Clarice Constellation
Clarice Lispector’s centenary has arrived, with the author nationally and internationally renowned for the excellence of her literary work. However, in her writing, invention and thought are indiscernible: in her books, there is no storytelling without reflection. G. H., one of her great characters, writes that “reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks.” And this thinking that is thought – and that becomes aware of it in the act itself – by means of fiction is an eminently visual thinking, which turns to matter and form, to immanence and metamorphosis. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the fine arts play such a key role in her books.
The narrators of The Passion According to G.H. (1964) and Água Viva (1973) are, respectively, a sculptor and a painter. Both books feature epigraphs taken from the universe of the visual arts: from the art historian Bernard Berenson in the first case, and from the Belgian painter and critic Michel Seuphor, an abstract art enthusiast, in the second. Virginia, protagonist of The Chandelier, “loved more than anything else” creating clay dolls. Clarice actually dedicated herself to painting in the 1970s. During the period in which her pictorial experiments intensified, between 1975 and 1976, she was also taking notes for two books, The Hour of the Star and A Breath of Life. In the former, Olímpico, Macabéa’s boyfriend, sculpted figures of saints in his spare time. In A Breath of Life, which Clarice left unfinished, the protagonist Ângela Pralini is also a painter, and like the narrator of Água Viva, she frequently talks about her creative process, in addition to describing some of her paintings.
This emphasis given to the fine arts has led us to propose proximities between the literary production of Clarice Lispector, which covers the 1940s to the 1970s, and works created by other artists in the same span of time. For this purpose, the exhibition has been organized into nine clusters, evoked by lines of force in Clarice’s writing, which are displayed and consolidated here in dialogue with the collected works: “All the world began with a yes;” “I didn’t fit;” “I lost my human form;” “Adoration for what exists;” “I want the plasma;” “More a graphism than a writing;” “Life is supernatural;” “Being other people is my passion;” and “I cannot end.” In addition to these clusters, there are two sets: “Above all, I paint painting,” which shows an expressive number of Clarice’s paintings; and “The apartment reflects me,” which groups objects and documents belonging to the writer.
By placing the works of these artists under the sign of Clarice, a perhaps unforeseen constellation is formed, in which we judge it possible, at some moments, to see collections of works with very different aesthetic orientations that are sometimes even antithetical and are rarely, if ever, presented side by side. By means of the proximity provided by Clarice, a renewed and more complex understanding of that moment in Brazilian art gains ground. On the other hand, from this constellation between visual works and writing, Clarice’s literature also appears under a new perspective.