Antonio Manuel

Cildo Meireles’ mount did not last 24 hours as expected, but that was the duration of an exhibition by Antonio Manuel originally planned to last much longer. In 1973, the artist had been invited to do a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. As we shall see, the directors of the museum had good reasons to be concerned about the kind of work Antonio intended to show, and they met with the artist to discuss his plans. Their first decision was that, from the series of eight works proposed, only one should be shown. Sheer censorship, no doubt, but justified by the directors as a well-intentioned measure of precaution and protection - of the museum, of the work, of the artist himself. A decision later to be reviewed, resulting in the cancellation of the whole show.


Curiously enough, the piece that the directors had formally agreed to show was O Bode (The Goat), surely the most radically subversive work proposed, and the one most likely to stink. If in Cildo Meireles’ Fiat Lux the material was the imminent risk of explosions, the blast here was latent, potential, symbolic. In the Quimbanda, a religious rite of African origin widely practised in Brazil, the black goat is a symbol related to evil and negativity. Not that the goat is evil, but it becomes the receptacle for the evil that exists in ourselves, which the animal attracts, assimilates, and stores. Because there is a limit for the goat’s capacity to absorb our bad vibes, and beyond which the goat would end up imploding, exploding from the inside, the animal is sacrificed, in a process of sublimation, of eradication of evil - the very figure of the scapegoat. Try to imagine, displayed as the artist intended, the black goat at the centre of a large circle painted in red (oops, still another version of our national flag?), and you’ll easily figure out how wrong the directors’ patronising, precautionary measures would have gone ha the show been opened and attracted the real censors with their stinking, terrible vibes.


But the exhibition finally was to take place, and it lasted 24 hours. Antonio Manuel convinced the editors of the daily newspaper O Jornal to dedicate six pages of their Sunday issue to the publication of his proposals. And the black goat was there, horny and proudly ruminating the bad vibes of those bad times in the good company of transvestites, vampires, The Cock of the Golden Eggs, The Painter Who Taught God How to Paint, among other outcasts and heroes of our human, all too human, daily sacrifice.


But I still owe you the explanation. What led the directors of the Museum of Modern Art - people, I must say, of progressive ideas and respect for the freedom of expression - to decide to cancel Antonio’s show? The answer lies in the artist’s body of work, or better, in his body as work. O Corpo ? a Obra (The Body Is the Work) was how the artist responded to the decision of the jury of the National Art Salon, held at the same museum in 1970 - to refuse the artist’s proposal to expose himself as an artwork, a decision which resulted in forcing its members to cope with one more unexpected version of the Nude Descending a Staircase, the work by Marcel Duchamp which so eloquently tells us about the significance of regulations, juries, judgements, and refusals in art.