Curators Cadu Riccioppo and Taísa Machado comment on the intersections between artistic languages based on projects from MASP and MAR
Is it possible to hear a color? Or see a musical note? Music and painting materialize differently, activating the senses of sight and hearing separately. But an attentive observer may notice that visual elements have the potential to evoke rhythm, while a melodic composition can awaken sensations that lead to the perception of color and form.
Wassily Kandinsky, precursor of abstractionism in art, wrote in “The Effect of Color”, in 1911, that the effects of colors can be physical. Observing a color palette promotes a physical sensation, the eyes are stimulated to the point of experiencing pleasure and satisfaction just as the palate is stimulated by tasty food. Or, the gaze can be strained like the tongue tasting a spicy dish. The physical sensation of color proposed by Kandinsky also refers to sounds. “The sound of color is so defined that you would be hard-pressed to find someone who expressed a bright yellow with low notes, or a dark lake with high notes,” he writes. On the path to synesthesia, it becomes possible to relate different artistic languages and experience art through a combination of senses.
Wassily Kandinsky. Lyrical, 1911 Imagem: MoMa
Music and painting can, each in its own way, express the same popular culture that is not based on direct representation, but that is hidden in the historical contexts in which they are inserted, in the lives of each of its authors or even in the meanings and signifiers that each piece of art acquires throughout its own history as an artistic and cultural product.
FUNK: A cry of boldness and freedom
In the case of the exhibition “FUNK: A cry of boldness and freedom”, we have music and painting as expressions of the culture permeated by the universe of funk. On view until August 24, 2024 at the Rio Art Museum (MAR), the exhibition is curated by Taísa Machado and Dom Filó, together with the museum team, and has the collaboration of consultants such as Deize Tigrona, Celly IDD , Tamiris Coutinho, Glau Tavares, Sir Dema, GG Albuquerque, Marcelo B Groove, Leo Moraes and Zulu TR.
Bruno Lyfe, “Tá ok”, 2023 (left) and Hebert, “I live from January to January, not just in December”, 2021 / Disclosure
“The movement is sovereign in this exhibition”, comments Taísa Machado, in an interview with Artsoul. The influence of funk as music is present in the movement that the paintings in the exhibition adopt by composition. “The pulse common to funk, which moves the body, which gives rhythm to everyday life, is present. There is a sense of freedom that the music expresses that we also find in the works, you look at the paintings and they quickly transport you to a scenario where movement, freedom and a dose of chaos coexist in harmony, in which the work becomes a dance and the dance becomes work.”
In addition to the impression of movement evoked by the rhythm, there are specific elements of funk aesthetics represented in the works in the exhibition. “Team shirts, Juliet glasses, the classic shorts and top, dance as an aesthetic element are some examples” says the curator. The selection of works sought to bring together as many artists as possible who recorded the memory and experience of funk and translated them into their works. Machado commented on the “Crialismo” movement, which imprints this experience in the contemporary context of Rio. “The attempt was to show funk in 360 degrees, showing that far beyond music, it also influences behavior, fashion, the continuous creation of trends that spread from Rio de Janeiro to the rest of Brazil and in each region it reaches its own characteristic. ”.
The exhibition has two rooms, in the first the story of the arrival of soul music in Rio de Janeiro is mainly on display, and in the second there are works from this contemporary scene described by Machado. The curator’s proposal is to show the development not only of funk – as a musical rhythm born from Rio’s black soul dances – but also of its aesthetics from the end of the 70s, in the context of soul music, to the present day. “Music is never just music, it represents a philosophy, a way of seeing life (…)”, he comments. For this reason, Dom Filó’s presence as curator is essential to bring together and rescue these musical movements along with his own aesthetic expressions that in some way influenced funk. Machado highlights how this crossroads of times brings to light experiences and identities that are inherently black. “The DNA of funk is black”, he adds.
Funk culture is repeatedly marginalized in Brazil, “which is why it is so important to place funk as a cultural and artistic product of maximum power and quality because it reflects the abundance of life that exists in the favelas and peripheries”. Bringing to the museum rooms works of plastic arts that portray the lived experience of this culture and the people who make it up is a milestone in the history of MAR.
Another experience can be seen free of charge by the public in São Paulo. The São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra (OSESP), in partnership started in 2015, carry out the “OSESP MASP Concerts” project. The series of concerts aims to establish dialogues between art and music, relating aesthetic and historical similarities. For each presentation, a work is chosen from MASP’s fixed collection, which is then commented on by a guest specialist, responsible for making the connection between the works of art in the museum’s collection with the pieces performed by OSESP musicians.
Concert held 3 years ago by the OSESP MASP program, with works by Tarsila do Amaral
The action is not new. “Relating art and music is an old trend in art institutions”, points out Cadu Riccioppo, curator and art critic – and also one of the experts invited by the project. The curator comments that such actions aim to take works of art out of their common place, bringing new movements and approaches to this artistic production. The purpose of the OSESP MASP concerts, in particular, is to bring to the general public dialogues between music and the visual arts that would not be obvious in other formats.
Riccioppo reveals that the selection of repertoires does not have a pre-established methodological rule to relate the selected visual works and the pieces performed by the musicians. “Sometimes it is a matter of trying to understand aesthetic connections, other times we look for possible historical connections between them, or even, we delve into a specific production by an artist and also a specific production by a composer”. There is not necessarily a direct correspondence between formal elements of the visual arts and formal elements of music, something that would be closer to Kandinsky and MAR. Riccioppo comments that the dialogue between the repertoire and the works can also be done as a counterpoint or historical review of the reading of each work.
The three situations demonstrate that there are always alternatives for reading an artistic work, be it visual or sound, and more and more institutions are opening themselves up to projects like this, which awaken an expanded and critical view in the public.
When asked about the public reception, Riccioppo sees that “if there is something that marks the successful character of the project, it is the fact that the two arts leave their highly isolated, highly autonomous place – private or isolated – in relation to the public dimension. . In the game of trying to join one with the other, the two open themselves up to be perceived differently.”