PAULO LAPORT May 22 - July 3, 2013
Essay by Charles A. Riley II, PhD
136 East 74th Street, New York, NY, 10021
+1 212 472 7770 info@edelmanarts.com www.edelmanarts.com
PAULO LAPORT On the Edge “ Barnardo: ‘Tis here! Horatio: ‘Tis here!
[Exit Ghost.]
W
ords and paint are often at war. If ever there
was an artist who defies ekphrasis or theoretical analysis it would be the arch-painter, Paulo Laport, the painter of paint. He has thrown “intellectuals” out of the studio for taking the wrong end of the
Marcellus: ‘Tis gone! We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence, For it is as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.”
brush (“You have to have the courage to talk about
--Hamlet, Act I, Scene i
that have a Nietzschean transcendence, the authors
the paint itself”) and forgetting the primacy of the medium. “No tales, no external stories to articulate the exercise of painting,” he sternly admonishes the writer. This liberty is offered to the virtuoso—we must not ask too precisely how the feat is accomplished. Whether in music, dance, or other arts the moment of the dazzling technical performance, the object of awe, often signifies a compositional breakthrough of considerable risk and originality. In a recent book on aesthetics, All Things Shining, that extols the way in which genius emerges in “shining moments” Herbert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly progress from Homer’s Odyssey to Nureyev’s impossible leaps and on to sports (human highlight reels such as Pele or Michael Jordan come to mind) to convey the level of ecstasy through performance that elicits wonder: “The great athlete in the midst of the play rises up and shines—all attention is drawn to him. And everyone around him—the players on the field, the coaches on the sidelines, the fans in the stadium, the announcers in the booth—everyone understands who they are and what they are to do immediately in relation to the sacred event that is occurring.” There is a luminous virtuosity, a shining both literal and affective, in Laport that defies complete accounting even as it elicits our wonder.
When the virtuoso swings into action, often the
of the incantatory infinitives resounding in the most
material with which he or she begins can be relatively
famous soliloquy in theater history, as murmured by
modest, like the air upon which Bach would build
Laurence Olivier perilously recumbent on a rampart
the superstructure of variations (the Goldberg
high above the crashing surf. The pedal point rolls
edifice is the most obvious example). Laport’s
in an hypnotic barcarolle—“to die, to sleep…to die, to
Cartesian grid and restricted palette are a case in
sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream,” transmuting
point. He has reinvented the grid to serve the paint
hesitation into the highest order of poetry as only a
in its viscous state. Its systolic and diastolic pulse is
Shakespeare, Proust or Mallarmé could accomplish.
all the more dynamic for the gentle modulation of
Another analogy is offered by the rippling arpeggios
the never-straight edges (Robert Ryman whispers
of Philip Glass (Laport adores his music), which like
in this way). Many of the vertical paintings use
the ostinato of good Vivaldi, redirect the listener
broader middle horizontal bands and diminishing
from a consciousness of the melody or harmony
top and bottom ones to bend the space of the
to the individual quality of the tone itself, an effect
painting (either convexly or concavely depending
that can be tried by playing a simple Glass piece
on your eye), a volumetric effect enhanced by the
on the piano. It takes little or no effort to recognize
curved edges of LESKO, which meet the frame in
the truth of Glass’s own stricture that “all the notes
a tray configuration that is all the more absorbing
are equal.” Laport, who reveals under duress that he
perceptually, accentuating the hemispheric cloud
is a drummer in a jazz combo (the construction of
of white on its left side. The rhythms of the grid,
rhythm is his role) has this to say about his love of
the most regulated part of which is generally the
music: “I listen to the sound of the music, not the
super-controlled vertical bands (twenty-five in all
music. Same thing happens in the painting. I’m not
in DELFO, strategically odd-numbered as a nod to
dealing with an image or a method. It is a state of
symmetry), are defined by edges, not lines. The titles,
mind to perceive noise.” A similarly loving precision
incidentally, are in capitals because they are derived
is lavished on the paint, which is why the touch is
from navigational aids, vectors in effect, offered to
so admirable—those curls of impasto worthy of
pilots as nodal points on a flight plan. Laport, who
Hofmann, those palimpsests—and Laport offers a
is trained as a pilot, says, “I really don’t know how to
fleeting glimpse into the “how” of the studio practice:
name things, but ZENIT for instance is a nickname for a crossing point between two routes coupled with a number, and a control tower will tell you to proceed to that coordinate, spelled out precisely, and descend 2,000 feet, for example.” As unrelated as possible to any verbal clue or suggestion of content, they strategically leave the viewer hanging in the air. The artist emphatically does not draw, or offer himself or us any kind of armature below the improvisatory unfolding of the layers upon layers of paint. The echoes of the geometry have the power
What gives the sense of scale is the paddle and the brush. I cut and design my own tools. A movement that doesn’t have a strong track or mixes or glazes too much will ruin it. It is not choreographed. I prefer to establish an austere approach. Sometimes I have to take out of the brush the excess of sensuality so as not to disturb what is going on. The work you see that is made by the relief and tonalities. If I could do it without the physical means I would. I calibrate the painting so that both touch and vision work together. It is not geometric. I am just following the edges of the colors. I cross one coat over another.
I start with a sensation that I cannot predict or control, and then I follow this almost lurid image toward something concrete. All the brush strokes finish as the first start. Left to right, right to left, all the strokes are the same. (Interview with the artist, April 23, 2013).
(i.e., it requires accurate attention under prolonged exposition).” One of the most original and eccentric aesthetic manifestoes of our time is the tectonic theory offered (and quickly forgotten) nearly two decades ago by the eminent historian of Modernist architecture,
The structural wonder of major poems, musical
Kenneth Frampton, to whom the greatest building
compositions and paintings like Laport’s is the way
was the result of a constructive process that weaves
in which they open and close many times before
vertical and horizontal, whether in the joinery of
they end, by necessity at a “terminal” edge which
wood, the interlocking of brick, or the framing of
Laport (like Barnett Newman before him) reluctantly
glass by steel. Like Laport, forwhom paintings are
renders contingent. The works on paper leave the
things not signs, for Frampton a building is the
studio under glass, a la Francis Bacon who similarly
work of the arche-tekton (where tekton offers an
relished the distancing effect of the in vitro captivity
etymological link to carpentry and construction
within which light paces back and forth reflectively.
as well as poetry and weaving) that he brilliantly
Laport unforgettably applied bleach to a sheet of
links not only to painting but to textiles and even
handmade paper because it bore too much trace
literary texts. One superb example he offers (among
of the original cedar, its deep-hued burgundy and
signature buildings of Louis Kahn, Renzo Piano, Mies
lavendar, even under layers of paint, were like the
and others) is Frank Lloyd Wright’s La Miniatura, a
whiff of cedar’s equally insistent aroma. The finest
brick and glass house he created for Alice Millard in
expert on Laport’s works is art historian Guilherme
Pasadena in 1923 when he had nicknamed himself
Bueno, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art
“The Weaver.” It would be the ideal space in which to
and professor of Brazilian Art History at the School
hang these tectonic paintings. Early in the manifesto,
of Visual Arts in Rio de Janeiro. He comments:
Frampton offers this perception that we can directly relate to the constructed space of Laport’s painting:
“In Paulo’s works everything is contained precisely
“Everything turns as much on exactly how something
to ‘calibrate’ the presence of the painting: the
is realized as on an overt manifestation of its form.
trajectory of the brush and of the paint on the
The presencing of a work is inseparable from the
canvas cannot be called gestural or austere; it is
manner of its foundation in the ground and the
not neutral, rather it is anti-expressive. The resulting
ascendancy of its structure through the interplay
mesh is not designed, but to call it spontaneous
of support, span, seam, and joint—the rhythm of its
would be to commit the negligence of looking for,
revetment and the modulation of its fenestration.”
outside the geometry, an inconvenient emotiveness
Even as an insight into the transition in Laport’s
in it. That same mesh actually reinforces the self-
painting from one support to the other, canvas to
unfolding relationship between the painting and the
oil, and the ways in which that influences what is
space that it simultaneously occupies and founds.
built, moment by moment, upon it, Frampton’s idea
This slow painting, in which respect is contradictory
has immense validity as a rubric for looking at art. If
to the fast-moving modern world, requests of us a
Laport’s paintings occasionally suggest the shimmer
perception that I would not call introspective (which
of elegant Beaux Arts façades (New Yorkers will be
would make it sound romantic), but rather immersive
forgiven for thinking of the delicate play of light on
the Flatiron Building in the raking light of morning), paint. The modulation does not exist because the then the vocabulary of architecture might be sense of calibration given by the paddle and the invoked to account, for instance, for the marvelous brush, the width and pressure, are done to pull out a literal arched shadows under the hooded crowns the undercoat in the coat being applied over it. That’s of the architrave surrounding Laport’s windows. why you see both dimensions at the same time. The Inside them, glassy auroras, veined (horizontally in difficulty of doing means no falsifying ease, and ORANS and ZENIT, vertically in LESKO and DELFO) imperfections have to be perfect. It should create a like metamorphic marble (speaking of tectonic visual collision. Normally you approach to see small formations) in the palette of mocha and a range of things. And when you do, you are hit by a train. greys and whites worthy of Twombly, and, like him, conducting the light of Turner. Inside these cells float The flight of the virtuoso, like the tenor at the top lilacs and burgundies that are shockingly vibrant in a of his range where cracking is always a possibility work that reads from a distance as silvered.
or the surgeon for whom the slip of a scalpel is
Move a step, dim or raise the lights, and the dance possibly fatal, is always perilous. Laport knows full of iridescence is initiated—pearlescent, opalescent, well that a chromatic harmony as finely tuned as his flickering through a spectrum that shifts in and or edgework as frangible as lace can be ruined in an out of the high Cubist palette of tans and greys. instant. He issues a vertiginous invitation to conclude Great moments in realism have invoked the optical the interview, “Get close to the edge and see.” amazement of iridescence—Jan van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelite Lawrence Alma-Tadema dazzled viewers with marmoreal architectural settings while one of the miracles of illusionism remains one of the tiniest passages in paint, the nacreous earring itself, the most celebrated piece of jewelry in art, that is the focus of Vermeer’s portrait of an unknown girl. Laport eschews the representational, but the optical effect (not the thing itself, as Mallarmé would insist, but its effect) is irresistible and even a little shocking. Consider the artist’s own view, offered during a
Charles A. Riley II, PhD is an arts journalist, cultural recent studio interview, which idiosyncratically but historian and professor at the City University of New York. firmly adheres to the physical process. Note the He is the author of thirty-one books on art, architecture, business, media and public policy, including Color violent ending: Codes (University Press of New England), The Jazz Age in France (Abrams), Art at Lincoln Center (Wiley), The paint remains almost raw on paper or linen, less Rodin and his Circle (Chimei), and Sacred Sister (in romantically it slants away from any possibility of collaboration with Robert Wilson). He is a guest curator at the Chimei Museum, Taiwan and curator-at-large for illusionism. My paintings are not allusions to things the Nassau County Museum of Art. external to them. On the contrary, they keep literally
within what presents itself. But the more austere they are in artifice, they become more comprehensive to me. That’s the issue. Paddling and brushing the paint drags and leaves their inscription while adding more
Herbert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Things Shining (New York: The Free Press 2011), p. 201. Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1995) p. 26.
LEKSO (Detail)
LEKSO 2012 oil on plywood, wood and glass 64.6 x 55.3 x 2.8 in (164 x 140.5 x 7 cm)
RONIX 2011-13 oil on plywood 59 x 47.2 x 2.8 in (150 x 12 x 7cm)
SAXTO 2012 oil on linen 78.7 x 63 x 3.9 in (200 x 160 x 10cm)
DASER 2012 oil on cotton 28.7 x 23.2 x 1.6 in (73 x 59 x 4 cm)
GAPSO 2011 oil on linen 28.3 x 19.7 x 1.8 in (72 x 50 x 4.5 cm)
DELFO (detail)
DELFO 2012 oil on plywood, wood and glass 63.4 x 47.8 x 2.8 in (161 x 121.5 x 7 cm)
KIWER 2011 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
KATSEN 2013 oil on linen 37 x 27.6 x 2 in (94 x 70 x 5 cm)
TOMKI 2011 oil on linen 70.9 x 47.2 x 2.8 in (180 x 120 x 7 cm)
KONIX 2012 oil on paper, wood and glass 44.1 x 32.7 x 2.4 in (112 x 83 x 6 cm)
TWANSY 2012 oil on linen 78.7 x 63 x 3.6 in (200 x 160 x10 cm)
MAGMA 2011 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
EZLON 2011 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
ORANS 2011 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
ZENIT 2011 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
KALOX 2013 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
LEROX 2013 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
TUSKY 2011 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
LACEN 2013 oil on linen 13.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 in (34 x 34 x 4 cm)
RALOT 2013 oil on linen 15 x 12.2 x 1.6 in (38 x 31 x 4 cm)
DAKLO 2012 oil on linen 23.6 x 23.6 x 1.6 in (60 x 60 x 4cm)
SLATIN 2012 oil on linen 18.1 x 18.1 x 1.8 in (46 x 46 x 4.5 cm)
SPINO 2011 oil on cotton 35.4 x 23.6 x 1.6 in (90 x 60 x 4 cm)
LAURNE 2013 oil on linen 10.6 x 23.6 x 1.5 in (27 x 60 x 3.8 cm)
OPHEA 2013 oil on cotton 9.1 x 25.6 x 1.5i n (23 x 65 x 3.8 cm)
TORAK 2012 oil on linen 21.3 x 21.3 x 1.8 in (54 x 54 x 4.5 cm)
TWYTE 2012 oil on linen 17.7 x 17.7 x 1.6 in (46 x 46 x 4 cm)
RAKON 2012 oil on paper, wood and glass 44.1 x 32.7 x 2.4 in (112 x 83 x 6 cm)
Paulo Laport b. 1951, Rio de Janeiro Education 1967-1969
Studied at Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1980-1982
The Art Students League of New York and Pratt Institute, New York.
Solo Exhibitions 2012
Marcia Barrozo do Amaral Galeria de Arte, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2000 GB Arte, Rio de Janeiro Brazil 1992
Galerie Lehmann, Lausanne, Switzerland
1989
Galerie Gerard Leroy, Paris, France
1986
Galeria Montesanti, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1981
Galeria Gravura Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Selected Group Exhibitions 1993
Lehmann Gallery, Lausanne, Switzerland
1992
Art Cologne Galerie Lehman, Germany
1991
FIAC Galerie Lehmann, Paris, France
1991
Musée D’Art Contemporaine FAE, Lausanne, Switzerland
1988
Galerie 1900-2000, Paris, France
1987
Oficina de Gravura e Escultura, MAB/FAA, São Paulo, Brazil
1987
Oficina de Gravura e Escultura, Museu Histórico do Estado, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1985
Velha Mania: desenho brasileiro, EAV – Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1984
Rio Narciso, EAV Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1981
4º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1980 Sotheby’s Park Bernet Gallery, NYC 1980
Rosto e a Obra Galeria IBEU, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1980
12 Gravadores Brasileiros, Baltimore, USA
1979
4ª Bienal de Gravura Latino-Americana, San Juan, Porto Rico
1979
1ª Bienal Italo-Latino-Americana di Tecniche Grafiche, Roma, Italy
1979
2ª Mostra do Desenho Brasileiro, Curitiba, Brazil
1979
Trienal Latino-americana del Grabado, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1978
2º Salão Carioca de Arte, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1978
1º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Gustavo Capanema Award
1978
1ª Mostra Anual de Gravura Cidade de Curitiba, Curitiba , Brazil– Acquisition Award
1977
3ª Bienal Internacional de Arte, Valparaíso, Chile
1977
1º Salão Carioca de Arte, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1977
Arte Actual de Ibero-América, Madrid, Spain
1976
Bienal Nacional 76, na Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil
1976
25º Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1975
Goiânia GO - 2º Concurso Nacional de Artes Plásticas Caixego , Brazil – Acquisition Award
1968
Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1º Salão de Verão – Museum of Morden Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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