Editorial

Welcome to the fifth edition of Arara, Summer 2003. 

In this issue we bring into view two aspects of current research and exhibition practice relating to the modern art and architecture of Brazil - one from the perspective of ongoing activities at Essex and the other from São Paulo. 

Flávio de Carvalho, artista plástico e animador cultural

Flávio do Carvalho is a figure who proves difficult to place. His Brazilian career extends from the thirties through to the seventies, and cannot be restricted to any one field of activity (painter, architect, scenographer, costume designer, writer, publisher ..). A few of his most audacious acts stand out and have recently attracted art-historical attention outside of Brazil (for example when he decided to put his interest in theories of crowd-psychology into practice by walking backwards through a Corpus Christi procession wearing a hat, almost getting lynched in the process ..) but few of his writings (including interviews with Man Ray, Tristan Tzara and André Breton and the public lectures which reflect his involvement with the Antropophagite movement - such as 'the Psychopathology of the works of Aleijadinho' ) have been taken up for research outside of Brazil. Rui Moreira Leite was one of the first to bring Flávio's work to a broader national and international audience (as the curator of a Sala Especial devoted to the artist at the XVII Bienal de São Paulo). His paper will provide some biographical details of interest for those unfamiliar with Carvalho, while arguing that the role of the artist as 'cultural animator' via his series of public interventions is best understood in its intrinsic relationship to the artist's more traditional artworks (paintings and drawings) and to his involvement with successive art movements and groups (including the British Surrealists) inside and outside of Brazil. 

At the end of last year the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art was invited to exhibit a selection of its Brazilian holdings at Gallery 32 in London. The collection's curators, directors and curatorial advisors collaborated in making a selection of works that coherently and diversely invoked the identity of the modern city, caught between the two poles of image and site. This idea was realised in the final November 2002 exhibition 'Architectures: the nature of the city'. Professor Valerie Fraser contributed a catalogue essay that related this exhibition to her research into the modern architecture of Brazil - which we are happy to be able to make available here in its Portuguese translation. 

We'd like to take this opportunity to introduce a new editor, Cristiana Bertazoni Martins, whose involvement with current research into the art of pre-Colombian civilisations has allowed us to publish two papers that are as relevant to the canon of modern art history and theory as they are to the history of ancient civilisations. 

Eduardo Natalino dos Santos's paper reveals how the aesthetic and figurative criteria of art as mimesis has been mis-applied in the analysis of the mixteco-nahua pictographic system. Presupposing that the aim of the artistic image is to represent in a realistic (illusory) manner, the images contained in this system have been read, in such analyses, as the mark of a culture that was artistically deficient. Taking two figurative compositions as examples, which he describes as the multiple point of view and the sectional drawing, Natalino dos Santos aims to reveal what the priorities that directed the production of images were, and how they related to the intrinsic logic and social function of this particular system of writing. 

Using information recorded by Spanish chroniclers in the Andes as a source, Paul R. Steele's paper 'Enemies and Ancestors' aims to identify how the deep-rooted structural patterns of thought (for example expressions based on groups of three) present within Inca narrative relate to the underlying traditions of earlier Andean civilisations. 

The next issue of Arara will be a special issue on the recent exhibition Aztecs at the Royal Academy. London, within which we will publish selected papers from the major international conference that accompanied this exhibition. An interview with one of its curators, Adrian Locke, will provide some background information on how the exhibition came about, how it was received and some of the critical issues raised by the show. This issue will be published in November 2003. 

If you attended the show and would like to submit a viewpoint on it, please do. 

Maria Clara Bernal, Cristiana Bertazoni Martins, and Isobel Whitelegg
Editors of Arara.