Poets, perverse and other tragedies
Felipe Scovino
Every artist creates an atmosphere, a story or an environment to create their work; or still a line of coherence that is reflected in the investigation of the material (I quote the cases of Sergio Camargo and Amilcar de Castro) or in the expansion of the support’s limits (that would be the case of Hélio Oiticica and his study on painting, reaching the point of making it tridimensional and tactile like his Penetráveis is). Alvaro Seixas’ narrative for this exhibition emerges from the biography of 3 poets. They are: Lord Byron (the lame), Sade (the sadist) and Álvares de Azevedo (the poet). Note that this apparently incongruous mixture is possible because of their capacity to build a persona, an alter-ego. I dare say that Byron and Sade’s personas acquire more visibility in the paintings than Azevedo’s, despite the fact that a certain melancholic weight inhabits some works. Byron is known for having written D. Juan (1818-23), a kind of romanticized autobiography. This poet’s life was marked by love affairs, wars (he was a hero in the fight for Greece’s Independence against the Ottoman army), trips, and possible sodomy. His sarcastic and carnal side is projected in his poetry. According to Augusto de Campos, Byron was “ultra-modern in his collagist digressions, which run over the narrative, translating poetry into prose and prose into poetry in unheard verses of syntagmatic rhimes”¹. Life and work for Byron, as well as for Sade, were complementary. They were characters themselves. Don Juan and its author’s life were mixed at such extent that it became impossible to separate one from the other. There, there are the love escapades and a clamorous and acid comment about the society of his time. His language – full of digressive, metalinguistic and self-questioning strophes – is a blow to Romanticism’s stomach and the idea of the sublime as a mediator of experiences between subject and nature.
Sade explores the possibility of getting rid of society’s rules and concessions. The licentiousness that exasperates in his poems creates an association as much as with civil disobedience as with the desire: the subject becomes driven or motivated by their libido, once the prohibitions are suspended. The libido is no longer taboo, but the conducting reason for their actions. But this is not a text about Byron, Sade or Azevedo, but about the way these atmospheres, stories, characters and their motivations contaminate and feed Alvaro Seixas’s work at this point. He doesn’t produce an anti-painting or is purely sarcastic with the métier, at least not in his paintings. His drawings, also maintaining a porous relation with these poets, are a separate chapter. With attacks increasingly direct against the hypocrisy of an art market, Alvaro approaches the contagious and intelligent sarcasm of very distinct sources, such as the magazine New Yorker and the artists Ad Reinhardt, Raymond Pettibon and Robert Crumb.
Pintura sem título (Ariel encontra Caliban) - Untitled painting (Ariel meets Caliban) celebrates these diverse characteristics that I mentioned. The absence of figures and the presence of wide chromatic fields that create a veil or layer over traces of possible stories or lines that were partially erased, bring these hints of disobedience and sarcasm. The luminous presence of the neon dialogues with this transgressing character of the poets. It’s the difference, the unexpected, the element that destabilizes and creates a destabilizing weight. Note that the artist emphasizes one of Azevedo’s narratives – Ariel and Caliban are characters of his poems – that doesn’t express itself in clear images, but in mists, disappearances, layers over layers that deny an objectivity, but that on the other hand, make visible a state of mind, so to speak.
In Pintura sem título (Orgia sádica) -Untitled painting (sadistic orgy) the density of the acrylic paint creates a mushy volume, fruit of a mixture of distinct colors that promotes the sensation of fluids or intermingled bodies. It has the character of a libidinal painting because in the metaphor field what Alvaro makes visible is the liquidity of ecstasy. The presence of carnality is what interests him here, making a clear reference to the carnal character of Byron and Sade’s poetry, announced by Augusto de Campos. This relationship between flesh, desire, libido and the appearance (dense) of the paint and the shapes (abject) on the canvas goes on in Don Juan encontra Catarina (Don Juan meets Catarina). The concentration of oil paint creating volumes at the canvas’ borders refers to the ejaculation of the fortuitous love encounters of the two characters. Note the quick paintbrushes that synthetize the dynamic of bodies and fluids. In Sade morre em Charenton (Sade dies in Chareton) we metaphorically see the outrageous and decrepit environment of the prison where the poet died. The repugnance that the voluminous and dense compound of the oil paint layers bring to the observer reflects in essence the insalubrious and tortuous days that Sade spent in prison. The sadness of the romantic poet, represented by Álvares de Azevedo, is seen with more strength at this moment. It’s a counterpoint or perfect antithesis to Haidée. The soft and smooth surface that the acrylic paint builds in this work translates the fantasy of the young, romantic, almost virginal body, ready to be seduced by the most voracious lover. In these two last examples an important link represented in the artist’s work becomes clear: passion and violence. They’re not antagonistic fields, because they start from similar sources or stories and invariably meet, collide and interact in his work. I close the text with the drawing O herói (the hero) that shows the printed copy of Johnny Depp’s face, dressed as the character Don Juan DeMarco played by him in the movie of the same name, directed by Jeremy Leven, in 1994. In the story, which takes place in contemporary days, a young man claims to be Don Juan and tells his psychiatrist the adventures of his love life. The image chosen by Alvaro is iconic because it’s the character, masked, with a rope around his neck, in a very theatrical perspective and delivering a ludicrous look (to those who observe him), typical of a ham actor. The exhibition, therefore, goes through this character’s tendency to put himself forward without restraints, who aims at decimating any kind of rule or method that imposes as truth or fact, because he builds his own certainties and wishes. He puts himself forward too much, he knows he’s in danger, but it’s exactly what makes him go on. There, there are his body, his marks and conquests. He’s not afraid of ridicule, because he ridicules himself first and foremost. It’s through this atmosphere and characters that have desire in their more diverse ambitions, love, libido and passion violently expressed that the most recent Alvaro Seixas’s exhibition goes on.