The Chromatic Plastic Dynamism of Abraham Palatnik—An Introduction to the First International Biennial of São Paulo (1951)

BRAZILIAN TECHNOLOGICAL ART The Chromatic Plastic Dynamism of Abraham Palatnik-An Introduction to the First International Biennial of Sao Paulo (1951) Mario Pedrosa I Tday;,the opening ofthe first 8i,00"" of8;0 Paulo. There are several foreign deleg~tions, and some are brilliant. The Brazilian delegation is also represented by our best artists. Thus, all modes of modern art will be represented . As part of the Brazilian delegation, but without any frame of reference for classification due to its status beyond routine regulations, we will see what will be undoubtedly one of the most interesting contributions to the exhibition: the chromatic plastic dynamism ofAbraham Palatnik. Palatnik will represent in this international show the cutting edge of the modern movement. He belongs to the avantgarde of pioneer artists that employ direct light as a medium of artistic expression. Palatnik abandoned the brush and the figure and, after a short abstractionist stage, decided to paint with light-daring to try to realize one of the oldest "artistic utopias," as wrote Moholy-Nagy. Modern technological media are, for this purpose, found in more abundance today than in the past. The multiple luminous signs, the searchlights, spinning electric bulbs, the flashing electric boards, neon gas--all these already occupy the nocturnal spaces and transform the modern night into permanent artificial fireworks. Out here we have the luminous image that projects itself, moves, deflects and comes forward toward us--in its desperate desire to give us duration and simultaneity, space and time, indissolubly and concretely united. Modern physics is opening an even larger venue in this sense. Until now all these experiences of industrial or commercial nature were nothing but a brutal aggression to our spirit and senses. They were not a plastic organization capable of synthesis, of selfcontrol , of internal structure, of superior signification-in short, of formal rigor. For the artist the old pictorial metier (the brush and chemically produced pigments) does not suffice . In order to be able to control, to direct, to shape light, the artist needs new instruments and familiarization with the advances of modern optics, from the issues of colorimetry to the virtualities of artificial light. Palatnik is lined up with the researchers of the plasticity oflight, i.e. ofthe effects ofspacetime upon our sensibility. Some of these researchers, such as Mario Pedrosa (art critic) (1900-1981). Originally published in Tribuna da Imprensa. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. October 1951. Translated by Eduardo Kac. Wallace Rimington and Scriabin (the composer), have created and designed light organs, while others worked with clavilux-like systems, as did Thomas Wilfred, Raoul Hausmann, Maurice Wetzel and Alex Laszlo among others. The instrument of the young Brazilian pioneer projects-on a screen or any other semi-transparent material-compositions of colored shapes in motion. His point of departure was the kaleidoscope, but he found too crude the primitive system of having to look at the images with one eye while rotating a glass plate. The artist then wanted to expand vision, freeing the image from the little box in which it was confined so as to project it against the wall by means of a system of lenses. It was a revelation. These revelations, these visions of fantastic structures, could not have gone beyond child's play if the discovery had not led him to look for a way of controlling such structures, making them return to their initial forms and therefore creating a rhythm. It is true that the kaleidoscope was already arbitrary-its structures are generated at random by the manipulation of the viewer. The artist could not accept this arbitrariness , which excluded him from the work. He wanted to intervene in the metamorphoses of the kaleidoscope to give plastic direction to these forms. The forms must multiply themselves, but according to a preliminary superior order determined by the artist. The projected luminous colors are not obtained with brushes and pigments. The kaleidoscopic motion also motivated the artist-inventor to set colors in motion, so that they could combine and develop from one to the other continuously. Palatnik's first apparatus resulted from the artist's study of the projection capabilities of the lenses. At first, the possibilities were few: motion was...