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NA ERA DO CONCEITO
E A ANTROPOLOGIA DO DESEJO
(1989)
1
Wilson Coutinho
We live in transplanted culture
Memory
Burnt perfume
Burnt poem
Proposition for a culture that would be:
non-white, non-european, non-colonial,
non-geographical
Poem of Rubens Gerchman written in New York
2
Winner of the prize of Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna in ‘69, Gerchman stayed in New York until 1971. The
‘70s undoubtedly were essential to the visual arts, with the radical abandonment of a pattern of appearance
called retinal, which according to the proposals of Marcel Duchamp checked, especially, the two-dimensional
painting. This period cannot be considered as a break, but as a rebound of geography avant-garde of the ‘20s,
acceleration and grasp of a process apparently forgotten in the world map of modern art. Echoed, by all the
epoch, the expression “death to the painting”, and new isms, or new procedures arise with the Work of art.
Even the notion “work of art” no longer has an empirical conviction. During this period, the work of Gerchman
also signals that time of “after-image” as referred Hélio Oiticica.
Living at Bowery, a former industrial area occupied by drunks and subsequently by artists, Gerchman runs
a studio of 2000 m
2
its New Yorkers’ works allied to the new trends, but also reactivating a bridge with the
tangible and neo-tangible Brazilian avant-garde. Against the excessive spurt of images, capable of paralyze
them as a critical procedure, Gerchman research signs, letters, linguistic games or structural paradigms. The
decade itself seemed to be a zero mark or constitute in a clearing of styles. “The ‘70s – says the artist in ’71 –
will not define anything. It will be the decade of no-style. Things are so much wide that will not fit into simple
classifications and labels. The art will be seen as a global and all-reality.”
At the same time, and because of this, there is a bulimia of procedures. The image crisis demands that the
artist be a voracious collector of pebbles in a dry river. Hence, he set up his bricolages; fight a battle against
the image, which practically forces him to root out the sensory and intellectual means offered by painting
or drawing, considered somewhat broken. Analyzing his New Yorkers’ works, Oiticica will clearly say, “What
interests me in this evolution of Gerchman is exactly that breakthrough of a season of major bond image
1
COUTINHO, Wilson.
In the Era of Concept and the Anthropology of Desire
. In: GERCHMAN. Rio de Janeiro: Salamandra, 1989.
2
GERCHMAN, Rubens.
Burnt Poem
. Writings of the artist as part of his creative process for the work
Burnt Poem
(1969-1971) and
published in this book (N.O.).