Since Sheila Leirner regards the stages of Brazilian art as somewhat incomplete, in this text she consciously proposes an innovative model that she calls “reductive art.” In defense of this idea, she states that it is not just another “foreign” model. The purpose of her proposal is for contemporary Brazilian art to develop a moral compass. This is Leirner’s response to the opportunistic, crass art activity she observes all around her, a constant flow of artwork based on false ideologies. The idea that Brazil is out of step with the artwork produced in the international art world is a given for Leirner, who is a strong supporter of theories previously stated by Ferreira Gullar in his controversial book Vanguarda e subdesenvolvimento: ensaios sobre arte (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1978).
As a journalist and art critic, the French Brazilian Sheila Leirner (b. 1948) was a member of the Conselho de Arte e Cultura da Bienal in 1982 and 1983 and came to be the chief curator of two biennials in that period: the eighteenth (1985) and the nineteenth (1987). After studying sociology of art in France, Leirner became an art critic for the daily newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in 1975. She published a collection of her essays under the title Arte e seu tempo (São Paulo: Editôra Perspectiva, 1991), a book in which she began to set a priority on what she called “new art.” That was also the year Leirner moved to Paris, where she worked and became an arts administrator. She represented the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Latin America (1993−99) and became a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) (French division). Leirner has contributed to countless journals and supplements in both countries, including Beaux-Arts Magazine, Europe Magazine Littéraire, Revista da USP, and Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira. She was also on the scholarship committee for UNESCO-Aschberg.
There are two texts in which Leirner analyzes the art produced during the 1970s and 1980s in Brazil, in the midst of pluralism in international art: “Brasil: uma nova arte” [doc. no. 1110940], and “Arte marginal” [doc. no. 1111364].