The recent exhibition ‘Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil’, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, credits the artist with creating the visual identity of Brazilian modern art. This begs the question: why did so many Brazilian women artists reject feminist discourse, even as their works struggled with similar issues addressed by their counterparts in the US and elsewhere? The most common explanation has been that Brazilian women artists, such as Do Amaral, had a prominent role in the visual arts and so didn’t need to fight for space or visibility. According to the critic and curator Paulo Herkenhoff, women were more than contributors to the visual arts in Brazil: they were the driving force of Brazilian art in the 20th century.
Do Amaral was the link between artistic communities in Paris and São Paulo and so became the catalyst for the emergence of Modernism in Brazil. Her 1928 painting Abaporu (which translates from the indigenous Tupi language as ‘the man who eats people’) – is a depiction of an elongated figure, a sun like a slice of lemon and a cactus. It became the visual representation of the concept of Antropofagia, which was set out in the Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibalist Manifesto, 1928), by Do Amaral’s husband, the poet and writer Oswald de Andrade. He encouraged artists to critically appropriate, digest and transform foreign influences into something new and uniquely Brazilian, proposing an end to cultural dependence. The artist Anita Malfatti was also instrumental in presenting avant-garde visual languages to Brazil in works such as O Homem Amarelo (The Yellow Man, 1915–16). The 1960s saw an explosion of great women artists such as Lygia Clark, Anna Bella Geiger, Anna Maria Maiolino, Lygia Pape, Wanda Pimentel and Letícia Parente, among many others. More recently, the work of artists including Jac Leirner, Beatriz Milhazes, Rosangela Rennó and Adriana Varejão – all of whom were born in the 1960s – have been exhibited internationally and widely collected.
tarsila_do_amaral_abaporu_1928_oil_on_canvas_85_x_73_cm._courtesy_c_collection_museo_de_arte_latinoamericano_de_buenos_aires_and_the_museum_of_modern_art_new_york
Tarsila do Amaral, Abaporu, 1928, oil on canvas, 85 x 73 cm. Courtesy: © Collection Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires and the Museum of Modern Art, New York
Mostly from privileged backgrounds, Modernist female Brazilian artists had access to higher education, artistic training and the latest developments in the visual arts. Despite the fact that many of their canonical works tackle topics around identity and the body, feminism did not have a significant place in the country’s visual arts when the movement gained momentum in the West in the late 1960s and ’70s. Because Brazil was under the most brutal phase of its dictatorship during 1968–75, important debates around identity were relegated to the sidelines as many artists focused on the fight against government repression while feminism concentrated on issues related to women in the workforce and wage inequality. Critical discussions around women’s sexual emancipation and their subordinate role in society were dismissed as subjective, individual and personal. The famous motto ‘the personal is political’ was rejected by leftists as bourgeois reformism.
Under these circumstances, many artists resisted being labelled as ‘feminists’ since it was perceived as limiting one’s artistic significance or, even worse, as being divisive and counterproductive. Over time, the discussion of feminism in Brazilian visual arts became a subject deemed best avoided. Though many canonical works by leading female artists questioned assumptions around gender, their attempts to explore or respond to feminist issues were often disguised or hidden.
anita_malfatti_o_homem_amarelo_the_yellow_man_1915-16_oil_on_canvas_61_x_51_cm._courtesy_c_the_fitzwilliam_museum_cambridge
Anita Malfatti, O Homem Amarelo (The Yellow Man) 1915–16, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm. Courtesy: © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Maiolino and Pape, for instance, addressed the authoritarian regime while also indirectly challenging patriarchal structures. Both artists employed the double entendre of the word língua, which in Portuguese translates as both ‘tongue’ and ‘language’. In the most poignant image of Maiolino’s photo-sequence É o que sobra (What Is Left Over, from her series ‘Fotopoemação’, Photopoemaction, 1974), she holds a pair of scissors, as if ready to cut out her own tongue. For Maiolino, the series was a way of transforming an act of poetic freedom into one of political resistance. Severing your tongue symbolically implies that your ability to speak has been undermined and so alludes to a twofold critique of censorship and the exclusion of women from male discourse.
The wounded tongue as an imposed sign of silence, self-mutilation and pain is also present in Pape’s concrete poem Língua apunhalada (Stabbed Tongue, 1968). In this work, the artist’s gesture of sticking out her tongue implies civil disobedience and political resistance. The body is stripped of its ability to articulate cogent meaning, destroying the efficiency and clarity demanded by patriarchal culture.
Both Pape’s O Ovo (The Egg, 1967) and Maiolino’s Entrevidas (Between Lives, 1981) tidily knit together notions of birth and destruction. O Ovo comprises a series of giant, wooden cubic structures (not ovoid-shaped, as the title might suggest) covered with coloured plastic from which either the artist herself or members of a samba school burst out. The thin surface of the cube is like a skin easily torn apart by the participants – a symbolic act that not only references birth but also the need to break free from political repression and societal constraints.
Maiolino’s Entrevidas consists of a rectangle on the floor covered with dozens of eggs. This ‘carpet’ evokes a sense of the precarious, the fragile and the sensorial. As the artist walks barefoot among the eggs – literally walking on eggshells – the implication is that of a minefield.
anna_maria_maiolino_entrevidas_between_lives_1981_gelatin_silver_prints_144_x_92_cm_each
Anna Maria Maiolino, Entrevidas (Between Lives), 1981, gelatin silver prints, each: 144 x 92 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan
The constant need for self-imposed restraint under the military regime is also explored in Pimentel’s paintings. Influenced by graphic design, Pimentel uses vivid colours and smooth, flat brushstrokes in a Constructivist grid to render intimate scenes – including parts of her own legs, feet and toes – intruding into household spaces. In her ‘Série Envolvimento’ (Involvement Series, 1968–84), parts of sewing machines, telephones, hairdryers, stoves and other devices related to the realm of women’s lives evoke a sense of domestic confinement and entrapment.
Likewise, in Parente’s videos the household becomes a space of instability and estrangement. The artist transforms familiar domestic chores – such as ironing, sewing and applying make-up – into unfamiliar and uncanny situations. In the video Tarefa I (Assignment I, 1982), Parente lies face down on an ironing board, while a maid presses the clothes that the artist is wearing. Through this ironic and painful act, Parente converts her own body into a passive object in an allusion to domestic violence. The objectification of the female body is also suggested in her video In (1975), in which the artist suspends herself through her blouse on a clothes hanger – as if she has become a commodity herself. She then closes the closet door remaining inside its claustrophobic space, replicating the asphyxiating atmosphere of the period.
Parente’s self-representations are far from the conventional feminine depictions of women in advertising and mass media. In the video Preparação I (Preparation I, 1975), the artist stands in front of a bathroom mirror brushing her hair and applying make-up. She sticks a piece of adhesive tape on her mouth and then outlines it with lipstick. She repeats the procedure on her eyes, drawing an eye shape with a pencil over the tape patches, and then takes her bag and leaves the room. Here, the functions of seeing and speaking are denied to the artist – a reference to the assault on the right to free speech and the impossibility of bearing witness under the authoritarian regime. The work also violates ideal standards of female beauty, questioning normative aesthetic values imposed on women by patriarchal culture.
Notwithstanding the fact that Brazilian women artists such as Do Amaral ‘had a seat at the table’, many of her peers confronted patriarchal structures alongside their critiques of political repression. As such, they forged new ways of representing women’s subjectivities and – even if they did not label themselves feminists – conceived a particular form of feminism unique to their country at a critical historical juncture.
Published in Frieze Masters, issue 7, 2018, with the title ‘Feminism in Disguise’.
Main Image: Anna Maria Maiolino, É o que Sobra (What Is Left Over), from the series ‘Fotopoemação’ (Photopoemaction), 1974, digital print, 62 × 153 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan
Claudia Calirman is a writer and curator based in New York, USA. She is currently associate professor of art history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
First published in Issue 7
Anna Maria Maiolino，Entrevidas(Inter.)，1981，明胶银印，每个：144×92cm。礼貌：艺术家和米兰拉菲拉·科特斯美术馆，皮门特尔的绘画中也探讨了在军事政权下自我约束的持续需要。受平面设计的影响，皮门特尔在建构主义网格中使用生动的色彩和平滑的平面笔触，以渲染侵入家庭空间的亲密场景——包括她自己的腿、脚和脚趾的部分。在她的“Série Envolvimento”(参与系列，1968-84)中，缝纫机、电话、吹风机、炉子和其他与妇女生活领域有关的装置引起了一种家庭封闭和陷阱的感觉。同样，在Parente的录像中，家庭变成了一个不稳定和隔阂的空间。艺术家把熟悉的家务——如熨烫、缝纫和化妆——转化成不熟悉和不可思议的情形。在Tarefa I(作业一，1982)的视频中，Parente面朝下躺在熨衣板上，而女仆则按着艺术家穿的衣服。通过这种讽刺和痛苦的行为，Parente把自己的身体转变成一个被动的对象，暗指家庭暴力。她的视频(1975年)也提出了女性身体的客观化，其中艺术家通过她的衬衫悬挂在衣架上，仿佛她自己已经成为一种商品。然后，她关上留在其幽闭恐怖空间内的壁橱门，复制出那个时期令人窒息的气氛。Parente的自我陈述与广告和大众媒体中对女性的传统女性描写远非如此。在视频Preparec a o I（Preparec I，1975）中，艺术家站在浴室的镜子前，刷头发，化妆。她把一条胶带粘在嘴里，然后用口红勾勒出来。她在眼睛上重复这一过程，用铅笔在胶带补丁上画出眼睛的形状，然后拿起她的包离开房间。在这里，艺术家被剥夺了观看和演讲的功能，这指的是在独裁政权下侵犯言论自由权和不能作证。作品也违反了女性美的理想标准，质疑父权文化强加于女性的规范性审美价值。尽管像Do Amaral这样的巴西女艺术家“在桌上占有一席之地”，她的许多同龄人在批评政治压迫的同时也面临着父权制结构。因此，他们创造了代表妇女主体性的新方法，并且——即使他们没有给自己贴上女权主义者的标签——在关键的历史关头构思出了他们国家特有的一种特殊形式的女权主义。伪装中的因式主义。主图：安娜·玛丽亚·梅奥利诺，《左边是什么》，1974年，来自“FotopoemaConceo”（摄影）系列，数字印刷，62×153厘米。礼貌：米兰·克劳迪娅·卡里尔曼·克劳迪娅·卡里尔曼，艺术家兼画廊拉斐拉·科特斯。克劳迪娅·卡里尔曼是美国纽约 的作家和策展人。她现在是约翰·卡里尔曼的艺术史副教授。纽约市立大学杰伊刑事司法学院第7期，第一期刊登于2018年9月7日巴西奥利诺万达皮梅特尔FRIZE特稿 ARThing编译