Organized by Instituto MESA in collaboration with curator and critic Luiz Camillo Osorio and the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo (MAM-SP) with support from the Terra American Art Foundation, the international seminar Flipping Pop took place on December 8th and 9th 2017. Planned in conjunction with the exhibition 35th Panorama of Brazilian Contemporary Art (Sept 26th – Dec 17th, 2017) curated by Luiz Camillo Osorio, the seminar was grounded in two key 1967 exhibitions reconsidered on the occasion of their fiftieth anniversaries: the American contribution to the IX São Paulo Biennial coined as the Pop Art Biennial and the New Objectivity exhibition/manifesto synthesizing proposals of the 1960s Brazilian vanguard at Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio). The resonance of these convergent histories is vitally present in contemporary practices as shown by the critical role of the manifesto “General Scheme of New Objectivity” written by Hélio Oiticica as the critical conceptual framework for the 35th Panorama exhibition.
The result of this meeting generated a digital publication organized from the papers produced especially for the occasion. The publication features Jonathan Flatley's article / keynote, the essays by Ana Maria Maia, Denilson Lopes, Izabela Pucu, Jessica Gogan, Ken Allan, Luiz Fernando Ramos, Sérgio Martins and Sônia Salzstein, including an unpublished interview in Portuguese by Helio Oiticica with the actor Mario Montez, suggested by Max Hinderer Cruz from its transcription and edition with the collaboration of the Project Hélio Oiticica.
Check out: Flipping Revisitando Pop
Flipping Pop aimed to expand analyses of Pop Art beyond the frame of New York, London, and western consumer culture and critically read Pop from the vantage point of the global south, Brazil in particular, examining how cross-culturally artists were challenging modernist myths and dealing with new hybrids of politics, culture, and aesthetics. For Brazilian art critic Mário Pedrosa, writing at the time, this was the postmodern turn. Within a contemporary context, as art history increasingly grapples with the postcolonial constellation, diverse understandings, and complex geographies how might we re-read such critical shifts as theorist Walter Mignolo suggests, with a certain “epistemic disobedience”? That is, how might we delink and decolonize art historical readings, both in content and method, from traditional Western macro-narratives and positions and rework them from different vantage points? The seminar Flipping Pop sought to act as a catalyst for these possibilities via new readings of American Pop art and 1960s Brazilian vanguard practices.
Organized by the Smithsonian Institute, the American contribution to the IX São Paulo Biennial featured a retrospective of Edward Hopper and the exhibition Environment USA 1957 – 1967 presenting work by Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Edward Ruscha and Andy Warhol among others. The commissioner, MoMA’s then curator William C. Seitz, drew an “unsentimental and at times ironic, humorous or disenchanted” parallel between Hopper’s American life pre 1920s and the 1960s.” The selection included Jasper Johns’ Three Flags, Edward Ruscha’s Gas Station and Robert Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II as well as three works from Warhol’s Death and Disaster series (1962 – 1967). These works and Seitz’s statement suggest a darker understanding of Pop beyond its consumerist veneer, one that may have particularly resonated in the context of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964 – 1985) and an already radicalized vanguard coalescing around the idea of New Objectivity – a concept originating in Hélio Oiticica’s writings with a focus on critical aesthetic shifts toward environmental art, participation, and socio-ethical issues. In addition, late 1960s counter culture produced vital “pop” experimentations from Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable to Brazil’s popular and avant-garde Tropicália movement. Through these various lenses Flipping Pop discussed a reframing of the Pop art imaginary via a Brazilian-American dialogue.
As a contribution to scholarship of American art in an international context Flipping Pop brought together diverse Brazilian scholars, artists, students, and international guests to explore timely “flippings” and “re-readings” with, through, and around the art of this historical moment. The seminar featured two keynote lectures and three panel discussions. Using the 35th Panorama exhibition as critical platform, Flipping Pop reexamined the critical reception of the 1967 exhibitions and explored contemporary, historical and cross-cultural readings of Pop, the “popular” cultural moment, camp, and the interweaving relationships between art practice and social space in the 1960s.
Keynotes:
Jonathan Flatley, associate professor of English at Wayne State University, coeditor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996) and author of Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (2008) and Like Warhol (2107) just launched by University of Chicago Press.
Flora Süssekind, professor of aesthetics and theory of theater, Center for Literature and Art, University of Rio de Janeiro writes on Brazilian art, 1960s Tropicália movement and is a contributor to numerous scholarly publications.
Panels:
1) Pop (mis) readings and the avant-garde will examine the critical reception of the 1967 São Paulo Biennial and historical and contemporary readings of Pop and New Objectivity.
Sérgio B. Martins critic and Artforum contributor, professor of history at PUC-Rio and author Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil 1949 – 1979 (2013). (Moderator)
Sônia Salzstein professor of art history and theory, Department of Visual Arts, School of Arts and Communications, University of São Paulo (USP). Author of numerous monographs as well as critical essays on pop and vernacular cultures.
Jessica Gogan former education director and special projects curator, The Andy Warhol Museum, director of Instituto MESA and co-organizer of Flipping Pop.
2) (Tropi)Camp: will explore parallels of camp in Andy Warhol’s and Hélio Oiticica’s practice, the influence of the artist Jack Smith on both their work, and the play of the margins and mainstream in the global cultural moment of 1967.
Max Hinderer Cruz independent critic and curator co-author Block Experiments in Cosmococa: Program in Progress, (2012) and co-curator The Potosi Principle, Reina Sofia, 2010. (Moderator)
Denilson Lopes, film scholar and professor of communications at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who writes on cinema, the visual arts and the esthetic possibilities of the everyday.
Luiz Fernando Ramos associate professor in the Department of Theatre, School of Arts and Communications at USP and author of Mimesis Peformativa: a margem de invenção possível [Performative Mimesis: The Margin of Possible Invention] (2015).
3) From the street to the museum/museum to the street: will explore art and social space in the 60s and pop as an experience of art in an expanded field.
Ana Maria Maia researcher, curator and author Arte-veículo: intervenções na mídia de massa brasileira [Art as Vehicle: Brazilian Mass Media Interventions] (2016) (Moderator)
Izabela Pucu, former director/curator Hélio Oiticica Art Center, co-author Mário Pedrosa: Primary Documents (2016) and author of the forthcoming Bandeiras na Praça (Flags on the Square) on the 1967 artist street intervention in São Paulo.
Kenneth Allan (associate professor of art history, University of Seattle and author of the forthcoming Object Lessons: Experiencing Pop Art in 1960s Los Angeles.
