Fortunately, There Are Remains

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Fortunately, There Are Remains SERVICE ESTIMATE GALLERY INVOICE PRESS LETTER GERALDO DE BARROS February 25 - April 8, 2017 Fortunately, there are remains DOCUMENT is pleased to present Geraldo de Barros’ first solo exhibition at the gallery. De Barros (São Paulo, Brazil, 1923-1998) concentrated on photography within two periods of time, each resulting in the produc- tion of the two bodies of work represented in this exhibition: the Fotoformas (1949-51) and the Sobras (1996-1998). By using a medium that so persuasively locates itself within day-to-day reality, de Barros was able interrogate the relationship between photography and other forms of capturing experience. In both series, he overlaid photographic document with the making-visible of imaginative or formal associations, and collapsed different moments of time into a single image. Fotoformas and Sobras bridge the beginning and end of de Barros’ working life as an artist. Between the two, his activity had included participating in the formation of the Concrete Art group Ruptura (1952-1959); co-found- ing both the collectivist furniture factory Unilabor (1954-1961) and the graphic design consultancy forminform (1958); creating, with Nelson Leirner and Wesley Duke Lee, an anarchic space named Rex Gallery & Sons (1966- 1709 W Chicago ave ave W Chicago 1709 1967), and founding the furniture company Hobjeto (1964-1989). The artistic output of this varied trajectory encompassed abstract painting, industrial and graphic design, assemblages produced by painting over found billboard fragments, and abstract reliefs made of Formica. This multifaceted career suggests a wilful and dextrous heterogeneity that is also contained within De Barros’ attitude towards photography. Through their use of cutting, cropping and collage, the Sobras also recall the processes first used in the produc- tion of the Fotoformas. Whereas the relationship between the two series is consistently apparent at the level of 262.719.3500 technique, the set of photo-collages on paper that also forms part of Sobras creates a more explicit connection Documentspace.com to the Fotoformas. Their source materials were reproductions of his earliest images, as produced for a book pub- lished for his 1994 retrospective in São Paulo. Being fortunate enough to be witness to the beginnings of his own historicisation, the Sobras thus allowed de Barros to submit his photographic practice to a degree of chronological disobedience. As a deliberate return to photography, his final series again marked out the distinct parameters of his approach to this medium. This is a series of work that de Barros began at the end of his life, but it is also one provoked by a need to recall his first motivations for engaging with photography. The Sobras, formed by a process of looking back that acted against both nostalgia and narrative, continue to invite the intrusion of the present. — Isobel Whitelegg ________________________________________ Geraldo de Barros was born in São Paulo in 1923 and lived there until his death in 1998. He started his career as a tra- ditional painter, but began an intense period of experimentation with the photographic medium in 1946, which culminated in his Fotoformas exhibition at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) in 1951. The exhibition was a watershed for Bra- zilian photography and led to de Barros receiving a scholarship to study engraving in Paris. While in Europe he travelled extensively, meeting influential artists and encountering key movements in art and design. He returned to Brazil and established a successful career as an artist and industrial designer. De Barros is part of numerous public and private collections, such as MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL; Coleção Inhotim, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil; The Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany, The Tate Collection, London, UK, and Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. 2017 Chicago > IL 60622.
Recommended publications
  • 7 Anthropophagous Political Uses of Pop Art in the Aftermath of the Brazilian Military Coup D’État of 1964
    7 AnthroPOPhagous Political Uses of Pop Art in the Aftermath of the Brazilian Military Coup D’état of 1964 Oscar Svanelid 215 It has been presumed that Brazilian artists in the 1960s thought U.S. pop art to be a devaluation of art without, that is, perceiving the critical impli- cations of that position (e.g. pop art as an attack on art as high culture). Brazilian art historian Sérgio B. Martins has recently given authorial weight to this view in his influential study Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil 1949–1979. In a critical review of the Brazilian avant-garde and the realist turn that it took in the 1960s, Martins makes a brief but suggestive comment on its anti-reception of pop art. His argument is that the critical standpoint that Brazilian artists and critics took in relation to pop art showed signs of ignorance on their part.1 Martins’ claim is basic- ally that the Brazilians did not know better than to dismiss pop art together with its commercial imagery. To explain this ignorance, Martins points to the peripheral position of the Brazilian avant-garde and its limited access to the original works of pop art. In the 1960s, the only time U.S. pop art was only shown in Brazil was when William C. Seitz curated the American pavilion at the IX São Paulo Biennial, 1967. That year Seitz had put together a selection of American artists into an extended lineage 1 Sérgio B. Martins, Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil 1949–1979, Cambridge, Mass.
    [Show full text]
  • Art in Transfer in the Era of Pop
    ART IN TRANSFER IN THE ERA OF POP ART IN TRANSFER IN THE ERA OF POP Curatorial Practices and Transnational Strategies Edited by Annika Öhrner Södertörn Studies in Art History and Aesthetics 3 Södertörn Academic Studies 67 ISSN 1650-433X ISBN 978-91-87843-64-8 This publication has been made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Program of the College Art Association. Södertörn University The Library SE-141 89 Huddinge www.sh.se/publications © The authors and artists Copy Editor: Peter Samuelsson Language Editor: Charles Phillips, Semantix AB No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Cover Image: Visitors in American Pop Art: 106 Forms of Love and Despair, Moderna Museet, 1964. George Segal, Gottlieb’s Wishing Well, 1963. © Stig T Karlsson/Malmö Museer. Cover Design: Jonathan Robson Graphic Form: Per Lindblom & Jonathan Robson Printed by Elanders, Stockholm 2017 Contents Introduction Annika Öhrner 9 Why Were There No Great Pop Art Curatorial Projects in Eastern Europe in the 1960s? Piotr Piotrowski 21 Part 1 Exhibitions, Encounters, Rejections 37 1 Contemporary Polish Art Seen Through the Lens of French Art Critics Invited to the AICA Congress in Warsaw and Cracow in 1960 Mathilde Arnoux 39 2 “Be Young and Shut Up” Understanding France’s Response to the 1964 Venice Biennale in its Cultural and Curatorial Context Catherine Dossin 63 3 The “New York Connection” Pontus Hultén’s Curatorial Agenda in the
    [Show full text]
  • Download Exhibition Brochure
    Feb 25th Fortunately, there are remains \ April 8th 2017 Geraldo de Barros Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998) concentrated on photography within photograph itself, presented as both image and object. two periods of time, each resulting in the production of the two bod - ies of work represented in this exhibition: the Fotoformas (1949-51) De Barros‘s approach to display suggests that the Fotoformas series was and the Sobras (1996-1998). By using a medium that so persuasively deliberate in its internal contradictions. This attitude is also suggested locates itself within day-to-day reality, de Barros was able interrogate by his navigation of critical debates surrounding abstraction in 1950s the relationship between photography and other forms of capturing ex- Brazil. Following his MASP exhibition, and during a year-long trip to perience. In both series, he overlaid photographic document with the Europe, de Barros both studied print-making with Surrealist and Ex- making-visible of imaginative or formal associations, and collapsed dif- pressionist artist Stanley Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris, and travelled ferent moments of time into a single image. to Zurich to meet celebrated Concretist artist Max Bill. On his return, de Barros co-founded the Ruptura group, and produced paintings ad- The Fotoformas, first exhibited under that name in a ground-breaking hering to the strict anti-representational precepts of Concrete art. The 1951 solo show at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), were shown text of Ruptura’s 1953 manifesto advocated the exclusion of any form again as a complete series only in 1993, at the Musée de l’Elysée, Laus - of naturalistic representation, including the ‘“incorrect” naturalism of anne.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Pop: an Introduction | Tate
    Political Pop: An Introduction | Tate http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-world-goes-pop/jessi... What's on Tate Modern Exhibitions The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop Sign in Political Pop: An Introduction Jessica Morgan 1 September 2015 Pop Art serves to remind us … that we have fashioned for ourselves a world of artefacts and images that are intended not to train perception or awareness but to insist that we merge with them as the primitive man merges with his environment. The world of modern advertising is a magical environment constructed to produce effects for the total economy but not designed to increase human awareness … Pop Art is the product of drawing attention to some object in our own daily environment as if it were anti-environmental. Marshall McLuhan, ‘The Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment’ 1 It is difficult to exaggerate the invasion of commercial brands, billboards, photographs, magazines and packaging designs that overwhelmed culture beginning in the 1960s. Advertising and its viral propagation on the street, in the home, through print and celluloid, presented an unprecedented aesthetic challenge, marked by its proliferation around the world. If consumer culture was branded quintessentially American, it was in fact indelibly global. While Marcel Duchamp had responded to the explosive production of materiality in the latter stages of the industrial revolution with the readymade, the next generation of artists had to contend with not just the object but a whole environment. Pop art, we know, was an inevitable rejoinder to the flow and dissemination of images of products (as much as the objects themselves).
    [Show full text]
  • Bond, Niles W
    Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project NILES W. BOND Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: April 14, 1998 Copyright 2 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Massachusetts raised in Massachusetts and Canada University of North Carolina and Fletcher School Sacco-Vanzetti case influence Havana, Cuba - Consular Officer 19,9-194. Visas /e0ish refugees State Department - Probationary 1nstruction 194. Courses of instruction Sumner 2ells 2artime atmosphere 3okohama, /apan - Consular Officer 194.-1942 Environment Visa 6ermany attacks Soviet Union Economic problems Courier trip to Peking Ship movement reporting 7empeitai - /apanese secret service Attack on Pearl Harbor and 0ar Code books burned S0iss government protection 1mprisonment 8epatriation Home0ard journey Doolittle raid 8eporting ship movements /apanese 0ar reporting Debriefings Madrid, Spain - Third Secretary 1942-1949 2illard Beaulac /ean 6rombach 1ntelligence organization :the lake; Anti-Hitler plot Otto /ohn 8efugee program Ambassador Carlton /.H. Hayes U.S. military refugees Spanish cooperation Pamplona Franco=s 0ar assistance Hitler and Franco Bern, S0itzerland - First Secretary and Chargé 1949-1949 State Department - Far East Asian Affairs - Assistant Director 1949-195. 7orea South 7orea government formed Syngman 8hee 7orea-/apan relations Tokyo, /apan - Deputy Political Advisor 195.-195, 6eneral Douglas MacArthur Duties /apanese treaty Pusan/Seoul, 7orea - Political Officer 195,-1954 Environment Ambassador
    [Show full text]
  • De Wesley Duke Lee Supervisor
    Título: The Birth Capsule [A Cápsula do Nascimento] de Wesley Duke Lee Supervisor: Marco Garaude Giannotti Proponente: Rafael Vogt Maia Rosa Universidade de São Paulo, Escola de Comunicações e Artes, Departamento de Artes plásticas Resumo: O projeto propõe um estudo do problema da teatralidade na obra de Wesley Duke Lee com base em uma revisão crítica de sua instalação “The Birth Capsule” [A Cápsula do Nascimento], produzida pelo artista em 1969, em Los Angeles, nos EUA. A obra passou por diversas etapas de desenvolvimento, dando continuidade a pesquisas com ambientes como “The Helicóptero” (1969), mas não chegou a ser aberta ao público e debatida criticamente. Entretanto, trata-se de um trabalho que representa um ponto privilegiado no experimentalismo do artista, no qual o mesmo suprimiu processos característicos como a combinação do pictórico com objetos ready made, e sintetiza seus embates com a própria instituição artística. O objetivo é contextualizar sua relevância em meio à produção de Duke Lee, especialmente no que se refere aos dilemas apresentados pela transição de um contexto moderno para o contemporâneo e à aproximação entre linguagens no âmbito das artes plásticas. A pesquisa se propõe a investigar os antecedentes do trabalho, suas consequências imediatas na década de 1970, bem como paralelos do mesmo com outras produções da época, notadamente, de Lygia Clark, buscando avaliar em que medida representa um ponto alto em meio as linhas de desenvolvimento do experimentalismo no Brasil, em particular no campo da estética instalacional.
    [Show full text]
  • Thoughts Upon Brazilian Art in the Years 1960And1970 Intheyears Thoughts Uponbrazilian Art , Guidedby Marxistthoughts(Burger, 1984)
    MARILIA ANDRÉS RIBEIRO, Thoughts upon Brazilian art in the years 1960 and 1970 187 that emerged in the early 20th century, called “historical avant- gardes”. It emphasizes the innovative and permanent nature of avant-gardes that is distinguished from the contingent aspect which shows itself through slogans, manifests and texts in order to spread new ideas and collective regimentation. Campos shows that the ENGLISH avant-gardes of the first decades of the 20th century created the assumptions of the artistic language of our age, and the neo-avant- THOUGHTS UPON BRAZILIAN art IN THE YEARS 1960 AND 1970 garde movements, which emerged in the second half of the 20th Marilia Andrés Ribeiro century, resumed and developed the proposals of historical avant- gardes within a different context, after the catastrophe of two World Translated by Ana Carolina Azevedo Wars and the oppressive intervention of totalitarian regimes. The critic makes a cyclical interpretation of the innovation/assimilation ABSTRACT: This article is a reflection upon art in Brazil during process of the avant-gardes, which means that the death of an the years 1960 and 1970, from avant-garde and neo-avant-garde avant-garde encourages the birth of another, thus always letting concepts in the art of the 20th century, with comments on the innovative artistic manifestations emerge to give strenght to artistic situation of Brazilian neo-avant-garde movements, especially the languages. Campos’s reading presents a wide etymological concept actions of militant critics and artists in the cities of São Paulo, Rio of avant-gardes and situates the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.
    [Show full text]
  • Geraldo De Barros: Throwing the Dice Fernando Castro
    Self-Portrait, 1949. Tatuapé, São Paulo GALLERY Geraldo de Barros: Throwing the Dice Fernando Castro 4 Pictures Courtesy If we could only keep our happy or sad memories we “Speak normally, Geraldo. I cannot under- would go crazy. Fortunately, there are others. stand what you are trying to say,” she told of the Sicardi Gallery, GERALDO DE BARRO him one morning. He asked for a pen but when she gave it to him, his fi ngers could Houston. not hold on to it. Only after being hospital- Unbeknownst even to himself, in 1979, Geral- ized did the family fi nd out what had hap- do de Barros suffered his fi rst attack of cerebral pened to him. “Too much stress and too ischemia. He was fi fty-six years old. Up until much smoking,” the doctor said. He had to the Seventies, it had been a good decade for slow down. Geraldo. In 1972, Hobjeto, the furniture fac- Although physically diminished, Geraldo tory of which he was co-owner had reached remained as lucid as ever and was deter- its maximum expansion employing over seven mined to continue to be the artist he had al- hundred people. His furniture designs had re- ways been. He was able to sketch geometric ceived several awards thus fulfi lling his desire patterns like those he had done during the to socialize art by allowing as many people as fi fties when he was one of Brazil’s most re- possible to use it in their lives. The commer- nowned Concrete artists. With the help of cial success of the Hobjeto chain made him a his assistant José Suares, who executed the wealthy man.
    [Show full text]
  • Escola De Arte Brasil, Depois Dos Dois Pontos Uma Experiência Artística (E Social) Depois De 1968
    UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO FACULDADE DE FILOSOFIA, LETRAS E CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS DEPARTAMENTO DE HISTÓRIA ÁREA DE HISTÓRIA SOCIAL THAIS ASSUNÇÃO SANTOS Escola de Arte Brasil, depois dos dois pontos Uma experiência artística (e social) depois de 1968 versão corrigida São Paulo 2012 THAIS ASSUNÇÃO SANTOS Escola de Arte Brasil, depois dos dois pontos Uma experiência artística (e social) depois de 1968 Dissertação de mestrado apresentada ao programa de pós-graduação em História Social do Departamento de História da Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo, como exigência parcial para obtenção do título de mestre em História Social, sob a orientação do professor Francisco Cabral Alambert Júnior. São Paulo 2012 2 Autorizo a reprodução e divulgação total ou parcial deste trabalho, por qualquer meio convencional ou eletrônico, para fins de estudo e pesquisa, desde que citada a fonte. Catalogação na Publicação Serviço de Biblioteca e Documentação Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo santos, thais assunção s194e escola de arte Brasil, depois dos dois pontos - uma experiência artística (e social) depois de 1968 / thais assunção santos ; orientador francisco cabral alambert júnior. - São Paulo, 2012. 192 f. Dissertação (Mestrado)- Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo. Departamento de História. Área de concentração: História Social. 1. escola brasil. 2. josé resende. 3. carlos fajardo. 4. arte anos 70. 5. ditadura militar . I. alambert
    [Show full text]
  • Archaeologies of the Selfie Are Two Paintings: with a Group Show Titled Archaeologies of the Selfie, Curated by Luis Pérez-Oramas
    archaeologies of the selfi e curated by luis pérez-oramas galeria nara roesler | new york opening february 27, 2020 | 6pm exhibition february 28 – april 18, 2020 COVER Antonio Dias. Sun Photo as Self-Portrait, 1968 SECOND PAGE Paulo Bruscky. Xeroperformance, 1988 [detail] Galeria Nara Roesler | New York is delighted to inaugurate its 2020 exhibitions program The core pieces, or historical anchors, of Archaeologies of the Selfie are two paintings: with a group show titled Archaeologies of the Selfie, curated by Luis Pérez-Oramas. Sun Photo as Self-Portrait (1968) by Antonio Dias – because ultimately all selfies are The exhibition comments on today’s phenomenon of mass image production and self-portraits – and Untitled (1961) by Tomie Ohtake, which she painted wearing a blindfold dissemination arguably conflated in the recent genre of theselfie . Luis Pérez-Oramas and while being explicitly self-referential in its making, nonetheless results in an obliterated begins by contextualizing the case of the selfie through two concurrent ideas: Pierre image. These markers are exhibited with pieces by Milton Machado, Cao Guimarães, Paulo Bourdieu’s theory of Middle-Brow Art and the narcissistic autarchy of the individual. Bruscky, Wesley Duke Lee, Vicente de Mello, André Severo and Vasco Szinetar – each of Following Bourdieu’s approach, Pérez-Oramas situates the selfie as a symptom of the which inherently explores, in their process of making, medium or in their imagery, the social use of photography, whereby we can all become photographers by having access to different ways in which the self has been depicted, referenced, imagined, obliterated or devices that produce easy and increasingly perfect images.
    [Show full text]
  • Download the Large Print Guide for Room Five
    Room 5 Pop at Home 43 Pop artists across the world focused on the domestic interior, subverting and reimagining the (American) dream home. The home could also be a stand-in for the family structure itself, which was undergoing significant changes in the 1960s and 70s. Women’s role within the family home comes under particular scrutiny. Several artists conflate the female body with domestic objects and appliances, creating works that occupy a territory between fine art and design. 44 Wall labels Clockwise from right of wall text Martha Rosler Born and works USA All works from the series Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain Pop Art, or Wallpaper Cold Meat II, or Kitchen II Cold Meat I Kitchen I, or Hot Meat Damp Meat Woman With Vacuum, or Vacuuming Pop Art c.1966–72 Photomontage Merging parts of women’s torsos with kitchen appliances, Rosler humorously deconstructs the traditional role of women at home and its representation in the media. She also addresses the marginalisation of women in pop art and in the art world generally with Woman with Vacuum, or Vacuuming Pop Art in which a woman cleans a corridor filled with pop art works by male artists. The artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin / Cologne. X50890, X50892, X50893, X55857, X50891, X51078 45 Oppostite Wall (Behind) Wesley Duke Lee 1931–2010 Born and worked Brazil Trapeze or a Confession O Trapézio ou Uma Confissão 1966 Aluminium, cloth and plastic, graphite and oil paint on canvas, steel cable and cloth rope Inspired by Kurt Schwitters’s immersive art environment, Merzhaus, this work originally invited the viewerinto a space in which they would be surrounded by representations of different aspects of human intimacy.
    [Show full text]