ContemporaryCariocaartbetweenthewhitecubeandthestreets

Although Brazilian painting produced from the 1980s onward did not carry the politicized stamp of the 1960s or the conceptual art of the 1970s, the redemocratization period after twenty years of civil-military dictatorship meant that national artistic production of this new moment engaged in different forms of dialogue with the political situation of the time. While painting was the flagship for the expansion of a more mature and profitable market, there also frequently emerged collectives organized around transgressive practices that always challenged both this financial flow and the formalization of the artistic milieu.

In Rio de Janeiro, some groups publicly took a stand against situations that restricted renewing ideas in the city and in the country. This was the case of the collective (which later became a magazine) titled A Moreninha, along with other public actions in the following years, such as the Agora and Capacete spaces and the Orlândia group exhibition.

Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph of a group of people gathered outdoors, possibly in a park or square. At the top of the image, there are large trees and green leaves. The people are arranged in several rows, with some sitting on the ground and others standing. Everyone is holding easels and brushes, suggesting they are engaged in an artistic activity. In the background, there is a structure that appears to be a brick building. The caption mentions "Artists of the A Moreninha group" and the source is "Nuvem Crítica."

Among the street actions that marked the 1980s, the name of artist (and currently also professor and researcher) Ricardo Basbaum stands out. He is the link between performance groups such as Dupla Especializada (with Alexandre Dacosta) and Grupo Seis Mãos (with Dacosta and Jorge Barrão), which carried out public paintings and used street posters, in addition to forming a band, pioneering the relationship between visual art and pop music in Rio de Janeiro. The collective A Moreninha lasted only two years (1987 and 1989), but the participating artists were numerous, changing during each action. Among the participants (besides Basbaum, Da Costa and Barrão) were painters Beatriz Milhazes and Cristina Canale and curators Marcio Doctors and Paulo Roberto Leal.

The group initially organized an impressionist painting marathon on Paquetá Island (where the group's name came from, since it is in this town that the famous novel by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, "A Moreninha," takes place), after creating a fantastic story honoring the supposed centennial of a group of "Sunday painters," whose name would also be A Moreninha. They were open-air painters who followed the ideas of the French impressionist painter Manet (who, in fact, visited the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1848). This incredibly made-up story was sent to media outlets, and the group from Rio saw newspapers and TV stations (including the program Fantástico) report on the action as the celebration of this fictional Paquetá group's centennial.

But certainly the most striking action by the collective A Moreninha was the happening they staged during Italian critic Achille Bonito Oliva's lecture at the Saramenha gallery, in Rio de Janeiro, in February 1987. Oliva was one of the theorists of "transavantgarde," a term that circulated frequently at the time. During the lecture by the Italian critic and theorist, Ricardo Basbaum and other artists carried out sound interventions (with a recording device belonging to Basbaum) and performative ones (such as watching Oliva's speech with their backs turned, holding a rear-view mirror, or wearing donkey ears). Since Oliva was a major name, with close ties to the art market that had been growing in the country, the artists were putting forward a critique of the European commercial and colonialist gaze over local works.

Image description: The image is a magazine cover in beige and brown tones, with a blurred background suggesting an urban scene. At the top, in large black letters, it reads "item-1." Below, in smaller letters, is the phrase "art magazine - june 1995." The spatial layout begins with the title at the top and moves downward, listing featured topics. The topics are presented in two columns, with the first items in bold and the following ones in black. The topics include "artists' texts," "carioca sculpture / debate" with the name Ricardo Basbaum highlighted, "the non-virtual and the baroque" with the name Sérgio Romagnolo highlighted, "starting to talk about lôic" with the name Leonilson highlighted, and "what I don't know" with the name Lygia Pape highlighted. At the end, it reads "center pages" in black.

These actions, in which artists formed one-off collectives to intervene in public debates and commercial practices in the visual arts, kept growing over the following decades. Economic crises and the hegemony of painting as the only successful form of work drove artists to devise ways of surviving and organizing themselves. In the 1990s, the institutional rigidity of the city led to the emergence of collective initiatives by new artists who sought not only to circulate ideas but also to organize their own exhibition spaces. Once again, Ricardo Basbaum took part in initiatives such as Visorama (a collective born out of a study group with various names), the magazine Item (edited by Basbaum, Eduardo Coimbra, and Raul Mourão in 1995, with six issues), and the Agora space (bringing together the studios of the magazine's group, as well as others such as Marcos Chaves, Tatiana Grinberg, and Carlos Bevilacqua) in a building on Rua Joaquim Silva, and Capacete (an initiative by Helmut Batista for producing international exchanges).

Image description: This is a photograph of an indoor setting, possibly a contemporary art exhibition. On the left, we see people from behind, some wearing long dresses and others in shorter clothing. In the center, there is a group of visitors looking at something on a white wall. On the right, there is a person seen from behind, wearing a blue shirt and brown pants. In the background, we see a person standing, seen from behind, with short hair. In the upper left, there is a wall with text and images, while on the right there is a wooden structure and equipment.

These collective movements, all connected to the city's deteriorated areas, such as Glória, Lapa, and other downtown regions, reached their peak with the Orlândia exhibition series: two editions in Botafogo (2001) and one edition in São Cristóvão (2003) – the latter titled Grande Orlândia – artistas abaixo da Linha Vermelha. Organized by artists Márcia X, Bob N, Ricardo Ventura, and Elisa Magalhães, these independent occupations, featuring up to 140 artists working in diverse techniques and forms, created alternatives to the city's commercial circuits.

All these actions by artists who also become critics, curators, teachers, or editors culminated in initiatives such as the gallery A Gentil Carioca, founded by Ernesto Neto, Marcio Botner, and Laura Lima in 2003 in the heart of Saara, a central region of Rio de Janeiro, and one of the most successful contemporary spaces in Brazilian art.