Bienal de São Paulo

In the Center of the Green Heart

Every two years, this unique museum founded by the Italian immigrant Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho ("Ciccillo" Matarazzo), occupies again the huge building designed by Oscar Niemeyer, that big "aircraft carrier" - as someone said - definitely anchored in the Ibirapuera Park since the elders of the City of São Paulo decided that the best way to celebrate its four hundredth anniversary, that would take place in 1954, should be to decorate it in green. A team designed this green, compounding it with the gray of the pedestrian and car thoroughfares, with the smooth surfaces with sweetly winding edges of its lakes where, on weekends, families spread the white and colorful squares of their picnic towels, playing, laughing, eating, sleeping, courting, always with a touch of the nostalgia that the sight of water inevitably arouses in the dweller of a city so lacking of it as is the case of São Paulo, a city with no sea or distant horizon where one can unbind his sight. If it fell to some people to conceive the green, to Oscar Niemeyer it fell to design the white, which is the color of the three pavilions and the great marquise with so capricious asymmetric contours, more daring than the lake's, with which it makes a counterpoint, perhaps because they were hand-designed to be materialized in concrete, frozen in concrete. They were painted white on account of the modem architectural precepts summarized by Le Corbusier – a major influence among Brazilians and their greatest architect, Oscar Niemeyer – as "the wise, correct, and magnificent play of volumes gathered under the light." White because the artifice must mark its difference from the green; the reason, of nature, although they are in love with each other, as suggested by the sensuality of the curves of the marquise, under which we stroll today among the crowd of boys sliding on roller skates and skateboards. Moreover, as suggests the fourth building of the complex, the Oca, strictly a buried sphere, a pure volume sprouting from the soil.

Every two years the São Paulo Biennial, this unique museum, occupies again the third, last, and bigger of the three buildings linked by the marquise. The former Pavilion of the Industries houses the event to the extent of being its registered trademark. The idea of an aircraft carrier is born from the contemplation of this huge, three¬-storied, parallelepiped-shaped edifice, with thirty three thousand square meters, glass-walled on one side, and the other side, hit by the sun, metallic because of the movable louvers that confer a variable texture. The mention of the ship is perhaps originated from the fact that along the 250 meters of the building's length, the terrain drops two meters and the huge volume makes this step evident as if detaching itself from the soil, as if floating in the air. But certainly what reminds us more of an ocean liner is the interior of the building, or more precisely, the void, the great irregular-shaped hollow that links the three floors. In each of them the concrete slabs open in diverging curves, reverberations of the curves in the marquise outside, so that the set of ramps supported by tree-like pillars may ascend to the last floor. And those who visited the Biennial have already seen it: while some people go up the ramps, a slow ascent, not because it is arduous but because the change of viewpoint has a touch of cinematographic travelling, other people take pleasure in peering at the building with their elbows on the parapets on these slabs that look out on the void. They spend some minutes in this pose as if enjoying the greatness of the space, in a rite reminiscent of passengers on ocean liners, leaning on the gunwales just to contemplate the open sight of the waters or the cities astride on the thin horizon line.

Every two years, although such regularity has been upset now and then, like now, coincidentally now, or maybe better said symptomatically now, when it celebrates its fiftieth anniversary and the burden of the age forces it to ponder its mission, the São Paulo Biennial, this unlikely museum, occupies again its grandiose seat at the Ibirapuera Park.

And it has a curious way of advertising itself: the silence. For several days, the building does not house the fairs and events that guarantee the institution's support; for several days there is nothing, no trace of that public extraneous to the arts, not interested in it, with all of its noisy attention focused on home appliances and electronic devices, children's goods, nautical ware, hotels, fashion pageants, camping, in short, a whole cast of products and activities for which, time and again, the organization of a fair is deemed necessary to attract their devotees. As a necessary sanitation measure, for several days the pavilion silently adjusts itself, disturbed only by some people's amplified steps and talk, or because someone insists in sawing or nailing something, wounding the thin columns of suspended dust, constructed by the light blades that pass through the side gaps between the blades of the louvers.

Gradually the silence is broken by the first trucks that arrive unloading wooden panels, by the construction foremen who, with architectural blueprints in hands, define the places where walls will rise, and by the teams of workers gathered to push this and lift that. There is a symphony full of rhythms and mechanical tones, characteristic of cutting, sawing, nailing, fastening, anchoring, of crisscrossing shouts and summons, of calls through electronics intercoms for the building is so vast and attention is always an item so urgent; all sounds become denser and denser, because they are the sounds of a deadline that gets nearer and nearer; notice that the crates with the works of art are coming already, up from the cellars. From all these activities, I was saying, rises an increasingly intense mass of sound until it reaches its paroxysm, until, finally, after a month or so acting intermittently, it begins to cease, to be exchanged for a gibberish, also noisy, but different.

The sounds of sawing, cutting and boring continue, but they are not so frequent anymore, and not open, but punctual, for now we are watching the moment in which the building begins to turn itself into a Babel, a harbor where groups of people from the whole world disembark, discussing among themselves and talking in bad English with other members of other foreign groups, and with the technicians appointed by the Biennial to assist them. The uproar is confusing and loud, due to the colliding speeches and accents. Sometimes they denote irritation, and you can guess why: there is the monotony of the wait, there are those who think that things that were promised are not being made, that the workers are slow, and so on, and all these complaints arise because what everybody wants is to finish with that soon, so that they can experience and know better the great city that had already amazed them from above, from the plane, and for the time being reaches them only through the huge windows and the quick trip from the hotel to the Ibirapuera Park. With time, in most cases, the tempers quiet down, indeed because one understands that lack of understanding is a natural condition in such circumstances. And also because most foreigners there are old-timers in such skirmishes, in other countries and in their own. Anyway, there are always those who stop, lean on the big span's parapet gazing upon the bustle that reigns in the ambient, and consider the possibility, at least in those days, of the City of São Paulo, or more precisely the Biennial building in the center of its green heart, being one of the centers of the world.

Agnaldo Farias

This is a revised version of the essay published in Agnaldo Farias (org.), Bienal 50 anos, 1951-2001. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 2001.


	português


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		In the Center of the Green Heart Every two years, this unique museum founded by the Italian immigrant Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho ("Ciccillo" Matarazzo), occupies again the huge building designed by Oscar Niemeyer, that big "aircraft carrier" - as someone said - definitely anchored in the Ibirapuera Park since the elders of the City of São Paulo decided that the best way to celebrate its four hundredth anniversary, that would take place in 1954, should be to decorate it in green. A team designed this green, compounding it with the gray of the pedestrian and car thoroughfares, with the smooth surfaces with sweetly winding edges of its lakes where, on weekends, families spread the white and colorful squares of their picnic towels, playing, laughing, eating, sleeping, courting, always with a touch of the nostalgia that the sight of water inevitably arouses in the dweller of a city so lacking of it as is the case of São Paulo, a city with no sea or distant horizon where one can unbind his sight. If it fell to some people to conceive the green, to Oscar Niemeyer it fell to design the white, which is the color of the three pavilions and the great marquise with so capricious asymmetric contours, more daring than the lake's, with which it makes a counterpoint, perhaps because they were hand-designed to be materialized in concrete, frozen in concrete. They were painted white on account of the modem architectural precepts summarized by Le Corbusier – a major influence among Brazilians and their greatest architect, Oscar Niemeyer – as "the wise, correct, and magnificent play of volumes gathered under the light." White because the artifice must mark its difference from the green; the reason, of nature, although they are in love with each other, as suggested by the sensuality of the curves of the marquise, under which we stroll today among the crowd of boys sliding on roller skates and skateboards. Moreover, as suggests the fourth building of the complex, the Oca, strictly a buried sphere, a pure volume sprouting from the soil. Every two years the São Paulo Biennial, this unique museum, occupies again the third, last, and bigger of the three buildings linked by the marquise. The former Pavilion of the Industries houses the event to the extent of being its registered trademark. The idea of an aircraft carrier is born from the contemplation of this huge, three¬-storied, parallelepiped-shaped edifice, with thirty three thousand square meters, glass-walled on one side, and the other side, hit by the sun, metallic because of the movable louvers that confer a variable texture. The mention of the ship is perhaps originated from the fact that along the 250 meters of the building's length, the terrain drops two meters and the huge volume makes this step evident as if detaching itself from the soil, as if floating in the air. But certainly what reminds us more of an ocean liner is the interior of the building, or more precisely, the void, the great irregular-shaped hollow that links the three floors. In each of them the concrete slabs open in diverging curves, reverberations of the curves in the marquise outside, so that the set of ramps supported by tree-like pillars may ascend to the last floor. And those who visited the Biennial have already seen it: while some people go up the ramps, a slow ascent, not because it is arduous but because the change of viewpoint has a touch of cinematographic travelling, other people take pleasure in peering at the building with their elbows on the parapets on these slabs that look out on the void. They spend some minutes in this pose as if enjoying the greatness of the space, in a rite reminiscent of passengers on ocean liners, leaning on the gunwales just to contemplate the open sight of the waters or the cities astride on the thin horizon line. Every two years, although such regularity has been upset now and then, like now, coincidentally now, or maybe better said symptomatically now, when it celebrates its fiftieth anniversary and the burden of the age forces it to ponder its mission, the São Paulo Biennial, this unlikely museum, occupies again its grandiose seat at the Ibirapuera Park. And it has a curious way of advertising itself: the silence. For several days, the building does not house the fairs and events that guarantee the institution's support; for several days there is nothing, no trace of that public extraneous to the arts, not interested in it, with all of its noisy attention focused on home appliances and electronic devices, children's goods, nautical ware, hotels, fashion pageants, camping, in short, a whole cast of products and activities for which, time and again, the organization of a fair is deemed necessary to attract their devotees. As a necessary sanitation measure, for several days the pavilion silently adjusts itself, disturbed only by some people's amplified steps and talk, or because someone insists in sawing or nailing something, wounding the thin columns of suspended dust, constructed by the light blades that pass through the side gaps between the blades of the louvers. Gradually the silence is broken by the first trucks that arrive unloading wooden panels, by the construction foremen who, with architectural blueprints in hands, define the places where walls will rise, and by the teams of workers gathered to push this and lift that. There is a symphony full of rhythms and mechanical tones, characteristic of cutting, sawing, nailing, fastening, anchoring, of crisscrossing shouts and summons, of calls through electronics intercoms for the building is so vast and attention is always an item so urgent; all sounds become denser and denser, because they are the sounds of a deadline that gets nearer and nearer; notice that the crates with the works of art are coming already, up from the cellars. From all these activities, I was saying, rises an increasingly intense mass of sound until it reaches its paroxysm, until, finally, after a month or so acting intermittently, it begins to cease, to be exchanged for a gibberish, also noisy, but different. The sounds of sawing, cutting and boring continue, but they are not so frequent anymore, and not open, but punctual, for now we are watching the moment in which the building begins to turn itself into a Babel, a harbor where groups of people from the whole world disembark, discussing among themselves and talking in bad English with other members of other foreign groups, and with the technicians appointed by the Biennial to assist them. The uproar is confusing and loud, due to the colliding speeches and accents. Sometimes they denote irritation, and you can guess why: there is the monotony of the wait, there are those who think that things that were promised are not being made, that the workers are slow, and so on, and all these complaints arise because what everybody wants is to finish with that soon, so that they can experience and know better the great city that had already amazed them from above, from the plane, and for the time being reaches them only through the huge windows and the quick trip from the hotel to the Ibirapuera Park. With time, in most cases, the tempers quiet down, indeed because one understands that lack of understanding is a natural condition in such circumstances. And also because most foreigners there are old-timers in such skirmishes, in other countries and in their own. Anyway, there are always those who stop, lean on the big span's parapet gazing upon the bustle that reigns in the ambient, and consider the possibility, at least in those days, of the City of São Paulo, or more precisely the Biennial building in the center of its green heart, being one of the centers of the world. Agnaldo Farias This is a revised version of the essay published in Agnaldo Farias (org.), Bienal 50 anos, 1951-2001. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 2001.