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Design and humanism: for a new model
the bossa-nova of João Gilberto and Tom Jobim, in the literature, starting from the
works of Oswaldo de Andrade, Guimarães Rosa and many others, in the architecture
of Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, in the plastic
arts, with the painters Tarsila do Amaral, Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, in the landscaping
of Burle Max, in the new cinema, and... in design, with the courses in the Institute
of Contemporaneous Art (Instituto de Arte Contemporânea – IAC) of São Paulo,
and the installation of the Superior School of Industrial Design (Escola Superior de
Desenho Industrial) in Rio de Janeiro. The design, associated in a recurrent way, to
the idea of progress, of actualization, initially had as focus the product in itself and
the adaptation of its project to the industrialized productive process.
Simultaneously to the American presence, it occurred, in Brazil, a relevant
European influence, specially French, with the arrival in Brazil of many of its
intellectual people, with the diffusion of productions, be them philosophers, poets,
movie makers, singers and artists, like Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Prévert, Jean
Cocteau, Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Juliette Gréco. The duplicity of references
from abroad leaded to esthetic and political alignments between Brazilians, with
repercussions in ways of thinking, expressions and cultural productions.
The occidental economy in the post-war had as propelling factors the scientifictechnological
advance, the change in values, the market heating, the increase in
number, variety and circulation of industrialized goods, taking not only to the
acceleration of consume, but also to the consumerism, to the planned obsolescence.
Even though we were still young, my generation questioned with vigor the
values that had been true for our parents, trues that collapsed. The criticisms and
the rejection of the traditional parameters that impacted the main urban centers of
United States of America and Europe, reverberated in Brazil. We formed a libertarian
youth that conquered the right of being young and that proposed another way
of life – the one of the counterculture, like no to war, yes to sex, rock and roll, the
influence of oriental gurus, frequent altered states of consciousness.
I lived with a painful intensity the period of darkness that covered the country
in the 1960s. The dictatorship. The democratic project of Brazil sank. The permanent
sensation of violence threat and of loss of civil rights haunted our daily life. Missing
colleagues; arrested, tortured or dead friends. A horror!
Cadernos de Estudos Avançados em Design - design e humanismo - 2013 - p. 141-148
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