Mira Schendel: Toquinhos: Critical essay: Lisette Lagnado

senza metafora[1]

Lisette Lagnado

— What is left of the tree after its trunk has been cut close to the ground? 

— A stump, or stub, informs the dictionary.

— And if the “stub” alludes to a diminished presence, of lesser order, what to make of a “little stub”?

Nevertheless, the word “toquinho” [which is, in Portuguese, the diminutive of “stump/stub” (toco)] consecrated a precious series of works by Mira Schendel.[2] This hiatus between title and work acquires relevance considering the late entry of the Brazilian language in the artist's biography. Born in Zurich in 1919, of a German father and Italian mother, she emigrated to Brazil in the post-war period, at the age of thirty, moving through various linguistic territories, from German to Serbo-Croatian, besides her Italian mother tongue. After a brief period living in Porto Alegre, she settled in São Paulo in 1953.

I propose that the title that encompasses this particular set of drawings should be positively affirmed, acknowledging that it does not result from an atrophied project, nor does it derive from a demolition process, but rather points to the resistance of its enunciation. Launched by the artist, the word [“toquinho”] invites us to approach the remaining part of the “trunk” within a perspective of surplus and continuity. In contrast to its terminological aridity, the Toquinhos [Little Stubs] series vibrates in intensity.

There is presumably a link between the artist’s deterritorialization and her isolation in the great national narratives. Nothing, however, that prevents the constitution of a singular place. Deleuze and Guattari were able to attribute a haunting status to Kafka’s vocabulary. “A minor literature is not the literature of a minor language, but rather the literature that a minority makes within a major language."[3] Transposing this argument to the field that interests us, it is equivalent to stating that the sobriety of each Toquinho has the power to summon a “matter of life and death”, an expression once used by Schendel to justify her urge to paint.[4] Or, according to the authors, it means finding “her own dialect, her own third-world, her own desert”. And so it was.

We know that bending the conventions of speech, giving rise to unexpected meanings, corresponds to the very foundation of poetry, an exercise that Schendel practiced throughout her life with no other commitment than pleasure. To the artist Li Yuan-Chia, whom she had met in London during her exhibition at Signals, she confided (in Italian!) her surrender to parallel desires: “Io continuo a disegnare. Ma ho cominciato a scrivere poesia, che mi interessa forse di piú.”[5] Certainly, lessons in restraint and asymmetry have permeated the poetic spatiality of both, to whom the smallest point has the power to magnetize the gaze. “senza metafora”, Mira Schendel inscribed on a Monotype that could be a conceptual still life, a visual poem, a philosophical aphorism: “L’anguria é rossa, l’abacate verde...”.

Now, to what kind of matrix does Little Stubs refer?

Those who are familiar with the works that the artist made on wood and chipboard, using tempera, plaster and a mixture of techniques, have already come across compositions marked by geometric volumes (1954) and cut-outs (1964). Later, this method incorporated various materials, applying on the surface acrylic blocks with letterset, dyed papers, gold sheets...[6] There was no shortage of attempts, on her part, to question the graphic code of writing, as evidenced by the enormous series Monotypes(c. 1964-67), made with handmade Japanese paper. Ambitions announced since then: to play with shadows and to establish a vaporous, aerial quality, none of this was new. For some reason, however, they revealed an insufficiency in relation to spatial freedom, due perhaps to the interdependence of the monotype with the wall.

However, the most explicit way of marking the emergence of Little Stubs is found in Objetos gráficos [Graphic Objects] (c. 1967-73), made up of very thin rice papers with handwritten calligraphy and transfer types, the latter ubiquitous in many series. The acrylic sheets reach a scale of one meter on each side, no longer need the frame and are presented suspended from the ceiling. With this device, Schendel took advantage of a surface with two fronts. She wrote in her diaries that she had finally managed to get around the two-dimensional plane, to eliminate the ideas of “front” and “back”.

In the history of Brazilian art, the theme of “inside” and “outside” reached a paradigmatic moment in 1963, when Lygia Clark conceived her proposition Caminhando [Walking], which consists in cutting, with scissors, a tape folded in a spiral until you can no longer go forward. A certain affinity of intentions, notably the surrender to the experience of duration, brings together the act of this “walk” and the cognitive simultaneity provided by Schendel's large acrylic plates, practically invisible, housing floating calligraphies.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to suggest that the research into the qualities of acrylic represents a peak of euphoria in her trajectory, above all due to the possibility of making the “here” and the “now” virtually coincide — the space-time. It is believed that, due to the complexity of its execution, the production of the Graphic Objects was restricted to a few units. The transition to an external (no longer domestic) and industrial manufacture required larger investments, escaping the autonomy of the previous series. Despite this, an imposing set of twelve pieces was exhibited in 1968 at the Brazilian Pavilion in Venice. It is also worth remembering an extraordinary production of Cadernos [Notebooks] (1970-71) that investigated different depths by means of superimpositions, thus touching on the same themes: transparency and simultaneity.

That is: since the early 1960s, the artist had been advocating a phenomenology of the perception of the work without the dualities that characterize Western consciousness. A very particular meaning of “corporeality”. No vocabulary, letter, number, trace, will be a gratuitous gesture. It is enough to follow the weight of terms like “zeit” and “welt”, and an irresistible attraction to the Set Theory, with its arrows, equations, signs, “n”, “x”, “{}”, “0”... and an absolute precision in everything, even if a playful choreography admits exchanges, and if “p” turns into “q”, or “d” or “b”.

In the early 1970s, Schendel sought to make acrylic into other volumes, exploring articulated strips, discs and cubes. The pictorial thought, which had never left her, resurfaced on small papers soaked in colored watercolor paint. Unlike the drawings from the Bombas [Bombs] series (1965), in which the ink is spread without much control, the dyed cut-outs are dense and saturated. They act on the rectangle of space like sponges, sucking up its surroundings. The oriental notion of a "full void" applies here. What we are given to see is an economy, leftovers of language... toquinhos: “1 4 5”, “e e e e”, “| |” … 

What purposes should be attributed to the dominion of the hand? “I attach the utmost importance to it being manual like this, being experienced, to it coming out of the belly like this”, she declared in an interview with Jorge Guinle,[7] categorically refuting the adjectivations of “intellectual” and “ascetic”, as if there were no corporeality in works done with rigor and precision. What did Little Stubs achieve after the radicality of multiplying and suspending the great plates of Graphic Objects, balancing a feverish writing, in dialogue with a person standing up? An innocuous question. In the universe of an artist dedicated to experimentation, it is in no way appropriate to introduce hierarchies between her different series.

It would be foolhardy to try to name the essence of another’s ambition. Many have tried. The emptiness or the transcendence of the material world punctuated a vast bibliography on Mira Schendel. Vilém Flusser's reflection elaborated his version based on a religious mysticism involving the origin of language. He described the risks, the straight lines, the curves, the signs and letters, as virtual lines, nods that ask for admission, thus tangentially touching on the theme of exile [emphasis added].[8] By the way, how can one imagine, after her participation in the Biennale di Venezia, the complexity of returning to a country ruled by a military dictatorship?

There is still to be written an essay that exposes the difficulty of managing to move uniquely between concrete poetry and philosophy, arenas historically dominated by men. No other female artist of her time imposed a similar fear of reference. It is therefore astonishing to observe someone of this magnitude use the diminutive peculiar to the irreverent language of childhood to title her works: “trenzinho” [little train], “droguinha” [little nothing] and “toquinho” [little stub] figure among some of her inventions. Yes, Clarice Lispector published short stories for children. Did Lygia Pape launch the word T-teia in the semantic field of art knowing that in popular Portuguese teteia designates a toy? Would this be a sign of detachment or courage on the part of these figures? Whatever it may be, only a good dose of freedom allows such an intense effort of conceptualization to deserve simple, uncomplicated, and authentic titles — like the teachings we receive from the little ones, also nicknamed, in Portuguese, “toquinhos de gente” [literally, little stubs of people].