Tadeu Chiarelli possesses a rare ability to reconcile historical research with direct contact with contemporary artistic production, coupled with intense activity in the exhibition and academic circuit. A precise illustration of this broad, pendulum-like movement is the author's launch of two seemingly distinct books in less than a month. On November 26th, "Apropriações" (Appropriations), a comprehensive collection of texts published by him between 1980 and 2020, revolving around a fundamental issue in contemporary art—the unavoidable use of second-generation images in artistic production—was launched at the Martins Fontes bookstore on Avenida Paulista. A panel discussion followed, with the participation of Lilia Schwarcz and Mariano Klautau Filho. Less than a month later, on December 19th, the researcher returns to the same bookstore to launch the re-edition of “Brazilian Art,” a work by the 19th-century critic Luiz Gonzaga Duque Estrada (1863-1911), rediscovered 30 years ago in an edition prepared by Chiarelli and now returning with a new preface, supplementary notes, and an extensive bibliography of works that have been incorporated into the work of the Rio de Janeiro critic and writer. The work marks the beginning of a new art collection, entitled “It Is Necessary to Drive Away the Night.” In an interview with Arte!BrasileirosChiarelli discusses these publishing projects, the result of collective efforts, analyzes the current state of the Brazilian art scene, and defends a broad and interconnected approach across different historical periods and fields of action. "You are an art critic because you are an art historian, and you are an art historian because you are an art critic," he summarizes, paraphrasing his mentors Annateresa Fabris and Walter Zanini.

art!🇧🇷 - Is it a coincidence that two books, encompassing two of his main areas of interest, were released almost simultaneously? One eye on history and the other on contemporary art? 

Thaddeus Chiarelli – They have different trajectories. This year, 2025, marks 30 years since our first edition of “Brazilian Art,” with updated Portuguese, notes, and an introductory text. At the end of the pandemic, editors Maria Elisa Meirelles and Vande Rotta Gomide and I were discussing creating a new art collection, and they expressed a desire for the first volume to be Gonzaga Duque's book, which they published in 1995, out of print since 2003, and which marked art history. Before its first publication, the book was very rare; there were two copies in São Paulo, and I think two or three in Rio. As it was republished, everyone had access to it, and a series of studies were developed from there. Eliane Pinheiro and I compiled that bibliography using as a parameter all the works produced since 1995.
“Appropriations” is another story. It had been many years since I published that book, “Brazilian International Art.” Albano Afonso and Sandra Cinto always insisted that I republish it. I didn't want to do a re-edition, but I thought it was important to bring together some things related to the issue of appropriation, of second-generation images, bringing together the many texts that concern photography and the photographic image. Instead of making blocks or chapters, I came to the conclusion that perhaps it would be important to put them in chronological order, divided by decades, so that the reader would perceive the changes in reasoning. It became more organic.

art!🇧🇷 - Concepts such as appropriation and citationism constitute a key to understanding contemporary production. These ideas, which are at the heart of 'Appropriations', have unfolded in your academic work and in the training of other researchers – for example, with the creation of the study group dedicated to art and photography?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – Of course. There's a coincidence there. It was actually my concerns about appropriation that led to the creation of the Arte&Fotografia group in 2004. It helped structure a moment of theoretical deepening, important for many people and especially for me.

art!🇧🇷 - Thinking in long-term terms, we have one book that deals with this idea of ​​early modernism, back in the 19th century, and another that follows the current scene. Do you refuse to be just an art historian or just an art critic?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – It has to do with my background and the great importance of two figures: Walter Zanini and Annateresa Fabris. And I think this comes a lot from an Italian tradition, very much related to Argan. They always said: “You are an art critic because you are an art historian, and you are an art historian because you are an art critic.” So this transition between, at least, these two periods – the passage from the 19th to the 20th and from the 20th to the 21st – is what characterizes me. All my academic training – master's, doctorate, post-doctoral studies – is focused on the issue of early 20th-century modernism. My practice as a curator, as a critic, is very much linked to this contemporary production. Zanini worked with video art, and his training was in medieval art! An interesting fact: I became interested in studying the issue of the “return to order,” which is what will underpin my doctorate, based on the work of Paulo Pasta.

art!🇧🇷 - And in a way, from what you're saying, Gonzaga Duque does that too. What fascinates you about him is this modernity that stands out from the two more natural paths, between progressive enthusiasm and a critique of reality?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – This duality in him really moved me. He's a critic, but he feels compelled to revisit the entire history of Brazilian art in order to understand his contemporaries. It's the same movement.

art!🇧🇷 - "It's been well over a decade since a history of art textbook was published in Brazil," you say in a 2002 text about the work of Sandra Cinto. Is there any prospect of filling this gap?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – In that text, I was referring to Zanini's book, which is impossible to find today. It costs a fortune! I don't know if you're aware, but it was supposed to be released this year and has been postponed to March of next year, the first volume of a series of studies on Brazilian art that the BEI publishing house is doing and which will somehow try to recover this. The first volume covers 1889 to 1930, the second 1931 to 1964, and the other 1965 to 1988… anyway. For this first volume, Rafael Cardoso, who was the editor, asked me for a text about Gonzaga Duque. It was very interesting to revisit him at this moment when I was writing this preface, to understand him already as a modernist. He will greatly emphasize the figure of Helios Seelinger, for him the great modern artist, who is part of the first generation of São Paulo modernists and disappeared from history, was canceled. I am also revisiting this issue of early 20th-century art history based on these considerations that I have been working on recently.

art!🇧🇷 - Let's talk about the "It's Necessary to Push Away the Night" series? Do you have any new titles planned?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – I don't need to tell you that this title was conceived at the very end of the pandemic and the Bolsonaro government. It also marks a place, right? We're thinking like this: the second volume of the collection will be a compilation of recent studies on the Monument to the Bandeiras, on Brecheret. And the third volume would be a collection of essays on Gonzaga Duque, based on a very cool course we organized around him. Colleagues from various regions of Brazil participated (Santa Maria, Rio de Janeiro, São Luiz do Maranhão, Campinas…), through online lectures. There are many new ideas there!

art!🇧🇷 - In your preface, you place him as one of the great authors who discuss art in 19th-century Brazil, alongside Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre, Félix Ferreira, and Angelo Agostini. Could you explain their importance?

Thaddeus Chiarelli Araújo Porto-Alegre is an intellectual linked to an academy, the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, but within a Brazilian faction, which is neither the Portuguese nor the French faction. They ended up clashing because the French said that art in Brazil began with the arrival of the French Mission. It will be Porto-Alegre, who works during the transition from the first to the second half of the 19th century, who will say no, that everything begins back then, in the colonial period. These young people who come later – Agostini, Félix Ferreira, and Gonzaga Duque – will have a more activist attitude, which I think didn't exist in Araújo Porto-Alegre, in the sense of intervening in the artistic debate of the late 19th century. After all, Gonzaga Duque's book is from 1888, the year of the liberation of enslaved people and a year before the Republic. Félix Ferreira's and Agostini's texts (even though they don't constitute a book) are also from this same period. My impression is that, for that Rio de Janeiro environment, the visual arts were also an important element in projecting a New Brazil. There's something interesting there. Besides Félix Ferreira, who spoke of making popular engravings as a way to help promote Brazilian art, there's an attempt at intervention in the art circuit; Gonzaga Duque himself would write "Brazilian Revolutions," in which he creates a genealogy that begins with the Quilombo of Palmares! Both this book and "Brazilian Art" are within this same vein of intervention. And traditionally, studies on the Brazilian intelligentsia at the end of the 19th century don't contemplate this; they only address literature or that sociology that was just beginning, and that's it. The authors don't talk about Gonzaga Duque because they don't know his work. He's seen as a writer, a novelist, and a symbolist poet. That's my hypothesis. Félix Ferreira, since he didn't belong to any particular establishment, remains completely unknown until the launch of our book. I had colleagues, specialists in the 19th century, who had never heard of him. That's an important example of erasure.

art!🇧🇷 - Now, going back to "Appropriations," which summarizes this view of the image as the center of contemporary production, of artists considered no longer to be creators of works but rather "editors," which is central to their trajectory. How does this resonate with you? And why does it become so important in your criticism?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – At that time, I was already at ECA (School of Communications and Arts) and studying a lot with Annateresa Fabris, who kept the students very informed about what was happening in contemporary art. I studied 19th-century photography with her, and we had this contact with contemporary production. From there, I became interested in this production (transavantgarde, neo-expressionism…) and began to notice in Brazilian production some artists who were moving along these lines. This issue of revisiting the museum, but not revisiting in the literal sense, but through images, for example. Among them was a great friend, Paulo Pasta. All this led me to delve deeper into studies on the appropriation of images in Europe, especially in Italy, and to try to understand the emergence of this type of production in Brazil. There are many critics, not only in Brazil, who say that this was a fad, that this was just another movement that they tried to impose. I don't think so. Thirty or forty years after that first explosion, nowadays you can't escape it anymore.

art!🇧🇷 - And we learn about art history, in part, through reproductions of the artworks…

Thaddeus Chiarelli – Not to mention the aspect you're raising. That's a whole other field, this realization that artists deal with images found in catalogs, magazines, on the internet… We critics, we, the general public, were also shaped by these second-generation images. I remember when I still lived in Ribeirão Preto and my father started collecting "Geniuses of Painting," a publication from Abril Cultural, for me! It opened me up, as it did for many people of my generation, to this contact with artworks. This should be studied more.

art!🇧🇷 - Let's talk a little about the contemporary art scene? Julio Plaza once defined the vocations of each decade. The 1950s, for example, belonged to artists and poetics. The 1960s to the object, the 1970s to criticism. From 2000 onwards, businessmen and sponsors dominate, a trend that seems to persist to this day. How do you see the scene today?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – Nowadays, there's a huge strengthening of collecting. However, if it were only the collectors, the problems wouldn't be so serious because collectors have always been at the base of the art circuit. What I find more serious is that today, what's considered art is what's in galleries. More than the power of the collectors, you have the power of the galleries. And that's where the problem lies.

art!🇧🇷 - The criteria are reversed. Any light at the end of the tunnel?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – Exactly, everything is becoming increasingly rigid. Our problem, as critics and intellectuals, is trying to create spaces for discussion, for resistance, and to maintain a certain notion of what art can be. Because I think that doesn't interest the market. Whatever falls into the net is fair game; there's no discussion, just endorsement. It's up to us to try to filter this production. That has always been, in fact, the role of criticism. And now things are becoming even more pressing, because the critic has also become an employee of the gallery.

art!🇧🇷 - Moreover, this idea of ​​a sieve is present in the etymological origin of the word. Does criticism still exist in Brazil today?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – I think that in some sectors you have critical thinking that is still being developed, but in the mainstream circuit you have market employees. That's very difficult. Even when you want to have a more critical perspective on what you're seeing, the very fact that the text is published in a commercial catalog already makes it instrumentalized, that there's an immediate incorporation of what's being said, even when you raise doubts. In short, I think that the visual arts have acquired a permissive dimension – starting in the 1960s and 1970s – which has greatly weakened them in several aspects. It's a situation we're also experiencing in the field of literature today.

art!🇧🇷 - Speaking of literature, how do you see the controversy surrounding Professor Aurora Bernardini's statements about the primacy of content over form? Is it possible to draw a parallel with the visual arts?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – That's where we needed to get to. I think that's our role. I think she's a bit radical, especially in the case of some authors. I don't know about you, but "Torto Arado" was one of the best novels I've read in recent times. It has a psychological dimension, a quality of writing that is wonderful to have. Now, it's the exception, not the rule. Our role is to try to see within this new generation, these artists who are emerging now, those who manage to translate the great issues of today into the realm of art. I was reading an interview with Rosana Paulino some time ago, and she said: "Look, the diaspora is an issue. But I'm not a historian, I'm an artist." I think that clarity of positioning is very cool. It's necessary to know how to translate this discussion into my field.

art!🇧🇷 - We are witnessing a disappearance of criticism and a consequent shrinking of thought about art. How do we move forward in this scenario?

Thaddeus Chiarelli – I was in contact with Denis Moreira, who has incredible work and is already in the Biennial, with works from the Vilanismo collective. He managed to resolve, through visual means, how to discuss the issue of African ancestry, with a very original contribution, engaging in dialogue with the previous generation, represented by artists like Rosana Paulino and Sidney Oliveira, not using literal mechanisms, but very much connected to visuality. This excites me. I got his phone number, went to visit him, and wrote 23 pages about him. I published it in Ars, the magazine of the Visual Arts department. If we believe that the structures of visuality have power, we have to go looking for it.

art!🇧🇷 - It's interesting to note your reading over time in relation to the work of fundamental artists, such as Rosangela Rennó, whom you defined forever as a "photographer who doesn't photograph." It's impossible not to recall the work she presented for Rio 92, focusing on the murders perpetrated by the police. This work is strikingly relevant today in light of the recent massacres in the same city.

Thaddeus Chiarelli – Her work permeates my work. There are three artists and friends who are pillars of my perspective: her, Paulo Pasta, and Ana Maria Tavares. Her work always illuminates; it's a document of an era, but it also has this contemporary relevance. She's not creating narrative for narrative's sake.

art!✱ - Tell us a little about your institutional experience, as a manager in institutions such as MAM, MAC and Pinacoteca, and also in the university.

Thaddeus Chiarelli – I think it was fundamental, because I believe in public heritage. That's also my more academic side. Yes, my commitment has always been to the collection first and foremost. It has to do with my commitment as a university professor, giving back what I received. The way to strengthen the institution is, above all, through its collection. Perhaps this concept is very outdated.
When I left the Pinacoteca, I realized I needed to teach somewhere. I returned as a senior professor, resumed supervising, didn't stop, and went back to working with postgraduate courses. This helps me understand myself as a person. I always write thinking about my students. That's what defines me.


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