This text by artists Ricardo Basbaum and Eduardo Coimbra is a public response to Argumentação contra a morte da arte, a compilation of articles by poet and art critic Ferreira Gullar that were published in the daily Jornal do Brasil. Basbaum and Coimbra argue that the prejudices against contemporary art evident in the book by Gullar suggest how fragile and precarious the Brazilian art world is. They assert that art criticism and production should operate in conjunction—of course without one being obsequious to the other—to establish a dynamic exchange. They look to the concept of the “expanded field” formulated by North American art critic and historian Rosalind Krauss in her famous essay in order to encompass the breadth of contemporary art to the extent possible. They take Krauss’s concept beyond the sphere of sculpture to indicate vectors that are a further reflection on contemporary art in general. 

Rio de Janeiro-based artist, critic, and curator Ricardo Basbaum (b. 1961) is a professor at the Instituto de Artes of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). He emerged on the art scene in the eighties, and in the nineties, formed part of the Visorama group while also editing the magazine Ítem. He was the coordinator of Agência de Organismos Artísticos (AGORA), and later, of Espaço Agora-Capacete. He was one of the curators of Panorama de Arte Brasileira (2001), and in 2007, his work was featured at documenta in Kassel. 

Eduardo Coimbra became known on the Brazilian art scene in the nineties. He formed part of the Visorama group that was active in Rio de Janeiro during that decade. He was also an editor of the magazine Ítem, coordinator of Agência de Organismos Artísticos (AGORA), and later, of Espaço Agora-Capacete.

Rosalind Krauss’s concept of the expanded field was highly influential in Brazil in the nineties. Indeed, it was applied to a wide range of situations; Fernando Cocchiarale used it to take the space of sculpture beyond convention in his presentation of the show Escultura Carioca at Paço Imperial (see “Fernando Cocchiarale: agosto 1994” [doc. no. 1110952]).

A professor at Columbia University in New York, art critic and theorist Rosalind E. Krauss (b. 1941) is well known for her scholarship on twentieth-century sculpture, painting, and photography, about which since 1965, she has published widely in North American magazines, such as Artforum, Art International,and Art in America. She was the associate editor of Artforum from 1971 to 1974, and in 1976, she became editor-in-chief of October, a publication on theory and contemporary art that she helped found.