D O C U M E N T/ I N T R O D U C T I O N - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

DOCUMENTO/INTRODUCCIÓN

POPAU, POP, OR AN
“AMERICAN WAY OF LIVING”?
AN INTRODUCTION TO ARACY AMARAL’S

“FROM THE STAMPS TO THE BUBBLE”

sofia gotti

The writings of Aracy Amaral, an academic, crítico, and curator active
since the mid-1960s, are a vital reference for the study of art history
in Brazil, and though they have been gathered in several collections in
Portuguese, her publications have been vastly undertranslated into
English.1 After working as a freelance curator and critic in close contact
with avant-garde artists from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro including
Mira Schendel, Cildo Meireles, Hélio Oiticica, and Wesley Duke Lee,
she was the director of São Paulo’s Pinacoteca between 1975 y 1979,
and of the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of São Paulo
(MAC-USP) de 1982 a 1986. Desde 1988, Amaral has taught art his-
tory at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at USP. Among her
many articles and reviews covering 20th-century art in Brazil, the arti-
cle translated here, titled “Dos carimbos à bolha” (“From the Stamps
to the Bubble”), examines the effects of the 9th São Paulo Biennial
(September 1967–January 1968), remembered to this day as the “Pop”
Biennial, due to the remarkable number of participating Pop artists
from the United States, whose work had not been seen before in
Brasil. Amaral’s text addresses the adequacy of Pop as a taxonomy for

Among her most celebrated essay collections are Arte e o meio artistico: Entre a feijoada e o
x-burger (São Paulo: Nobel, 1983, and São Paulo: Editora 34, 2013) and Textos do Tró pico de
Capricó rnio: Artigos e ensaios (1980–2005) (Sã o Paulo: Editora 34, 2006).

doi:10.1162/ARTM_a_00150

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Brazilian art in the 1960s. Laying out the plethora of factors—both
local and imported—that converged into so-called Pop in Brazil, él
exposes how the conflicted relationship between a “Brazilian reality”
and an “American way of living” was threatening the development of
a locally relevant artistic idiom. Tal como, this introduction seeks to
provide the historical context needed to enable a contemporary reading
of her text, in light of current debates over the expansion of canonical
labels like Pop to non-Western locales.

Over the past fifteen years, a number of exhibitions in Brazil have
used Pop to focus on the works of a selection of (predominantly male)
artists produced in the mid-sixties; En particular, authors including
Cacilda Texeira da Costa, Paulo Herkenhoff, Paulo Sérgio Duarte, y
Sônia Salzstein have used this expanded notion of Pop to reflect on
how a perceived Latin American collective consciousness was torn
between the popular myths of Che versus Coca-Cola.2 Most recently,
the exhibitions International Pop, at the Walker Art Center in
Mineápolis, and The World Goes Pop, at London’s Tate Modern,
have displayed works produced in the 1960s and early 1970s under
the umbrella of Pop, to reflect on a shared moment of socio-political
upheaval worldwide, engendered by sexual liberation, Cold War poli-
tics, the proliferation of the mass media, and consumer culture. Mientras
these perspectives have aided in the reconstruction of a history of the
sixties, they have sometimes marginalized discussion about the very
adequacy of this label—a discussion that a reading of Amaral’s text
reopens today.

Published in the respected Sunday literary supplement of the
São Paulo newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, “From the Stamps to the
Bubble” was written for an intellectual and informed readership, famil-
iar with current cultural debates in Brazil. The text appeared for the
first time in print in April 1968, just a few months after the closure of
the 9th Biennial. Proving to be one of the most influential expositions

Among the most significant texts and volumes on Pop art in Brazil are Arte de contradic-
ciones: Pop, realismos y política, Brasil-Argentina 1960: Fundación Proa, Julio–Septiembre
2012, ed. Paulo Herkenhoff, Rodrigo Alonso, and Gonzalo Aguilar (Buenos Aires: PROA,
2012), exhibition catalog; Paulo Sérgio Duarte, The ’60s: Transformations of Art in Brazil
(Río de Janeiro: Campos Gerais, 1998); Aproximações do espírito Pop, 1963–1968, ed.
Cacilda Texeira da Costa (São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna, 2003); and Sônia
Salzstein, “Pop As a Crisis in the Public Sphere,” in Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures, ed.
Kobena Mercer (Cambridge, MAMÁ: CON prensa, 2007), páginas. 88–109. See also Paulo
Herkenhoff, "Introducción,” in Arte de contradicciones.

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at the time, the Biennial attracted over 150,000 visitors that year.
With representations from sixty-one countries (the highest numbers
for the Biennial since its inception in 1951) and boasting record sales,
the Pop Biennial catalyzed a crucial moment of reflection for Brazilian
artists and critics alike about the relevance of this internationally
influential style.3

The US showcased works by Edward Hopper and twenty-one
New York–based Pop artists (including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein,
Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg). The participating European
countries included France, Bretaña, Italia, Poland, and Switzerland,
which exhibited works respectively by Baldacini Cesar, William
Turnbull and Richard Smith (winner of the grand prize), Michelangelo
Pistoletto, Tadeusz Kantor, and Peter Stämpfli, all of whom subscribed
to figurative tendencies. The marked difference with the previous edi-
tion of the Biennial, where abstraction prevailed as an overarching
trend (Vasarely and Burri had been awarded the grand prize in 1965),
provoked widespread anticipation in the months leading up to the
inauguration. This sentiment was spurred by Rauschenberg’s award
of the Golden Lion at the 1964 Venice Biennale: because his works
challenged the supremacy of abstraction—especially of abstract
expressionism in the US—Pop had become a fertile source of debate
worldwide.4

Por el contrario, the local press widely criticized the Biennial’s selec-
tion committee for the Brazilian representation. After a nationwide
open call for participation, 390 artists were invited to exhibit, sugerir-
ing an apparent lack of selection criteria. Even Ciccillo Matarazzo
Sobrinho, the Biennial’s founder, who continued to hold the reins of

For in-depth studies of the São Paulo Biennial, see Cultural Anthropophagy: The 24th
Bienal de São Paulo 1998, ed. Pablo Lafuente and Lisette Lagnado (Londres: Afterall, 2015);
Liliana Mendes, IX Bienal Notes, from Pesquisa sobre Ciccillo Matarazzo: Parte 1 (Investigación
on Ciccillo Matarazzo: Parte 1) (Conducted September 1994 to October 1995), São Paulo
Biennial Foundation, Arquívo Histórico Wanda Svevo, São Paulo; Isobel Whitelegg, "El
Bienal de São Paulo: Unseen/Undone (1969–1981),” Afterall online, No. 22 (Autumn/
Invierno 2009), www.afterall.org/journal/issue.22/the.bienal.de.so.paulo.unseen
undone.19691981 (last accessed January 2015).

4 Herbert Pee, director of the Ulm Museum and commissioner of the German contribution
to the Biennial, featuring the works of Rainer Kuchenmeister and Josua Reichert (respetar-
tively associated with “Informal New Figuration” and letterset printmaking), voiced his
opposition to Pop Art, which he understood as a uniquely North American style, cual
ought to be rejected by other countries. “Bienal: Comissario alemão contra Pop,” Folha de
São Paulo, Septiembre 7, 1967.

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107

the Biennial Foundation, commented, “It’s absurd! In the entirety of
our modern art history 393 artists have never existed, even if those
of a mediocre level are included.”5

In the months leading up to the Biennial, it seemed that the style
set to prevail at this particular Biennial among the Brazilians was New
Objectivity, a term derived from the pivotal exhibition of the same
name (featuring many of the same artists) held earlier that year at the
Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro.6 New Objectivity asserted
a synthesis of the recent Brazilian formulations of Neo-Concretism,
Popcreto, New Realism, and Magic Realism, yet—in a distinction
clearly stated by Hélio Oiticica in the exhibition’s catalog—marked
a separation from Pop, Op, Hard-Edge Abstraction, and Nouveau
Réalisme.7 One article in particular, published to coincide with the
Biennial, provided “practical lessons in modern art” by singling
out each movement represented in the show: Kinetic Art, Optical
Chromatism, Pop, Expressionism, Surrealism, Realism, Neo-Realism,
Geometric Art, Abstraction, Op, and New Objectivity.8 By contrast,
in an important preview dossier on the Biennial, José Geraldo Vieira
chose to use Pop—and to a lesser degree Op—to describe most works
from the USA, Brasil, and Western Europe. He observed how Pop
(used as a blanket definition) demonstrated a “democratization of artis-
tic processes” and a “dominance of ludic interaction,”9 both attributes
that formed bases for criticism of the Brazilian contingent. In the arti-
cle translated here, Amaral also picks up on the “ludic element” in
many works at the Biennial, criticizing them for promoting an “art for
everyone available to everyone.” In a further text published in late 1967,
she described the Biennial as a “nervous and feverish expression of the

5
6

Flavio de Aquino, “Os Milhones na Bienal,” in Fatos Fotos, No. 349, Octubre 7, 1967.
The exhibition Nova Objetividade Brasileira was held at the MAM-RJ between the 6th
and 30th of April, 1967. The Brazilian interpretation of New Objectivity was completely
distinct from Weimar Germany’s Neue Sachlichkeit. Both the Biennial and Nova
Objetividade Brasileira featured works by Antônio Dias, Rubens Gerchman, Hélio
Oiticica, Marcello Nitsche, Gláuco Rodrígues, Nelson Leirner, and Geraldo de Barros,
to name a few.

7 Hélio Oiticica, “Esquema geral da Nova Objetividade,” in Nova Objetividade brasileira (Rio

de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Abril 1967), 4–18.
Anonymous, “Aprenda a chamar pelo nome certo as coisas desta Bineal” (Learn How to
Call by Their Right Names the Works in This Biennial), Jornal da Tarde, São Paulo,
Septiembre 30, 1967.
José Geraldo Vieira, “Pop Art da IX Bienal,” Correio da Manha, Río de Janeiro, Septiembre
17, 1967. The preview dossier as a whole included texts by Mário Schenberg, Décio
Pignatari, Michel Ragon, Gillo Dorfles, and William C. Seitz.

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lost artistic atmosphere of today’s Brazil,” lamenting a rampant lack of
quality in craftsmanship.10 Meanwhile, Flavio de Cavalho, the only
Brazilian artist to be awarded a prize, criticized his peers (incluido
the Americans) for lacking “any depth greater than the day to day,” for
producing works that looked like “children’s toys.”11

During the course of the Biennial, a further reaction from news-
papers helped to coin a new terminology for addressing Brazilian art-
works and to question Brazilian Pop’s supposedly derivative affiliations.
This was Mário Pedrosa’s term “Popistas of Underdevelopment,” which
he used to define the works of Antônio Dias and Rubens Gerchman.
These artists were among the foremost members of the Neo-Realist
grupo, which was formed with the signing of a manifesto in 1965 en
Rio; en 1967 they had also subscribed to Oiticica’s near-comprehensive
label “New Objectivity.” Pedrosa resorted to a new definition to rethink
Brazil’s position in relation to US Pop. By juxtaposing “Pop” (seen as
the cultural apogee of US capitalism) with “Underdevelopment” (el
condition associated with Brazil’s economic status), he addressed what
he perceived as the basic incongruence between Brazilian Pop and US
Pop: the latter aptly reflected the pervasiveness of an already estab-
lished consumer culture; el primero, mientras tanto, reflected the effects
of foreign investment and economic growth, and of Brazil’s rapid tran-
sition toward that financial model.12

In a comparable vein, Pignatari used the term “Popau” (a combina-
tion of Pop and Pau, madera), in reference to the “Manifesto of Pau-Brasil
Poetry” by the Brazilian poet and essayist Oswald de Andrade, pub-
lished in March 1924.13 The manifesto expressed a desire for Brazilian
culture to be exported, like a crop of the native Pau-Brasil wood.
Andrade suggested that Brazilian culture owed nothing to European
influences, which should in turn be affected by Brazil. He wrote, para

10 The “cause” referenced by Amaral in the article concerns the formulation of an educated
and sophisticated Brazilian art, which could also act as a social tool. Aracy Amaral, “Arte
sem educação e/ou o Brasil visto de afora” (Art without Education and/or Brazil Seen
from the Outside), Correio da Manha, São Paulo, Septiembre 27, 1967, accessed as press
clipping, São Paulo Biennial Archives, 1967.
Flavio de Carvalho, quoted in “Unico brasileiro premiado na Bienal já andou nu pela
rua,” Jornal do Brasil, São Paulo, Septiembre 24, 1967.

12 Mário Pedrosa, “Do Pop americano ao sertanejo dias” (From American Pop to Sertanejo

Dias), Correio da Manha, Río de Janeiro, Octubre 29, 1967. Sertanejo is a Portuguese term
that refers to a Brazilian equivalent of the cowboy at the western frontier.
Pau is usually translated as “wood” or “stick,” yet it can also mean “penis,” offering a
satirical reading of the “Manifesto,” as well as Decio Pignatari’s neologism.

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109

instancia, that “Wagner is submerged before the Carnival lines of
Botafogo,” and that “[Pau-Brazil is] the counterweight of native origi-
nality to neutralize academic conformity.”14 The manifesto was also a
precursor of the author’s 1928 “Anthropophagic Manifesto”—a key
resource for Brazilian artists throughout the 20th century, cual
described Brazilian culture as cannibalistic, devouring, and digesting
international styles and currents.15 This second text built on the meta-
phor of culture as a material export, considering the concurrent effects
of imported ideas and vernacular tradition. By coining the term
“Popau,” Pignatari sought to establish how Pop could also fit such
an import-export paradigm.16 However, in the context of his article,
the use of this terminology also betrays resentment toward a weakness
or a lack of erudition among Brazilians: “If the Brazilian artists took
the trouble to read at least the Oswald de Andrade manifestos—‘Pau
Brazil’ and ‘Anthropophagic’—some day, surely, we could hope to
have a strong and authentic Brazilian popau art. . . .”17

In response to the increasing associations made between Brazilian

works and American Pop (cual, as we have seen, often resulted in
pejorative comments on Brazilian art), Rubens Gerchman stated in
an interview in 1966:

It is time we put an end to this nonsensical perception that we
have been influenced by US pop art. A few US pop artists such as
Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg are important for us,
en efecto, in the sense that they revealed the potential use of new
materials and subject matters; sin embargo, their influence has been
exerted individually, not as a group or school. I have been to New
York and have seen the “pop” they are doing there. I think it is
poor, decadent even.18

14 Oswald de Andrade, “Manifesto of Pau Brazil Poetry,” translated by Stella M. de Sá Rego,
Latin American Literary Review 14, No. 27, special issue on Brazilian Literature (Jan–Jun
1986), 184–87.
The most cited phrase from the “Anthropophagic Manifesto” is “Tupi or not Tupi: eso es
the question,” a tribute both to the Amazonian indigenous tribe that notoriously carries
on cannibalistic traditions and to Hamlet’s iconic dilemma.

16 Decio Pignatari, “IX Antevisão e reparos” (IX Preview and Fixes), Correio da Manha, São

Paulo, Septiembre 7, 1967.

17 Original: “Se os artistas brasileiros se dessem ao trabalho de ler, pelo menos, os manifes-

tos de Oswald de Andrade—Pau Brasil e Antropofografo—por certo poderiamos alimentar
a sperança de têr-mos um dia uma fortissimo e autêntica arte popau brasileira. . . .” Ibid.
18 Rubens Gerchman, quoted in José Augusto Ribeiro, “The 1960s Brazilian Avant-Garde:

Proposals and Opinions,” in Texeira da Costa, Aproximações do espírito pop, 158.

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Gerchman’s words reflect what many artists and intellectuals felt
toward Pop, which became the scapegoat for much of the criticism
attracted by the Brazilian works at the Biennial.

Amaral’s text, En realidad, views artists’ reliance on Pop-like techniques

as the symptom of the Americanization of Brazilian culture, an associ-
ation that was consolidated especially after the 9th Biennial. Never-
theless, while her peers focused on the superficial aesthetic influences
of Pop, she delved deeper into the motivations behind such similarities,
focusing on how artists were reacting to the Americanization of
Brazilian culture, rather than on notions of artistic derivation. Amaral
was aware that the US was one of the principal investors in Brazilian
industry and infrastructure, and that it supported the military dictator-
ship in place in Brazil since 1964. A leitmotif in her writing from the
period is the demand for a socially relevant art for which the tools pro-
vided by Pop seemed inadequate. Amaral noted a lack of artistic educa-
tion and of “devotion to the cause” of developing a “true cultural base”
for the country, a base that she believed the regime itself had the
responsibility to produce by sponsoring university courses and espe-
cially by diminishing illiteracy (which stood at over 50% at the time).19
In this context, “From the Stamps to the Bubble” perhaps anticipated
the infamous extraconstitutional Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5)
issued in December of that year. The AI-5 marked the entrenchment of
state repression through legitimized forms of censorship, federal inter-
vention in the running of public institutions such as universities and
newspapers, and the abolition of habeas corpus. No form of political
dissent was tolerated, and political prisoners were notoriously tortured
and sometimes disappeared completely. As Claudia Calirman explains,
Brazil after 1968 was a “changed nation, marked by disillusionment
with traditional politics, rejection of the military regime, and disbelief
in all forms of authoritarianism,” entering the so-called anos de
chumbo, or “years of lead,” a six-year period of hostilities between
left and right in dictatorship-era Brazil.20

Regardless of the criticism addressed toward many of the Brazilian
works in the Biennial, artists were aware of the need to produce socially
relevant, and above all intellectually accessible, art that would counter

19 Amaral, “Arte sem educação”; Mario Schenberg, “Representaçao brasileira na IX Biennal

de São Paulo,” Correio da Manha, São Paulo, Septiembre 27, 1967.

20 Claudia Calirman, Brazilian Art under Dictatorship: Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, y

Cildo Meireles (Durham, CAROLINA DEL NORTE: Duke University Press, 2012), 5.

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what critic and poet Ferreira Gullar had described as an “aristocratic
view that placed art at the margins of life and its problems”—a view
that stemmed from the widely held perception that Brazil’s art scene
was largely elitist and inaccessible to broader segments of the public.21
Por el contrario, some critics, including Schenberg and Pedrosa, believed
that many of the Biennial’s works—despite, or perhaps because of,
their supposed lack of sophistication—were successful in engaging
audience participation, from both adults and children. Pedrosa wrote
that at the Biennial “art ceased to be that boring distant, albeit terribly
respected, thing,” finally enabling “the population” to embrace it.22
Schenberg, por otro lado, claimed that the Brazilian room was
symptomatic of a generational shift; he saw advantages in young art-
ists’ “lack of preparation” and “inexperience,” leading him to believe
that “what is new is ultimately irreducible to what is old.”23

Amaral’s article similarly advocates the participatory approaches
of artworks at the Biennial, and especially their use of participation to
spread political messages. Among Amaral’s main examples are the

21 Gullar also questioned the quality and craftsmanship of the work on display and whether
such international influences were interfering with the Brazilian artistic process.
Amaral’s article, En realidad, strengthens an association between Pop Art and a general will to
disseminate the work of art to a broader portion of the public, reflecting on how artists
were renegotiating the distribution and purpose of their works. This discussion was
invariably paired with the omnipresent concern for imitation and derivativeness, cual
led her to expose the issue of Americanization, epitomized by Pop Art, in local artistic
producción. Ferreira Gullar, “Opinião 65,” Revista Civilização Brasileira I, No. 4
(Septiembre 1965), 221–25.

22 Mário Pedrosa, “A Bienal e a partecipação do povo,” Correio da Manha, Río de Janeiro,

Octubre 8, 1967.

23 Schenberg, “A répresentação brasileira.”

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collective works Domingo das Bandeiras (Flag Sunday) and Carimbos
(Stamps), which have seldom been examined in print.24 Flag Sunday
was presented in two phases. The first took place during the winter
de 1967, when Nelson Leirner, Flávio Motta (a professor of art at the
University of São Paulo), and his students (among them the young art-
ist Marcello Nitsche) planned to distribute silkscreened flags or ban-
ners on the streets of São Paulo, as a democratizing gesture designed
to rebel against the exclusive gallery and museum apparatus.25 The
police prematurely ended the street event by confiscating the banners
and dispersing its participants, under the pretext that the artists did
not have a sales permit (although the banners were not being sold,
but freely distributed). Despite the hostility solicited by Flag Sunday,
Leirner and Motta, with the added cooperation of Carlos Scliar,
Oiticica, Carlos Vergara, Farnese de Andrade, Gerchman, Dias, y
other Rio de Janeiro artists, were able to restage the event the follow-
ing year. Cloaked by the clamor of the Rio Carnival, the artists gathered
in the General Osorio Square on February 18, 1968. Each of the partici-
pating artists designed a flag, which together referenced a mixture of
themes, including football (in the flags by Gerchman and Leirner),
still life painting (Carlos Scliar), cordel literature26 (Antônio Dias), y
political resistance (Oiticica, Samuel Spiegl). Among the flags that cir-
culated most widely was Oiticica’s “Seja marginal, seja herói” (“Be an
Outcast, Be a Hero”).27 In keeping with a method he had used in the
pasado, Oiticica based his image on one he found in a newspaper of the
thief Alcir Figueira da Silva, who decided to commit suicide rather than
face arrest after a bank robbery (Oiticica had previously used newspa-
per images of victims of the armed forces, such as the bandit Cara de
Cavalo, killed by the police under falsified circumstances). Figueira da

24 The Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica restaged the event Flag Sunday on October

4, 2014, in the Tiradentes Square in Rio de Janeiro. The Stamps are held in the Roger
Wright Collection in São Paulo and have never been re-exhibited outside of the collection.

25 This form of antagonism toward the market was being voiced in São Paulo by Leirner,
who along with Wesley Duke Lee and Geraldo de Barros had recently opened REX
Gallery & Sons. The artists waged war against an art system that—according to them—
lacked in exhibition platforms, publicaciones, and bold critics, which in turn impeded the
development of a young avant-garde and the formation of an effective collection of
Brazilian national art. See “Warning: It Is War,” Rex Time, No. 1, São Paulo, Junio 3, 1966.
For a thorough analysis of the REX phenomenon, see Fernanda Lopes, A experiência Rex:
“Éramos o time do rei” (São Paulo: Alameda, 2009).

26 Cordels, which literally means “strings,” are brief stories or poems illustrated by woodcut

prints, usually sold cheaply in markets and squares in northeastern Brazil.
In Portuguese, marginal has the double meanings of “outcast” and “marginal.”

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113

Silva’s story was little remembered because it did not receive much
attention from the media. Yet it was precisely this “marginality” that,
for Oiticica, underscored how the media could only draw attention to a
fraction of the crimes perpetrated by officials during that difficult time,
and thus the extent to which the regime instilled fear in people’s
minds. With a similar polemical tone, Anna Maria Maiolino presented
a flag with the words “Alta tensão” (“High Tension”); Cláudio Tozzi, a
remastered image of Che Guevara.28 As the banners were put on dis-
play, the Banda de Ipanema and the Mangueira Samba School joined
el evento, merging the demonstration with the carnival celebrations.

The following week, Scliar united the artists once again, esta vez

to sell their banners at bargain prices, entre 40 y 60 cruzeiros
novos (the equivalent of USD 12–18 at the time).29 Members of the pub-
lic were invited to write comments about the banners and to deposit
these in urns that, by resembling ballot boxes, were also symbols for
democracy. The whole event was designed to approach as broad an
audience as possible and to sensitize it to the potential of art to mobi-
lize the public. Scliar devised the urn system as the last phase of Flag
Sunday, seeking to encourage the public to examine what the flags
stood for. Además, the act of placing opinions into an urn sealed a
critical connection with Brazil’s dictatorship, which did not permit
democratic elections.

The second collective work referenced by Amaral is Stamps, a
series of thirteen giant rubber-stamps (approximately A4 in size),
each one designed by a different artist, including Acácio Assunção,
Geraldo de Barros, Luís Gonzaga, Carmela Gross, Mário Gruber,
Flávio Imperio, Renina Katz, Leirner, Motta, Nitsche, Samuel Szpigel,
Caciporé Torres, and Tozzi. The stamps were exhibited at the IV Salão
de Arte Moderna do Distrito Federal, in the Teatro Nacional Cláudio
Santoro in Brasília, where the artists distributed to the public sheets of
paper printed with the rubber stamps. Each stamp reflected its author’s
particular style, which resulted in a heterogeneous series. Tozzi repro-
duced the image of one of his previous works of a chopp (a draft beer)

28 Paulo Roberto de Oliveira Reis, Exposições de arte—Vanguarda e política entre os anos 1965

mi 1970 (PhD diss., Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brasil, 2005), 172.

29 Mariana Filgueiras, “Mostra resgata bandeiras originais de Oiticica, Scliar e Vergara e
refaz ‘happening’ histórico de 1968,” O Globo, Río de Janeiro, Octubre 3, 2014, http://
oglobo.globo.com/cultura/artes-visuais/mostra-resgata-bandeiras-originais-de-oiticica-
scliar-vergara-refaz-happening-historico-de-1968-14117672.

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with the slogan “I drink chopp, she thinks about marriage,” and
Gonzaga presented a new elaboration of Warhol’s “Do It Yourself”
paintings, perhaps commenting on critics’ persistent focus on tech-
nique—one of the most substantial sources of criticism of Brazil’s
room at the São Paulo Biennial.30 The work shows a feminine hand
holding a dropper filled with liquid (meant to be colored red), the drops
of which almost resemble spermatozoids. On the stamp’s side are
instructions on how to fill in each section of the picture, with each
number corresponding to a color. The image initially appears innocu-
ous. Sin embargo, should the spectator choose to engage with it and follow
the instructions on how to color it, the red background and the few
green and blue details would greatly enhance the image’s effect.
Another stamp by Nitsche referenced political issues by presenting
the footprint of a military boot, while Gross’s depicted a raised closed
fist, a gesture symbolic of protest and mass mobilization.

30 These critiques include Amaral, “Arte sem educação,” and Schenberg, “A representaçao
brasileira,” both in Correio da Manha for September 27, 1967. Both articles lament a lack
of quality in the manufacture of the works on display, which often seemed amateurish,
particularly in comparison with the production quality of many foreign works.

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115

Stamps and Flag Sunday had similar objectives: both were meant
to be open and available to a wide public. The artists’ collaborations in
the production of these works strengthened the notion of an “art for
everyone, available to everyone,” as described by Amaral in her article:
a democratizing gesture that still allowed each artist to maintain a
unique visual language, uncompromised. Amaral’s objective in focus-
ing on these works, sin embargo, was not only to show how they reached
out to wider audiences, but also to criticize the efficacy of their political
messages. By using the phrase “art for everyone, available to everyone,"
she commented on the commonplace value of the artworks, on their
lack of sophistication, and on their inability to produce any lasting
effects—comparable to “bric-a-brac,” “children’s toys,” and “Shanghai
Ciudad,” all definitions used in the press.31 Benjamin Buchloh, writing
on the similar conjunction of Pop and participation in works by Andy
Warhol, uses the expression “infantilized interaction” to describe the
techniques Warhol used in his Tango and Foxtrot paintings, which pre-
sented simplified diagrams of the dances’ steps. Buchloh claims that
the mode of programmed aesthetic participation these encouraged
degraded it “to the level of absolute farce,”32 a statement that finds
its counterpart in Amaral’s notion of “art for everyone, available to
everyone.”

Placed as a counterpoint to Stamps and Flag Sunday, Nitsche’s
work Bolha (Bubble) earned Amaral’s unreserved praise, which was
particularly remarkable given that Nitsche was only twenty-six when
“From the Stamps to the Bubble” was written. While at university he
worked as an engraver, and he only became drawn to painting in the
mid-sixties, under the growing influence of the Neo-Figurative
movement and the aesthetics of Pop Art. Following the military coup,
Nitsche’s practice became increasingly sensitive to military and politi-
cal themes, including the Vietnam War and the economic bond
between Brazil and the United States that sustained the former’s dicta-
torship. In 1966–67 he gravitated toward the REX Gallery,33 where he

Flavio de Carvalho, quoted in “Unico brasileiro premiado na Bienal”; Pedrosa, “A Bienal e
a partecipação do povo.”

32 Benjamín H.. D. Buchloh, “Andy Warhol’s One-Dimensional Art: 1956–1966,” in Andy

Warhol, ed. Annette Michelson, October Files 2 (Cambridge, MAMÁ: CON prensa, 2001), 13–14.
Leirner, Sotavento, and de Barros founded REX Gallery & Sons in 1966. The gallery quickly
became a point of reference for young artists, who were given the opportunity to exhibit
their works and participate in the gallery’s programming, which included lectures, película
series, and the publication of a quarterly bulletin.

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participated in a group show alongside other young talents. With some
of the REX artists and his peers, Nitsche also collaborated in the real-
izations of Stamps and Flag Sunday. The time spent alongside the REX
artists greatly informed his later output, especially in terms of specta-
tor participation and the construction of environments (core concerns
of REX founders Lee, Leirner, and de Barros). En 1967 Nitsche partici-
pated in the New Brazilian Objectivity exhibition at Rio’s Museum of
Modern Art and in the 9th Biennial, exhibiting, among other works,

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117

Mata Mosca (Fly Swatter), an extra-large papier-mâché hand holding
a swatter.

Bubble, the concluding work in Amaral’s article, represents a

moment of culmination and rupture in Nitsche’s artistic trajectory.
Departing from ideas about environments and the intelligibility of
artistic language, Nitsche developed a new proposition: a large inflat-
able fabric balloon that was slowly inflated each hour by a machine.
Filled with air, Bubble almost completely occupied the exhibition space,
forcing viewers to press against the gallery walls. For Amaral, this work
encapsulated a vigorous paradigm shift, as Nitsche succeeded in elicit-
ing a physical sensation equivalent to that produced by the govern-
ment’s systematic oppression. Bubble was not an isolated commentary:
Maiolino’s flag with the slogan “High Tension,” distributed during Flag
Sunday, highlighted the same notion of tension and danger caused by
the regime’s control over the media and information, and often over
people’s very homes and telephones. While Maiolino’s was a visual
stimulus for the viewer to perceive and then react against the sense of
oppression the image referred to, Nitsche’s work invariably produced
this feeling in the spectator’s own body, in this way pushing further
the notion of participation and accessibility.

Instead of accepting simplified definitions, Amaral clearly
identified the many differing attributes of the works produced at the
time—ranging from ludic, to environmental and participatory—and
how young artists shared some of Pop’s stratagems to reach the goal of
broader audience participation. En cambio, Nitsche’s Bubble, a pesar de
informed by such international aesthetics, was more successful in
conveying, through the universal language of physical sensation, el
desired call for political awakening. En otras palabras, while Flag Sunday
and Stamps attempted to reach wider audiences, and also confronted
issues connected to politics, the ways they employed participation failed
to sustain an emotional response, according to Amaral, and conse-
quently to incite lasting reflection in the viewer. Nitsche’s work, por
contrast, was championed for assimilating foreign tendencies within
Brazilian culture. Although many artists were averse to any affiliation
with Pop (as was shown by umbrella terms such as New Objectivity),
Amaral identified Pop as an important aspect of their work and central
to her critique. This is not to say that she was critical of artists’ use of
Pop strategies per se; she instead slated their failure to fully appropriate

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such strategies and make them relevant within a Brazilian context—as,
Amaral argued, Nitsche’s Bubble was successful in doing.

In light of contemporary debates on the expansion of Pop as a
global category, Amaral’s article sheds light on the motives that led so
many artists to employ the accessible, albeit sometimes unsophisti-
cated, language of the mass media to incite spectator participation.
Her argument confronts the influence of US Pop, examining how the
similar social conditions that inspired its rise in the Unites States (y
elsewhere) were emerging in Brazil, as a consequence of the decade’s
socio-economic transformations. Amaral stressed how artists found
themselves in the difficult position of having to negotiate vernacular
Brazilian culture, and how they succeeded to differing degrees—made
evident by the all-encompassing and chaotic Brazilian contribution to
the 9th Biennial. The definition of Pop Art in Brazil that emerges from
her considerations is based on the additional terminologies of the ludic,
the participatory, and the environmental, all of which are connected by
the common objective to involve a larger number of spectators in the
pursuit of making art universally accessible. Also thanks to the experi-
mentalism inspired by Pop, Nitsche’s Bubble demonstrates the fruits of
this extenuating process of reinvention. Buchloh interprets Warhol’s
works as the mockery of what he terms a “bodily synecdoche”: “a heroic
tradition of twentieth-century avant-garde practice that would instigate
active identification of the reader/viewer with the representation and
replace the passive contemplative mode of aesthetic experience by an
activating participatory mode.”34 Buchloh thinks that Warhol’s use of
“infantilized participation” was too similar to advertising’s capacity to
turn participation into consumption. Bubble, por el contrario, relinquished
its ties to commercial culture to suggest how Pop, at least in this case,
was assimilated into a veracious bodily synecdoche, perhaps the defini-
tive accomplishment of Pop in Brazil.