In this text, Julio Plaza questions the notion of the “Geração ‘80” that circulated widely in Brazil. Brazilian art criticism used that term to define new artistic production that differed from the experimentalism prevalent in the seventies; the rallying cry and supreme value of that new tendency was “the return to painting.” Plaza takes pains to demystify certain “nominalisms” regarding that production, that is, terms that seek to pinpoint it. He challenges the notions of “fleetingness,” “originality,” “Zeitgeist,” and even “spontaneity,” all of which he opposes to an innate artistic impulse that he calls “insight.” Plaza recognizes that digital media governed by the principle of bricolagem (DIY, do-it-yourself) are predominant in the art of the times. Regardless, he repudiates an art fetishized by passing trends, an art that produces only “artistic merchandise” under the guise of a purist discourse eager to take in a general, and undemanding, “audience.”

This text is highly critical of the emergence and intense commercial support of the “Geração ‘80” in Brazil. It points out how quickly success came to the young artists in that movement exhibited at the XVIII São Paulo Biennial. The backdrop for this text is the idea of the “great canvas,” the theme that curator Sheila Leirner developed for that edition of the biennial (she would curate two editions of the event in the eighties). Plaza insists on the “conservative”—indeed reactionary—bent of a strain of postmodernism that advocates first and foremost “the return to painting.” He supports a more progressive stance that moves back and forth between painting and the mass media. The premise of the journal Arte em São Paulo was to provide art with an autonomous venue while also meddling in the art circuit. The publication’s first editor was artist Luiz Paulo Baravelli, a post later held by journalist Lisette Lagnado. Thirty-seven issues of the journal were published before 1987. Multimedia artist, professor, and theorist Julio Plaza (1938–2003) was an important figure in Brazilian conceptual and digital art; he is also known for his work in the graphic design of a number of concrete poems. Along with poet Augusto de Campos, he produced book/objects like Poemóbiles (1974) and the Caixa Preta (1975). He taught in the Departamento de Multiméios do Instituto de Artes da UNIcamp (in Campinas) and in the Departamento de Artes Plásticas of the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA/USP). He organized Arte pelo Telefone: Videotexto (São Paulo: Museu da Imagem e do Som, 1982), a groundbreaking exhibition in video text in Brazil. He directed the special room for new media at the 17th São Paulo Biennial in 1983, the moment when digital art was emerging in the country. Plaza wrote his doctoral thesis—later published in book form—on inter-semiotic translation by which literary texts are transplanted in visual and sound codes. Professor Walter Zanini—director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (USP) from 1963 to 1978—wrote two texts on Plaza’s work, the first on the show Poéticas Visuais [see in the ICAA digital archive “As novas possibilidades = The new possibilities” (doc. no 1110585), and the second, “Primeiros tempos da arte/tecnologia no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111029), pertinent to the text addressed here. For further reading, see also in the archive the following texts by Julio Plaza: “77: quase-apresentação” (doc. no. 1110719), “Arte e interatividade: autor-obra-recepção” (doc. no. 1111093), “Arte e videotexto” (doc. no. 1111090), “Busca da dimensão mais firme para a realidade” (doc. no. 1110750), “Câmara obscura” (doc. no. 1110718), “Imagemega” (doc. no. 1111133), “Info foto: grafias” (doc. no. 1111091), “O livro como forma de arte (I)” (doc. no. 1111238), “O livro como forma de arte (II)” (doc. no. 1111239), “Mail-art: arte em sincronia = Mail-art: art in synchrony ” (doc. no. 1110592), “Manifiesto pro integración” (doc. no. 1110751), “Poéticas visuais = Visual poems” (doc. no. 1110587), and “Transcriar” (doc. no. 1111237)].