A visitor observes one of the works in the Isaac Julien exhibition dedicated to Lina Bo Bardi, on September 22 at the MAXXI in Rome.Giuseppe Lami / EFE
Now that museums are turning to the function they should have, they are crazy about inventing something new;
now that some insist on being absurd
kunsthallen
and bombard us with concepts such as “care” and “accompaniment” - terms that did not need to be codified, since the museum's very structure has always cared for and accompanied us;
Now in sum that fashion has decided that looking and appealing to sensations is neither acceptable nor
chic
, I want to go back to Lina Bo Bardi and her radical proposal, without so much theoretical blah, blah, blah that has us a bit exhausted.
Lina Bo Bardi, to the rescue of architects
At the São Paulo Art Museum —that powerful red building on Avenida Paulista, designed by Bo Bardi— the Italian-born architect proposed a museum approach that challenged the norm: the paintings from the magnificent “classic” collection that houses the museum. museum were not hanging on the walls.
They were positioned like a forest on glass feet, a space for cinematographic depth planes that, on the way back, allowed the rear ones to be seen.
It was the future happening in the mid-sixties of the 20th century, perhaps because modern architecture requires modern ways of presenting collections.
Despite everything, no one has ever been more radical in a museum.
Nobody has challenged the exclusions of the speech from the speech in such a forceful way, because with the rear ones the invisible part of the picture that the power has hidden - and hides - from the "people outside the group" was revealed - to quote Martha Rosler from 1979, before it was a trend.
It became visible to anyone that part to which, according to the prevailing logic, only the artist, the curator, the museum director, the restorer ... Those who occupy a privileged position in short, have access.
These backs became, in addition, a kind of extended cartouche, details in the history of the works: from trips to eventual marks left by the artist himself.
In the work shown by Isaac Julien's Helga de Alvear gallery, the artist talks about Lina Bo Bardi and recreates her in some of her mythical works — from MASP to SESC Pompeii.
He does it through a walk through the buildings and a fictionalized narrative with actors based on the artist's ideas.
Especially one of them becomes the
leitmotif
of Julien's story.
“Linear time is a western creation;
time is not linear, it is a wonderful tangle in which, at any moment, you can choose points and invent solutions, without beginning or end ”, says Bo Bardi.
Like Bo Bardi's time, Julien's space is not linear either: it is broken by the three screens that make up the work.
And the viewer gets lost in another wonderful mess that acts as a mirror.
In front of the work it is clear that the future is not tomorrow.
Not even today.
It was yesterday.