Gilberto Gil

Here is an interesting interview with Gilberto Gil from The Guardian....

Among many other things, Gil discusses the legal battle with Time Warner over his statement that he would attain rights to some of his music and provide it for free downloading. Time Warner disagreed, because they owned the rights and, naturally, they want to provide things that aren't free.

More Tropicália

Another article on the art movement Tropicália...

The original exhibition of Hélio Oiticica's Tropicália was in 1967, an installation at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. Some interesting tidbits about Oiticica: he studied samba, was the passista in 1965, known for his Parangolé pieces, where audience is encouraged to put on a cape and become the art by dancing the samba, participating in a parade, etc... the word is slang for 'sudden confusion among peoples.' Also, interestingly, he had a terrible drug habit and died of a stroke at age 43, also studied with Grupo Frente (1954 -1956). Grupo Frente was a leftist circle of abstract artists including Ivan Serpa, Lygia Clark, and Lygia Pape. He later broke away and helped found the Neo-Concrete group with Lygia Clark. His Tropicália work is an important work from his career, and gives the name to the movement we think of when we talk about Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes. The piece features palm trees, narrow pathways, puddles, nooks and crannies with sand and trash... Oiticica referred to his installations in this genre as 'trashiscapes.' The article discusses this recent exhibit which featured scaffolding and presents a view of the piece that was not available to the original audience in 1967. Interesting, we have to wonder what the artist would think of that... I feel that he may be uneasy about the birds eye view, simply for the fact that he intended the piece to be a participatory experience where you would get your shoes wet, literally and figuratively, in the slums of Brazil.

Here is another article from the New York Times about a recent Oiticica exhibit in Houston.

A bit more on Tropicália

Tropicália refers to an art collective that came about in Brazil in the 1960s. The movement was undeniably linked to the tenets proposed in Brazil more than thirty years earlier by Oswald de Andrade in his “Manifesto Antropófago” – the work itself and the surrounding movement which celebrated not the internationalism of other contemporaries, but rather turned back toward Brazil to create a cultural cannibalism and embrace the juxtapositions so prevalent in modern Brazilian life. Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, Vicente do Rêgo Monteiro and other modernistas of Andrade’s time thought of themselves being of both ‘the jungle and the school.’ This was an idea that the tropicalists of the 60s embraced fully; this philosophy “fit… like a glove.”
The name ‘Tropicália’ used to describe the counter-cultural movement of late 1960s Brazil is derived directly from the work of the same name by Hélio Oiticica in 1967, an installation at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. The work is a seminal piece in Brazilian art history, and Art History as a whole, and of its purpose Oiticica said that: “…The myth of ‘tropicality’ is much more than parrots and banana trees: it is the consciousness of not being conditioned by established structures, hence highly revolutionary in its entirety. Any conformity, be it intellectual, social, or existential, is contrary to its principal idea.”
The fascinating part of the movement as a whole, to me, is its ability to take parts of Brazilian past and apply them in a modern sense – the products seem modern and groundbreaking, never folkloric. Some parts are embraced, other parts of the culture are parodied – still the result is cohesively Brazilian. Very few artists the world over have achieved this goal with estimable success. To use elements so strongly tied to the Brazilian past – both indigenous and colonial – without it transcending into historical recreation-ism (like the Brazilian version of a Renaissance Fair) is quite impressive. The way in which Tropicália oversteps this obstacle is impressive.
Hélio Oiticica stated that, “Any conformity, be it intellectual, social, or existential, is contrary to its principal idea.” He also said we should all ignore his work prior to 1959. Perhaps it was too conformist. I'm not a huge fan of his work, but I can see its influence.

Os Mutantes

Here is an interesting article by Todd Simmons from The Brooklyn Rail about Os Mutantes, a little bit on their history, a little musical history, a discussion of their contribution to modern music and their influence as it is still being felt...

Interesting discussion of their adverse experiences of being bombarded with eggs and fruit by upset audience members. Although, wouldn't we all prefer that to the torture or deportation visited upon some of their contemporaries?

FridaTube...

I wish the changes were a bit slower, and I am not exactly sure the music fits well with the work, but I like the fact that all these pieces are in one place...