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Lygia Clark

Life

In 1920, Lygia Clark was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais Brazil. Clark became an artist in 1947. In this year, she moved to Rio de Janeiro to study with Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. Between 1950-52, she studied with Lger and Arpad Szenes in Paris. In 1953, she became one of the founding members of Rio's Frente group of artists. In 1957, Clark participated in Rio de Janeiro's first National Concrete Art Exhibition. This would be one of Clark's frequent trips to Brazil in order to exhibit her artwork.

In the first decade of her career, Clark devoted her time to painting and sculpture. In the early 1970s, Clark taught art at the Sorbonne. During this time, Clark also explored the idea of sensory perception through her art. Her art became a multisensory experience in which the spectator became an active participant. Between 1979 and 1988, Clark moved more toward art therapy than actually creating new works. She used her art therapy to treat psychotic and mildly disturbed patients. Clark returned to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1977. In 1988, she died of a heart attack in her home.

Some critics say her artwork pre-aged the modern digital information era. Her later works were more abstract and holistic with a focus on psychotherapy and healing.

Stylistic Periods

During the early part of Clark's career, she focused on creating small monochromatic paintings which were done in black, gray, and white. She would then move on to create neo-constructivist sculptures. During the 1960s, her work became more conceptual and she used soft objects that could be manipulated by the art spectator. Clark later moved on to co-found the Neo-Concretist movement with fellow Brazilian Hlio Oiticica. Throughout her career, Clark's art would evolve as if she had unanswered questions about her art's effect on spectators. One of her goals, through her artwork, was to answer all of her questions. The purpose of her art was to appeal to the average, everyday person, not just the bourgeois crowd.

As previously mentioned, Clark and Oiticica co-founded the Neo-Concretist movement. The Neo-Concretists believed that art was subjective and organic. They believed that an artwork should be manipulated by the spectator. The Neo-Concretists believed that the object and person should become a single entity. They utilized 3-dimensional moveable figures so that the spectator, in essence, becomes the artist. Neo-Concretists looked to push the limits of what art represented. The art is the actual process of doing. It is during this interaction that the spectator truly experiences what the art work means.

In the late 1950s, Clark and Oiticica fused modern European geometric abstraction art with a Brazilian cultural flavor. The Brazilian Neo-Concretist movement borrowed their artistic ideas from Max Bill who was the director of the Ulm Superior School of Form in Germany during the early 1950s. One of the goals of this newest artistic group was to create worldly, modern art as opposed to the provincial style currently popular in Brazil. The Neo-Concretists wanted art to be intuitive, yet expressive and subjective.

During 1960s-1970s Brazil, there was a counter-cultural movement that persisted even after the country was ruled under a military dictatorship. At this point in time, Institutional Act Number 5 (aka AI5) was enacted and artists were forced into exile. Many artists fled Brazil simply because they were unable to deal with the current political situation. Clark spent these years in Paris where she taught at the Sorbonne. She developed her more famous interactive works with her students.

During the 1970s, Clark explored the role of sensory perception and psychic interaction that the participants would have with her artwork. She referred to this as "ritual without myth". For Clark, art work would have no representative meaning outside of its manipulation by the participants. Participants would take the art objects and fashion them in any way that they pleased. At this point, the line between the participant and art work would become blurred. The participants would become one with the art piece. In a sense, the participant and art work would become fused. In the final years of her career, Clark focused solely on psychotherapy and the use of art in healing patients. Clark's objective through her art was to surpass each phase since ideas that were originally considered groundbreaking were outdated with regard to her latter works.

Clark's later, more famous works were viewed as "living experiences." Clark's interactive art period lasted three decades . She did not separate the mind from the body and believed that art should be experienced through all five senses. After 1963, Clark's work could no longer exist outside of a participant's experience. Her art became an interactive experience. She believed that a viewer (also known as a "participant") served an active and important function in the art world. This is one reason Clark's work cannot be adequately enjoyed at a museum. In most museums, works are affixed to a stand or on the wall. Clark's works were meant to be manipulated by the viewer/participant. Her belief was that art should be a multi-sensory experience, not just one enjoyed through the eyes.

One of her most recognized interactive art pieces is Baba Antropofgica. This piece was inspired by a dream that Clark had about an anonymous substance that streamed out from her mouth. This experience was not a pleasurable one for Clark. She viewed it as the vomiting of a lived experience that, in turn, was swallowed by others. In a sense, Clark seemed to view this atrocity as a way of displaying its freedom. One of Clark's (and for that matter, Oiticica) aims was to create art directed toward a larger world audience, drawing attention toward its social issues thus achieving as sense of cultural freedom. For her interactive art pieces, Clark always used inexpensive everyday objects. These objects would then only have significance if they came into direct contact with a participant's body.

In the latter part of her career, Clark focused more on art therapy and less on the actual creation of a work. When she returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1976, Clark's therapeutic focus rest upon the memory of trauma. She wanted to uncover why the power of certain objects brought about a vivid memory in her psychotherapy patients so that she could treat their psychosis. Depending upon the individual, the sessions could be short-term or longterm. Treatment came about through the relationship between the relationship object and how the participant interpreted its meaning.

Art Works/Experiments

1958: Unidade series- These were paintings on a dense matte surface produced with a nitro-cellulose paint on board. There was no frame, but the black surface was raised from the wall and bordered by slightly recessed, narrow lines that suggest a fullness or even an emptiness.

Cocoons- These were unpainted metal sheets that were folded over so that there was an interior space. These sheets were hung on the wall.

1960s: Bichos (aka Animals, Beasts) - This was the first series of movable art pieces created by Clark. This was where Clark took the Cocoons structures down from the wall and thus they became hinged art pieces, which could then be manipulated by participants. Clark viewed the Bichos as living organisms whose parts were all functionally related to each other. The participants interaction with these organisms is what defines the new relationship.

1964: Borrachas,- These flexible sculptures were not on pedestals nor were they affixed to the walls: complete interaction between the art piece and the participant.

Caminhando- The participants are each invited to take a pair of scissors, twist a strip of paper and form a Mobius loop out of it and continuously cut alone the plane. This is the art experiment in which Clark commented that the meaning of this particular experience lies in actually engaging in the activity.

1966: Air & Stone- A small plastic bag was filled with air. A stone is then placed on the bag and the participant squeezes the bag to experience the heft of the space and the weightlessness of the air inside the bag. The rock begins to show qualities of a living organism. In this experiment, Clark played with the concept of opposites such as emptiness and fullness and air versus solid.

1967: Sensorial Hoods- This experiment involved eye pieces, ear covers, and a small bag that would be affixed over the participant's nose. The participants would also have helmets with small mirrors affixed to them. The purpose of this experiment was to utilize all of the senses at one time. The outcome of this experiment might be that a participant would use his senses in a way he would never have thought possible.

Abyss-Masks- The participant's eyes were blindfolded and large bags of air weighed down with stones could be touched giving off the sensation of empty space from within the body.

The I and the You: Clothing/Body/Clothing- A man and a woman wear hoods over their eyes and a full body suit and during this experiment, each would come to understand their own gender by feeling through their pockets

1973: Collective Bodies- Listed below.

Antropofagia- One participant lies down while the rest sit around him with blindfolds over their eyes and communicating with one another solely by touch. These participants are eating fruit found inside the pockets of the reposed participant's suit (which forms a stomach).

Baba Antropofgica (aka "Anthropophagical Dribble") - One participant lies down and the standing participants hold small spools of thread in their mouths and release the string until the reposed participant would be completely immersed in the thread.

1976: Structuring the Self

1976-1982: Clark focused primarily on art therapy

Exhibitions

1959 - Bienal, So Paulo

1960 - Venice Biennale, Venice

1960 - Konkrete Kunst, Zrich

1961 - Bienal, So Paulo

1962 - Venice Biennale, Venice

1963 - Bienal, So Paulo

1964 - Signals Gallery, London

1964 - Mouvement II, Paris

1965 - Signals Gallery, London

1965 - Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro

1967 - Bienal, So Paulo

1968 - Retrospective, Venice Biennale, Venice

1986 - Retrospective (with Hlio Oiticica), Pao Imperial, Rio de Janeiro

1987 - Retrospective, Museu de Arte Contempornea da Universidade de So Paulo

1997 - Documenta, Kassel

2000 - Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

2001 - Brazil: Body and Soul, New York, Guggenheim Museum

2001 - 7th International Istanbul Biennial Sala especial, Istanbul

2002 - Brazil: Body and Soul, Guggenheim Museum, New York

2003 - Pulse: Art, Healing and Transformation, ICA, Boston,

2004 - Pensamento Mudo, Dan Galeria

2004 - Artists' Favourites, ICA - London

2005 - 50 Jahre/Years DOCUMENTA: 1955-2005, Kunsthalle Fridericiaum Kassel

2005 - Lygia Clark, da obra ao acontecimento: somos o molde, a voc cabe o sopro..., Muse des Beaux-Arts, Nantes

2005 - Tropiclia: a revolution in Brazilian Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

2006 - Barbican, London

2006 - Pinacoteca do Estado de So Paulo, SP, Brasil

2006-07 - Bronx Museum of the Art, New York

2007 - WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, MOCA, Los Angeles

Note: Clark's later works were interactive pieces which made it difficult for museum curators to properly display them in their institutions. Consequently, her works from the late 1960s onward have not been seen in art exhibitions.

Bibliography

Guy Brett, "The Proposal of Lygia Clark". In: Catherine de Zegher (ed.), Inside the Visible. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston & MIT Press, 1996.

Lygia Clark, "Nostalgia of the Body". In: October. The Second Decade, 1986-1996. October Books / MIT Press, 1997.

References

^ a b c d "Lygia Clark" on the Coleccon Cisneros website http://www/coleccioncisneros.org

^ a b c d Brett Guy, "Lygia Clark: In Search of the Body," Art in America (July 1994): http://www.encyclopedia.com/printable.aspx?id=1G1:15570360

^ a b c Suely Rolnik, "The Body's Contagious Memory; Lygia Clark Return to the Museum," translated by Rodrigo Nunes, Transversal (January 2007): http://eipcp.net/transversal/0507/rolnik/en

^ a b Simone Osthoff, "Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica: A Legacy of Interactivity and Participation for a Telematic Future," Leonardo, Vol. 30, No. 4. (1997), 279-289: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0024-094X(1997)3:4<279:LCAHOA>2.0.CO;2-1

Websites

The Body's Contagious Memory: Lygia Clark's Return to the Museum

Lygia Clark

Coleccion Cisneros

Lygia Clark: In Search of the Body

Essay on her work and life

The Land You installation/clothing series (1967), via Documenta X

Categories: Brazilian painters | 1920 births | 1988 deaths | University of Paris faculty
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