The Resurgence of Anthropophagy
2004; Routledge; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0952882032000182712
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Urban and sociocultural dynamics
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes The focus of the 1998 Bienal de São Paulo was defined in the section entitled Nucleo Historico: Antropofagia e Histórias de Canibalismos. The most recent exhibition, ‘From Anthopophagy to Brasilia: Brazil 1920–1950’, took place at the Institutio Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain, October 2000–January 2001. See Ronaldo Brito's ‘O jeitinho moderno braziliero’, Gávea 10, 1984, pp 6–11. A recent dissertation by Christopher Dunn, The Relics of Brazil: Modernity and Nationality in the Tropicalista Movement, 1996, devotes almost two and a half pages to Oiticica and Tropicália, thus giving Hélio Oiticica (HO) more credit than past works; however, Dunn uses Hélio Oiticica to arrive at his focus – the musicians. Celso Favaretto, Invenção de Hélio Oiticica, 1992, like Dunn, sees the concerns of Oiticica and the musicians as separate developments which eventually meet. The movement was not clearly stated or defined in the plastic arts. MPB (Música Popular Brasiliero). The manifesto was published in Revista de Antropofagia, 1:1, São Paulo, May 1928. Currently housed at the Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro. Oiticica was meticulous about documenting and cataloguing his own works (an obsession that some attribute to growing up with a father who was an entomologist). For example the use of the structural grid derived from Oiticica's personal experience with European constructivism and his sense of Mondrian and Malevich. Hélio Oiticica has compared his structure to the Barroco – architecture often created using available and found or discarded materials. It contains a placard stating Pureza é um Mito (Purity is a myth). Tropicália was a collaborative work. Oiticica invited two artists to present their works. Antonio Manuel displayed works derived from newspapers and Roberta Oiticica included poem‐objects strewn among the plants. Hélio Oiticica, Tropicalia (Planos para construção), 16 April 1967, and an interview with Mário Barata, 15 May 1967. Projeto Hélio Oiticica (now in the archives at the Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica). Hélio Oiticica diary, 4 March 1968. See the writings of Hélio Oiticica, printed in Jornal do Brasil, Caderno B, 23 March 1968, p 109. The commercial rights to the term were in question and even a yoghurt company wanted to use the name. Oiticica commented: ‘Anthropophagy would be our defence against exterior domination’. See Maria Ignez Corrêa da Costa, ‘O tropicálismo portrás da imagem digerida’, Jornal do Brasil, Caderno B, 23 March 1968. In this case, the songs of the musicians were not yet called tropicalist but were eventually known under this term. The title of his 1993 album is Tropicália II. Other musicians of the group who are often overlooked, also considered Tropicalists, include Capinam, Nara Leão, Torquato Neto, Os Mutantes, Julio Medaglia, Gal Costa, and Tom Zé. For an informed description of Hélio Oiticica's earlier work, see Mário Pedrosa ‘Arte Ambiental, Arte Pos‐moderna, Hélio Oiticica’, Correio da Manhã, 26 June 1966. ‘Hélio Oiticica por Caetano Veloso’, Qualis, revista, 2:5, August 1992. Especially notable are the series of articles by Frederico Morais for Diario de Notícias. See Hélio Oiticica's text, ‘O Sentido de vanguarda do grupo baiano’, Correio da Manhã, 24 November 1968, where he praises ‘the fight of these artists against the general Brazilian repression … repression not only of the dictatorial censorship but also of the contiguous intelligentsia’. São Paulo, 28 April 1968. Parangolé cape 19, P23, titled Caetelesvelásia. Marissa Alves de Lima is responsible for both the Showpapo event and having Caetano photographed for her article. See note 38. Hélio Oiticica also dedicated a tent in his work EDEN to Caetano and Gil, 1968. The banner showed the bandit Cara de Cavalo from the Rio favelas gunned down by the police. The words across it state Seja Marginal, Seja Herói (Be Marginal, Be a Hero). The military government declared the Institutional Act 5 on 13 December 1968 – censoring all avenues of artistic communication. The two musicians were imprisoned for four months in 1969, never charged, and went into self‐imposed exile shortly thereafter in England for two years. Two letters dated 19 January 1970 and 22 June 1971 were published in the Jornal do Brasil, 8/10/89, p 4. For example the photo‐spread of Gil and Oiticica together in the US in 1971 in ‘Gilberto Gil em Nova York’, O Pasquim, no 122, Rio, 2–8 November 1971. A fact pointed out by the artist and friend of Hélio Oiticica, Luciano Figuereido, Director of the Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica and past director of Projeto HO and source of a wealth of information about Hélio Oiticica). It is more than likely that the papers started the ‘‐ismo’ which, as Augusto de Campos, one of the Concrete poets, points out, ‘is a suffix preferably used by adversaries of movements of renovation, in order to try to historicise and confine them’. See ‘É proibido proibir os baianos’, Correio da Manhã, 13 October 1968. This article was entitled ‘Marginália: Arte & Cultura na Idade da Pedrada’. ‘Tropicália não é séo de Veloso’ Intervalo, VI:281, March–June, 1968, p 27. This is an early article focusing on Oiticica, pointing out that Tropicália is not just the work of Caetano Veloso. Including plastic artists, directors, musicians, poets, critics, and humorists (among them were: Caetano, Gil, Oiticica, Celso, Rocha, Dias, Gerchman, Sganzerla, Torquato, and the São Paulo Concrete Poets). See archives of Lygia Clark, MAM, Rio. Unfortunately, the statement by Oiticica was not considered appropriate and was censored. ‘Blanked’ was written (in English) under his name. Fortunately, Hélio Oiticica included his original statement in the letter to Clark. During the early phase of Cinema Novo, Glauber Rocha made the film Terra em Transe, 1967. The film came out at nearly the same time as Tropicália and, like Oiticica and Celso, Rocha had concentrated efforts on trying to decolonise Brazilian art forms; in this case, the cinema. Rocha had hoped to develop a low‐budget cinema that could compete with dominant cinema (first‐world Hollywood) and overcome economic underdevelopment Caetano notes that he was at the 1967 Bienal de São Paulo (see Christopher Dunn's ‘The Tropicalista Rebellion’, Transition 70, October, 1966, p 132). Conversation with the artist and friend of Hélio Oiticica, Antonio Manuel, in 1996. Open to appropriating international ideas, O Rei da Vela was a parody of the French playwright Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (King Ubu). In this, its first staging, it speaks strongly against the military dictatorship and the American exploitation of Brazil. Oiticica notes that it was after this play that anthropophagy ‘became fashionable’; Hélio Oiticica, exhibition catalogue, Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1992, p 301. However, Hélio Oiticica does not mean this as a negative comment on Celso's work. Oiticica died in 1980 and his works have been in the charge of his two brothers. Also, limiting perceptions of other artists of importance to the history of Brazilian art, such as Lygia Clark, and leaving out artists significant to the true anthropophagic movements.
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