While traveling in New York, philosopher Vilém Flusser, who had lived in Brazil for two decades, visited the studio of Brazilian artist Antonio Henrique Amaral to see his Campos de Batalha series, which consisted of the works on canvas on the banana theme discussed in this article. Flusser points to three discrete components of this work: the ethical, the aesthetic, and the technical. Though bananas may be commonplace, especially in a tropical country, Flusser uses them as the basis of reflection. He observes that Amaral painted these works in largely unconventional “situations that are not shown.” The dramatic nature of these works is associated with the Brazilian people and with the stigma of the recent past after two decades of military dictatorship (1964?85). In works depicting bananas cut with forks and knives and tied with hanging ropes, the banana-Brazil nexus is indisputably political. Nonetheless, Flusser asserts that the message in these works is obvious only to those who want it to be. The historic component of the work is not narrated directly. In other words, the work features urgent images rather than descriptions.  

In this text, Vilém Flusser analyzes the work Antonio Henrique Amaral (1935?2015) produced in New York in the early seventies, specifically the Campos de Batalha series. While Flusser’s perspective is phenomenological, he does not fail to notice Amaral’s hyperrealist method. Flusser astutely observes that avant-garde art employs new technical media rather than conveys new messages.  

Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920–91) lived in São Paulo for nearly two decades after fleeing Nazism. Ironically, he returned to Europe in 1972 pursuant to the harshening of the military dictatorship in Brazil in power from 1964 to 1985 and the oppressive climate in the country. He wrote a series of works on the philosophy of language that reflects on the links between contemporary man and new image technologies. This article is one of a group of thirteen essays published in the magazine Íris from 1982 to 1985, the years when democracy was slowly returning to Brazil (Flusser was living abroad by that time). Ricardo Mendes, who wrote his dissertation on Flusser, asserts that the Czech philosopher’s ideas brought a new air to the stifled atmosphere surrounding photography in the country at a time when the thinking of post-structuralist and semiotic theorists—in particular Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag—was extremely influential. Flusser was in contact, during that period, with Stefania Bril and Arlindo Machado, both of whom communicated his theory as critics for major São Paulo newspapers. Flusser’s work was also influential among some artist-researchers.

Other texts by Flusser on photography include “O instrumento do fotógrafo ou o fotógrafo-instrumento?” [doc. no. 1110899], written in 1982; “O futuro e a cultura da imagem” [doc. no. 1110898], written in 1983; and “A urgência de uma filosofia da fotografia” [doc. no. 1111089], written in 2002.