Jeannene Przyblyski

Jeannene Przyblyski, claims that In the Modern and contemporary period, in terms of – isms. there is one – ism that we should perhaps confront directly, since, still, many of its assumptions inform our contemporary understanding of art today.

And that -ism is Modernism as a whole. The image of Alfred H. Barr's wonderful and terrible diagram for the exhibition catalogue “Cubism and Abstract Art”, in 1936, that set out to try to make sense of the real welter of influences and interventions in art practice that characterize the late 19th and early 20th century, and to do it in such a way that it conformed to a progressive notion of history.

That is to say that history, in teleological terms, means one thing after another, and that those things hopefully add up to progress, add up to a place that values improvement and what comes next, rather than tradition and what has been known.

And, in that sense, also values novelty and newness, as well. So, all of the sometimes contrary and competing influences and interventions in Modernism, in Barr's view, boiled down to two possibilities in 1936. And they are sort of reassuring possibilities, in a weird way, for people who want certainties.

That is to say that he saw art moving toward abstraction in either case but a kind of geometric investigation of abstraction, on the one hand, or a kind of non-geometrical anthropomorphic investigation of abstraction, on the other hand.

This is an artificially neatened up version of history. It's a version of history that privileges one particular perspective, that of European and, by the mid-20th century, American artistic production and aesthetic points of view. And it's worth saying that it is not a version of art history that would, by and large, sit easily with artists. And so, it's not surprising that we find, in relatively short order, the American artist Ad Reinhardt, whose production included both abstract painting, and a pretty aggressive and pretty interesting practice as a kind of caricaturist, illustrator, commentator, in visual form, on the circumstances of Modern art production and reception in the United States and elsewhere. Precisely as a rejoinder to Barr's diagram, Ad Reinhardt pictures modern art as a sort of really unruly ancestral family tree, with its roots in various categories of production, with Braque, Matisse, and Picasso becoming the strong trunk from which many branches and leaves might ensue. But all of that is weighted down with preconceptions of what art ought to and ought not be, with the interventions of a public that is more or less sympathetic or questioning.

And those are the circumstances of the value of newness and novelty, as well, that an artist working to further traditional conventions might expect a comprehending and mutually reinforcing relationship with his or her audience or community.

But an artist and art movements that are always looking to what's next, always looking to the future, might then reasonably expect to encounter, from time to time, uncertainty or derision. And, certainly, Matisse was burned in effigy at the Armory show in 1913. And some of Barr's efforts, while they can seem really flattening and homogenizing, were also efforts to diffuse that kind of tension around Modern art practice.

Well, so what is the self-identified Modern artist to do in the face of the apparent contradiction between these two versions of newness?

On the one hand, the notion of advanced thinking, of advanced practice, of being ahead of the game, of being always on the lookout for the newest rejoinder in a grand conversation about the conditions of contemporary art. And on the other hand, mere novelty, the newest or merely fashionable as nothing more than wanting the latest automobile model or make, or the latest cut of a suit in a department store.

In that context, abstraction takes on a new value because abstraction is precisely not the language of advertising and the language of novelty.

The language of advertising and the language of everyday novelty is the language of an increasingly hyper realism, the language of commercials, the representational language that will show you a bottle of beer, for example, and every single drop of moisture clinging to that ice cold bottle of beer, to make you want it even more.

So, if a kind of hyperreality is the language of novelty, then abstraction becomes, in response, the preferred language of advanced art.

But it's not sort of like, Abstraction, it's worth saying, is equally hard to organize as a visual field, and especially as a painting, and it needs to have its own kind of motor force and its own set of questions.

So, one of those questions might be the very basic question of how do you keep a mere novelty out of the frame, especially as it is manifested through the language of realistic, illusionistic representation, when every time you put a mark on a canvas, you create a figure ground relationship?

You're almost always verging on the realm of representation and, in fact, it is a really hard thing to make a purely abstract painting — a painting that doesn't set up some kind of relationship of being something.

And so that's why, when we look at — this work is, perhaps, one of the grandest and notorious examples of mid-century Modernism.

This is Jackson Pollock's, No. 1, 1950. Lavender Mist, it's also called, given that title by the critic Clement Greenberg, who was a great interlocutor of Jackson Pollock's work.

We can see these paintings as, on the one hand, a sort of random collection of drips and drops, and that's certainly how they were often satirized in the press.

Satirizing of Modernist practices, 'Oh, my child could do that.' 'Oh, anybody could do that.' 'Oh, this seems to be some kind of prank that's being played on us by those cranky and arrogant Modern artists.'

But on the other hand, one could look at these paintings as precisely records of the great effort it takes to cancel figuration, to negate it within a practice of painting.

So that all of that web-like criss-crossing of schemes, of painted drips and lines, can be seen as an effort to repeatedly cancel out those figure-ground relationships until they become absolutely undecipherable and untangleable, until they become a kind of immeasurable and all-encompassing, all-over kind of experience.

So, on the one hand, one can read a painting like, Lavender Mist, as a really principled and labored rejection of the conditions of representational painting, an effort to absolutely refuse to give the viewer a thread of illusionism by which to anchor themselves in certainty in confrontation with this painted field, and to insist, instead, that it was the absolute unrepeatableness of this performance, in many ways, it's absolute boundedness to the unique hand and body of the individual artist, that gave the painting its authority as abstraction.

And, on the other hand, that sort of relationship to newness was carefully managed by the artist himself.

And we see it as nowhere more apparent than in the very well - known series of photographs of Jackson Pollock that were done by the photographer Hans Namuth.

Photographs that insistently picture Pollock as a heroic loner, isolated in his studio, doing battle with the canvas as if it is a battlefield lowered to the ground to be traversed and subdued by the artist with the mere materials of stick-like brush and bucket of house paint.

And yet, after this battle, when the painting is elevated to the wall, a wondrous kind of optical field of infinite complexity remains for the viewer's experience.

Yes, but that other side of newness — in mere novelty and kitsch, haunts Pollock's work, as well. It haunts it in the incessant caricaturing of his practice that is a part of the popular press.

This is another confrontation between the human subject and Pollock's painted fields, not the artist alone in his studio at work, the painting in process on the floor, but the painting finished, installed in the gallery and become a backdrop for a photo shoot by Vogue magazine in 1951.

But why does an artist and his dealer present their work in this way?

Well, because, on the one hand, paintings – Modernist or not – are luxury objects in a modern economy. And it takes a moneyed consumer to go into the upper and high-end galleries of New York, or Paris, or Mexico City, or Beijing, or Shanghai, and come out with a purchase of substance.

So you have to cultivate those viewers, and Pollock was willing to do so.

So, this in some ways, I have to give credit to the art historian T.J. Clark, who introduced me to these photographs, and whose work on Jackson Pollock I find really important. He said, 'This is Modernism's worst nightmare, in a way”, that after all of that principaled grappling with the very premises of painting, it becomes sort of mere wallpaper for the fashionable set. And it does its job pretty well, in that regard. That, on the one hand, this is a painting that could stun the perplexed viewer into a kind of fury over what art might be.

'Does art amount to this?'

And, on the other hand, it can go quietly into defeat, right?

The mural wallpaper for this lovely model with her amazing architectural dress that's colors turn out, lo and behold, to be quite complementary to Pollock's, Autumn Rhythm.

What is it to be?

Is Modern art yet another form of novelty?

Or can it take its principal distance from precisely the world that it must engage in to perpetuate itself in terms of the artist's career?

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that the rejoinder to abstract expressionism as a form of Modernist practice will constitute a fork in the road for Modernism, if you will.

That, on the one hand, some artists will entrench in more extreme examples of abstract work, more conceptual practices that principally refuse to create high- value objects in their wake. And on the other hand, a group of artists that will plot themselves, for lack of a better term, right in the midst of this dilemma about the kitschy and the commodity form, and begin to interrogate the status of those images in terms of both process and practice, and in terms of subject matter. And, probably, the example of that that first comes to mind is the work of Andy Warhol.

And this is his, 32 Campbell's Soup Cans, from 1962, a work that says, 'Well, if art is due to be wallpaper, if there is no holding at bay the relationship between elite culture and popular culture, then I am going to put that dilemma squarely on the wall.' 'I am going to create works that are not about the celebration of individual creative genius and uniqueness, but about the factory-like replication of familiar forms.' 'I am going to refuse, almost insistently, to have that kind of existentialist artist's struggling, heroic personality that was so much a part of the discourse of abstract expressionism, and I am going to fantasize that I could be merely a machine.' 'And I am going to refuse to believe that I could make an end run around kitsch, but, instead, I am going to confront the viewers squarely with it again and again and again, in nearly endless repetition, to almost the point of numbness.' I do think we can look at Warhol's, Soup Cans, as one rejoinder to Modernism's bad dream, that is to say, the image of the fashion shoot in front of the heroic abstract expressionist's paintings.

I also want to turn around and ask a different question of that image of, Vogue magazine, of the image of the female model in front of abstract expression. But I want to say this: certainly, another dilemma that has been much written about, in terms of the rhetoric of abstract expressionism, was the urgency with which it aligned abstract expressionist process with a mode of creativity that was insistently gendered as male.

And I think we can see that in the real gender tension between the Namuth photograph of Pollock as a kind of heroiccreator whose practice is almost a form of prolifically and generatively ejaculating on the canvas, the brush being a sort of extension of the phallus, and, on the other hand, the negation of those modernist heroics by the positioning of the body of the female model in front of the painting, which neutralizes it as a kind of wallpaper.

There were other female interrogators and female tests of abstract expressionist rhetoric, and I think Pollock's wife, the artist Lee Krasner, was perhaps one of the most illuminating, and yet sometimes overlooked.

The painting by Lee Krasner, Three in Two, from 1956, which I think is an address to abstract expressionism and the question of how to deconstruct figuration as a practice of abstraction, is an address to Pollock's testing of himself against the work of the artist that he revered as a kind of master Pablo Picasso.

And I think this is Krastner's address to Picasso, as well. And I think, in a strange way, also, it's a deconstruction of that fashion imagery, that test of the female proximity to abstraction as a kind of undoing of it's painterly agency.

And so, Three in Two, is a work that allows its traces of figuration, its traces of relationship to the body, to be seen and yet not precisely named. It allows the painting to exist in a process of simultaneous becoming and undoing at the same time.

A becoming of abstraction, and an undoing of figuration. It plots it's art historical linkage to Picasso's great unfinished work, the Demoiselles d'Avignon, and in it's fleshy tones and the kind of pointed triangulation of the composition, it seems, to me, to have a lot to do with the Demoiselles d'Avignon and, instead, it asks that confrontation between representation and illusion, figuration and abstraction, fermininity and masculinity, to be understood as completely contained and renegotiated again and again on the surface of the painting as a matter of process, and not as a matter of a circuitry of looks and desires.

And that circuitry of looks and desires is the circuitry of commodity fetishism, and of the desire for novelty. And that is not, most vehemently, what this painting is about.

Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan University President

Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan University President, claim that the idea of "the modern" develops at the end of the 18th century and how being modern became one of the crucial criteria for understanding and evaluating cultural change during the last two hundred years.

The Modern and the Postmodern traces the intertwining of the idea of modernity with the idea of art or culture from the late 18th century until the present. Beginning with the Enlightenment, Western cultures have invested heavily in the notion that the world can be made more of a home for human beings through the development of culture (and technology). Throughout this period there has also developed a strong, sophisticated counter-movement that sees the Enlightenment effort as a disaster – destructive of both art and of the world.

The Western idea of modernity is linked to but not the same as the idea of modernism.

Modernism in painting is often identified since the work of the great art critic Clement Greenberg now more than 50 years ago.

A modernism is often identified as a movement in aesthetics that calls attention to the artwork's own status as an artwork. In this case, the paintings own painterliness.

It is not, the painting isn't just a way of seeing the world, the painting is an object itself.

The way in which the painting, calls our attention to its status as art. Rather than trying just to give us a moment of entertainment by letting we look into the world and that reflects of dimension.

Art talking about its own artiness or art talking about its own aesthetic dimensions that will be part of the modernist stream right into the middle of the 20th century.

There are lots of ways of defining modernism, but one of the most important ways is the investigation within a medium of the most important qualities of the medium you're working in.

In painting will often be an exploration of painting itself, even though the object may be different.

Whatever the subject is, the painting also is an exploration of painting, of painterliness of the canvas.

That reflexive dimension, art commenting on art, is part of modernism from the last quarter of the 19th century, the last half of the 19th century up through the middle of the 20th century.

The modernist had a critical relationship to bourgeois or conventional culture.

Trying to find the angle on the world that would allow you to see it properly, to see it as it really is, to see it in a fundamental way, this would be characteristic of a modernist art project.

You can't just see it any old way. You're seeing it in a critical way to reveal what's wrong or what's shaky about. The conventions of seeing and acting normally. And you’re seeing in a way that should lead you to a core truth.

Pollock create a new process for painting making, by dripping the paint on the floor on the canvas is to intensifying the act of painting.

This kind of incredible rush of energy to the surface of the painting and that sense that the surface of the painting is just a clinging to its own existence.

But Pollock in doing this is an example of a modernist, an artist on a quest for, a painting surface that is adequate to the energy of the modern age.

And a painterly service that is adequate to the energy of his own psyche.

Pollock was an artist who was trying to dredge up from himself the kind of, the core elemental energetics a fantasy and desire, exploding into the making of painting.

And this is a post-World War II painting that tried to be alive to the energy of the world out there and alive to the tormented energy of the internal world as well. But, in both cases, trying to get beyond convention, get beyond polite painting. Get beyond polite society. Get beyond bourgeois norms, to something both more intense and perhaps more fragile, by producing this, offering a critique of the kind of eye candy and easy to look at work that one might find in corporate showrooms or family living rooms or in advertising.

Pollock offering something that would be challenging to the status quo. But also offering something that would really get at the really real. And he arrives at these drip paintings, he's arrived at one of the final stops of modernism.

Pollock is looking for essence not irony he's looking in within modernism.

The philosophical discourse of modernity

Habermas, Jürgen – The philosophical discourse of modernity. Texto Editora, 2010.

The word "modernization" was introduced as a "terminus" only in the 50. The concept of modernization refers to a bundle of cumulative processes that reinforce each other: capital formation and mobilization of resources, the development of productive forces and the increase in labor productivity, the establishment of centralized political power and the formation of national identities, the expansion of rights of political participation, urban life forms and formal school education refers to the secularization of values ​​and norms.

The first philosopher to develop the concept of modernity was Hegel. We have to go back to Hegel to understand what the internal relationship between modernity [Modernitat] and rationality. Hegel began to use the concept of modernity in historical contexts as epochal concept: the "new times" are the "modern times". This corresponded to contemporary usage in English and French of the terms "modern times" and "temps modernes"; designate by 1800 the previous three centuries. The discovery of the "New World" as well as the Renaissance and the Reformation – the three great events around 1500 – is the epochal transition between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. While the Christian West the "new times" appointed time yet to come to the man that opened only after the Final Judgment, the profane concept of the modern age expresses the conviction that the future has already begun, the mean epoch headed for the living future, which opened the new things that are to come. Thus, the caesura of the start of new shifts to the past, precisely to the beginning of the modern age; was only in the XVIII century that historical threshold to 1500 wheel was retrospectively recognized as being in reality this beginning.

The new world, the modern world differs from the old in that it is open to the future. Hegel also believes "our time" as "the most recent season". Places the beginning of his present caesura in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution represent for men with more discernment living at the end of the XVIII century and beginning of the XIX century.

It is initially in the field of aesthetic criticism that we are aware of the problem of a foundation of modernity from itself, and this becomes clear when one traces the history of the concept of "modern". The separation process paradigm of ancient art starts at the beginning of the XVIII century famous by the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. The modern call into question, with arguments of critical historical sense of imitation of ancient models, according to the standards of absolute beauty, seemingly disconnected from time, draw up the criteria for a beautiful and conditioned by time and thus articulate self-understanding of the French Enlightenment, as an epochal beginning. While the modernist noun (along with the antithetical antiqui / moderni) were used in a chronological sense since late antiquity in European languages ​​of the modern age just too late, more or less, from the midle of XIX century, the modern adjective noun was, and again for the first time in the field of Fine Arts. This explains why the terms modernity, moderne, modernitat, modernity, even today retain a kernel of aesthetic significance marked by self-understanding of avant-garde art.

For Baudelaire aesthetic experience blended with the historical experience of modernity. In basic experience of aesthetic modernity is becoming more acute the problem of self-justification, because here the temporal horizon of experience is reduced to the decentered subjectivity, which departs from the conventions of everyday life. That is why to Baudelaire the modern work of art occupies a unique position at the intersection of the axes of today and eternity. Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, is one half of art the other half being the eternal and the immutable. This understanding of time, radicalized again by the surrealism, based affinity of modernity with fashion.

Baudelaire says that beauty is formed by an eternal and immutable element and also a relative and circumstantial element, which is represented by the season, the fashion, the spiritual life, the passion. Without this second element, which is like the bright and attractive cover that opened the appetite for divine cake, the first element would be indigestible to human nature. Baudelaire, in his capacity as an art critic in modern painting highlights the aspect of beauty fleeting, ephemeral gift of life, the nature of what the reader allows us designate by modernity. Baudelaire wrote the word modernity between quotes because it is fully aware that this word is new and is a terminology used in a particular way thus the authentic work is radically attached to the moment he is born; precisely because it consumes at present is that it can stop the steady stream of trivia, disrupt normalcy and indulge for a moment, the moment of ephemeral eternal fusion with the current, the immortal longing for beauty.

The eternal beauty is revealed only in disguise costume of the time; Walter Benjamin refers to this later using the expression of the dialectical image. A modern masterpiece is marked by the union of authentic with the ephemeral. This character of the current also underlies the affinity between art and fashion, with what is new.

Hegel is the first to raise the category of philosophical problem separation process of modernity normative cues from the past that are external. While modernity awakens to a consciousness of itself it comes a need for self-certification, which is understood by Hegel as the need of philosophy. He sees confronted with the task of translating the thoughts in your own time, for Hegel means modern day philosophy. Hegel is convinced that somehow can’t grasp the concept that philosophy makes itself without regard to the philosophical concept of modernity.

For Hegel modern times are characterized in general by a structure of self-relation what he calls subjectivity: the principle of the modern world in general is freedom of subjectivity. When Hegel characterizes the physiognomy of modern times (or the modern world) explains subjectivity through freedom and reflection. What gives grandeur to our time is the recognition of freedom, ownership of the spirit, the recognition that the spirit itself is being with you. In this context the term subjectivity mainly involves four connotations: a) individualism in the modern world infinitely particular peculiarity may assert their claims; b) right of criticism, the principle of the modern world requires that it should be recognized by every one if he presents himself as something legitimate; c) autonomy of action, is characteristic of modern times that we want to blame us for what we do; d) finally, the very idealist philosophy, Hegel considers task of modern times which philosophy perceives the idea that knows itself. Historical events key to the establishment of the principle of subjectivity are the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. With Luther's religious faith has become reflexive in the solitude of subjectivity the divine world transformed into something postulated by us. Against the faith and tradition of preaching Protestantism proclaims the sovereignty of the subject that makes it worth its discretion. Soon after the Declaration of Human Rights and the Napoleonic Code consecrate, to the detriment of the historic law, the principle of free will as a substantial foundation of the state, it is considered that the law and ethics were grounded in this land of the will of man since previously only a divine commandment emanating from outside, written in the Old and New Testament .

The principle of subjectivity determines moreover the settings of modern culture. This is what happens in the first place, with science objectively that undresses the Nature of magic and simultaneously releases the knowing subject: then challenged –  all miracles; because Nature is now a system of laws known and recognized, the man feels good inside her and only tells what he feels right; knowledge of Nature becomes free .

Modern art reveals its essence in romanticism; the form and content of romantic art are determined by an absolute interiority. The expressive self-realization becomes the principle of art that presents itself as a way of life.

In modernity therefore religious moral life, state and society as well as science, and art became so many incarnations of the principle of subjectivity. Its structure is enclosed as such in philosophy, namely as an abstract subjectivity in cogito ergo sum of Descartes, in the form of absolute self-consciousness in Kant. It is the structure of the self-respect of the knowing subject which focuses on you as on an object to understand as precisely reflected in a mirror, a speculative attitude picture.

To the extent that the theory of modernity is guided by the basic concepts of the philosophy of reflection, knowledge of the concepts of awareness and self-consciousness, it becomes evident the internal connection of this theory with the concept of reason or rationality.

Memory of my father

Manuel Pereira da Silva was extremely methodical in arranging his day-to-day, geometric, like his designs. Every day rose at 6:00 am, did his gymnastic exercises in the room, was followed by a walk of half an hour and was at school at 7:30 am, an hour before starting classes, was the first to arrive, in order to read the news in the press and talk with friends and colleagues.

At school he was known as the white coat, because he used a white coat in his classes, this white coat who also used every afternoon in his studio. Because he had classes in the morning, every afternoon went to the studio, before passing the downtown Oporto cafes, to chat with friends and play some snooker billiards, and only then went to his studio, sometimes in company of friends, they also artists like the sculptor Aureliano Lima, the painter Reis Teixeira, sculptor Fernando Fernandes, the sculptor Arlindo Rocha, among others.

The Sunday was the only day that he didn´t go to the studio, as well as the entire month of August, when went to the beach with the family. The evenings, after dinner were spent sleeping when "watching TV" or friends came to fetch him home to go to meetings: of Firemen department, the various Avintes authorities, the Socialist Party, who was militant, the Avintes Village Council, he arrived to be President, for three months, instead of the President who had fallen ill. Always refused to play senior positions in any of the institutions of his homeland, which has never left, except for a brief period after his degree at the Oporto School of Fine Arts, had been in Paris for over a year in company of some fellow students. Never felt the need to travel, the places he frequented in his daily routines and the imagination was his world.

One of the traits of his personality was never talking about himself, to avoid talking about himself inundated people with questions, this of course, with all those people who approached, sometimes on the street, on the bus, whenever he was. Another feature was never complain about anything, never complained of students, colleagues, friends, family, health, life, lack of money, the government, in short, what people usually complain.

Manuel Pereira da Silva had always the notion that the artistic life was incompatible with marriage and having children. Today I see that his artistic creation had three distinct phases:

The 1st phase, which lasts until age 40, when he married and a year later was born the daughter and the following year his son, before the wedding period was of great artistic creativity, staged after the Bachelor in the sculptor Henrique Moreira studio, where he worked with Sousa Caldas, Lagoa Henriques and Mário Truta at the Monument to the Heroes of the Peninsular Wars, in the Boavista square, in Oporto, participated in several group exhibitions, at the Oporto Comercial Athenaeum, with the Independents group, three consecutive years, in Caldas da Rainha, in Viana do Castelo, SNBA (National Society of Fine Arts), the Portuguese World exhibition in Mozambique, the Portuguese State had orders: to Angola (Luanda), for Guinea-Bissau (Bolama), to the Oporto Justice Palace, also had orders of the Church: to make evocative fresh of "Passion of Christ" in the Santa Luzia Church, in Viana do Castelo, Our Lady of Areosa in the Areosa Church, in Oporto, and some busts of priests;

The 2nd phase, of build a family, forced him to be a secondary school teacher and accept all kinds of orders, not all, because he never accepted to do saints, some immigrant communities in France and Canada, specifically, made this request and this was perhaps the few things he refused. Because for the friends he always accepted their requests in a generous way, i.e. never charged a penny for his work he made for all Avintes institutions, including for the Avintes Church, despite being an atheist, always had an enormous respect for people and institutions at various stages of his life, curiously, drew several pictures of Christ, without being per order. In this particular period made ​​busts of Avintes people and public figures such as the journalist Fernando Pessa, Professor José Hermano Saraiva, Major Valentim Loureiro, many priests and businessmen, moreover, and this is another trait of his personality, made ​​busts of all the artists who worked with and his whole family: grandfather, father, children, grandchildren and his own bust in stone;

The 3rd phase comes after retiring from teaching, there began again to have large orders, such as the Tribute to the Industrial Furniture, made ​​by the Paredes City Council, the abstract figure to the gas station on the A1, in Gaia, among other. But it is mainly in his studio, in the morning and afternoon, which he delivers with passion to his artistic creations. These are works that never came to be exposed, unless two years ago at the invitation of Casa Museu Teixeira Lopes who wanted to do a retrospective of his work and it showed a small part of these works. Another trait of his personality is that since the 50s, that is, for about 60 years, refused all invitations to participate in exhibitions, both in the House Museum Teixeira Lopes, who invited regularly, wants the Soares dos Reis Museum, or from some galleries, especially that of his colleague and friend Jaime Isidoro.

While visiting the Museums and Galleries regularly in Oporto, by the invitation of friends and colleagues for their exhibitions, always held fondly these catalogs with dedications of those artists.

I Can’t fail to mention the only exposure that he ever mentioned that was when the Gulbenkian inaugurated the exhibition of the sculptor Henry Moore in 198, in Lisbon. It was a shock to him, because he thought that those sculptures he saw for the first time, had similarities to his own, he judged to be the first to express in that kind of language, reclining women, human figures with holes, human figures with geometric shapes. It was at this point that he no longer express this way, thus had a long period in which only drew, and then he began to pay attention the sheets of paper lying on the ground could be worked and acquiring human forms, sometimes women, sometimes men.

As a final note, it is more a concern of mine, and a challenge to those who might be reading this blog, whenever I ask this question to all my colleagues in the school where I work, who graduated at the Faculty of Fine Arts, painters, sculptors, architects, designers, which is as follows:

Tell me what is the style or art movement of the works of Manuel Pereira da Silva?

The answer has often been a shrug, a silence, a don’t know!

Initially I was disappointed, pursued a better answer, until I realize that this was indeed the correct answer. Manuel Pereira da Silva never intended to represent an era, an artistic period, a movement, as some of his colleagues and friends when they created the "Independent" group in the 40s, in Oporto, at the time were students, which the group intended to break with the past and at the same time free themselves from all the "isms" of all currents and trends and create their works with full freedom. I note that is precisely what the artists currently intend to do, each artist represented himself, without country, without current or movement creates its own artistic language.

Manuel Pereira da Silva had a creative proximity to some fellow artists and friends, as Aureliano Lima, Reis Teixeira, Fernando Fernandes and Arlindo Rocha, with whom he shared his studio, a relationship marked by passion with the work of art, are what could be called a compagnons de route. Reflected the taste of working together, sharing, exchange of ideas, and interaction outside the studio space in the downtown Oporto cafes.

Manuel Pereira da Silva began his activity as a sculptor in the sculptor Henrique Moreira studio, while intern recently graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Oporto, this place where he met my mother, niece of Henry Moreira.

Henrique Moreira was at that time in the 40, 50, 60 and 70 the only artist in the Oporto city, he lived exclusively on his artistic activity, all other artists were mostly secondary school teachers. Has devoted a lifetime only to the sculptural production in Portugal. After his graduation went to work in the studio of Master Teixeira Lopes. His work, figurative, and academic centered representation of distinguished and popular figures, the largest and most substantial part of his vast work was produced for the Oporto city, is therefore rightly considered "the Oporto sculptor".

Manuel Pereira da Silva during the period he worked in the atelier of Henry Moreira collaborated with him in the realization of low-reliefs at the Rivoli Theatre and Oporto Coliseum, and even the "Monument to the Heroes of the Peninsular Wars" in the Boavista square.

Manuel Pereira da Silva has abstract aesthetic tendencies, whose main theme is the human figure and as subthemes: the man, the woman, the couple, the family, the motherhood. Generally the creative process begins with one or several drawings on paper, A4 paper, which can then move to a larger format, bristol board, then can move to the canvas, first drawing with pencil on the canvas and then painting, using various materials: gouache, watercolor, Indian ink, or oil, finally can convert to a sculpture, first made ​​in clay, then in plaster in aluminum structure, just passing the bronze if orders. The purpose of all these studies prepared in drawings, mostly with the pen (Bic) could be made in pencil or crayon, is turning them into sculptures.

Manuel Pereira da Silva intended only to develop a personal project, sought the uniqueness, sought leverage all mankind in him without imposing anything on anyone. Never offered as a gift is works, as is the case with many of the artists he knew, was common they offer as birthday present their work.

However had a peculiar habit at Christmas every year sent a postcard to his friends with a poem of his own. When did eighty, the Gaia City Council together with the Avintes Village Council, honored him with the Medal of Cultural Merit, in a dinner, one of his friends met all these postcards and surprised us all exposing them in a cardboard on the walls of the restaurant. Only at this moment the family had knowledge of it.

The Pereira da Silva collection has about 700 drawings, 280 paintings and 140 sculptures. With the release of this collection I intend to share with the general public the legacy left by Manuel Pereira da Silva to his family, in time thereby perpetuating his artwork.

Pedro Cabrita Reis

I don’t consider the triangle gallery / critic (curator) / Collector valid. Artists validation is done by the artists, museum circuit, curators, critics, etc., and finally collectors, in that order and no other.

The collecting is an obsession, it's a constant search for a construction of a model of understanding the world through works of art. It is a kind of new world, i.e., he reconstructs an understanding of history, of their own position in the world through works of art that will bring to you. The collector turns out to be the artists "compagnon de route", and are welcomed by the artists within it, are respected and eventually become an integral part of the lives of artists and art history.

The galleries have as fundamental concern historically legitimized artists, who are their insurance while apart from that investment are always cast into the fire, poor souls who do not know this, a number of new artists who are burned time after time, without having thought about it before and allowed to go on the siren song of the galleries in the hope of having an opportunity to achieve fame, there is a logic of marketing of new products, gallerists sitting at the door of the stairs of the Fine Arts Schools waiting for them, make an exhibition and send them home again, waiting for the next.

The art fairs and biennials and the system itself are prepared for it, for a very rapid rotation of names in order to feed a vicious and voracious appetite for novelty by the art market, which is designed to create added value, this is economy, has nothing to do with art.

Julião Sarmento

A Portuguese gallery can never be able to put a Portuguese artist in Gagosian gallery.

Portugal has zero power, how a gallery that is part of this Portuguese status may have some power?

I think there are no art collectors in Portugal. Joe Berardo is an investor; Francisco Capelo made ​​him the collection in a time of "fat cows" when things were dirt cheap.

The art fairs replaced the museums, however they are fairs they aren’t exhibitions. The main art fairs today are Basel, Basel Miami and New York Freeze. In Portugal there are no art fairs.

Nowadays anyone that wants to do an exhibition in Portugal is a lost investment, I have no financial return.

Paulo Cunha e Silva

Since 1990 I have been developing at the Serralves Foundation, rather systematically, around the major contemporary issues but there is always an artistic thinking behind.

An exhibition is particularly a problem, and it is primarily a will to enunciate it and after you try to solve it, don’t close it but until complicate it and give it other opportunities that before been formulated the problem doesn’t had. I don’t delivery for an exhibition with a list of artists to stick in place, I delivery with an open mind. Of course everything is very contingent because there are affinities, which somehow influence the curator. There isn’t a white, generic, pure curation, curation is always made of knowledge’s of tastes and affinities with artists with whom we live and work, and so this decontamination is never possible.

The artists who have more success in Portugal, at least apparently, don’t have galleries in Portugal, as the case of Joana Vasconcelos or Pedro Cabrita Reis. The Julião Sarmento has a Portuguese gallery, Cristina Guerra and then has international galleries.

The figure of gallery is a bit bizarre, often because the private collector always tries to dodge paying a substantial percentage of the value of the work, 30 % to 40 %, and is looking to buy directly to the artist. The relationship between artist and gallery is very complicated, it is an almost marital relationship, and as such the size of betrayal is implied. The history of Portuguese artists and galleries is made ​​up of these small betrayals.

The competition is increasing, the artists are desperate to get a gallery, gallery owners promote artists but when they gain some notoriety jump to another gallery owner that promote him in a more effective way and thus these relationships are relationships of interest.

Due to the crisis we are witnessing the creation of a kind of union of artists, artists associations that try to protect these malevolent figures of some galleries, which in this case will still suck more blood from the poor artists.

From the conversations I have had with major galleries, the domestic market is completely stopped, and international conditioning with regard to Portuguese artists.

The role of art criticism has been dimmed a bit and has been occupied by the figure of the curator, the artist feels closer to the curator than to the critical, because the curator is one that you can put the works in the exhibition, and curator is also a critic, also has a speech about the works.

Situations looked great promiscuity between critical and more private and personal situations of critics who ought to have some pure, some asepsis. The independence of criticism is one thing that is very questionable.

I think in the future there will be two main parts, the curator - critic and the curator - producer.

The Art Institute results from the merger of the Institute of Performing Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art, there was no contest, the doorbell rang up and people who were friends of those responsible had an easier time making their exhibits or put in charge of the schedule than others they weren’t. When I was president of the Institute of Arts, I started to introduce the support to the program of the arts in 2003 and 2005.

The internationalization is closely associated with the brand of each country, and Portugal is a country that has a very weak brand, and so the ability to the country to drag his artists is highly conditioned, very doomed, no systematic approaches.

Joana Vasconcelos is a popular artist, created a great empathy with the public, i.e., she created a short circuit between the public and her work that isn’t created by the system, no critics, no curators, no galleries, she as created a direct relationship. Because she created a mechanism for very fast desubjectivation, her work is somewhat inter-subjective, and is work as an immediate empathy, easy empathy.

Bernardo Pinto de Almeida

Bernardo Pinto de Almeida was always involved in institutional collections. Been linked to the collection of Serralves in the buying commission between 85 and 92, then in 92-95 was linked to the group that organized the MEIAC collection in Badajoz, from 1996 to 2002 in the Cupertino de Miranda Foundation. As critical was linked to the Portuguese collector activity and its transformation over 25 years.

As curator of collections was connected to the Serralves Foundation, a committee that included Fernando Pernes, Alexandre Melo and architect Nuno de Almeida, the program was to equip the future museum of modern art in a consistent collection from the viewpoint of modern art without ever losing sight of the contemporary Portuguese art from the 60s to the 80s .

We have several museums of contemporary art that does not fulfill this function, as Serralves and Chiado. The problem is that they behave as centers of art and not as museums, with exception of the Gulbenkian Foundation, which is a modernist collection. Secondly, the state in Portugal don’t watch as they should cultural practices of museums to which they give money, if they are to comply with the statutes, we don’t have a commission to examine it, as there is in England, with the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art), who watches in fact, also exists in Spain, France and USA.

For example, at a certain point rose suspicious relations between the Chiado Museum and Elypse Foundation, for the simple reason that the director of Chiado was also curator of Elypse Foundation and many artists who had exhibited in the Chiado were exposed in Elypse Foundation.

The problem is that Portugal 1000 potential collectors, perhaps only 50 or less have a small idea of what exists in the collections of museums and aren’t sufficiently clarified the processes that led to it. In Portuguese institutions are still in the plane of the taste, the museum has such a director who likes croissant with ham, the other has a museum that just likes the Portuguese water, and then the artists that aren’t neither in nor another group can never see their work exhibited.

Nasoni gallery had a great impact on the art market to inflate prices, because it sought to create a international dynamicl. And early on I removed myself for not agreeing with it. When the gallery began to create reputation, visibility and money, some of the greedy founders dropped the boat and enjoy the gains to go away. First point, the livelihood disappeared; second problem: the Nasoni had no serious cultural project, many of the artists with whom they worked by chance, some were good, some were bad, and some were so so. There were many artists who came and went and those who stayed weren’t the best nor the most interesting. Therefore, with so many losses Nasoni fell, creating the illusion that there was a market for art. The market is blind, where judges will give more.

The art critic is an agent who works on the side of the artist, which protects them from the bad market, has the role of producing a thought built on what art teaches that comprises the language of art and translates for everyone.

Fernando Pessoa, plus a great poet is a great critic who was constantly challenging the creation that is around him. In Portugal there are very few critics who currently do. Today there is a regression in this field, the newspapers were closed. There is moreover a dissemination of critical reviews on the internet, but that very few people come because they work in close groups, tend to tribalism. I think I have been part of the last generation of critics existed in Portugal in the sense that there were several voices who thought differently and that sometimes digladiat and argued among themselves. This generation was absorbed almost all by the institutions, and therefore there was no public space should welcome that, as in other countries.

In Spain and France it is very strong, the newspapers want young interns who say some things about art at this time there is no art magazines in Portugal.

Alexandre Melo

Alexandre Melo is curator of the Private Bank collection and Elypse Foundation. The collection of Private Bank was a collection started more than half a dozen years and was originally a collection of contemporary Portuguese art only and that was to be gathered under the protocol between the Private Bank and the Serralves Foundation, according to which works from the collection of the Private Bank be deposited in Serralves, which made the acquisition criteria and acquisitions were decided in collaboration with me as responsible for the collection of the Private Bank and the artistic director of Serralves, Vicente Tolodi at the time, even at that time with the collaboration of João Fernandes, and later with João Fernandes as director.

After 3 or 4 years of work became an exhibition of the collection of the Bank in Serralves, which occupied the entire space of the museum, only Portuguese art. Later Dr. João Rendeiro, President of the Bank, has decided to make an international art collection, continuing the collaboration with Serralves. With the evolution of the collection has an international dimension with Dr. João Rendeiro had the idea to create the Elypse Foundation, headed by him, with the assistance of other people from Portugal, Brazil and Spain, is an international foundation based in the Netherlands, though the center array is in Portugal, with the most ambitious goal of building a collection of international contemporary art that will become a reference collection for the period from the turn of the century, the end of the XX century, beginning of XXI century. There are 3 curators and then there is a panel of consultants with whom we formally met once or twice a year.

The collection has three components, have the artists that we consider historical, with works from the late ‘70s, first half of the 80s, then there are some artists who are at the core of the collection that had a stronger claim, most unique in the panorama world in the last 10, 15 years, and then we have emerging artists, who began to hear the last 5, 6 years.

That idea of the criterion of art as the pope who builds and destroys a reputation with a text, I think no longer exists. Today most of the texts which are published on the plastic arts are not critical texts, texts are news, reports, interviews, news stories and appreciation of works depends on a discourse that is more journalistic than properly critical in the artistic sense.

The whole situation of collecting along the XX century is miserable. Portugal reached the end of the XX century without having anything at all, it is a scandal, is the demonstration of absolute cultural underdevelopment of Portugal throughout the XX century.

The Berardo Collection is a collection that comes to modify significantly the reference of collecting and of the art in Portugal and the lending contract (loan to the State) for 10 years is balanced. The Berardo Collection was created by historical chronological criteria encompassing the likeness of a compendium or a history of art blocks, values ​​didactic and pedagogical perspective.

I'm currently cultural adviser of José Sócrates without power of decision or budget.

The art market today essentially passes through London and New York although Germany and France still have some weight, but there are art centers emerging everywhere.

There is often international exhibitions in which there are so many Portuguese artists such as Spanish, in the younger generations of artists.

João Fernandes

João Fernandes said that in Portugal more than art collectors have been buyers of art. Tradition of collecting in Portugal.

It is curious to think how in Portugal, in Portuguese houses and in the Portuguese collections the decorative arts are emphasized at the expense of painting or sculpture. This ends up falling in a chain that doesn’t encourage artists to develop, to create works.

Portugal continues to have artists and always had. In the XX century, although things are extremely difficult in the history of Portugal, we have generations of very interesting artists modernism either the first or the generation of Amadeu de Sousa Cardoso, Eduardo Viana, do Almada Negreiros, who were contemporaries of his time, practically since the 60s Portugal has produced successive generations of artists where artists always found very interesting and which are often not known outside Portugal due to the isolation of the country , the lack of structure and lack of collectors too.

The gallery is richer for what they buy than for what they sell.

The collections of Mr. Abreu in Oporto have been an international collection of great size, with Portuguese and international artists, and sold his collection to Jorge Brito, in international auctions and powerful international galleries who came to Portugal in the 70s, because he was frightened by the economic and political context of the time .

Sometimes certain market forces don’t exist because the price of the artwork is set with a randomly between the artist and the gallery regardless of purchase and sale.

I think that over the last 5, 6 years a new generation of people is interested in art, the emergence of this new generation also represents a new phenomenon, globalization in the contemporary art market, the rapid circulation worldwide collectors, the new phenomenon of art fairs, the new role that galleries have, all of this come to Portugal .

Are the collectors that feed the market and in turn allow artists to work and survive.

Portugal has been a very unstable country because it has very few institutions working with art, has a very low circulation system for an artist in terms of exhibitions within the country. It is very difficult for a Portuguese artist, never the less it is easier than other times, move out of the country, and actually I think the galleries haven’t established collectors.

Regarding galleries programming there are sometimes options that I don’t understand. In Serralves we made over 200 exhibitions and off Serralves since the museum opened, were no more than half a dozen foreign artists that we exposed, and there were hundreds who have had exhibitions in galleries in Portugal.

Museums are institutions of reference, see the schedules of museums, see the resumes of artists, there are several ways to build knowledge; I don’t present artists firsthand unless it is a contest of artists. Institutions serve as a reference and guidance for collectors. This new generation of collectors sometimes doesn’t buy in Portugal, or don’t buy Portuguese artists, because they feel unsure of the options available to them. However they will buy in ARCO or London or New York because they feel confident that what a Gallery in London or New York offers.

The art world today is a very prolific constellation of artists and if we see the artists that are in fashion at any given time may cease to be in another, the art world is a very complex phenomenon because somehow became industrialized and in this aspect seems all more confusing, because everything is much larger, there are thousands of artists, worldwide, each Venice Biennale presents us with more than 200, 300 or 400 artists.

This industrialization of art began to emerge 20 years ago. Today there are thousands of people living from the art, living of selling art, living buying art, living exhibiting art, living writing about art. Maybe artists are a minority today in the art world, while at 30 or 40 years ago weren’t. This means that there is commercial and non-commercial art, which is art that sells and doesn’t sell, it doesn’t mean that one is good and another bad.

The art is in principle what artists do. What characterizes the work of art is that there are no rules regarding styles, genres and media, a true collector doesn’t buy works of art only to decorate the house, it is said that a collection usually begins when home decor ends.

The programming of Serralves Museum sought constitute a core that represents the 60s and 70s in contemporary art, we locate those dates the beginning of contemporary art that our choice was curiously accompanied by a recognition soon after, after we have done this and opened the museum, the big auction houses like Christie’s, Sotheby's and Phillips began to create specific departments of contemporary art following the same timing.

In the 60s and 70s we saw a paradigm shift in relation to the work of art, we find an entire society that discusses and discusses their limitations, their characteristics, their structure, their forms of organization, etc.. The biggest breakthrough of the XX century in the artwork, in the years 10, 20, appeared when Soviet Constructivism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, the major avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century will be reviewed by this second generation that will not mention, however will carry them in a certain way and recast one way of making art in the sense that Richard Serra spoke of art without boundaries, this radical notion that undermine the art object, which dematerialized the art object, which stops transform in merchandise, that goes against his presentation and preservation in museums, it undermines the museum, the artists at the time closed several museums in demonstrations and strikes in various countries of the world, will require transforming the museums and transforms the art world. This is a major revolution. And no doubt it was important for us in a country that had lost the artistic contemporarily all along the XX century, assuming a museum of contemporary art. Would have no problem in assuming a museum of modern art, but with the budget we had available that would be completely impossible and secondly we think is a priority of a contemporary art museum. We did it in the 90s, we started making this collection from 97.

The opening exhibition of the Museum had an exhibition - manifesto of his new collection, with works of Portuguese artists and foreign, representative of the historical period that is covering. With the title “Circa 68 " , 08 JUN 1999 to 29 AUG 1999 this exhibition held simultaneously Museum and House , presenting not only the works of the collection but also other works that allow contextualize.  Constituted thus a presentation about the collection and around the collection, demonstrating the artistic and cultural context of experimental languages ​​that have become a cultural symbol of the western world the year 1968. We present a set of 600 works produced between 65 and 75 , bought over seven years 80 % these works, from 97 until today acquired about 1000 works, and then we have several collections on deposit here, since institutional collections as the Luso-American Foundation , the collection of the Ministry of Culture and several private collections .

But for us it was a priority during the early years of the museum to remove something that was very negative in Portuguese society. If Portugal had no Matisse, Picasso, Brancusi, Giacometti, Man Ray, Portugal had failed in the XX century in a certain way, at least we could have Richard Serra, Oldenburg, Polke, i.e., fundamental names of contemporary art at the same time seek to represent a Portuguese context.

It will be shown that there is a paradigm shift of Portuguese art, is from the late 50s that a set of Portuguese artists go abroad thanks to grants from the Gulbenkian Foundation and also artists seeking information against the regime against censorship, against the lack of freedom. And say obsolete discussions that went on Portuguese art begin to be violated by a new generation of artists , and the generation of Lourdes Castro, René Bertholo, Helena Almeida, Angelo de Sousa, Ana Haterly, Ernesto Melo e Castro, Ana Vieira, we have so many artists who actually constitute a new generation that is contemporary of his time .

In fact Portugal has a new generation that is contemporary of his time with modernism, with Amadeu de Sousa Cardoso, Parisians 1st generation, and then has a 2nd generation only in the 60s, phenomena of artistic contemporaneity in the range of these two periods are very rare and almost only occasional and personal. It is the case of Fernando Lanhas, Manuel Pereira da Silva and Nadir Alonso.

On the other hand, was very important for us to look at the international context from the Portuguese art and look at the Portuguese art from the international context, because there are areas of intersection and there are works by foreign artists that we bought on the basis of Portuguese artists we have in the collection, and there are works of art by Portuguese artists we buy because of foreign artists who have in the collection, thus seeking dialogues, meetings, etc. .

While the 60 and 70 there is a period that somehow encompasses a whole set of nuclear artists that work and work in various countries of the world, whether in Germany, or in Italy, with art povera, either in the U.S. with conceptual art and post -minimal, also in France.

From the 80s the artists don’t exist as groups, movements or languages​​, each artist is a concept of art is a language, there is no longer a period.

We want to have emblematic works of artists but especially work that surprise. What is a label of an artist is your receipt, we want to be agents of a receipt and so do our research, our study. Regarding the generation of 80 and 90 we are working on constellations of artists looking name to name, such as Thomas Schulte, Luc Tuymans, José Pedro Croft, and Pedro Cabrita Reis.

We do not have a permanent exhibition as the Soares dos Reis Museum, our collection is young and only expose one to two times per year at the museum, it circulates in other museums around the country, and we now have 14 exposures out.

When I look for an artist, I try to understand what is his language, which is what he adds to the art that I know and what problems he poses to art. More than knowing is surprised by what you don't know. The artist builds and creates problems for itself, there is a confrontation of the artist himself and the confrontation that transpires after the work.

Today there are young artists who began working 5 years ago and have an exhibition in New York, in London; it would have been unimaginable 20 years ago. Today there is a great curiosity in the world in relation to Portugal.

For me the ideal museum would be a mixed of a lab, a workspace and experimentation while library for scholars, this museum doesn't exist today.