O espectro do caos: a contemporaneidade e a ambivalência da arte urbana paulistana (1970-1990)

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on graffiti and picho practices as a form of urban art in the city of São Paulo and its ambivalent relationship between discourses and searches for legitimacy, from 1970 to 1990. The proposition is to present that, being seen as graffiti or picho, both constitute forms of contemporary expression regarding their emergence in Brazil. With motivations and processes that are not to be opposed radically, their hierarchical presentation, mainly, must be disputed. From the analysis of some of these artistic reconfigurations and their entanglement in the dynamics and expansion of the city of São Paulo that pervade the group Tupinãodá, considered one of the first urban art crews in Brazil with more plural articulations, along with one of its former members, the artist Jaime Prades, the argumentation is developed. The artist in question has his testimony highlighted to settle a critical questioning concerning the types of discourse, in an attempt to articulate the paths of São Paulo’s urban art. Finally, amid a growing institutionalization of graffiti throughout the 1980s, seeded largely by its representation in some major local newspapers, this study produces a debate about legitimacy building, its foundation in judgements of taste and its relationship with hegemony to consequently draw a correlation with the picho processes. The main objective of this work lies therefore in an attempt of dismantling this apparent dichotomy, favoring a questioning based on a certain ambivalence of that street art, which takes over the public space as its platform. In accordance with a process of analogies, it is revealed the purpose of equalizing creative freedom, transgression, method, institutionalization and repression, often propelled by the same agents.