Page 110 - ARTE!Brasileiros #55

ENGLISH VERSION IN MOURNING I STRUGGLE

architecture cannot be thought of as something shape to an idea, a will, a desire. We are doomed century, an inescapable reference
separate from everyday life, from solving to transform an idea into a thing, because for contemporary production, would
people’s problems and from the pursuit of otherwise nobody knows your idea. If you write complete 100 years in 2021; arte!brasileiros
satisfying human needs and desires. The title lyrics on paper, here’s the poem turned into a publishes text that analyzes different
of the article, published in that month’s edition thing. When it was just in the poet’s head, it moments and works of the german artist’s
of Brasileiros - “The broad sense of architecture” was nothing”.
- and the headline on the cover - “Paulo Mendes trajectory
da Rocha: a thinker” - tried, minimally, to account about Cities anD publiC spaCe
for this breadth of thought by the architect who “In fact, the idea of a city is not one of physical By faBio Cypriano

, at that time, was the last great name alive in support, in the sense of protecting it from the
Brazilian modern architecture. wind and rain. It’s a place where you can talk. the artist Joseph beuYs was born on May 12,
Now, five years later, shortly after the death The city is man’s laboratory. He needs to be 1921 in Krefeld, Germany, near the Netherlands.
of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, aged 92, as a result together. And to live together, you need public In this pandemic year, therefore, his 100 years of
of lung cancer, arte!brasileiros recalls some transport, children’s schools, etc. This does not birth are celebrated. A precursor to issues that
of the most striking parts of that conversation. mean that the city of São Paulo, with 20 million we are systematically debating In these months
The architect, born in Vitória and based in inhabitants, the result of the decadence arising of confinement, such as the defense of nature,
São Paulo, was one of the main names of the from a colonialist policy, is the ideal city”. his figure also stands out for rethinking the art
so-called Escola Paulista de Arquitetura - along “In these moments of crisis, when the system. This theme was addressed by me in a
with his master João Vilanova Artigas. He acuteness of the problems becomes explicit, lecture at the Goethe Institute in 2011, in the
designed, among many others, the gym of the the city transforms itself to say exactly what Third Cycle of German Thought, which turned
Paulistano club, the MuBe (Brazilian Museum it intends to be. When spaces are occupied, into a chapter of a book with the same name
of Sculpture and Ecology), the renovation of the when the street takes on the character of an of the event the following year. The actuality
Pinacoteca do Estado, the Marquise in Praça assembly, it is also an architectural vision of of the debate is maintained and we consider it
do Patriarca, the Coach Museum (Lisbon) transformation. Because architecture doesn’t appropriate to now republish the text, without
and the Sesc 24 de Maio . He was a professor always require building something. It can be major modifications.
at fau-usp, persecuted by the civil-military carried out with human attitudes simply”.
dictatorship at the end of the 1960s, and he had ***
a marked influence on the architectural thinking about man anD nature One of Beuys’ most significant works is
of the generations that followed him. With an “Because there is this tendency to think that The End of the 20th Century (Das Ende des
emphasis on the construction technique, the talking about nature is talking about green. No, 20. Jahrhunderts) (1982-83), exhibited at the
adoption of exposed reinforced concrete and nature is even the male and female condition of Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin, an
the enhancement of the structures of houses human beings, and this has never been faced installation composed of 21 basalt rocks that
and buildings, his works are an unavoidable with such evidence as when faced with the issue can represent numbness, solidification or
reference in Brazilian architecture. of the impossibility of an overpopulation on even a collective cemetery. Basalt, it is good
But, in addition to his works, it was his ideas the planet. We are nothing. We always have to to remember, contains crystals that are not seen
and positions that made him one of the biggest imagine what we will be. And when you ask that, with the naked eye. On each rock, the artist made
names in national architecture - as happened here’s the political dimension of our existence. a circular hole and from there removed a cone,
with Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Artigas and What will we be if we can make decisions about reintroducing it again, this time glued with felt
Lina Bo Bardi, among others. Read excerpts our directions? It’s avoiding disaster. In the and clay, as signaling that even the most solid
from the 2016 interview below. end, this is it”. and immutable can undergo transformations
“You have to face the fact that the planet is a through human action.
about arChiteCture anD art helpless little pebble spinning in the universe, According to Peter-Klaus Schuster, curator
“We are here, in any of our activities, to solve and for the first time man cannot deny it.” of the exhibition A century of German art, which
problems. There are always problems, as it is took place in three major museums in Berlin in
very difficult to be any living being in nature. You about eDuCation anD training 1999, and which placed Beuys as the central
see what species had to invent, from a dragonfly “The educational system is all wrong. We should artist of his selection on German art in the 20th
to a giraffe, the business is very complicated. teach physics, elementary mechanics along century, The end of the 20th century deals with
Viewed in this way, things get to some extent with literacy. A child plays with a pawn in the the “ambivalence of the enormous catastrophes
exciting, because we have to solve problems. palm of his hand, flies a kite, sets off a rocket, of the century and at the same time , as a positive
Or, for this to happen, we need to know how to plays marbles. In other words, he knows what a image of the value of human life.”
formulate our problems”. sphere is that touches a plane only at one point. It is this essentially humanistic vision, which
“You can’t solve problems, architecturally, You don’t play marbles with parallelepipeds, but elects every man not only as a revolutionary, but
from a purely functional point of view. Then with perfect spheres. And you tie a stone to a also as an artist, responsible for contributing
you create machines at most. Precisely the string and any child will understand what the to the construction of a new society, defined
grace of architecture is to keep the speech force of gravity, conservation of energy, etc. by Beuys as “social sculpture”, which places
alive that, given the urgency to do something, are. It is easier to teach elementary physics and him as one of the leading thinkers of the 20th
it is already done with high ideals of the vision mechanics to a child than to teach Mother’s Day. century and whose ideas I intend to address
we have of ourselves. This is what linguists call The difficult thing, for a child, is to understand in this text The abandonment of art - inspired
the concomitance of the emergence of needs the nonsense they are talking about. And then by a postcard from 1985 , entitled With this I
and desires. You turn strict need into desire I’m talking about the whole world, not just Brazil. abandon art - to reflect on the absolutely radical
at the same time. In other words, you solve a Education today is made to subject the comrade character of its propositions.
problem from a practical, almost mechanical to the enjoyment of the market and the ideology The original title of this work, moreover, is
point of view, giving an expression that it can that is placed there, of a stupid capitalism”. Hiermit trete ich aus der Kunst aus and the
still be better solved in the future”. “It is easier for a child to understand what a translation I adopted is that in the book Joseph
“Nowadays, I see the expression art as heart is if you put him to feel the pulse with his Beuys, by Alain Borer, in illustration 148. Literally,
somewhat reductionist. It can’t be just art, hand, in his own body, than to have him draw a it may not be the most appropriate translation,
and here’s the fun of architecture, which you red thing on paper, so abstract. The fisherman’s but conceptually, as we’ll see below, it’s totally
don’t really know if it’s art, science or technique. son knows everything about wind, weather, pertinent.
In other words, it has to be all of this at the etc. The confrontation with nature in its set
same time. It is a discourse about knowledge. of phenomena educates, even today, in a way 1. beuYs: the mYth
The impression I have is that everything man that serves a bit of counterpoint to this official To understand Beuys’ thinking it is essential
does has an artistic dimension. Our existence education we have”. to know his own biography. This is not about
requires a position of what we call art, or artistic “I don’t have much experience, for me the justifying his work as an illustration of his life, but
attitude. In speech, gesture, expression, world is always new. I don’t know what was and of the very interrelationship he sought between
concern for the other… Deep down, art means what will be. All I know is that I’m not afraid of art and life, a link that became essential in the
concern for the other”. things, much less the present, because he’s way art was conceived in the 1960s and 1970s, a
“There is a market of so-called architecture, all we have.” period that has in Beuys one of its main figures.
gaudy, frightening, which, like any packaging, Centenary | Joseph Beuys [pages 80 to 86] This particular moment of the 20th century
the market produces, with a fictitious value, caused artists such as Andy Warhol, Hélio
capable of being enacted as a value. Architecture JOSEPH BEUYS AND THE Oiticica or Beuys himself to create around him
as a commodity is a mistake. Architecture is not a series of legends, as a symbolic sample of his
merchandise, it is always the result of needs”. ABANDONMENT TO ART conceptions of art. Each, in his own way, has
“I think it’s very nice to use this popular created upon himself a series of legends that,
expression “to architect”. People say: what One of the most radical and influential whether true or false, it doesn’t matter, are the
are you designing? And that is: to be giving artists of the second half of the 20th way they embodied their own conception of art.
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