Volume 5–2.pdf - U&lc

4
THE ESTHETIC
ALPHABETOF
MARIO BOTAS
Comparisons among the world's great languages are, in a sense, as futile as comparisons
among the world's great rivers. Who is to say if the Amazon or the Mississippi,
the Volga or the Nile, is the most beautiful and most useful to those who dwell
along its banks? Portuguese, for example, is as different from English as night is from
day. But, fortunately, we have a common denominator in the alphabet. As different
as our languages are, our alphabets remain the same. Still, as wide a difference as
there is in language, an equally wide difference exists in the physical approach to
the drawing of an alphabet—the alphabet of Mario Botas providing a good case
in point. Botas, a Portuguese artist living in Lisbon:has culled a formidable record
for himself in his 26 years. His work has appeared in several international art and
poetry publications, and he has had exhibitions of his artistry in one-man showings
at galleries in Oporto and Lisbon as well as group exhibitions at such prominent
showcases as The National Society of Fine Arts in Lisbon, The Nike Gallery in Tokyo,
and The Drawing Center in New York. Name headings of many of the shows present
an added appeal: "Eroticism in Modern Portuguese Art;' "Local Mythologies:
and (our favorite) "Exquisite Corpses and Other Paintings" (at the Ottalini Gallery in
Lisbon). Botas tells us that, cluing these last years, his drawings have taken on a
confrontation between two realities: the figuration. and the text. The two become
one whole, the drawing presupposing the text and the text the drawing. As Botas
puts it: "Taking the text to its simplest form, the single letter, I allow the drawing the
task of physically representing the letter without any deliberate codiying, which
would inevitably change from language to language.The letterforms are given full
plastic and thematic autonomy" That's the way Mario Botas puts it. The reception
of work like this, of course, depends on the viewer's own sensibility and cultural
background. We view it as an esthetic exercise of highly creative invention, but let
our readers be the better judge of that.
THIS ARTICLE WAS SET IN ITC ERAS LIGHT