Originally published in 1977 in the alternative magazine O BEIJO, “Mamãe Belas-Artes” is one of the most important articles about the Brazilian art world in the 1970s, together with “O boom, o pós-boom e o dis-boom” [Boom, post-boom, and un-boom], published in the newspaper Opinião, number 200 (Rio de Janeiro, pp. 25?28) [see doc. no. 1110451], jointly written by the sculptor José Resende (b. 1945) and the art critic Ronaldo Brito (b. 1949)—an article that was also signed by two other artists: Waltércio Caldas (b. 1946) and Carlos Zílio (b. 1944).
In this document, Resende and Brito embark on a sarcastic sort of “Freudian analysis” of the Brazilian art world, discussing its impulses and repressions, commitments and symptoms. Written at the time when groups of artists were staging “art in the street” projects in the major Brazilian cities, the article shed light on the limitations and ideologies implicit in the desire to escape from the clutches of institutional confinement. In the authors’ opinion, such street productions can be understood as a new interpretation of a belief in art as a means of expression, instead of the historical process traditionally followed within institutional parameters. What they are both advocating is a demand for a purely “Brazilian art” that would address the meaning of artistic languages and cultural advances in a totally abstract way to express the ordinary, everyday concept of a “nation” and the “Brazilian people.”
Brito believes that there is “a modern calling for the current reality” at the heart of the Brazilian sculptor José Resende’s work, which is why he joined forces with him to challenge the (always ideological) institutional stagnation of art [doc. no. 1111278].