Tropical ginsberg

5.2 Fine Arts: Hélio Oiticica’s “Tropicália”
57
Não se trata mais de impor um acervo de idéias e
estruturas acabadas ao espectador, mas de
procurar pela descentralização da ‘arte’, pelo
deslocamento do que se designa como arte, do
campo intelectual racional para o da proposição
criativa vivencial, dar ao homem, ao indivíduo de
hoje, a possibilidade de ‘experimentar a criação’,
de descobrir pela participação, esta de diversas
ordens, algo que para ele possua significação. 116
Avant-Garde artists 117 in São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro,
throughout the first five years of 1960, slowly began to devour
international art movements, like New Realism, and Pop. 118 The result
of this feast produced a new art, one which would be ready to discuss
and criticize the ‘Brazilian reality’ that the dictatorship tried to cover up,
one which sought to become a collective singularity, in spite of all
discrepant proposals, ideas, or thoughts. Above all, they aimed to
integrate Brazil into the international art market with something ‘truly
Brazilian,’ like their predecessors from antropofagic Modernism had
tried 119 They managed to trespass the limits of their art, be them the
physical structure of the painting itself – the framing limit – or the
ethical limit of an artist – which prohibited artists to criticize the
dictatorship – for many, the forced blindness in face of authority.
In the “Opinião 65” art exibition 120 a certain common trait
116
Oiticica, Hélio, “Posição e programa,” Aspiro ao Grande Labirinto. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco,
1986. 111.
117
Hélio Oiticica, Rubens Gerchman, Antonio Dias, Waldemar Cordeiro, Pedro Escosteguy,
Wesley Duke Lee, Lygia Clark, and Sérgio Ferro.
118
New Realism sought to poetically recycle daily life by appropriating reality into paintings
through allusive, and not representative, ways. Pop Art was a British art movement from the
early fifties, profitably adopted by the Americans in the late 1950s, that incorporated mass
media products into their art, mixing fine arts with graphic art, with mass media art, the term
itself is already permeated with polemics of all kinds.
119
Favaretto, Celso. “Tropicália: A Explosão do óbvio,” Tropicália: uma revolução na cultura
brasileira [1967-1972]. Basualdo, Carlos (org). São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2007. 84.
120
Agust, 12 – September, 12, 1965, in Rio. Hélio Oiticica’s work, “Parangolé,” which was
backed-up by a live performance of ‘Estação Primeira de Mangueira,’ was forcefully removed
from the building on the allegation that the perfomance could cause physical damages to the
other works; Oiticica was forced to finish his performance on the gardens, outside the Museu
de Arte Moderna (MAM). Rubens Gerchman, Antonio Dias, Waldemar Cordeiro, Pedro
Escosteguy, and Wesley Duke Lee also exposed their works.