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TEXT JONATHAN CANE

LANDSCAPED GALLERYDEEP WITHIN THE BRAZILIAN JUNGLE, AN ART COLLECTION

SHINES BETWEEN CAREFULLY MANICURED LAWNS

IN 1941, THE MELANCHOLIC AUSTRIAN WRITER STEFANZweig called Brazil the land of the future. Having fled thetragedies of pre-war Europe, he found the same sensuousbeauty and muscular modernity that had enchanted LeCorbusier and Josephine Baker on their illicit trip to Rio deJaneiro a decade earlier.

In 1943, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hostedthe exhibition Brazil Builds, which surprised, even shocked,international artists, critics and architects. They wereflabbergasted by the bold and energetic designs of, amongothers, the young Oscar Niemeyer who showed his first solocommission, the Pampulha architectural complex whichincluded a lagoon, casino, yacht club, hotel, open-airnightclub and church in the city of Belo Horizonte.

It would not be a hyperbole to claim, as many historianshave, that by 1951, when the Bienal de São Paulo wasinitiated (the second biennial in the world, after Venice),Brazil was the most modern country in the world. That thecountry was modern was not a surprise, in Brazil at least.After all, it was in February 1922 during the Semana de ArteModerna (Modern Art Week) that Brazilians decided the eraof modernity had begun.

What made Brazilian modernism interesting is thatalthough deeply political and intellectual, it was also fun,sexy, surprising, weird and colourful. Even the most brutallysocialist buildings in São Paulo, such as Lina Bo Bardi’scultural centre SESC Pompéia, look playful and charming, somuch so that they make London’s Brutalist Barbican look likean abandoned Soviet housing block in winter.

This endless potential to surprise is embodied in Centrode Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, the art and botanical

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Centro de ArteC o n t e m p o râ n e aInhotim inBrumadinho,B ra z i l

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gardens in Brumadinho in Minas Gerais, southeast Brazil. Yo uwould be forgiven for not knowing where Minas Gerais stateis — Inhotim’s location is only a little absurd, like Elmgreenand Dragset’s 2005 “pop architectural land art project” Pra d aMar fa on Route 90, in the middle of the Texas desert.

Inhotim is in the middle of a tropical jungle, in the middleof nowhere. Despite its isolation, by sheer force of will — anda not insignificant amount of money — art collector andmining billionaire Bernado Paz set up a remarkable collectionshown in more than 20 pavilions in gardens designed bylegendary Bruno Burle Marx.

The creator of the modern garden, landscape architectBurle Marx brought Rio’s promenade to prominence withpainterly walkways and bold blocks of colourful, indigenoustropical plants. He, too, was featured in Brazil Builds for hisradical roof garden on Rio’s Ministry of Education and Healthbuilding and the gardens of Niemeyer’s Pampulha.

Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais, the mostlikely point of arrival and departure on a visit to Inhotim, andoffers a counterpoint to the fantasy jungle art tour in anexpedition to the beautiful but failed Pampulha — leaky anddysfunctional, what one critic called “melancholy harbingersof an age of erotic liberation that never really came”.

Burle Marx’s gardens at Inhotim are now maintained by anarmy of gardeners who carefully mow between the sculpturesand installations and care for an impressive palm and orchidcollection. As well as so-called botanical curators, Inhotimhas attracted prestigious art curators, such as AllanSchwartzman from the New Museum in New York and JochenVolz, co-curator of the 53rd Venice Biennale, who are now incharge of the collection. While the works include an

obligatory Anish Kapoor, it is the chance to view works byBrazilian neo-concrete artists Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Papethat are behind a schlep into the jungle.

Their contrarian proto-performative movement isexemplified in the fabric works of Pa p e ’s Divisor andOiticica’s Pa ra n g o l é s . One, a crowd of heads poking throughcloud-like sheets, moving as a sensuous unit, and the other,brightly coloured layers of fabric — these actions andmaterials insisted on an immediacy and poverty of expressionand experimentation. Oiticica’s The Invention of the ColourPenetrável Magic Square #5—De l u xe (1977) is now plantedamong the palms and is one of the few remaining works tosurvive a 2009 fire. Ttéia 1C (2002) is also typically relational,yet Pape’s forest-like installation is as weightless and silent asOiticica’s is brutish.

Younger Brazilian artists such as Adriana Varejão have alsofeatured in the fantastical modern galleries. Varejão’s fiercepostcolonial, blue-and-white mosaics, wonderful as they are,were likely foregrounded by her (now failed) marriage to Pa z .

Inhotim is not without its contradictions; its beauty isscarred by the idea that it was only because of Paz’s extensivedestruction of the environment that he was able to invent sucha wonder. One doesn’t want to be too cynical though, forfostering an unhealthy awareness of oppression and sufferingcan lead to terrible hopelessness. Unable to imagine a future,Zweig and his wife ingested massive amounts of barbituratesand died on their bed not long after he had declared Brazil theland of the future.

Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim,w w w. i n h o t i m . o r g. b r

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Lygia Pape.Ttéia 1C. 2002

Church of StFrancis by

architect OscarN i e m eye r

What made Brazilian modernism interesting is that although deeply politicaland intellectual, it was also fun, sexy, surprising, weird and colourful

Hélio Oiticica. TheInvention of the

Colour PenetrávelMagic Square

#5—D e l u xe . 1977

Inhotimg a rd e n s

designed byBruno Burle

Marx