Written in 1978, this meditation on art criticism and its relationship with Conceptual art resumes an earlier discussion stirred up by the caustic criticism of Frederico Morais in the early 1970s. In those years, from his Rio de Janeiro base, Morais proposed to articulate a “new criticism,” in which anyone who writes on art must become not just an ally, but even an artist in his own right (see “O público: O exercício da liberdade” [doc. no. 1110476]). From that starting point, Leirner added that any response to this proposal about criticism could be applied to the curatorial practice as well. In fact, she herself became more prominent in the mid-1980s while serving as director of São Paulo biennials.
As a journalist and art critic, the French Brazilian Sheila Leirner (b. 1948) was a member of the Conselho de Arte e Cultura da Bienal in 1982−83, and came to be the chief curator of two biennials in that period: the 18th (1985) and the 19th (1987). After studying the sociology of art in France, Leirner became an art critic for the daily newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in 1975. She published a collection of her essays under the title Arte e seu tempo (São Paulo: Editôra Perspectiva, 1991), a book in which she began to set a priority on what she called “new art.” That was also the year Leirner returned to Paris, where she worked and specialized as an arts administrator. She represented the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Latin America (1993−99), and became a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) (French division). Leirner has contributed to countless journals and supplements in both countries, including Beaux-Arts Magazine, Europe Magazine Littéraire, Revista da USP, and Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira. She was also on the scholarship committee for UNESCO-Aschberg.
In addition, there is another text in which Leirner analyzes the artwork produced in the 1970s and 1980s in Brazil, in the midst of pluralism in international art, entitled “Brasil: uma nova arte” [doc. no. 1110940].
