In this essay, Tadeu Chiarelli analyzes Brazil art from the eighties and nineties, specifically production that involves three-dimensional space (sculpture, objects, or installation). He draws ties between those decades and the experimental tradition of earlier periods, specifically the Duchampian legacy, which was particularly influential in the sixties and seventies. He examines the dialogue with painting central during the eighties thanks to figures like Leda Catunda, Ana Tavares, Nuno Ramos, Rosângela Rennó, Valeska Soares, Jac Leirner, Lia Menna Barreto, Iran do Espírito Santo, Edgard de Souza, Eliane Prolik, Shirley Paes Leme, Luiz Hermano, Marcos Coelho Benjamin, Efraim de Almeida, Ângelo Venosa, Fernado Lucchesi, and Gustavo Rezende. Chiarelli formulates the hypothesis that art from the eighties and nineties had a distinct popular bent.

This text by Tadeu Chiarelli was featured in the book Tridimensionalidade published in conjunction with the show of the same name held at the Instituto Itaú Cultural in São Paulo in 1997. The show signaled the emergence of a new generation of studies on Brazilian art that attempted to devise a historical reading of experimental art from the sixties and seventies. Those new studies took stock of more recent work, that is, of art from the eighties and nineties. 

The current director of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Tadeu Chiarelli has done research and curated shows on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazilian photography and art. In that work, he establishes ties between art and photography, on the one hand, and the art world and its circuits, on the other, always with an emphasis on social questions. He has played a fundamental role not only in thought on the photographic medium, but also in establishing it as central to Brazilian art from recent decades.

[For complementary reading, see in the ICAA digital archive the following texts by Tadeu Chiarelli: “15 artistas brasileiros: colocando dobradiças na arte contemporânea = Putting Hinges on Contemporary Art” (doc. no. 1110500), “Amanhã hoje: Casa triângulo de 1988 a 1995” (doc. no. 1111344), “Apontamentos para um mapa das artes plásticas em São Paulo durante 1985” (doc. no. 1111351), “Apropriações: o lugar da arte como questão” (doc. no. 1111252), “Armadilhas para Narciso” (doc. no. 1111253), “Considerações sobre o uso de imagens de segunda geração na arte contemporânea” (doc. no. 1110502), “Da arte nacional brasileira para a arte brasileira internacional” (doc. no. 1075144), “Emmanuel Nassar: erudito e popular” (doc. no. 1110457), “Fotografía en Brasil: años 90 = Photography in Brazil in the 1990s” (doc. no. 1110894), “A gravura no espelho” (doc. no. 1111250), “A gravura paulista significa” (doc. no. 1111251), “Jac Leirner” (doc. no. 1111254), “La mirada contaminada: otras fotografías = The contaminated gaze: other photographies” (doc. no. 1110893), “Realidade e simulacro” (doc. no. 1111255), “Uma realidade... dilacerante: a produção de Nazareth Pacheco = Nazareth Pacheco’s output: a lacerating reality” (doc. no. 1111059), “Sobre a fotografia brasileira atual = On current Brazilian photography” (doc. no. 1110895), and “Sobre as pinturas de Mônica Nador” (doc. no. 1111256)].