On the 12th October, the Lyceum Club held, at the Naval Military Club, a lecture on the “History of Contemporary Art” with Prof. Dr. Eduarda Pires, who highlighted some of its characteristics, such as the ephemerality of the work, mixture of styles, use of different materials in the same work, the abandonment of traditional supports – the artist has total freedom to express himself, technically or conceptually, as he no longer has institutional commitments with the Church or politics, the interaction of the spectator with the work, this is no longer the object in itself, but merges with the creative process.
Special reference to Vik Muniz who, with his work, gave the waste pickers from the Jardim Gramacho landfill in Rio de Janeiro new hope, stimulating in all of them self-confidence, recognition and appreciation, and who, with the sale of the works, allowed them to improve their standard of living. First he photographed them, then, with the material collected at the dump, he mounted the pictures, in large dimensions, in a nearby warehouse. The whole project of his work “The Bearer Irma” of 2008 was recorded and originated the prestigious documentary “Extraordinary Waste”.
The union leader Sebastião Carlos dos Santos, better known as Tião, was portrayed in two paintings, one of them in a similar pose to the painting “The death of Marat”. Professor Eduarda Pires also mentioned some of the periods of Contemporary Art, and several artists, such as the Portuguese Bordalo II (whose sculptures are made from scrap metal), the Japanese Takashi Murakami, Salvador Dalí, and the subjectivity and artistic freedom of his work “The Persistence of Memory” of 1931.
After the lecture, a snack was served as usual.