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Maria Cecília Loschiavo dos Santos
abandonment-discard and the necessity of recycling and reusing the industrial
product. Looking to the streets of the big cities, it is possible to recognize this
power of improvisation of habitats, what bring us the opportunity of re-thinking
the human tragedy and of understanding this phenomenon from the daily life, that
goes way beyond the classic interpretations of esthetics.
What are the consequences of recognizing the esthetics of the dispossessed
people, of the material and of the product discarded and re-integrated in the
informal habitat of the homeless people or in the Brazilian vernacular design? In
this point it is important to retake the thought of Gilda de Mello e Souza. With a
wide thought, recognizing the role of design as a way of expression, the philosopher
Gilda de Mello e Souza gives us the key to understand the esthetic regime of the
culture and of the objects produced by the dispossessed population.
Commenting about the inheritance of the first group of French professors –
Lévi-Strauss, Jean Maugüé, Roger Bastide – who came to teach esthetics in the
Department of Philosophy in the São Paulo University, the philosopher Gilda de
Mello e Souza developed the concept of “poor esthetic and rich esthetic”, which
is crucial for the understanding of the ephemeral esthetics of vernacular design.
According to Souza, “in opposition to the Esthetics of the Classicism of Jean
Maugué and Lévi-Strauss, the analysis of Roger Bastide go around another concept
of art. [...] His esthetics is, then, an Esthetics of anthropologist, of a studious of the
phenomena of religious mysticism” (SOUZA, 1980, p. 34).
Gilda continues:
But it is also an esthetics of vanguard. [...] It was natural
that, arriving to a country that did not have a big cultural
tradition, people had dedicated themselves to the
elaboration of a poor esthetics – using the term in analogy
with what nowadays is designated as poor art, that is an
esthetics that turning the back to the great periods and the
great artistic manifestations, would embowel the esthetic
phenomenon of the daily life, of the insignificant facts, and
without forums of greatness, but that compound the fabric
of our life (SOUZA, 1980, p. 34).
The work of Lina and Gilda has the sensibility of looking to the essence of
humanity present in the Brazilian vernacular design, in its wide diversity and in the
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Cadernos de Estudos Avançados em Design - design e humanismo - 2013 - p. 149-156