Unrepentant Populism Cayo Honorato
1 This is a kind of summary of the first Léon Degand conference, made weeks earlier, in the former Biblioteca Municipal (today Biblioteca Mário de Andrade) on 9 August 1948. See Léon Degand, ‘A importância do público’, in João Bandeira (ed.), Arte concreta paulista: documentos, São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, CEUMA/USP, 2002, p.23.
(1)
2 Ibid.
‘complete and profound’ studies about ‘the various states of public opinion’. To
In an article published on 29 August 1948, entitled ‘A importância do público’,1 Léon Degand, organiser of the opening exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP) – institution that would later produce the 1st Bienal de São Paulo –, questions the lack of attention that was historically given to the public. According to him, what is usually mentioned is the ‘incomprehension of an audience [...] with regard to artistic innovations’, being very few the Degand, however, the public would be an essential component of the artistic phenomenon: As a phenomenon, an artwork is not merely what the artist intended it to be, consciously or unconsciously. It is also, [sic] everything that each of us, in obedience to the spiritual trends of the time and of [sic] personal mood, decreases, adds or changes. 2
However, his argument differs from what, for example, Marcel Duchamp proposes under an ‘art coefficient’. While Duchamp introduces a fissure at the core of the creative act through which both the public and the outside world invade it, Degand keeps creation and fruition as two parallel worlds. He suggests, on the one hand, that the public discover ‘as accurately as possible’ the feelings governing artistic creation, and on the other, that they react in the ‘most vivid way’ even if the reaction ‘is not in accordance with the original intentions of the artist’, to then conclude: the important thing is ‘the collaboration of an audience’. But as we said, in this collaboration there is no point of contact between one instance and another. In fact, Degand does not specify any kind of intersection between the ‘innovations’ of art and the ‘contradictory reactions’ of the audience; nothing that could advance, as he proposes, an understanding of ‘artistic thought through [...] non-creators’. So where is his defense or recognition of the importance of the public? In what way does he expect the public to collaborate?
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