AboutEverythingElse

Mosaic :: BR Conspiration :: Fábio Galeazzo :: 2012

According to some historians, the first record of tiles in Brazil dates back to around 1620, when pieces of glazed ceramics from Portugal came to adorn the convent of Santo Amaro de Água Fria, in Olinda. Since then – whether for its strong representation of the metropolis’s culture, for its plastic beauty or for its thermal comfort characteristics (well suited to our climate) – the tile gained more and more space in Brazilian buildings. Initially present in panels of religious or government-owned buildings, in a few decades the beautiful pieces began to be imported not only from Portugal but also from France and the Netherlands (countries that produced their tiles with an important forma of artistic expression) and also began to serve as frontages of urban buildings.

Also in the late nineteenth century, Brazil started manufacturing the tile – but it was not before the beginning of the twentieth century that our production became regular. And although during that time some architects abandoned the use of this material (as a rejection of elements that represented the colonial period), the modern Brazilian movement, seeking to “combine tradition and modernity, and turn domestic and traditional materials into a bridge between the colonial and the modern”* (re)incorporated the tile to its architecture. Since then, the domestic tile has become a powerful artistic expression of our own culture, and depicted, along with geometric shapes, elements of our landscape, our wildlife and our flora.

Under this historical perspective, the tiles created by designer Fabio Galeazzo and now released by Azulejaria Brasil (Cerâmica Antigua) have gained even greater momentum. In a collection named Conspiração BR (BR Conspiracy, in a free translation), which consisted of 20 prints divided into four themes, Galeazzo rescues and revisits, with mastery, one of the most important elements of our architecture.

Galeazzo reveals deep knowledge, extreme sensitivity and an enormous capacity for innovation through his choice of format (15cm X 15cm, the most traditional in our production), his choice of themes (which range from Festa do Divino images to prints traditionally found in the Brazilian cheetah), and his assembly of the color palette, thus obtaining results of undeniable plastic beauty.

By combining technical and theoretical expertise, sensitivity and talent, Galeazzo proves that interior design can indeed be innovative and storytelling, playful and cultural – all at once, while providing beauty to the environment, pleasure to the eye and comfort to the soul.

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Arthur Bispo do Rosário :: ‘Manto da Apresentação’ :: sem data

It is assumed that Arthur Bispo do Rosario lived for about 80 years – no one knows the exact year of his birth. He spent 50 of these years as an intern at an old mental hospital in Rio de Janeiro called Juliano Moreira, being 25 continuous years until his death in 1989.

As a black man, grandson of slaves, poor and migrant, he tried to survive in Rio de Janeiro as a janitor, caretaker, building doorman, employee of a public utility company and bodyguard of politicians, until he was considered “a paranoid schizophrenic”. In a context marked by the rise of fascism – including Brazil, where the acting Brazilian League for Mental Hygiene took a hygienist, racist and xenophobic approach – he was subjected to lobotomy, electroshock and punishment by psychiatric methods that mutilated and excluded those who disturbed the order.

His work was made public, as a whole, only after his death – and revealed an immense artistic legacy of originality, profound thematic creativity and diversity of shapes and materials, bringing to light a previously unknown life whose understanding was based on art, not insanity.

Consciously appropriating of his exile as a way of facilitating self-expression, Bispo do Rosario created art out of any material resource he laid his hands on, irrefutably demonstrating man’s innate ability to create – in spite of difficulties of any nature: technical, material, theoretical knowledge or personal history. His hands made bottles, combs, coins, shoes, mugs, spoons, brooms, pieces of fabric (taken from sheets), sewing threads (for embroidery, taken from the inmates’ uniforms) leave their original purpose to become vehicles of his obsessive quest for ordainment, structure and rhythm of time and thought.

In the words of Louise Bourgeois, “Bispo do Rosario had the ability to take an object of his life of confinement and turn it into a symbolic object of his self-expression, mystery, beauty and freedom”. Coming across any of these objects is an experience invariably fraught with great emotion for its astonishing plastic beauty and the possibility of recognizing shapes, words and meanings that silently talk with the human soul, awakening universal feelings and existential questions.

Questions, yes. Because by looking inward, listening to his own soul and allowing himself to give vent to his creative essence even in the face of immense adversity, Bispo do Rosário yielded beauty and put himself in a time in history psychiatry will never reach. We then wonder where our eyes are turned to, what our ears are listening to and why, even when there is no adversity, we find ourselves reluctant to let forth the creative essence that each one of us carries, in a unique and singular way, inside of us.

P.S. 
In 1982, the Bispo do Rosario Museum of Contemporary Art was inaugurated in Rio de Janeiro – http://www.rioecultura.com.br/instituicao/instituicao.asp?local_cod=119

In 2007, CosacNaify published the beautiful book named “Arthur Bispo do Rosario – Seculo XX”, put together by Wilson Lazaro, with texts by Emanuel Araujo, Louise Bourgeois, Paulo Herkenhoff and Ricardo Aquino, currently out of print.

Xenon on Berlin’s Matthäikirche, 2001 © Jenny Holzer

Born in Ohio in 1950, Jenny Holzer is an artist who, over the past three decades, has been consolidating a beautiful and impressive work in the visual arts. In spite of her flirting with the abstract arts at the beginning of her career in the late 70’s, when she moved to New York, Holzer chose the word as the driving force of her work, and began to use non-conventional media such as billboards, LED panels and lighting projections to convey both dimensions that make up a word: form and content.

The texts used have different origins: many of them are her own writings, others are internationally known poems, others are even extracted from governmental documents. But Holzer uses this diversity to work in a single line, which speaks of universal values and establishes counterpoints that deeply touch us all: the public and the private, the political body and the physical body, the universal and particular.

More impressive, however, is Holzer’s counterpoint between form and content: we see, at one time, sensitivity and strength, gigantism and fluidity, frailty and perennity – all with a plastic result of unarguable beauty.

It is impossible to stand indifferent when faced with one of Holzer’s pieces of artwork. The strength of her words beautifully invades our eyes, our minds and our souls.

To learn more: www.jennyholzer.com
“ProtectProtect”, Jenny Holzer Exhibition at Whitney Museum, NYC, 2009 (video)

Photo :: Gabrielle Chanel

Almost 100 years after her first creations, Chanel is still revered in the fashion world – and outside as well. In an era when products, thoughts and relationships are increasingly ephemeral, one should wonder why such a long stay.

Freeing the woman from rigid attires at the end of the nineteenth century (which favored ostentation at the expense of comfort), Chanel reproduced, on an industrial scale, her own image – a distinctive image in absolute harmony with her personality and the historical moment in which she lived. And here lies the secret of her stay in the collective imagination for so long: we are not fascinated by her clothes, necklaces or perfumes – we are fascinated by her identity both strong and unique, which is revealed to us through the objects she used and (re)produced.

Some say that the intensity of Chanel’s presence annulled those of her rivals. It doesn’t seem to me, however, that this fascination came from the objects she chose to wear… On the contrary, such objects were personal and conscious choices, result of the intensity of her thinking – and of the understanding that, also by dressing, she expressed her own identity.

Ironically, the industrial production of a unique personal style has become a paradox – to the point when Chanel herself stated: “I am no longer what I once was: I must be what I have become.” The desire for a socially recognized and valued image combined with the lack of knowledge and reflection on oneself make thousands of people seek in bags, shoes and clothes the ability to grant them personality and identity, in a total reversal of roles.

As I once wrote in the text ‘About dressing’ (Jan, 2011), beauty lies in being and perceiving ourselves as unique. Beautiful, therefore, is not to own Chanel – beautiful is to be Chanel.