Brazilian Concrete art theorist Waldemar Cordeiro discusses the exhibition Propostas 65, which was conceived and organized by artists. In Cordeiro’s view, what is called “proposal” art is radical insofar as it entails collective, rather than individual, expression. It follows in a specific context open to direct dialogue. In his text, Cordeiro places emphasis on the semantic value of this strain of art and how ideas are applied. In other words, he discusses how the medium transforms information whose origin lies in international art. Cordeiro identifies contemporary realism with criticism of the historical development of the culture of the image, including the evolution of the concept of “medium” and of the narrative in mass culture and design. For Cordeiro, this contemporary realism entails the “creation,” “codification,” and “reading” of a new visual reality, one wholly different from traditional artistic genres. He writes briefly about some of the artists in the show who exemplify this movement, mentioning specifically Abraham Palatnik, Ubirajara Ribeiro, Ruben Martins, Pedro Escostéguy, Antonio Manuf, Efizio Putzolu, Mona Gorovitz, Waldomiro de Deus, Ângelo D’Aquino, Samuel Szpigel, Maurício Nogueira Lima, Rubens Gerchman, architect Sérgio Ferro, set designer Flávio Império, Carlos Vergara, Miriam Chiaverini, and Nelson Leirner.

The exhibition Propostas 65, which took place in December 1965 at the seat of the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP) in São Paulo, featured work by forty-nine artists. The show—along with what was called Opinião 65—was one of the first collective expressions of “new figuration” in Brazil. The event took place the year after a military coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year period of dictatorship, and as such, the idea of “the collective” that Cordeiro emphasizes here was not only opportune but also necessary. Important debates between artists and critics ensued during and after Propostas 65. Contrarian painter, designer, landscape artist, art critic, and theorist Waldemar Cordeiro (1925−73) formulates a paradigm of theory and of participation at the core of art and technological advances. After having participated in the fifties in the Concrete art group Ruptura (founded in 1952) and creating semantic objects or “Popcretos” in the sixties, he engaged in research on artistic experimentation. Cordeiro looks to theorists like German thinker Max Bense as he grapples with a dialectic that vacillates between “things” and “realities” in relation to a conception of “pop.” He is convinced that contemporary art implies an objective language that presents things (or semantic units) wholly unrelated to representation. He calls this phenomenon “concrete semantic art.” This is one of the topics Cordeiro addresses in “Novas tendências e nova figuração” [see doc. no. 1110840], an essay published in the architecture magazine HABITAT. The precedent for Cordeiro’s idea of “contemporary realism under the auspices of critical action” lies in earlier texts of his authorship, among them “Produto direto de uma atitude crítica” [doc. no. 1087239]. The text discussed here must also be understood in the context of the wider concept developed in “Realismo: ‘musa da vingança e da tristeza’” [doc. no. 1110839]. Ironically entitled “Todos atentos,” this text is a reflection on the irresolvable conundrum of art within a consumer society. Implicit to his argument is a criticism of the hegemonic “culture” of the mass media and the use (or manipulation) of those media by artists.