{"id":9471,"date":"2017-10-19T21:01:37","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T21:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=9471"},"modified":"2020-07-28T20:45:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T20:45:32","slug":"how-to-organize-delirium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=9471","title":{"rendered":"How to Organize Delirium?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-heading\"><span style=\"color:#abb8c3\" class=\"tadv-color\">From <\/span><em><span style=\"color:#abb8c3\" class=\"tadv-color\">Art Journal <\/span><\/em><span style=\"color:#abb8c3\" class=\"tadv-color\">76, no. 2 (Summer 2017)<\/span><\/h4>\n\n\n<figure id=\"attachment_9473\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9473\" style=\"width: 384px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/10_Reviews-03-Maroja-cover-image_TOC.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9473\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9473\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/10_Reviews-03-Maroja-cover-image_TOC-384x500.jpg\" alt=\"H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium\" width=\"384\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/10_Reviews-03-Maroja-cover-image_TOC-384x500.jpg 384w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/10_Reviews-03-Maroja-cover-image_TOC-154x200.jpg 154w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/10_Reviews-03-Maroja-cover-image_TOC-210x273.jpg 210w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/10_Reviews-03-Maroja-cover-image_TOC.jpg 692w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9473\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em><\/strong><br>Exhibition organized by Lynn Zelevansky, Elisabeth Sussman, James Rondeau, and Donna De Salvo, with Anna Katherine Brodbeck. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, October 1, 2016\u2013January 2, 2017; Art Institute of Chicago, February 19\u2013May 7, 2017; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 14, 2017\u2013October 1, 2017<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em><\/strong><br>Exh. cat. With texts by Lynn Zelevansky, Elisabeth Sussman, James Rondeau, Donna De Salvo, Adele Nelson, Guilherme Wisnik, Martha Scott Burton, Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Frederico Coelho, Se\u0301rgio B. Martins, and Irene V. Small. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, and Munich: DelMonico Books\/Prestel, 2016. 320 pp., 291 color ills. $75<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Visiting <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em> at the Carnegie Museum reminds us that the success of the current Latin American canon has marginalized a decade of one of its most prominent artists\u2019 work. Neither geometrically abstract nor explicitly political-conceptual in its approach, the 1970s art of H\u00e9lio Oiticica (1936\u20131980) does not fit neatly within the current discourse of Latin American art history. Mostly unfinished and ephemeral, reflecting a precarious moment of self-imposed exile, Oiticica\u2019s work from this period has rarely been shown in the United States and has received scant scholarly attention.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-9471-1' id='fnref-9471-1' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(9471)'>1<\/a><\/sup> This exposes a powerful irony in the career of Oiticica, as his long-sought marginality\u2014first encountered in the Brazilian <em>favelas<\/em> in 1964\u2014was actually fulfilled in New York, the center of the art world, where vestiges of the time he spent there would remain for the most part unseen.<\/p>\n<p>To encounter this lesser-known Oiticica is to grasp that more than twenty years after Latin American art famously left the coatroom of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US institutions overlook much of its legacy.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-9471-2' id='fnref-9471-2' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(9471)'>2<\/a><\/sup> By 2017, major US collections have presented the artist\u2019s trajectory from Concretism to Neconcretism, highlighting his redefinition of the art object as an intrinsically participatory experience. However, the work made during his New York years (1971\u201378) and his brief return to Brazil before his untimely death (1978\u201380) has remained obscured. Part of the explanation for the elision of Oiticica\u2019s 1970s production lies in the success of the Latin American canon itself, firmly anchored in geometric abstract and political art. The artist\u2019s participation in the Concrete and Neoconcrete vanguard groups in Rio de Janeiro during the 1950s and 1960s undeniably helped to construct and solidify the concept of Latin American art that now excludes his New York period. Works such as the <em>Metaesquemas<\/em> (1957\u201358) and the celebrated banner, <em>Be an Outlaw, Be a Hero<\/em> (1968) are by now part of a global art history, granting a multiple modernity if not a <em>post factum<\/em> genealogy for today\u2019s participatory works described under the rubric of \u201crelational aesthetics.\u201d Yet the ubiquity of these canonical works obfuscated Oiticica\u2019s later production, excising the dominant narrative based almost exclusively on participatory works from his Neoconcrete phase. Thus, it is a happy surprise to walk into the Carnegie galleries and encounter these less familiar artworks, never before comprehensively exhibited in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>By choosing to emphasize this last decade in a retrospective exhibition, <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em> juxtaposes the artworks with works from his earlier and most famous period, inviting us to reassess the artist\u2019s trajectory beyond the Neoconcrete mythology. This opportune decentering is promoted by a revised chronology that emphasizes the later part of the 1970s, after the artist had participated in the groundbreaking show <em>Information<\/em> (MoMA, 1970) and moved to New York while sponsored by a Guggenheim fellowship. The more inclusive chronology of Oiticica\u2019s career is present in the galleries and more clearly delineated in the catalogue, in which essays and artworks are divided into the periods 1955\u201368 (encompassing his Concrete and Neoconcrete production and canonical pieces like the <em>Parangol\u00e9s<\/em>), 1969\u201373 (marked by large, participatory environments and new-media work made for the most part in London and New York), and 1973\u201380 (a period that includes the experiments with cocaine and the <em>penetr\u00e1veis<\/em> or \u201cpenetrables\u201d done once he was back in Brazil). Examining these three phases, an established team of scholars from Brazil and United States avers that the scarce attention Oiticica received while in New York is a thing of the past. The English catalogue effectively rewrites art history by historicizing the complete trajectory of one of Latin American\u2019s most acclaimed stars.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9475\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9475\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1_Reviews-03-1-Maora.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9475\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9475\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1_Reviews-03-1-Maora-500x333.jpg\" alt=\"Installation view, H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017 (photograph by Matt Casarella provided by Whitney Museum)\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1_Reviews-03-1-Maora-500x333.jpg 500w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1_Reviews-03-1-Maora-200x133.jpg 200w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1_Reviews-03-1-Maora-210x140.jpg 210w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1_Reviews-03-1-Maora.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9475\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Installation view, <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em>, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017<\/strong> (photograph by Matt Casarella provided by Whitney Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The challenge made by Oiticica\u2019s 1970s artworks to the limits of the white cube further explains the long absence of a comprehensive display. Oiticica works during this period display an increasing push toward the rejection of the optical as the central mode of artistic experience. The dominant understanding that the 1970s were his \u201clost decade\u201d is revised and subverted in this exhibition. During these years, Oiticica in fact created an excess of projects, albeit projects that escape easy control and are seldom fully executed. Much of his art from the period is thus difficult to display. Adding to these inherent challenges was the destruction of a large portion of his legacy in a 2009 fire at the Foundation Projeto H\u00e9lio Oiticica in Rio. In light of these obstacles, an Oiticica lacuna is less mysterious. How does one exhibit a partially destroyed production, the remnants of which also pose such inherent difficulties for curators? <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em> takes the challenge and helps decenter the myth of a Neoconcretist, participatory Oiticica. But how does one organize such an oeuvre in an institutional space?<\/p>\n<p>Before entering the gallery, the visitor is greeted by a projection of <em>Apocalipop\u00f3tese<\/em> (1968). The video documents the collective artistic experience that took place in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s iconic gardens designed by Roberto Burle Marx and adjacent to Rio\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, where Oiticica started his career with lessons from the painter Ivan Serpa, winner of the first S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial. Taken months before the artist traveled to London, the footage is vital to contextualize Oiticica\u2019s practice as a participatory experience beginning in Brazil. The display of <em>Apocalipop\u00f3tese<\/em> amid tropical plants also reminds the visitor of his anti-institutionalism; Oiticica was, after all, an artist who affirmed that \u201cthe museum is the world; it is the daily experience.\u201d<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-9471-3' id='fnref-9471-3' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(9471)'>3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Inside the gallery, the first room displays the canonical 1955\u201368 Concretist and Neoconcretist production. This body of work engages formally with shape and color and is undeniably the most visually striking room in the exhibition. These are also the works that are more familiar to the public and were, for example, carefully displayed in Oiticica\u2019s last US solo show, <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: The Body of Color<\/em> (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2006\u20137). On the walls the visitor could contemplate early geometric works that compose the series <em>S\u00eacos<\/em> (1956\u201357) and <em>Metaesquemas<\/em>. These works on paper are beautifully juxtaposed with the sculptural <em>Spatial Relief<\/em>s (1960), <em>Bilaterals<\/em> (1959\u201360), and <em>Nucleus<\/em> (1961\u201363), the last placed in the middle of the gallery, floating in the space. There is also the maquette for the <em>Hunting Dogs Project<\/em> (1961)\u2014a never-built environment with five architectural constructions named <em>Penetr\u00e1veis<\/em> and featuring works by the poets and fellow-Neoconcretists Ferreira Gullar and Reynaldo Jardim. The <em>Hunting Dogs Project<\/em> preannounces not only the increasingly immersive nature of Oiticica\u2019s production, but also the challenges for exhibitions showing his oeuvre: a high pedestal, a device that Neoconcrete artists categorically rejected, frustrates an aerial view of the model. This is not the only instance in which Oiticica\u2019s production is at odds with traditional museographic display.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the show, we are reminded of the difficulties and ironies of displaying such works. Pinned against the wall are the original <em>Parangol\u00e9s<\/em> (1964\u201368), conceived as objects that required the body to operate; segregated on short bases are the famous <em>B\u00f3lides<\/em>, which the artist believed to embody an ethical position as they were integrated into the world. That some of the artworks are post-fire reconstructions (all duly flagged in the labels) poses a further dilemma and raises the question of the destiny of these new pieces post-exhibition. The iconic installation <em>Tropic\u00e1lica<\/em> (1967) concludes this first room, the environment that, defying kitsch, mashes together live parrots, sand, tropical plants, poems by Roberta Camila Salgado, TV sets, and penetrables. The visitor meanders through the paths of the environment, swayed by Caetano Veloso\u2019s song of the same title, named for Oiticica\u2019s work. The Portuguese phrase painted on the door of one of the structures, \u201cPurity is a myth,\u201d almost seems to assuage our longing for original material and our increasing concerns about the commodification of Oiticica\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n<p>In the catalogue, Adele Nelson revises the Concrete period, associating Oiticica\u2019s early work with Paul Klee rather than with the ubiquitous references to Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. Guilheme Wisnik subsequently examines <em>Tropic\u00e1lia<\/em>, placing the artwork in the larger context of the countercultural and musical movement in Brazil during the years of dictatorship. Both essays are excellent additions to a vastly studied phase.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9474\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9474\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-03-3-Maora.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9474\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9474\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-03-3-Maora-500x319.jpg\" alt=\"Miguel Rio Branco, Babylonests, 1971, digital projection, dimensions variable (photograph provided by C\u00e9sar and Claudio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro)\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-03-3-Maora-500x319.jpg 500w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-03-3-Maora-200x128.jpg 200w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-03-3-Maora-210x134.jpg 210w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-03-3-Maora.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9474\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Miguel Rio Branco, <em>Babylonests<\/em>, 1971,<\/strong> digital projection, dimensions variable (photograph provided by C\u00e9sar and Claudio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The next rooms remind us that Oiticica\u2019s career extended much beyond his canonized work, with the display of art from the New York years. Created and first shown mostly in the semiprivate environment of his loft on Second Avenue, which he called <em>Babylonests<\/em> (a conflation of Babylon, the artist\u2019s nickname for New York, and <em>Nests<\/em>, the environmental pieces famously shown in <em>Information<\/em>), these pieces conflate working and living, tearing down the boundaries between life and art. They demand a temporal engagement at odds with the conventional gallery time and suggest why this post-Brazil body of works has until now been estranged from the current canon. Yet the facsimiles of <em>The Subterrania Notebook<\/em> (1971), the experimental film <em>Agrippina Is Rome-Manhattan<\/em> (1972), and the slide series <em>Neyr\u00f3tica<\/em> (1973) demonstrate that these works display strong connections with the contemporaneous New York experimental scene, a period including Andy Warhol\u2019s films (which fascinated Oiticica). One of the only creations of this period that was realized and exhibited in Brazil, <em>Filter Project\u2014For Vergara<\/em> (1972), makes evident the exchanges between an exiled Oiticica and the artistic scene in his home country. The large-scale maze bombards the participant, mixing the sounds of radio and TVs with recordings of poems by Haroldo de Campos and of Gertrude Stein\u2019s reading of <em>The Making of Americans<\/em>. The modulated color grid of earlier penetrables, previously formed by cheap materials such as nylon curtains and plastic walls, is now dematerialized into pure light. After being immersed in blues and yellows, the participant can literally ingest color, drinking an equally artificial orange juice before leaving the environment. The augmentation of the sensorial experience through an increased use of technology illustrates one way in which New York affected his work.<\/p>\n<p>The catalogue section assigned to these years gives life to the meager imprint that remained from Oiticica\u2019s stay in New York, showing that the relative invisibility of this period should not be equated with ostracism. James Rondeau explains how Oiticica\u2019s <em>barrac\u00f5es<\/em>, structures named after the sheds where preparations for the Rio Carnival take place, were constantly reinvented. From their conception as immersive environments that could shape consciousness via a synesthetic experience, as in early projects such as Hunting Dogs, to the effervescent space of Babylonest, the barrac\u00f5es polemicize Oiticica\u2019s trajectory as a continuum rather than as a progressive march toward participation. Elisabeth Sussman stresses that the marginality of these years are in fact fundamental to redefining key categories in his work, such as how the notion of the sensorial was enriched by Oiticica\u2019s contact with New York\u2019s new-media scene. Martha Scott Burton provides an account of the artist\u2019s trips to the South Bronx, loosely guided by Martine Barrat and Carlos Suarez, to reveal that Oiticica\u2019s interest in marginalized neighborhoods did not dwindle during his stay in the United States. Anna Katherine Brodbeck demonstrates that Oiticica\u2019s sensorial experiments started in Brazil and incorporated both Latin American and US references. Mixing Brazil\u2019s Marginal Cinema and the thinking of Herbert Marcuse and Marshall McLuhan, they conceive an eroticized subject, capable of alienating herself from alienation\u2014enlarging our notion of the meaning of the political during those turbulent years. By surveying the artist\u2019s participation in multiple exhibitions in Brazil, Brodbeck also aptly reminds the reader that New York\u2019s centrality did not promptly translate into international opportunity. Finally, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz interprets Oiticica\u2019s coinage of \u201cTropicamp\u201d\u2014a term associated with the work of Jack Smith and Mario Montez\u2014as a means to resist the gradual commercialization of queer aesthetics in the United States during the 1970s. Elucidating how these years shaped social and ethical concerns in Oiticica\u2019s oeuvre, this section successfully defies the \u201clost decade\u201d moniker.<\/p>\n<p>Among the works made between 1973 and 1980 is the famous series <em>Cosmococas<\/em>. These works employ cocaine, the sale of which seems to have been Oiticica\u2019s main source of income in the mid-1970s. Made in collaboration with Neville D\u2019Almeida, the enclosed environment contains hammocks, loud music, and projections of rock-and-roll album covers adorned with the white powder. Segregated inside the gallery space, <em>CC5 Hendrix-War<\/em> (1973) provides the visitor with a chance to experience both a moment of collective solitude (evoking the original context inside Oiticica\u2019s apartment) and the friction that such works introduce into the institutional space. This friction is exacerbated with <em>Newyorkaises<\/em> (1971\u201377), an open archive of texts and images that began as a book project. The facsimiles cover the walls of an entire room, are mostly in Portuguese, and are placed too high on the gallery\u2019s walls for a viewer to read. This display proves the productivity of these years, but also highlights that this work-in-progress was never truly conceived as public.<\/p>\n<p>If the galleries evince the sparse retinal quality of Oiticica\u2019s 1970s works, the catalogue helps to integrate this body of work into art history. Frederico Coelho, author of an extensive analysis of <em>Newyorkaises<\/em> in the context of the counterculture, examines Oiticica\u2019s unfinished book.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-9471-4' id='fnref-9471-4' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(9471)'>4<\/a><\/sup> S\u00e9rgio Martins exposes Oiticica\u2019s vast landscape of references that amalgamate Nietzsche and Hendrix. Cruz, in his second contribution to the catalogue, explores Oiticica\u2019s literal and artistic use of cocaine in the context of his precarious status in New York, as a publically gay, South American dissident in exile, living under an expiring resident permit, who nevertheless considered his return to Brazil \u201cdisastrous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The works of the return to Brazil (1978\u201380) include <em>Brutalist Manhattan\u2014Semimagical Found Object<\/em> (1978), a large chunk of asphalt in the shape of Manhattan island \u201cappropriated\u201d from a construction site on Avenida Presidente Vargas, a street that crosses Rio\u2019s downtown center. The artist carefully placed the \u201cfound object\u201d in his bathroom among other appropriations of Rio\u2019s sidewalks. Both <em>Brutalist Manhattan<\/em> and its private display in the artist\u2019s apartment attest to resonances of the New York period back in Rio. The exhibition also includes original photos and reenactments of the performance <em>Counter-B\u00f3lide 1, To Return Earth to Earth<\/em> (1979), in which a square wooden frame placed on the ground is filled with soil taken from another site and then removed, poetically evoking the artist\u2019s recent experiences of displacement and exile. Finally, consider <em>PN27 Penetr\u00e1vel, Rijanviera<\/em> (1979), one of the few originals exhibited. Rijanviera, as the name suggests, was created in homage to the city of Rio and realized at the Hotel M\u00e9ridien in Copacabana. The penetrable, like <em>Filter Project<\/em>, consists of colored walls, but also contains a floor partially filled with water and a rock garden. When it was first presented in Rio, almost forty years ago, the pump broke on the opening night and flooded the gallery. But as the visitors learn from H.O., Ivan Cardoso\u2019s 1979 experimental film about Oiticica\u2019s work, even a flooded floor did not discourage a plethora of friends and collaborators, from the poet Ferreira Gullar to the artist Lygia Clark, from walking through the semi-veiled penetrable. At the Carnegie the pump broke again, and it\u2019s ironic that now the piece had to be closed to the public. By contrasting this spontaneous reenactment with Cardoso\u2019s moving images, the visitors are given a bittersweet reminder of the consequences of the inevitable institutionalization of this period.<\/p>\n<p>In the catalogue, the years in Rio are treated as a phase in its own right. Irene Small ingeniously \u201corganizes delirium\u201d to place Oiticica\u2019s return to Brazil in the larger context of his work. Following patterns cherished by the artist, such as constellations and labyrinths, she demonstrates that his \u201cinvention\u201d&nbsp;is immune to dilution&nbsp;as it transforms finished works into something generative and new. In short, Oiticica\u2019s work cannot be reduced to a linear, static chronology. Finally, the struggles of putting together a comprehensive retrospective of Oiticica\u2019s show are examined in Donna De Salvo\u2019s essay. She analyzes <em>The Whitechapel Experiment<\/em> (1969), the only major museum show held during the artist\u2019s life, and the first posthumous retrospective, the 1992 H\u00e9lio Oiticica show at the Witte de With in Rotterdam. This last contribution effectively embodies the ambitions of the exhibition when it theorizes the later part of Oiticica\u2019s work and historicizes the whole of his legacy.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9477\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9477\" style=\"width: 333px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-3-4-Carnegie-Oiticica.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9477\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9477\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-3-4-Carnegie-Oiticica-333x500.jpg\" alt=\"Installation view, H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2016 (photograph by Bryan Conley provided by Carnegie Museum of Art)\" width=\"333\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-3-4-Carnegie-Oiticica-333x500.jpg 333w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-3-4-Carnegie-Oiticica-133x200.jpg 133w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-3-4-Carnegie-Oiticica-210x315.jpg 210w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/3_Reviews-3-4-Carnegie-Oiticica.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 333px) 100vw, 333px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9477\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Installation view, <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em>, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2016<\/strong> (photograph by Bryan Conley provided by Carnegie Museum of Art)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When the visitors leave the galleries at the Carnegie Museum, they realize that the exhibition\u2019s chronology was positively interrupted. Due to the sheer size and nature of some of the 1960s production, some artworks were placed in a large atrium below. The re-created large-scale installations <em>Eden<\/em> (1969) and <em>Appropriation\u2014Snooker Room<\/em>, after Van Gogh\u2019s <em>\u201cNight Caf\u00e9\u201d<\/em> (1966), together with some reproductions of <em>Parangol\u00e9s<\/em>, the celebrated interactive capes, invite the public to finally experience the works in a fashion closer to Oiticica\u2019s intentions. Viewing Oiticica\u2019s celebrated Neoconcrete pieces after being exposed to the whole of his production cleverly connects these participatory works both to his earlier formal experiments (<em>Eden<\/em>, viewed from above the atrium, clearly transforms Mondrian into planes materialized in space) and to his last production in Brazil (by comparing, for example, his taste for appropriating items difficult to transport, such as pool tables and asphalt). These associations are important, especially as they undermine the Neoconcrete myth of an isolated moment of radical experimentation\u2014a mythology that has dislodged both his earlier formal experiments with color (which were categorically dismissed by the artist himself in 1972) and the later 1970s phase. The circularity helps us to avoid the pitfalls of inflecting a progressive reading into Oiticica\u2019s artistic production, a progression that is then suddenly interrupted when his 1970s artworks no longer fit the canon. By placing the noncanonical pieces inside the galleries, the exhibition successfully rewrites Oiticica\u2019s narrative in more meandering ways\u2014an apt metaphor for an artist who aspired to the great labyrinth.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-9471-5' id='fnref-9471-5' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(9471)'>5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>Camila Maroja<\/strong> is the Kindler Distinguished Historian of Global Contemporary Art and an assistant professor of art and art history at Colgate University.<\/p>\n\n<div class='footnotes' id='footnotes-9471'><div class='footnotedivider'><\/div><ol><li id='fn-9471-1'> Although Oiticica scholarship in English continues to grow, as attested by Irene Small\u2019s excellent <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: Folding the Frame<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), most of the attention is given to his work of the 1950s and 1960s; the English-language literature on the 1970s concentrates on Oiticica\u2019s cinematic experience, including the famous <em>Cosmococas<\/em> series. See, for example, Carlos Basualdo, <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: Quasi-Cinemas<\/em> (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2001); and Sabeth Buchmann and Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica and Neville D\u2019Almeida: Block Experiments in Cosmococa\u2014Program in Progress<\/em> (London: Afterall, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013). The Projeto H\u00e9lio Oiticica digitized the artist\u2019s writings, including the extensive texts and notes produced during his time in New York, before the 2009 fire. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-9471-1'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-9471-2'> I refer here to John Yau\u2019s 1988 piece \u201cPlease Wait by the Coatroom,\u201d <em>Arts Magazine<\/em> 63, no. 4 (December 1988): 56-59, rep. <em>Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures<\/em>, ed. Russel Ferguson (London: Afterall, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), in which Yau writes about Wifredo Lam\u2019s <em>La Jungla<\/em> (1943) being placed outside the MoMA galleries. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-9471-2'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-9471-3'> H\u00e9lio Oiticica, \u201cPosi\u00e7\u00e3o e programa\u2014Programa ambiental\u2014Posi\u00e7\u00e3o \u00e9tica\u201d (1966), in H<em>\u00e9lio Oiticica, Aspiro ao grande labirinto: Textos de H\u00e9lio Oiticica (1954\u20131969)<\/em>, ed. Luciano Figueiredo, Lygia Pape, and Waly Salom\u00e3o (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1986), 79. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-9471-3'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-9471-4'> Frederico Coelho, <em>Livro ou livro-me: Os escritos babil\u00f4necos de H\u00e9lio Oiticica (1971\u20131978)<\/em> (Rio de Janeiro: EDUERJ, 2010). <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-9471-4'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-9471-5'> On January 15, 1961, H\u00e9lio Oiticica wrote: \u201cI aspire to the great labyrinth.\u201d The phrase was later used for the title of the posthumous anthology of his writings cited above in note 3. The title makes it clear that the earlier period of Oiticica\u2019s trajectory is also substantially more explored in his home country. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-9471-5'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Camila Maroja<\/p>\n<p>Camila Maroja reviews the exhibition and catalogue, <em>H\u00e9lio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kia_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-art-journal",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}