By LUIZ RENATO MARTINS
The treatment of the issue of space, in the visual scope of modern Brazilian culture, brings together the works of Tarsila do Amaral, Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx
Despite the material distinctions between painting, urbanism, architecture and landscaping, the treatment of the issue of space, in the visual scope of modern Brazilian culture, brings together the works of Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973), Lúcio Costa (1902-1998), Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) and Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994).
On the other hand, the work of Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980), which brings together materials specific to the aforementioned media in his poetics, differs radically from those others in terms of the use and conception of space. How does such a comparison interest today's narrow and cramped Brazil, a country in which the mythical figures of “time off” and “cordiality”, linked to the symbolic economy of waste and large spaces, no longer circulate?
Tarsila
In Tarsila do Amaral's painting, unlike that of Anita Malfatti (1889-1964), contours play a determining role. Geometrized at first and curvilinear and elongated later in “anthropophagy”, at one stage or another, they define the figures in the manner of the vertical and horizontal reflections of descriptive geometry.
In these terms, the execution of Tarsila do Amaral’s paintings follows a project; it does not contain the striking gestures and thick impasto of Malfatti's canvases, which stage the act of painting as a subjective and dramatic action. With neutral brushstrokes and parsimonious use of paint, Tarsila's pictorial action seems to come from the serial and industrial context of graphic arts.
This does not diminish it. Rather, it indicates coherence. The option to prioritize the design and the plan is consequential in its developments; thus, the chromatic areas tend towards uniformity, and the treatment of the canvas seeks to give the latter the smoothness of the paper. In short, his art results from a projective will that has drawing as its flagship and that prevails over the plane as tabula rasa or virgin land.
In context, the modernizing character of such a project is undeniable. That said, other aspects and factors are condensed in such a painting. Its colors radiate Brazilianness. According to Tarsila do Amaral, they evoke the country world.[I] This option, in turn, in addition to the reminiscent and simple inflection, involves a visual objectification of the country's main economic source: the coffee farm. The agreement of the colors with the lines and the uniform luminosity duplicates on the pictorial plane the interaction between the coffee and industrial capitals, which, at the time, sought to modernize and rationalize the country on its terms.
If this is true for “pau-brasil” painting, some variables in this equation change in the “anthropophagous” cycle, starting in 1928. More mature, his art dissolves immediate links: it exchanges the schematic representation of the local landscape for the prospection of the Brazilian imaginary . The national affirmation, guided by the initial reference to nature, is overcome by the incorporation of popular, indigenous, African myths, etc. In this process, the hardness of the angular line and the geometric structure, previously stylistically hegemonic, begin to be tempered, without losing the planned character of the composition, by more elliptical and sinuous lines, suitable for the representation of the imaginary.
But this update takes place in terms of modernist discourse and does not nullify the previous program: it seeks a synthesis between modernist language models, such as geometric-serial ones, with a cosmopolitan content, and signs of Brazilianness, once repressed in academic-classicizing discourse. of Brazilian Empire.
In Tarsila do Amaral's “anthropophagous” style, the same basic components as before persist: the alliance between the nationalist program and the analytical content of poetics prevails, marked by the modernizing and internationalizing power of formalization, established through the line, which legislates hegemonically over the plastic field. The composition remains linear and on a modular basis. It brings together elements brought from previous works and internal series, in which the shapes, if they vary in size and combination, assert themselves as derivations of a module. Rational and analytical poetics is not afraid of repetitions.
Color, in turn, in the “linear-anthropophagic” order, responds for volume. It therefore continues to function as the element that keeps the memory of the look and tactile experience of childhood, of the feeling of the agrarian and pre-industrial world. In Tarsila's painting of the period, in fact, the chromatic fields expanded, along with the prospection of the imaginary. However, the colors, although they gain in intensity and eloquence, continue to be subject to a project that, simple and economical, aims to be universal, cosmopolitan and rational.
Certainly, such a poetic program has two goals: to enter into the rhythm of international modern art and to expand the social base of national culture. By reiterating, however, childhood sensations in adulthood, this desire for modernization reveals, alongside the universalizing dimension, a private angle: a socially protected life, which preserves the continuity between childhood and adult life; passage, on the other hand, destroyed for the majority without the power of choice, reduced to the mere condition of labor force.
Thus, the modernizing impetus denotes coming from someone educated to command and signals, like the rest of modernism, “the (populist) attempt of a cultural elite to eliminate class differences and create an art that was the expression of the whole of nationality”.[ii]
Brasilia or Maracangalha[iii]
Continuing, along the lines of this review, from the space of the screen to the territory, from the work of Tarsila do Amaral to those of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, we find continuities. Lúcio and Tarsila have in common the party because it is simple, linear and geometric, because of its sober and synthetic risk. Both value the simple and functional features of the rural colonial house, the distinctive horizontal profile of the headquarters of old Brazilian farms.
Another thread of continuity can be distinguished between the curves characteristic of the width and sinuosity of Tarsila do Amaral's “anthropophagous” style and Oscar Niemeyer's architecture. In both cases, the choice of curves stands as an emblem of Brazilian visuality, sometimes referring to African culture and sometimes to the nature of the country. The rounded features of the figure the black (1923, oil on canvas, 100 x 81,3 cm, São Paulo, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo), by Tarsila do Amaral, which stand out in the foreground against the structure in horizontal bands in the background, foreshadow the preponderance of the curves in his “anthropophagous” painting; in turn, the curves of Pampulha, in Niemeyer's design, concentrate the horizons of Minas Gerais.
In addition to this order of similarities, the modernist platforms of the three coincide structurally. In them, the power to modernize includes the civilizing and universalizing conviction. Modernizing implies operating on a board where you play alone. In this way, the power of the subject and his thinking come together, based on a rational and civilized project, with the prerogative of planning from top to bottom, of dividing the country's space well, of which the symbolic, plastic or architectural field presents itself as a double or simile.
Thus, the echo of the colonizer's seigneurial privilege of legislating unilaterally can be seen throughout. The building of the Ministry of Education and Health (commissioned in 1936 by Capanema, minister of Getúlio), the Pampulha complex (commissioned by JK [1902-1976], appointed mayor of Belo Horizonte, in 1941), in short, the architectural landmarks modernity in pre-1945 Brazil were born from the order of Estado Novo authorities, which, even if modern and “enlightened”, are not democratic.
In the cycle of economic and political expansion that began after the 1945 war, modern Brazilian architecture also developed. In this production, inventions that concern the interface between the building and the natural space stand out. The “Brazilian genius” stands out, as Mário Pedrosa (1900-1981) notes, in the invention of new systems of thermal protection, ventilation, natural lighting, sun visors, trusses, cloisters and hollow bricks called cobogós – these, with notable visual fantasy and combining architecture with graphic arts, another landmark of Brazilian excellence at the time. The integration of the garden into the house, making the external space an extension of the internal space, will be another mark of the inventiveness of this architecture.[iv]
Burle Marx, a pioneering and exemplary landscaper, abandons the classic regular flowerbeds and brush lawns. His art also innovates in the use of colors. He moves away from chromatic division towards large patches of color. As in Tarsila do Amaral, there is a synthesis between resources from modern European art and primitive or anti-classical elements, elevated to national emblems. Collaborator of Oscar and Lúcio, Burle Marx uses plants from the Amazon rainforest and others, which are found in backyards or on the side of the road.
Like Tarsila's colors, these plants constitute elements “familiar to the ambience of the Brazilian countryside” and absent from classicizing academic art. Architecture and nature come together: “Burle Marx’s gardens are still a piece of nature, although they already participate in the life of the house and serve (…) as a cadence to its spatial rhythm. Their role is now to expand it, to make it spill over into open spaces.”[v]
The presidential palaces, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, also serve the vocation of integrating building and nature: horizontal constructions, surrounded by large balconies, porches or terraces, in accordance with the architectural tradition of the Casas Grandes. Alvorada and Planalto also boast, along the balconies, a column/sculpture hybrid whose curves, in addition to stylistically updating the bulging of Greek columns, may even suggest another hallmark of the country: that of the rafts' billowing sails.
However, when decorating the porches around the palaces, these columns, in addition to the emblematic dimension they have for the external public, also perform another function: they frame the Cerrado landscape.[vi] They therefore act as the implantation of Casas Grandes at a higher point on the land, proposing the view of the landscape as a heritage item.
In these modern abstract pieces that are Niemeyer's columns, as in Tarsila's painting, there is an articulation of the abstract operations of modern design, with the typical colors of the country, in this case, those of the Cerrado. Therefore, this building, although modern, does not appear as an urban element, but rather as a unit in the landscape, like a rural colonial house.[vii]
In short, a single type of relationship encompasses the findings of Brazilian modernist architecture: the integration between architecture and nature or the rational and evaluative use of nature by the project. However, this happens, as Pedrosa notes, “to the detriment of a more articulated and in-depth spatial thinking, in the games of volumes and interior spaces”.[viii]
Therefore, the excellence of this architecture lies rather in the valorization of nature than in urban risk, the latter objective being more in line with the functionalist guideline of modern architectural rationalism. It is worth saying, the atavistic perspective of modern Brazilian architecture is still that of the “colonizer/civilizer”, who launches himself onto the so-called virgin land (sic) to incorporate it into the so-called “civilization (of the market)”.
This genetic mark will also be that of the Brasilia Pilot Plan. In other words, the modular geometric structure, without an organic or autochthonous background, which populates the plane with communicative and internationalizing forms, in Tarsila's works, is also that of the logic expressed by Lúcio Costa's memorial for the Brasília competition.
On page 2 of the original of the Plano Piloto, the architect and urban planner, when presenting his party, says, in a frank and direct way, as, in fact, was his style: “It was born from the primary gesture of someone who marks a place or takes it from possession: two axes crossing each other at right angles, that is, the sign of the cross itself.”[ix]
On the other hand, there is another aspect, planning, under which such architecture, linked to the colonial tradition, distinguishes itself from the latter. Throughout history, private advances over national territory have always occurred according to short-term and unilateral interests. In other words, from the captaincies, the first form of privatization in Brazil, through the expeditions of the bandeirantes, as well as later, during the establishment of the agrarian-exporting latifundia of the São Paulo coffee growers, the march from the coast to the interior invariably had a chaotic and predatory content. Modern construction actions have a planned character. And the prime example of planned territorial occupation must be Brasília, according to Pedrosa.
Thus, the critic justifies the creation of the capital as an example of a new logic, contrasting it precisely with the opening of coffee farms by São Paulo residents.[X] The devastation of landowners created a certain type of city: “The developer quickly lays out some streets (…) and the sale of lots starts right there. The first houses (…) indicate the future main street, the road itself. There is nothing more practical for the flow of goods (…). The pioneers are indifferent to the local environment, as they never stop in their incessant race”.
Brasília, no: it is “an old political idea, embedded through generations”, says Pedrosa. Politics and planning would thus be opposed to the chaos of profit, as forms of rationality.[xi]
Brasília's destiny, however, could be, as in fact it was, different from that of the planned and emancipationist utopia, which should amalgamate the projects of the new capital and agrarian reform. In this sense, the same Mário Pedrosa had already been warning, since 1957: “Something contradictory is hidden in the very modern envelope of its conception (…). Lúcio Costa’s Brasília is a beautiful utopia, but does it have anything to do with the Brasília that Juscelino Kubitschek wants to build?”[xii]
One of the dangers of Brasília, isolated from other urban areas, would be that it would become a hotbed of bureaucracy.[xiii] Hence Pedrosa's praise for Lúcio's Plan, which, unlike the others, “ingeniously avoided all closed forms”, avoiding “the vice of bureaucratic centralism (…) and the administrative omnipotence of those who decide without the resistance of a present opinion.”[xiv]
A second far-sighted critical warning was also political in nature: “Lúcio, despite his creative imagination (…) tends to give in to anachronisms (…). In his plan, [he] envisages along the monumental axis of the city, above the municipal sector, in addition to (quoting the architect) 'urban transport garages (…) the barracks' (…). [But, exclaims Pedrosa:] What barracks are these? According to him, they are actually the Army’s troop barracks (…). [And continues:] First, one has to ask: why are these barracks inside the city? Second, what are the specific functions of these troops, when the New Capital (…) is sheltered from a sudden enemy landing and can only be reached by air? Deploying ground troops for its defense finds no military justification (…). Unless these troops were not intended to defend it against external enemies, but at certain moments considered opportune, to spend their tanks, in a way so well known to us, through the central axis of the city, in order to have an effect on the inhabitants themselves and weigh (…) on the deliberation of one or more powers of the Republic. But then why change? Why Brasilia? Why dream of utopias?”[xv]
Hence the subtitle of the text: “Brasília or Maracangalha?”. It is known what Pedrosa got right. But returning to the obvious about Brasília is useful to situate the historical roots of this pioneering generation of modern architects as alien to a context of urban reflection. In short, his perspective is the same as that of the first modernists, who synthesized modern poetic structures and national elements, previously repressed by academic art. In this symbolic operation, depending on the circumstances and limits of the historical moment, the national emblems they create claim immediate or semi-organic contact with nature.[xvi] It is worth saying, from this perspective, Brazil appears more as a myth and nature than as a city and social formation, posed by the social division of labor.
In addition to primitive enchantments, only visual languages – generated, alongside social sciences and other knowledge, after the installation of a network of industries in the post-war period – will actually build other cognitive models, based on urban and country issues. thought of as a historical social formation. The problems of Brazilian cities then become more clear to new architects and artists, in the light of democratic demands and mass production.
A complex of urban issues, specific to such patterns, establishes new parameters of challenges and achievements for architecture: meeting the universalization of land use rights and the urban environment, analogously equating internal/external flows and connections, proposing plural environments , anonymous structures etc.
Oiticica and Mangueira
In this new light, the work of Hélio Oiticica constitutes a landmark. Unlike the first modernism, and returning to the rational re-elaboration of such issues by Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) and Tarsila do Amaral in the 1930s, Oiticica does not identify exclusion in ethnic terms, that is, in the figures of the Indian and the black, as doubles of nature, but rather in the favela, that is, in those excluded from the economic-legal order of the basic property: housing.
Hélio Oiticica's search for another conception of space is linked to the research of the neoconcrete movement regarding a new relationship of reciprocity between the work of art and its surroundings, including the direct public, as the subject of observation, elevated to the condition of participant or experimenter. Hence the suspension of the inside/outside limit and the experience of space in intrinsic connection with that of time – since it requires the mobility of the observer. Hence also the notion of participation as an active relationship between the observer and the aesthetic object.
The separation between life and art and the related idea of contemplation are thus targeted. In order to promote the mobility of the observer, to anti-contemplative participation, in 1960 Oiticica abandoned two-dimensional painting for spatial relief, a kind of aerial labyrinth, painted wooden boards, suspended by nylon threads, the Nuclei, as he said.
However, it was in 1964 and in Mangueira, against the times under the weight of the military coup, that the decision to revive the life/art relationship took on a different concreteness, leading to the concept of environmental art as anti-art: “All my experience in Mangueira with people of all kinds taught me that social and intellectual differences are the cause of unhappiness – I had some ideas that I thought were very abstract, but suddenly they became real: creativity is inherent in everyone, the artist would only inflame , it sets fire and frees people from their conditioning.”[xvii]
What does Hélio Oiticica discover in Mangueira? First, a new notion of shelter, clothing or temporary housing, in short, a mobile and temporary way of occupying space, which he will call Parangolé.[xviii] It is, prosaically and summarily, a cloak, tent or banner.[xx] From Parangolé, which concerns the body – and for which Parangolé acts as a deconditioner –, Hélio Oiticica moves on to more comprehensive constructions: other shelters, already, in this case, declaredly architectural, such as Penetráveis and Ninhos. If Parangolé came from dance, the latter come directly from organic architecture and, always in process, from Rio's favelas.[xx]
But, deep down, Parangolé itself, created from the overlapping or collage of fabrics, was already nourished by the idea of favela space: “In the architecture of the favela a character of Parangolé is implicit, such is the structural organicity between the elements that constitute it and the internal circulation and dismemberment of these constructions; there are no sudden passages from the bedroom to the living room or kitchen, but the essential that defines each part, which is connected to the other (by) continuity. In construction works, the same thing happens on a different level. And so in all these popular corners and buildings, usually improvised, that we see every day. Also fairs, beggars’ houses (…) etc.”[xxx]
The Penetráveis and the Parangolés are made from the remains of other things, fragments of which Oiticica appropriates, just as the favela dwellers do, to build their homes. The idea of appropriation, in which the issue of ownership is already in question, corresponds to a new degree of participation. The appropriation focuses on things in the world, which, like everyone else, Oiticica encounters on the streets.[xxiii] The creator of objects succeeds the artist who proposes practices.
The latter arise from propositions, which, as open ideas, do not elaborate a closed object or form, but are combined with the disappearance of the art object and the related contemplative act, replaced by practices called anti-art or suprasensory, in which “the true doing [of the work] would be the experience of the individual”, who “disalienates” himself by objectifying “his ethical-spatial behavior”.[xxiii]
Thus, “contrary to what a conventional architect does, Oiticica, instead of creating a space for a certain program of uses and functions, proposes the space to then allow possible uses and functions to be discovered”.[xxv]
Opposed to the work of art, appropriation and proposition found environmental art, which has the declared purpose of transforming the socioeconomic structure. Says Hélio Oiticica: “Such a position can only be (…) a totally anarchic position (…). Everything that is oppressive, socially and individually, is in opposition to it (…) the social-environmental position is (…) incompatible (…) with any law that is not determined by a defined inner need (…) it is the resumption of the individual’s trust in his most cherished intuitions and desires”.[xxiv]
The paradox of popular constructive art, which combines scarcity and wealth of inventions, emerges in the verse of Nelson Cavaquinho (1911-1986): “Our shacks are castles in our imagination”. In poetry, the conversion of “shack” into “castle” takes place, in the words of the preceding verse, thanks to the “power of expression” of “Mangueira’s modest verses”[xxv]. This conception of poetic power is consistent with Hélio Oiticica's notion of the art of adversity.
Today, having overcome the military dictatorship still in force at the time of Hélio Oiticica's death in 1980, and having verified the political majority of the workers' movement, the legal-political struggle for overcoming the concept of property, which restricts the use of land to a minority, may well turn from an announcement by poets into a political objective of the majority. Therefore, both art, urbanism and architecture can be thought of equally in these terms.[xxviii]
* Luiz Renato Martins is professor-advisor of PPG in Visual Arts (ECA-USP). Author, among other books, of The Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil (Haymarket/ HMBS).
Portuguese version of chap. 1 of the book above.
[I] When explaining her “brazilwood” production, Tarsila justified her “return to tradition, to simplicity”, due to the intense pleasure given to her by encountering “the colors she loved as a child”, on a trip to the historic cities of Minas, with Blaise Cendrars and other modernists, apoud Carlos Zilio, Brazil's quarrel.Rio de Janeiro, Relume Dumará, 1997, p. 67.
[ii] Cf. C. Zilio, id., ibid.
[iii] Maracangalha was an imaginary city mentioned parodically in the song of the same title (1957), designed by Dorival Caymmi (1914-2008). Contemporary with the construction of Brasília, the song alluded to the myth of this as a modern city, when the protagonist stated that he would go to Maracangalha, even alone and without Amália, but that he would certainly take his straw hat. This was the characteristic condition of manual workers who migrated from miserable rural regions, mainly from the North and Northeast, to build Brasília. They lived in slums, often in shacks made of cement bags and, after the inauguration of the capital in 1961, they went to live in so-called satellite cities, which present precarious aspects similar to those of their cities of rural origin – features, in detail and as a whole. , contrasting with the Plano Piloto of Brasília, designed by Lúcio Costa, in which both the palaces designed by Oscar Niemeyer and the superblocks are located.
[iv] See Mário Pedrosa, “Introduction to Brazilian architecture – II”, in idem, From the Murals of Portinari to the Spaces of Brasília, Aracy Amaral (org.), São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1981, pp. 329-32.
[v] Cf. M. Pedrosa, “The landscaper Burle Marx”, in idem, From the Murals…, op. cit., p. 286 (my emphasis).
[vi] See, for example, the photos of Alvorada in Oscar Niemeyer, My Architecture, Rio de Janeiro, Revan, 2000, p. 94.
[vii] The priority given to the design of the building as an isolated unit in the landscape, ready for contemplation, is also revealed in a recent text by the architect, about the project for the Ibirapuera Park auditorium: “Architecture… How good it is to see a white sheet of paper appear palace, a cathedral, a new form, anything that creates the amazement that reinforced concrete allows!”, cf. O. Niemeyer, “As if everything began again”, in The State of S. Paul, 05.12.2002, p. C3.
[viii] Cf. M. Pedrosa, “Modern architecture in Brazil”, in idem, From the Murals…, op. cit., p. 262.
[ix] Cf. L. Costa, “Brasília/ Memorial descriptive of the Brasília Pilot Plan”, in Lúcio Costa: About Architecture, organized by Alberto Xavier, 2a ed., Porto Alegre, Editora UniRitter, 2007, p. 265.
[X] Pedrosa relies on the thesis of Pierre Monbeig (1908-87), Pionniers et Planteurs of São Paulo (1952), which links the expansion of São Paulo in the interior to Portuguese colonization, both combining “continuous displacement” and “tenacious desire for profit”. Hence the instability of the population, “an uninterrupted race”, “the destruction of the land”, “where planters are installed, the grass barely grows again”. See M. PEDROSA, “Brasília, the new city”, in idem, Academic and Modern/ Selected Texts III, org. by Otília Arantes, São Paulo, Edusp, 1998, pp. 411-21. For a precise and acute balance of the critic's positions in relation to Brasília, see Otília Arantes, Mário Pedrosa: Critical Itinerary, São Paulo, Scritta, 1991, pp. 79-150.
[xi] “The spirit that blows over Brasília (…) is the spirit of utopia, the spirit of the plan (…). It is a gesture (…) of a profound national need: the defense of the land, under a continuous and terrible process of destruction (…) Brasília will be able to hasten the time for liberation from too immediate submission to the international price market. It could only force the pioneer front to settle (…). The pace of expansion of the national market will be intensified by the creation of true new regions, in the center of the country, around the new capital. Furthermore, it will not be possible to reequip or equip these lands without the agrarian reform that is increasingly being talked about in Brazil. In short, Brasília involves a geographic, social and cultural remodeling of the entire country (…). The time for economic renaissance will be the time for planning. The time for planning is the end of the advance of pioneering speculation.” See M. Pedrosa, “Brasília…”, op. cit., pp. 416-7.
[xii] Cf. M. Pedrosa, “Reflections around the new capital”, in idem, Academics…, op. cit., p. 391, 394.
[xiii] In an “artificial and isolating climate, moral irresponsibility will thrive, as the centralism of a new, all-powerful, technocratic bureaucracy develops, under the effects of the separation from national life itself, combined with the tremendous availability in resources (…)”. Cf. M. Pedrosa, “Reflexões…”, op. cit., p. 392.
[xiv] Cf. M. Pedrosa, “Reflexões…”, op. cit., p. 392.
[xv] Cf. M. Pedrosa, “Reflexões…”, op. cit., pp. 400-1.
[xvi] For greater nuance, it is worth considering Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's observation that the Portuguese colonial city, unlike those in Hispanic America, does not reflect “abstract reason”, since it “does not contradict the picture of nature, and its silhouette is intertwined with the line of the landscape.” See SB of HOLLAND, Brazil roots, pref. Antonio Candido, Rio de Janeiro, Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1969 (5th ed.), chap. IV, p. 76.
[xvii] H. Oiticica, “Letter to Guy Brett, 02.04.1968”, in idem, Helium Oiticica, catalogue, org. Guy Brett et al. (Rotterdam, Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, February-April 1992; Paris, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, June-August 1992; Barcelona, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, October-December 1992; Lisbon, Centro de Arte Moderna at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, January-March 1993; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, October 1993-February 1994; Rio de Janeiro, Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, September 1996-January 1997), Rio de Janeiro, City Hall of the City of Rio de Janeiro/ Projeto Hélio Oiticica, 1996, p. 135.
[xviii] For Oiticica’s appropriation of the term, see Jorge GUINLE Filho, “The last interview of Hélio Oiticica”, in Interview (Rio de Janeiro, April 1980), rep. in César OITICICA Filho and Ingrid VIEIRA (org.), Hélio Oiticica – Encontros (Rio de Janeiro, Beco do Azougue, 2009), p. 269.
[xx] “It all started with my experience with samba, with the discovery of the hills, the organic architecture of Rio’s favelas (and consequently others, such as the stilt houses in Amazonas) and especially the spontaneous, anonymous constructions in large urban centers – the art of streets, unfinished things, vacant lots, etc.” Cf. H. Oiticica, “Tropicália/ March 4, 1968”, in idem, Helium…, catalogue, org. G. Brett et al., op. cit., p. 124. Republished in idem, Hélio Oiticica – Museum is the World, org. César Oiticica Filho, Rio de Janeiro, Beco do Azougue, 2011, p. 108. See also Paola B. Jacques, Ginga Aesthetics/ The Architecture of Favelas through the Work of Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, Casa da Palavra/ RIOARTE, 2001, pp. 23-42.
[xx] See the interesting study, very rich in indications, by Paola Jacques, cited above.
[xxx] Cf. H. Oiticica, “Fundamental bases for a definition of Parangolé”, in idem, Helium…, catalogue, org. G. Brett et al., op. cit., p. 87; rep. in idem, Hélio Oiticica – Museum…, org. C. Oiticica Filho, op. cit., p. 71.
[xxiii] See H. Oiticica, “Environmental Program”, in idem, Helium…, catalogue, org. G. Brett et al., op. cit., p. 103; rep. in in idem, Hélio Oiticica – Museum…, org. C. Oiticica Filho, op. cit., p. 82. See also Lisette Lagnado, “Museu é o mundo”, in I &, 24-26.05.2002, year III, n. 101, in newspaper Valor, São Paulo, pp. 60-1.
[xxiii] Cf. H. Oiticica, “Appearance of the Suprasensorial”, in idem, Helium…, catalogue, org. G. Brett et al., op. cit., p. 128; rep. in idem, Hélio Oiticica – Museum…, org. C. Oiticica Filho, op. cit., p. 106.
[xxv] See PB Jacques, op. cit., p. 83. See also pp. 110-111.
[xxiv] See H. Oiticica, “Environmental Program”, op. cit., p. 103; rep. in idem, Hélio Oiticica – Museum…, org. C. Oiticica Filho, op. cit., p. 81-2.
[xxv] The lyrics say: “Mangueira is a barn of bambas like me/ Portela also had/ Paulo who died/ But the samba singer lives eternally in our hearts/ Mangueira’s verses are modest/ But there is always strength of expression/ Our shacks are castles in our imagination/ ô, ô, ô, ô it was Mangueira who arrived”. Cf. Nelson Cavaquinho and Geraldo Queiroz, Always Hose.
[xxviii] Research assistance and review of the previous version: Gustavo Motta. Last review: Regina Araki.
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