Page 88 - ARTE!Brasileiros #42

ICONOGRAPHY & INSUBORDINATION ENGLISH VERSION

Heloisa Espada, curator of the exibition, the couple that pushes the anticipating in some years the beginning of abstract art, as it presents
hurdy-gurdy may have attended the Salle des Fêtes or it can only a rare aesthetic quality, combining formal and chromatic subtlety to
symbolize a fragment of a waking dream. In the work of Anri Sala, intense spirituality. Adds up to this her unique story. Formed at the
the trivialization of everyday life is transformed through libertarian Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in 1887 (second in the world
practices in the public space, in the best spirit of the Situationist to accept women students), was a relative success artist, dedicating
International, a movement emerged in 1957, which advocated, among himself to landscape, botanical design and illustrations of books,
other things, a playful life and with permanent freedom. magazines and newspapers. Had also a deep interest in science and
The primary installation of Momento Presente’s main instalation religion, which ends up taking her little by little to the wide-ranging
seems to have found in music the ideal way to represent and to work which can be see in the Pinacoteca do Estado.
experiment transience. The great room holds two opposing dialogue The show brings to Latin America for the first time some of the most
screens, having as leitmotiv Transfigured Night, the last romantic emblematic series made by Hilma in the first decades of the 20th
piece of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), which century and remained hidden from the public for almost a century
then breaks up with the tonal tradition and creates the twelve-tone – first by order of the artist her self, who have this in her will, and
technique. The videoinstallation has short duration, with seven then by the difficulty of the art system to understand and absorb
minutes of the initial sound and the remaining eight focused on her work. After all, it is surprising that a woman, initialy imbued by
testing the chamber orchestra, in which the repetitive gestures a spiritual mission, have anticipated in so clear way, researches that
of the violinists, with his arms moving like pistons, take over the would come out by established masters like Kandinsky and Mondrian,
space. The central ceiling displays battery drums removed and fixed they also interested by the metaphysical plan.
upside down and the noise from the notes repetition alludes to the At the entrance of the exhibition, the visitor is received by 10 huge
technological alienation from post-Fordism times paintings of almost 3.5 meters high, representing the ten ages of
In another room, amid the Long Sorrow video projection, in the human life, from childhood to old age. The set has a grandeur and
first week of the exhibition, the audience was surprised with a live a strong power of seduction with its very particular chromatic
performance of saxophonist Andre Vida. His music, performed on subtleties and organic abstraction. They were made in a breath
the spot, dialogued with the images of the video in which another just over 40 days, in 1907, which gives an average of four days for
musician, Jemeel Moondoc, performed with exquisite jazz saxophone, the making of each one of them. The set is part of a broad research
hanging outside the 18th floor of a building of the housing project, developed by Hilma following instructions given by external entities,
known as Langer Jammer, in English Long Sorrow . that asked to do a cycle of paintings for a temple. And is, in the words
The language always interested Garaicoa, especially that of public of curator Jochen Volz, “the first and most monumental works of
spaces. The Havana’s sidewacks surfaces in 30’s and 40’s, has abstract art in the Western world”.
printed in front of shops, the names of the establishments with The majesty of the “Ten Largest”, as they are called, don’t shade
some comments. There are still some photographs and, from them, other groups of selected works in the vast production of Hilma. The
Garaicoa transforms fragments of sidewalk in rugs, creating a visitor discovers, room by room, as the work unfolds in different
graphic layer that covers the time and temporality of urban spaces. fields of research, since an investigation into the atom, to a sublime
According to curator Rodolfo Athayde, the artist puts light into representation of world religions from small compositional variations
poetic fragments, like “end of silence” or “frustration of dreams”. from a simple circ ular structure.
The issue of language is also present in the shows. According to This mystical dimension, key in her path, happened in a differentiated
Foucault, man wrote his own figure in the interstices of a language manner over time. From the first psychic experiences with a group
in fragments. In Làk-Kat, Sala filmed three boys in dark environment of four other friends, titled De Fem (The Five) – represented in the
where an adult, in off, makes them repeat words in uólofe, original exhibition by a broad range of automatic writing and designs, a
language of Senegal. At first, the words refers to the concepts of technique that would acquire artistic status in the 20’s, with the
darkness and light. Then describe skin tones and varyed ways of surrealist experiences – even later experiments, such as the series
referring to foreigners. Three screens simultaneously show the uólofe “Observation of flowers and trees”, 1922 (an impressive integration
translations to Portuguese spoken in Brazil, Portugal and Angola. between the visible, the energetic and a spiritual order), there is
a change of tonic. The before external voices, attributed to “high
EXHIBITION SÃO PAULO | PAGES 32 TO 36 master” become little by little internal.
AN ARTIST AHEAD Experts attribute this tonic less connected to spiritism and more
to the soul space, the approximation of Hilma with Rudolf Steiner,
OF HER TIME founder of anthroposophy. He is the only one to receive permission to
view, in 1908, the works that she was developing and are enchanted
with the series “Primordial chaos”. And the relationship between
SCIENCE, RELIGION AND ART INTEGRATE THE COSMOGONY OF HILMA them is maintained over time. In the years 1920, after her mother’s
AF KLINT, AT HER FIRST EXHIBITION IN PINACOTECA DE SÃO PAULO death, she starts to visit often Goethearum, headquarters of the
anthroposophical movement where she is dedicated to study the
BY MARIA HIRSZMAN theory of colours, of Goethe, reissued by Steiner. In Jochen Volz
words, “If she had shown that in her time, a much more chauvinist
HILMA AF KLINT is an exceptional artist. And exceptional at time , she probably would be declared a clinical case”.
the various meanings of the term. His work is not just seminal, Such astonishment with the boldness of her work, always seeking

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