Remembering Helio Oiticica´s Work

More than 90% of Oiticica´s work has been lost this last Saturday Oct. 17th. At Literal we published a magnificent article about his exhibition The Body of Color.

"Hélio Oiticica’s current exhibit The Body of Color at the Museum
of Fine Arts Houston may tempt the viewer to agree with
writers who have called his art “ordered delirium.” 1 On the
one hand there is forethought and calculation; on the other,
spontaneity and a crescendo of forms and colors (pink, yellow,
orange, red, etc.) incarnated in a variety of objects. Many of
these objects escape known art genres and fall into new categories
invented by Oiticica in the sixties. In the midst of this
genre confusion the run-of-the-mill viewer may find it a little
harder to fathom order. Oiticica’s order mirrors Rio de Janeiro’s
popular culture and the organization within the seemingly
chaotic constructions of the favelas.
The Body of Color echoes Oiticica’s 1965 exhibit Opinao 65
at the Museu de Arte Moderna (Rio de Janeiro) to which he
invited dancers from the Mangueira samba school to participate.
2 Writer Anna Dezeuze notes, “The irruption of the poor
into the bourgeois atmosphere of the museum caused such a
scandal that the director had them evicted. As censorship
worsened in Brazil during the later 1960s, Oiticica’s association
with Mangueira would increasingly be linked to a political
resistance to the dictatorship that had taken over the country
in 1964.”3" To read more click here

Image: Glass Bólide 05: “Homenagem a Mondrian”, 1965.
Oil with polyvinyl acetate emulsion on nylon mesh and burlap; glass; paint and pigment suspended in water.
César and Claudio Oiticica Collection, Rio de Janeiro.