Fading the Phallus

Wilfried Wiegand, a German critic, asserts unequivocally in a concise biography of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) that African masks indeed influenced the process of Cubism, particularly Picasso's works and thoughts. Citing the poet Max Jacob (1876-1944), Wiegand accurately recounts the occasion when Picasso encountered masks from Gabon, whose authorship remains unknown. This meeting took place at Henri Matisse's house, setting the stage for a complex plastic and intellectual relationship. African masks hold a value as sophisticated as what English semiology, Cubism, and contemporary art strive to reach and debate: the concept of a "sign." José Ferreira dos Santos states that a sign is “any word, number, image, or gesture that indirectly represents a referent (a chair) through a reference (the idea of a chair in our mind).” This idea manifests in the process of visually dissolving a figure to represent it through a suggestion involving other images/references. From an artistic standpoint, this is a foundational trait of Cubism (1907). After all, as Cézanne claimed, geometric forms model all the figures present in nature. When organized, these forms represent "indirectly a referent through a reference.” Here, we see the works of Mário Cravo Júnior (1923-2018) and Raylton Parga (1996), two artists who use geometric shapes to create masks with entirely different forms, purposes, tools, and almost disparate outcomes, constituted through both similarities and contrasts. Together, they abundantly produce signs.

The works of Mário Cravo Júnior exhibit certain persistent elements, what we might call "marks." The most evident and commendable among them originates from Cézanne’s (1839-1906) formulation, which influenced some of the most renowned European artists of the last century, crossing the ocean and arriving in Salvador, Bahia, through Cravo’s work. From Maurice Denis (1870-1943), relating him to Cézanne, I tend to understand that, before being a figure, an image is composed of shapes. And before shapes, colors. This approach was pivotal in establishing Mário Cravo Júnior as “the most important artist for the knowledge and dissemination of modern art in Bahia.” This is how MCJ is described in the book The Beginnings of Modern Art in Bahia by artist and writer Sante Scaldaferri. In the same book, one finds a 1950 critical text by José do Prado Valladares (introduced by Carybé as “the most sober critic with words I’ve ever met”), offering a highly Cubist reading of MCJ’s work. Valladares asserts: “All emphasis is placed on the creation of systems of lines, planes, masses, and the exploration of the sensory values of raw materials.” We can see the power of creation invented through other creations and powers, with the goal of (re)creating what already exists.

Another product of Cravo's persistence and accumulation is the phallic dimension that permeates his works and overflows from them. This dimension is more clearly understood through Mônica Maria Linhares Castrioto's text The Giant of the Crossroads, written after an interview with Mário Cravo Júnior. In this text, she writes: “thus, (MCJ) describes Oxalá as the orixá of creation and procreation, with procreation being intrinsically tied to the mechanics of sex, to semen; and Exu, historically represented—in his seats in Africa—by the phallus, is understood as the patron of copulation.” As we will see, between Oxalá and Exu, Creation and Procreation, there is a curious projection: the artist. Or perhaps, a human, an artist.

“In the beginning, they say, there was the void,

the silent infinity, the rest of chaos…

Without body, matter, or substance, life flees, emotions, pebbles, the space without direction.

Sound and noise lay dormant

waiting for the event

(…)

Then, from the second clash of materials, ghosts, memories, death, and life were born.

In the fiftieth hour, artists began to scratch their caves,

to mold with debris, stories, dreams, and fantasies.

The BIG BANG happened one billion and nine hundred million millennia after.”

Thus wrote Mário Cravo Júnior in his poem The Balanced Fright on December 29, 2010, in reference to his solo exhibition bearing his name, held at Paulo Darzé Gallery between April and May of the following year. The phallus, "patron of copulation," predecessor and co-founder of creation, when viewed through a cisgender and profoundly misogynistic lens, repeatedly reaffirmed by Mário Cravo Júnior’s behaviors and comments during his life, takes on another meaning: that of an individual, poetic, cultural, and political expression that reflects and recreates a context to which we have yet to pay sufficient attention when reflecting on Cravo’s works and life. As with only a few other artists, one can perceive in his work traces of artistic thinking and deeply personal thought, which are also revealed in his tumultuous human relationships and disturbing social interactions. There reigns a sovereign notion of the creator, which grants him a phallic and nearly divine power. Rigid like the nature of his forms. Hidden, like all true power. Inaccessible, like the intention of his masks.

The ex-votos reimagined and presented by Mário Cravo Júnior are, in fact, the products of an Afro-Indigenous cosmogony that allows for dialogue with a god through a tangible object. Ex-votos are also offerings, material gifts through which one establishes a dialogue with the intangible, the divine. When sick, people bring replicas of the ailing body part to churches so the deity might heal it. Understanding the immense value that ex-votos hold for Afro-Brazilian culture and the art system, Mário Cravo Júnior, alongside Carybé and other significant figures in Brazilian art, engaged in what Carybé described as “rescue trips throughout the entire Northeast,” where they gathered "ex-votos, saints, saved from termite torture, popular ceramics—everything that, to us, had artistic interest or revealed a new form." In the text from the catalog for the 2002 exhibition Evocations, a solo show by MCJ at Paulo Darzé Gallery, Carybé continues, painting an image worthy of himself and most participants of the bandeirante, I mean, modernist movement: “We would return from these trips dusty and smelly like crusaders, and like them, with the feeling of a job well done, the duty of preserving the national heritage.” Preserving what? For whom? Again, we notice the power of creation invented through other creations and powers, with the aim of (re)creating what already exists.

Raylton Parga (1995), on the other hand, rejects the position of creator. Born in Taguatinga, Federal District, he grew up between DF and Pará, and graduated in Visual Arts from the University of Brasília (UnB). When asked why he makes art, the artist says: “I just know I have to do it.” His work reveals an unpretentious tone, with the sole intention of letting things happen, of creating, connecting with disposable everyday life, and rediscovering it. His works exist through and from others. His masks are meant to be worn on the face, not to hold a totemic position. “They can hold many things,” says Parga. He is not the creator or revealer of their content. There is almost nothing hidden within them. This is an "anti-phallic" and "anti-elitist" trait we could analyze alone, and it would already be enough to establish Parga's production as relevant and powerful, which it is. As a demonstration of his effectiveness, Parga leaves questions open. His body withdraws. It is the work that becomes the tool for accessing the work itself. His words become almost irrelevant, as he prefers. Thus, the artist renounces the power of the word. This renunciation is also part of his process of rethinking the place of the ultimate authority, the creator.

João Victor Guimarães