Art critic and curator Fernando Cocchiarale argues that the expansion of the visual arts into other fields has implied greater distance from the traditions of which it formed part. The inclusion of time and space in art became an important mark of contemporariness. In Cocchiarale’s opinion, video was the culmination of that trend insofar as it allowed immediate viewing of recorded images. Cocchiarale recounts pioneering experiences in film which have been little seen, despite the ease of their reproduction. The author concedes that painting is an object with a single point of view despite all the attempts to surpass that limitation.

This text was published in the chapter “Sobre filmes de artista” in the catalogue to the exhibition Filmes de artista: Brasil 1965–80 held at Oi Futuro, a venue in Rio de Janeiro, from May 1 to June 17, 2007. The exhibition, which was curated by Fernando Cocchiarale, was a pivotal and far-reaching retrospective of pioneering works by Brazilian artists working in film and video. It made a major contribution to the debate on production of this type, which has still not been duly studied.

[For other texts by Cocchiarale on film and its uses and on photography, see ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 1111425 and 1111427)].

In the sixties, before focusing his efforts on curating and cultural administration, Fernando Cocchiarale (b. 1952) was an experimental artist and one of the engines behind the Sala Experimental at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio). Since the eighties, he has worked as an art critic while also curating a number of important shows. He has served as the director of Fundação Nacional de Arte (FUNARTE) and of MAM-Rio.

Texts in the ICAA digital archive on Cocchiarale’s work at the Sala Experimental in the mid-seventies include “O pão nosso de cada dia” on Anna Bella Geiger (doc. no. 1110557), and a text signed jointly by Geiger, Ivens Machado, and Paulo Herkenhoff on the primary purpose of the “Sala Experimental” (doc. no. 1110602).