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.

Cristina Guerra

Cristina Guerra works with contemporary art since 1983-84. Cristina Guerra Gallery opened in 2001, alone. Before she worked with Filomena Soares, 97-99. And before that worked at the Cultural Center which led to the Centro Cultural de Cascais. At this time she had artists going outside to make museums. When they started working with her the artworks coasted 500€ and now cost 20,000€. But it takes a very long time, is 10 years. The galleries have the actual quote of the artist, the real price of an artist is in the galleries. For her the triangular system of the gallery, the critic / curator and collector remains valid and essential. A curator theorizes what the artist does and so there is a better understanding of the work by the collector.

Until 97 people just wanted canvas and started buying papers. Nowadays the paper can be as expensive as a canvas, the main interest is the artwork itself.

The Americans, British and a bit the French art collectors if they appreciate an artwork they buy. The Swiss and Germans want to know what the artist did, studying the artwork and only then they buy.

From 2004 everyone is already on the internet and it's easier to know what artists are doing.

Cristina Guerra states that nowadays we have a problem, there isn’t a museum with a permanent exhibition of Portuguese artists, there are only temporary exhibitions and we see very little Portuguese artists. There are many foreign collectors who ask her where they can see Portuguese art and she have to take them to other galleries. At the Reina Sofia Museum there is a floor where is seen only Spanish art. Nowadays we don’t see half career artists or we see the older or the very young. What happened was that the directors of the museums prefer foreign things than the Portuguese, she thinks it should be the middle term, which is to perceive, to contextualize. The Serralves Museum is at four years to buy. She usually says that "we are now a cultural center." There are many people who come to see but not buy. Passos Coelho went to Serralves the first time in his life a short time ago. This is amazing, isn’t it? The current Secretary of State is a person who understands, at least he knows everything. But the guy who is directing the Institute of Arts doesn’t know anything at all. Mário Soares, António Guterres and Durão Barroso were educated people, interested who visited the galleries.

Cristina Guerra states that, in 2007, the strategy of the gallery with a view to greater international visibility of our artists in the international market began to put some artists she worked with and had exhibited to international collections in auctions at Christie's and Philips: "what happened is that I had to put an artwork at auction and then I would have to buy through other people who bought them.” Because we don’t have art market many art collectors see the catalogs of auction houses, especially international. There are many people, even in Portugal, studying art, even some galleries, trough the auction houses to see the evolution of the rising price of an artist.

Cristina Guerra believes that there is an evolution of private art collecting in Portugal towards greater social and cultural responsibility. The interest of this new collecting is that the Portuguese art becomes more internationalize and therefore they offer works of Portuguese artists to some foreign institutions: "right now there are collectors who buy now artworks, to be in the Tate. In which they don’t benefit as patrons. It is something that is common practice in almost all countries, including Brazil, in Portugal that practice doesn’t exist. "

Cites several reference collections, such as the recent collection of Miguel Rios Foundation, Elypse collection is closed, has few Portuguese artists, is very mainstream, there is another collection, but with few Portuguese, he is Brazilian, but the idea is more South America and Middle East which is the art collection of Luis Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, the Cachola collection is the only exclusively of Portuguese artists, and he isn’t a private banker or businessman, is an employee, can make a collection that every agent respects, and some institutional collections, BES Art collection, EDP, and others who have made collections but have stopped buying a long time, cases of PT and Culturgest . "I can’t understand the lack of interest from institutional, or governmental or State funding for this area of ​​contemporary art. Because economically are tradable. Why there is no more support in acquisitions, we must do something about the culture, as cultural tourism exists and is increasingly implemented".

What happens is that usually comes a crisis and all the collectors disappear and others appear, we are always in a new beginning.

Cristina Guerra states that have 70 square meters in Basel, and the whole operation costs 90,000€, which is nonsense. Most artists that exposes are Portuguese, costs about 10,000 €. Less discount of less than half, which is what she earns, typically has a loss. Unless you sell a foreign artist, are pieces of 80,000 € 90,000 € 100,000 € 200,000 €. Looking at the financial and economic side I ought to have given up long ago. The Portuguese Galleries normally goes to the art fairs of: ARCO, Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, Art Forum Berlin, FIAC, Vienna Art Fair, Art Rio and Shanghai. I went into Miami in 2002 and 2003. The collectors go all to the same art fairs. Our rulers if they go to ARCO is already very good, but some don’t go. When I was in APGA with Pedro Cera, the State rested for 2 international fairs with a minimum stand. In the first year, four years ago, there was 200,000€, has now been reduced to 100,000€. Sometimes the State support an artist, occasionally, like Joana Vasconcelos at this moment, I think this exhibition completely idiotic.