Tropicàlia At The Barbican
Mar. 29th, 2006 06:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveI finally got round to seeing the Tropicàlia exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery which continues through to May 21st. I highly recommend a visit.
"Tropicàlia - A Revolution in Brazilian Culture" revisits the energy and excitement of late sixties and early seventies Brazil to reasssess a true Brazilian cultural revolution.
Apart from the gorgious music that mixed bossa nova with rock influences which was most realised by Caetano Veloso's "Tropicàlia!" LP,The Tropicalist movement is inextricably linked with thw visual arts,cinema,theatre and even architecture.
Crucially it was an installation by Hëlio Oiticica in 1967,a colourful distillation of the emergant favela (or shanty town) diaspora, which gave the movement both its name and focus.
The period also reflects a process of profound cultural and social transformation by a diverse group of creative talents galvanised by a commmon understanding of national reality.The movement emerged against a backdrop of a repressive military regime which lasted til 1985 and a period of accelerated development characterised by abyssmal economic and social inequality.
A huge influx of rural poor was creating favelas along the edges of the cities,providing cheap labour and services in an increasingly urban highly stratified society.
The Tropicalists were inspired by the Brazilian situation and the new cultural diversity - a melting pot of European and Afircan influences as well as a successful marriage of high-art European avant-garde tendencies with mass cultural popular movements like pop music. The meovement was also born out of an urgent desire to forge a new cultural identity created from the synthesis of "cultura populare" and international modernism.
The Tropicalists placed the spectactor at the very heart of their practice and urged the spectator to participate in the creative milieu ,viz a viz with certain installations and very tactile art such as the various gloves and head masks shown in the exhibition upstairs.
They created a new vibrant cultural language that remains influential to this day even in advertsisng (I refer to a recent track from Os Mutantes for a fairly recent UK TV ad).
Furthet details about the exhibition can be obtained from http://www.barbican.org.uk/tropicalia.
Whilst on the subject of art i must direct you to an interesting and thoght provoking
site from my pal and former work collegaue Pual Munson.You will find his art at http://www.munsonart.co.uk.
A big thanks for Stephen to link his site to mine with the review of the Vitamin B12 gig.
Also ,for those yet to discover these sites,three fascinating livejournal accounts by the said Mr.Drennan,his reviews of small press zines at http://community.livejournal.com/bypasszine/
and his own diary blog at http://steviecat.livejournal.com/
and his new look at all kinds of objects at http://object-project.livejournal.com/
A good trawl through http://alasdairwillis.com reveals an insight into what the main leader (although he would dsipute it) of Vitamin B12 thinks about,and ,in my opinion,is particularly interesting to all deep thinkers and philosophers.
And finally for creative people in the south there is http://www.artistsandmakers.com/
So happy reading and blogging,and remeber,comments are always welcome.
"Tropicàlia - A Revolution in Brazilian Culture" revisits the energy and excitement of late sixties and early seventies Brazil to reasssess a true Brazilian cultural revolution.
Apart from the gorgious music that mixed bossa nova with rock influences which was most realised by Caetano Veloso's "Tropicàlia!" LP,The Tropicalist movement is inextricably linked with thw visual arts,cinema,theatre and even architecture.
Crucially it was an installation by Hëlio Oiticica in 1967,a colourful distillation of the emergant favela (or shanty town) diaspora, which gave the movement both its name and focus.
The period also reflects a process of profound cultural and social transformation by a diverse group of creative talents galvanised by a commmon understanding of national reality.The movement emerged against a backdrop of a repressive military regime which lasted til 1985 and a period of accelerated development characterised by abyssmal economic and social inequality.
A huge influx of rural poor was creating favelas along the edges of the cities,providing cheap labour and services in an increasingly urban highly stratified society.
The Tropicalists were inspired by the Brazilian situation and the new cultural diversity - a melting pot of European and Afircan influences as well as a successful marriage of high-art European avant-garde tendencies with mass cultural popular movements like pop music. The meovement was also born out of an urgent desire to forge a new cultural identity created from the synthesis of "cultura populare" and international modernism.
The Tropicalists placed the spectactor at the very heart of their practice and urged the spectator to participate in the creative milieu ,viz a viz with certain installations and very tactile art such as the various gloves and head masks shown in the exhibition upstairs.
They created a new vibrant cultural language that remains influential to this day even in advertsisng (I refer to a recent track from Os Mutantes for a fairly recent UK TV ad).
Furthet details about the exhibition can be obtained from http://www.barbican.org.uk/tropicalia.
Whilst on the subject of art i must direct you to an interesting and thoght provoking
site from my pal and former work collegaue Pual Munson.You will find his art at http://www.munsonart.co.uk.
A big thanks for Stephen to link his site to mine with the review of the Vitamin B12 gig.
Also ,for those yet to discover these sites,three fascinating livejournal accounts by the said Mr.Drennan,his reviews of small press zines at http://community.livejournal.com/bypasszine/
and his own diary blog at http://steviecat.livejournal.com/
and his new look at all kinds of objects at http://object-project.livejournal.com/
A good trawl through http://alasdairwillis.com reveals an insight into what the main leader (although he would dsipute it) of Vitamin B12 thinks about,and ,in my opinion,is particularly interesting to all deep thinkers and philosophers.
And finally for creative people in the south there is http://www.artistsandmakers.com/
So happy reading and blogging,and remeber,comments are always welcome.
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