NWSA Roundtable Pre-conference Abstract

I have decided to talk about Brazil, its matriarchal cultural line, which emerged so strongly in the 20th century, and three particularly important Neo-concrete artists of the 1950s and 1960s whose work is worlds apart from the Abstract Expressionism practiced in the U.S., then cultural capital of the world. Contrasted with U.S. artistic machismo of the Cold War era, in which women artists as strong as Krasner, Mitchell, and Dehner were never fully vested or recognized, Brazilian conceptualists Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Mira Schendel each opened new doors of perception. Not coincidentally they also were among the earliest artists to postulate a post-modernist aesthetic dealing with aspects of the performative, the quotidien, and the limitations of language.

All this happened during a period of great social transition from Kutischek's democracy of the '50s to the dictatorship of the '60s and '70s, which aided in radically transforming these artists' means of expression. All this, too, within a post-colonial social context in which art, even culture as a whole, was viewed as a decidedly "female" domain compared to the male arenas of politics and business.

My experience comes into play here in my "discovery" of this other world of art that set my "U.S.-based, dominant culture/hegemonic" assumptions and issues on their ears. For so long I had been indoctrinated into the idea that New York had superseded Europe/Paris after World War II, but I hadn't realized how blind and dead-ended that tracked vision was. Here in Brazil was a "virgin territory" waiting to be discovered.

What also is important is how this Brazilian art world is changing in the face of growing recognition from outside.