On Vertices and Ruptures

Abstract

The 1970s presented a crux in critical discourse on the state of artistic vanguardism in Brazil, one set against a regional repositioning of intellectual and curatorial strategies in response to the ongoing Cold War. This article delves into exhibitions and criticism during this fraught period in order to elucidate the reverberations between the political imperatives for the region’s artists and critics, and the institutionalization of the now canonical narrative of Brazilian modern art. The seventies saw the cementing of the history of Brazilian modernism, a process that engaged but also contradicted the surge in Latin Americanism then occurring in response to the region’s charged political context. Yet a consequence of writing this canon was also the ensuing neglect of conceptual practices that emerged during this period, manifesting as collective and collectivist expressions of a shared regional precarity.