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worked mirror frame. It is a news item – a victim of a crime of passion: AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE/THE BEAUTIFUL
LINDONÉIA OF 18 YEARS OLD DIED INSTANTLY. The alleged headline surrounds, above and below, the frame
that encloses around the photograph. Among the public universe of the newspaper text and intimacy of the
face founds the domestic world of the decorated frame, but at the same time, besides the spheres shift, the
frame adds embossing and contrasts materially with the flat, plane, without any perspective. But in Gerch-
man the
ready-made
is not a Dadaist feature, does not shock nor even is ironic. Identifies the origin universe
of
Lindonéia
– distant of the affluent neighborhoods, who have cultivated the design.
Lindonéia
has the style
of the suburbs.
Strictly speaking,
Lindonéia
is not a portrait, despite its subtitle –
A Gioconda dos Subúrbios
– engages us in
that direction. It is the fragment of the fragment of the new landscape. This one, is no more contemplated on
nature, but on the newspapers’ front pages. The new landscape is composed by the figures of the imperative
urban: politician, crises, crimes, wars. Everything happens in the city, and
Lindonéia
would be a newspaper
piece that would be a bit of the city. If it were not the frame, which tames and arrests
Lindonéia
, and allows, in
principle, as one of many anonymous Lindonéias, that individualizes and becomes in the
Lindonéia
of Rubens
Gerchman, sung by Caetano.
The plastic movement of the frame, very simple, even rude, obeys to the brutal transit of urban life, not that
of cars or crosswalks, but to the everyday life identity that is bound to divide, without major subtleties in the
multiple representations in the different universes which circulates: from the crowd, from the professional,
from the proven. Making and remaking itself “every day (...) everything always equal” unless the tragedy stops
that fate, as did with
Lindonéia
.
Lindonéia, a Gioconda dos Subúrbios,
in a simplified manner, brings all the elements that form the equation
semantic and formal of Rubens Gerchman in this period of the New Figuration, and is lyricism, purposely
skimpy, demonstrates that the treatment of urban thematic in underdeveloped Brazil cannot share of the
cynicism pop that criticizes the well-advanced consumer society.
Paulo Sérgio Duarte
(João Pessoa, 1946) is a professor, curator and art critic. In 1978, alongside with Antonio Dias,
was one of the founders of the Núcleo de Arte Contemporânia (NAC) at the Universidade Federal of Paraíba. He de-
veloped the Espaço Arte Brasileira Contemporânea – Espaço ABC – Funarte, 1980 -1982. He was director of the Ins-
tituto Nacional de Artes Plásticas of Funarte (1981-1983) and the Paço Imperial (1986-1990). Currently teaches at the
Universidade Cândido Mendes and is responsible for the Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes (CCCM). He is the author
of several publications, including
Anos 60: Transformações da Arte no Brasil
(Rio de Janeiro: Campos Gerais, 1998)
and
Arte Contemporânea Brasileira: Um Prelúdio
(Rio de Janeiro: Silvia Roesler, 2008). About his work, see
A Trilha
da Trama e Outros Estudos sobre Arte
(Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 2004), organized by Luísa Duarte.