Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article the journalist Lisette Lagnado discusses the layout of the XX Bienal Internacional de São Paulo in terms of the artwork/space ratio and arrangement vis-à-vis the interaction among artists, curators, architects, and even the public. [...]

This is the catalogue for the exhibition commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the Casa Triângulo. Organized by Maria Izabel Branco Ribeiro, the exhibition presented the history of the gallery during that time, introducing those young artists [...]

Silvano Santiago begins this essay with the famous statement by Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, “We are not Europeans nor North Americans, our original culture has been eliminated: nothing is foreign to us as everything here is foreign. Our own [...]

This text by Celso Fioravante was featured in the catalogue to the exhibition Arco das Rosas: o marchand como curador, curated by José Roberto Aguilar, and held at the Casa das Rosas in São Paulo in 2001. In it, Celso Fioravante analyzes the role [...]

This text by Nelson Brissac questions the ongoing interest in national roots in the age of globalization. Due to the current impossibility of defining any “identity,” what is at stake, in the author’s view, is the ability to take full advantage [...]

Daniela Bousso opens the roundtable by introducing the participants, their practices, and their work in the realm of audiovisual art. Christine Mello assesses the Prêmio Sérgio Motta, which, in her view, is limited insofar as it is a prize for [...]

In this text, Ana Letícia Fialho analyzes the place of Brazilian art on the international art scene starting in the nineties. She argues that the “politically correct” discourse adopted by curators and other players on the [...]

In this text, Guy Brett discusses work by Mira Schendel. Brett focuses on her drawings from the sixties, including the 1966 series entitled Droguinhas—a word made up by the artist’s daughter, Ada, to refer to “little nothings” or worthless [...]

In this text, literary critic Silvano Santiago delves into questions of identity politics and of globalization in modern Brazilian culture. He discusses four crucial moments: the end of the nineteenth century, the decade of the twenties, the decade [...]

The author of this article, Rodrigo Naves, explains that Ronaldo Brito’s essay presents an overview of a movement that was representative of contemporary Brazilian art. Naves also suggests that Brito’s critique attempts to understand works that [...]

This text is an analysis of the two years that had passed since the opening of the Divisão de Artes Plásticas do CCSP (Centro Cultural São Paulo), reorganized in 1989. Stella Teixeira de Barros emphasizes that in spite of remaining fairly distant [...]

This text analyzes the reorganization of cultural production, principally of an audiovisual and visual nature, in the context of globalization. Its authors examine the role of governmental policies in culture and the growing importance of culture in [...]

While this analysis of contemporary Brazilian art by Otília Arantes focuses on the period that spans from 1965 to 1969, it comments as well on the fifties, seventies, and eighties. For the sixties generation, Arantes argues, making art meant [...]

This set of articles debates the role exercised by large exhibitions in the Brazilian visual arts world. The articles include both favorable and negative opinions about such major events. Baravelli raises an alert against the danger of emptying the [...]

In this article, the sculptor José Resende steps up to defend art education at the university level, based on his belief that art is an activity involving intellectual exploration. While its integration into the academic sphere may be complicated, [...]

This is the introduction to a book that analyzes the formation of the arts system in Brazil from the late nineteenth century until the 1980s. In principle it discusses the development of the Brazilian art world from the country’s independence [...]

In this introduction to the catalogue for the (2001) exhibition Côte à Côte: art contemporain du Brésil [Side by Side: Contemporary Art in Brazil], Edemar Cid Ferreira states his conviction that art is a key product for commercial trade between [...]

In this text, curator Moacir dos Anjos analyzes the global conditions transforming contemporary artistic production. Mondialisation, he argues, entails rupture in the traditional associations between place, culture, and identity, ushering in [...]

This book is about the works of art assembled by the collector and gallery owner Marcantonio Vilaça, an important promoter of contemporary Brazilian art in the international market in the 1990s. The book includes essays by Paulo Herkenhoff, Angé [...]

Roberto S. Figueiredo argues that a stable currency created by the “Plano Cruzado” (a set of economic measures), together with the “Ley Sarney” (the law named for the Brazilian president at the time), would strengthen the art market and [...]

The journalist Angela Prysthon clearly differentiates modern from postmodern cosmopolitanism. In the modern form, the center/periphery dialectic prevails, and there are tensions between traditional reality and internationalist aspirations; the [...]

This is the transcript of a lecture given by Maurício Segall on the subject “Museus hoje para o amanhã” [Museums today for the future]. In his lecture, the museum organizer reviews current trends in the field of museology, characterized by [...]

This article is about the mega exhibitions that were presented all over the world during the last three decades. The author—the critic Paulo Sérgio Duarte—highlights exhibitions that were organized thematically by curators who (in his opinion) [...]

This text by Arlindo Machado addresses iconoclasm, that is, aversion to the image. Some cultures over the course of history—among them Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Greek and Reformation thought—have nourished mistrust, and even rejection, of [...]

In this text, researcher Otília Arantes reflects on the impact of recent initiatives in France to restore the country’s position as a world center of twentieth-century cultural production. The projects undertaken and investments made form the [...]

The introduction/preface written by Ricardo Basbaum explains the collection of texts with a range of perspectives, from critics, artists, art researchers, and historians (many published earlier, and some out of circulation). His purpose was to [...]

This text by Sônia Salzstein is an analysis of the changes in the appearance of Brazilian art starting in the 1950s. She believes that the cultural modernization launched in that decade had a utopian dimension, which lost ground to an [...]

This newspaper report highlights the problems, controversy, and expectations that surrounded the curatorial proposal of the twentieth Bienal Internacional de São Paulo of 1989. Additionally, it included comments made by three renowned art critics, a [...]

This document is a text and a graphic work by Cildo Meireles published in 1975, in the first issue of the magazine Malasartes. In it, the artist includes a series of works that, in his judgment, exist at the margins of the art circuit, which either [...]

This anthology presents the first results of the research undertaken by the Núcleo de Tecnologia da Imagem at the EC-UFRJ (Escola de Comunicação da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), as well as that by the Centre for Advanced Inquiry at the [...]

Guy Brett provides an analysis of the Droguinhas series by Mira Schendel. The name of the series is a word that the artist’s daughter, Ada, made up to refer to “little nothings” or worthless things. Brett considers the work a challenge to the [...]

In this 1967 text, the French art critic and writer Jean Clay analyzes the work of the sculptor Sérgio Camargo. He suggests two ways of interpreting the work of the Brazilian artist: on the one hand, that of surfaces and volume as modulations, and, [...]

This article compares the complex and contradictory movements in Brazilian visual arts between the late 1950s and the early 1990s. To the well-known Brazilian critic Rodrigo Naves, the disruption took place just when the work created by the most [...]

This essay analyzes certain characteristics inherent in the selection of foreign artists for participation in the twentieth International Biennial of São Paulo in 1989, highlighting the preponderance of retrospectives. To the writer Lorenzo Mammì, [...]

In this text, North American curator Dan Cameron asserts that it is difficult to take stock of the vast work and public role of São Paulo-based gallerist Marcantonio Vilaça. The text holds that Vilaça performed a crucial mission in forging a [...]