Printing invention: Artwork, Project or Device.

Purity Is a Myth THE MATERIALITY OF CONCRETE ART FROM ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, AND URUGUAY Edited by Zanna Gilbert, Pia Gottschaller, Tom Learner, and Andrew Perchuk For review purposes only. Not for distribution. ISSUES & DEBATES Issues & Debates Purity Is a Myth The Materiality of Concrete Art from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay Edited by ZANNA GILBERT, PIA GOTTSCHALLER, TOM LEARNER, and ANDREW PERCHUK Getty Research Institute Getty Conservation Institute Los Angeles For review purposes only. Not for distribution. Getty Research Institute Publications Program Mary E. Miller, Director, Getty Research Institute Gail Feigenbaum, Associate Director © 2021 J. Paul Getty Trust Published by the Getty Research Institute and Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles Getty Publications 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500 Los Angeles, California 90049-1682 getty.edu/publications Mary T. Christian, Editor Jim Drobka, Designer Clare Davis, Production Karen Ehrmann, Image and Rights Acquisition Distributed in the United States and Canada by the University of Chicago Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gilbert, Zanna, editor. | Gottschaller, Pia, editor. | Learner, Tom, editor. | Perchuk, Andrew, editor. | Getty Research Institute, issuing body. Title: Purity is a myth : the materiality of concrete art from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay / edited by Zanna Gilbert, Pia Gottschaller, Tom Learner, and Andrew Perchuk. Other titles: Issues & debates. Description: Los Angeles : Getty Research Institute, [2021] | Series: Issues & debates | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Purity Is a Myth presents new scholarship on Concrete art in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay from the 1940s to the 1960s”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021001297 (print) | LCCN 2021001298 (ebook) | ISBN 9781606067239 (paperback) | ISBN 9781606067246 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Concrete art—Argentina. | Concrete art—Brazil. | Concrete art—Uruguay. | Art, Argentine—20th century. | Art, Brazilian—20th century. | Art, Uruguayan—20th century. Classification: LCC N6502.57.C65 P87 2021 (print) | LCC N6502.57.C65 (ebook) | DDC 709.04/056--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001297 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001298 Distributed outside the United States and Canada by Yale University Press, London Printed in Italy [ FSC logo ] Front cover: Judith Lauand (Brazilian, b. 1922). Untitled, 1954, detail. See p. 93, fig. 2. Back cover: Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguayan, 1874–1949). Monumento, 1944. See p. 19, fig.7. Frontispiece: Rhod Rothfuss (Uruguayan, 1920–69). Cuadrilongo amarillo, 1955, detail. See p. 31, fig. 2. Every effort has been made to contact the owners and photographers of illustrations reproduced here whose names do not appear in the captions or in the illustration credits at the back of this book. Anyone having further information concerning copyright holders is asked to contact Getty Publications so this information can be included in future printings. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. Contents vii Acknowledgments 1 Introduction The Myth of Purity: New Material Histories of Concrete Art in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay PART II. GENERATIVE PROCESSES IN CONCRETE ART 67 4. Cut, Fuse, Fissure: Planarity circa 1954 Irene V. Small Zanna Gilbert, Pia Gottschaller, Tom Learner, and Andrew Perchuk PART I. NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE EMERGENCE OF CONCRETE ART FROM ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, AND URUGUAY 11 90 Aliza Edelman 105 1. Material Relations: Torres-García and Concrete Art from Argentina 2. Rhod Rothfuss and the marco recortado: A Synthesis of Cultural Traditions in the Río de la Plata Region 6. Hermelindo Fiaminghi’s Quadrature of the Circle between 1954 and 1959: From Concrete Enamel to Giotto’s Tempera Pia Gottschaller, Tom Learner, and Joy Niko Vicario 27 5. Judith Lauand’s Sketchbooks and the Visualization of Concrete Form in 1954 Mazurek PART III. CONCRETIZING COLOR 125 María Amalia García 7. Energy, Legibility, Purity: Color in Argentine Concrete Art Idurre Alonso, Pia Gottschaller, C. C. 46 3. Waldemar Cordeiro and Grupo Forma: The Roman Road to São Paulo Concrete Art Heloisa Espada Marsh, Andrew Perchuk, and Lynn Lee 147 8. Looking to the Past to Paint the Future: Innovative Anachronisms in the Work of Alfredo Volpi and Hélio Oiticica Mari Carmen Ramírez and Corina E. Rogge For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 166 9. The Adventure of Color in Brazilian Art: Aluísio Carvão, Hélio Oiticica, and Roberto Burle Marx 252 14. Technical Studies of Concrete Art from the Río de la Plata Region Fernando Marte Luiz Camillo Osorio PART VI. THE RECEPTION OF CONCRETE ART IN MUSEUMS AND ACADEMIA PART IV. CONCRETE ART ON PAPER 181 10. Printing Invention: Artwork, Project, or Device 263 15. A History of the Field Aleca Le Blanc Isabel Plante PART VII. CHRONOLOGIES 200 11. On Kissing and Biting: Materiality, Language, and Design in the Work of Hermelindo Fiaminghi and Willys de Castro 279 16. The Argentine Paint Industry: 1940–60 Sofía Frigerio and Florencia Castellá Zanna Gilbert 294 17. Paint Production in Brazil, PART V. ANALYZING CONCRETE ART: TECHNICAL OVERVIEWS 221 12. Experimentation and Materiality: Constructing the Brazilian Artwork, 1950s–60s 1940s–60s João Henrique Ribeiro Barbosa 312 Contributors 314 Illustration Credits 316 Index Luiz A. C. Souza, Alessandra Rosado, YacyAra Froner, Rita L. Rodrigues, Maria Alice Sanna Castello Branco, Giulia Giovani, and Vítor P. Amaral 236 13. Argentine Concrete Art, the First Decade: Between Material and Formal Tradition and Innovation For review purposes only. Not for distribution. Pino Monkes 10 Isabel Plante Printing Invention: Artwork, Project, or Device Only a few short years after producing the magazine Arturo: Revista de artes abstractas in 1944, artists in the Río de la Plata region split off in different directions, forming Arte Madí, Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI), and Perceptismo. As new members joined those groups, they began to differentiate their discourses and practices. All of them, however, were committed to “inventing” artistic objects that would contribute to the creation of a new society by abandoning the deceptive pleasure of illusion. The marcos recortados (cutout frames) and coplanars made in the latter half of the 1940s were their first attempts to conceive of artworks as devices: as objects that—like the panopticon in Michel Foucault’s analysis of prison architecture, or like national flags, or advertising—have the power to act upon us and our environment. At the same time, these artists published magazines and booklets to give their aesthetic proposals substance and credibility in terms of artistic movements.1 In those pages they circulated programmatic and poetic texts, along with reports of their own achievements or those of likeminded artists. These publications were also an agile medium for presenting their works and projects in images that could be worth more than a thousand words (or could enhance the worth of words). The first and only issue of Arturo was full of drawings printed on the pages in black, with some colored illustrations adhered to other pages.2 The project of using an illustrated magazine as an avant-garde platform was continued first in Arte Concreto-Invención, with a single issue in August 1946 that contained the inventionist manifesto, and then in Arte Madí universal (1947–54) and Perceptismo (1950–53).3 This chapter argues that the inventionist magazines—those that gave a sense of continuity to Arturo and the eponymous manifesto— functioned as a kind of interface between aesthetic ideas, artistic projects, For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 181 and the construction of concrete objects. They are not only crucial documents about works, activities, and intentions, they can also be considered a platform for generating the future. The pages that follow reflect first on these works as devices with the potential to transform people and the environment; then, on the biographies of the inventionist works that were actually constructed (namely, on the history of some of those pieces, their earliest versions, and their replicas); and finally on the relationship between the nature of the inventionist works and the potential of printed images. Certain formal, material, and historical aspects of the inventions materialized by the artists will be contrasted with the ways in which works and projects circulated solely on paper. For different reasons, among which continuity is no minor factor, Arte Madí universal and Perceptismo are particularly interesting and complex. Placing the focus on printed images allows us to pose new questions about the ways in which those objects were conceived, while analyzing the multiplicity of images printed on those pages leads us to consider a fictional dimension for the avant-garde magazines, propelling their aesthetic proposals toward the future—that key horizon of desire in the avant-garde. THE ARTWORK AS A DEVICE In his study of concrete art and the development of industrial design in the Southern Cone, Alejandro Crispiani focuses on the problem of the object and its transformative potential. He reminds us that the desire for a radical transformation of reality, which had galvanized concrete art (and much of the artistic production of the twentieth century), ultimately led to a reconsideration of the very concept of the artwork.4 Although Crispiani does not state it explicitly, he regards artistic works and designed objects as devices, in Foucault’s sense: something (architectural installation, law, institution, work of art, etc.) that has a concrete materiality or function but is not confined to being an object, instead establishing regimes of visibility or enunciation, which modulate games of power—in other words, an object that has the power to act upon us and our environment, challenging us and causing us to speak or act.5 The inventionists were committed to developing artistic devices that would inhabit the viewer’s space not only as a new object. That presence would be less a reflection of a society in transformation than a spark that would serve to create that new society, through abandoning old forms of representation. The magazines were platforms for circulating programmatic texts that marked out what they intended to leave behind and characterized the new art. Two early texts by Alfredo Hlito and Rhod Rothfuss make it clear that the invention of new artistic objects implied revitalizing the question of materiality. In 1946 Hlito tied it to Marxist thought: “As it [materialist aesthetics] does not separate the object from its qualities, it establishes that the aesthetic property lies in the concrete For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 182 Plante materiality of the artwork.”6 Two years earlier, Rothfuss had articulated a vision of the materiality of invention, in his text on the marco recortado in Arturo. He noted that Cubism and non-figurative art, with their compositions based on rhythms of oblique lines, had thrown the rectangular frame into crisis: “A painting with a regular frame leads to a sense of continuity of the object, which only disappears when the frame is structured rigorously according to the composition of the painting.”7 In the absence of any indications regarding the procedures and materials for making those visual devices that would change the world, the programmatic texts arrived as avant-garde gestures, galvanizing artists to develop those constructed objects through trial and error. The artists found different solutions for giving shape to the marcos recortados, coplanars, and (occasionally mobile) three-dimensional objects, abandoning the territory of painting and sculpture as necessarily representational. This is demonstrated by the variety of solutions that the artworks show: frameless shaped hardboard or plywood, as in the case of Juan Melé and Raúl Lozza; canvas extended over irregular stretchers as shown in Gyula Kosice’s Pintura Madí no. 7 (1946); the unexpected solution by Martín Blaszko of painting a canvas on a traditional stretcher and then mounting it on a rigid support; or the construction of an irregular frame, with greater or lesser skill, in the cases of Diyi Laañ, Carmelo Arden Quin, and Rothfuss. (See the chapters by Pino Monkes and Fernando Marte in this volume.) Conceiving of artworks as devices bearing the future, and their construction as being grounded in an exploration of materials and procedures, had implications for the characteristics of those objects, as well as their biographies. THE PROBLEM OF THE WORKS’ BIOGRAPHIES The publications from the mid-1940s reproduce no small number of inventionist works. In 1944 Rothfuss’s article promoting the marco recortado was accompanied by images of his first attempts.8 Manuel Espinosa’s response to “¿A dónde va la pintura?” (Where is painting going?)9 was published in January 1945 with a photograph of a shaped canvas painting. The first and only issue of Arte Concreto-Invención, from August 1946, reproduced photographs of other irregularly shaped works by Hlito, Tomás Maldonado, Lidy Prati, and Juan Alberto Molenberg, among others. There are also photographs taken at the group’s earliest exhibitions, showing other pieces constructed in those first two or three years of activity. But have those early works survived? To what extent have the pieces surviving today been reconstructed? Thanks to interviews with these artists by Pino Monkes in the mid1990s, we know that the first prototypes were created using cardboard and several were made with hardboard. According to Blaszko’s account, For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 183 the first version of Molenberg’s Función blanca was on cardboard, but it did not survive the artist’s journey on public transportation, leading Molenberg to construct it again using a different rigid support.10 Several photographs of the coplanars from that period show planar deformations, which seems to confirm that some of them were, in fact, made of cardboard. The earliest pieces were models for exploring formal and constructive problems, and durability does not seem to have been at the center of their initial concerns. The fragile materials, the irregular forms, and the delicate arrangements of the coplanars would have made it impossible for them to be conserved in their original conditions. We likely only know about Arden Quin’s Composición, painted on cardboard around 1945–46 (see the chapter by Monkes, fig. 8),11 because of the protection supplied by the wooden frame, the unfinished nature of which seems to confirm that it was constructed before he left in 1948 for Paris, where he was able to order frames from the commercial woodworking shop owned by the family of his partner, Marcelle Saint-Omer.12 As these pieces sought to usher in the future, the artists believed that aging was inimical to their avant-garde nature.13 While Molenberg remade Función blanca with a material that was more durable than cardboard, many of these artworks were also restored, repaired, repainted, or reconstructed to ensure they would not look faded when they were being exhibited.14 This manipulation was condoned because the project of the work itself was understood to be more important than the object’s uniqueness. Although these artists did not propose multiple editions as an alternative to the idea of an original work, they did consider the prospect of making multiple versions of a single work. Kosice’s Röyi is particularly interesting in this regard. The booklet Invención 1, published in 1945, contains one photograph of the piece on the cover and another inside, with no measurements given (fig. 1). The size of the screws and the grain of the wood allow us to infer that it is a significantly smaller version (roughly 20 by 25 cm) than the piece photographed in the first Madí exhibition, in August 1946, which is about 70 by 80 centimeters, and of which there is a replica in the collection of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA).15 Both versions of Röyi have a similar finish: the eight pieces of wood were turned and joined with technical precision; their industrial appearance is reinforced by the “mechanical” movements allowed by the joints. Although we do not know exactly when either of them was constructed, based on information from their respective first reproductions, the smaller piece (now lost) might be considered a model for the larger work, which would have been constructed at a later date.16 However, the completion of the piece reproduced in Invención 1, as well as the caption “Röyi—wooden mobile,” do not seem to indicate that it was a preparatory piece. The relationship | Fig. 1. Invención 1 (1945), cover, showing Gyula Kosice’s Röyi. between both objects is, at the least, ambiguous, and they could easily be considered different versions of a single project. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 184 Plante For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 185 The manner in which Lozza documented his works suggests he did not employ traditional concepts of the uniqueness of a work of art. | Fig. 2. Raúl Lozza (Argentine, 1911– 2008). Artist’s file for Pintura no. 163 (1948), listing six versions, tempera on paper. Archivo Raúl Lozza, private collection. | Fig. 3. Pasteup of images for reproduction in brochure for Arte Madí universal, Buenos Aires, March 1948. Buenos Aires, Museo Kosice Archive. He seems to have noted carefully the pieces that were no longer in his possession, jotting down the buyers and whether he had made different versions of a certain work, which in the case of Pintura no. 163 (1948) seems to have been six pieces of different sizes (fig. 2). For Pintura no. 72 (1945), Lozza clarified in the file that the sketch was made in 1945, that T.M. (Tomás Maldonado?) had a copy of the sketch, and that the Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori in Buenos Aires has the original. Lozza thus constructed more than one version of more than a few of his works. In addition to exploring objects with geometric shapes, flat colors, and polished finishes, the Madí group began experimenting with manufactured goods and an industrial vocabulary, such as fluorescent tubes or plastic materials,17 which contributed to defining the “art of For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 186 Plante their time” to which they aspired. A brochure from March 1948 reproduced four photographs of Kosice’s “fluorescent light artifact (rotatable)” (fig. 3).18 The object consists of an irregularly shaped metal frame holding two fluorescent tubes, installed as a ceiling lamp.19 The word “industrialization” is printed on the brochure itself above the photos in capital letters and emphasized with an exclamation mark.20 The second issue of Arte Madí universal, from October 1948, reproduced this fluorescent tube piece once again, along with other works that were part of a permanent exhibition at the “magazine’s editorial office,”21 headed up by Kosice. In this case, there were not multiple versions but rather a repetitive circulation of photographs of the same works, which also had mass-produced industrial components, such as fluorescent tubes. This multiplicity of constructed and documented objects, as well as the continual repairs to the pieces made by the artists, which in the case of the coplanars involved replacing damaged parts (as if they were machine parts, or lamp tubes), complicate the status of these visual artifacts: they do not conform with the traditional binary of the original/ copy or sketch/finished work. Perhaps the unplanned production of different versions of a single work might be considered in relation to the playful, collectivist vocation of inventionism in those early years. Edgar Bayley’s manifesto, “La batalla por la invención,” published in Invención 2, in 1945, defines inventionism in terms of the battle of collectivism against individualism. In Bayley’s text, individualism is connected to illusionist painting more generally, and to the idea of art as a subjective expression, in particular. Collectivism was instead related to the joy of communion spurred by invention: “Fantasy and fortuitous facts are adversaries of the New Art only to the extent that they become symbolic. While they may lack any significance or justification, they are the joy that leads to communion.”22 Within convictions such as these, it does not seem a stretch to consider that the fetishization of the artwork as unique and original corresponded to an individualistic production. In contrast, an indifference to the original integrity and uniqueness of the works may very well be linked to the joy of communion that Bayley associated with invention, or rather, with the anticipated effects of those artistic devices. The industrial appearance of the objects, which were unmarked by the artist’s subjectivity—or had even been constructed by another person with specific expertise in woodworking, for example, coincided with the freedom to make more than one version of the works, or to modify them. The biography of inventionist works, in particular marcos recortados and coplanars, is singularly rich (or turbulent). While this was not planned, it was linked to the very conception of these works, in both their relationship to the idea of a contemporaneity marked by industrialization and their jubilant nature, which encouraged communion. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 187 INVENTION AND PRINTING As we have seen, the magazines devoted many pages to reproducing the works that the inventionists were making and exhibiting. But the images they published did not only document works. The prints produced by Grupo Madí, for example, abounded in visual aids, reinforcing the impact of the public declarations. The article “Concepto de creación e invención Madí,” which opens the second issue of Arte Madí universal, uses inverted photographs of movable type pieces with a heavy Egyptian typeface to spell the word invention in capital letters. This crucial word, coined four years earlier in Arturo, took on an unyielding appearance, one that evinced printing on paper and its industrial techniques. It also seemed to challenge the two-dimensionality of the page, due to the illusion of volume resulting from the foreshortening of the pieces of type and the grays of the printing. Graphic technology was yet another tool to generate a visual culture for a modern industrialized society, and the printed images of the inventionist artistic production included graphic treatments that moved beyond the reproduction of works. The case of 3 círculos rojos (3 red circles), attributed to Rothfuss and purchased from Kosice by Eduardo | Fig. 4. Arte Madí universal 2 (October 1948), cover. | Fig. 5. Rhod Rothfuss (Uruguayan, 1920–69). Superestructuras!, in Arte Madi universal 2 (October 1948), n.p. | Fig. 6. Detail from page with drawing signed “P. Delmonte” and captioned “Pintura articulada,” from Arte Madí universal 2 (October 1948), inside cover. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 188 Plante Costantini around 2001, was a case in point. The cover of the second issue of Arte Madí universal, from October 1948, has a color image adhered to it that could be perceived as a reproduction of that work (fig. 4).23 It also appears to be part of Rothfuss’s Superestructuras series, documented in the same issue of the magazine (fig. 5). However, while the black-andwhite images show evidence of having been printed with a plate made using retouched photographs of the works,24 the color image on the cover was almost certainly not based on a photograph. The generous overlap of the black line and the red and blue printed inks indicates that the plates were registered by hand. 25 A limited number of loose prints were tipped in to the pages of the second and third issues of Arte Madí universal: five in the second issue (Rothfuss on the cover, and Aníbal J. Biedma, Laañ, María Bresler, and P. Delmonte [fig. 6] inside), and three in the third (Biedma on the cover, and Rothfuss and Bresler inside).26 This made it possible to incorporate color without it being too expensive, as the four-color process was only used for those images; the magazine itself was printed in black ink, in a single pass through the machines.27 Given the artists’ limited means, these small images were likely treasured objects: both Kosice’s and Breier’s archives have several loose copies of the prints that we see in the magazines. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 189 Perhaps they functioned as a stock of images for use in other publications. This is supported by the reuse of Laañ’s image—upside down—in the booklet Madimensor, printed in Toulon, France. None of these representations of irregularly shaped works are mediated by a photograph, and they thus do not document objects that were actually constructed. Those attributed to Biedma and Delmonte in the second issue28 are captioned “painting” and “articulated painting,” predisposing the reader to view them as creations made in a medium other than paper and ink. The latter even introduces a representation of the supposed painting with distinct articulated parts and a hinge. The Grupo Madí artists had actually constructed articulated paintings and sculptures.29 Issue zero of Arte Madí universal, published in 1947, contained photographic documentation of articulated paintings by Arden Quin, and two decades later the French magazine Robho reproduced photographs of one of Arden Quin’s “articulated structures,” dated 1946, in different positions. The second issue of Arte Madí universal experimented with a different method for presenting an articulated painting attributed to R. Rasas Pet, superimposing different photographs in such a way that the image presented a ghost, or a record of movement. Rasas Pet is an invented artist, a pseudonym used by Arden Quin before he left for Europe in 1948, and then by Kosice. He appears in the magazine as the author of not only artworks but also the “Madigrafías,” short poems that appeared in Arte Madí universal. One of them refers to the ability of the paper magazine to invent an author: “It has been said that a “Madigraph” is an exaggerated externalization of a useless thought, never actuated. And that at times is totally senseless. I am of the belief that it is a reality that is inventing me.”30 It could be said that just as this reality, that of paper, invented the artist Rasas Pet, it also invented works and projects that never altogether left the page.31 The magazine Perceptismo also used images in a way that moves beyond documentation. I would like to focus on the printing solutions explored for presenting coplanars installed directly on the wall. Lozza had been involved with the creation of the AACI in 1945, but he left the group two years later when its members returned to the rectangular format. In 1948 the critic Abraham Haber published his book Raúl Lozza y el Perceptismo, and in 1950, together with his brother Rembrandt V. D. Lozza and Haber, they began publishing the magazine that bore the movement’s name.32 The Lozza brothers had attempted to transcend the contradictions of earlier versions of the coplanars: they had removed the supporting bars from the work and mounted them on a monochrome base. However, that base inevitably generated a figure-background effect as ancient as the illusionist painting they longed to abolish. Haber explained in his article “Pintura y percepción,” in the first issue of Perceptismo, that the colored backgrounds should eventually be replaced by the architectural wall itself, thus abolishing the distinction between the artwork and its surroundings: For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 190 Plante “Perceptist painting . . . involves ‘forms’ that are inserted into the ‘background’ supplied by the environment. The perceptual field thus includes the surrounding world, from which the viewer has isolated himself in order to enter into the world of the representative painting.”33 | Fig. 7. Illustration of interior, from Perceptismo 1 (October 1950), captioned “Perceptist structure by Raúl Lozza.” Haber’s article included an image of one of Lozza’s coplanars installed in an environment almost bare of decorations or furniture: from a wide-angle viewpoint (both floor and ceiling are visible), we see a room with a large window, a metal-and-glass coffee table—chrome plated—and a sofa cut off by the frame (fig. 7). The caption reads: “Raúl Lozza’s perceptist structure, Mural no. 150, 1948.” But is this a retouched photograph or an illustration?34 To Lorenzo Amengual—an artist and designer with experience in these printing techniques—it appears to be a “brutally retouched” photograph.35 In fact, a work bearing resemblance to the one in the illustration is Invención No. 150, in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, also from 1948. In that work, three elements are mounted on an orthogonal blue panel in exactly the same configuration. Was an illustration or a photograph of this work edited to remove the backing panel? If so it For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 191 would be a literal (but fictionalized) performance of Haber’s argument that these works would be ideally positioned in everyday surroundings. Retouching was standard practice when photographs were reproduced in print, either because the shot required an adjustment or to compensate for the fact that the printing technology offered less definition and contrast than a photographic copy on paper. An advertisement for a photoengraving workshop during the period recommended: “Order well-retouched plates! Improve your prints!”36 Retouching was used to emphasize or correct some aspect of the image, allowing it to be decoded without further ambiguities after it had been printed. Retouching was usually done with a brush or an airbrush, covering a certain part or modifying the photo that would be engraved, as well as scratching or making lines deeper, using a burin directly on the plate’s surface. In the case of the black-and-white photographs of irregularly shaped works, retouching involved removing the background behind the photographed piece,37 thickening the lines that delineate the object, and even adding white touches that emphasized the volume and the gap between the wall and the marco recortado or coplanar. These procedures can be seen in photographs of works published in Arte Madí universal, and they are taken to extremes in the reproductions | Fig. 8. Illustration from Arte Concreto-Invención 1 (August 1946), 7. | Fig. 9. Interior, from an Alba color chart, 1950s. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 192 Plante in Abraham Haber’s book on Lozza, published in 1948.38 But they also appear on the pages of the first and only issue of Arte Concreto-Invención, from 1946: looking at Lozza’s image on page 7, the retouching is so visible that it compels the viewer to ask whether he photographed a work that had truly been constructed (fig. 8).39 The manipulation of photographic reproductions in order to clearly show certain key constructive aspects ran counter to the rejection of the conventions of representative painting, which these artists promoted and practiced. The objectual nature of the inventionist works, the concern for “surrounding people with real objects rather than ghosts,” as they had stated in the inventionist manifesto,40 played a trick on them when it came time to move them to the printed page, where they used nothing less than chiaroscuro. But the graphic resources seem to have moved beyond simply optimizing the reproductions, creating something akin to a fictional zone for the images of the marcos recortados and coplanars. In this sense, Lozza’s images of interior spaces in Perceptismo invite comparison with those produced by paint factories to promote their products (fig. 9). An Alba color chart from the period offers an effective visual scheme (and one strikingly similar to Lozza’s images),41 illustrating what different domestic environments would look like if they were painted with this For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 193 or that combination of colors. These print advertisements functioned as a kind of “do it yourself,” an invitation not unrelated to the proposal in Perceptismo. Lozza called for an “art of joyous living, of physical and objective beauty, capable of activating people’s knowledge and their own creative consciousness.”42 For his part, Haber took up those intentions in his book about the artist: Perceptist art is struggling against a number of prejudices, which naturally are rooted in the concept of traditional art. Anyone can paint like that. We have heard [this] said contemptuously in front of the invented painting. That is true. It is a virtue. Anyone capable of thinking can take the beauty that belongs to them as a human being and materialize it in an object. 43 Lozza seems to have used the “as if” of those images in Perceptismo—that fictional space—like an advertisement. (Advertising is one of the most well-oiled devices to cause us to act—or consume.) Namely, it would show works that have not yet been constructed, offer a believable image of how they would look hanging on the walls of a modern home, and urge readers to take up these projects—laden with the future—as their own. For a number of years, as Andrea Giunta has emphasized, the reproductions of artworks in the books and magazines that organized the narratives of modern art and the European avant-gardes were exclusionary materials, which the inventionists used to formulate their own transcendent, avant-garde proposals. The magazine Arturo, she argues, contains one of the keys to understanding the artistic culture of the immediate postwar period: works by Mondrian, Kasimir Malevich, or Georges Vantongerloo were being reconsidered within the circulation of images determined by the conditions imposed by the war.44 Recall that Maldonado saw an original Mondrian for the first time in 1948, and that Hlito’s first contact with a real painting by this Dutch artist, during his first trip to Europe in 1953, was disappointing. By observing the picture close up, Hlito realized just how tactile and intuitive Mondrian’s working practice had been: “I realized that Mondrian’s painting was different than I had thought, that he spent a great deal of time on every work; I saw that their white backgrounds—which seemed to have been painted without any accidents—had black lines that were actually furrows.”45 During the 1940s, the Río de la Plata inventionists had thus constructed their own artworks based on a misunderstanding about the finish of the European works, stemming from the planimetric printing offered by graphic technology (fig. 10). That misunderstanding seems to have been a fertile ground for their inventions, both the constructed objects and the printed images, which, as we have seen above, did not always depict works that had already been made. The graphic technology For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 194 Plante also allowed them to reproduce the visual artifacts they were constructing, at the cost of returning—when the images were being retouched—to the illusionist resources they despised. This chapter considers the status of inventionist works not only | Fig. 10. Detail of Piet Mondrian, “De la liberación. De la opresión en la vida y en el arte,” Saber vivir 6, no. 72 (1948), n.p. in terms of their material characteristics and the biographies of those visual artifacts but also in conjunction with the images that these artists printed in their own magazines. To construct their works, the artists tested materials and procedures that enabled them to develop visual artifacts with irregular edges and relatively smooth surfaces. Printing techniques were another method for obtaining the mechanical-looking finish they desired for their surfaces, which they had imagined based on reproductions of works by their European references before they had the opportunity to see them in person. Arte Madí universal and Perceptismo contained a broad range of images that circulated without a clear hierarchy. Their pages include photographic records of works, meetings, and exhibitions, as well as sketches and projects—in other words, images of what was feasible For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 195 to make at that point in time, as well as what they expected to be able to make in an eagerly anticipated future. Projects, prototypes, copies, reconstructions, reproductions, replicas, repairs, documentation: all these terms indicate the conceptual nature of the problem posed by the status of an inventionist work. The images that circulated in avantgarde magazines are key to interpreting the material characteristics and biographies of these objects, laden with the future. Conversely, the material and procedural study of the works conserved in different collections opens up new routes for examining and studying the avantgarde magazines. Translated by Audrey Young Notes This essay grew out of an exchange with the members of the project “El invencionismo argentino entre la tradición y la innovación material y formal” (Argentine inventionism between material and formal tradition and innovation), and in particular with María Amalia García, who generously shared documents, bibliographic materials, reflections, and questions related to inventionism. I am also grateful to Lorenzo Amengual and Andrea Gergich, graphic designers and researchers of printing techniques, for their invaluable collaboration. 1 The term movimiento was a decisive one; by December 1945 it was adopted by these artists, first as the Movimiento de Arte Concreto-Invención and then, in 1946, as the Movimiento Madí. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, “The Argentine Avant-Garde 1944–1950,” PhD diss., University of Essex, 1996, 115. 2 On the history and material aspects of this magazine, see María Amalia García, “Arturo Magazine and the Manifold Power of the Avant-Garde,” in María Amalia García, Arturo: Facsimilar edición (Buenos Aires: Fundación Espigas—Tarea IIPC, 2017): n.p. 3 Eight issues of Arte Madí universal and seven issues of Perceptismo were published. 4 Alejandro Crispiani, Objetos para transformar el mundo (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2011). 5 Gilles Deleuze explores the different meanings of this idea for Michel Foucault in “¿Qué es un dispositivo?” (1988), in E. Balbier et al., Foucault filósofo (Barcelona: Gedisa, 1990), 155–63. Also see Giorgio Agamben, “¿Qué es un dispositivo?,” Revista Sociológica 26, no. 73 (May–August 2011): 249–64. 6 Alfredo Hlito, “Notas para una estética materialista,” Arte ConcretoInvención 1 (August 1946): 12. 7 Rhod Rothfuss, “El marco: Un problema de plástica actual,” Arturo: Revista de artes abstractas (1944): n.p. 8 See the text by María Amalia García in this volume. 9 On this investigation, see Cristina Rossi, “En el fuego cruzado entre el realismo y la abstracción,” in María Amalia García, Fabiana Serviddio, and Cristina Rossi, eds., Arte Argentino y Latinoamericano del siglo XX, sus interrelaciones (Buenos Aires: Fundación Telefónica, 2004). 10 Martín Blaszko, interviewed by Pino Monkes, cited in Pino Monkes, “Arte Concreto en el Río de la Plata—de los materiales al ideal Concreto,” bachelor’s thesis, Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, 2008: n.p. Raúl Lozza said something similar to Adriana Lauria when they were organizing his For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 196 Plante retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires in 1997; conversation with the curator, March 2019. 11 The work came from Martín Blaszko’s workshop, which makes the dating quite reliable. 12 Shelley Goodman, Carmelo Arden Quin: When Art Jumped Out of Its Cage (Dallas: Madi Museum, 2004). 13 In the interviews with Monkes, everyone agrees that they prefer the work to look new, at least at certain points of their lives—Melé and Blaszko later regretted overpainting their works. 14 The accounts of partial or complete repairs of inventionist works have multiplied. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro has been meticulous in his observation of the comparative works reproduced in periodicals from the period and the works available in the mid-1990s. For her part, the researcher Cristina Rossi affirms (conversation with the author in March 2019) that Manuel Espinosa’s works were burned in a fire and remade before Nelly Perazzo organized the exhibition Vanguardias de la década del 40: Arte Concreto-Invención, Arte Madi, Perceptismo in 1980 at the Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori, which, along with the exhibition at Alvaro Castagnino’s Arte Nuevo gallery in 1976, signified the return of inventionist production to the Argentine public landscape (as well as a strong entrance into the market). Unfortunately, we have found no documents regarding the manipulation of the works in those institutions’ archives. 15 The measurements correspond to the replica of Röyi at the MALBA, which in turn is a version made in 1993 based on the model of Röyi 1 (1944), which is in a private collection in Buenos Aires. María Amalia García, record about the work for the MALBA, available at http://malba.org.ar/coleccion-online /decada/1940/?idobra=2001.101. 16 This was done by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro in his 1996 thesis “The Argentine Avant-Garde.” Kosice always insisted on dating this work to 1944. 17 Examples are the untitled objects reproduced in Arte Madí universal 3 (October 1949); or Coordenada en fracción de espiral (Coordinated in a spiral fraction), reproduced in Arte Madí universal 4 (October 1950: n.p.). 18 Quoted from the captions of the photographs, Arte Madí universal brochure, March 1948. Archivo Breier, Centro de Estudios Espigas—IIPC-UNSAM. 19 Straight tube lamps with a preheat ballast had been released onto the market in the United States and Europe in the late 1930s. Cécile Dazord and JeanJacques Ezrati, “Art contemporain, sources lumineuses et obsolescence,” Techné (Centre de recherche et de restauration des Musées de France) 37 (May 2013): 83–88. We have not yet found reliable data on their circulation in Buenos Aires, but they were possibly a rarity in domestic environments during the 1940s. 20 The first neon piece Kosice reproduced (dated to 1950) is from the 1953 Galería Bonino catalog. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, In conversation with Gyula Kosice (New York: Fundación Cisneros, 2012), 48. 21 Arte Madí universal 2 (October 1948): n.p. 22 Edgar Bayley, “La batalla por la invención: Manifiesto,” Invención 2 (1945): n.p. 23 María Amalia García noticed the similarity between the two in the record about this work for the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. Available at http://malba.org.ar/coleccion-online/tecnica/Pintura /?idobra=2001.142. 24 Inca likely did the color printing in Arte Madí universal, as it had an advertisement on the inside back cover of the magazine. As for the printer’s marks, although the first issue does not include the data, in later issues it For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 197 corresponded to: Talleres Gráficos “Optimus” for issues 2 and 3; C. Clancy y Cia. for issues 4, 5, and 6; and Cesa Talleres Gráficos S.R.L for issues 7/8. Milena Yolis, “Arte Madi universal en clave visual,” I Jornadas Internacionales de Estudios sobre Revistas Culturales Latinoamericanas Ficciones Metropolitanas. Revistas y redes internacionales en la modernidad artística latinoamericana, Centro de Estudios Espigas— IIPC-UNSAM, Buenos Aires, 8–9 May 2017. Available at http://www .revistasdeartelatinoamericano.org/items/show/81. 25 Consultation with Lorenzo Amengual, an artist, cartoonist, and designer with extensive experience in printing techniques, 24 August 2016. Amengual adds that it is easier to do it by drawing on tracing paper. 26 In some cases, the loose prints have been lost; the copy of issue 2 in the library of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires includes only the image on the cover, but the other four pieces can be found in the Colección Braier in Centro Espigas IIPC-UNSAM, as well as in the special collections of the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 27 The fourth issue, published in October 1950, used four-color printing throughout. 28 Unlike the cover image, these two have a hatching that gives halftones and lighter colors. 29 For more on the beginnings of the inventionist group and the differences between the coplanars of the Grupo Madí artists and those produced by the concrete artists, see Cristina Rossi, “Invención y movimiento,” in Dan Cameron, ed., Kinesthesia Latin America and Kinetic Art, 1954–1969, exh. cat. (Palm Springs, FL: Palm Springs Art Museum), 2017. 30 R. Rasas Pet, “Madigrafías,” Arte Madí universal 5 (October 1951): n.p. 31 On this and other pseudonyms, see Pérez-Barreiro, “The Argentine Avant-Garde.” He characterizes Arte Madí universal as a far more chaotic publication than the other inventionist magazines, and notes a number of singularities: the absence of something as obvious as a contents page, the absurdity of the stories by Laañ, and the equally perplexing Madí dictionary. 32 See “Cronología biográfica y artística,” in Adriana Lauria, ed., Raúl Lozza: Retrospectiva 1939–1997, exh. cat. (Buenos Aires: Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 1997). 33 Abraham Haber, “Pintura y percepción,” Perceptismo 1 (October 1950): n.p. 34 This question was raised in Pérez-Barreiro, “The Argentine AvantGarde,” 273. 35 The scattered nature of the Lozza archive makes locating such a document unfeasible. 36 Advertisement for Fotograbados Nagel Cia, in Argentina gráfica 5, no. 48, June (1940): n.p. 37 This was likely achieved by cropping the photo or covering the bottom of the negative, before copying the photo, with a dense, water-soluble sealing wax paint. 38 Abraham Haber, Raúl Lozza y el Perceptismo: La evolución de la pintura concreta (Buenos Aires: Diálogos, 1948). 39 Molenberg has dismissed this as a drawing rather than a photograph of a real painting, but this was refuted by Raúl Lozza. Pérez-Barreiro, “The Argentine Avant-Garde,” 171. 40 Published in Arte Concreto-Invención 1 (August 1946): 8. 41 To support himself, Lozza worked as a wall painter, among other jobs, so he was likely familiar with the color charts. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 198 Plante 42 Cited in Haber, Raúl Lozza, 37 43 Cited in Haber, Raúl Lozza, 37. 44 MoMA’s collection seems to have been crucial for Maldonado and Prati. Their proposals were based on Malevich’s Suprematist Composition (1915), included in the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, held at MoMA in 1936, and Mondrian’s Composition en blanc, noir et rouge (1936). Andrea Giunta, “Adiós a la periferia: Vanguardias y neovanguardias en el arte de América Latina,” in AA.VV. La invención concreta. Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Reflexiones en torno a la abstracción geométrica latinoamericana y sus legados (Madrid: Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2013), 104–17. 45 “Alfredo Hlito: La elocuencia de un maestro que sospecha de las grandes palabras,” interview from 1983, in Sonia Henríquez Ureña De Hlito, ed., Alfredo Hlito: Escritos sobre arte (Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de las Artes, 1995), 205–6. For review purposes only. Not for distribution. 10. Printing Invention 199