TRANSGRESSÃO E FEMINILIDADE EM CELEIDA TOSTES: UM FLERTE COM O CAOS

Resumo: O presente artigo propõe examinar a produção artística de Celeida Tostes, a partir de sua biografia, construída por Marcus de Lontra Costa e Raquel Silva, no livro Celeida Tostes. Busca-se, portanto, analisar os deslocamentos da artista, entre interdito e transgressão, diante da revolução iconográfica proposta em seu trabalho e verificar em que medidas tais transgressões possibilitaram-lhe um encontro com a feminilidade. Para tal, efetivou-se uma pesquisa bibliográfica ancorada no referencial teórico psicanalítico de Freud e Lacan, no que concerne à temática feminilidade, e exploraram-se os estudos de Bataille relativos aos conceitos de transgressão, interdito e erotismo, com vistas a priorizar as convergências existentes entre tais autores. Além disso, para mediar e enriquecer a discussão, foram priorizados estudiosos dos referidos autores, como Butler, Quinet, Nunes e Safatle. Diante do explorado, pode-se constatar que as transgressões empreendidas por Celeida levaram-na a construir suas próprias regras e normas, de modo que, ao colocar seu ser em questão, opôs-se aos juízos e conceitos vigentes no contexto da ditadura militar e da arte concreta. Vê-se, portanto, que a vida e a obra de Celeida são perpassadas por um desejo que se inseriu no furo do Outro e que, dada a impossibilidade de se desvencilhar totalmente desta instância que também a fez desejar, pôde criar alternativas para se articular entre interdito e transgressão, experimentando, assim, um encontro com a feminilidade.Palavras-chave: Psicanálise. Feminilidade. Transgressão.Abstract: This article proposes to examine the artistic production of Celeida Tostes from her biography, built by Marcus de Lontra Costa and Raquel Silva in the book Celeida Tostes. The aim is, therefore, to analyze the artist’s displacements between interdiction and transgression in face of the iconographic revolution proposed in her work and to verify what extent such transgressions enabled her encounter with femininity. To this end, a bibliographic research was carried out anchored in Freud and Lacan’s psychoanalytical theoretical referential that concerns to the femininity and explored Bataille’s studies relatives to concepts of the transgression, interdiction and eroticism, with the intention of prioritizing the existence of convergences between such author. Besides this, to mediate and enrich the discussion were prioritized scholars of these authors, such as Butler, Quinet, Nunes and Safatle. Given the explored, it can be seen that the transgressions undertaken by Celeida led her to construct her own rules and norms, so that, when questioned her being, she opposed the prevailing judgments and concepts in the context of military dictatorship and concrete art. It is seen, therefore, that Celeida’s life and work are permeated by a desire that was inserted in the hole of the Other and that, given the impossibility of completely disentangling herself from this instance that also made her want, she could create alternatives to articulate between interdiction and transgression, thus experiencing an encounter with femininity. Keywords: Psychoanalysis. Femininity. Transgression.

Toward a Common Configurative Impulse

Brazilian art critic Mário Pedrosa’s theorization of art’s affective power, whereby the relational contract with the spectator is neither rational nor purely visual but is infused with feeling, was decisive for understandings of geometric abstraction as expressive in the 1950s. “Toward a Common Configurative Impulse” turns to another modernism, nestled alongside the geometric ones that would come to define the aesthetic of artists associated with Concrete Art in these years. Beyond Concrete Art, Pedrosa’s modernism also encompassed the creative production of diverse practitioners, among them, popular artists, self-taught artists and psychiatric patients (the latter is the subject of my book Learning from Madness: Brazilian Modernism and Global Contemporary Art). With this in mind, this essay tracks the historical and discursive origins for such an inclusive modernism and how Pedrosa’s embrace of different artistic subjectivities calls for a necessary shift in the historiography of Brazilian modernism at mid-century.

Wie entwirft man “mit Geschichte“? Über Gion A. Caminada oder wie Architekten historische (Vor-)Bilder rekonzeptualisieren

“Gion Caminada has left tangible traces of the dialogue with the building tradition of his region, the Grisons. On closer inspection, however, he does not design by following history: he does not take up or add, but reconceptualizes knowledge in new spatial experiences, interpreting what already exists and sometimes combining it with “finds” from other historical sources. The awareness that nothing interesting can arise from copies faithful to the original leads to the belief that designing “with history” implies a transformation. Gion Caminada is an architect who interprets the construction traditions of his place very serenely, designing on them and at the same time updating their meanings. Think of the revival of the Strickbau, one of the oldest methods of building with timber in Grisons, which has been reinterpreted in a freer way to create smoother transitions between rooms inside the buildings and generate a refined interaction between open and closed spaces or even create unprecedented relationships between the inside and the outside. At the same time, the study of his projects reveals other historical references in the field of international art and architecture of the past, an aspect that is clear for example in its similarity to concrete art, neoplasticism, and constructivism, through a strong interest in the creation of plastic and sculptural spaces. Therefore, designing “with history” does not imply a repetition of what history itself, a place, a memory, or an image “present” to the architect, but a comparison and a further thought.”

Nature, the Nonhuman, and the Critique of Representation in Dieter Roth's Biodegradable Work

The practice of the Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth is distinguished by his pioneering use, since the early 1960s, of biodegradable materials. This essay examines the development of Roth's practice from Concrete Art to process-oriented and biodegradable work in the context of the reconceptualization of the “concrete” within the global artistic network of Fluxus in the postwar period. Highlighting the challenge Roth's biodegradable work poses to the traditional conceptual limits of the spheres of culture and nature, it argues that the profound transformation of Roth's practice in the early 1960s was rooted in the artist's growing discontent with the idealist and ethical premises of modern art and aesthetics, at the heart of which is the distinction between the human and the nonhuman. In this, Roth's biodegradable works precede later preoccupations with how humans relate to the natural environment, both in early earthworks from the late '60s and in contemporary practice. By examining Roth's biodegradable works in the context of Fluxus, this essay points towards aspects of Fluxus work that remain unexamined, most crucially the role of the natural and the nonhuman in Fluxus critiques of representation.

Armonia spațialității pozitive și negative în sculptura artistului Ingo Glass

"Harmony of Positive and Negative Spaciousness in Ingo Glass sculpture. The aim of this article is to discuss issues regarding the ways spaciousness and harmony of positive and negative surfaces in Inglo Glass sculpture are valorized. The artist was born in 1941 in Timișoara, he studied at the Traditional School of Arts from Lugoj and then he attended the university in Cluj. Between 1967-71 he worked as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Arts from Galați and he established connections with visual artists from all over the country. Later on, between 1972-73 he worked as teaching assistant at the Architecture University from Bucharest and then he became cultural consultant at the German Culture House Friedrich Schiller. During this period, Ingo Glass created a Constructivist Art with metal structures developed vertically following the spatial pattern specific to the great Gothic cathedrals– the most famous work Septenarius was built in 1976 on the Danube boardwalk from Galați. Being forced by the political circumstances from the Socialist Republic of Romania, he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1979, he moved to München where he worked for the Municipal Art Gallery and where he was integrated in the group of Concrete-Constuctivist Art artists. After 1989 he came back to Romania with different exhibitions and he created public monuments in Galați, Timișoara, Moinești and Lugoj. Then, in 1992 he presented his PhD thesis about the influence of Constantin Brâncuși Art over the 20th century sculpture. Between 1989-1998 the artist crystallized an original visual concept based on the usage of the basic geometric shapes in conjunction with the primary colours. Ingo Glass upgraded Bauhaus theory and he associated the square with blue, the triangle with yellow and the circle with red. By using shapes and primary colours the artists creates Concrete Art, a new symbolic universe, purely geometrical, the harmony of his entire work being given by the proportion and link between full and empty spaces. Expanded spaciousness specific to the Constructivst Art phase experiments the architecture-sculpture link and the monumentality of the metallic structures encourages the entrance to the central core of works. The open, non-material dimension forms the main volume of the sculpture, the empty space dominates the full shape and it outlines the effects of an unrated and irrational spaciousness. Balanced spaciousness specific to the Concrete Art phase experiments geometrical combinations, based on the basic shapes in positive and negative intersections, by the spaciousness and non-spaciousness link, the pace between full and empty spaces. The usage of the three basic geometrical shapes also influenced the combining vocabulary of these elements, and it even ensured the ordering and deduction of the empty space. The utopia of basic forms expresses tendencies towards positive irreductible forms of energy or negative forms through non-materiality, where the concepts of mass, weight, space and time are added. In each of his works, the artist used a proportion between the elements of the composition through a rational interpretation stimulated by the achievement of a geometrical order as the essential basis of tasks. The relation between positive and negative spaciousness appears constantly in the sculpture of the last century and the rhytm and sequence of its spatial effects are determined by a sense of proportion that involves an aesthetic of proportion. Thus, we can definitely say that the work of the artist Ingo Glass originally captures all these aspects of Contemporary Art. Keywords: sculpture, spaciousness, Ingo Glass, constructivism, Concrete Art. "

Artistic Vanguards in Brazil, 1917–1967

The 1922 Modern Art Week is considered the initial landmark of artistic vanguards in Brazil. However, before it was held, Anita Malfatti’s 1917 exhibition, which presented expressionism to Brazilians, and the articles of Oswald de Andrade announcing in the local press the poetry of Mário de Andrade and futurism caused significant polemics and opened the way for renovation. In the middle of the 1920s, the contacts of various artists with European vanguards—especially cubism—and the reinterpretation of the national element and popular culture with the incorporation of this repertoire, with an emphasis on cosmopolitism, established and solidified modernism in various artistic areas. In the 1930s, social commitment, the revalorization of the regional, and adhesion to leftwing ideologies changed the focus of artistic production, leading to the reorganization of groups and the emergence of new protagonists: Patrícia Galvão and Flávio de Carvalho, among others. The return to classic forms and new experimentalisms marked the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by the reappearance of the sonnet, with Vinicius de Moraes, Cecília Meirelles, Murilo Mendes, and Jorge de Lima; renovations in language that reached a peak with Guimarães Rosa; photomontages by Jorge de Lima. Concrete art and poetry, notably the National Concrete Art Exhibition (1956) and neo-concretism, returning to the strategy of the manifestos and journals of the 1920s, revived the same polemical reception and bitter rivalries. In the following decade, the revisiting of Oswald de Andrade’s work, especially the idea of anthropophagy, gave a strong impulse to tropicalism, Cinema Novo, and a greater renewal in Brazilian theater, with the staging of O Rei da Vela by the Teatro Oficina group (1967), the culminating point of a fifty-year cycle of artistic vanguards in Brazil.