how do hélio oiticica and lygia clark work 'hand in glove' in brazil in the 1950s and 60s...

How do Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark work ‘hand in glove’ in

Brazil in the 1950s and 60s to reimagine the spectator’s bodily and organic relation to the artwork?

A Hero in the Labyrinth: Neo-Spectatorship in the Neo-Concrete

Benjamin Leggett FNSX0

HART2011 Image/Object

Course Tutor | Briony FerPersonal Tutor | Maria Loh

2556 Words

Spring 2015

FNSX0 Hero in the Labyrinth HART2011/Briony Fer

Neo-concretism, the Brazilian movement to which Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticaca as visual artists

were instrumental throughout the 1950s and ‘60s defines itself as ‘a re-interpretation of neo-plasticism’

whereby ‘the work of art transcends the sum of its parts, and creates for itself a tactical meaning that emerges

in it for the first time.’ Ferreiro Guller’s manifesto makes a claim for the neo-concrete expressiveness (a 1

form of enunciation reminiscent of Michel de Certeau’s tactical ‘walker in the city’) and the way in which its

work draws attention to the process by which it was made, and the processes it engenders between body and

object. The work’s temporal position, reflecting its past whilst manifesting its potential for future 2

engagements, is perhaps what most differentiates it from that of previous movements. It is through this

temporal dimension that the spectator’s relationship is reimagined by Clark and Oiticica, yet since time itself

cannot escape its own ‘hand in glove’ relationship with space, this essay will pay due attention to both these

universal dimensions. In order to make the case for the fundamentality of the neo-concrete duo’s work in

respect to the transformation of spectatorship in art, the following study will examine Clark and Oiticica’s

practices through the metaphor of the labyrinth, which embodies and deals with the concepts of time; space;

the dichotomy of inside and outside and, consequently, the body itself. It is hoped that the relationship

between the work of Clark and Oiticica is shown to be one of mutual benefit and ultimately conducive to a

radical new approach to art through which the spectator navigates the labyrinth of time and space inside,

outside and between bodies.

Any assessment of time and place in regard to this period in Brazil cannot ignore the central and

recurrent motif of movement. Cultural stereotypes in the spheres of music and dance, possibly generated by

* Clark’s quote taken from Julian Piesco, ‘30x Bienal: Guia Virtual’, 2013, p. 17. “Labirinto (nascimento) Espaço dado ao homem para que ele viva um período de regressão.” (My translation) ** Oiticica’s quote taken from Mari Carmen Ramirez, Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour (London: Tate Publishing, 2007), p. 202. Ferreiro Gullar, ‘Neo-Concrete Manifesto’ in Paulo Venancio Filho and Annika Gunnarsson, Time & Place: Rio de 1

Janeiro 1956-1964 (Stockholm: Steidl / Edition7L, 2008), pp. 53-56.

Emphasis on process insinuated by Annika Gunnarson in Time & Place: Rio de Janeiro 1956-1964, p. 48.2

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“Labyrinth (Birth): Space given to man so that he might live a period of regression."

- Lygia Clark*

“What do we want from colour? To prove or to lose ourselves in it? Only to live it.”

- Hélio Oiticica**


the inevitable intercultural nature of the principal Brazilian east coast port-city, ensured that the image of Rio

was always associated with rhythm. So active was Rio de Janeiro on the 1950s that by 1960 it had given

birth to a new capital city, Brasília, as a result of extraordinary, almost exclusively carioca, intellectual and

economic endeavours. The creative energy permeating the ‘cidade maravilhosa’ gave rise to the construction 3

of a modern art museum which hosted and maintained the art of Clark and Oiticica for the majority of their

professional careers.

It was Lygia Clark as the older of the two artists who initiated painting’s expansion into the third

dimension, and consequently the fourth, thus finding ‘movement’ even in the static object. This movement,

of course, came first from the spectator which in turn generated motion in the work. In expanding her

paintings into space, Lygia also expanded the role of the viewer to one of a participant, who only through

bodily movement could activate the artwork as it was intended to be activated, thus ‘artwork’ became ‘act.’

The Casulos (Cocoons, Fig. 1) and Contra-Relevos (Counter-Reliefs Fig. 2) of 1959-1965 were, according to

Gullar, the definitive steps which brought painting as it used to be known into actual and actable space. The

manner with which her cardboard canvases began to extrude was ironically tentative in consideration of the

conceptual gravity that such a notion would carry. Here was the inception of the ‘organic line,’ which

according to Briony Fer defines itself ‘when it comes into being, not as a contour or outline, but as the

interruption or gap between two planes.’ Following Clarke, ‘the plane is the thickness of a space,’ which 4

makes the organic line that which breaks planes apart and quantifies their distinct thicknesses. This line is 5

therefore non-representational, and works to produce an effect which can only manifest itself once the viewer

moves around the work. In circumambulating a piece such as Casulo No. 2 (Fig. 1), the optical experience

offered by multiple distinguishable planes goes beyond that of regular abstract painting. In raising one plane

above the other, Clark’s organic line takes its first steps towards the labyrinth soon to emerge from later

works.

If the organic line is the defining characteristic of Clark’s work, then colour plays a similar role in that

of Oiticica. For him, ‘the body of colour’ manifests itself once it is emancipated from the (quasi-)rectangular

format of representation. Since colour mediates ‘between the world of the senses and that of the intellect, 6

Paulo Venancio Filho, ‘Modernity in a Tropical Metropolis By The Sea’ in Paulo Vanacio Filho and Annika 3

Gunnarson, Time and Place: Rio de Janeiro 1956-1964, (Moderna Museet: Stockholm, 2008), pp. 15-16.

Cornelia H. Butler and Luis Perez-Oramas, Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988 (United States: Museum 4

of Modern Art, 2014), p. 226.

Clark quoted by Luiz Pérez-Oramas, Curator for MoMA exhibition ‘Lygia Clark: Abondonment of Art’ interviewed in 5

‘Lygia Clark and Her “Abandonment” in MoMA’, YouTube (YouTube, 2014) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ4TXDlUwQc> [accessed 26 April 2015]

Mari Carmen Ramirez, Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour (London: Tate Publishing, 2007), p. 202.6

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the world of the object and that of ideas,’ it constructs space, walling the path, presenting in a singular

moment the totality of the labyrinth and its centre.

In dialogue with Clark’s Casulos and Contra-Relevos are Oiticica’s Bilaterales (Fig. 3), which

demonstrate the way in which colour engages with space, satisfying the criteria for a ‘non-object’ and

bringing painting into the third (and consequently fourth) dimension. Here begins a kind of ontology of

colour in space, since once the planes of singular colour in the Bilaterales defeated the constraints of the

two-dimensional rectangular aspect, Oiticica’s paintings would incrementally open up out of the wall until

they existed as hanging installations as Relevos Espaciais (Fig. 4). At this point, the labyrinth had expanded,

yet offered no clear route through. This infinite maze represents Oiticica’s understanding of wanting to ‘live’

colour, as opposed to ‘prove’ or ‘lose ourselves in’ it. Proof would be purely intellectual, whilst getting lost 7

would be entirely bodily, so for Oiticica it is at the synthesis of these two, which he relates to Nietzsche’s

Apollonian and Dionysian, where art is experienced at a sublime level. If Clark’s lines disrupt space for the 8

spectator, then Oiticica’s colours construct it, and both artists use their methods to reflect an internalised,

bodily space which is always being navigated by the spectator-participator through the intellect.

The Me’en people of Ethiopia maintain the practice of ‘entrail-reading,’ now somewhat archaic but

historically omnipresent in ancient cultures across Africa, Europe and West Asia. Sacrificing a domesticated 9

animal, they lay its intestines out as a map in order to predict the future. The intestines represent their land:

various arteries come to represent paths, rivers or ravines, their differing colourations indicating the fortune

of the event to take place there. The reading of the entrails was the task of a specific, initiated member of 10

the group, however their authority is flexible as they work in conjunction with the collective assembled

around them. Through the character of Oshima, the writer Haruki Murakami explains (an unproved but 11

rational and widely-accepted theory) that the labyrinth concept was invented by the ancient Mesopotamians.

“They pulled out animal intestines […] and used the shape to predict the future […] which means that the

principle for the labyrinth is inside you.’ In juxtaposing these examples from the fields of anthropology and 12

literary fiction, it can be said that the idea of the labyrinth as being in direct correlation with the body is

Ibid.7

Ibid.8

‘In late Republican Rome, Cicero wrote that "nearly everyone uses entrails in divination" (extis enim omnes 9

fere utuntur).’ Quoted in Derek Collins, ‘Mapping the Entrails: The Practice of Greek Hepatoscopy’, American Journal of Philology, 2008, 319–45 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ajp.0.0016>, p. 320.

J. Abbink, ‘Reading the Entrails: Analysis of an African Divination Discourse’, Man, 1993 <http://dx.doi.org/10

10.2307/2803993>, pp. 710-711.

Ibid., p. 716.11

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (Vintage: London 2005), p. 379.12

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archaic yet durable. In the work of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, we see this correlation manifested once

more, not out of witchcraft or philosophical prose, but in a particularly social realm of art.

The labyrinth is an appropriate metaphor to connect the work of Oiticica and Clark, whilst

simultaneously alluding to the ‘bodily and organic relationship’ it has with the spectator. According to

Oiticica ‘Man must find a sense of structure.’ It is only once we begin to actively negotiate the lines and 13

planes of Clark and Oiticica’s work that we begin to discover certain directions within ourselves that would

previously had been impossible; as Oshima says, ‘when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same

time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside.’ Making every effort to involve the spectator in their work, 14

the neo-concretist duo test their expressive acts out in the social field, inviting its inhabitants into their

labyrinths in the hope that by finding their own way through the work, it will transcend its own exteriority

and make an impact on the inside. The labyrinth is also a temporally conceivable teleological symbol, since

in order to negotiate its space one must also move in time. The sacrificial entrails used by Me’en to predict

the future map out not only places but events, and it is in this four-dimensional application of the labyrinth

that we find the extent of its relevance to the work of Oiticica and Clark. The journey into the self is a

journey into the past but also the future, and in the context of the gallery space the viewer-participator finds a

metaphor for this journey in their spatiotemporal experiencing, and living, of Oiticica’s Tropicália or Clark’s

Bichos (Creatures).

The ostensible example for Clark’s engagement with the labyrinth concept is her work A Caso É A

Corpo: Labrinto (The House is a Body, 1968) to which her introductory quotation to this essay owes its

context. An installation work consisting of a tunnel made up of ‘cells’ inciting physical contact with those

who explore it, Labrinto encourages an active relationship between spectator-turned-participator and the

work, characterised by both spatial and haptic experiences. Entering the work, the participator is at once

sheltered from the world outside and assaulted by the arsenal of threads and inflated plastics inside. The

installation is a metaphor for the house, and in turn the body, where the dichotomy between inside and

outside is the defining common concept. If Clark’s obsession over the foetus, evident from her letter to Mario

Pedrosa in 1969, is manifested here and we imagine her installation not as a body but a womb, then we can

apply the metaphor of birth to the experience of negotiating the work. For Clark, birth was synonymous 15

with making art; unlike other artists whom ‘vomit their entrails in a grand process of solitary extroversion,’

Clark’s process was one of ‘swallow[ing …] in a process of introversion, in order to finish ovulating one

Ramirez, p. 17413

Murakami, p. 379.14

Butler, pp. 233-234.15

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single ovule [, …] to lay an egg.’ The painful and difficult experience of ovulation and birth described by 16

Clark does not suggest a degree of comfort in sheltering, but rather an internalised version of exterior events.

This dichotomous exchange is always present in her work, echoing Oshima’s words and quantifying the

bodily/organic experience of the spectator-participator.

Caetano Veloso, the Brazilian musician and national treasure who in driving the short-lived

Tropicalismo movement rose to international stardom, released his latest album to date, ‘Abraçaço’ in March

2013. In its most popular track, A Bossa Nove é Foda (Bossa Nova is the Fucking Shit), he sings about 17

sound as being waves that ‘colour in space’, giving the poet the power to transform the myth of ‘saddened

races.’ It would appear that despite half a century passing since Oiticica’s work and writing, his ideas are 18

still alive and relevant in pop culture. We first witness the relationship between Veloso and Oiticica’s work

through photographs of the pop star, apparently in the act of singing, wearing one of the artist’s wearable

Parangolés (Fig. 5). Embodying the neo-concrete aesthetic, the musician represented for the artist the

structuring of music through the primary element of sound, just as Oiticica saw the painter’s primary element

as colour. He aspired to use colour in a ‘pure language’ as found in music. The album cover (Fig. 6) and 19

music video (Fig. 7) for Abraçaço and A Bossa Nove é Foda respectively use an aesthetic which undoes yet

engages with neo-concrete ideas. The album cover employs text reminiscent of neo-concrete graphic poems

overlaid onto a photographic mugshot of a topless Veloso, with two pairs of hands belonging to invisible

actors holding his head. If the photograph of Veloso in the Parangolé embodied Oiticica’s work, then the

recent promotional images ostensibly reference Clark’s pieces; particularly the photographic series Dialogo

de Mãos (Dialog of Hands, 1966, Fig. 8). One of Clark’s images captures a graceful manual sparring

between herself and Oiticica with wrists wrapped in a möbius strip, ‘the signature of the embrace that gives

birth to vision,’ where two bodies meet through the meeting of two lines. This ‘dialog of hands’ pertains to 20

the non-verbal but distinctly lingual relationship between people in the presence of neo-concrete work. The

hands, young and old, which animate and caress Veloso in his music video (Fig. 7) make visible the

interiorised energies which travel between people. The ‘myth of saddened races’ is transformed by the poet,

the musician, the artist, who through their medium express these energies and engender social connections.

The labyrinth’s path is infinite, drawn without the pen leaving the paper, but to discover its infiniteness the

Ibid., p. 233.16

The Tropicalismo movement was ostensibly inspired by the work of the Neo-Conretists, particularly Oiticica’s 17

Tropicália, and embraced popular european music genres whilst maintaining the principle ideology of cultural cannibalism or anthopophagy.

Lyrics follow my own translation. Caetano Veloso, A Bosse Nova É Foda, (Universal Music, 2012)18

Ramirez, p. 24419

Butler, p. 49.20

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hero must work through and into another’s path. This necessary, cyclic excursion, out from the individual,

into the social and back again, defines the social field in which Oiticica and Clark applied their work.

By creating works which not only encouraged but necessitated interaction with it, Clark and Oiticica

activated a new (or newly recognised) organic and bodily role for the gallery visitor. Merely observing the

labyrinth is not sufficient to slay the Minotaur; Theseus traversed the maze alone, step by enunciative step, to

complete his quest and become a ‘hero.’ The spectator, who had always shared the physical space of the

artwork, only after neo-concretism could realise their potential to champion their own narrative.

Writing in 1986, Clark describes Oiticica as ‘the outside of a glove, the link with the outside world’

whilst considering herself the inside; they ‘both existed at a time when the glove had a hand within it.’ The 21

glove, made from the single same piece of material, fits over the hand and each finger finds its sheath. It

gives the hand a new identity, and in doing so reconstitutes its potential. It seems that Clark always worked,

as in her birth metaphor, through an repeatedly interiorising process of swallowing, whereas Oititica worked

to rework the world ‘outside.’ What is remarkable about their relationship is that despite the directionally

opposed processes, one reflective and the other transparent, their work functions in very similar ways, as

testified by this essay.

Clark’s ‘organic line’ is organic since it finds its source in what is already there in the work. It is a

byproduct of the work, yet also its defining feature. This relationship to the work is shared by the new 22

spectator whose organic experience of the work comes about from within themselves, from the interior

labyrinth which is the exterior labyrinth. It is a regression, the journey back, to which Clark refers when she

claims that the labyrinth, like birth in reverse, is the space where one may reach their very origins, through

the body, wearing the glove, not seeking proof nor getting lost, but simply living and for the first time

becoming the hero.

, Nahama Baldo Santos, A Mediação: O Corpo Em Relação Ao Espaço-Obra Contemporâneo (Universidade do 21

Estado de Mina Gerais/Escola Guignard: Belo Horizonte 2011), p. 15.

My translation of: “Hélio era o lado de fora de uma luva, a ligação com o mundo exterior. Eu, a parte de dentro. Nós dois existíamos a partir do momento em que há uma mão que calce a luva”

Butler, p. 46.22

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FNSX0 Labyrinth HART2011/Briony Fer

Appendix

Fig. 1.

Lygia ClarkCasulo No. 21959Painted glavanised steelSource: Butler, Cornelia H., and Luis Perez-Oramas, Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988 (United States: Museum of Modern Art, 2014)

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Fig. 2

Lygia ClarkContra-Relevo (Objeto N. 7)1959Industrial paint on woodSource: Butler, Cornelia H., and Luis Perez-Oramas, Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988 (United States: Museum of Modern Art, 2014)

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Fig. 3

Hélio OiticicaBilateral Equali1959Oil-casein emulsion on wood fibreboardSource: Ramirez, Mari Carmen, Helop Oiticica: The Body of Colour, ed. by Mari Carmen Ramirez (London: Tate Publishing, 2007)

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Fig. 4

Hélio OiticicaSpatial Relief (red) REL 036 19591959Polyvinyl acetate resin on plywoodSource: Ramirez, Mari Carmen, Helop Oiticica: The Body of Colour, ed. by Mari Carmen Ramirez (London: Tate Publishing, 2007)

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Fig. 5

Photographer UnknownSinger and Composer Caetano Veloso wearing one of Oiticica’s Paranglé CapesCape made in 1964, Image taken in 1968.Source: Ramirez, Mari Carmen, Helop Oiticica: The Body of Colour, ed. by Mari Carmen Ramirez (London: Tate Publishing, 2007)

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Fig. 6

Album Design:Art Direction and Photography: Fernando Young and Quinta-FeiraStyling: Felipe VelosoReview of Texts: Luiz Augusto (Revertexto) Graphics Coordinator: Geysa AdnetEnglish Translation: Arto LindsayDesign Adaptation: Jason Arias

Released by Nonesuch Records, 2012

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Fig. 7

Fernando Young, Tonho Quinta-Feira(Stills from) A Bossa Nova É Foda Official Music Video2012Source: ‘Caetano Veloso - A Bossa Nova É Foda’, YouTube (YouTube, 2013) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orPhkLpX3ps> [accessed 26 April 2015]

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Fig. 8

Lygia ClarkDiálogo de MãosPhotograph of the proposition1966

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Bibliography

Literature:

Abbink, J., ‘Reading the Entrails: Analysis of an African Divination Discourse’, Man, 1993 <http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2803993>

Butler, Cornelia H., and Luis Perez-Oramas, Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988 (United States: Museum of Modern Art, 2014)

Collins, Derek, ‘Mapping the Entrails: The Practice of Greek Hepatoscopy’, American Journal of Philology, 2008, 319–45 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ajp.0.0016>

Filho, Paulo Venancio, and Annika Gunnarsson, Time & Place: Rio de Janeiro 1956-1964 (Stockholm: Steidl / Edition7L, 2008)

Murakami, Haruki, Kafka on the Shore (London: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006)

Baldo Santos, Nahama, A Mediação: O Corpo Em Relação Ao Espaço-Obra Contemporâneo (Universidade do Estado de Mina Gerais/Escola Guignard: Belo Horizonte 2011)

Piesco, Julian, 30x Bienal: Guia Virtual, (Falacultura 2013)

Ramirez, Mari Carmen, Helop Oiticica: The Body of Colour, ed. by Mari Carmen Ramirez (London: Tate Publishing, 2007)

Videos and websites:

‘Lygia Clark and Her “Abandonment” in MoMA’, YouTube (YouTube, 2014) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ4TXDlUwQc> [accessed 26 April 2015]

‘Caetano Veloso - A Bossa Nova É Foda’, YouTube (YouTube, 2013) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orPhkLpX3ps> [accessed 26 April 2015]

‘Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour’ <http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/helio-oiticica-body-colour> [accessed 26 April 2015]

‘Lygia Clark’ <http://www.lygiaclark.org.br/arquivoPT.asp> [accessed 26 April 2015]

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how do hélio oiticica and lygia clark work 'hand in glove' in brazil in the 1950s and 60s...

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