândrade’s many travels, accomplished at different times, intertwine in O Guesa

as one atemporal journey. If these episodes lack a center, as the Campos brothers
have noted, their structure nevertheless display a shifting axis, like a hurricane
destroying everything in its path. The New York episode is therefore fundamental,
as it informs the poem with the extreme actuality of financial capitalism as the most
recent avatar of colonialism. “Which other poet of his time,” asked the Campos in
1964, “could have traced the Dantesque vision of the New York Stock Exchange—the
epicenter of the capitalist world—as an infernal circle?”44 Inferno’s most terrifying
aspect is its eternal duration, and it is thus understandable that Sousândrade would
construct his vision of hell through an asynchronous collection in which different eras
intersperse and collide. As he starts the episode, Sousândrade notes that the wall that
names the street was erected as a “defense against the Indians.”45
The notion of dislocation defines the guesa and the poet Sousândrade, as well
as his poetry overall, especially as it is presented in this poem. Character, poet, and
poem enact an art of constant dislocation, through which they question any feeling
of belonging exclusively to a territory, and to a language. Sousândrade is an odd
romantic, for whom there is not one language, but languages; not one (national)
territory, but first and foremost, the earth: limitless and without frontiers; element,
hearth, and planet; the lands where one wanders, imbued with a deeper feeling of
belonging (because the being is grounded on earth) and yet, extremely superficial
(because the being is nomad, fleeting, never reducible to a stable essence, to an
identity). In the figure of his cosmopolitan Indian, Sousândrade seems to have
synthesized an understanding of Amerindian thought that would only be articulated
by Oswald de Andrade’s anthropophagia half a century later.

Like a guesa, Paulo Nazareth became a wandering artist who made of his
own sense of dislocation the very issue of his art practice. Art critic Kiki Mazzuchelli
noted that from the beginning, drifting away has been a characteristic of his
process. News from America, his best-known project, represents the moment in
which his drifting took on epic proportions, allowing for previously local concerns,
to gain wider scope.46 Indeed, Mazzuchelli refers to News from America in terms of
an “American epic.”
News from America consisted of a series of nonlinear trips starting in Brazil
and through various countries in Latin America until its final destination in the United
States. Throughout his journey Nazareth wore the same pair of plastic sandals,
never washing his feet and accumulating dust gathered on Latin America soil. The
project ended in New York, as he washed his feet in the Hudson river. Throughout

240 | STERZI
his pilgrimage, Nazareth was attuned to both the public reaction to his ethnicity (he
is a descendent of Krenak Indians mixed in with black and Italian), and to the recent
historical trauma related to political strife in the Americas. The strength of News from
America resides in the intertwining of these three threads: pilgrimage, mixed ethnicity,
and political upheaval.
News from America, which started in March 2011 and lasted for one year, was
a hybrid of itinerant residency and field study. The pamphlet titled Lo que llevo en mi
memoria, issued by the artist during the journey, opens with a reflection on the recent
dictatorship in Brazil: “In Guatemala, I am aware that by digging in the ground, just like
in any place in Latin America, there’s a possibility of coming across bones by chance.
At the moment I am in the Memory Site Campo La Ribera (Córdoba, Argentina), I
dig like a dog, sensing that I might come across fragments of memories . . . in Brazil
my memory is erased, the people do not seem to remember the wounds of the past,
either from the military dictatorship, or slavery”47 Kiki Mazzuchelli notes: “In this short
fragment, Nazareth makes explicit his search for erased memory and suggests the
possibility of discovering it in another land, a different culture but perhaps analogous,
that in some way might share common traits with his native land.”48
Nazareth’s wanderlust, his need to meet different people and cultures, aims
to foster “unsuspected links in an attempt to reconstruct histories never told or
deliberately erased.”49

When I invited him to participate in a group show in Paris in 2011, he replied that he would like
to participate but that unfortunately he could not be present for he would only arrive in Europe
after exploring Africa, the same way that he got to the United States through Latin America. In
one of our last conversations, when he was about to end his American journey, he told me:

“I become myself in my mixed ethnicity

I am indian and black
It’s incredible”50

“His mestizo origin allows him to play with his own image, becoming black,
Indian or simply exotic according to the situation,” Mazzuchelli writes. One of the
performances produced during News from America consisted of the artist carrying
a poster with the phrase: “Vendo mi imagen de hombre exótico” (Exotic Man Image
For Sale). In yet another project, Cara de índio (Indian Face), he photographed himself
with “city-dwelling indigenous persons from the extreme south to the extreme north
of the Americas,” comparing his mestizo face to the face of the other.51

At the end of his Trans-American itinerary, Nazareth seems to revert and

disassemble the art of the conqueror; as Sousândrade described in O Guesa: “e

241 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

os fanfarrões d’Hespanha, / Em sangue edêneo os pés lavando, passam” (and the
Spaniards, with their braggadocio / washing their feet in Edenic blood, they go).52
Marília Librandi-Rocha invites us to consider O Guesa—above all the episodes
known as “Tatuturema,” and “O inferno de Wall Street”—as “performance
poems,”53 as body poems, with their share of “dance” and “pandemonium.”54
In some of his works, Nazareth actually seems to perform what in O Guesa was
given as virtual.
Walter Benjamin wrote “Origin is a whirlpool in the river of becoming and
swallows up the genetic material in its rhythm.” When Paulo Nazareth at last dips
his feet in the Hudson River, near Wall Street, he proposes something like a counter-
origin—returning to the waters the dust of all that apparently is no longer there but
that in fact has always been there, a land with an improper name “America” that goes
beyond the United States. He adds flux (walking, erring, trailing) to the flux (the river).
If experience is wandering, dust is experience materialized as residue, relics.
Earth, in this context, contradicts territory; it is the refusal of territoriality, stuck
to the body; it creates something like a minimal trans-territorial space, extraterritorial,
subterritorial (underground) rather than supraterritorial (celestial). Dissolved in the
waters of another territory, it stands as an inscription, like a tattoo, even though
a mobile one; an inscription that takes its strength from its immediate dissipation
(standing there, yet, putting in question the stability of there).
Paulo Nazareth teaches us that, contrary to what we read in Sousândrade’s
poem, there is no such thing as the last guesa. Every guesa, albeit a figuration of
dubious and mutable identity (which is the Latin-American identity, and, more broadly,
post-Western identity) is always the penultimate: because there will always be another
to testify and to sing “De tudo resta um pouco” (A residue remains from everything),
wrote Carlos Drummond de Andrade. And perhaps literature will always be the
residue that remains from everything that we call history. The posthumous condition,
hinted at by Sousândrade’s last guesa, is tantamount to surviving; and to survive is
to witness, that is, to insist in the word. Perhaps the unfinished character of O Guesa
(a modernist trait present in the oeuvres of Flaubert, Proust, Kafka, Musil, and even
Bolaño55) can be considered as an attempt to assume this penultimate condition. The
ultimate word never arrives. If there is still a word, it is because another will come.
Besides the apocalyptical moments in O Guesa, Sousândrade seems less interested in
the end of the world than in what he himself deems as the “world of the end”:

—São d’electricidade
Tempos, mundo do fim;
= São as manchas solares,
Dos ares
A alumiar tudo assim! 56

242 | STERZI
Perhaps the same can be said of Paulo Nazareth. Instead of the paralyzing fear in
face of the world (space closure by time), Sousândrade and Nazareth opt for a poetic
mapping of the world of the end (time opening up through space). By facing the
world’s evil head on, and revealing it in their own time, the poet and the artist kept the
possibility of utopia alive.

Lá está íris!—ha de haver abysmo . . .

Onde o arco vê-se da visão formosa
Dobrar-se luminoso, um cataclysmo
Se deu, ou s’está dando.57

We must not forget that it is precisely when Guesa enters into the “Wall Street
inferno” and is summoned to leave behind all hope, that “a Voice from the deserts”
asks: “Swedenborg, is there a world to come?”58 Swedenborg’s answer comes a few
stanzas later, and this postponing of the reply is graphically marked by the poet:

(SWEDENBORG respondendo depois :)

—Ha mundos futuros: república,
Christianismo, céus, Lohengrin.
São mundos presentes:
Patentes,
Vanderbilt-North, Sul-Seraphim.59

It is from the horror and degradation of “present worlds” that “future worlds” are
born. Those who “mourn the world” and go after the world to quench their longing
do not mourn the world that was but also the world to come.

243 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

Notes Guccione,” interview with also Eduardo Sterzi, “A voz da interview with Pádua
Giuseppe Savà, RagusaNews. terra,” in Transporte no tempo Fernandes, Prisma Jurídico
I thank the Fundação de com, August 16, 2012, http:// [Transported in time], ed. Ruy 10, no. 2 (July–December
Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado www.ragusanews.com/ Belo (Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras, 2011): 265.
de São Paulo (FAPESP) for articolo/28021/giorgio- 2014), 7–13.
their support of my research agamben-intervista-a-peppe- 27 / Déborah Danowski
for this essay. Translation sava-amo-scicli-e-guccione. 19 / Sousândrade, O Guesa, and Eduardo Viveiros de
from O Guesa by Antonio 291–293. Castro, Há mundo por vir?
Sergio Bessa. 12 / Luiz Costa Lima, Ensaio sobre os medos e
“O campo visual de uma 20 / Sousândrade, 35. os fins (São Paulo: Instituto
1/ Joaquim de experiência antecipadora: Socioambiental, 2014), 158.
Sousândrade, O Guesa (São Sousândrade,” [The visual 21 / Sousândrade, 38–39.
Paulo: Demônio Negro, field of an anticipatory 28 / See Machado de Assis
2009), 19. experience: Sousândrade], 22 / Sousândrade, 37. “[Notícia atual da] Literatura
in ReVisão de Sousândrade, brazileira—Instincto de
2/ Augusto de Campos, ed. Augusto de Campos and 23 / Sousândrade, 47. nacionalidade” [1873], in
“Errâncias de Sousândrade,” Haroldo de Campos, 2nd Critica litteraria (Rio de
in Sousândrade, O Guesa, 7. ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Nova 24 / Darcy Ribeiro, Janeiro: W. M. Jackson,
Fronteira, 1982), 395–434. Testemunho (São Paulo: 1944), 136.
3/ Sousândrade, O Guesa, Siciliano, 1991), 94: “Com
60. 13 / Lima, 399–400 and 407. a expressão, refere-se 29 / Assis, 137.
especificamente aos
4/ See Sousândrade, O 14 / Lima, 407. ‘remanescentes atuais de 30 / See “He got the
Guesa, 22, 29, 60, 84. altas civilizações originais wrong people, earth and
15 / Lima, 410. contra as quais se chocou blood,” in Gilles Deleuze
5/ Marília Librandi-Rocha, a expansão europeia,’ isto and Félix Guattari, What Is
“Maranhão-Manhattan: uma 16 / “C’était le GUESA, é, aos sobreviventes das Philosophy?, trans. Hugh
ponte entre nós. Uma visão ou l’errant, c’est-à-dire la grandes civilizações pré- Tomlinson and Graham
dissonante da literatura e da créature sans asile.” Quoted colombianas, como incas Burchell (New York:
cultura brasileiras” [2008], from the encyclopedia e maias.” (The expression Columbia University Press,
in Maranhão-Manhattan: L’Univers, ou histoire et refers specifically to the 1994), 109.
Ensaios de literatura description de tout les “remnants of the original
brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: peuples, de leurs religions, high civilizations against 31 / Deleuze and Guattari,
7Letras, 2009), 23. moeurs, coutumes, etc.— which European expansion 109.
Colombie et Guyanes, by M. has collided,” that is, the
6/ Librandi-Rocha, 23. C, Famin, in Sousândrade, O survivors of the great pre- 32 / Franz Kafka, “The Wish
Guesa, 17. Columbian civilizations, such to Be a Red Indian,” trans.
7/ Librandi-Rocha, 24. as the Incas and the Maya.) Alessandro Baruffi, in The
17 / See Giorgio Agamben, Tales of Franz Kafka: English
8/ Librandi-Rocha, 24. Homo sacer: Il potere sovrano 25 / In Quel che resta di Translations with Original
e la nuda vita (Turim: Einaudi, Auschwitz, Giorgio Agamben Text in German (Philadelphia:
9/ Librandi-Rocha, 23. 2008 [1995]). thought “witness” precisely Literary Joint Press, 2016), 11.
in relation with the remnant,
10 / Francisco Foot 18 / Ruy Belo, “Explicação more specifically the notion 33 / Oswald de Andrade,
Hardman, “A Panamérica que o autor houve por of the people that remains “Virar índio” [1946], in
utópica de Sousândrade”, in indispensável antepor a esta (povo que resta). Giorgio Telefonema, ed. Vera Maria
A vingança da Hileia: Euclides segunda edição” [Explanation Agamben, Quel che resta Chalmers (São Paulo: Globo,
da Cunha, a Amazônia e the author felt indispensible to di Auschwitz: L’archivio e il 1996), 135–136.
a literatura moderna (São include in this second edition], testimone (Torino: Bollati
Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2009), in Aquele grande rio Eufrates Boringhieri, 1998). 34 / Oswald de Andrade,
213–224. [That great river Euphrates] “O chocalho do xamã é um
(1961, 2nd ed. rev. 1972), 26 / Eduardo Viveiros de acelerador de partículas”
11 / Giorgio Agamben, included in Todos os poemas Castro, “A indianidade é [1999], interview with
“Giorgio Agamben, intervista [All the poems] (Lisboa: um projeto de futuro, não Renato Sztutman, Silvana
a Peppe Savà: Amo Scicli e Assírio & Alvim, 2000), 15. See uma memória do passado,” Nascimento, and Stelio

244 | STERZI
Marras, in Eduardo Viveiros 45 / Sousândrade, O Guesa,
de Castro, ed. Renato 247.
Sztutman (Rio de Janeiro:
Azougue, 2007), 47. Oswald de 46 / Kiki Mazzucchelli,
Andrade, “Uma boa política “Sobre marfins, dentes e
é aquela que multiplica os ossos: uma breve introdução
possíveis,” interview with ao trabalho de Paulo
Renato Sztutman and Stelio Nazareth” [About ivory, teeth,
Marras, in Eduardo Viveiros bones: A brief introduction to
de Castro, 249. the work of Paulo Nazareth],
in Paulo Nazareth: Arte
35 / Eduardo Viveiros contemporânea/LTDA
de Castro, “No Brasil todo (Contemporary Art Inc.),
mundo é índio, exceto quem ed. Paulo Nazareth (Rio de
não é,” (In Brazil, everyone is Janeiro: Cobogó, 2012), 11–21.
Indian except for those who
aren’t), interview with Carlos 47 / Mazzucchelli, 20–21.
Dias Jr., Fany Ricardo, Lívia
Chede Almendary, Renato 48 / Mazzucchelli, 20.
Sztutman, Rogério Duarte
do Pateo and Uirá Felippe 49 / Mazzucchelli, 20.
Garcia, in Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro, 146. 50 / Mazzucchelli, 20.

36 / Castro, 146–147. 51 / Mazzucchelli, 18.

37 / Castro, 147. 52 / Sousândrade, O Guesa,

20.
38 / Castro, 147–148.
53 / Librandi-Rocha,
39 / Castro, 142. “Maranhão-Manhattan,” 49.

40 / Castro, 135–137. 54 / Librandi-Rocha, 49.

41 / Déborah Danowski 55 / See also Jorge

and Eduardo Viveiros de Herralde, “Respuestas a un
Castro, Há mundo por vir? cuestionario de la revista Qué
Ensaio sobre os medos e pasa de Santiago de Chile,”
os fins (São Paulo: Instituto in Para Roberto Bolaño
Socioambiental, 2014), (Buenos Aires: Adriana
156–157. Hidalgo, 2005), 65.

42 / J. M. G. Le Clézio, Índio 56 / Sousândrade, O Guesa,

branco [1971], trans. Júlio 50.
Henriques, (Lisboa: Fenda,
1989), 13. 57 / Sousândrade, 284.

43 / Augusto de Campos, 58 / Sousândrade, 247.

“Errâncias de Sousândrade” From this verse, Danowski
[Sousândrade’s wanderings], and Castro extracted the title
in Sousândrade, O Guesa, of their volume Há mundo
8–9. por vir?.

44 / Campos and Campos, 59 / Sousândrade, O Guesa,

109. 264.

245 | THE WANDERER, THE EARTH

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Form and Feeling is the culmination of a conference Jakob Bill for granting an interview at Max Bill’s residence
sponsored by a generous research grant from the Andy Warhol in Zurich, Switzerland; Martin Mäntele at the Hochschule für
Foundation and presented at the Graduate Center at the City Gestaltung in Ulm, Germany, for allowing me to research in
University of New York (CUNY) in 2016. Additional funding for this the school’s archives; Mrs. Sigrid Mavignier for coordinating a
publication was provided by the Consulate General of Brazil in meeting with Almir Mavignier in Hamburg, Germany, where I also
New York. I am deeply indebted to my colleague Julieta Gonzalez had the opportunity to visit the artist’s studio; Beny Palatnik for
for her valuable input in the initial phase of this project during coordinating a meeting with Abraham Palatnik in his apartment in
her tenure as adjunct curator at the Bronx Museum. In addition, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In addition, I would like to thank those who
we counted on the extraordinary talent of Momo Ishiguro, our granted permission to reproduce images from their archives and
grants writer at the time, who was able to organize our ideas into collections: Alessandra Clark and Fabiane Moraes at the World of
a strong proposal. For the conference, art historian Luisa Valle Lygia Clark; Cesar Oiticica and Ariane Figueiredo at Projeto HO;
offered extraordinary support not only in securing a date in the Luciano Figueiredo for images related to Navilouca; the Acervo
Graduate Center’s hectic calendar but also in coordinating travel do Centro de Pesquisa do MASP; the Arquivo Fundação Bienal
arrangements for all participants. Anna Indych-López, associate de São Paulo; Mendes Wood DM; Nara Roesler Gallery; Hugo
professor of art history at the City College of New York and the Segawa for images of Flávio de Carvalho; Anna Maria Maiolino
Graduate Center embraced our idea from the start, facilitating and Livia Gonzaga, at Studio Anna Maria Maiolino; the inter-
scheduling and, most importantly, introducing the conference and library services at the University of Texas at Austin; and Isadora
moderating one of the sections. Porfirio at Instituto Bardi—Casa de Vidro.
I would also like to thank all the participants for their
generous reception to our proposal and their insightful
contributions: Dr. Michael Asbury (University of the Arts, London);
Dr. Irene Small (Princeton University); Dr. Frederico Coelho
(Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro); Dr. José Lira
(School of Architecture and Urbanism, São Paulo University); Dr.
Rachel Imanishi (Brasilia National University); Dr. Eduardo Jorge
de Oliveira (Zurich University); Dr. Claudia Calirman (John Jay
College of Criminal Justice/CUNY); Luisa Valle (The Graduate
Center of The City University of New York); Dr. Adele Nelson
(University of Texas, Austin) and Dr. Martin Mäntele (director of
the museum and archives of the Ulm School of Design). When
putting together the manuscript for this book, two participants in
the conference withdrew their original papers. To present a more
nuanced picture of the era, we reached out to four colleagues
and asked for specific contributions in their respective areas. I am
extremely indebted to Fernanda Lopes (Curator at Museum of
Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro), Claudia Saldanha (Director of Paço
Imperial, Rio de Janeiro), Marcos Augusto Gonçalves (Journalist
at Folha de São Paulo, and author of 1922: A Semana que não
terminou), and Eduardo Sterzi (Campinas University, São Paulo)
for their utmost professionalism and spirit of collaboration. Their
contributions helped make this collection a valuable resource for
those interested in a cultural moment unfolding throughout a
turbulent period in Brazilian history.
Finally, I would like to thank the individuals and institutions
that collaborated with this project in kindly granting permission
to research in their archives. They include: Ginevra Bria and Atto
Belolli Ardessi at Istituto Internazionale di Studi sul Futurismo in
Milan, Italy, for allowing access to the archives of Mary Vieira;

247 | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Asbury is a London-based art historian, art critic, the intersection of politics and the visual arts during the most
and curator. He is Reader of Art History and Theory at Chelsea repressive years of Brazil’s military regime from 1968 to 1975.
College of Arts, University of the Arts London (UAL) and founding The book received the 2013 Arvey Award by the Association for
member of the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity Latin American Art. Calirman is a recipient of the Arts Writers
and Nation (TrAIN). Over the last twenty years he has written Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation and was a Visiting
extensively on themes involving modern and contemporary art Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
with a particular emphasis on Brazilian culture. His work has been at Harvard University. She is a member of the International
published internationally by Americas Society, Art in America, Association of Art Critics (AICA). Calirman has curated several
Astrup Fearnley, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Cosac exhibitions in New York, including Berna Reale: While You Laugh
Naify, Documenta Kassel (12), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, (2019); Basta! Art and Violence in Latin America (2016); and
Flash Art, Fundação Iberê Camargo, Liverpool University Press, Antonio Manuel: I Want to Act, not Represent! (2011).
MIT Press, Perspectiva, Rodopi, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt,
Tate Publishing, Third Text, Turner Contemporary, and Wilhelm/ Frederico Coelho is a researcher, essayist, and professor
Fink, among others. He has curated a number of exhibitions of Brazilian literature and performing arts in the Department of
on artists such as Alfredo Volpi, Anna Maria Maiolino, Antonio Literature at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro
Manuel, Cao Guimaraes, Cildo Meireles, Detanico and Lain, (PUC-Rio). He has an MA in history from Instituto de Filosofia e
Ibere Camargo, Jose Oiticica Filho, José Patricio, and Rosangela Ciências Sociais at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and
Rennó as well as on themes such as Brazilian photography and a PhD in literature from PUC-Rio. He was a researcher for the
architecture, concrete and neoconcrete art, and the monochrome exhibitions Tropicália—A Revolution in Brazilian Culture (2006)
in contemporary art. and Hélio Oiticica—To Organize Delirium (2018). His publications
include Livro ou livro-me: os escritos babilônicos de Hélio Oiticica
Antonio Sergio Bessa is chief curator emeritus at the Bronx (2010), Eu, brasileiro, confesso minha culpa e meu pecado: cultura
Museum of the Arts, and used to lead a museum education marginal no Brasil 1960/1970 (2010), and (with César Oiticica
seminar at Columbia University’s Teachers College (2006–2016). Filho) Hélio Oiticica: Conglomerado/Newyorkaises (2013).
A scholar of concrete poetry, he has organized several exhibitions
on themes related to text-based art, including Double Space (Apex Marcos Augusto Gonçalves is a journalist and the editor
Art, New York, 2000); Re: La Chinoise (Baumgartner Gallery, New of Ilustríssima, the cultural supplement of Folha de São Paulo.
York, 2002); Animating Fahlström (BAWAG Foundation, Vienna, He is the author of 1922—A Semana que não Terminou (2012)
and the Institut d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France, 2002). At the and coauthor (with Heloísa Buarque de Holanda) of Cultura e
Bronx Museum he organized a series of exhibitions, including Partipação nos anos 60 (1983).
How to Read (2005), Paulo Bruscky: Art is Our Last Hope (2013),
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (in collaboration with Yasmin José T. Lira is professor at the School of Architecture and
Ramírez, 2015), Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect (in collaboration Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (FAU-USP). He used
with Jessamyn Fiore, 2017); and The Life and Times of Alvin to be a research affiliate of the Brazilian National Council of
Baltrop (2019). His essays on concrete poetry and art have been Research (CNPq, 1999–2014) and directed USP’s Center for
published in several anthologies and catalogs, including Öyvind Cultural Preservation (CPC-USP, 2010–2014). His PhD dissertation
Fahlström (1998), Architectures of Poetry (2004), and The Sound (FAU-USP, 1997) explores the connections between housing
of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound (2009), Poetry Goes Visual (2012). debates, urban culture, and architectural and planning discourses
He is the author of Öyvind Fahlström: The Art of Writing (2009) in Recife, Brazil, in the first half of the twentieth century. His
and editor (with Odile Cisneros) of Novas: Selected Writings of post-doctoral research (Tese de Livre Docência, FAU-USP, 2008)
Haroldo de Campos (2007) and Mary Ellen Solt: Toward a Theory focuses on the life and work of Ukrainian avant-garde architect
of Concrete Poetry (2010). Gregori Warchavchik (1896–1972) in Brazil from the 1920s to the
1950s. He has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University’s
Claudia Calirman is associate professor in the Department of Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Art and Music at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York. (2009) and at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture
Her areas of study are Latin American, modern, and contemporary de Paris—Malaquais (2015), as well as a visiting professor
art. She is the author of Brazilian Art under Dictatorship: Antonio in the Program in Latin American Studies and the School of
Manuel, Artur Barrio, and Cildo Meireles (2012), which analyzes Architecture at Princeton University (2020). He is the author of

249 | CONTRIBUTORS
O visível e o invísivel na arquitetura brasileira/The visible and the University of Santa Catarina is about the translation of avant-
the invisible in Brazilian architecture (2017) and Warchavchik: garde poetry. From 2012 to 2014, she coordinated the Centro de
Fraturas da vanguarda (2011); coeditor of Domesticidade, gênero Referência Haroldo de Campos (Casa das Rosas, São Paulo). Since
e cultura material (2017), Patrimônio construído da USP: Políticas 2011 she has directed the Center for Literary Translation Studies at
de proteção, gestão e memória (2014), Memória, trabalho e the museum Casa Guilherme de Almeida in São Paulo.
arquitetura (2013), and São Paulo: Os estrangeiros e a construção
das cidades (2011); and contributor to numerous books and Adele Nelson is an assistant professor in the Department of
journals, writing on architectural and planning history and Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, where
criticism; modernism, architecture, and the city; Brazilian social she is also associate director of the Center for Latin American
thinking; housing history; architecture’s material production; and Visual Studies (CLAVIS). She received her BA in Portuguese and
ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in architecture and urbanism. Brazilian Studies and Art Semiotics from Brown University and
her MA and PhD in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts,
Fernanda Lopes is assistant curator of the Museum of Modern New York University. She specializes in twentieth- and twenty-
Art in Rio de Janeiro. She received her MA and her PhD in art first-century art of Latin America, with a focus on the postwar
history and criticism from the School of Fine Arts at Universidade and contemporary art of Brazil. She is the author of Jac Leirner
Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She is coeditor (with Aristoteles in Conversation with Adele Nelson (Fundación Cisneros, 2011),
A. Predebon) of Francisco Bittencourt: Arte-Dinamite (2016) as which was translated into Portuguese by Cosac Naify in 2013. Her
well as author of Área experimental: lugar, espaço e dimensão do articles have been published in Art Journal and ARTMargins and
experimental na arte brasileira dos anos 1970 (2012) and “Éramos national and international museum publications, including Lygia
o time do Rei”—A Experiência Rex (2006). Her curating experience Clark: Painting as an Experimental Field (2020), Mário Pedrosa: De
includes the Special Room of the Rex Group at the 29th São la naturaleza afetiva de la forma (2017), Hélio Oiticica: To Organize
Paulo Biennial (2010). In 2017 she received the Brazilian Art Critic Delirium (2016), Mário Pedrosa: Primary Documents (2015).
Association’s Maria Eugênia Franco Prize for Best Exhibition Nelson is co-organizing, with MacKenzie Stevens, the exhibition
Curatorship for the exhibition In a frenzy—An overview of the Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil for the
Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro Collection at the Museu Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin in fall 2021.
de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (2016). The project has received the Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts grant. She also contributed to the catalog and helped
Martin Mäntele is lecturer in design history and exhibition to organize the award-winning exhibition Joan Miró: Painting and
theory at the Ulm Polytechnic, Würzburg Polytechnic, and Anti-Painting, 1927–1937 (MoMA, 2008). Her current book project,
Schwäbisch Gmünd Polytechnic. He is also the director of public Forming Abstraction: Art and Institutions in Postwar Brazil,
relations and education at the Museum Ulm and, since 2013, of studies how the practice and theory of abstract art developed in
the HfG-Archiv, the archive of the former Ulm School of Design Brazil in the 1940s and 1950s in close relation to new modern art
(1953–1968). After studying art history and modern German institutions. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright US
literature at the universities of Tübingen, Newcastle upon Tyne, Scholar Program and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
and Hamburg, he received his MA and PhD in art history from the
University of Tübingen. His publications include Ulmer Modelle— Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira is assistant professor at the
Modelle nach Ulm (2003), an exhibition catalog published in Institute of Romance Studies at the University of Zurich, where
conjunction with a travelling exhibition celebrating the 50th he also coordinates the Institute of Brazilian Studies (literature,
founding anniversary of the Ulm School of Design. culture, media). He published several articles on the topic of
animals and animality in Brazilian art and literature, concrete
Simone Homem de Mello is a poet and translator. Her poems poetry, and performance and contemporary literature. His
are collected in Périplos (São Paulo, 2005), Extravio Marinho research interests include literature and visual arts; modernities
(São Paulo, 2010), and Terminal, à escrita (São Paulo, 2015), as and migration in literature and art, representations of violence,
well as in anthologies of Brazilian contemporary poetry. She has and technics of writing.
written libretti for operas, including Orpheus Kristall (composed
by Manfred Stahnke, Munich, 2002), Keine Stille außer der Claudia Saldanha is the director of Paço Imperial in Rio
des Windes (composed by Sidney Corbett, Bremen, 2007) and de Janeiro, an institution dedicated to contemporary art. She
UBU—Eine musikalische Groteske (composed by Sidney Corbett, has a PhD degree in visual arts from UERJ and an MFA degree
Gelsenkirchen, 2012). She has translated into Portuguese novels from Pratt Institute, New York, and teaches art history at the
by Peter Handke and several modern and contemporary German Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). She also used
poets (including Arno Holz, Thomas Kling, Ulf Stolterfoht, and to be the director of the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage
Barbara Köhler). She has also translated Augusto de Campos’s (2008–2014), the Division of Theory and Research at the Museum
poems into German (Augusto de Campos: Poesie, 2019). Mello of Contemporary Art, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (2003–2005), and
studied German literature at the University of São Paulo and at the Visual Arts Division at RioArte (1993–2005) and organized
the University of Cologne. Her PhD thesis in translation studies at many notable exhibitions, including: Alviceleste, a survey of

250 | CONTRIBUTORS
performance artist Márcia X; Paulo Roberto Leal—Espaços
Articulados, at Paço Imperial (2015); Paulo Werneck—Muralista
Brasileiro at the Museu de Arte Moderna de Recife and the Museu
de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2014); Pinacoteca do Estado
de São Paulo and at Caixa Cultural de Brasília (2011); Da Matéria
Nasce a Forma—Paulo Roberto Leal at Museum of Contemporary
Art, Niterói (2007); Abrigo Poético—Diálogos com Lygia Clark,
at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Niterói (2006); Márcia X.,
at Galerie Weisser Elephant, Berlin (2006); Márcia X. Revista, at
Paço Imperial (2005); Insertae Sedis: José Rufino, at Museum of
Contemporary Art, Niterói (2005).

Eduardo Sterzi is a writer, critic, curator, and professor

of literary theory at Universidade Estadual de Campinas
(Unicamp), where he also coordinates the Graduate Program in
literary theory and history. His research includes the relations
between the Middle Ages and modernity in literature, as well
as the topos of the waste land in modern and contemporary
poetry and the survival and dissolution of myth, as well as the
relationship between anthropology, literature, and the arts
in Sousândrade, Oswald de Andrade, and Mário de Andrade.
He cocurated the traveling exhibition Variations of the Wild
Body: Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Photographer (SESC
Ipiranga, São Paulo, Brazil, September 2015 to January 2016;
Weltkulturenmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany, November 2017;
and International Center of Arts José de Guimarães, Portugal,
February 2019). He carried out part of his doctoral (2003–2004)
and postdoctoral (2009) research at the Università degli Studi
di Roma La Sapienza in Italy. He received scholarships from the
main research promotion agencies in Brazil (CAPES, CNPq and
FAPESP). His publications include Por que ler Dante (2008) and
A prova dos nove: alguma poesia moderna e a tarefa da alegria
(2008), Prosa (2001), Aleijão (2009), Cavalo sopa martelo (2011),
and Maus poemas (2016). He used to be the editor of Do céu do
futuro: cinco ensaios sobre Augusto de Campos.

Luisa Valle is a doctoral candidate in art history at the

Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Her
research focuses on Latin American architecture and its
implications for art production from the region, with a special
interest in the local, national, and global contexts of modernism.
She has published articles on Roberto Burle Marx and the
synthesis of the arts, Mary Vieira and concretism, and Thomas
Hirschorn’s Gramsci Monument. She is in the process of finishing
her dissertation entitled “The Beehive, the Favela, the Mangrove,
and the Castle: Modern Architecture in Rio de Janeiro, 1885–
1945.” She has received several fellowships—including a CUNY
Teaching Fellowship at Hunter College and an Avery Foundation/
The Bronx Museum of the Arts Curatorial Fellowship—and has
taught art and architectural history at the City College of New York
and Hunter College.

251 | CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
Page numbers in italics indicate an illustration. art therapy workshops, Engenho de Dentro. See Engenho de
Dentro (Centro Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II, National
A-Cultura della Vita (magazine), 104 Psychiatric Hospital)
abjection, 138 Artaud, Antonin, 123, 235
“Abjection et les formes misérables, L’,” (Bataille), 138 “Arte: Necessidade Vital” (Pedrosa), 39
abstraction, 36–38, 56, 95, 131 Artes (Lins), 151, 154n6
Academia (Bo Bardi), 108 Artistry of the Mentally Ill (Prinzhorn), 39
Agamben, Giorgio, 228 arts education, 60. See also Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG,
Agrippina é Roma Manhattan (H. Oiticica), 206n4 Ulm School of Design); Instituto de Arte Contemporânea
Aicher, Otl, 77, 78, 81, 83, 84–86 (IAC); Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-
Alameda Lorena (F. de Carvalho), 28–30 RJ, Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro); Parque Lage
Albers, Josef, 4, 42, 60, 70, 74, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84; Introitus (School of Visual Arts)
(Dedication), 65–66, 75n29 arts, synthesis of, 94–95, 100n23
Allianz, 91s Assis, Machado de, 153, 233
Alvim, Roberto, 4, 6 Auto do possesso (H. de Campos), 193
Amaral, Aracy, 2, 60, 128, 129, 142n1 avant-garde, 2–3, 6, 13, 18–21, 35, 39, 52, 59, 60, 62, 67, 70–72,
Amaral, Tarsila do, 21, 42, 128, 182 73nn6,7 96–99, 115, 117, 124, 145, 167, 184, 186, 211, 213, 222,
ambiguity, 93, 95, 99, 220, 221 223n15
Amora, Artur, 39, 57n5
anarchism, 40 Bailado do deus morto (F. de Carvalho), 21
“Anatomia da formação” (Santiago), 204 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 133
Andrade, Carlos Drummond de, 235, 242 Bandeira, Antonio, 45
Andrade, Mario de, 153, 155n24, 235 Bardi, Pietro Maria, 62–64, 67, 74nn20–21, 104
Andrade, Oswald de, 18, 21, 118, 125n8, 128, 155n24, 182–183, “Barnbilônia” (H. Oiticica), 193
235, 240 “Barocke Marine” (“Marinha Barroca,” Holz, trans. A. de Campos
anthropophagia, 19, 20, 128, 138–139, 235, 240 and H. de Campos), 213, 223n16
“Anthropophagite Manifesto” (O. de Andrade), 128 baroque, 193, 208n24, 211, 213, 215, 218, 219, 221–222, 224n23,
anti-art, environmental, 98, 101n38 235
Anzieu, Didier, 201 Barr, Alfred H., Jr., 59, 62, 73
Ao vencedor as batatas (Schwarz), 1, 8n1 Barros, Emygdio de, 122, 148, 154n9
“Apocalipopótese” (happening), 131, 142n16 Barros, Lenora de, 207n12
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 4, 210, 219 Bastos, Oliveira, 120
Aragon, Louis, 15 Bataille, Georges, 138, 143n34
Arantes, Otilia, 41 Baudrillard, Jean, 161
architecture, 27–30, 93–95, 97–99, 104–106 Bauhaus, 3, 4, 6, 59–76, 77–79, 81, 84, 86, 94–95, 100n23, 104, 210
Área experimental (exhibition series), 161, 166–167, 179n8 Behring, Edith, 89, 100n1
Arnheim, Rudolf, 68 Belo, Ruy, 229
“Arno Holz” (A. de Campos and H. de Campos), 7, 209, 213, 218 Benedicto, Jozias, 159
arrière-garde, 3–4 Benjamin, Walter, 202, 242
Arroz e feijão (Maiolino), 138 Bense, Max, 84, 117, 125n7
art: abstraction, 56; design and, 84–85; experimentation, 166–167; Bento, Antônio, 161
Grupo Frente, 69–70; inequality, 128–129; nationalism and, 4, Bergdoll, Barry, 60
6; outsider, 38, 115, 123, 125n4; psychiatric patients’, 39–40, Bergmiller, Karlheinz, 81
121; public, 98; Read, 40–41, 50–51; science and, 50–51; simple Betts, Paul, 62
and, 44 Bildung, 198
Art Brut, 39 Bienal Latino-Americana de São Paulo (“Mitos e magias”), 135
art critical discourses, inconsistencies within, 35–58 Bill, Max, 4, 74n21, 76n41; Bauhaus in Brazil, 60, 63, 68–69, 76n43;
art museums, 107–109 Hochschule für Gestaltung, 77, 78–79, 81, 85; Josef Albers,

253 | INDEX
 Hans Arp, Max Bill (exhibition) poster, 75n29; Ministry of Cara de índio (Nazareth), 241
Education building, 95; Vieira, 89, 91; Weissmann’s Cubo Cardoso, Joaquim, 91
vazado, 53, 56 cariocas, rift with paulistas, 35–37
bioscriptural drive, 193, 200, 201, 206n5, 208n24 Carvalho, Eleazar de, 27
birth, 131, 139, 140 Carvalho, Flávio de, 6, 11–13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18–33
Black Mountain College, 4, 74, 81 Carvão, Alusío, 67, 69
Blechschmiede, Die (Holz), 219 casa é o corpo, O (Clark), 155n23
Bo Bardi, Lina, 6, 25, 74n16, 103, 104–109, 106, 107 Castro, Eduardo Viveros de, 233, 236–237, 245n58
body: Bakhtin, 133; Carvalho, 18, 21–23, 29; Clark, 124, 148, catalogs, 39, 39, 41, 93, 104, 160, 179n5
149–150, 152, 155n23; H. Oiticica, 124, 198; Pape, 124, 134; Centro de Pesquisa de Arte, 145, 154n2
space of experimentation, 122, 124 Centro Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II. See Engenho de Dentro
“BODYWISE” (H. Oiticica), 192 (Centro Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II, National Psychiatric
Bólide caixa 18, “Homenagem a cara de cavalo” (H. Oiticica), 202 Hospital)
Bopp, Raul, 153, 155n24, 235 Chermayeff, Serge, 74n20
“Brasil diarréia” (H. Oiticica), 204 “Cinco anos entre os brancos” (Bo Bardi), 109
Brasilia, 28, 90, 92, 93–95, 96, 97, 98–99, 154n1, 182 Cinema Novo, 182, 185–187
Brasilien baut Brasília (Vieira), 93 “cinema novo e a aventura da criação, O” (Rocha), 185
Braun, 87 “City of the Naked Man, The” (F. de Carvalho), 19–20
Brazil, 1–4, 6–7, 8nn1,3, 11, 12, 20, 21, 24, 28, 35, 36, 38, 51, 97–98, Clark, Lygia, 7, 58n39, 59, 62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 97, 117, 122, 124, 128,
129, 154n1, 182–184, 186 142n4, 145, 146, 147–149, 150, 151–155
Brett, Guy, 128 clinical, relationship with critical, 123–124
Brito, Ronaldo, 2, 51–52, 58n38, 60, 73n8 Clube de Arte Moderna (CAM, Modern Artists’ Club), 20–21
Broodthaers, Marcel, 155n23 Coelho, Frederico, 7, 192, 193
Buchloh, Benjamin, 60, 73n6 Cold War, 38, 62, 70, 78
Bulcão, Athos, 91, 94, 167 colonialism, 1, 2, 20, 216, 228, 240
Burandt, Ulrich, 85 concrete art. See concretism
Bürger, Peter, 59, 60, 73n6 Concrete Marigold (E. Forman), 159
concrete poetry, 3, 117, 120–121, 182, 199–200, 209–211, 213,
Cabinet, The (E. Forman), 159 215–216, 221–222
Caixa de baratas (Pape), 130–131, 133 concretism, 1–4, 6, 93–94, 130–131; relationship with
Caixa de formigas (Pape) 130–131, 133 neoconcretism, 7, 12, 35–58, 115–124, 142, 147, 151, 153, 192,
Calder, Alexander, 73n7 199, 202, 204–207, 209; São Paulo, 35–39, 48, 49, 115, 118,
Calligrammes (Apollinaire), 210 120–122. See also concrete poetry
CAM (Clube de Arte Moderna, Modern Artists’ Club), 20–21 Conglomerado Newyorkaises (H. Oiticica), 192, 206n11
Campofiorito, Quirino, 40 constructivism, 2, 7, 46, 50–51, 56, 58, 60, 62, 94–97, 99, 100n2,
Campos, Augusto de, 3, 4–5, 7, 58n30, 116, 117, 118, 209, 221–223; 115, 117, 118, 120, 122, 124, 130–131
Holz and Sousândrade, 211, 213, 215–217, 218, 244 consumerism, 134, 138
Campos, Haroldo de, 1, 58n30, 116, 117, 118, 155n24, 191–208, Contemplation (Kafka), 235
209, 211, 221–223; “Arno Holz,” 213, 218; “Da fenomenologia “Contemporary City, The” (Niemeyer), 95
da composição à matemática da composição,” 120; Cordeiro, Waldemar, 36, 44
Galáxias (Galaxies), 117, 125n6, 191, 192–193, 196, 198–202, Costa, Lúcio, 94–95, 100n21
203–204, 205, 206n5, 207nn14,16; Hagoromo—o manto de Costa Lima, Luis, 228
plumas, 206n6; “Heliotapes” 1, 194; “Heliotapes” 2, 195; counterculture, 6, 7, 115–125, 167, 207n14
Holz and Sousândrade, 211, 213, 215–216, 218, 219; Holz’s coup de dés, Un (Mallarmé), 198, 210, 213
“Mondabend” (“Noite de Lua,” trans.), 213; “Parafernália para Coutinho, Wilson, 110
Hélio Oiticica,” 196–198, 199; “Peregrinação Transamericana Crescimento e Criação (Pedrosa and Serpa), 67, 67–68
do Guesa de Sousândrade, A,” 224n23; sequestro do critical, relationship with clinical, 123–124
barroco na formação da literatura brasileira, O, 208n24, crowds, 21–23. See also multitude
224n23; Signantia Quasi Coelum—Signância Quase Céu, Cubo vazado (Weissmann), 53, 56
221; Sousândrade’s Harpa de oiro, 220–221; Sousândrade’s O cultural imperialism, 37
Guesa errante, 243; Zeami’s (attrib.) Hagoromo (trans.), 193, cultural liberation, 37
196 cultural subjugation, 3
Cândido, Antonio, 204, 208n24 Cunha, Fausto, 193
canonization, 35 curricula: Bauhaus, 81, 84; Hochschule für Gestaltung, 77, 81, 84,
“Canto XX” (Pound), 222, 224n39 85, 86–87; Instituto de Arte Contemporânea, 63–64, 71, 75n23;

254 | INDEX
 Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, 69; Parque Lage, environmental anti-art, 98, 101n38
108–109, 110 epic poetry, 198, 200, 211, 220. See also Holz: Phantasus;
Sousândrade: O Guesa errante
“Da fenomenologia da composição à matemática da composição” epidermization, 127, 130–140, 201–202
(H. de Campos), 120 epiphany, 198–202
Dadaism, 20, 167 Equação dos desenvolvimentos em progressões crescentes e
Dafnis (Holz), 218 decrescentes (Maluf), 65–66, 75n28
d’Amico, Tereza, 45 equality, 128–129
Daniel, Arnaut, 222 Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI), 60, 79, 81
Danowski, Déborah, 233, 245n58 ESDI (Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial), 60, 79, 81
Darger, Henry, 148 Estado escatológico (Maiolino), 130, 135
“Das formas significantes à Lógica da expressão” (Pedrosa), 121 excrement, 134–135, 138, 140
“De Holz a Sousândrade” (A. de Campos and H. de Campos), 213 exhibition catalog (Grupo Frente), 39
Degand, Leon, 38, 39, 121 Exhibition of Concrete Art, 46
Deleuze, Gilles, 123, 235 experience, 71–72, 94, 100n2, 105–110, 131, 133, 192–193, 203–204.
Depestre, René, 18 See also Carvalho, Flávio de
“Desencontro” (Costa), 95 Experiência no. 2 (F. de Carvalho), 11–12, 21–23
design, 64, 84–87 Experiência no. 3 (F. de Carvalho), 11, 12, 16, 17, 23–27
destruction, 131, 139, 140, 226, 231, 233–236 experiências (F. de Carvalho), 11–12, 16, 17, 23–27, 31n4
Deus e o Diabo no Fausto de Goethe (H. de Campos), 201 experimentation, 70–71, 115, 161, 166–167, 204. See also
developmentalism, 2, 51, 94, 98–99 Carvalho, Flávio de
D’Horta, Arnaldo Pedroso, 45 Exposição de pintura moderna (exhibition), 183–184
Di Cavalcanti (Rocha), 181–182, 186 expressionism, 31, 44, 62, 128
Di Cavalcanti, Elizabeth, 181–182
Di Cavalcanti, Emiliano, 36, 45, 94, 181–182, 184, 186 Fahlström, Öyvind, 155n23
Di Prete, Danilo, 41 Fajardo-Hill, Cecilia, 142n14
“Dialética da malandragem” (Cândido), 208n24 Famin, Stanislas Marie César, 228–231
Diário de S. Paulo (journal), 24 fashion, 24, 25, 32n35
Dias-Pino, Wladimir, 52 Faust II (Goethe), 219
Díaz, Eva, 71 Fazenda Capuava (F. de Carvalho), 12–15, 14, 18, 31n12
Dickerman, Leah, 71 Fédida, Pierre, 148, 151, 154n14
digital technology, 221–222 feminism, 127–129, 134, 140, 142nn1,14
discrimination, 128–129 Fenollosa, Ernest, 193, 206n7
dislocation, 167, 240–243 Fernandes, Pádua, 233,
Divisor (Pape) 131, 133 Ferrara, Maria, 25
Doesburg, Theo van, 37 Fiaminghi, Hermelindo, 59, 61
Domingues, Raphael, 148, 154n9 Figueiredo, Luciano, 117, 120, 122, 123
drawing, 64–66 figuration, 36, 38, 95, 100n26
Duarte, Rogério, 115, 117, 123, 125n12, 148, 154n9 Films and Slides of Family and Friends in Brazil (E. Forman), 177
Dubuffet, Jean, 39, 68 Flor do Mal (periodical), 1, 191, 193–195, 206n1
Folha de São Paulo (newspaper), 36, 204
Eat Me (Pape) 133, 139, 143n22 food, excrement and, 134–135, 140
Eat me: A gula ou a luxúria? (Pape) 133–134, 143nn24,26 form, 2, 64, 184, 192, 203205, 220
education, 2, 4, 60, 66, 67, 77, 100n35, 199, 204. See also “Forma e personalidade” (Pedrosa), 39, 41, 121
Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG, Ulm School of Design); Forman, Antonietta Clélia Rangel, 157, 158
Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (IAC); Museu de Arte Forman, Emil, 7, 157–161, 162–165, 166–168, 169–176, 177–179
Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ, Museum of Modern Art Formas eletrorotatorias, espirálicas, a perfuração virtual (Vieira),
in Rio de Janeiro); Parque Lage (School of Visual Arts) 93
Eficácia (F. de Carvalho), 19 formation, 2, 199, 204
Eichbauer, Hélio, 108 Foster, Hal, 60, 73n6
Eisenstein, Sergei, 4 Foucault, Michel, 123, 124, 1125n14
Engenho de Dentro (Centro Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II, Franck, Klaus, 85
National Psychiatric Hospital), 38, 39–40, 57n21, 68, 100n35, Franco, Maria Silvia Carvalho, 236
118, 121–124, 148, 153, 154nn2,4,9 Freud, Sigmund, 22
Entrevidas (Maiolino), 132, 139 Froebel, Friedrich, 4

255 | INDEX
Futurism, 210 high modernism, 115, 117, 125n5
history, 200–203, 208n24, 211, 218, 228, 230, 237–238, 241, 242,
Galáxias (Galaxies, H. de Campos), 117, 125n6, 192–193, 196, 246
198–205, 206n5, 207nn14,16 Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG, Ulm School of Design), 4, 60, 68,
GAM (magazine), 177 77–88, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86
Geisel, Ernesto, 182 Holz, Arno: Phantasus, 211, 213, 214, 215, 217–218, 219–220, 223,
gender issues, 127–129, 140 223n15
Gerchman, Rubens, 6, 103, 108, 110, 118, 154n14 housing, 29–30, 91
Gesamtkunstwerk, 94, 100n23
Geschwister Scholl Foundation, 78 IAC. See Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (IAC)
Gestalt psychology, 56, 57n21, 65 identity, national, 3, 37, 95, 99
Giorgi, Bruno, 18, 42, 45, 94, 100n26 illegibility, 209, 220–221, 222
Giunta, Andrea, 142n14 Illinois Institute of Technology, 4, 74n20, 79
Glu, Glu, Glu . . . (Maiolino), 134–135 images, 122, 178
Goeldi, Oswaldo, 42 imagination, 227–229
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 198, 201, 219 imperialism, cultural, 37, 184
Goulart, João, 110, 145, 154n1 In-Out (Antropofagia) (Maiolino), 138–139, 141
Grande tela, A (installation), 147 Indianhood, 237–239, 241–243. See also nativehood
Graphic Tectonics series (Albers), 65, 65–66, 75n29 indigeneity, 233–235, 237–239, 241–243
Gropius, Walter, 60, 70, 77, 100n23 Índio branco (Haï, Le Clézio), 239
grotesque realism, 133 “Inferno de Wall Street, O” (“The Wall Street Inferno,”
Grundlehre (Hochschule für Gestaltung), 78–79, 81, 84, 85, 86–87 Sousândrade), 191–192, 202, 203, 216–217, 228, 242–243
Grupo Frente, 37, 39, 39, 67, 69, 70, 75n34, 76n45, 121, 145, 154n2 Institute of Design, Chicago, 63, 64, 74n20
Grupo Música Nova, 125n2 Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (IAC), 62, 63–66, 71,
Guattari, Félix, 123, 235 74nn14,16,21, 75n23, 104
Guernica (Picasso), 43 Interbau (exhibition), 93
Guernica Biennial, 36, 43 International Congress of Artists, 94
guesa, 228–230, 231, 238, 243, 246. See also Guesa errante, O International Congress of Psychiatry, 40
(Sousândrade); Indianhood; nativehood International Extraordinary Conference of Art Critics, 94
Guesa, O (Sousândrade), 7, 212, 226–231, 233–235, 239, 240–243 International Museum Council, 107
Guesa errante, O (Sousândrade), 202, 206n4, 211, 216–217, International Music University, 27–28
219, 223n15; “Inferno de Wall Street, O” (“The Wall Street Introitus (Dedication) (Albers), 65, 65–66, 75n29
Inferno”), 191–192, 202, 203, 216–217, 228, 242–243; intuition, 29, 37, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 56, 121. See also irrationalism
“Memorabilia,” 223n15; “Tatuturema,” 216, 219, 228, 232, 242 irrationalism, 186; rationalism and, 115, 117–118, 122–123. See
Guimarães, Fernando Luis, 196 also postmodernism
Gulart, João, 8n3 Itamaraty Palace, 95. See also Polyvolume: Meeting Point
Gullar, Ferreira, 2, 3, 6, 48, 50–52, 58n30, 71, 94, 96, 120–122, 145, (Polivolume: Ponto de encontro, Vieira)
149; “Manifesto neoconcreto,” 48, 50, 58n32, 94, 96, 120, Itten, Johannes, 84
142n4; Vanguarda e subdesenvolvimento, 2, 3
Jardim, Reynaldo, 120–121
Habitat (magazine), 104, 107 Jornal do Brasil (newspaper), 95, 120, 181
Hagoromo (attrib. Zeami, trans. H. de Campos), 193, 197, 198, 199 Josef Albers, Hans Arp, Max Bill (exhibition), 75n29
Hagoromo—o manto de plumas (H. de Campos), 206n6 Jung, Carl, 40, 41, 57n21
Haï (Índio branco, Le Clézio), 239 Juventude Musical Brasileira, 27
haiku, 218
Hardt, Michael, 131 Kafka, Franz, 235, 242
Harpa de oiro (Sousândrade), 220 Kandinsky, Vasily, 65–66, 68–69, 75n28
Hegel, G. W. F., 202, 207n21 Kinechromatic Device (Palatnik), 54, 55
“Heliotapes” 1 (H. de Campos), 193, 194 Klabin, Paulo, 147
“Heliotapes” 2 (H. de Campos), 193, 195 Klee, Paul, 60, 68–69 73nn7,9, 84
Here & There (Maiolino), 139–140 Krauss, Rosalind, 138
Herkenhoff, Paulo, 69; E. Forman, 166–167; Latin American art, Kubitschek, Juscelino, 43, 51, 145, 154n1
128, 134; madness and reason, 153; Maiolino, 139; Pape, 128,
131; Pedrosa, 100n37 Lacan, Jacques, 200, 207n17, 237
HfG. See Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG, Ulm School of Design) Lacerda, Carlos, 103–106

256 | INDEX
Langer, Susanne, 41–42, 51–52, 56 Mazzuchelli, Kiki, 240–241
language, 117, 122, 138–140, 185, 215–217 McCloy, John J., 78
Latour, Bruno, 21 Me segura qu’eu vou dar um troço (Salomão), 122, 123
Le Clézio, J. M. G., 239 “Mechanism of loving emotion” (F. de Carvalho), 13
Lefebvre, Henri, 90 mechanisms, 22, 23, 29, 30
Leon, Ethel, 63, 75n28 medieval, 70
Leskoschek, Axl, 100n1, 154n2 Meeting Margins (conference), 57n21
liberation, cultural, 37 “Memorabilia” (Sousândrade), 223n15
Librandi-Rocha, Marília, 227–229, 242 Mendes, Murilo, 15, 18, 179n11
Life Styles—ICA Films (exhibition), 177 Meu doce rio (Clark), 146, 147, 148, 149–151, 150, 153, 154nn6,17,
Lima, Jorge de, 167, 179n11 155n23
Lins, Sonia, 151–153 Milliet, Sérgio, 193
literary history, 199, 202–203, 208n24, 217–218 Minha formação (Nabuco), 204
literature, 3, 7, 12, 149, 150, 153, 155n24, 204, 208, 211, 218, 222 “Mitos e magias” (I Bienal Latino-Americana de São Paulo), 135
Livro-obra (Clark), 147 Mitos vadios (exhibition), 130, 131, 135
Livro ou livro-me (Coelho), 193 “moda e o novo homem, A” (F. de Carvalho), 24
Lo que llevo en mi memoria (Nazareth), 241 Modern Artists’ Club (Clube de Arte Moderna, CAM), 20–21
Lobato, Monteiro, 150 “Moderne Walpurgisnacht—Kein Misterium” (Holz), 219
long poetry, 197, 213–215, 218, 220. See also Holz: Phantasus; modernism, 40–42, 73n7, 96, 184, 186; architecture, 93–94;
Sousândrade: O Guesa errante European, 1–4, 50, 59–60, 72; high, 115, 117, 125n5; literature,
“Louco faz arte?” (Gullar), 122 153, 155n24
modernismo, 42, 128
Machado, Duda, 117 modernist architecture, 93–94
Maciel, Luiz Carlos, 123, 206n1 modernist literature, 153, 155n24
madness, 117, 118, 123–124, 153. See also irrationalism modernity, 8n1, 220–222, 242–243
Maiolino, Anna Maria, 127–143, 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 141 Moholy-Nagy, László, 63–64
Mais de mil (Maiolino), 137, 139 “Mondabend” (“Noite de Lua,” Holz, trans. H. de Campos), 213
Malabou, Catherine, 207n21 Monumento à fome (Maiolino), 131, 135
Malasartes (journal), 134, 143n27 Moore, Henry, 40, 50
Maldonado, Tomás, 81, 84, 84–85 Moraes, Susana de, 117
Malfatti, Anita, 128, 142, 183–184 Morais, Frederico, 138, 143n32, 160–161
Mallarmé, Stéphane, 4, 192, 198, 200, 206, 210, 211, 213 Muitos (Maiolino), 136, 139
Maluf, Antonio, 65–66, 65, 72, 75nn27–29 multiculturalism, 128
MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Museum multitude, 131. See also crowds
of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro), 62, 66–69, 75n32, 130, 147, Murtinho, Wladimir, 95
154n4 Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), 24, 25, 62, 63, 66, 89, 104,
MAM-SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo 106–108, 109
Museum of Modern Art ), 39, 62, 63, 104, 121, 130 Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP, São Paulo
Mammi, Lorenzo, 42, 44 Museum of Modern Art ), 39, 62, 63, 104, 121, 130
Man Ray, 20, 168 Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ, Museum
“Manifesto neoconcreto” (Gullar), 48, 50, 58n32, 94, 96, 120, 142n4 of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro), 62, 66–69, 75n32, 130, 147,
“Marinha Barroca” (“Barocke Marine,” Holz, trans. A. de Campos 154n4
and H. de Campos), 213, 215 Museum of Modern Art, Salvador, 109
Marriage Lunch series (E. Forman), 177 Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (Museu de Arte
Martins, Maria, 45, 128 Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, MAM-RJ), 62, 66–70, 75n32, 147,
Martins, Sérgio, 57n21, 73n7 154n4
masculine supremacy, 129 museums, 106–109
MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo), 24, 25, 62, 63, 66, 89, 104, Música Nova, 115, 125n2
106–108, 109 “Müüüüüm and the Megaphones” (Fahlström), 155n23
Matarazzo Sobrinho, Francisco, 43
mathematics, 37, 46, 48, 50–52, 120–121 Nabuco, Joaquim, 204
Maurício, Jayme, 47 national identity, 3, 37, 95, 99
Mavignier, Almir da Silva, 38, 39, 57n5, 68, 80, 81, 121 National Psychiatric Hospital. See Engenho de Dentro (Centro
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 219 Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II, National Psychiatric Hospital)
mazes, 198, 207n12 nationalism, art and, 4, 6

257 | INDEX
nativehood, 233–235, 237–238. See also Indianhood 196, 198, 203–204, 206nn6,11
naturalism, 211 Oiticica Filho, César, 192
nature, 228–229, 231, 232 On Growth and Form (Thompson), 50
Nature (magazine), 26–27 organic, 50
Naves, Rodrigo, 46, 48 outsider art, 38, 115, 123, 125n4
Navilouca (magazine), 117–118, 120, 124 ovo, O (Pape) 131, 139
Nazareth, Paulo, 230, 234, 238, 240–241
Negri, Antonio, 131 Palatnik, Abraham, 38–39, 54, 55, 69
neoconcrete manifesto (“Manifesto neoconcreto,” Gullar), 48, 52, Pan-American Conference of Architects, 19–20
58n32, 94, 96, 120, 142n4 Pan-Americanism, 227–229
neoconcretism, 46, 48, 50–52, 71–72, 89, 94, 96, 142n4, 205; Pape, Lygia: body, 124; discrimination in art, 128; epidermal and
relationship with concretism, 35–58, 115–125, 153, 166, 192, visceral works, 130–131, 133–134, 139, 140, 143nn22,24,26;
202, 204–206, 249; Rio de Janeiro, 35–37, 115, 117–118, feminism, 127; Grupo Frente exhibition, 69; Gullar, 122;
120–121 neoconcretism, 142n4
neologisms, 211, 213 “Parafernália para Hélio Oiticica” (H. de Campos), 196–198, 199
Neto, Torquato, 115, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125n12 Parangolé Cape 23, M’Way Ke (H. Oiticica), 196
Neue Zeitung, Die (newspaper), 78 parangolés (H. Oiticica), 193, 196, 196, 198, 203–204, 206nn6,11
“New City—Synthesis of the Arts, The” (Pedrosa), 94 Parque Lage (School of Visual Arts), 103–104, 105–106, 108–109,
New Look (F. de Carvalho), 23–27 110, 111n1
“New Models of the Rental House” (F. de Carvalho), 30 Parque Lage, Project for a pavilion at (Bo Bardi), 106, 107
New York, 177–178, 184, 191–193, 202, 206n4, 216, 243. See also Parts of a Body House (Schneeman), 155n23
Sousândrade: “Inferno de Wall Street, O” (“The Wall Street Pasquim, O (periodical), 123
Inferno”) Patricio, José, 57n5
New York Stock Exchange, 206n4, 216, 240. See also paulistas, rift with cariocas, 35–37, 115, 117–118, 120–121
Sousândrade: “Inferno de Wall Street, O” (“The Wall Street Pedrosa, Mário, 47, 76n39, 147; art, 56, 69–71; art museums, 107–
Inferno”) 108; “Arte: Necessidade Vital,” 39; Bauhaus, 71–72; Brazilian
News from America (Notícias de América) series (Nazareth), 230, attitude to modernism, 73n7; children’s education, 2, 4, 66,
234, 238, 240, 241 67, 100n35; Clark and Albers, 70; Crescimento e Criação, 67,
Nicholson, Ben, 41, 44 67–68; “Das formas significantes à Lógica da expressão,” 121;
Niemeyer, Oscar, 94, 95, 100n21 “Forma e personalidade,” 39, 41, 121; Grupo Frente exhibition
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 20, 202, 207n21 albums, 69–70; neocolonial attitude of foreign art critics, 59;
Nochlin, Linda, 128 “The New City—Synthesis of the Arts,” 94; H. Oiticica, 98,
Noigandres poets, 4, 7, 209–211, 219–222, 224n39 100n37, 101n38; “The Problematics of Sensibility,” 52; Serpa,
“Noh” or Accomplishment (The Noh Theatre of Japan, Fenollosa 66, 67–68; Vieira’s Polyvolume, 98; Volpi, 36–42, 44
and Pound), 193, 206n7 Pense-Bête (Broodthaers), 155n23
Noh theater, 192, 193, 196, 206n7 “Peregrinação Transamericana do Guesa de Sousândrade, A” (H.
Noh Theatre of Japan, The (“Noh” or Accomplishment, Fenollosa de Campos), 224n23
and Pound), 193, 206n7 Péret, Benjamin, 20, 21, 68
“Noite de Lua” (“Mondabend,” Holz, trans. H. de Campos), 213 Perloff, Marjorie, 3–4
Nonné-Schmidt, Helene, 84 Pessoa, Fernando, 201
Notícias de América (News from America) series (Nazareth), 230, Pestalozzi, Johan Heinrich, 4
234, 238, 240, 241 Peterhans, Walter, 4, 79, 81, 85
Nova objetividade brasileira (exhibition), 130 Phantasus (Holz), 211, 213, 214, 215, 217–218, 219–220, 223n15
Nove artistas de Engenho de Dentro (exhibition), 121 phenomenology, 48, 70
Novo Mundo, O (newspaper), 233 Picasso, Pablo, 43
Pictures of Antonietta Clélia Rangel Forman (E. Forman), 157–159,
Object of the Atlantic, The (Price), 2 161, 162–165, 167–168, 169–176
objectivity, 51–52 Pignatari, Décio, 12, 36, 37, 46, 58n30, 116, 209, 211, 222
Objects of Maria dos Anjos Ferreira (E. Forman), 160–161 Pintura em Pânico, A (Lima), 179n11
Oficina Theater (Teatro Oficina), 104, 182 Planes on Modulated Surface #5 (Clark), 71
Oiticica, César, 69 Planos em superfície modulada series (Clark), 70–71, 71, 72
Oiticica, Hélio, 3, 7, 58n39, 101nn38,41, 117, 118, 123, 124, 135, plasticity, 202, 207n21
142nn4,16; correspondence with Clark, 147, 148, 152; Grupo “Poema sujo” (Gullar), 149
Frente exhibition, 69; meeting with H. de Campos, 1, 191–208; “Poesia concreta” (Gullar, Bastos and Jardim), 120–121
Parangolé Cape 196, M’Way Ke, 196; parangolés, 193, 196, poetry, 50–52, 121, 198–200, 211, 220–221, 233–235, 240–243. See

258 | INDEX
 also concrete poetry; Holz: Phantasus; Sousândrade: O Guesa Richard, Nelly, 129
errante Rio de Janeiro, 183; neoconcretism, 35–37, 115, 117–118, 120–121;
Pólen (magazine), 117–118 public spaces, 105
Political Body, The (exhibition), 142n14 Rivet, Paul, 18
Polivolume: conexão-livre-homenagem a Pedro de Toledo (Vieira), Rocha, Glauber, 181–182, 185–186
90–91 Roericht, Hans (Nick), 87
Polivolume—Ponto de encontro (Polyvolume: Meeting Point, Rolinhos e cobrinhas (Maiolino), 139–140
Vieira), 89–101, 92, 96, 97 Romanticism, 208n24, 228
Polyvolume: Meeting Point (Polivolume—Ponto de encontro, Ruchti, Jacob, 62, 63, 64, 75n28, 104
Vieira), 89–101, 92, 96, 97 Ruptura Group, 37
Pompeia Factory, 104, 109
Pontual, Roberto, 160 Salomão, Waly, 117, 118, 122, 123, 124, 125n14
populism, 184, 185 Salon Magazine (exhibition), 177
Portinari, Candido, 184 Santa Helena group, 42
posters, 65–66, 65, 75n29 Santiago, Silviano, 204
postmodernism, 117, 125n5. See also irrationalism São Paulo, 183–184
“Póstudo” (A. de Campos), 3, 4–5 São Paulo Biennial: 1st (1951), 36, 37, 38–39, 64, 65; 2nd (1953), 36,
Pound, Ezra, 4, 192, 193, 206n7, 211, 222, 224n39 41, 43, 45, 47, 49; 4th (1957), 59, 61, 70–72; 6th (1961), 38–39;
Pradilla Cerón, Ileana, 159, 167 18th (1985), 147; posters, 64–67, 65, 75n29
Price, Rachel, 2 São Paulo concretism, 35–37, 48, 50, 115, 117–118, 120–121
primitive art, 40–41, 121 São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (Museu de Arte Moderna de
Prinzhorn, Hans, 39 São Paulo, MAM-SP), 39, 62, 63, 104, 121
“Problematics of Sensibility, The” (Pedrosa), 52 Schneeman, Carolee, 155n23
product design, 84–86 Scholl, Inge, 77–78
progress, 12 School of Visual Arts (Parque Lage), 103–110, 111n1
Project for a pavilion at Parque Lage (Bo Bardi), 106, 107 schools, architecture for, 104–105
Propp, Vladimir, 155n24 Schwarz, Roberto, 1, 3, 8n1
psychiatric patients’ art. See Engenho de Dentro (Centro science, 22, 29, 38, 50–52, 84–86
Psiquiátrico Nacional Pedro II, National Psychiatric Hospital) seduction, 133, 134
psychoanalysis, 41, 147–148 Segall, Lasar, 42–44
Psychopathic Art (exhibition), 40 Semana de arte moderna (exhibition), 184
public art, 98 sensibility, 39–56, 133, 192, 205
Punkt und Linie zu Fläche (Kandinsky), 75n28 sensorial, 39–58, 134, 192, 205
sequestro do barroco na formação da literatura brasileira, O (H. de
quality, 129 Campos), 208n24, 224n23
Serpa, Ivan, 38, 62, 66, 67, 68–72, 75nn32–34, 145, 154n2, 159
Ramírez, Mari Carmen, 69 Signantia Quasi Coelum—Signância Quase Céu (H. de Campos),
Ramos, Milton, 91 221
Ramos, Oscar, 122, 123 Silva, Golbery do Couto e, 182
rationalism, 120, 130–131; irrationalism and, 115, 117–118, Silva, José Fábio Barbosa da, 45
122–123. See also reason Silveira, Nise da, 38, 40, 68, 100n35, 118, 121, 123, 153, 154n2
Re visão de sousândrade (A. de Campos and H. de Campos), 211, skin, 201–202
217 Small, Irene V., 69, 73n7
Read, Herbert, 36, 38, 40–41, 42, 49, 50–51 Soares, Lota de Macedo, 105
readability, 221–222 “Solida” (Dias-Pino), 52
reading, 52, 121, 209, 215, 216, 220–221 Sousândrade, Joaquim de, 3, 7, 202–203, 211, 222, 223n15, 243–
realism, 2 244; Campos brothers, 211, 213, 215–216, 218, 219; Guesa, O,
reason, 51, 117, 118, 120, 153. See also rationalism 212, 227–231, 233–235, 237, 243–246; Guesa errante, O, 202,
regrets, 237 211, 216–217, 219–220, 223n15; Harpa de oiro, 220–221, 228,
rei da vela, O (O. de Andrade), 182 231; Holz, 211, 213, 215–216, 218, 219; “Inferno de Wall Street,
repetition as transformation, 71 O” (“The Wall Street Inferno”), 191–192, 202, 203, 216–217,
representation, 36–37 223n15, 230, 242–243; “Memorabilia,” 223n15; “Tatuturema,”
resistance, 228, 233, 236 216, 219, 228, 232, 235, 242
revenge, 233 Souza, Emygdio Emiliano de, 44
Ribeiro, Darcy, 233, 236, 244n24 Souza, Gilda de Mello e, 32n35

259 | INDEX
space, 29, 48, 70, 90–99, 166–167, 198, 213, 220–222 Vanguarda e subdesenvolvimento (Gullar), 2, 3
Stallybrass, Peter, 133 Vargas, Gétulio, 8n3, 184
Stone, Shepard, 78 Vaz, Suzana, 57n21
Story of the Vivan Girls, The (Darger), 148 Veloso, Caetano, 115, 117, 118, 123
Structural Constellations (Albers), 70 Venâncio Filho, Paulo, 139
subjugation, cultural, 3 Venetian Tools Project, The, 177
surrealism, 19, 20, 128 vengeance, 233
survival, 233, 236, 239, 243 verbivocovisuality, 209–210, 219, 221
symbolic transformation, 51, 52, 58n39 Verdade tropical (Veloso), 115, 117
synthesis of the arts, 95–96, 100n23 Vieira, Mary, 6, 81, 89–101, 92, 96, 97
Villas Boas, Glaucia, 39
Tarsila do Amaral, 128 Visão (magazine), 25
Tatin, Robert, 45 viscerality, 127, 129–140
“Tatuturema” (Sousândrade), 216, 219, 228, 232, 242 Viveros de Castro, Eduardo, 233, 236, 237
Teatro da Experiência, 21 Volpi, Alfredo, 36–38, 41–48, 45
Teatro Oficina (Oficina Theater), 104, 182
technology, 85, 86, 221–222 “Wall Street Inferno, The” (“Inferno de Wall Street, O,”
“Teoria do não-objeto” (Gullar), 48 Sousândrade), 191–192, 202, 203, 216–217, 223n15, 230, 245,
Terra moldada series (Maiolino), 136, 137, 139 246–247
Thistlewood, David, 40–41 Wall Street, New York, 184, 206n4, 243. See also “Wall Street
Thomas (German company), 87 Inferno, The” (“Inferno de Wall Street, O,” Sousândrade)
Thompson, D’Arcy, 50 Wallis, Alfred, 41, 44
Time (magazine), 25 Week of Modern Art, 183
totem, 23–27 Weissmann, Franz, 37, 50, 52–53, 56, 61, 97
transformation, 51, 52, 58n39, 59, 60, 71 White, Allon, 133
trobar clus, 209 Whitehead, Alfred North, 50, 51
Tropicália (H. Oiticica), 101n41, 191, 198 “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (Nochlin), 128
Tropicália (Tropicalismo), 115, 117–118, 123, 182, 198 “Wish to Be a Red Indian, The” (Kafka), 235
witnessing, 233, 244nn24–25
Ulm model, 85–87 Wollner, Alexandre, 81
Ulm School of Design. See Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG, Ulm women artists, 127–130. See also names of individual artists
School of Design) women’s constructed identity, 127–141
Última Hora (newspaper), 26–27 words, 122, 124, 177, 210
underground, 204, 208n24
UNESCO, 107 Zeami Motokiyo, 203
Unhão Museum, 104, 109 Zeiten einer Zeichnung (Vieira), 91
universalism, 2, 38, 39, 40, 68, 129
unreadability, 209, 220–221, 222
Untitled (Nazareth), 230, 234, 238, 241

260 | INDEX
 Form and Feeling: The Making of Concretism in Brazil is
made possible with major funding from the Andy Warhol
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