IV.4.4 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1065099
IN GENERAL, IT CAN BE SAID THAT THE WORK ETSEDRÓN,1 which was presented at the last São Paulo Biennial aroused little comment. It was almost ignored by the “initiates,” both artists and critics, who considered it a “difficult” work. Deprived of the critic’s usual frame of reference, they may—who knows…?—have found that they had nothing on which to base any judgment or comments. The public may find it repulsive and perplexing, which is a healthy reaction, but the artistic fraternity classifies it as something horrible, dirty, as well as completely different from what is usually imported from Europe or New York. To my way of seeing, it is precisely this latter characteristic that is the most attractive thing about Etsedrón, and on inspecting this environmental work I found a great deal of nurture for thought. Could it be that Etsedrón represents, to a certain extent, one of the paths that Brazilian art might follow if we were not so submerged in the internationalist wave of art?
Faced with such reflections, one might argue, as the critic Laís Moura does, that the authors of the work are somewhat less than fully informed. She is right since they decided to produce “environmental art” they know it is valid, and it makes no difference whether it is two-dimensional or three-dimensional. But I think that is as far as their knowledge of international art goes, for the concept, the materials and the forms they have employed give the impression of having emerged from the earth itself; and that is what gives this work its predominantly visceral tone. That minimum amount of information, however, was at the same time enough to make it clear that this work is not a thing apart from the everyday world. It is also an indication of the fact that we are not dealing with a folklorist concept.
But neither is it a matter of gratuitous nationalism. It might be well to begin by asking ourselves just what it was that led to the appearance of Etsedrón in recent years. (Another work by this group was presented in the preceding Biennial.) It is significant that it comes, as mentioned before, from the Northeast: the part of Brazil that most jealously maintains its cultural traditions, owing to its lack of economic “oxygenation.” The latter factor may also make it—in the terminology of Argentine critic Marta Traba—an area that is “closed” to outside information, and thus less open to the internationalist tendencies that dominate art in the southern part of the country. The number of European—or Oriental—immigrants to be found in northern and northeastern Brazil is minimal in comparison to the contingents that have settled in the area between Rio Grande [do Sul] and Rio de Janeiro. The population of those northern areas is therefore still a product of the same racial mixture that has existed since colonial times (Iberian white, Indian, and black). At the same time, Etsedrón may almost be considered a cry of alarm, calling the attention of an entire country–continent, which—in its southern and best-communicated part—is virtually losing its traditional characteristics: its “roots.”
The work Etsedrón is loaded with evidence of our ecological–social reality: midway between man and the earth, these strange, fantastic, beings, part human, part flora, part fauna, are nonetheless seen as an extraordinary unified whole, crafted from the matter–energy of ivy, fibers, clay, bones, leather and straw. [They are] crafted by human hands from their own region. “Is it beautiful?” It makes little difference, when one of the categories of aesthetics itself is the “horrible beautiful.”
What is certain is that Etsedrón is a work of impressive vigor and vitality, although it must be looked at in a new way by the expert or city dweller who is used to finding a reflection of imported art in Brazilian works of art. The only similarity between Etsedrón and foreign-inspired art lies in the bold way they call on our attention.
The installation of the work left much to be desired and impaired its effectiveness. As we know only too well, the same thing applies to everything that is shown at the Biennial. The space is so inadequate that the works presented there are almost never shown to their best advantage. Furthermore, owing to a lack of sensitivity on the part of those who arranged the exhibits, Etsedrón lost [some] of its impact because of the works placed on either side. The rather unfortunate work by Bernardo Caro and the folklorism of the lineal and literary Aderson Madeiros, neither of which had the slightest thing in common with Etsedrón, were confusing to the visitor, since the three were placed almost as if they formed a visual sequence.
On asking visitors to the Biennial what impression they had received from Etsedrón, I heard such comments as these: “It evokes poverty, so I didn’t like it”; “It presupposes an atmosphere of struggle”; “I don’t like it because the materials are offensive to the senses”; “Aesthetically, it’s ugly”; “The colors are disgusting,” and “The expression is hostile”; all of them answers that proved the impact of the work. The rural air of Etsedrón (which [Argentine critic Jorge] Romero Brest would be sure to reject on the basis of that characteristic alone, since according to him the renovation of art must come from urban circles, from the representatives of “modern living,” had an obvious effect on visitors’ thinking, as witnessed by the opinion overheard to the effect that the characters in the work looked like “those figures they set in the middle of rice fields to scare away the birds.”
It is true that the dramatic element of these figures gives them an expressionistic air. There is emphasis on impetus, on strength, on structure (volume is almost ignored), on rich tactile-visual effects, and on a very symptomatic disinterest in colors. The “absence” of color, that is, the preference shown for ochre and earth tones in detriment to chromatic vivacity—which is as typical of Brazil as it is of most tropical countries where the lineal element is more important that vivid coloring (the goal of these northeastern artists, as has been noted by so many writers) rhythm, vigor, and the “disgusting” nature of the materials—is a characteristic feature of Etsedrón.2
The whole character of this Etsedrón work seems to me far more mature than that of the work shown at the preceding Biennial, for, plastically speaking, it is a much more finished proposal. It is a work of the “here and now.” As it happens, however, art is not normally produced for a numerous public, but for an elite group of initiates whose approval or rejection decides its fate. It is for this reason that Etsedrón, no matter how serious it may be, is rejected by the public. Here we have a work that is not “white,” that expresses a high opinion, without prejudice or complexes, of the personality of the mulatto or cafuso.3 A “poor man’s work” that has nothing whatever to do with the sophisticated “arte povera” of Europe, it is difficult fare not easily accepted by those who are accustomed to forms of expression copied from those of European and North American artists. We may well be witnessing a new, Brazilian mestizo form of plastic/visual expression [that stems from those] of the colonial period. An expression of the sertaneja cultural reality [coming from the backlands], which deliberately avoids any visible link with the type of European art that dominates artistic circles in Southern Brazil.
It is because of this series of considerations that I would rather not try to relate Etsedrón (or even such other, and to me less successful, efforts as the previously mentioned work by Aderson Madeiros, or those by [the group from the State of] Ceará) to the current wave of “primitivism” in the United States. There, that movement is a result of the fact that artists in the great urban centers have developed a new awareness of certain almost forgotten ancestral values, such as the American Indian culture (and here—theoretically—there might be an affinity with the goals that Etsedrón pursues, but there is not). And [they] are showing it in works in which the erudition is very close to the surface, particularly as regards the refined treatment given certain rustically present materials. In Brazil, the artists who are best known form giving their work a sophisticated touch in the American fashion (which is of enormous value in the magnificent work of Puerto Rican artist Rafael Ferrer) are “the internationalists” Rubens Gerchman and Romosa.4
To avoid prejudice in judging it, work like Etsedrón, a testimony of a mulatto or sertanejo art that suddenly appears in a Biennial modeled on—of all things!—that of Venice, it might prove useful to adopt (as the Peruvian critic Juan Acha suggests) a Latin American, rather than a European-North American, critical viewpoint [SEE DOCUMENT IV.4.5]. Is it possible—and what is even more important—, have we sufficient cultural autonomy for there to be a plastic expression, a Brazilian plastic language, in place of the one we have copied from the Western culture? It may be too soon. But perhaps Etsedrón represents a first howl (for there is a great deal of violence in the work) of assent. It is not a word designed to “bring order out of chaos,” as the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro Brazilian urban architects of the fifties (the “concrete men”) proposed to do. It is, above all, the “matter” of the earth, used by craftsmen: [those] who worked as a team in a common social effort.
1
Etsedrón is an anagram of the word “Nordeste”—Northeast—spelled backwards. The Nordeste region is also the poorest area in Brazil.—Ed.
2
The whole work is impressive due to its commitment to struggle. Characters are represented in battlefield rites viewed as the observer moves treading on soil featuring the wretched ones, the defeated, [and] the desperate people already prepared for a new battle.
3
“Cafuso” is a Portuguese term meaning a person of mixed Indian and African ancestry.—Ed.
4
See Carter Ratcliff, “On Contemporary Primitivism” in ArtForum, Nov. 1975. The intellectual nature of this trend is very evident in the author’s concept: “Primitivism seems to be a combination of style and iconography intended to plunge beyond them both toward newly discovered (or rediscovered) certainties, truths, essences, or intensities of feeling, insight or perception.” In the case of the Brazilian Etsedrón group, it is a question of an “artistic effort” based on a given local reality, and the artists do not represent any great artistic center. Their reality is more linked to rural than to urban tradition. Judging by their work, it would appear that the sole function of urban society lies in providing the original impulse for expressing themselves as they do. Mention is made in Ratcliff’s article of an exposition-seminar organized at Vassar College on Robert Goldwater’s work, “Primitivism in Modern Art,” in which the author divides the “primitive” tendencies of present-day art into four different categories: psychological, historical, cultural (which may be confused with the preceding type), and aesthetic primitivism.