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ROSTOS NA MULTIDÃO
(1978)
1
Sergio Santeiro
Each person may traverse the same steps that led the caves’ world of one to the external that life has mul-
tiplied. We born singulars, one by one, naked, from inside our mothers, and we found, first one by one, the
other, the father, then the others, relatives, friends, in groups, on an increasing scale, and suddenly we finally
immersed in the reality in which we are still unique individuals but similar to thousands, millions, billions of
others.
Walking in Copacabana, the first major small Brazilian metropolis, the anonymity of the crowd which in wa-
ves cross the streets, bath on the beach, live the buildings, bought and sold at various prices, appears clear as
the great revelation for me, living in the tragic sixties: the anonymity is the anemia of life.
To be and not to be, when and how, is the whole tragedy. Trait that will underpin the Brazilian crisis, do not
know if global, since it was also the dash questioning that I saw one day passing in front of a gallery – the
Relevo – near my home, walked in the avenue, between my similar identically without identity.
This is not a nostalgic illusion like miss of the integrity of life in nature in the field I ever lived – is not the lost
paradise; is babel. It is not to be me outside home the same human that I have been doing since birth, is the
fear of the other. On the street, we lose the domestic identity and at least in Brazil where I exist, then not
conquer another. We get lost.
It seemed that this was the identity the one I rediscover between the raisin on the avenue, me, and the author
whom I see, in the painting in the shop window of the gallery, invited me to meet the exhibition. I entered. In-
side of I saw with delight and confusion that these moments have, unable to extract the reasoning that only
today I arm, just saw, and was an encounter to see what my spirit wondered also being asked by the smashed
crowds whose from the painting spied me, wanting to be someone. Not a special one, as it seems implicit in
this bolero expression, but simply anyone, a being of itself, and not the millionth appearance of clay that is
said to be the form of the first similar.
The exhibition
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was from Rubens Gerchman, yours, and for me, the first, Rubens who later I came to know
and to swap with little figures. We work together, we repeat, even if not materialize them properly in words,
the common sensations which we feel and that we absorb in our existence. He passed a course of forwards,
re/voltas[sin] (backwards and revolts), and I, from the Avenue, also pass through the paths that all alike cross.
In this path, he recorded the contact with the world through materials and ideas, materials, the paint, the ink,
the press, the printer, the papers, the wood, the images and words. Are the words faces in the crowd of the
meanings we attach to things we see? Rubens inscribes the words, the persons and things, integrated in their
representation of the world.
Naming is to give face to the differences that bring closer and move away one another the people and
possibilities: is to exercise it. And we inscribe on each other in the line drawing of our faces, of which we
contemplate, that of witnessing, of those we love, and for all of this we give faith. Does this reflect the
1
SANTEIRO, Sergio.
Faces in the Crowd
, May of 1978. In:
Rubens Gerchman
. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 1978. (N.O.).
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Rubens Gerchman: Paintings, Objects, Drawings and Serigraphs
. Exhibition catalog. Rio de Janeiro: Galeria Relevo, 1967.
(N.O.).