Page 104 - ARTE!Brasileiros #48

THE ART OF MEMORY ENGLISH VERSION
a particular drawing, which shows the Brazilian flag in dilution process, seems to me main guiding questions of his production. Originally conceived by curator Kiki Mazuchelli
emblematic). The paper plane receives countless situations, as recorded under the to introduce Carvalho’s work to the English public, the exhibition – which in the Brazilian
hood. There are several scenes produced in the form of collages, in which the artist version could add a larger number of works – has a clear didactic vocation, showing
attests to cynicism, barbarism, torture – tragic scenes and – amazement! – full of almost its various facets, at the same time chronological articulation. language. The richly
sad, fierce humor. Although serious and important as insurmountable testimonies of illustrated, rich catalog with five analytical texts and a chronological summary (whose
the state’s action on the average citizen, these drawings are more than that, and do English version is the first publication about the author in this language) also assists
not fit as solemn emblems of that situation in which the artist was a victim among so in this effort to draw a more complete picture of his production.
many. They are documents of a crime, of course, but also their own overcoming. They Adopting a stripped montage, the exhibition presents the visitor with a very dense
act as the best answer to agency because they ridicule it while questioning themselves. volume of paintings and drawings. One of the highlights is the large panel of portraits
These drawings refuse to mean mere documents about the barbarism suffered, to act he made over decades, which testifies to his great appreciation of the human figure,
as critical reworkings of the evils they point to, not to be overwhelmed by them. They devoting himself almost exclusively to portraits and nudes. His interest was not in the
are weapons of resistance. physiognomy but in the psychological aspect of the portrayed, which makes his work
*** close to the surrealist and later expressionist aspects. The show also brings to light
As mentioned, after five decades, Sérgio Sister’s work is pointed out as one of the main experiments developed by him in the 1970s, using phosphorescent paint that shines
references of current Brazilian painting, and apparently has no reference to those early under black light, reinforcing his interest in researching new media and materials.
career productions: neither the denunciation of his early paintings, nor the critical content Carvalho painted and wrote all his life. And there is, even in his most revolutionary
of his drawings. Do people really think so? works, often associated with an impulsive temperament, a theoretical basis, and acute
In recent years, Sister’s production has been characterized as an affirmation of certain conceptual reflection, Kiki recalls. At different times, and using different strategies
constitutive elements of painting, revered in modernity, as strategies for the delimitation (architecture, theater, performative action), the artist demonstrates how he anticipates,
of his own field: the reiteration of two–dimensionality, the emphasis on the act of painting and quite early, the general state of the arts in the country. “His conceptual projects
and the planned use. monochrome to emphasize all these peculiarities. No representation attest to his extraordinary achievement. to expand the field of art beyond known
– the painting does not represent the real, it presents itself as a new data –; no stricter territories and forms, thus broadening the very definition of what can be considered
color – the lower tones tend to reinforce the planar dimension of the painting and enhance art, ”explains the curator.
the indices of the painter’s action on the surface. Such moments of great creative power, many of them ephemeral or unfulfilled, are
However, the distance between the two moments of Sister’s production tends to shorten represented in the exhibit through extensive documentation. Carvalho was, for example, a
when one analyzes the artist’s structuring of his early career paintings. There, perhaps, pioneer among the first modernists of São Paulo architecture and won the admiration of
the teachings of the Brazilian constructive currents informed the way the artist designed avant–garde like Mário and Oswald de Andrade with the project he presented in a contest
the pictorial field, dividing it into a kind of grid that resonated the structures of those held for the São Paulo Government Palace in 1927, under the suggestive pseudonym
strands, dividing the field of support into communicating but autonomous areas. Now, of. Efficiency. In 1931, performs Experiment no. 2, a scathing act against false Catholic
looking at his recent paintings, it seems that Sister focuses his attention and works on morality, walking provocatively against a Corpus Christi procession with its head covered
each of these particular areas, detaching them from the overall body of the grid, making by a beret, being almost lynched by the population. In Experience no. 3, performed
them reach their leading role. almost thirty years later, hits patriarchal morale when he decides to parade through the
Is it hard to sustain this proposed link for the two moments of the artist? It may be, as city streets wearing New Look, a costume he had developed as the ideal outfit for men,
this is a matter of seemingly pure formal interest here, as if to justify Sister’s alleged replacing the traditional suit and tie with a pleated skirt, a blouse. of light, puffy cloth
lack of current engagement with the political and social situation. and a fishnet to hide the varicose veins.
Wrong. The austere and rigorous paintings that Sister produces today keep the same role In dialogue with his more plastic work, the diversity of experiences and the often rebellious
of resistance weapons from the paintings and drawings of his early period. In affirming and performative character of his work, which is difficult to translate into expository elements
the specificities of pictorial language – so dear to modernity – the artist’s most recent due to its ephemeral and conceptual character, becomes more concrete. The replicas of the
production seems to be at a critical distance from the co–optation that the practice of masks used in the play The Ballet of the Dead God (originally written in 1931) and re–enacted
painting has suffered in the last decades, almost always easy prey to the process of by the Uzyna Uzona Theater Theater sometimes, including the vernissage of the show,
alienation to which it comes. being submitted – a more than plausible index of the process coexist with a select set of paintings from the 1930s as well. at the opening of the exhibition.
of alienation and brutalization that our society suffers today. His ability to subvert patterns and try to establish new bases for reflection on the place
of man and art in the world is impressive. I was not afraid of combat. It defied society,
opposed the moralistic hypocrisy of an extremely religious society. “He has been interested
EXHIBITION SÃO PAULO | PAGES 76 TO 79 in two fields of knowledge throughout his life, psychoanalysis, relatively new at that time,
FLÁVIO DE CARVALHO: and ethnology,” explains Kiki. It is for the confluence of these two fields, for a permanent
desire to try to understand the world from behaviors built since ancient times, that the
A PERMANENT curator interprets her very diverse production.

EXPERIMENTATION Another interesting aspect of the selection is the emphasis it places on the artist’s broad
social network, which somewhat contradicts the current idea that Carvalho was a lonely,
marginalized man. From a wealthy family with many contacts in São Paulo’s artistic and
DESIGNER, PAINTER AND PERFORMER, THE ARTIST HAS AN IMPORTANT social environment, he had close relations with the circle of first–generation modernists
RETROSPECTIVE AT ALMEIDA E DALE GALLERY (the show’s own title, Ideal Anthropophagus, takes on a praiseworthy nickname attributed
to him by Oswald de Andrade ) and actively participated in actions for the agglutination
BY MARIA HIRSZMAN of the artistic milieu, such as the founding of the Modern Artists Club (CAM).
BERLIN – After England, where the artist lived between 1914 and 1922 but where his work
Huge figure of Brazilian modernism, Flávio de Carvalho is a character of great abundance had never been exhibited before, it will be time for the German public to get to know his
and complexity. If he is always remembered when it comes to listing the unavoidable work more closely, whose disruptive, experimental and critical character will be central to
names of Brazilian art of the twentieth century, there have been few opportunities in the Biennale. from Berlin next year. “Her interest in mass psychology (Freud) allows us to
recent decades to know more deeply the fertility and diversity of paths explored by this analyze ideas of homeland, religious fanaticism, fear, crowd organization, lynching, fake
multifaceted artist. The Ideal Anthropophagous exhibition, on display at Galeria Almeida news, and dissident bodies in public space,” says Lisette Lagnado, one of the curators of
e Dale, fills this absence by presenting a broad panorama of his work, addressing the the event. “For us, Flavio is an antihero,” she summarizes.

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