Michael Workman

Walking into Tropicalia, the Museum of Contemporary Art's showcase exhibit of the Brazilian art and cultural movement that ran from approximately 1967-1972, it's nice to see that the curators didn't stick everything into glass cases. Taking its name from an installation by Helio Oiticica, the movement came to encompass the values of "informality, interactivity and cultural hybridity" that the artist embraced in his work. As a movement, it spawned cultural goods in the worlds of visual art, music, theater, fashion and across the spectrum, resulting in one of the most popular record albums from Brazlian musical legend Caetano Veloso. While the MCA's treatment has resulted in a smaller show than one might expect of a movement that seized and became a leading force in redirecting the identity of an entire nation, it somehow feels sufficient. Situated in three rooms on two floors, the first-floor exhibit makes up the main body of the cultural artifacts on display and sets the standard for the atmospherics and environmental art that are its focus. This first room holds a re-creation of Oiticica's installation, and is the strongest of the whole exhibit. Much of the room is suspended on wood decks secured to metal trellises. Its "sandbox" areas, complete with live animal display (caged parrots), are transporting for visitors, who are invited to walk through by following a white stone pathway. This pathway leads back through a colorful micro shantytown, box houses that visitors may choose to enter through narrow passageways that wind inward on themselves, or simply open rooms with matting on the floor. Many are hung with colored cloth, bedded with straw, or flanked with huge swaths of fabric. It's a uniquely theatrical sensation, to trudge through the inch-deep sand and into these claustrophobic spaces; one is even a bed draped with mosquito netting.

Across the hall in the second room of the exhibition are more cultural artifacts, including album and theatrical posters, the words "Terra Em Transe" or "O Capitao Bandiera" popping out from garish splashes of color. Add in samples of Lygia Clark's mirrored goggles or the Tropicalist variants on Minimalist themes: Ferreira Gullar's geometric paper construction books "Lembra" and "Nao" from 1958 and '59, and Lygia Pape's "Relief" (four works with the same title), a series of wall-hanging constructivist pieces that rearrange the visual geometrics of squares and triangles on a two-dimensional surface to create hints of colors. My favorites, however, are Nelson Leirner's zipper canvases, a series called "Homage to Fontana," in which the canvas has been fitted with a circle in the center, half unzipped to reveal a layering of color that encompasses the Minimalist influences of color in fashion and art, reducing both to a barest utilitarian device--the zipper--stripped of its use except as an aesthetic device. Simple.

If any doubts about the seriousness of Tropicalism's engagement with the culture arise from the ostensible frivolity of such pieces, in the same room are Carlos Zilio's politically motivated pieces, including "Reina tranquilidade (Calm Prevails)." It's one of many pieces in which Zilio uses a blank, expressionless white facemask to represent the workers of the world, faceless and in many instances numbered on their foreheads like cattle. Tropicalism, of course, was also a political movement, though its roots and motivations remain difficult to discern to this day. Augusto de Campos, the inventor of concrete poetry, wrote in his essay "Viva a Bahia-Ia-Ia," about the movement's "use of collage and juxtaposition, aleatory and concrete music, references to pop art and Claude Levi-Strauss' bricolage." That a poet felt compelled to seek the movement's motivations offers insights into the power of Tropicalism as a force for changing the currents of artistic thought. That those cultural-anthropological ripples should flow into the present day with the strength of all the color, embrace of amatuerism and populist sympathies of its creators is a credit to the show's curators. It's a moment in time, relived, and done so with all the zeal of a moment in history, realized in the spontaneous need for a vision of a bold tomorrow seemingly, but not quite, ever out of reach.

(2005-11-15)

Also by Michael Workman

Eye Exam
If you've been involved with the art scene in the city for any length of time, you know that beyond the museums, galleries and art schools exists a healthy swath of the culture made up of little atelier spaces run out of people's apartments, garages and storefronts
(2005-11-08)

Eye Exam
In the second of a two-part assessment of the Bridgeport neighborhood during the Select Media Festival, this week we interview Jesse Batesole of the Texas Ballroom and Gallery
(2005-11-01)

Chicago Artist
Mia Capodilupo draws from varied sources for her art, from feminism and urban environments to the sensitivity of our human bodies to touch
(2005-10-25)

Eye Exam
While wearing my other hat as art promoter and event organizer, I've occasionally crossed paths with Ed Marszewski
(2005-10-25)

The Collectors
(2005-10-18)

Eye Exam
(2005-10-18)

Chicago Artist
(2005-10-11)

Eye Exam
(2005-10-04)

Chicago Artist
(2005-10-04)

Chicago Artist
(2005-09-27)

Eye Exam
(2005-09-20)

Eye Exam
(2005-09-13)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment