Contemporary Art in dialogue with the Visual Tradition: Cardoso, Zocchio and Navas (São Paulo, 1887-2016)

Cardoso, Zocchio and Navas (São Paulo, 1887-2016)

Abstract

The article, structured in 3 segments, comments some visual essays by contemporary artists Patrícia Cardoso, Marcelo Zocchio and Thiago Navas, which take the city of São Paulo and its representations as subject, working with aspects as memory, authorship, authority and visual tradition. Following the article presents a historiographical panorama about the work of Militão Augusto de Azevedo (Rio de Janeiro, 1837-São Paulo, 1905), a prominent visual producer, whose images are central for those essays. Militão Azevedo’s Álbum comparativo da cidade de S. Paulo (1862-1887), the most extensive imagery set about the city at the end of the 1880s, is a reference in different degrees and modes in such contemporary artworks. This paper seeks also to highlight how the images of Militão were perceived and mobilized throughout the 20th century in the process of building a local urban memory and in the very constitution of the field of the history of Brazilian photography. The article concludes with the analysis of Cardoso, Zocchio and Navas’ works, commenting the ways they operate on structural principles such as the comparative resource between photographs, documentary and representational functions etc. The text focuses on the temporalities articulated by the imagetic narratives in Militão's album and the later appropriations, and seeks to feature the potent reflection that takes form in the segment of contemporary art, which reveals the dynamics that had subjected the local historical iconography to different agendas.