Hélio Oiticica (1937-80) was one of the most brilliant Brazilian artists
of the 1960s and 1970s. He was a forerunner of participatory art, and
his melding of geometric abstraction and bodily engagement has
influenced contemporary artists from Cildo Meireles and Ricardo Basbaum
to Gabriel Orozco, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and Olafur Eliasson.
This book examines Oiticica's impressive works against the backdrop of
Brazil's dramatic postwar push for modernization.
From Oiticica's late 1950s experiments with painting and color to his
mid-1960s wearable Parangolés, Small traces a series of artistic
procedures that foreground the activation of the spectator. Analyzing
works, propositions, and a wealth of archival material, she shows how
Oiticica's practice recast--in a sense "folded"--Brazil's utopian vision
of progress as well as the legacy of European constructive art.
Ultimately, the book argues that the effectiveness of Oiticica's
participatory works stems not from a renunciation of art, but rather
from their ability to produce epistemological models that reimagine the
traditional boundaries between art and life.