Page 96 - ARTE!Brasileiros #45

FREEDOM IS HARD WORK ENGLISH VERSION
in our society, “this anonymous violence, against the anonymous one.” “They of the movement. The manifesto arrived in New York, with an article in the New York
kill 63,000 people a year, with ever increasing rates, going through the various Times, criticizing Brazilian censorship in the arts. In Italy, Corriere della Sera published:
governments, and people tolerate”, he laments. However, he ponders that we should “The Biennial is in danger because of the political situation in Brazil”. Eduard de Wilde,
not let art take the blame, believe that because of the escalation of tensions, it director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, was one of the first to join the boycott
should take on the role of always responding to events. “Art has to be good, anyway.” and the Netherlands, the first country to withdraw and the last to return to Ibirapuera.
Rescue - Going back and reviewing these movements forgotten by institutions, criticism Outside the walls of the São Paulo Biennial, the artists also militated. In 1967, Nelson
and the artistic circuit is vital if we are to find ways to block those who defend the Leirner and Flávio Motta, with humor and veiled critics, make big of cloth flags, printed
end of the democratic path in the country. In this sense, the AI-5 exhibition tweaks in in serigraphy, with images of cordel literature, soccer and carnival, and sell at Av. Brazil
our recent history two projects of great importance - symbolic and conceptual - that with Rua Augusta, in São Paulo. Both are confused with street vendors and confiscated
deserve to be reevaluated these days, when we seek new outlets. The first one is flags. In the same year, Antonio Henrique Amaral launches the album of woodcuts O
the plan elaborated by Mario Pedrosa for the new Museum of Modern Art of Rio de meu e Seu, with strong satire to the military. From 1968, with the AI-5 edition, artists
Janeiro, after it was destroyed by fire in 1978 (any resemblance to the case of the use metaphors alluding to the regime. Cláudio Tozzi, besides the panel Guevara Vivo or
National Museum is not mere coincidence). Soon after the disaster, Pedrosa suggested Morto, works the series Screws, reference to the harsh reality lived by the Brazilians at
restructuring the museum around five vital axes for understanding Brazilian art, with nuclei the time. In 1971, Tomoshige Kusuno, guest of the II Biennale of Antwerp, is prohibited
dedicated to the black, indigenous, popular arts of the Unconscious and contemporary. from photographing his environmental work on the lawn near the Biennale pavilion,
The second is the attempt led by Aracy Amaral to reorient the Sao Paulo Biennial, considered by the military “occupying a national security area, by proximity to the barracks.”
transforming it into a kind of Latin American pole, capable of stimulating the exchange,
production and exhibition of regional art as a form of political and cultural strengthening. Despite pressure marking, artists were sometimes able to circumvent the censors. In the National
Both have not left the paper, but are - along with the rest of the production of their authors Hall of 1971, the most important of the time, Antonio Henrique Amaral, receives the Prize Travel
- vital sources of feedback in this process of rescuing models capable of guiding the process Abroad, with the Brasiliana series, large format screens, with strong criticism of the regime,
of resistance in the face of attempts to tear down the national culture. with bananas as theme. Regina Vater also receives the same award with the series Nós, of 1972.
Anyone who has lived in this period, certainly does not want to see history repeat itself,
let alone the plastic artists who, throughout history, are the constant target of any regime
MEMORY SÃO PAULO BIENNIAL | PAGES 30 AND 31 of exception.
INTERNATIONAL BOYCOTT MEMORY ARTICLE | PAGE 32

TO THE SÃO PAULO BIENNIAL IT DIDN’T TERMINATE TO FINISH

AS A REACTION TO THE REPRESSION BY THE DICTATORSHIP,
MANY COUNTRIES ABANDONED THE SHOW AFTER AI-5 BY PAULO MIYADA

BY LEONOR AMARANTE THE EXHIBITION “Ai-5 50 Years - It’s Not Over Yet” ended on November 4th, a week after the
end of Brazil’s presidential election. Since the highest office of executive power was again
HOW CAN A DICTATORSHIP change the cultural physiognomy of a country? decided by the population direct vote, there was never been an electoral campaign in which
Brazil has already experienced this poison with the 1964 coup, when the military public debates and private discussions talked both about the legacy and the breadth of the
dictates rules for all sectors of society and the plastic arts do not escape the rule. military dictatorship. Relativization, denial, misinformation, and bad faith showed their prey
One of the torpedoes was given at the São Paulo International Biennial, in its 1967/1968 edition, in attempts to rewrite history as a heroic and nationalist revolution. On the other hand,
just minutes before the inauguration, the Federal Police removed the work of Cybele Varela all sorts of efforts for elucidation and reparative justice - among which this exposition is
for judging it “offensive” to the authorities. The young artist Quissak Júnior is threatened certainly to be found - proved them as insufficients and found that more than the dispute
with imprisonment for his work, five oils on canvas, modulable, representing the Brazilian flag. with the present obscurantist discourses is at stake: to complete the cycles of historical
In opposition to this prohibition, the United States, with the largest room in the exhibition, reparation and institutional refoundation that were only partially fulfilled in Brazil’s long,
the Environment USA: 1957/1967, exhibited the American flag in Three Flags, of Jasper bargained and incomplete “redemocratization”.
Johns, one of the Biennial Awards of São Paulo, next to Caesar , Cruz Dias and Pistoletto. As a cultural and artistic action, the exhibition was at the opposite pole to the attempts to
In the following edition, with the promulgation of AI5 (Institutional Act No. 5), the situation relativize the data left by the military dictatorship in Brazil. When attempting to minimize
worsens. Critic Mario Pedrosa is threatened with arrest, as is Mario Schenberg. Many the impact of the coup and its repressive policy by claiming that the regime’s “excesses”,
intellectuals leave the country and others are exiled. In Rio, police invade the MAM and close that they have hit only left-wing radicals, three perverse injustices are committed: 1. It
the exhibition that brought together the works of Brazilians who would participate in the is not true that only radical terrorists were arrested, tortured and killed; the example of
6th Bienal de Paris. The foreign minister, José de Magalhães Pinto, in an article published Wladimir Herzog is one of hundreds of cases of brutal violence against those who only
by Folha de S. Paulo, said that the works contained a message against the regime and exercised their citizenship; 2. Even in the cases of direct combatants to the regime who
“intended to incompatibilize the government with public opinion.” Faced with repression have followed routes of armed struggle and urban guerrilla warfare, the State should never
the participation of Brazilians is limited to the areas of architecture, urbanism and music. have the role of retaliation without all the legal apparatus that underlies the rule of law - if
In 1969, the São Paulo Biennial suffered its biggest setback, the “international boycott,” the government acts by the law of the eye- by-eye, tooth-by-tooth, what is the remaining
which began with Brazilian artists and transcended borders, reaching the United States, reference for citizens to act differently?; 3. In addition to cases of direct State violence
France, Mexico, Sweden and the Netherlands, where many artists joined the movement . through deaths, exiles, torture, arbitrary arrests and withdrawal of political rights of its
In Europe, the action was led by the French critic Pierre Restany, a friend of Mario Pedrosa, citizens, the dictatorship has signed and monitored more than 300,000 citizens through
who at the meeting at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, states: “Cultural protest here is a its censorship agents, in addition to systematic censorship of the press, culture and art.
sudden expansion, and this is only the beginning.” The boycott petition had 321 signatures The consequences of this last point go far beyond the scope of the dictatorship that they
and was signed by Pablo Picasso. One of the most active critics at the time, Pontus Hultem, tried to relativize, and they were given special attention in the exhibition, which started
responsible for formulating the Beaubourg concept in Paris, was one of the militants from the context of the visual arts to understand the cost of silencing the population and

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