According to Mário Pedrosa contemporary art is characterized by “objectivism” or by a rejection of self-expression. In this essay he refers to the symbolic objects suggested by Salvador Dalí and to “the crisis of the object” identified in 1936 by André Breton, both of whom sought to propose an alternative to mass produced objects. Pedrosa claims that the object has been hijacked and subjected to external forces that seek to store it or rebuild it by disrupting normality and replacing it with “unusual” circumstances. The paradox of Pop Art is to create or maintain those “unusual” circumstances when faced with the redundancy of mass communication. Pedrosa believes that true artists base their work on redundancy with a view to group participation. They thus radically reduce what is real by establishing a new relationship with reality.   

The art critic Mário Pedrosa wrote this essay as a result of the debate prompted by Nova Objetividade Brasileira, the exhibition held at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) from April 6 to 30, 1967. Pedrosa, who developed the concept of “objectivity” based on the idea proposed by the Surrealist writer André Breton, explores the ways in which Dadaist and Surrealist artists changed in response to mass communications and mass production. He thus distinguishes between Brazilian art and North American Pop Art in view of its critical nature vis-á-vis reality and the need to be part of a group.    

The intellectual and politician Mário Pedrosa (1900–81) is undoubtedly Brazil’s most important twentieth-century art theoretician and critic. He was originally an international politics columnist for the Diário da Noite, and joined the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) in the 1920s. He was imprisoned in 1932 for his political affiliation (he was a Trotskyite at the time). He lived in exile in France and New York during the Getulio Vargas regime’s Estado Novo, but returned to Brazil after the war, at which time he worked for Correio da Manhã. His anti-Stalin convictions prompted him to start the weekly publication Vanguarda Socialista. His thesis on aesthetic teaching, “Da natureza afetiva da forma na obra de arte” (1949), which he presented at the Faculdade de Arquitetura (Rio), included all his knowledge of philosophy and Gestalt psychology. At that time he was one of the founders of the AICA (1948) and he helped organize the International Congress of Art Critics (Brasilia, 1959). He wrote an art criticism column for the Tribuna da Imprensa (1950–54), was among the organizers of the 2nd and 3rd São Paulo Biennials (1953 and 1955), and was appointed director of the MAM-SP (1961–63). He was Secretary of the National Council of Culture during the brief Jânio Quadros administration. During the military dictatorship he went to Chile, where he became the director of the Museo de la Solidaridad in Santiago. After the Pinochet coup (1973) he moved to Havana as the Secretary of the Museo de la Resistencia Salvador Allende. He returned to Brazil in 1977 (in the early days of the Amnesty) and was the first to sign the founding manifesto for the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, 1980). His huge library (eight thousand volumes) is partially accessible at the Biblioteca Nacional de Rio de Janeiro.     

[As complementary reading, see the following essays by Mário Pedrosa in the ICAA digital archive: “Abstração ou figuração ou realismo?” (doc. no. 1085648); “L’architecture moderne au Brésil” (doc. no. 1086489); “Arquitetura e crítica de arte” (doc. no. 1086553); “Arte Ambiental, arte pós-moderna, Helio Oiticica” (doc. no. 1110622); “Arte infantil” (doc. no. 1110389); “Arte signográfica” (doc. no. 1085678); “Arte, necessidade vital” (doc. no. 1110355); “O ‘bicho-da-seda’ na produção em massa” (doc. no. 1110436); “Bienal e participação... do povo” (doc. no. 1111108); “A cidade nova, síntese das artes” (doc. no. 1086503); “Crise do condicionamento artístico” (doc. no. 1110433); “Crise nas artes individuais” (doc. no. 1110406); “Da abstração a auto-expressão” (doc. no. 1085707); “Da dissolução do objeto ao vanguardismo brasileiro” (doc. no. 1110435); “Da lógica na apreciação artística” (doc. no. 1086587); “Debate: o artista e a crítica” (doc. no. 1110951); “Do ‘informal’ e seus equívocos” (doc. no. 1085759); “Do porco empalhado ou os critérios da crítica” (doc. no. 1110442); “Espaço e arquitetura” (doc. no. 1087020); “Flores do abismo” (doc. no. 780902); “Grupo Frente” (doc. no. 1083731); “Introdução à arquitetura brasileira – I; Introdução à arquitetura brasileira – II” (doc. no. 1086620); “Introdução ao tema inaugural: A cidade nova, obra de arte” (doc. no. 1110409); “Intróito à Bienal” (doc. no. 1090338); “Lições do Congresso de Críticos” (doc. no. 1110410); “Lições do congresso internacional de críticos” (doc. no. 1086667); “MAM: reconstrução” (doc. no. 1111078); “A máquina, Calder, Léger e outros” (doc. no. 1085302); “Mestres da arte virgem” (doc. no. 1110393); “O novo MAM terá cinco museus. É a proposta de Mário Pedrosa” (doc. no. 1110466); “Opinião... opinião... Opinião...” (doc. no. 1090568); “O painel de Tiradentes” (doc. no. 1111004); “Parecer sôbre o ‘CORE’ da Cidade Universitária” (doc. no. 1110830); “Pernambuco, Cícero Dias e Paris” (doc. no. 1110816); “Quinquilharia e pop-art” (doc. no. 1110437); “Reflexões em torno da nova capital” (doc. no. 1086728); (untitled) [“Se alguém tem ainda a intenção de falar (…)”] (doc. no. 1086986); “Variações sem tema ou arte da retaguarda” (doc. no. 808010); “Paulistas e cariocas” (doc. no. 1085056); “Pintura brasileira e moda internacional” (doc. no. 1126469); and “Problemas da pintura brasileira” (doc. no. 1075171)].