Tomie Ohtake

sem título | untitled, 1977 óleo sobre tela | oil on canvas 100 × 100 cm
coleção | collection Miguel Chaia

100

sem título | untitled, 1982 acrílica sobre tela | acrylic on canvas 100 × 100 cm
coleção | collection Francisco Ferreira Leite

101

sem título | untitled, 1980 óleo sobre tela | oil on canvas 100 × 100 cm
coleção | collection Miguel Chaia

102

sem título | untitled, 1974 óleo sobre tela | oil on canvas 100 × 100 cm
coleção | collection James Lisboa

103



sem título | untitled, 1983 acrílica sobre tela | acrylic on canvas 100 × 100 cm
coleção | collection Ricard Akagawa

105

sem título | untitled, 1980 óleo sobre tela | oil on canvas 150 × 150 cm
coleção | collection Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro

106

sem título | untitled, 1983 óleo sobre tela | oil on canvas 149,5 × 150 cm
coleção particular | private collection

107



sem título | untitled, 1984 óleo sobre tela | oil on canvas 150 × 150 cm
coleção particular | private collection

109



sem título | untitled, 1984 ferro | iron 120 × 170 × 172 cm
coleção | collection Harilda e Gerard de Larragoiti

111

sem título | untitled, 1984 escultura de ferro | iron sculpture 300 × 80 cm
coleção particular | private collection

112

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tomie ohtake:
gesture and geometric reason

2013 was a special year at Instituto Tomie Ohtake.
It was the year for commemorating the 100th birthday of
she who lends her name to the institute and whose ex-
pressive œuvre has attained considerable acclaim. Tomie
Ohtake’s centennial celebrations included various events
that ended with the exhibition Tomie Ohtake: Gesture
and Geometric Reason.

In his curatorial design of the exhibition, historian
Paulo Herkenhoff – himself a regular interlocutor of the
artist and one of her most dedicated followers – chose to
present 60 years of her art production through the prism
of her relations and contrasts with the Brazilian and the
international Concrete art movements. To this end, he
drew on the unique manner in which she uses geometric
forms and constructive elements in her artwork.

The curator’s slant as regards Ohtake’s production be-
comes even more significant if one considers the artist
has never belonged to any art movement. Ohtake has
always treaded an independent path despite having ac-
companied the development of abstract art in Brazil,
engaging in dialogue and making important contacts in
the circle of Concrete and Neo-concrete artists and critics.

As indicated in the exhibition title, gesture and geome-
try are combined elements in this stage of Tomie Ohtake’s
career. Despite their possibly implying a formal reason-
ing, these attributes reveal the artist’s relationship with her
paintings and sculptures, as if the techniques, brushstrokes,
torsions and compositions she employs would impregnate
their aesthetic output with her presence.

Most impressively, the exhibition drew on histori-
cal and aesthetic reflections to feature a cohesive and
amazing path made up of Ohtake’s images and the space
organized between exhibits. This event added a grace
note in the conclusion of Tomie Ohtake’s centennial
celebrations. We hereby wish to acknowledge RE IRB
Brazil, Bradesco, Laboratório Aché and Havaianas for
the partnership and collaboration that have made this
tribute possible.

Instituto Tomie Ohtake

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tomie ohtake - constructive Paulo Herkenhoff

in the essay L’Empire des Signes (Empire of Signs, Brazil –, as result of her contact with, and experimen-
1970) Roland Barthes re-created Japan under the im- tation in, Western art in her days as a teenage school
pact of a journey for the purpose of interpretation. At student. This was the prevailing paradigm of moder-
the base of the sign’s poetic economy is “the aberrant nity in a Japan eager for Westernizing transformations.
grammar of the Japanese language,” he states. Instead Ohtake was growing up in Japan when it opened up to
of using Freud’s concept of the uncanny (unheimliche) to the Western world under the Meiji emperor Mutsuhito,2
interpret its singularities, Barthes prefers to delve into who ruled from 1868 to 1912 – a period marked by the
language signs, which fascinated and captivated him. crisis of traditional feudalism and the advent of political,
From the Latin (aberrare), the adjective aberrant derives economic and social change, which included integration
from the prefix ab (separation of outer from boundary) with Europe and the United States. During this process,
and the verb errare (to go astray, to wander). Therefore, Brazil too entered diplomatic and trading relations with
the use of “aberrant” by Barthes to focus Japan’s sign sys- Japan. The Meiji emperor’s Shinto religious orientation
tem through the language itself designates that which was widespread in Japan, but spiritual life featured syn-
wanders or moves away from the prevailing standard (in cretism too, since concurrent interests in Shintoism and
his case, Western tradition). In this sense, both scientists Buddhism coexisted. Something similar happened in the
and artists may be aberrant. Barthes’ expression “aberrant spiritual experience of Tomie Ohtake – although her
language” may be extended to describe Tomie Ohtake relations with Shinto remained in abeyance for further
as an artist situated between the modernizing Japan of study. The enlightened Meiji regime also fostered the
her youth and the modernity of Brazil, the country she pursuit of learning. In this process, to take an example
chose to live in – hence her errant wandering straddles closer to the history of art in Brazil, a Japanese uncle
these two instances of modernity. She operates an arc of Japanese-born Brazilian painter Flavio-Shiró (1928)
ranging from the geometry of shadows to the ensō – the traveled to Germany to study science at the University
imperfect circle in Japanese culture – or to painting in- of Heidelberg. Towards the end of the Meiji period, the
formed by the notion of order in Concrete art and sen- first Japanese migrants sailed to Brazil, where they land-
soriality in Neo-concrete art. ‘Constructive will’ emerges ed in Rio de Janeiro, in 1907, and Santos, in 1908. Tomie
in Ohtake’s painting as a fissure in her gestural system in Ohtake was born in Kyoto, the Japanese imperial capital,
the context of Western and Eastern mentalities. In the in 1913, a year after the end of the modernizing period.
wake of Barthes’ Japan, we may see her geometric work The previous year, ancient Edo had been renamed Tokyo
as an aberrant art moving away from or beyond the Eu- and designated the nation’s capital. Ohtake’s family life
ropean constructivist camp of Russian, German, Dutch and geographical origin were thus intertwined with key
and Swiss artists.The calligraphic act and painterly action processes in Japanese society: tradition, modernization
in her œuvre, whether informal or formless, necessarily and opening to the rest of the world.
reach for a new poetic diction and establish a system
of symbols beyond rhetoric and analog connotations in Destined to be modern, Ohtake also did her part for
the signifier-signified relationship. Polysemy produces the ‘general constructive will’ by producing autonomous
demands for historical, critical and transcultural conver- culture in a peripheral country, denoting her wish to be
gences that address the phenomenological particularities part of Brazil’s complex cultural system and spiritual fab-
corresponding to Ohtake’s gaze, constructed in the ric.3 A certain effort to problematize rationality contextu-
course of developing a complex poetic agenda. The ar- alizes Ohtake’s production for a second characteristic of
chaeological gaze comes to the aid of Ohtake’s pursuit Brazilian art, which would now be ‘general constructive
of a plastic-conceptual project for the pictorial sign, if will’, the most important aspect of the Brazilian avant-
only the method open to the transversality that crosses garde according to Hélio Oiticica.4 Ohtake was asked to
this tenuous constructivist universe is rewarded by the bring her work into this debate and did so under the in-
experience of difference. fluence of its principles rather than a rigid formal adjust-
ment. Nor was she asked because of her work’s adherence
Critic Mário Pedrosa’s claim that Brazil was “destined to the principles of New Objectivity; rather, it was due to
to be modern”1 gained the emphasis of a 20th-century it having been included in this movement’s historically
aphorism, such was his flair for describing Brazil’s cultur- constructivist matrix. Although Oiticica was referring to
al dynamics. Ever since Ohtake’s childhood in traditional what he called ‘New Objectivity’, based on six points (in-
Kyoto, she was apparently ‘destined to be modern’ – like cluding the “tendency to reject the object and go beyond

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easel painting” and “the anti-art concept”), Ohtake ob- Husserl have often been used to usher in practices that
stinately continued to practice ‘easel painting’. However, are precisely the opposite of those recommended by the
she also introduced other pictorial issues that would con- philosopher of phenomenology. Husserl functions, there-
stitute her anthropophagic mode, a characteristic of her fore, as a kind of talisman-alibi. Mechanistic gaze and
own painting. Primarily, her ‘blind paintings’ of the early reductionist interpretation lead to misconceptions such
1960s defied the vision-centric tyranny of easel painting, as misunderstanding specific differences between Bra-
despite it having been a permanent practice for artist as zilian Concrete painters, for instance, or yet between
renowned as Antonio Dias. Another factor was the trans- Oiticica’s different groups of Metaesquemas in the 1950s,
cultural dimension of her work, informed by the syncretic or Mira Schendel’s 1964 series of monotypes. Certain
spiritual experience of Shinto-Buddhism then prevailing aspects of Ohtake’s production – such as her ‘blind
in Japan, which Ohtake brought to Brazil. In her condi- paintings’ – also tend to be downgraded by analysts.
tion as involuntary immigrant (traveling to São Paulo in Historians such as Miguel Chaia and Agnaldo Farias
1936 to visit a brother, then unable to return to Japan have undertaken the task to clear these obstacles from
when World War II broke out), Ohtake was constantly the gaze on Ohtake’s visual thinking. “Abstract art re-
pursuing integration in Brazil. Hélio Oiticica developed mains misunderstood by the majority of the majority
his ‘general constructive will’ concept to cover anthro- of the viewing public.” Maurice Tuchman wrote. “Yet
pophagy, believing that “what led Oswald de Andrade to around 1910, when groups of artists moved away from
his celebrated conclusion that our anthropophagite cul- representational art toward abstraction there was never
ture, or our immediately reducing all foreign influences an outright dismissal of meaning.”7 Part of our mission
to Brazilian models ... would not have happened were with this text is to look for hidden meanings in Tomie
there not something special, a Brazilian characteristic la- Ohtake’s painting.
tent in our way of apprehending these influences, which
was our general constructive will.” 5 Rather than religious The author’s writing project on Japanese immigrants’
syncretism, the immigrant Ohtake’s painting produced contribution to the formulation of modernity in Brazil
an East-West synthesis in a singular slant from her own
cannibalism, unrelated to the issue of underdevelop- The key premise for this historiographical program is the
ment and cultural dependence. Oiticica sees this general hypothesis that, in art, there can be no Brazil without
constructive will as the overcoming of underdevelop- Japan, despite the suppression of Japanese-Brazilian art-
ment, a question posed by Gullar’s Vanguarda e subde- ists by large segments of the formalist academy. The ini-
senvolvimento.6 Ohtake’s anti-dogmatic singularity lay tial focus was Ohtake’s production from 2001 onwards
in her cultural origin situated in the formative process followed by the exhibition Flavio-Shiró: pintor de três
of Brazilian culture itself, being multiple and dialoguing mundos – 65 anos de trajetória commemorating the 65th
with differences in the environment. While the Neo- anniversary of his painting career, in 2008.8The next step
concrete thought provided a more remote pillar for the was the exhibition Laços do olhar [Bonds of the Gaze], in
New Objectivity experience, Ohtake was influenced by 2008), which aimed at putting together, with the collab-
its principles and she approached its formulators, from oration of Roberto Okinaka, a comprehensive retrospec-
critic Mário Pedrosa to painters Willys de Castro and tive of 19th-century bonds between Brazil and Japan in
Hercules Barsotti. All this eventually led to her “arrival” the visual arts. The perspective posed by Mário Pedrosa
to the general constructive will. for relations between Western art and Eastern culture
and his interest in Ohtavvke’s phenomenological paint-
The conclusion that the constructive will in Ohtake’s ing in the 1960s provided solid grounds for a revision of
painting is polysemic leads to demands for more open her role in the Brazilian scene. In 2011, a Japanese-Bra-
approaches to particular features of the phenomenology zilian trilogy began with an essay on Manabu Mabe’s9
she developed for over 50 years. An archaeological gaze painting commissioned by editorial coordinator Max
is required to appreciate unexpected plastic and concep- Perlingeiro. Ohtake’s ‘constructive will’ ensured that the
tual developments of the sign. Methodological refine- trilogy continued 10 with a book released in her centen-
ment must be open to the transversality of relations tak- nial year of 2013. Parts of the present essay are enlarged
ing place in the universe of Ohtake’s constructive situa- versions of extracts from this publication.The trilogy is to
tions. One problem posed for the historiography of geo- be concluded in 2014 with a more extensive coverage of
metric abstraction in Brazil is the difficulty of the real the œuvre of Flavio-Shiró, a painter of three worlds: Ja-
analytic approach to the art object itself, which Edmund pan, Brazil (particularly the Amazon region), and Europe.
Husserl suggested, with a view to understanding it and
its singularity against logocentric verbiage. References to

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The first retrospective of Ohtake’s work was held situated above opinion,demanding prior knowledge for its
at Museu de Arte de São Paulo – Masp in 1979, with review (Manifesto Ruptura, 1952). In the article “Mani-
curatorial design by Casimiro Xavier de Mendonça. The festo Ruptura,” which he wrote in 1953, Cordeiro pro-
exhibition mapped the artist’s extensive production and posed a more empirical program for the Fiedlerian pre-
had huge impact in São Paulo. Occupying an entire floor view, and a more definite Concrete project.16 Likewise,
of the building designed by architect Lina Bo Bardi, the Tomie Ohtake is not represented in the Adolpho Leirner
show was accompanied by an enhanced catalogue with collection of Brazilian art, but her work integrates the
plentiful photographic illustrations. However, it was not section of geometric abstract art of the Collection Hecil-
until two decades later that another publication would da and Sergio Fadel. Possibly the same lack of critical
examine her painting career and go on to produce a me- and historical information justifies Ohtake’s absence
ticulous taxonomy of her œuvre organized from the point from Leirner’s collection. A keenly attentive collector, he
of view of formal and pictorial problems she had ad- acquired works by artists whose profiles would not pass
dressed in half a century’s work.11 Highlights in this new a more rigorous conceptual screening of geometric art-
book are Miguel Chaia’s review and Ricardo Ohtake’s works, as for example Norberto Nicola and Jacques Dou-
editorial work. Chaia’s text reveals a process of concep- chez, or artists who belonged in the second generation
tual problematization that could only be the fruit of his of constructive art, such as Sergio Camargo (Relevo 326,
extensive reflection on Ohtake’s œuvre. 1970). There are instances in which Ohtake’s mathemati-
cal unconscious acts as a compass opening into varying
Despite the prolific academic output over the past two geometries, snaps under the many pressures of the canon,
decades, our knowledge of the history of modern Brazil- or may even be forsaken as a form of rejection of the
ian art has numerous historiographical lacunae that im- mechanistic rationale. However, this gaze will always be
pair the country’s symbolic cartography, thus challenging in some way struck by the recurring geometric uncon-
historians with the task of filling in blanks. If Ohtake’s scious that surfaces in the artist’s paintings, often as a
body of geometric works had been thoroughly charted symptom of the crisis of rationalism.
or made visible in the mid-1970s, critic Frederico Mo-
rais might have discussed it in his groundbreaking survey The conceptual keys to Ohtake’s painting are definitely
Concretismo / Neo-concretismo: quem é, quem não é, quem situated beyond the labels to which it was confined, in
aderiu, quem precedeu, quem tangenciou, quem permaneceu, the abyss excavated by the reductionist approach of skim-
saiu, voltou, o concretismo existiu? 12 [Concretism / Neo- ming glances or the ethnocentrism of rationalists in the
concretism: who is in, who is out, who joined, preceded, Brazilian market. The problem was not in her painting
touched on, remained, left, returned. Did Concretism or her discreet personality, but the systematically dis-
exist?] – a milestone in discussions about geometry torted reception of her work by certain critics. Against
reaching beyond Concrete art and Neo-concrete art. the reductionism of confining her to the heading ‘Jap-
Ohtake’s leaning to geometry emerged erratically in the anese-Brazilian artists’ – a ghetto outlined by Mário de
early 1950s and was expressed more frequently from the Andrade and implemented in a Rio de Janeiro university
mid-60s. However, she was always somewhat removed –, a more in-depth assertion is required to demonstrate
from the strict rules set by Waldemar Cordeiro, a painter that she is indeed a Japanese-Brazilian artist. Hence, the
with the collective Ruptura who advocated the preview cultural density driving the importance of her contribu-
of the Concrete form, as in the philosopher Konrad tion to art and its singularity, beyond the confines of the
Fiedler’s advocacy of rigidly geometric drawing. Fiedler ghetto of nationalisms or the reductionism typical of
sought to “redefine the essence of art” and deplored “the Greenbergian flunkies of form. At just the time when
constant spontaneity of being” (aphorism 94) or posi- the Brazilian constructivist project was facing the 1964
tivism, empiricism, atomistic-mechanistic intuition and crisis, Tomie Ohtake seemed to have exhausted the limit-
arbitrary spiritual edifice (aphorism 97).13 Cordeiro also experiment of her ‘blind paintings’ and moved on to a
replicates a palette restricted to primary and secondary particular process of gradually addressing the apparent
colors in terms of the manifesto “The Basis of Concrete exhaustion of geometric abstract languages.
Art” manifesto (1930, signed by Theo van Doesburg,
Léon Tutundjian, Jean Hélion, Otto Carlsund and Mar- Proto-geometry
cel Wantz) and quasi-industrial painting methods.14 The
manifesto argues that an artwork “must be fully conceived When, after having had two children and raised them
and spiritually shaped before it is produced”.15Taking the through to their teen years, Ohtake started painting again
same path as the European group, Cordeiro wanted art at the age of almost 40, most of her paintings were urban
to be given a definite role in contemporary intellectual scenes in São Paulo, such as rows of ordinary houses on
work as a means of knowledge of deducible concepts,

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Rua da Paz (1952), in the Mooca district. Her “geometric banished forever from Ohtake’s spatial, material and
will” shown from 1952 to 1956 in the organization chromatic rationale. Her return to painting coincided
of urban landscapes soon turned toward abstract art. with the first São Paulo Biennial. At that time, this new
A prevailing feature of her return to painting was an intu- locus for art in the city’s imaginary made a great impact
itive ordering and alignment of facades in perspective to locally, even though young Brazilian artists had already
depict the city. A geometric unconscious was already ac- been doing abstract work. Before finding her place in the
tivating in the emerging artist. Ohtake’s subtle geomet- material sign responses, the artist’s first step was to de-
ric will was more remotely seen in her urge to use space finitively do away with titles for her works. An untitled
in the form of a proto-geometry based on human inter- painting cannot allude to anything.
ventions in landscape such as a row of houses on a street,
or lines of trees. In a painting dated 1956 (60 x 75 cm), the epiphany
of space is developed into white lines outlining the void
The São Paulo cityscape was to offer Ohtake an un- of its monochrome support with random straight lines
expected relationship with Ukiyo-e woodblock art (1952 and curves and angled bends – the locus is constructed
and 1953). A couple of her canvases overlap a double se- over a huge area of dark blue hues. This proto-geometric
riality: façades aligned along streets and tree trunks in calligraphy evokes Paul Klee’s almost childlike drawings
rows. This painting is typical of japonisme, although it of simple structures, such as imaginary architectures. The
might seem tautological to say so. The powerful graph- resolute brushstroke follows the sensory path of Ohtake’s
ic sense of the tree trunks recalls the striking contours discrete rationale. Form alludes to nothing beyond its in-
of 19th-century Ukiyo-e production in Japan. The view ner space. Construction is architecture and structure. Her
of the façades is shrouded by a row of dark-brown bare spatial key is far from Waldemar Cordeiro’s Concrete
trunks to contrast with brightly lit facades in the back- methodology, since the subject will never be expressed
ground, as in the grille effect of the Ukiyo-e graphic art by mathematics, although the latter inhabits the un-
tradition. A line of trees along this street in São Paulo conscious of language. In the second half of the 1950s,
operates the ‘grille effect’ or play of light and shade to Ohtake worked on several experiments and investigated
define space, as noted in a text on Japanese woodcuts a method that would enable her to use abstraction as a
written by Siegfried Wichmann,17, which Ohtake had condensation of purpose and action. Her ‘blind paintings’
surely read. Hokusai addressed the same subject in vari- opened up a new path.
ous woodcut landscapes such as Abe no Nakamaro (Look-
ing at the moon, 1840s). His methodology was adopted Transcultural geometry
for the Trees (1911) oil painting, but Monet’s Poplars on
the Epte (1890) was a more significant paradigm. These In the National Library building, a paradoxical watercolor
sequences of trees and the problem of light in Western by Jean-Baptiste Debret features an African man in Rio
art are also used to produce the ‘grille effect’ in the paint- de Janeiro wearing dress uniform and drawing, with a
ing of Edouard Vuillard, Félix Valloton, Pierre Bonnard, stick, a perfect circle on the ground. Debret’s neoclassical
Gustav Klimt and Maurice Denis. In modern Brazil, form seems to be a geometry lesson from the Enlighten-
they are seen in etchings by the modernist Carlos Os- ment, an intricate transcultural overview, but one that also
wald (Árvores em Pietti, 1908, and Dança clássica, 1909) shows his discomfort in relation to slavery. The ever-Eu-
and in Anita Malfatti’s work of the mid-1910s. Ohtake’s rocentric Debret could not imagine an African-Brazilian
urban scenes have something of the solitary aspect that circle not being derived from a Platonic perspective. Per-
recalls a sense of mystery Robert Goldwater pointed out haps the scene refers to the older idea of something like a
in that painting by Monet.18 Ohtake’s landscapes resulted “scored point” or some other meaning from a different reli-
from her naive return to painting, since she had not yet gious system. As in Debret’s case, Brazilian ethnocentrism
combined the spiritual dimension of life into her art. tends to exclude artists of Japanese origin from discus-
sions of the major postwar artistic movements. This bias
After Ohtake’s three São Paulo landscapes, she portends a certain racism in relation to differences within
moved toward non-objective visual discourse and ab- Brazil – there are probably critics and academic historians
stract sketches. Representations of the outside world who have written essays throughout their careers without
were no longer part of her painting, thus expressing her ever naming a Japanese-Brazilian artist.
restless search for new concepts as a definite option. In
two paintings (1953 and 1954), color blotches and zones In any analysis of Ohtake’s constructive will, it must
adjust the chromatic agenda of space in her first affin- be said from the outset that her legacy was to pose an
ity with non-representation and a clear penchant for opportunity for an idea of transcultural geometric art
geometric ordering of the gaze. Figurative work was

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beyond the Greek geometry of Platonic solids that Sergio Japanese diaspora was not marked by the tragic condition
Camargo reconfigured in the 1960s. Ohtake’s arc of of slavery or multiple pogroms and the Jewish Holocaust.
geometric abstraction straddles East and West to fos- For Brazilian painting of Japanese origin to avoid being
ter constant encounters between the two traditions. confined to a territorial limbo (due to not being Euro-
Through her work, painting gained its own right to act as centric, Afro-descendant or “nativist”), it has to be seen
ongoing transition between the two experiences, fusion as a particular form of ‘in-between-place’ that activates
and singularity, as a metaphor for her own life. Another aesthetic and historiographical problems. Here we use
example of this transcultural practice is geometric art this term borrowed from Silviano Santiago to discuss
focused on problematizing perception rather than pur- the difficulties of critique as negation of differences and
suing precision in form. This phenomenological method a hierarchized way of understanding certain artistic pro-
coexists in both Japanese Buddhist calligraphy’s use of ductions by denying them any kind of fruitful problema-
circles and Latin American support for the sensitive ge- tization.22  To counter this theoretical obliteration, be it
ometry concept. voluntary or involuntary, Ohtake’s transculturality has to
be afforded visibility and integrated into the general ter-
Ohtake’s extensive references to the traditional East ritory of ‘constructive will’. Her transcultural geometry
include her calligraphic will; sumi; color transitions in is a particular process of hybridization since her praxis
Ukiyo-e prints; Japanese culture’s shadow tradition and approaches Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology
Yozo Hamaguchi’s mezzotint engraving of the post-war or Ernst Cassirer’s symbolic man concept advocated for
period. They also include her relationship with Flavio- Neo-concretism, or Buddhist and Shinto precepts, while
Shiró and other Japanese-Brazilian artists such as Sa- combining geometric abstraction with a certain spiritual
chiko Koshikoku or Kimi Nii; her interest in Kumi orientation in the manner of Rubem Valentim. In terms
Sugai’s forms; Mário Pedrosa’s advancing closer relations of Maurice Tuchman’s key, Mira Schendel showed a re-
between Brazil and the culture of Japan; Taoist yin / markable interest in tantric Buddhist mandalas – para-
yang symbolism and, conceptual questions of Buddhism. digms of lesser interest to Ohtake in her corpus of circles,
Ohtake’s personal identification with Mira Schendel may despite her taking them as symbols of the void and the
have been based on a convergence to spiritual elements universe. Ohtake’s transcultural ‘constructive will’ poses a
from the symbolic field of the East. The significance of challenge in the form of an opportunity to deconstruct
this encounter is anchored in the relation with image regency using postcolonial discourse to reconstruct what
and the ineffable. Schendel viewed the circle as mandala Homi Bhabha and others have called the contemporary
and pi, Ohtake as enso. Schendel’s discursive capacity is location of culture, which acts as agency dismantling limits
sustained by a belief in language capturing human ex- within which part of Brazilian culture is confined.23
perience, so a monotype is no more than writing over a
semicircle: nel vuoto del mondo (in the void of the world); Concrete geometry and Neo-concrete paradigms:
Tomie Ohtake’s verbal economy proposes a verbal void, Mondrian, Malevich and Albers
since her works are never given titles.
Some Ohtake paintings recognize a tribute to Brazil’s
The discussion of Japanese-Brazilian artistic miscege- Constructivist art universe, the most extended being
nation remains limited, despite the existence of an œuvre in a reference to conjoining all three major paradigms
such as Roberto Okinaka’s sculpture, for example, which for Neo-concretism with Kasimir Malevich’s suprema-
potentiates references from an African-Brazilian religion, cism, Piet Mondrian’s neoplasticism and Josef Albers’
candomblé.19 The acceptance of a work that in some way Concrete art. Max Bill’s call for mathematical precision
refers to the Far East – such as, for example, that of Cu- in Concrete art led to him eventually playing a lesser
ban painter Wilfredo Lam, an Afro-descendant of mixed role for the Rio group than these three precursors. Very
Chinese origin, in a double angle of slavery in Cuba – is emphatically, the grand prize awarded Max Bill at the
partly mediated by its discourse referring to the orishas 1st São Paulo Biennial, when geometric abstraction in
of the Cuban pantheon. Lam is located in a process of Brazil was in its early stages, seemed to hold out the
miscegenation that Edouard Glissant20 has recognized promise of an aesthetic orientation for both, the pro-
and solidly theorized through his ‘creolization’ concept. development ideology that emerged in Brazil at that
Like Flavio-Shiró’s, Ohtake’s transculturality is obviously time, and the utopian horizon that was also opening up.
opposed to the Amerindian-African-Portuguese mod- Even today, the latter guides certain academic reviews in
ernist tripod that Graça Aranha launched in A estética Brazil. In this context, Waldemar Cordeiro seemed to
da vida (1921)21. It is outside the significant axis of his-
torical victims of the colonial process and on the Portu-
guese side, as representation of the Conqueror State. The

119

believe in Konrad Fiedler’s model consistent with the chose to work on the analytic color relations that Albers
former’s philosophical position, in which an artist “dis- developed in his lengthy series Homenagem ao Quadrado
pels the darkness that disturb men’s way of looking at the [Homage to the Square] for an untitled 1980 painting.
world and their lives.”24 The calls for order in Max Bill’s The unique symbolism of this work, in which chromatic
discourse did not adhere to the Neo-concrete experi- relations are broken down into white and yellow planes
mental project or Ohtake’s intuitive ‘geometry without of light, arises from Ohtake’s first impression of a “yel-
rulers’, a particular dimension of her ‘constructive will’, low” Brazilian atmosphere when she set foot at the port
beyond any operations in fields formed by an imaginary of Santos for the first time. Each of the painting’s three
grid. In Gullar’s Manifesto Neo-concreto [Neo-concrete bands has a fold that acts as a shadow of color, a vestige
Manifesto] (1959), he writes of taking “a new stance in from Japan’s traditional culture as revisited in Jun’ichiro
face of non-figurative ‘geometric’ art ... and, particularly, Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows.27
in face of Concrete art taken to a dangerously rationalist
exacerbation.” Bill’s excessive rationalism in calling for Another untitled painting by Ohtake from 1978
mathematical precision in geometric art would soon lose situates a black rectangle overlaid by a nebulous plane
its attraction for the Rio-based artists. At a certain point, juxtaposed with a red square on a white support. This
even canonical Concrete artists such as Hermelindo Fi- plastic-chromatic vocabulary references Descoberta da
aminghi or Décio Pignatari, albeit belatedly, came to the linha orgânica (c.1954), a key-work in the set of Lygia
conclusion that “Max Bill seen as a ‘weak’ painter – had Clark’s created spaces. In both works, flat surfaces coex-
been fully immersed in so-called informal research” ist with chromatic questions influenced by the plastic
(1961).25 Ohtake was referring to precisely that artistic thinking of Malevich and Mondrian, including their
triad (Malevich, Mondrian and Albers) whose legacy of ideas on the nature of objects. Furthermore, Ohtake’s
plastic problems sustained historical references in Brazil, painting most clearly poses plastic dialogue with two
in various instances, from abolition of the object to sym- Mondrian works showing the same arrangement of
bolic and formal paradigms. painted geometric referents as Clark’s Composição
branca e vermelha [Composition white and red] (1932)
Certain geometric works by Tomie Ohtake, dated and Composição C – Composição com cinza e vermelho
from 1978 to1980 may also be situated in the context [Composition with gray and red] (1936). Her neoplas-
of two major exhibitions that reintroduced the geomet- tic chromatic economy is pared down to black, white,
ric abstraction discussion in Brazil: Projeto Construtivo gray and the primary colors. The Manifesto Neo-concreto
Brasileiro na Arte: 1950-1962 [Brazilian Constructivist stated that “in his geometrical painting, Malevich had
Project in Art], organized by Aracy Amaral at Museu already expressed dissatisfaction, a will to transcend the
de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – MAM-RJ and rational and the sensorial that nowadays manifests itself
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, in 1977; and Arte in irrepressible manner.” Similarly, Ohtake’s relation-
Agora III: América Latina: Geometria Sensível, [Art Now ship with the Supremacist ‘zero degree’ of Male­vich’s
III: Latin America: Sensitive Geometry], curated by painting emblematically overlaying white on white
Roberto Pontual at the same MAM-RJ, in 1978. Al- may be seen in two works from the white ‘blind paint-
though Ohtake was not concerned for her own legitima- ings’ series (in the Mário Pedrosa and Patricia Phelps
tion through associations in her painting, her way of ar- de Cisneros collections). All Ohtake’s paintings are
ranging these planes within the rectangular frame leaned developed within this sensoriality-rationality dichot-
more towards orthogonality, as in certain of Clark’s Pla- omy (as in the sighted-blind opposition). This ‘blind
nos em superfície modulada or Oiticica’s works featuring painting’ seems to have learned from Ferreira Gullar’s
the aesthetics of the collective Grupo Frente. As regards essay Teoria do não-objeto (1960) [Theory of the Non-
Neo-concrete art, Ohtake’s closeness to critic Mário Object]28 written some two years previously, where he
Pedrosa and painters Willys de Castro and Hercules spoke of the “desert, mentioned by Malevich, in which
Barsotti26 influenced her in the form of a need to ex- the work of art appears for the first time freed from any
periment with the plastic ideas then current,rather than signification outside the event of its own apparition.”It
allegiance to the Neo-concrete program on the lines of would be pointless to look for an association between
Ferreira Gullar’s Manifesto Neo-concreto or Teoria do não- Ohtake and Malevich based on the question of form.
objeto. Constructive artists largely rendered their hom- Both struggled against rationalist excesses and both
age to Albers by working with square supports, as was overlaid intellectual reflection on logocentrism. The
the case with Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Judith Lauand, icon as a devotional object in the spiritual universe of
Geraldo de Barros, Waldemar Cordeiro, Aluisio Carvão, Russian liturgy and his interest in theosophy constitute
Hermelindo Fiaminghi, Maurício Nogueira Lima and the spiritual basis for the latter’s art29 – an art perme-
others. Instead of the prevailing square support, Ohtake ated by the Zen.30

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 Imprecise geometries The gaze – Piet Mondrian’s painting celebrated this
(or quasi- geometry in perception) power – corrects the mistakes of the ‘geometric will’ ex-
pressed in painting as power of perception.This is Gestalt
In the aftermath of World War II, after nuclear weapons psychology’s law of pragnanz [meaningfulness] of form.
had caused mass destruction and death in Hiroshima There are painters who use crooked lines to paint straight
and Nagasaki, with their terrible consequences widely ones, or sketch crooked rectangles. Or paint squares with-
reported, Ohtake could have no faith in the idealistic out right angles.This affinity is called ‘imprecise geometry’
view of harsh constructive form charged with utopia and , which is perhaps contradictory in scientific terms. To see
optimism. Otilia Arantes analyzes Mário Pedrosa’s con- imprecise lines in Mondrian’s neoplastic structures, is to
temporary relevance to poses the social and historical realize that the gestalt process of the gaze eventually sees
process of modern architecture in Brazil as an experi- everything as exactly straight, as in some of the Compo-
ence of crisis: “a successful transplant when everything sitions. Their neoplastic structures are based on pseudo-
condemned it to be a pale imitation due to the glar- perfect bands on their edges. However, a historian or
ing absence of the technical and social pre-conditions critic who claimed they were absolutely straight would
required for the new constructivist rationality – whose attest to an anti-Husserlian gaze that would not look at
necessarily ‘formalist’ course nevertheless revealed the the object itself, but would confound the poetic license
reality that had been disguised in the original metropo- Mondrian allowed himself, unlike Theo van Doesburg’s
lises, the false basis of the Ideology of Planning, whose canonical and verbal precision.
utopian tabula rasa was to be the functional extension of
the endless and euphemistic ‘creative destruction’, as the Although Gestalt form has not been totally absent
essence of capitalist accumulation.” Her article points to from Ohtake’s geometric production, her geometry was
the disappointing outcome of Waldemar Cordeiro’s ca- rarely submitted to the most powerful appeals of graph-
nonical Concrete art and predicts its aesthetic impasse.31 ics solutions based on this psychology, much less did she
Cordeiro’s work had no place for the psychology of the resort to Op Art’s mechanistic seduction. Eschewing bel-
“black sun of melancholy,” Gérard de Nerval’s poem, licose statements, Ohtake very clearly took up a position
modern culture since Baudelaire, or contemporary phi- distant from the ‘objectivist’ and rationalist idealizations
losophy.32 that permeated Waldemar Cordeiro’s Concrete art in Sao
Paulo, and from the prevailing gestalt-geometric art of
Ohtake’s ‘blind paintings’ of the 1960s, which were ex- the early days of Concrete Art in Brazil. The imprecise
ecuted blindfold, reexamine art and the gaze within the geometry is found in the crooked empty black bands
bounds of possibility.33 In Brazil too, geometric abstrac- (the white part is in the unpainted area) of Frank Stella’s
tion comes across as belief in modern western rationality 1958-1960 Pinturas pretas [black paintings], which recall
and the ideology of progress adopted by most Brazilian Mondrian. These paintings in turn, succeed Clark’s “or-
academic critics who were mimetically optimistic in re- ganic line” and are also contemporary with the organic
lation to the constructive process in its historical context affinity in the open lines of Lygia Pape’s Tecelares [weav-
of Juscelino Kubitschek’s social democracy. It was an im- ers] woodcuts. Unpainted white interstices between black
age for readers of Meyer Schapiro, who saw Mondrian’s bands are called “breathing spaces” in William Rubin’s
abstraction as a desire for utopia.34 With Flavio-Shiró, essay on Stella.37 Imprecise lines were also to be found
Iberê Camargo and Tomie Ohtake (blind paintings), on the edges and corners of supports in paintings by
informal abstract painting gradually moved away from the German artist Blinky Palermo, such as 4 Prototypen
supporting that utopian optimism. However, Mondrian (1970), “reality rough at the edge, torn”, as Susan Tall-
himself treated art as a “moral struggle” against worldly man notes,38 or “wobbly” as Maika Pollack puts it.39 From
violence.35 Ohtake sees painting as reflexive action that imprecision comes minimalism, of which Frank Stella’s
addresses not only perception but also the specters of painting The Marriage of Reason and Squalor (1959) is
rationality, which in her case would be war itself and the emblematic. Unlike Ohtake, Stella named his abstract
violence inflicted on the Japanese people.36 Hence her paintings, sometimes resorting to verbal drama.
‘blindness’. In face of the Real, Ohtake came up against
the limit of the unrepresentable on ceasing symbolic ac- The unnamed
tion. Hence also, the emergence of her geometric spec-
ters in imprecise geometries or quasi-geometry. Her Were it not for the painting itself, it would be a case
geometric art therefore emerges as a symptom. This ge- of aphasia. Ohtake rejects titles to avoid any discursive
ometry in art can only be spectral for Max Bill’s formal- instance being a necessary aspect of a work. In the text
ist followers and many other abstract-geometric artists.

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civilization, the rule of invariance is the painting’s status Sexta-feira da paixão [Good Friday] or Catholicism’s
of verbal silence. “Form is merely insinuated,” noted altar-stone reliquary. Until the late 1950s, Schendel was
Miguel Chaia.40 Her painting does not rely on an acoustic- not doing a strict geometry. It would be ingenuous to ask
image title such as Aluisio Carvão’s Cubocor, Lygia Pape’s for geometric precision in her ideogrammatic writing, as
Tecelares, Hélio Oiticica’s Metaesquemas or Hermelindo in the enunciation of the form of Earth in her Genesis
Fiaminghi’s Corluz, or self-edifying titles such as Iberê series (1964), which was always a rough circle, like a sig-
Camargo’s Ascensão and Tensão, using the typical vocabu- nature or a simple sketch of its calligram.
lary of his heroism of form.The title of Frank Stella’s Mar-
riage of Reason and Squalor conveys a strong extra-picto- The structure of Mondrian’s neoplastic work hardly
rial dimension while articulating antithetical relations of consists of precise lines and bands with exact patterns
entropy and optimistic construction. Ohtake refuses to and contours. Like Mondrian, Ohtake relies on view-
let any phonological, poetic, interpretive or political di- ers being mentally able to correct perception and restore
mension of a painting take control of viewers’ perception right angles to her planes. She starts from an orthogonal
or interpretation. Hearing has nothing to with painting. constructive matrix to soften angles, corners and edges of
“Power lies with the eye,” wrote Jean-François Lyotard.41 planes. Constructive will resolved in deconstructive will
An Ohtake painting exists in the instance of the belief for geometric exactness. It is not the precision of preva-
in this power of the eye; it is not a chain of “signs from a lence of number over form that moves Ohtake. As an
spoken chain” that requires the phonological dimension artist associated with Zen thought, she knows that per-
of Saussure’s linguistics.42 fect form is impossible. In imprecision it is still possible
to fruitfully examine the just value of rationality given
Painting is what is seen, not what is named, written or the world’s imperfection. What system of controlling the
read. Before Lyotard’s Discourse, Figure (1974), Ohtake world is possible for the Zen artist? Perhaps the most
had already realized that seeing is not reading. What she appropriate response would be “disbelief ”. However,
offers therefore is un-named sign and symbol. This de- Ohtake operates through symptoms. Form is the specter
liberate non-naming is a means of avoiding the power of of the history of constructive art.
a name over viewers’ phenomenological exercise of gaze.
She believes a title will confine pictorial signifier to an It has been claimed, as in Mondrian’s precedent, that
extra-pictorial primordial meaning and the verbal cannot Ohtake’s quasi-geometry (1961-1965) inscribed im-
read the visual. Like all Brazilian art, Ohtake’s is a victim precise planes in primary colors (yellow, red or blue) or
of an uneducated market that, based on mere market- purple on black, white and gray graphic base. This pro-
ing strategy, labels “composition” any abstract work of art, duction coincides with the most critical moment of form
even if it is not one. Names for periods are coined by for- in her method when she was working on the blind paint-
mal similarity. Landscapes are named from topographi- ings experiment. Ohtake’s quasi-geometry afflicts the
cal descriptions, any geometric work is described as plane with fracture, rupture, imprecision and upset – as
“Neo-concrete”, and so forth. This thematic fabrication if it were the first (or last) view of geometric form at the
often violates conceptual rigor and miseducates those beginning (or end) of its dissolution and crisis of cohe-
consuming it. The artist finds reiterative titles that fos- sion. As a radical finishing touch, the Concrete poet Har-
ter an unnecessary tautology of verbal over visual to be oldo de Campos also found “dissipatory structures” in the
just as undesirable. Not naming sustains a painting in its corpus of her work.45
condition as model for purely visual knowledge, given
that “reading is understanding/hearing and not seeing,” Circles – a brief introduction
as J.F. Lyotard reminds us.43
“Ever since I was a child, I have really liked roundness.
Ohtake’s geometric art shows that quasi-geometry is It’s a synthetic form that contains love and energy,”
proportionally stronger among women aligned with the Ohtake told Camila Molina, at the age of 97.46 In these
Brazilian constructivist project, in the work of Maria Le- words of many a contemporary artist, free of the intel-
ontina, the paintings of Ione Saldanha from her paint- lectual affectation, she summarizes her conceptual and
ings to her Bamboos, and Mira Schendel, as well as the affective program driven by the pulse of life – today at
post-Neo-concrete developments of Clark and Pape’s the age of a hundred, to paint is to live life to the full.
production. Due to their affinity, Schendel gifted Ohtake Ohtake provides a glimpse of the circle as her noema,
a few of her monotypes. In Schendel’s graphic work, the or intentional object of thought. In it, she finds mean-
line functions as a beam as strong as a hair strand, as Max ing – and if it is thought, it cannot be mere canon, as
Bense44 defined it; the line produces imprecise rectangu- the Concrete art of Theo van Doesburg would have
lar architectures, such as the door in the monotype series

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wished. In her painting, the circle takes the form of what affixing black fields on the edges so as to institute nega-
Edmund Husserl treated as an intentional object of an tive spaces that ultimately virtually cut off the curve.
act of consciousness, but the object remains unnamed Barsotti devises the relationship between lines and
as result of determination and impossibility. Painting circles through Archimedes’Exhaustion Method, which
is what you see, not what is appointed. Hence the art- involves drawing a regular polygon, inscribing it in a cir-
ist’s posture being so close to the unspeakable. Hence cle and doubling its sides successively until the inscribed
her view of painting as a paradox. It is the act of con- polygon touches the circumference.50 Thus, as the num-
sciousness itself, which, however, is not materialized as ber of sides of the polygon increases, the form grows
response of the perceptive faith of the cogitato but as an closer to the shape of a circle. Hercules Barsotti’s cir-
investigative hypothesis for her questioning given the cular painting is a state of panic of visual logic on black
vast universe and incommensurable void. and white, introducing negative spaces that virtually cut
across the curve. Decio Vieira’s circle energizes chro-
Tomie Ohtake adhered to the shape of the circle, matic plays of fractured form and color intermission in
which sought to exhaust possibilities of “enformation” of his “color-form” stylemes.51 Antonio Bandeira’s memory
matter by means of the pictorial action – thus evoking contains the circle as a fiery core of energy reminiscent
Martin Heidegger’s concept to indicate labor with the of the forge in his father’s workshop. For Amilcar de
material sign of painting. To Ohtake, painting means Castro, the circle is a planar form in the epiphany of tri-
activating a phenomenology of the circle as a condition dimensional space arising from the economy of two acts:
of matter.47 In her work, the circle, the more stable and cutting and folding. Lygia Clark’s tondo Egg posits the
perfect form, found no privilege or status of permanent perceptual challenge of closing an incomplete circle un-
solution, it found a paradoxical dimension. Ohtake’s der the aegis of Gestalt theory’s principle of continuity.
geometric unease has always relinquished a formal lexi- A circle emerges from straight lines in Lothar Cha-
con ruled by a canon. Establishing a taxonomy of circles roux’s Op Art play. It is the disciplined mathematics of
would prove nonproductive before the painter’s prac- color proportion in Antonio Maluf ’s phenomenology of
tice. Our aim here is to problematize certain knowledge perception. In Rubem Valentim the circle constitutes a
models of the circle, like another geometry. variant symbology of Afro-Brazilian religions, in its role
of formal economy of geometric reduction of tools and
From infinity to the circle other evocative elements of orishas and their spiritual
values​.​ In Mira Schendel’s symbolic abundance, it is a
In the to and fro between East and West, the three fun- letter and ideogram for Earth and Pi, the Chinese sym-
damental concepts of modern mathematics are infinity, bol for heaven. For Tomie Ohtake, the circle in its more
zero and the redefinition of the concept of “One” as a complex philosophical and spiritual dimension is ensō,
multiple. “Unbinding from the One delivers us to the the experience of the imperfect circle in Zen Buddhism.
unicity of the void and to the dissemination of the infi-
nite,” philosopher Alain Badiou wrote.48 Tomie Ohtake Erudite East
had explored spatial infinity in the so-called blind-
painting series (1959-1962) as figural sense of informal “My work is western but there is a lot of Japanese in-
abstraction itself. The surface agitation may produce fluence, reflecting my education. This influence is seen
nebulae in Ohtake’s paintings. In them, gas surrounds in the pursuit of synthesis: a few elements must say a
the nebula, attracted by the magnetic field and the radia- lot. Haiku poetry, for example, speaks of the world in
tion from the pulsar.49 The circle, however, offers a broad 17 syllables”.52 Here Ohtake not only addresses cultural
and consistent mathematical possibility of approaching ties from her country of origin and the place she chose
Ohtake’s mathematical unconscious. Briefly overviewed, to reside, but also sets forth the economic regime for
circles have often featured in pieces by abstract artists in her work. The artist’s spiritual fabric can weave delicate
Brazil since the early 1950s, so Ohtake’s meaning may senses of the Baroque Counter Reformation53 shifted
be contextualized in the Brazilian setting. Overlapping in Brazil with the symbolic weight of the circle in
circles and patches of color emerged in the painting of Zen sumi painting. Her controlled poetic dimension
Ivan Serpa and Willys de Castro reinterpreting Gestalt and elegant restraint in her un-named painting show a
issues raised by Max Bill’s print series Fifteen Variations radical nexus with traditional Japanese poetry. Ohtake
on a Single Theme (1935-1938). In the circle of Ohtake’s does not paint haikus, but finds in them an economic
friendships, Hercules Barsotti painted a circular white synthesis that enables her to leave aside the minimalist
picture that operates with the panic of visual logic by

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principle of “less is more” taken from Mies van der need such reckless strategy for validation. Mammì

Rohe. Brazilian historiography has done little research viewed the artist’s reel stacking as an arrangement of

into origins and the singularities of the constructive form for drawing, painting or engraving, an argument

will. Inn São Paulo, detailed readings of local Con- with which Iberê Camargo is not in total agreement

crete artists continue quite successfully, whereas unfor- when he states, “objectified creation [sic] is the reality

tunately a frequent screening has muted the readings of art. Theme, subject, color, line, volume, etc. are art-

of Rio de Janeiro constructive art production. Instead, work contents that, however, can only be considered as

there is a tendency in Brazil to understand geometric such when creating the aesthetic picture.”58 Who will

abstraction and, as a consequence, Oiticica’s “construc- deliver Mammì’s argument that mistakes the tridimen-

tive will” was announced at the exhibition Nova Obje- sional model and its representation for the built form?

tividade Brasileira (1967) as a western language with The exhibition curated by the USP professor reserved

a compulsion to Eurocentric reductionism. Vicente do itself the right to obliterate violently the Neo-concrete

Rego Monteiro’s pioneering modernism contains refer- experience, possibly because it had trouble understand-

ences to Cubism pervaded by his studies of the archeol- ing the conceptual and historical program of the Rio de

ogy of indigenous peoples in the Amazon region at the Janeiro movement, and offer a phenomenological gaze

Museu Nacional. The subject has not been sufficiently that would be closer to the object than to the concepts.

investigated, excepting Walter Zanini’s pioneering es- It is difficult to examine the “root of [constructive]

says.54 The impact that the graphics of certain indig- form” in the same work by Camargo that other crit-

enous peoples had for an artist such Lygia Pape has ics in Mammì’s group assessed from the viewpoint of

yet to be assessed. In Brazil, the Eurocentric academic George Bataille’s concept of “formless”. 59 As it seems,

world appears to have actively excluded two strains of Iberê Camargo – a well-established name in the his-

geometric art: the Afro-Brazilian and that of Japanese- tory of Brazilian art – had to be included in the exhibi-

Brazilian artists.55 Although no deliberate desire to tion, one way or another, to serve an alliance among

exclude them may be imputed, critiques eventually im- critics of the Brazilian mainstream. In so doing, meth-

pose a formal canon and elide differences within society. odological evaluation rigor was being sacrificed, as here

the object was missing the phenomenological reunion

with itself as per Edmund Husserl’s recommendation.

Eurocentric West To Mammì, Neo-concrete experiences including Lygia

Clark’s Bichos, Lygia Pape’s Book of Creation and Neo-

Perhaps the young critic Sérgio Bruno Martins was concrete Ballets, and Hélio Oiticica’s Núcleos are not

misled, in his commentary about Tomie Ohtake (“it’s important. After reviewing Mammì’s standpoint, Sér-

hard to see how the notion of ‘​​constructive will’ could gio Bruno Martins should also critically scrutinize the

take in an artist like Tomie Ohtake without its histori- “parallels” drawn by the English critic Guy Brett and

cal meaning becoming too vague”)56 by his lack of in- that Martins abjured. Brett drew true pseudomorphist

depth knowledge of the artist’s work, compatible with comparisons by means of the formal juxtaposition of

her firm deconstructive political intention. Offhand, a Lygia Clark’s O eu e o tu (1967) and Goya’s La confi-

little-investigative Martins dismissed the assertion by anza (1797-1798), his Caprice n. 50, as well as Clark’s

PUC-SP Professor Miguel Chaia that, “Tomie Ohtake Canibalismo (1973) and Goya’s Brujas en el aire (1794-

stands out in the history of Brazilian art for accom- 1795).60 It will be even harder for Sérgio Bruno Mar-

plishing a specific synthesis between geometry and in- tins to review the misconceptions of Brett’s gaze on

formalism” (2001). Moreover, if Martins’ nonchalant Brazilian art, without jeopardizing his own network in

exclusion of Ohtake was befitting, then the same should London, where he studied. Brett’s writings mix up to-

apply to Iberê Camargo, unless certain critics entered a gether madness, psychiatry, therapy and psychoanalysis.

corporate agreement. In particular, the critic Lorenzo Whereas the modernity on the fringes witnesses

Mammì tried sticking Iberê Camargo in Brazil’s Con- “an inevitable commingling of several ethnicities,” as

crete experience. In the catalogue of the exhibition Paulo Sérgio Duarte and others have noted,61 there

Concreta ‘56: a raiz da forma (MAM-SP, 2007), Mammì are people who would purge the encounter and limit

listed the reels stacked in Camargo’s work of engraving it – on the level of constructive will – to a Eurocentric

and painting among the three major directions (three axis, which also excludes Ohtake from the discussion

amendments) taken by constructive will in Brazil, the in the Instituto Moreira Salles website. Duarte him-

project design for Brasilia and Alfredo Volpi’s produc- self emphatically states that, in his view, Rubem Val-

tion, respectively. 57 Iberê Camargo’s painting did not entim’s lifelong effort to arrange an encounter between

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the symbolic universes of Afro-Brazilian religions and at the exhibition. Sérgio Bruno Martins contradicts
constructivist art was unsuccessful.62 As a black artist, himself by seemingly aiming to support the hegemo-
Valentim would be on the fringes in terms of success ny of the “modernist formal categories” (precisely the
and fine aesthetic achievements. However, this does ones with greatest recognition in the international art
not seem to match Giulio Carlo Argan’s ideas on Val- market), after having flirted with pseudomorphism
entim’s African theogony governed by a radical reduc- in a short text about the Neo-concrete artist Decio
tion of religious symbols to structural and geometric Vieira.69 In this piece, he literally compares one of Vie-
elements. “[symbolic-magical signs] must be shown ira’s abstract drawings to a windmill. Having cornered
before they appear suddenly immunized, stripped of the market for adequately articulating pseudomor-
their own original evocative or provocative virtues: the phism in his manner, Martins was not to recognize the
artist works on them until the threatening obscurity of obvious relation of three Neo-concrete artists with the
the fetish is clarified in a limpid form of myth,” Argan angular drapery folds on Aleijadinho’s Cristo no horto
wrote.63 Rubem Valentim’s Manifesto ainda que tardio, (in the Way of the Cross, at Congonhas do Campo), in
one of Brazilian art’s greatest documents, defines the the exhibition’s section on African origins, candomblé
principles of what he called “riscadura brasileira” [Bra- and the Baroque. The critic failed to see that the metal-
zilian linework]. “Following my intuition between lic folds in the Neo-concrete sculptures by the three
popular and scholarly, source and refinement ... in the Minas Gerais artists (Franz Weissmann, Lygia Clark
symbolic instruments and tools of candomblé – abebês, and Amilcar de Castro) relate to the geometric drap-
paxorôs, oxés – I began to detect a kind of ‘speech’, a ery in Aleijadinho’s Christ. The three experienced the
Brazilian visual poetics, capable of configuring and ad- epistemological leap of Sphan when it replaced the old
equately synthesizing my entire core interest as an art- discussions about colonial art with analysis of the Ba-
ist.”64 Rubem Valentim struggled in a society afflicted roque, beginning with the work of Hannah Levy, a re-
by an “inferiority complex over its African past,” in searcher of Heinrich Wöfflin’s work at Sphan. In their
which black and African became synonymous with slave, youth days in Belo Horizonte, the three sculptors were
the anthropologist Arthur Ramos noted.65 This conclu- in contact with Alberto da Veiga Guignard, a painter
sion seems unfit for Greenbergian models for analyzing who recognized the value of colonial art, and with the
art in Brazil, given that as late as in 2013 slave quar- process of recognizing the historical importance of the
ters still appear to be the place for blacks, and history Baroque, at Sphan. The conceptual framework that
must be one of triumph in the market. To the generous underpins the relations between the five artists – Alei-
Mário Pedrosa who agreed with Giulio Carlo Argan’s jadinho, Guignard, Weissmann, Castro and Clark – is
assessment, however, Rubem Valentim “belongs in the provided by the essay The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque,
same spiritual family as Volpi, or Tarsila”.66 This rela- by Gilles Deleuze.70 In Brazil, the Baroque being fold-
tionship of two leading art critics historically known to ed inwardly (as in Leibniz and Deleuze) is the slave,
be socialists seems not to meet the requirements of the and in Neo-concrete art, it will be in the field of the
alleged young Brazilian left.67 subject, under the topology of Clark’s infra-sensoriality.
Moreover, Martins misuses the concept of pseudomor-
Sérgio Bruno Martins, a critic from Paulo Sérgio phism because the specific comparison, in this case, is
Duarte’s circle of influence, also expelled Afro-Bra- between the exceptionally angular folds in Aleijadin-
zilian culture from the debate held in the Instituto ho’s drapery and the metal folds of Neo-concrete artists
Moreira Salles website.68 In a text for the exhibition as matrices pointing to the homo faber’s subjectivity. At
Vontade construtiva na coleção Fadel [Constructive will the show, the fold was a sign of space. Three references
in the Fadel collection], an anthropoemic Sérgio Bru- for the exhibition Vontade construtiva were Théorie du
no Martins rejected “broadening the interpretation of nuage, pour une histoire de la peinture by Hubert Da-
this constructive will by taking ‘Minas Gerais Baroque’ misch;71 Mnemosyne, by Aby Warburg72 and Georges
as its privileged historical antecedent. This is a thesis Didi-Huberman.73 In particular, Sérgio Bruno Martins
that flirts with pseudomorphism, or apparent similarity seems to ignore the importance of Baroque74 for the
between forms originating from different historical- Brazilian constructivist project, as raised by Waldemar
cultural situations, and its aim is clearly to challenge Cordeiro or Lygia Clark, and its relationship to geo-
the hegemonic role of modernist formal categories in metric art in the view of European and U.S. historians.
the historiography of Brazilian art.” The term “Minas Martins ejects Aleijadinho, son of a slave woman, from
Gerais Baroque” used here refers to two Aleijadinho an even more remote Brazilian constructivist matrix.
sculptures, a photograph of his work in Congonhas do The claim that Martins excludes Afro-Brazilian culture
Campos, and a picture of Mestre de Piranga shown

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is corroborated by the fact that he has not even noted essay “Mondrian: Order and Randomness in Abstract
the absence of slavery scenarios at the exhibition Rio Painting” (1978) that not only inscribes randomness but
de imagens, which he commended.75 This absence, how- also states that Matisse found “a new expression” in “geo-
ever, brought a manifest frustration for black residents metric abstraction”. 78 This is one of the cues for discuss-
in the Rio de Janeiro port area, home to the city’s most ing the peculiarities of Tomie Ohtake’s constructive will.
concentrated Afro-Brazilian political and cultural his-
tory. This is an extremely contradictory position for an Diversity and spiritual reason
author purporting to make a materialist analysis of his-
tory – it means being omissive in face of the oppression A more in-depth look into the meaning of artists’ œuvres
that provided the basis on which Brazil’s class system is and a better understanding of Ohtake’s pictorial corpus
organized and defends his current taste for geometric ab- would perhaps have mitigated the prejudice that makes
straction. As result from form’s high-handed maneuver, differences invisible. Among the principles (paramitas) of
this omission may feed a neocolonial view of class. Zen Buddhism, dana asks for detachment of the heart,
mind and hand; dhyana, for patience and shanti, for me-
Perhaps Sérgio Bruno Martins had not reread Hélio diation. In its aesthetic experience, the void is the ab-
Oiticica’s text on “general constructive will” in which the sence of presence, the experience of the principle of mu
artist broadens his scope to include modern architecture (or wu), closer to enlightenment. Upon returning from a
and anthropophagy as part of this “will.” Offhand, Tar- study trip to Japan, the erudite Concrete poet Haroldo
sila do Amaral’s anthropophagite period is distinct from de Campo viewed Ohtake’s circles as a “Hagoromo-like
her post-cubist phase. She practiced geometric art dur- collection of moons.” 79 Between the Buddhist enlight-
ing what is known as her pau-brasil period and reflected enment and astrophysics, the emptiness of the subject
journeys to Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais from 1923 and the language shifts towards to the idea of vacuum.
onwards. Therefore, “constructive will” is arguably not re- In Japanese tradition, hagoromo is the feathered robe
stricted to “programmed geometry” (Roberto Pontual’s needed to return to heaven in a No play by Motokiyo
term for geometric formalism). Jean Dubuffet’s Geomét- Zeami (1363-1443). De Campos’ poetic image suggests
rie (1959, lithograph) resembles a cloud of dust. Against a different vision of geometric art, a cosmological vision
this, Martins rushes into reductionism to force exclusion that overreaches the rationalist pre-visualism of Theo van
in the only two cases he discussed in the entire exhibi- Doesburg’s Art Concret manifesto. Such keen rejection of
tion: the black origin of Baroque-Rococo and Japanese Valentim’s and Ohtake’s geometric art elicits the nexus of
erudition. The critic’s divergence is similar to that of spirituality. With Mira Schendel’s desperate metaphysics
São Paulo’s modernist oligarchy and petit-bourgeoisie of the mid-1960s, they constitute the complex trinity of
who refused to absorb Japanese culture into national- the sacred geometry of Brazilian art.80 Under the aegis
ist modernism because they were put off by the colo- of a mechanistic materialism, that critique has to ignore
nial model of society.76 Once again, we make a note of the profound religiosity permeating Schendel’s aesthet-
Martins’ canonical stance to attack Ohtake: “[although] ics, along with a singular phenomenology. That art triad
occasionally fruitful, the [exhibition curators’] strategy operates with a metaphysics that is cultivated in its roots,
involves certain risks too: it is hard to see how the no- and sophisticated in its aesthetic resolution.
tion of ‘constructive will’ could take in an artist such as
Tomie Ohtake without its historical meaning becoming Symbolic circles
too vague.” Indeed, the intention is to deliberately ex-
pand the geometric field of Brazilian art, but not with- Tomie Ohtake has broadened the field of symbolic ge-
out a weighty methodological precedent. In an analogy, ometry in Brazil. Formerly a pillar of Neo-concrete art,
although not exactly symmetrical to Ohtake’s contribu- it has been affected by Eastern spiritual and plastic val-
tion to Oiticica’s “constructive general will”, critic and ues that have entered Brazilian culture despite meeting
curator Rob Storr included Louise Bourgeois in the with rejection from the nationalist Mário de Andrade
exhibition Minimalism & After at MoMA in 2000 – a to the Eurocentric temptation of certain contemporary
show featuring minimalist modes in Europe and the artists.81 In the field of Euclidean geometry, the work
United States. This is what Arthur Danto wrote about of Waldemar Cordeiro, the seminal artist of the collec-
the interior square in the painting Swan Lake n. 2 (1961) tive Grupo Ruptura, made reference to Archimedean
by Helen Frankenthaler: “the geometry sides are bro- science and his theses Measurement of the Circle, Quadra-
ken and blobbed.” 77 In Tomie Ohtake’s paintings there
are squares with blobbed sides. Finally, another and
perhaps even more significant case is Meyer Schapiro’s

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ture of the Parabola, On Spirals, and Method Concerning Tanizaki notes that No theater is dressed by the beauty
Mechanical Theorems. In the context of Euclidean geom- of a singular world of shadows. The range of shadows
etry, Cordeiro directly painted Desenvolvimento ótico da of No architecture and drapery appear in a painting by
espiral de Arquimedes [Optical development of the Ar- Ohtake, now conserved in the MAM collection (above).
chimedean spiral] (1952) but did not distance his work Finally, Tanizaki’s inquiry into the origin of these differ-
from the Max Bill of Fifteen variations on a theme (1938). ences in taste between Japan and the West suggests that
Ohtake’s painting does not make art from painted axi- Asians tend to seek satisfaction from whatever place they
oms by demonstrating geometry’s logical assumptions happen to be in; they tend to be content with things
or theorems as in the canonical geometry of Brazilian as they stand darkness does not displease since they are
Concrete painter Waldemar Cordeiro, in the 1950s. Re- resigned to its inevitability. In her pursuit of circular
flecting her association with Mário Pedrosa, readings of shapes, Ohtake is resigned to their necessary vagueness
Merleau-Ponty, friendship with the Neo-concrete artists and this should in no way be seen as a static dimension
Willys de Castro and Hercules Barsotti, and with Mira of her visual thinking. She accepts the cosmological per-
Schendel, Ohtake’s painting reveals a strong signic pres- spective for the analysis of her work, so one may infer
ence of the brushstroke, but does not cast off the “symbol” that certain patches of shadow allude to the dark matter
idea. Her option for symbolizing pictorial fact, and cir- of the universe. 84
cles in particular, drew on Buddhism and Neo-concrete
ideas, including the philosopher Ernst Cassirer’s thesis of
the inevitability of symbolizing as human activity.82 A red The curved and the straight
Mobius-band structure showing continuous unilateral
space between subjectivities or workers on a production Einstein’s general theory of relativity posits a universe
line is featured in her abstract sculpture that the Santo marked by a cosmological constant and is shown as
André metalworkers union commissioned as a Workers curved,85 which leads to a diagnosis of Ohtake’s curved
Monument (2014) for a public space in the ABC region geometry as related to the astrophysical dimension of
of the São Paulo metro area. The presence of the circle, image. In terms of analyzing her constructive affinity, it
for example, would be refractory to any attempt to reduce matters little that Einstein’s theory of the universe may
it to its exclusive condition as sign, as it was among the have been or will be revised in some way. Gaston Bache-
São Paulo Concrete artists, to be reiterated as symbol un- lard sees intimate and cosmic aspects as interchangeable.
der the Zen cultural regime. Ohtake’s constructivist affin- Ohtake’s work reiterates that in art there is no such thing
ity is permeated by psychology of the elements as her air, as absolute “progress” that prevails over poetics, since the
fire, water and earth circles develop a kind of geometry imagination’s triggers require neither exact knowledge
d’après Gaston Bachelard. She is herself an animal simbo- nor a hypothesis to be illustrated. A longstanding friend
licum (to use Cassirer’s expression) of Eastern origin, so and scholar of her work, the critic Miguel Chaia pon-
her circle will always be the Buddhist experience of ensō. ders that Ohtake puts pressure on straight lines to break
down rigidity and establish curve as her signic units by
Geometry of shadow retrieving the heritage of constructive control while also
recognizing unconstrained gestures. Chaia adds that, as
The philosophical substrate of Ohtake’s blind paintings a corollary, her arcs, circles, spheres, ellipses or spirals
and some of her circles conceives an ontology of vision emerge and then start to order space. Being the critic
under the register of image emerging through painting. most familiar with her œuvre, he has quite properly used
She has read Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows the term “curved geometry” for the “original underpin-
(1933), which epitomizes the notion of shadow in Ja- ning of Tomie Ohtake’s language and artistic expres-
pan’s material and spiritual culture. “Of scientific mat- sion.” 86 Her curved geometry involves the circle’s modes
ters I know nothing,” he writes. 83 His literature has a of existence in an extensive typology referring to symbol-
connection with the erotic obsession and the impact of ogy, the ensō ideogrammatic calligraphy, baroque curves
Japan’s modernizing transformations superimposed by in motion, Brazilian Concrete art, modern philosophy
the West, such as the traditional culture of shadows seen of mathematics concepts, Euclidean geometry’s circle,
here in three passages. Tanizaki’s analysis of traditional topology of the mathematician and astronomer August
architecture shows that the beauty of a Japanese room Ferdinand Mobius, physics, cosmology, phenomenology
arises from variations of shadows – dense shadows on of the senses, the logic of femininity, the psychology of
slight shadows, no more and no less. In the second image, the four elements of nature, and the body language that
produces painting.

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Cosmic geometry Katie van Scherpenberg’s Rio vermelho (1983) and Jardim
Vermelho (1986); Cildo Meireles’ Desvio para o vermelho
In his essay on the cosmic dimension of Ohtake’s art, (1967-1984); Miguel Rio Branco’s photography of de-
Chaia’s insightful analysis identified three “phases of sire; Emmanuel Nassar’s Amazon visuality; Rosangela
cosmic representation” in her production.87 An essential Rennó’s Série Vermelha (Militares) (2000); Niura Bel-
reference text for any student of her œuvre, it describes lavinha’s A medida do impossível (installation, 2003) and
the spatial experiments of her first period (1961-1962), Paulo Pasta’s painting. Red shift is also seen in Ohtake’s
which roughly correspond to what I have called the fiery circles, and in her cosmology there is red on red – or,
“blind paintings”, as “incommensurable planes of the in linguistic terms, scarlet on blood red, as overlapping
universe” showing spiraling movements of expansion fields of fire and heat. Ohtake chooses the light con-
and contraction, ebb and flow.88 The second period (late veyed by the longest wavelengths visible to the human
1970s and the 1980s) foregrounds form. Painting is seen eye, which are in the 630-740 nanometer range: red. As
as an orbital field and a stellar dimension in the compass a pure energy field of electromagnetic waves known as
of cosmic mechanics. Formerly ethereal aspects are now “color”, the incandescent chromatic energy of this ensō-
shown as stars, galaxies and other cosmic events. “Per- universe generates flames like the sun in an eclipse of fire
spective is fragmented,” adds Chaia, “enabling the artist over fire, with the halo around the periphery of the stellar
to compose a space accessible to a multiplicity of visions, geometric figure. It is more Sun than Mars, although the
or approaches a structuring process that is very close latter is known as the Red Planet due to abundant iron
to cubism”. Chaia outlines a taxonomy of aspects from oxide in its atmosphere. Painting could be the reversal of
this period: (1) predominantly straight lines and angular a universe that seems to be created from excess hot light
forms; (2) structuring by curves and rounded shapes; (3) until a red circle stands out in the red field to establish
similar to the latter, but featuring forms, from the 1990s the world’s existence due to geometry creating difference
onward, that seem to be in a state of fluctuation; (4) mul- over monochrome. Ohtake’s incandescent circles are not
tiplicity of perspectives with forms distorted and planes held up in the verticality of the flame or the ascendant
articulated by lines. In the development of her third logic of fire; they are meteorite-bodies shaped by a huge
period, Ohtake was noted for using water on an acrylic- mass of fire.90 She drops the flame’s verticality and uses
paint base, which led to new plastic solutions for images. spherical fire shown in the apparent flatness of her fi-
As historian of Ohtake’s œuvre, Chaia also notes the spe- ery circle, seen head on. Were they actually circles, they
cial presence of curves, concentric structures, spirals and would correspond to their own possibility of being stellar
ellipses.“In a certain sense, the presence of the circle or bodies. Ohtake’s blood-red Fiat lux is a spatial explosion,
sphere may enable her to order the chaos of colors and the difference between two chromatic signs or brush-
control matter that aspires to become form,” he wrote. strokes, and not the linguistic fact of Genesis that fuses
The challenge for the present essay was to build a model the carmine of Hell and life.
of converging interpretation for aspects that have now An eclipse as fiery spectacle that should be compared
been firmly established while opening up new hypoth- with the universe in Ohtake’s abstract work is seen in Di-
eses for analysis. onísio Aeropagita convertendo os filósofos pagãos [Dionysius
the Areopagite converting pagan philosophers] or Dion-
Fiery circles ísio Aeropagita e o eclipse do sol [Dionysius the Areopagite
and the eclipse of the sun] (c. 1575) by the mannerist
Einstein showed that there is red shift somewhere in painter Antonie Caron. Compared with Ohtake’s pic-
the universe.89 There is red shift in Brazilian art too, and tures, the ascendant circle of fire in Emmanuel Nassar’s
it emerges with Eliseu Visconti’s L’adieu (1917) and is painting comes from empirical practice in Brazil reflect-
found in the variations of Milton Dacosta’s Em vermel- ing aesthetics, the indigenous tradition of slashing and
ho (1958-1959); remerging in Aluisio Carvão’s Cubocor burning to fertilize soil, and ecological disaster. Thus,
(1960); Decio Vieira’s Núcleos; Helio Oiticica’s Bólides Ohtake’s work has us interrogating the cosmos (in the
and Parangolés Waldemar Cordeiro’s Popcreto para um context of a solar eclipse, perhaps), as in German roman-
popcrítico (1964) and written content (Canalha) in Viva tic painting; Nassar’s work gets viewers to uneasily see
Maria (1966); the feeling for red in Antonio Dias’ Co- ‘deep Brazil’ and its impact on what is by now an anthro-
ração para amassar (1966), Monumento inacabado (paint- poscenic planet. His critical operation is to replace light-
ing, 1969) and The invented country (object, 1976); ing supplied through informal hook-ups to the mains
(known as gambiarras) by the destructive use of slashing

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and burning to clear vegetation in the Amazon region. the psychology of elements; he works with the idea
The contrast between the two images shows transitioning that rationalization occurs immediately for a modern
values that “unite the morality of the ‘little world’ with mind (one could hardly say otherwise of Ohtake). Each
the majestic morality of the universe,” Gaston Bachelard liquid is characterized by its own density and, he adds,
noted. “When a particular image takes on cosmic value, it the differing densities of immiscible liquids suffice to
functions as a vertiginous thought.”91 Imprecise geometry explain this phenomenon.95 Water and acrylic paint
now follows the mutant form of the fiery sphere. should not be mixed, however one cannot help but as-
sociate them specifically in relation to aqueous circles,
Aqueous circles such as those in which the outcome of painting poses
a more agitated liquid surface than impastos or heavily
Before looking at the aqueous circles, a digression is in caked brushstrokes. These circles pose an ambivalently
order concerning acrylic paint, the new modern material intelligible visual experience, between the image of
that revolutionized painting in the second half of the water and the coagulated form of the material state of
20th century. Polymer colors are based on synthetic resins the sign dried brushstroke under the regency of action.
made by dispersing pigment in acrylic emulsion. “These Ohtake converts viscous acrylic to a watery consistency,
colors are diluted in water (thinned), but when dried, so that the material imagination’s model for natural el-
resin particles coalesce to form a tough film that is im- ements has to be shifted from the specific case of water
pervious to water,” noted the specialist Ralph Mayer.92 to acrylic paint.
When Ohtake started making art again in the early
1950s, she embraced a new technique quite unlike the The aqueous appearance of the circle-universe result-
sumi of her childhood, or her oil paintings. In the mid- ing from the domain of matter leads to paraphrases of
1980s, she took to using acrylic paint dissolved in a wa- the psychology of Gaston Bachelard’s waters.96 Ohtake is
ter base. Since then, she has worked with the hypothesis equipped with that phenomenological ability to provide
of an aqueous geometry that, due to the nature of the material images that go beyond forms to reach matter it-
sign, evaded the sometimes almost quasi-static clash be- self. She never lets us forget that we are looking at a paint-
tween matter on any surface caked over a painting, like ing.The pictorial sign is not placed below number or idea
a Djanira or a Judith Lauand. Her painting no longer since Ohtake regains “constructive control” by determin-
has to be restrained by or struggle with the viscosity of ing liquid flows over the canvass in light of their paths
oil paint. It now flows better due to the quick nature of determined by surface porosity and gravity. A painting of
diluted polymer paint with new demands of temporal this set of circles is always a state of material imagination
experience and signic material. Her method ranged from of the world. Although Ohtake does not do watercolors
mastering the solubility of the sign-material and its by diluting paint in water, there are aspects of Water and
speedy drying or choosing to cake paint as in oils. Dilut- Dreams that support a symbolic vision of certain circles
ed acrylic paint may take on the aqueous appearance of in her painting. Her harmonious aqueous circles are fe-
a watercolor without the viscosity of oils, but has speed male because, as Bachelard noted on what he calls violent
obtained by using water to dilute it. A painting consti- water, when “the water becomes spiteful, it changes sex.
tuted by paint-time may then become the vessel that Turning malevolent, it becomes male.”97 It is the figural
informs the aqueous circle as imprecise geometry. In mod- rather than figurative aspect that makes this is an aque-
ern physics, space-time foam is the closest of these blue ous field. Bachelard also mentions the psychoanalyst
surfaces moved by the painter’s gestures; it corresponds Marie Bonaparte’s “mother-landscape” concept, which is
to the effort to quantify gravitation using a geometrical located primarily in the sea. “The sea is for all men one of
approach, the phenomenon tested by astrophysicist John the greatest and most constant maternal symbols.” 98 The
Wheeler.93 From above, these turbulent liquid foams are suggestion is that Ohtake’s aqueous circles relate to the
as flat as the sea in Wheeler’s imagination, says Jean- symbolism of mother-landscapes.
Pierre Luminet.94
The analysis of Ohtake’s aqueous circles also relates
Ohtake’s remark that “water is stronger than fire and to Luce Irigaray’s theses in Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un99
stone” makes a cogent case for analyzing her work in which poses symbolic relations between water and land
the light of three authors: Gaston Bachelard, Luce Iri- relocated to the field of physics by using images from
garay, and Zygmunt Bauman. The Bachelard to whom fluid mechanics and solid mechanics. The feminist theo-
Ohtake’s oceanic circles relate is the one that studies rist situates the imaginary between liquidity and solidity,
vulva and phallus, man and woman. Taking the physical
and symbolic model of Irigaray’s mechanics, the artist

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and theorist Carol Armstrong discusses the specificity of the gaze contemplates an astrophysical spectacle that
material in Cézanne’s watercolors based on the fluidity of is announced in circles, exceeding the threshold of the
this pictorial medium in her book Cézanne in the studio: as-yet to be created, the assumption of becoming part
still life and watercolors.100 Her arguments could also be of the world.
applied to the fluidity of Alfredo Volpi’s tempera facture
and most certainly to Ohtake’s. A previous Armstrong Liquid or aqueous circles are mentioned here since
text, Manet Manette, had already argued that pictorial fluids gases and liquids take on the shape of their con-
facture had been feminized by Berthe Morisot rather tainers. In Ohtake’s painting, the formless pictorial flux
than Manet, to whose family she was related.101 Certain floats over the support painted on the plane and under
painting surfaces in the Ohtake corpus have the actual the compression of the external black circle, its recipient.
appearance of tracts of water, due not to the specular op- Formless is not informal.This absence of fixed form is po-
tical interface, but the way material flows, showing the liticized in the above ‘liquid modernity’ metaphor coined
female facture of her feminine geometry. Some of her by the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman. The psychic and
circles comprise real visual fields of fluid matter, and fac- symbolic dimension of fluid, constructed from the es-
ture converts the emergence of the sign to the painting’s chatological image of sputum, in the “Formless” entry of
symbolic becoming. the phantasmagoric Encyclopaedia Acephalica (by George
Bataille and Michel Leiris)104 elaborates on the sense of
Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid modernity takes the physi- perplexity prompted by the formless. The linguistic di-
cal differences between solids and liquids to establish a mension of “formless” is cogitated in the entry’s first sen-
philosophical debate on the liquidity of contemporary tence: a dictionary would begin as of the moment when it
life. Much of the procedural exploration and apparent no longer provided the meanings of words but their tasks.
image of painting as fluid matter in Ohtake’s pictorial A term serving to declassify, requiring in general that all
activity took place around the year 2000, when Liquid things should have a form. What it designates does not...
modernity was published. In some ways, the Polish phi- possess rights, and everywhere gets crushed like a spider
losopher revisits Luce Irigaray’s model of analysis. Li- or an earthworm. The whole of philosophy has no other
quidity, with the related ideas of fluidity and lightness, is aim; it is a question of fitting what exists into a frock-coat,
deployed as “the leading metaphor for the present stage a mathematical frock-coat.To affirm on the contrary that
of the modern era.”102 Bauman articulates the character- the universe resembles nothing at all and is only formless,
istics of liquidity (as opposed to the rigidity of solids) to amounts to saying that the universe is something akin to
define it as a polysemic category that enables critical ob- a spider or a gob of spittle.”Following Bataille’s argument,
servation of society and human life within a framework applying the formless concept to that painting of Ohtake’s
of dystopia given the problems of emancipation, indi- would conclusively show its close proximity to the spider
viduality, time and space, work and community. Situa- or crushed worm of Encyclopaedia Acephalica.
tions ranging from the disintegration of systems to the
soft-ware dependent community, Bauman predicts situ- Ohtake’s pre-world is the epiphany of the visible on
ations quite the fearful ones expected by George Orwell the verge of unachieved figurability: the image is figural
or Aldous-Huxley style nightmares. but not figurative; it is line but devoid of any descrip-
tive or discursive intentionality. Jean-François Lyotard’s
Clash between circle and formless arguments in Discours, figures would show that an aque-
ous or cloudy circle is a geometric image in a figural
A black circle is formed on the periphery of the liquid- state,105 since it is neither named nor discursive. It is
shadow region; it is barely able to sculpt the void as a formless in its future (or “becoming”) form. Ohtake
liquid of nocturnal hue leaks and contaminates the cir- paints paradoxes by determining the formless contours
cle-core. By laying a red circle over shadows and spots, of the circle and establishing a dialectic between per-
Ohtake introduces the idea and ideal of perfect form ceptual precision and the physical imprecision of the
in the fluid space of the inner formless. On a conjec- plane as a phenomenological challenge to vision’s in-
tural level, the image could also be seen as an insurgent telligence. Mira Schendel’s pre-world may be the last
monad forming a territory of simple substances, as in moment prior to the emergence of language, that which
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s philosophy, and there the Jean-François Lyotard designates as being “the instance
place of the inner folds of the baroque subject in Gilles of discourse”106 – and there may be just a vestige, not
Deleuze’s analysis is visualized.103 In a field of shadows, even a single letter, because literacy in its desire requires
with matter in a state of condensation and expansion, a graphic reader capable of activating the proposed
phonetic when it is readable, even if it has as yet no
meaning, such as Alleluiah or Zeit (1964). In Schendel’s

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more economic monotypes, writing may still experi- or wu shamanism. An Ohtake painting now shows the
ment with its formless state. Jean Dubuffet’s Géométrie rotating force of empty space between two spiral forms
(1959) lithograph shows thousands of tiny dots seem- interpenetrated in complementarity (rather than opposi-
ingly comprising a handful of dust; The tripper (1972) by tion) like galactic movement itself, perhaps a trajectory
Antonio Dias has a constellation of splashes that creates in extra-human time in the collision-pressure process
references to draft portulano-like charts of the subject’s of matter and energy. Like Ohtake’s cosmological vi-
cosmic route without a soothing place between the sub- sion, Meireles’s featured double cosmic spirals in Mebs/
ject’s imagination and the cosmos. Speaking of astro- Caraxia (1970-1971) and Fontes. Mebs Caraxia is a sculp-
physics nebulosity instead of phantasmagoria in some ture made from spiraling sound recorded on a disk by
of Ohtake’s formless works, such as her blind paintings the output from a frequency oscillator’s isomerized graph.
or her formless circles requires the receiver-viewer to The Fontes (1992) installation holds the Milky Way, a
interpret them by projecting an analogy or metaphor, dual spiral galaxy comprising thousands of carpenter’s
or applying conjectural reasoning to something that is rulers hung from the ceiling. Meireles and Ohtake point
no there, in the instance of the imagination in which to the world’s primordial randomness. In Paul Klee’s spa-
“the ecstatic spirit believes it is on the verge of discover- tial thinking, spirals convey a double movement of life
ing the secrets of the universe.107 However, there is no and death. Seen in the centrifugal direction, it would be
semantic relation of substitution by verbal discourse in the route of life, while the centripetal path would be on
Ohtake’s work. In the painting, the world appears as course toward closure, dissolution, death.111 Painting pro-
endless abysmal surface besieged by the void of light. poses to deploy an axis of forces centrifugally in the di-
rection of its core in the endless pursuit of the vital “out-
Positive Negative ward” expanding dimension.This optimistic expansion of
painting may be an emblem of the existential meaning of
The sign of Ohtake’s painting also dissipates and accu- art for Ohtake on the eve of her 100th birthday.
mulates as nebula or cosmic cloud, since the circle now
calls for a different brushstroke without the restlessness Crooked geometry
of the aqueous circles. The lines of force arranged in the
painting refer to Eastern yin-yang’s graphical structure Geometry is where Tomie Ohtake proposes the return
and the mechanics of bodies in the universe. On discuss- of gesture as Zen act. The more the eye thinks it will find
ing memory in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Gilles rest and meditation, the more this geometry is relentless
Deleuze writes of “reliving images”.108 Ohtake’s art could and imprecise. The imperfect circle is exacerbated in her
not be expected to faithfully reproduce the Asian sym- crooked circles which were made to be touched: unpre-
bol. The symbolic universe of Ohtake’s image has to be dictable movement ravaging the most stable form. For
penetrated. Taoism and the arts of China (organized by Clark, it was the tension of incompleteness of the most
Stephen Little and Shawn Eichman) notes that “from perfect. Ohtake’s crooked geometry has the same level
a cosmological point of view, the yin force, which as a of physical disruption of the ideal as Franz Weissmann’s
complement to the yang (male) force, symbolizes the battered metal sheets of the 1960s. Their aim is to sub-
feminine aspect of reality... Yin and yang are seen as mit the precise geometry of industrial manufacturing to
mutually complementary opposites whose interaction the rapist act of utopia as a kind of return of the subject
creates all the mechanisms of the universe; one cannot repressed by Concrete pre-formism. “Despite important
exist without the other.”109 Little and Eichman included developments such as the return to [Oswald] de Andrade
a chapter on ‘Divine Manifestations of Yin, Goddesses and his anthropophagy theory; despite proposing an
and Female Saints’ which may reintroduce a new aspect ‘industrial baroque’ to cover specific aspects of Brazilian
of the feminine accent into Ohtake’s pictorial discourse. reality,” said Ronaldo Brito, “Concrete art was incapable
of systematically analyzing the political rationale for its
The Taoist yin-yang’s universal duality emerges as pri- practices and justifying its engagement with our cultural
mal relationship between night and day, or as a dynamic environment.”112 Both artists, Ohtake and Weissmann,
system in which the whole is greater than the parts.There assumed this failure of formal idealization. While sci-
are aspects of both yin and yang in everything. Taoism’s ence since Archimedes has sought “to straighten the cir-
fluid boundaries can accommodate deities and values cumference” (thus obtaining a straight segment whose
with those of different philosophical-religious systems.110 measure is equal to the length of the circumference, as
The yin-yang duality is also found in Confucianism and given by 2πr), Ohtake’s sculptural circles introduced
other Chinese philosophical systems such as feng shui

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crookedness into all the exactness of circles calculated by that the least space between two points is a segment of
engineers and made using industrial technology. the ellipse. Tomie works with a geometric impulse but it
is not straight-line based geometrism.”116 While Chaia
As a Japanese immigrant, Ohtake never wavered in explored the relations between Ohtake’s pictorial œuvre
her option for integration in Brazil and for art as the lan- and Bernhard Riemann’s model that paved the way for
guage of choice for her process of symbolic negotiation. relativity theory and through precedents for the baroque
The baroque Zen juncture may be seen as her transcul- world, there is also a need to discuss the geometric mod-
tural pact between Brazil and Japan. Her striking persis- el’s explanatory role for the Renaissance Universum in
tence in relation to imperfection also applies to her way Nicolaus Copernicus’ centered circular space or the el-
of looking at the baroque and her adhesion to Zen. The liptical eccentric (de-centered) space of Johannes Ke-
Portuguese-language etymology of barroco [baroque] re- pler.117 However, the rare presence of a truncated ellipse
fers to a “rough and uneven pearl”. The first dictionary to in Ohtake’s work is not grounded on the transcendental
show the general state of the language, Padre Raphael phenomenology of a Kepler. Galileo wrote that the el-
Bluteau’s Portuguese & Latin Vocabulary, was published lipse was unnatural, a “perverted” circle. This is the experi-
in a series of volumes, the first of which came out in ence of her crooked-circle installation. Despite focusing
1712 (from the printing press at Coimbra’s Colégio das mainly on circles, Ohtake’s cosmology does not feature
Artes). The word baroco when applied to form was used a binary structure, nor is it evidently heliocentric, much
to designate imperfect work. Perhaps because it also less anthropocentric.
designated the bizarre, Jorge Luis Borges’ prologue to
Universal History of Infamy somewhat harshly asserted: Indeed, her blind paintings dialogue with Giordano
“I would say that baroque is that style which deliber- Bruno’s infinite universe rather than Kepler’s ellipse and
ately exhausts (or wants to exhaust) its possibilities and his notion of the universe’s finiteness being determined
that verges on its own caricature.”113 Although Ohtake by the observable distances of the stars. Ohtake refutes
viewed baroque art in the states of Bahia and Minas the idea of infinity as “conceptual closure”. The role of art
Gerais,114 she never directly cited colonial monuments is not to measure the universe but to set out the poetic
or their forms, nor did she reinterpret their constitu- dimensions of perception, including our experience of its
ent elements. Doing so would detract from her stand limits, and of the expansion and infinity of space for a pe-
against giving her paintings titles and adding a verbal riod in which questions are posed for science. Her brush-
phonetic dimension to their signifiers, which she wanted stroke flows blindly without a portulano chart because it
to be purely visual. Ohtake’s pictorial phenomenology is the vehicle of pure Zen experiencing space in the act of
includes phenomenological crises and tension in her being in the world and removed from it. It is unlike Ce-
geometrical figures. The “tension of intentionality”115 as cilia Meireles’ canto on the impasse of the anti-colonial
driving force for her painting does not downplay con- movement trapped by colonial authority and betrayal in
structive intention, but does test its limits. Imprecision is the irregular urban space of Vila Rica: “I cannot take a
tactical. Constructive intentionality is reaffirmed in the step / through this atrocious labyrinth / of forgetfulness
uninhibited gestural works of the 1980s, such as Amilcar and blindness” (Romanceiro da Inconfidência). Therefore,
de Castro’s drawings and Brice Marden’s prints. Indeed, Ohtake does not copy or illustrate the baroque but pur-
reclassifying colonial art as baroque has been a recent sues points of tension.
phenomenon in Brazil (from the 1940s) and a very in-
fluential one locally, as seen in Hannah Levy’s work for Severo Sarduy suggested that symbolic forms should
the heritage body (Sphan); Manuel Bandeira’s Guia de be interpreted depending on the cosmology of the period.
Ouro Preto [Guide to Ouro Preto] (1938-1939, Sphan); The retombée of the geometrization of star orbits described
Cecília Meireles’ poetry in Romanceiro da Inconfidência by scientists had already been augured in Renaissance
[ballads relating to the failed anti-colonial movement of art. Ohtake’s blind paintings should be seen in light of
1789] (1953); Marcel Gautherot’s photography; Anto- Sarduy’s retombée concept in which the consequence of a
nio Candido’s literary criticism; and Alberto da Veiga fact may precede its cause, or things may look like some-
Guignard’s paintings in Minas Gerais. thing that does not exist. Ohtake’s cosmic retombée was
heightened as Russia and America vied for technological
Michael Chaia examines the space Ohtake creates mastery of space during the Cold War, beginning in 1957
from a Bachelardian perspective to conclude: “[her] with the launch of Sputnik 1 on an elliptical orbit around
curvature is not null (as if it were a visual translation of the Earth. The space race together with the weapons race
Riemannian space), since she constructs her elements, made headlines for another 15 years, including America’s
pictorial forms or structures based on the assumption Apollo 11 moon landing.

132

A close reading of different stages in Ohtake’s trajectory to the Square series that Josef Albers started in 1949 and
shows how she mobilizes her forces from the physical had developed into hundreds of chromatic interactions
dimension of brushstrokes to the parameters of spiritu- by the time he died in 1976. Every circle is different
ality to take the constructive rationale closer to gestural not only because a perfect circle is unattainable but also
sensitivity, thus obtaining a fundamental stylistic sin- because each circle’s imperfection is an unrepeatable
gularity in opposed references.118 Ohtake’s imaginary phenomenon.
has no place for dichotomies between circles and el-
lipses, even if the former much prevail over the latter in From 2008 to 2010, in preparing for an exhibition,
her corpus of paintings. The key to understanding the Ohtake concentrated on paintings in which circles
circle’s persistent presence in her trajectory is found in predominated. For over two years, she was working on
the Eastern sumi-ê tradition, which involves figuration this form alone. “I have put so much work [into this].
and elements of ideogrammatic calligraphy in the art Worked real hard! 121 I discussed these circles with her
that migrated from China to Japan. individually and followed their progress during quar-
terly studio visits. The one demand she made was that
Among practitioners of sumi-ê painting in Brazil, this process be fully and clearly discussed, which she
ensō is seen in the work of Massao Okinaka, a mem- saw as a decisive condition for her to evolve rather
ber of Ohtake’s network.119 On returning from Japan than repeat. Camila Molina’s lucid review of the 2010
in 1959, Mario Pedrosa spoke highly of sumi-ê and exhibition at Instituto Tomie Ohtake highlights the
this artistic practice is found, in an adapted version but presence of 25 circles in the pictorial production of a
nonetheless present, in the work of Flavio-Shiró, Mira nonagenarian Ohtake: “there is a double force in the
Schendel, Amilcar de Castro, Anna Maria Maiolino, exhibition: paintings are impacted by the others in
Wesley Duke Lee, and Julio Plaza. Ensō ( ) is Japa- a movement of a wide range of ‘round forms’, while
nese for circle. However, ensō in Ohtake’s work takes each painting autonomously reveals a life.” 122 As the
the form of an assumption left unwritten, an attitude most stable and perfect of forms, the circle could not
rather than an ideogram. The circle was the Platonic be assured any guarantee or privileged status as a final
ideal of perfection, as it was for Islamic and Asian cul- solution for form. Rather than perfecting drawings of
tures, whereas Zen saw ensō as an imperfect circle since circles in her paintings or ‘possibilizing’ the impossible,
exactness was unattainable. the agenda posed by Ohtake’s rationale cultivates the
experience of imperfection. She sees the circle as in-
Ohtake drew on traditional Japanese culture to exhaustible experience of impossibility rather than the
profoundly embrace the imperfect-circle notion. Her most exact and complete of forms. Key to her vitality,
circles are associated with the conceptual framework this is also her geometric concern. For as long as she
of ensō and relate closely to Lygia Clark’s Ovo linear lives, Ohtake will be working with inexactness.
[linear egg] (1958) painting, which revisits the essential
reference to organic and symbolic aspects. Ovo linear At this stage in the discussion of exclusion of di-
shows an incomplete or imperfect circle that has not versity from constructive mentalities, there are some
been joined; it refers to life and time, which is creation pertinent points raised by Raul Antelo concerning the
of humanity, and to emptiness. Perhaps somehow ap- geopolitical power games that beset the ‘peripheral’ re-
proaching the notion of ensō, Ovo linear is the world’s gions: “They want Asia or South America to be obliged
time; its peripheral white line is broken off, thus creat- to follow the paths traced by one ideology or another.
ing perceptual tension, which according to the Gestalt They want to force on humanity one sole type of uni-
“law of good form”, the mind harnesses for the eye to versalized existence— a humiliating and unacceptable
complete form virtually. However, this incompleteness leveling. The diversity of the destiny of nations of races,
of the exact circle in the painting of Clark or the Japa- of religions, of customs, and even of civilizations makes
nese painter Jiro Yoshihara paradoxically refers to the the crusade for the unification of thought and spirit an
very long tradition of a circle beyond imperfection, a attack on the life of peoples. Even the desired solutions
form in which there is no lack or excess.120 Sophistica- will no longer be desired or tolerated when they come
tion is thus found more in the minimal subtleties of the to mean the triumph of one civilization, one ideology
inexact than in the futile attempt to reach perfection. over another, of which it will become the discretion-
Although lacking taxonomy or organization, Ohtake’s ary guardian.”123 Antelo’s diagnosis seems to have been
circles refer to the repeated squares in the long Homage written to order as a means of shedding light on this
discussion. In Ohtake’s constructive affinity, ensō is
both self-contained and open to infinity.

133

notes 30 See the author’s: Tomie Ohtake: pinturas cegas. Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê
Camargo, 2012.
1 PEDROSA, Mário. Folha da Manhã, São Paulo, Dec. 23, 1953.
31 ARANTES, Otília Beatriz Fiori. “Atualidade de Mário Pedrosa”. Folha de S.
2 Mutsuhito Meiji (1852-1912) was the 122nd emperor of Japan. Paulo, São Paulo, April 16, 2000 (trans.).

3 See the author’s Tomie Ohtake na trama espiritual da arte brasileira [Tomie 32 See KRISTEVA, Julia. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1987). New
Ohtake in the spiritual plot of Brazilian art]. São Paulo: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, York: Columbia University Press, 1989; and STAROBINSKI, Jean. “Melancholy in
2003. the Mirror: Three Readings of Baudelaire”, Charlotte Mandell (trans.) Hyperion,
vol. V, issue 2, Nov. 2010.
4 OITICICA, Hélio. In: Nova Objetividade Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Museu de
Arte Moderna, 1967. 33 See the author’s: Tomie Ohtake: pinturas cegas, 2012, cit.

5 Idem. 34 SCHAPIRO, Meyer. Mondrian: On the Humanity of Abstract Painting. New
York: George Braziller, 1995, p.25-78.
6 GULLAR, Ferreira. Vanguarda e subdesenvolvimento. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização
Brasileira, 1969. 35 MONDRIAN, Piet. Liberazione dall’oppressione nell’arte e nella vita.
In: MARSIANI, Ottavio (org.) L’astratismo de Piet Mondrian. Venezia: Neri Pozza,
7 TUCHMAN, Maurice. “Hidden meanings in abstract art”. In: TUCHMAN, 1956, p.168.
Maurice (org.) Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. Los Angeles: Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986, p.17. 36 MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. In: BALDWIN,
Thomas (org.) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings. London: Routledge, 2004.
8 HERKENHOFF, Paulo. Flavio-Shiró: pintor de três mundos – 65 anos de
trajetória. São Paulo: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, 2008. 37 RUBIN, William. Frank Stella. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1970,
p.16.
9 HERKENHOFF, Paulo. Manabu Mabe: anos 50/60. Rio de Janeiro: Banco
Pactual; Pinakotheke, 2012. 38 TALLMAN, Susan. “Blinky Palermo, after the fact”. Arts Magazine, summer
1989, p.15-16.
10 HERKENHOFF, Paulo. Tomie Ohtake construtiva. Rio de Janeiro: Banco Pac-
tual; Pinakotheke, 2013. 39 POLLACK, Maika. “Blinky Palermo: Original Gangster?” The New York Ob-
server, New York, Aug. 24, 2011.
11 OHTAKE, Ricardo (ed.) Tomie Ohtake. São Paulo: Instituto Tomie Ohtake,
2001. 40 CHAIA, Miguel. A dimensão cósmica na arte de Tomie Ohtake. In: OHTAKE,
Ricardo (org.) Tomie Ohtake. São Paulo: Estúdio RO Projetos, 2001, p.218.
12 In: AMARAL, Aracy (org.) Projeto construtivo brasileiro na arte: 1950-1962.
Rio de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Moderna; São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 1977, 41 LYOTARD, Jean-François. Discourse, Figure. Anthony Hudek and Mary Ly-
p.292-299. don (trans.) Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2011, p.9.

13 FIEDLER, Konrad. Aforismes. Daniel Cohn (org.) Paris: Éd. Images Mod- 42 SAUSSURE. Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics (1916). New York:
ernes, 2004. Columbia University Press, 2013.

14 See by the author: Pincelada: pintura e método no Brasil, projeções da década 43 Ibid., p.217. (“Lire est entendre et non pas voir.”)
de 1950 [Brushstroke: Painting and Method – Projections from the 1950s]. São
Paulo: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, 2009, p.226-231. 44 BENSE, Max. Pequena estética. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1971, p.225.

15 BALJEU, Joost; VAN DOESBURG, Theo. “The Basis of Concrete Art.” In: Theo 45 CAMPOS, Haroldo de. “As esculturas dissipatórias de Tomie Ohtake”. In:
van Doesburg. New York: Macmillan, 1974, p.97. TOMIE OHTAKE. São Paulo: Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, 1981.

16 CORDEIRO, Waldemar. Ruptura. Correio Paulistano, São Paulo, Supplement, 46 MOLINA, Camila. Círculos de Tomie. O Estado de S. Paulo, São Paulo, Nov. 22,
Jan. 11, 1953. Cordeiro quotes Fiedler: “Beauty is not deducible from concepts; 2010.
but the value of an artwork is indeed.”
47 HEIDEGGER, Martin. The Origin of the Work of Art. David Farrell Krell
17 WICHMANN, Siegfried. Japonisme: the Japanese influence on Western art (trans.) New York: Harper Collins, 2008.
since 1858. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007, p.228-235.
48 BADIOU, Alain. Number and Numbers. Robin Mackay (trans.) Malden: Polity,
18 GOLDWATER, Robert. Symbolism. New York: Icon, 1998, p.2. 2008, p.7-15.

19 See the author’s Laços do olhar: roteiros entre o Brasil e o Japão [Bonds of the 49 LUMINET, Jean-Pierre. Le destin de l’univers – trous noirs et énergie sombre.
Gaze: Routes between Brazil and Japan]. São Paulo: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Paris: Fayard, 2006, p.178. The author presents an image of pulsar and a descrip-
2009, p.293. tion of the phenomenon..

20 GLISSANT, Edouard. Traité du Tout-Monde. (Poétique IV). Paris: Gallimard, 50 The Exhaustion Method is an operation based on proof by contradiction,
1997, and other titles. expressed in Latin by reductio ad absurdum. The method devised by Archimedes
in his attempt to approximate the value of π (pi) relies on approximate answers to
21 GRAÇA ARANHA. “A estética da vida” (1921). In: Graça Aranha: obras com- different problems, specifying the boundaries between which the correct answer
pletas. Afrânio Coutinho (org.) Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1960, lies. Hercules Barsotti’s painting mentioned above can be visually approximated
p.620. to the graphical representation of the polygon resulting from the method of ex-
haustion.
22 SANTIAGO, Silviano. Vale quanto pesa. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1982, p.19.
51 Terminology adopted by the author to discuss Decio Vieira’s painting work as
23 BHABHA, Homi. DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the from the 1950s. In: Decio Vieira. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getulio Vargas, 2014
modern nation. London: Routledge, 2004, p.199-244. (in press).

24 FIEDLER, Aphorismes, 2004, cit., p.51. Our translation. 52 Apud MENDONÇA, Casimiro Xavier de. Tomie Ohtake. São Paulo: Ex-Libris,
1983.
25 PIGNATARI, Décio. Introduction. In: Fiaminghi exhibition catalogue.
Campinas, SP: Galeria Aremar, 1961. Vantongerloo had conducted unorthodox 53 See the author’s Tomie Ohtake na trama espiritual…, 2003, cit., p.29-39.
experiments such Volume et graphique (1945) and Formation de la lumière (1951),
which may have informed the experiments of Cordeiro and Fiaminghi with 54 ZANINI, Walter. Vicente do Rego Monteiro (1899-1970). São Paulo: Museu de
color-light in the 1960s. On this subject, see ANKER, Valentina. Vantongerloo. Arte Moderna, 1997.
Art International, Lugano, v.XXIV, n.5-6, p.158-194, Jan.-Feb. 1981.
55 Rubem Valentim, Emanoel Araújo and Edival Ramosa are some of the art-
26 See the author’s Tomie Ohtake na trama espiritual…, 2003, cit. ists of African descent to be excluded, while sculptor Mari Yoshimoto and the
painter Lidia Okumura integrate the Japanese-Brazilian group.
27 TANIZAKI, Jun’ichiro. In Praise of Shadows. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G.
Seidensticker (trans.) New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1977. 56 MARTINS, Sérgio Bruno. “O MAR de cima a baixo”. Available at http://
www.blogdoims.com.br/ims/o-mar-de-cima-a-baixo-%E2%80%93-por-sergio-
28 ASBURY, Michael (2005) “Neo-concretism and minimalism: on Ferreira martins/; accessed on July 30, 2013.
Gullar’s theory of the non-object”. In: MERCER, K. (ed.) Cosmopolitan Modern-
isms. London: InIVA; Boston: MIT Press, 2005, p.168-189. 57 MAMMÌ, Lorenzo. Concreta ’56: a raiz da forma. São Paulo: Museu de Arte
Moderna, 2006, p.43.
29 Ibid.

134

58 CAMARGO, Iberê. Answers to Walmir Ayala (org.) A criação plástica em 86 CHAIA, “A dimensão cósmica...”, 2001, cit., p.217-218.
questão. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 1970, p.181.
87 CHAIA, ibid., p.220-222. All the above Chaia references are from these pages.
59 See, for example, SALZSTEIN, Sonia. “Anos 60/ um marco na obra de Iberê
Camargo”. In: Diálogos com Iberê Camargo. Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Ca- 88 See the author’s Tomie Ohtake: pinturas cegas, 2012, cit.
margo, 2003, p.46-49.
89 See RUSSELL, cit., p.108-112.
60 BRETT, Guy. “Lygia Clark: six cells”. In: Lygia Clark. Fondació Antoní Tàpies
(Barcelone), MAC, galleries d’art contemporain (Marseille), Fundação de Ser- 90 The question about whether fire has mass in quite common. The matter
ralves (Oporto), Société des Expositions du Palais des Beaux Arts (Brussels), undergoing combustion has mass, same as gases. Fire is an oxidation process
1997-1998, p.30-31. said to be combustion or burning that produces processes of heat and light en-
ergy. “The flame is a becoming-being”. See BACHELARD, Gaston. The Flame of
61 DUARTE, Paulo Sérgio. “Modernos fora do eixo / Modernity on the Fringes”. a Candle. Robert S. Dupree (trans. and ed.) Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications,
In: AMARAL, Aracy (coord.) Arte construtiva no Brasil: Coleção Adolpho Leirner 1988, p.20.
/ Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection. São Paulo: DBA, 1998,
p.183. 91 BACHELARD, The Flame of a Candle, 1988, cit., p.21.

62 Ibid., p.202. 92 MAYER, Ralph. The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques. New York:
Viking, 1991, p.258.
63 ARGAN, Giulio Carlo. In: Rubem Valentim. Rome: s.n., 1966. Our translation.
93 See LUMINET, cit., p.359-360.
64 The text is dated “Bahia, Rio, São Paulo, Brasília. Janeiro 1976”. In: RUBEM
VALENTIM. São Paulo: Bienal de São Paulo, 1977. 94 Ibid., p.361.

65 RAMOS, Arthur. Arte negra do Brasil. Cultura, Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da 95 BACHELARD, Gaston. Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of
Educação e Saúde, n.2, p.189-212, 1949. Matter (1942). Edith R. Farrell (trans.) Dallas: The Pegasus Foundation, 1983,
p.93.
66 PEDROSA, Mário. “Contemporaneidade dos artistas da Bahia”. Correio da
Manhã, Rio de Janeiro, Jan. 29, 1967. 96 Ibid., p.157.

67 For an analysis of the meaning of Rubem Valentim’s oeuvre, see the author’s 97 Ibid., p.15.
Pincelada…, 2009, cit., p.185.
98 Maria Bonaparte quoted in BACHELARD, ibid., p.115.
68 MARTINS, “O MAR...”, cit.
99 IRIGARAY, Luce. Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un. Paris: Minuit, 1985.
69 MARTINS, Sérgio Bruno. Décio [sic] Vieira: Geometric Investigations. En-
clave Review, Issue 1, p.4-5, Summer 2010. 100 ARMSTRONG, Carol. Cézanne in the Studio: still-life and Watercolors.
Los Angeles: Getty Publication, 2004.
70 DELEUZE, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Tom Conley (trans.)
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1939. 101 ARMSTRONG, Carol. Manet Manette. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2002, p.259-267.
71 DAMISCH, Hubert. Théorie du nuage, pou une histoire de la peinture. Paris: Seuil,
1972. 102 BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity (2000). Cambridge: Polity Press,
2006, p.2.
72 WARBURG, Aby. Mnemosyne, l’atlante delle immagini (1927-1929). Martin
Warnke (org.) Maurizio Grelardi and Bettina Müller. Marene: Nino Aragno Ed., 103 In this respect, see DELEUZE, Gilles. The Fold, Leibniz and the Baroque
2002. (1988). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

73 DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. L’Image survivante: Histoire de l’art et temps 104 BATAILLE, Georges, LEIRIS, Michel et allii. Encyclopaedia Acephalica. Ian
des fantômes selon Aby Warburg. Paris: Minuit, 2002. White (trans.) London: Atlas Press, 1995, p.51-52. “Formless”. This paragraph
summarizes Bataille’s argument concerning the formless.
74 In this essay, we have used the term “Baroque” for its wide acceptance in
the designation of colonial art by artists such as Aleijadinho. For the historio- 105 See LYOTARD, Discourse, figure, 2011, cit., p.160.
graphical revolution of this debate on the Baroque in Brazil, see LEVY, Hannah.
A propósito de três teorias sobre o Barroco. Revista do Serviço do Patrimônio 106 Ibid., p.117.
Histórico e Artístico Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, v.5, p.259-284, 1941. For the con-
ceptual and historiographical issues, see: LOPES JR., Guilherme Simões. Palavra 107 CAILLOIS, Roger. Images, images. Paris: José Corti, 1966, p.151. Our trans-
Peregrina, o Barroco e o Pensamento sobre Artes e Letras no Brazil. São Paulo: Edusp, lation.
1998 Miriam Andrade Ribeiro de Oliveira’s theoretical corpus offers classical
conceptual analysis of visual culture of the period, with sharp distinctions be- 108 DELEUZE, Gilles. Bergsonism (1966). Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988, p.64.
tween Baroque and Rococo in Brazil.
109 LITTLE, Stephen; EICHMAN, Shawn (org.) Taoism and the Arts of China.
75 Incidentally, only one of the four inaugural exhibitions of the Museu de Arte Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2000, p.275.
do Rio (MAR) that Sérgio Bruno Martins reviewed in a text was met with his
unreserved approval: Rio de Imagens, a show jointly organized by the refined 110 Ibid., p.169.
specialist Carlos Martins and the excellent historian Rafael Cardoso, who is also
Martins’ partner in a cultural production company. 111 KLEE, Paul. Théorie de l’art moderne. Paris: Gonthier, 1971, p.127.

76 See the author’s: Laços do olhar, 2009, cit., p.57-66. 112 BRITO, Ronaldo. Neoconcretismo: vértice e ruptura do projeto construtivo
brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 1985, p.44. Translated from Portuguese for
77 DANTO, Arthur C. “Helen Frankenthaler.” In: Embodied meanings: critical this edition.
essays and aesthetic meditations. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994, p.27.
113 BORGES, Jorge Luis. Preface to Universal History of Infamy, 1954.
78 SCHAPIRO, 1995, cit., p.72.
114 See the author’s Tomie Ohtake na trama espiritual da arte brasileira, 2003, cit.
79 CAMPOS, Haroldo de. As esculturas dissipatórias…, 1981, cit.
115 DERRIDA, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Alan Bass (trans. and intro.)
80 See, respectively, the author’s (a) “A pedra de raio de Rubem Valentim, Oba- Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978, p.27.
pintor da Casa de Mãe Senhora.” In: Salas Especiais. 23ª Bienal Internacional de
São Paulo. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 1996, p.418-424; (b) Tomie 116 CHAIA, 2001, cit., p.218.
Ohtake na trama espiritual..., 2003, cit.; and (c) “Mira Schendel and the shaping
of the unexpressible.” New York: The Drawing Center, 1995. 117 PEREZ, Rolando. Severo Sarduy and the neo-baroque image of thought in the
visual arts. This essay contains the full text of Sarduy’s interpretation raised above,
81 See respectively HERKENHOFF, Pincelada..., 2009, cit.; and MARTINS, “O including Renaissance cosmology.
MAR...”, cit..
118 CHAIA, 2001, cit., p.217.
82 CASSIRER, Ernst. An Essay on Man. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944,
p.26, animal symbolicum. 119 See LOURENÇO, Maria Cecília França. Alina e Massao Okinaka: perenidade
e vida. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 1993; and Sumi-ê e os
83 TANIZAKI, In Praise of Shadows, 1977, cit. contemporâneos. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 1986.

84 LUMINET, Le destin de l’univers..., 2006, cit., p.209. Luminet describes 120 One of the photos Pedrosa brought back from Japan in 1959 was an image
gravastars and black energy (énergie sombre in the original French). of Jiro Yoshihara’s work Black circle on white.

85 See RUSSELL, Bertrand. ABC of Relativity. London: Routledge, 2009, p.107-108. 121 MOLINA, Camila. “Círculos de Tomie”. Op. cit. note 45 above.

122 Ibid.

123 ANTELO, Raul. “O impossível de Maria Martins”. In: Maria Martins. São
Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 2013.

135

texto | text
Paulo Herkenhoff

organização e produção | organization and production
Instituto Tomie Ohtake

tradução | translation
Izabel Burbridge

revisão | proofreading
Armando Olivetti

projeto gráfico | graphic design
Verbo Arte e Design / Fernando Leite
Viviane Giaquinta

fotografia | photographs
Ricardo Miyada
Acervo Instituto Tomie Ohtake

pré-impressão e impressão | pre-printing and printing
Stilgraf

Todos os direitos desta publicação estão
reservados ao Instituto Tomie Ohtake.

dados internacionais de catalogação na publicação (cip)
(câmara brasileira do livro, sp, brasil)

Tomie Ohtake : gesto e razão geométrica
[curador Paulo Herkenhoff ; versão para o inglês Izabel Burbridge].
– 1. ed. – 
São Paulo : Instituto Tomie Ohtake, 2014.
Edição bilíngue: português/inglês.

ISBN 978-85-88728-78-3

1. Arte – Brasil – Exposições – Catálogos
2. Othake, Tomie, 1913- 3. Pintores brasileiros
I. Herkenhoff, Paulo.

14-08753

CDD-750

Índices para catálogo sistemático:
1. Pinturas : Artes : Brasil : Exposições : Catálogos 750