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'Realism' rubbery idea in French art show in Brazil
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A retrospective of French- and French-inspired art from 1860 to 1960
on display in Brazil is taking a liberal approach to its theme of
"realism."
The exhibition, currently in Sao Paulo's Museum of Art (MASP),
features everyday people or scenes painted by
Renoir,
Manet,
Cezanne
and
Toulouse-Lautrec -- but also surrealist visions imagined by
masters Salvador Dali, Joan Miro and Max Ernst.
But while the theme and its subversive opposite battle it out on the
walls, the organizers of the show are hailing the collection's
ability to attract 100,000-plus visitors.
The popularity of the exhibit makes it one of the prime events of a
Year of France in Brazil cultural program that is currently feting
all things Gallic in this Latin American nation.
"Ten percent of the works are loans from French museums," notably
the Musee d'Orsay, the Pompidou Center and l'Orangerie Museum, the
cultural attache to the French consulate in Sao Paulo, Jean-Martin
Tidori, told AFP.
Others come from Portugal's Colecao Berardo Museum in Lisbon. But
most are jealously prized possessions of the MASP itself -- the
biggest repertoire of European art in Latin America.
The aim of the show, Tidori said, is to highlight "the distance
between subjectivity and objectivity... The more one wants to
represent things as they are, the more we detach them from reality."
The parentheses of that ambition could be seen in one of the very
first works, a photo-realistic 1849 painting of cows harnessed for
the "First Plowing in Vineyard" by French artist Rose Bonheur, and,
at the end, a 1960s pop-inspired tableaux of a French gangsta youth
surrounded by graffiti.
In between lies the progression not only of artists themselves -- a
Picasso portrait from his early, literal period already showing
leanings towards his later angular distortions -- but also the
increasingly inward inspiration through generations of artists who
sought to symbolize rather than capture reality.
The influence of Africa and the Pacific is there in paintings by
Modigliani and Gauguin.
And in turn the influence of the French paintings is seen on some
Brazilian offerings fitted harmoniously into the exhibit.
But it is clearly a one-way street.
The European urbanized modern pictures of the 1950s and 1960s
diverge markedly from the emerging Brazilian esthetic, which is
infused with a New World search for identity and, later, an ironic
homage -- or sometimes critique -- of Old World perceptions.
The works of some of Brazil's most renowned artists -- Ibere Camargo,
Candido Portinari, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti -- borrow the European
conventions, and then embellish them with colors and extravagant
fauna, one that continues to evolve today.
One common theme in the Brazilian movement is that of black
servitude, dating from the country's slavery past, and ongoing
racial tensions.
"O Realismo" will complete its two-month run at the MASP at the end
of this month before heading to the southern city of Porto Alegre.
Not all the works may make the voyage, though.
The Musee d'Orsay is said to be reluctant to allow the Bonheur
painting and other loans to continue on, to the disappointment of
Brazilian officials, who are confronted with the "realism"
of cultural bureaucracy.
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