This text by art critic, professor, and journalist Lourival Gomes Machado takes stock of Brazilian art criticism after the II Congresso de Críticos held in 1961.  Gomes Machado was the coordinator of the section of that event dedicated to the relationship between the São Paulo Biennial and international art. In his opinion, the biennial was failing to perform its most important mission, mainly to represent both international and Brazilian art. The reasons for that failure, the author claims, are the private interests operative in national representations, as well as the influence of the vastly expanding art market on the decisions of the event’s jurors. Gomes Machado even makes reference to the art market’s influence on art criticism, a topic discussed by French news magazine France Observateur (currently known as L’Obs). Jacques Putnam, the editor of that publication, expressed the opinion of the editorial office when he stated that local criticism must be anonymous and aware of the danger of falling under the influence of the market. In Gomes Machado’s view, criticism, especially in his times, should be removed from non-artistic interests even though it is immersed in the suffocating market. His position indicated that both France and Brazil were experiencing a period of crisis when it came to art criticism.

Lourival Gomes Machado’s article supports the end of national representations at the coming editions of the São Paulo Biennial, something that would not ensue until decades later. It also covers the growing influence of the art market on that event. Gomes Machado was concerned that the biennial perform at least one of the roles he himself envisioned for it, mainly “to formulate vital contact, rather than a simple and lukewarm confrontation, between modern art from Brazil and art from the rest of the world.” That was how Gomes Machado put it in the introduction to the catalogue of the first edition of the biennial where he served as artistic director.

In 1941, journalist, critic, and art historian Lourival Gomes Machado—along with intellectuals of the stature of Antonio Candido, Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, and Décio de Almeida Prado—launched the São Paulo-based magazine Clima. The aim of the publication was to encourage innovation in the spheres of literary criticism, film, and theater in Brazil. During the forties, Gomes Machado was an art critic for the newspaper Folha da Manhã and the editor of the international section of O Estado de S, Paulo. After the resignation of Belgian curator Léon Degand, Gomes Machado became the director of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP), a post he held from 1949 to 1951; he was also the chief curator of the first and fifth editions of the São Paulo Biennial. His most well known text is Barroco Mineiro (1969), a selection of articles on the baroque from the state of Minas Gerais, a topic that Gomes Machado began investigating in 1953 in his Teorias do Barroco.

Pertinent as well is the text introducing the I Bienal of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo written by Gomes Machado (see “Apresentação,” ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1110834). In it, he explains the formulations underlying the organization of the event. Gomes Machado also wrote a letter to the event’s major advocate, Dona Yolanda Penteado, dated March 8, 1951, in which he informs her of the negotiations surrounding the national representations from Europe at the first edition of the biennial (doc. no. 1110824).

The text “A Bienal de cá para lá” [The Biennial from Here to There (The Rest of the World)] by critic Mário Pedrosa (1900–1981)—director of the fifth edition of the event held in 1961—dialogues with this article by Gomes Machado, especially in terms of the influence of the market and the uncomfortable topic of national representations. Though Pedrosa’s article was written in 1970, it was not published until years later, specifically in the book Arte Brasileira Hoje: situação e perspectivas by Ferreira Gullar (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1973).