Plastico Moderno by Fernanda Carlovich

Plástico Moderno art & architecture

Brasilia Marcel Gautherot

Clarice Lispector

Caetano Veloso

Oscar Niemeyer

Athos Bulcão

Lúcio Costa

Burle Marx

n°1

PLASTICO MODERNO MAGAZINE 2019 N°1 BRASILIA EDITORIAL BOARD Axelle Dechelette Fernanda Carlovish Jose Luis Villanueva ADVISORY COMMITTEE Luis Carranza

Editor's Note Our framework On March 23, 1962, Oscar Niemeyer wrote: “The problem of the synthesis of the arts is more complex than it seems at first sight.” When architects and artists work together, Niemeyer stressed, both need to be aware of the general problems of each profession. More than a simple professional compliment, Niemeyer claims for a profound integration, one in which the artist should “start working from the very beginning on the architectural sketches, discussing all the problems of the object in their smallest details amicably, without dividing it into specialized areas but considering it as a uniform and harmonious whole”.

The interrelation between art and architecture has always been controversial. The diversity of plastic conceptions and aesthetic judgments have frequently clashed with conflicting architectural endeavors such as functionality and efficiency. This became especially relevant during the twentieth century, an era of radical social, artistic, and political transformations. Architecture, a discipline that often wanders between emotional and rational prerogatives, nurtured an extensive array of theoretical stances in regards to the arts. Art became both a source and an expression of architectural buildings, resulting in a wide range of creative cooperation among architects and artists. In this context, Latin America fosters one of the best and most genuine efforts of plastic integration. Whether figurative or abstract, artistic ventures played a fundamental role in shaping modernism into Latin America’s sensibilities. It is often said that the synthesis of the arts –as Niemeyer mentions– is a problem impossible to solve. Paul F. Damaz, in his book “Art in Latin American Architectures,” revealed the difficulties one encounters when architecture and art aim to work together: “When and how the architect should use the services of artists, as he uses those of engineers and other specialists, has long been a matter of controversy. But the advocated of total integration can speak only from theoretical points of view, since they have no solution for the total unification of today’s art and architecture”. This problem is further accentuated by the fact that different artistic approaches are said to be judged using explicit criteria, and that creation is often seen as an individual action; a unique achievement engendered by a singular mind.

Our Claim In response to this apparent impossibility, we believe that a total plastic integration is not only possible but, in fact, that it already exists in its most blunt shape: the city. Rather than addressing a single artistic method, individual, or building, we understand the city -and its citizens- as a multifaceted canvas; a site where juxtaposition, confrontation, integration and unity between the arts and architecture becomes both an immaterial experience and a physical manifestation. In this light, we understand the city to be the genuine material and experiential expression of plastic integration; the place where the communion between architecture, sculpture, painting, music, performing, and film, live together in an urban ecology prompted by its buildings and artistic drives. Perhaps, for this reason, it is better to understand the city as kind of exquisite retroactive corpse for plastic integration; a recollection of viewpoints and expressions realized together when seen collectively assembled. For us, the city is an open network, disjointed yet united. Like a collage, it is the place where two and three-dimensional layers are seen and experienced together simultaneously. 6

Architects as Artists. Artists as Architects. Buildings as Sculptures. Sculptures as Space. Space as Public space. Public space as city. Plastic as Expression. Motifs as Decoration. Collaboration as Assimilation. Arts as Synthesis. Architecture as Experimentation. Art as Phenomena. Architecture as Experience. Experience as Programmatic. Aesthetics as Ideological. Pictorial as Application. Abstraction and Figuration. Connections and deviations between architecture and the arts create juxtapositions that intensify visual and experiential valuations. If plastic integration -with its different nuances- sought to forge a sense of identity, then the city is the place where identity has its definite form. PLĂ STICO MODERNO is a magazine that celebrates plastic integration by looking at art and architecture within the urban fabric. The bi-annual publication will focus on a different Latin American city each issue, aiming to create a collection of visions and interpretations that represent not only the cities but also the artistic production of Latin America. The purpose of this magazine is to look at those cities with other eyes, through the curation of artistic projects of various scales and media â&#x20AC;&#x201C;in dialogue with each other and with the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; that question the limits of plastic integration. We believe that by presenting cities through their artistic interpretations, it is possible to convey a deep layer of knowledge of its environment; one that is not described on maps, pictures of tourist destinations and travel guides. The selected projects bring a personal and expressive vision that deeply sensitizes us by presenting a naked, evident, and honest version of a city. Carlovich/Dechelette/Villanueva

Plástico Moderno

art & architecture

Plástico Moderno

art & architecture

Buenos Aires

Mexico DF

Brasilia n°1

n°2

n°3 7

Plástico Moderno

art & architecture

Plástico Moderno

art & architecture

n°5

Bogota

Lima

Caracas n°4

art & architecture

n°6

Brasilia

This first issue is dedicated to perhaps the most iconic Latin American city of the twentieth century: Brasília. Founded in 1960, Brazil’s capital exemplifies plastic integrations in many levels. Experimental, dogmatic, avant-garde, historical, national, and global. Brasília holds the spirit that dominated Brazil in the 1950s, a mixture of economic development and democratic opening, together with the modern thinking acquired from the contact with Europe that had been present in the arts since 1922 and was establishing itself in architecture in the middle of the century. The 1950s were marked by significant changes—political and economic and in the cultural sphere—inspired by the hope of a prospect future of the country. The process of industrialization opened a new perspective, with the expansion of the automobile industry and the transportation infrastructure in the form of railways. Still, like the other Latin American countries, Brazil had a wide gap of development that led to an obsession of republican governments for modernization and progress. The national-developmental mindset depicted Brazil as a great country in the future: the whole nation should compromise with joining forces to reach this goal. In this context, Juscelino Kubitschek comes to power in 1956, with a government plan that aimed to evolve “50 years in 5,” formed by an ambitious set of goals culminating in the construction of Brasília. Juscelino believed in the project for the capital as an incentive for economic development, for expanding the frontiers of occupation of the national territory and for the resources that would be transposed for the construction of the city. There is great faith that the economic advance of the country would lead, consequently, to a corresponding social development. Brasília is designed to host the government and inscribed on an empty space where there was no previous cultural reference. Traditions from all over Brazil were transplanted to the capital city. Together with the construction workers, came artists and intellectuals who impressed on the landscape the aesthetic and utopian values of modernism and modernization. More than a project for the development of the country, Brasilia, in the voice of Juscelino, is seen as the resumption of the destiny of the country, towards a future of development and progress.

The plan to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro, on the coast, into the Brazilian territory is an old plan that began with the missions in the XIX century of engineers and astronomers that surveyed the central region of the country to trace the perimeter of the federal district—the geographical center of Brazil where the capital should be implemented. Brasília is, then, an attempt to enhance Brazil’s nationalism and modernity at the same time. Nationalism, because it returns to the interior with the ambition to discover and to conquer the immensity of the national territory. Modernity, for the capital, is in direct dialogue with the European currents and could be understood as the so dreamed tabula-rasa of the modern movement.

The seven projects that were chosen to represent this city are divided between those who constituted it and those who interpreted it. Lúcio Costa is the architect behind the urban plan of the city that is rational as a grid and poetic as a flying bird. Oscar Niemeyer transcribed his ideology in the institutional and cultural buildings of the city, giving them a unique and democratic character. Athos Bulcão was responsible for the production of the murals that connect the immensity of the city’s architecture with the day-to-day human scale. His work set the tone of Brasília’s landscape. Marcel Gautherot photographed the construction of the city in various forms, portraying facts and impressions, monuments and abstract compositions. Burle Marx brought the compositional rules of painting to the gardens of Brasilia. Clarice Lispector vomited her sensations from her first visit to the city. Caetano Veloso sang the disillusionment of the 1950 utopia, crying out for the exaltation of the heterogeneity that constitutes Brazilian culture.

Contents

MARCEL GAUTHEROT photographer CLARICE LISPECTOR novelist 14

CAETANO VELOSO singer songwriter OSCAR NIEMEYER architect ATHOS BULCÃ&#x192;O painter LUCIO COSTA architect BURLE MARX landscape designer

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B m ra ag si az lia in e

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photographer

Marcel Gautherot 1910 - 1996

“In Brasilia, all elements of Gautherot aesthetic education and photographic gaze could converge. In the city of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, elements of the architectural past and the natural landscape of Brazil were submitted to a new, very modern synthesis that could not fail to capture the imagination of a photographer who had always been interested in each of the capital’s essential elements—landscape, patrimony, aesthetic modernity and social renewal.” Marcel Gautherot studied architecture and interior design at the École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 1936. He was interested in documenting and understanding the life of common people in pre-industrial configurations. Through this ethnographic impulse, the photographer traveled to Brazil in 1939 to document the popular culture of the Amazon delta. At the beginning of the 1960s, Gautherot was commissioned by the Brazilian government to photograph the construction of Brasília. His work addressed not only the stages of construction, the condition of the workers’ housing, and the monumentality of the buildings, but they were also an inventory of the plastic expression of that specific moment in Brazil. The collection combines two aspects of modern architecture photography: the documentary perspective and abstract composition. The photographs that documented the construction, traveled to inform the architecture of the new modernist capital through official media but, almost twenty years later, would be rediscovered as a document of the precarious conditions of the construction workers; they

had an exhausting physical routine and lived in improvised houses made out of remnants of building materials. The abstract compositions were an expression of Gautherot aesthetic that, similar to Brasília itself, was highly influenced by the 1920s European modernism. This double-character contributed to the creation of an aura of Brasilia that goes beyond the register of its buildings, presenting it, at least at a distance, as the epic realization of the modern utopian city. It is possible to notice in Gautherot’s photographs the influence of the principles of modern Geometric Abstraction. The images could be read as a two-dimensional composition that breaks with the limits of the frame, advancing towards an infinite arrangement of planes. To achieve such an effect, the photographer need to master the positioning of the camera and the right hour of the day to generate the perfect gradient shadow. But even in the abstract images, there is a preoccupation of not losing a trace of the materiality of the environment that is sometimes translated through the appearance of a human figure between some of the plans, with some details and textures that characterizes the concrete of those constructions or even with the shadow that comes from his silhouette against the sun. The endless planes of the Guatherot’s photography are in a constant dialogue with the design of Brasilia, in the seemingly endless plain topography of the Brazilian cerrado, where the, also infinite, geometric grid of the urban fabric was embedded.

novelist

Clarice Lispector 1920 - 1977

Clarice explores the physical and emotional sensations of the first contact with the immensity of Brasília. She highlights the sterility of the constructions as absolute truth and questions: where the mice hide in such a bright and evident city? Clarice compares the town with her insomnia, that is not beautiful nor ugly, but only exists in a condition of astonishment. The astonishment transpasses the aesthetic judgment, turning into a search of her own identity when confronted by the whiteness of the new city. The same astonishment is the one that led the architects to the lonely experience of creating a world, to the author, a world that already starts as a final simplification of ruins. “Brasília has a splendor past that no longer exists” because the city is only complete as a utopia, the moment it encounters reality, it is not as white and as perfect as the initial idea. The text is constructed as a flow of thought, and the reader feel as if they were by her side while walking along the horizontal and sharp lines of the new capital. Clarice questions the artificiality of the city and the relationship between the identity of the ones that will occupy that environment. Brazilia shows itself as a place where you can decide what you will be, once it’s impossible to find former references. If she lives there, she will grow her hair, because she would be a new version of herself, one that could choose how to look and, with that, how to act. Brasília doesn’t let her get tired; it is positive all the time; it is a reflection of an optimistic vision constructed with astonishment.

Brasília Brasília is constructed on the line of the horizon. Brasília is artificial. As artificial as the world must have been when it was created. When the world was created, a man had to be created especially for that world. We are all deformed by our adaptation to the freedom of God. We don’t know how we would be if we had been created first and the world were deformed after according to our requirements. Brasília does not yet have the Brasília man. If I said that Brasília is pretty they would immediately see that I liked the city. But if I say that Brasília is the image of my insomnia they would see this as an accusation. But my insomnia is neither pretty not ugly, my insomnia is me myself, it is lived, it is my astonishment. It is a semicolon. The two architects didn’t think of building beauty, that would be easy: they erected inexplicable astonishment. Creation is not a comprehension, it is a mystery. – When I died, one day I opened my eyes and there was Brasília. I was alone in the world. There was a parked taxi. Without a drive. Oh how frightening. – Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, two solitary men. – I regard Brasília as I regard Rome: Brasília began with a final .simplification of ruins. The ivy has yet to grow Besides the wind there is something else that blows. One can only recognize it by the supernatural rippling of the lake. – Wherever people stand, children might fall, and off the face of the world. Brasília lies at the edge. – If I lived here I would let my hair grow to the ground. – Brasília has a splendor past that now no longer exists. This type of civilization disappeared millennia ago. In the 4th century BC it was inhabited by extremely tall blond men and women who were neither Americans nor Swedes and who sparkled in the sun. They were all blind. That is why in Brasília there is nothing to stumble into. The Brasilianaires dressed in white gold. The race went extinct because few children were born. The more beautiful the Brasilianaires were, the blinder and purer and more sparkling, and the fewer children. The Brasilianaires lived for nearly three hundred years. There was nothing in the name of which to die. Millennia later it was discovered by a band of outcasts who would not have been welcomed anywhere else: they had nothing to lose. There they lit fires, pitched tents, gradually digging away at the sands that buried the city. These were men and women, smaller and dark, with darting and uneasy eyes, and who, being fugitives and desperate, had something in the name of which to live and die. Thew dwelled in ruined houses, multiplied, establishing a deeply contemplative race of humans. – I waited for nightfall like someone waiting for the shadows so as to steal out. When night fell I realized in horror that it was no use: no matter where I was I would be seen. What terrifies me is: seen by whom? – It was built with no place for rats. A whole part of us, the worst, precisely the one horrified by rats, that part has no place in Brasília They wished to deny that we are worthless. A construction with space factored in for the clouds. Hell understands me better. But the rats, all huge, are invading. That is an invisible headline in the newspapers. – Here I am afraid. – The construction of Brasília: that of a totalitarian State. – This great visual silence that I love. My insomnia too would have created this peace of the never. I too, like those two who are monks, would meditate in this desert. Where there’s no place for temptation. But I see in the distance vultures hovering. What could be dying, my God? – I didn’t cry once in Brasília. There was no place for it. – It is a beach without the sea. – In Brasília there is no way in, and no way out. – Mama, It’s lovely to see you standing there in that fluttering white cape. (It’s because I died, my son). – An open-air prison. In any case there would be nowhere to escape. Because whoever escapes would probably go to Brasília. – They imprisoned me in freedom. But freedom is only what can be conquered. When they grant it to me, they are ordering me to be free. – A whole side of human coldness that I possess, I encounter in myself here in Brasília, and it blossoms ice-cold, potent, ice-cold force of Nature. This is the place where my crimes (not the worst, but those I won’t ever understand in myself), where my ice-cold crimes find space. I am leaving. Here my crimes would not be those of love. I am leaving on behalf of my other crimes, those that God and I comprehend. But I know I shall return. I am drawn here by whatever frightens me in myself. – I have never seen anything like it in the world.

But I recognize this city in the furthest depths of my dream. The furthest depths of my dream is a lucidity. – Well as I was saying, Flash Gordon… – If they took my picture standing in Brasília, when they developed the photograph only the landscape would appear. – Where are Brasília’s giraffes? – A certain cringing of mine, certain silences, make my son say: gosh, drown-ups are the worst. – It’s urgent. If it doesn’t get populated, or rather, overpopulated, it will be too late: there will be no place for people. They will feel tacitly expelled. – The soul here casts no shadow on the ground. – For the first couple of days I wasn’t hungry. Everything looked to me like airplane food. – At night I reached my face toward the silence. I know there is a hidden hour when manna descends and moistens the lands of Brasília. – No matter how close one gets, everything here is seen from afar. I couldn’t find a way to touch. But at least I had this in my favor: before I got here, I already knew how to touch from afar. I never got too discouraged: from afar, I would touch. I’ve had a lot, and not even what I touched, you know. That’s how rich women are. Pure Brasília. – The city of Brasília lies beyond the city. – Boys, boys, come here, will you, look who is coming on the street all dressed up in modernistic style. It ain’t nobody but… (Aunt Hagar’s Blues, Ted Lewis and His Band, with Jimmy Dorsey on the clarinet.) – That frightening beauty, this city, drawn up in the air. – For now no samba can spring up in Brasília. – Brasília doesn’t let me get tired. It pursues a little. Feeling good, feeling good, feeling good, I’m in a good mood. And after all I have always cultivated my weariness, as my richest passivity. – All this just today. Only God knows what will happen in Brasília. Because here chance is abrupt. – Brasília is haunted. It is the still profile of a thing. – In my insomnia I look out the hotel window at three in the morning. Brasília is the landscape of insomnia. It never falls asleep. – Here the organic being does not decompose. It is petrified. – I would like to see scattered through Brasília five hundred thousand eagles of the blackest onyx. – Brasília is asexual. – The First instant of seeing is like a certain instant of drunkenness: your feet don’t touch the ground. – How deeply we breathe in Brasília. Whoever breathes starts to desire. And to desire is what one cannot do. There isn’t any. Will there ever be? The thing is, I am not seeing where. – I wouldn’t be shocked to run into Arabs in the street. Arabs, ancient and dead. – Here my passion dies. And I gain a lucidity that leaves me grandiose for no reason. I am fabulous and useless, I am made of pure gold. And almost psychic. – If there is any crime humanity has yet to commit, that new drime will be inaugurated here. And so hardly kept secret, so well-suited to the high plan, that no one would ever know. – Here is the place where space most resembles time. – I am sure this is my rightful place. But the thing is, I am too addicted to the land. I have bad life habits. – Erosion will strip Brasília to the bone. – The religious atmosphere I felt from the first instant, and that I denied. This city has been achieved through prayer. Two men beautified by solitude created me standing here, restless, alone, out in this wind. – Brasília badly needs roaming white horses. At night they would be green in the moonlight. – I know what the two wanted: slowness and silence, which is also my idea of eternity. The two created the picture of an eternal city. – There is something here that frightens me, I shall also know what I desire. And because I desire, I fear. Often is was fear that took me by the hand and led me. Fear leads me to danger. And everything I love is risky. – .In Brasília are the craters of the Moon. – The beauty of Brasília is its invisible statues I went to Brasília in 1962. What I wrote about it is what you have just read. And now I have returned twelve years .later for two days. And I wrote about it too. So here is everything I vomited up

Warning: I am about to begin. This piece is accompanied by Strauss’s “Vienna Blood” waltz. It’s 11:20 on the morning of the 13th.

Clarice Lispectorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; s Google doodles

singer songwriter

Caetano Veloso 1942 - present

Caetano Veloso’s Tropicália is the anthem of the movement of the same name. Tropicália was the rebellious, strong, and potent response to Bossa Nova’s passivity and the unifying optimism of the 1950s. Brazil is a country of continental dimensions that does not allow for the congruence of a “single national voice,” despite the narrative that was being constructed through modernism. The idea that the construction of Brasilia would respond to the constant questioning of ‘what is to be Brazilian’ fell apart during the decades that followed its inauguration. Tropicalia is not worried about creating a rational and linear narrative to Brazilian culture; on the contrary, it embraces the heterogeneity and contradictions of such country. They were part of the counterculture movement that was shaking Brazil in the 1960s, turning inside out the traditional reading of the country and its processes of modernization. “Over my head the plans, under my feet the trucks” is exposing the economic growth driven by investment in the railroad model that allowed the construction of the capital in the “high plains,” his nose is facing this landscape while he looks at it, analyzing it. To direct the carnival is to establish a rule to a movement which is essentially rulesness. When Caetano sings about inaugurating one monument in the “central high plains of the country” as an organizing imposition for the carnival, he is questioning this reductionist idea of the

unique artistic expression of the country. In the lyrics of his song, the musician exposes the different elements that constitute the Brazilian culture that is sophisticated and ordinary, rich and poor, religious and pagan, old and new, vernacular and modern, all at once. Caetano Veloso flirts with the idea of anthropophagy of Oswald de Andrade; in his 1928 Anthropophagic Manifesto, the artist presupposes the radical devouring of the other (and of the many others) in order to constitute Brazilian culture. The song also discuss the military dictatorship that evolved the country from 1964. According to Veloso: “It was an image of great irony, a more or less unconscious expression of what it was like to be in Brazil and be Brazilian at that time: you’d think of Brasília, of the planalto central [central high plains] and you’d expect to derive a certain feeling of pride from the architecture, and yet it was not at all like that. The feeling was more like ‘What a monstrosity!’ And this is because Brasília was built and soon after the dictatorship came, and so Brasília remained there as a center of this dictatorship.” With that in mind, the song not only exalts the different elements of the national culture but also puts them in check, as a morbid and silent protest, one that must be opaque once that figure with a gun on their “left wrist,” has the big and attentive eyes on the musician, threatening and intimidating him to continue thinking.

Tropicalia Over my head the planes Under my feet the trucks Pointed toward the high plains My nose I organize the movement I direct the carnival I inaugurate the monument On the central high plains Of the country Sobre a cabeça os aviões Sob os meus pés os caminhões Aponta contra os chapadões Meu nariz Eu organizo o movimento Eu oriento o carnaval Eu inauguro o monumento no planalto central Do país 34

Long live the bossa Long live the straw hut Long live the bossa Long live the straw hut Viva a bossa-sa-sa Viva a palhoça-ça-ça-ça-ça Viva a bossa-sa-sa Viva a palhoça-ça-ça-ça-ça The monument is of crêpe paper and silver The green eyes of the “mulata” The hair hides behind the green forest The moonlight of the “Sertão” The monument has no door The entrance of an old, narrow and crooked street And on the knee a smiling, ugly and dead child Is begging

O monumento é de papel crepom e prata Os olhos verdes da mulata A cabeleira esconde atrás da verde mata O luar do sertão O monumento não tem porta A entrada de uma rua antiga, estreita e torta E no joelho uma criança sorridente, feia e morta Estende a mão Long live the forest Long live the “mulata” Long live the forest Long live the “mulata” Viva a mata-ta-ta Viva a mulata-ta-ta-ta-ta Viva a mata-ta-ta Viva a mulata-ta-ta-ta-ta In the inner courtyard there is a pool With blue water of “Amaralina” Coconut tree, breeze, Northeastern speech and lighthouses In his right hand he has a rosebush Authenticating the eternal spring And in the gardens the vultures roam the whole afternoon Among the sunflowers No pátio interno há uma piscina Com água azul de Amaralina Coqueiro, brisa e fala nordestina e faróis Na mão direita tem uma roseira Autenticando eterna primavera E nos jardins os urubus passeiam a tarde inteira Entre os girassóis Long live Mary Long live Bahia Long live Mary

Long live Bahia Viva Maria-ia-ia Viva a Bahia-ia-ia-ia-ia Viva Maria-ia-ia Viva a Bahia-ia-ia-ia-ia In the left wrist bang-bang In your veins runs very little blood But his heart swings to a tambourine samba. Emits dissonant chords By the five thousand loudspeakers Lady and gentlemen he puts his big eyes Over me

No pulso esquerdo bang-bang Em suas veias corre muito pouco sangue Mas seu coração balança a um samba de tamborim Emite acordes dissonantes Pelos cinco mil alto-falantes Senhora e senhores ele põe os olhos grandes Sobre mim Long live Iracema Long live Ipanema Long live Iracema Long live Ipanema Viva Iracema-ma-ma Viva Ipanema-ma-ma-ma-ma Viva Iracema-ma-ma Viva Ipanema-ma-ma-ma-ma Sunday is the finest of Bossa Monday is in the pit Tuesday goes to the countryside However The monument is very modern

Didn’t even mention the model of my suit. Hope that everything else goes to hell, baby. Domingo é o Fino da Bossa Segunda-feira está na fossa Terça-feira vai à roça Porém O monumento é bem moderno Não disse nada do modelo do meu terno Que tudo mais vá pro inferno, meu bem Long live to the band Long live Carmen Miranda Long live to the band Long live Carmen Miranda Viva a banda-da-da Carmem Miranda-da-da-da-da Viva a banda-da-da Carmem Miranda-da-da-da-da - Caetano Veloso -

architect

Oscar Niemeyer 1907 - 2012

A walk through brasilia cathedral “The search for an unusual solution fascinated me. In the Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasília, for example, I avoided conventional solutions, which had produced the old dark cathedrals reminding us of sin. On the contrary, I designed a dark entrance hall leading to the nave, which is brightly lit, colorful, its beautiful, transparent stainedglass windows facing infinite space. I always received understanding and support from the clergy, even from the Papal nuncio, who could not contain his enthusiasm upon visiting the cathedral: ‘This architect must be a saint; only a saint could devise such splendid connection between the nave, heaven, and God.’” Oscar Niemeyer The boundaries between sculpture and architecture are distorced to its limits on the Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of Aparecida. I invite you to follow me into this visit. The visit through the cathedral starts on a square, where its main volume sits together with four bronze sculptures by Alfredo Ceschiatti representing the evangelists Marcos, Matheus, Lucas and João and the bell tower that alludes to the baroque churches—establishing a dialogue between the colonial architecture and the modern Brasília. Walking around these elements is a compositional game, there is no way of isolating one from the others, the movement of the body is a part of this dynamic compositional game. We approach the main volume, a circular and compact structure that is intended to be democratic, once it shows itself externally

with the same purity in all the angles. The pureness of the form is reflected on its structure: twenty-one columns, contained in a circumference of seventy meters in diameter, mark the development of the facade, in a rhythm that ascends towards infinity. In order to enter the church, we are carried into the earth by an underground passage of orthogonal corners, which contrasts with the curved lines of the other elements of the square. The entrance of the ramp deliberately leads us to walk through a space of shadow before reaching the nave, accentuating the effects of light when we finally reach the circular nave. The glass that seals the volume between the columns brings lightness and light to the environment. The Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of Aparecida is a building designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer and calculated by the structural engineer Joaquim Cardozo, who is also a poet. Perhaps that’s an explanation for the essential structural expression that translate so thoroughly into the sacradity of the cathedral space. It is a monument and a sculpture, interweaving in a single element that combines art and architecture at its core. “Now, when I visit Brasília I feel that our effort was not in vain; that Brasília marked a heroic period of labor and optimism; that my architectural design duly reflects my state of mind and my courage to expose that which touched me most deeply. In my design I jonored the volumes and free spaces of Lúcio Costa’s master plan, its extra-ordinarily wellconceived characteristics that produced a monumental and hospitable city.”

Brasilia magazine

This section is dedicated to reproducing some of the pages of “Brasília” magazine; a periodical published monthly between January of 1957 and May of 1963. Created by the Novacap (Urbanizing Company of the New Capital of Brazil), it had the journalist Raimundo Nonato Silva as its director and editor. The purpose of the magazine was to document the construction of the new capital with a newsletter to supply a national and international public opinion on its progress. The aim of this session is to narrate through these images the official story told to promote the discourse about the new capital.

painter

Athos Bulcão 1918 - 2008

The word azulejo is a combination of “smooth stone” with “blue coloration.” It was an arabic solution for protecting the building from humidity. With time, this technique was enriched with aesthetic and ornamental properties. The azulejos travelled together with the arabic culture to Europe, specially in the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, the azulejos started being used over the whole wall, as a way of creating diverse rhythms and colored compositions. The portuguese style of azulejos was transported to Brazil during the colonial period. There are controversies whether the use of azulejos on the facade is a brazilian or portuguese creation, they were developed at the same time during the sec. XVI. In a search for an brazilian architecture language, azulejos acquired extreme importance for being both a functional plastic element and a nationalist expression of what would be a purely Brazilian art. At the same time, in Brazil, the geometric abstractionism reach its principal exponent on the concretism of São Paulo, with the Ruptura Group created by Waldemar Cordeiro and Geraldo de Barros and in Rio de Janeiro with the Grupo Frente, in 1954, by students of Ivan Serpa. The constructivist project in Brazil aimed a non-representational art in the search for the functional integration of art in the society, based on mathematical rigor and simplification of form. Athos Bulcão was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1918, he was part of the carioca bourgeoisie. He entered medical school but dropped to pursue an art career. Worked as an assistant of Cândido Portinari with the murals in Pampulha. Studied art in the Beaux-Art in Paris. Was invited by Oscar Niemeyer to move to brasília and collaborate in several works

during the construction of the capital. Is in the integration with architecture that his work acquires great recognition. He had a major sensitivity for works in the public space, producing works that incorporated the landscape and are accessible to citizens. Perhaps for that reason, the artist was the only collaborator of Brasília’s construction that actually moved to the city. His contribution was essential to the architecture of the city, combining art and public space, and has become references in the imaginary of the city’s landscape. Bulcão’s interpretation of an art/architecture integration was related to the complementary functional aspect of art as a public œuvre. Much inspired by the mexican muralism, he understood the plastic integration as a manner of creating a democratic and public expression. That conceptual framework guided his choices of material— that needed to be durable for resisting the external ambiance—and also the relations between the work, its contexts, and the public depending on the desired effects. One of his most important works in Brasília is the facade of the National Theater Claudio Santoro. The artist created panels with concrete blocks that play with light and shadows. Bulcão’s one and only figurative mural is the one of Igrejinha Nossa Senhora de Fátima, in Brasília, 1957. The mural is made of two different modules with blue background of different tones and highlighted by a white moldure reinforcing the idea of the modular character of the azulejos. A black star that represented religiosity and a white dove representing peace that could also be understood as the plan Brasília itself.

Igrejinha Nossa Senhora de Fรกtima Architect: Oscar Niemeyer Muralist artist: Athos Bulcรฃo

Teatro Nacional Claúdio Santoro Architect: Oscar Niemeyer Muralist artist: Athos Bulcão

architect

Lucio Costa 1902 - 1998

Although Brasília has been the fruit of a collective entreprise, one man’s labor can be rightfully singled out: that of Lúcio Costa. French-Brazilian architect and urbanist born in 1902, Costa was in charge of Brasilia’s masterplan, the Plano Piloto, perhaps the most important moment in the creation of the new capital. In this entreprise of unprecedented scale, the importance of urban layout took all its significance, as it would literally set the founding ground on which the future will be erected. For the new Brazilian capital to signify a revolutionary achievement of its time, the spectacular architecture had to take off from an exceptional site, and Lúcio Costa certainly seized the complexity at stake. The tracing of the Plano Piloto respond to a quintessential preoccupation of the modernist entreprise: what urban form suits the modern man? Which urban layout will enhance society’s conditions of living, with the promise of transforming humankind? Brasília presented an opportunity to deploy the principles of modernist onto a blank canvas, a virgin and desolated territory suspended outside history, to which the new capital gave it its raison d’être. Costa’s Plano Piloto anchors the city to western civilization’s Antiqui roots: the Egyptian sense of axial grandeur and the Roman Empire cardinal foundations are latent in the organization of Brasília. The two axis

that structure the city, the monumental and residential directions, do not merely serve a functional purpose, although they respond exquisitely to the modern paradigms of communication. Above all, the axis symbolically projects what the modern dream for Brazil would be. Situating government at the mirroring and organizational center of the urban layout operates a bi-directional projection: the Nation’s spirit is synthetized in its capital who in turn, projects on the country the utopia of future. National Congress thrones in the middle of government powers and administrative centers. The proportions of the esplanade enable an unprecedented civic forum delimited by the the finest architectural creations of the century. Brasilia’s impact, both for Brazil and the world owes to Lucio Costa’s clairvoyance, as he saw what would differentiate the city from just another new city. He both transcended Corbusier’s vision of the Radiant City and Robert Moses’ principles of functionality to create a place with character, a capital with solemnity, and a city with life. As Brasília is often described as a miracle for the fast pace at which it was built, maybe the real divine intervention manifested in Costa’s sensible capacity to balance between the forces at play in the construction of the new city, the technology, the almighty, the monumental, with the every-day life, the human perception, and the sublime.

Jornal do Brasil, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Brasilia - From the pilot plan to the Pilot Planâ&#x20AC;?

Pilot Plan. Lucio Costa

landscape designer

Burle Marx 1909 - 1994

“A garden is a complex of esthetic and plastic intentions, and the plant is to a landscape artist not only a plant; it is also a color, a shape, a volume, or an arabesque in itself. It is the paint for the two-dimensional picture of a garden which I make on my drawing board”. (84) It is not a surprise that the same names of the first Brazilian modernist experiments converge again in Brasília. It is the case of Roberto Burle Marx, architect, landscapist and painter, who was put in charge of most of the vegetal compositions that populate Brasília and give it its charming “urban garden” atmosphere. Roberto Burle Marx was born in 1909 in São Paulo in family of French and German descent. Marx was originally a painter, and it is through his artistic practice that he first approached the universe of gardening and landscape. His upbringing in Rio de Janeiro is possibly the force that lured Marx into his obsession with organic colors and shapes, that eventually became his landscape creations signature. He began designing gardens as abstract paintings and creating paintings as if they were gardens, introducing his mural in garden spaces. Merging his compositions with plants and flowers created abstract threedimensional creations. Marx’s first significant collaboration with an architectural project was the Education

Ministry in Rio de Janeiro, project headed by Costa, and his intern at the time, Niemeyer, the same figures who were to be reunited again around the projection of Brasília. The Ministry of Education in a way set down the principles of the Brazilian modernism in-becoming, marking the milestone of plastic integration. The Capanema Palace was conceived with a open garden on its ground plane, designed by Burle Marx and augmented with sculptures by Lipchitz and Bruno Giori, and frescoes and tile murals by Portinari. The deliberate attempt to include a three-dimensional, multi-sensorial artwork in this foundational building of Brazilian modernism set the tone for the future of architectural creation in Brazil: monumental, public and plastic. Burle Marx didn’t discriminate material use in function of the canvas, as mosaics and tiles navigate between his mural works and garden paths; he ornates sidewalks with stones and pieces of mosaic: gardening is painting, and vice-versa. But Burle Marx’s most notable work in Brasilia is perhaps the idyllic tropical garden created for the residential axis of the Plano Piloto. The east-west axis is upholstered with an extension of tropical trees and plants, populated by colorful birds and other exotic animals, creating an unprecedented rupture with the prevalent imaginary of urbanity crowded, somber, filthy. Burle Marx gave life to the tropical version of Corbusier’s dream of the tower in the park.

Gardens of the Ministry of the Army