Visual Arts | Luís Eduardo Hofmeister, who holds a degree in Art History, shows how the visual artist challenged established categories and expressed the spirit of her time
*By: Luís Eduardo Hofmeister
*April 18, 2024
*Photo: PBSA/UFRGS Collection – Reproduction
In a 2015 interview with the Tate Gallery, on the occasion of a major Pop Art exhibition, the Brazilian artist Romanita Disconzi stated that she does not consider herself a Pop artist. According to her, her work merely draws from the same source as Pop Art – that is, mass culture, celebrity photographs, and consumer advertising.
In the large painting “Batman, Madonna, and Wonder Woman,” created in 1993, pop culture elements are very well placed: Madonna’s characteristic smile appears alongside Wonder Woman’s face and the Batman logo, taken directly from the comics, together with a large hibiscus flower. However, the images seem to be composed of a series of small solid-color squares that blend into one another; it is difficult to say where the flower ends and the Batman symbol begins, for example.
Communication has always been one of Romanita’s greatest interests. Born in the city of Santiago, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 1940, her presence in the artistic world of Rio Grande do Sul is very notable: faculty member of undergraduate and graduate programs at the Institute of Arts/UFRGS for several decades, Romanita was also director of MARGS and participated in the group of artists known as Nervo Optico in the 1970s. In 1969, she motivated the creation of the “object” category at the Porto Alegre City Hall, since her very original Interpretation Totem did not fit into the traditional categories of sculpture. Totem is, in reality, a big game: a series of blocks with different symbols painted on them – arrows, hearts, weapons, fists, “stop” signs. The meaning that the Interpretation Totem brings depends only on the arrangement of the blocks, never being perfectly clear.
The Totem is, perhaps, a first manifestation of Romanita’s interest in the sending and receiving complexities of human communication and its arbitrariness.
This interest would continue over time in her screen prints, for example, in which she continuously expanded the vocabulary of symbols that want to say a lot but end up saying nothing at all. It is precisely this interpreting play that interests her.
In 1991, however, Romanita began her doctoral studies at USP under the supervision of professor and artist Julio Plaza, developing the project that would give rise to “Batman, Madonna, and Wonder Woman” and would allow her to clarify her interests. The so-called “Post-TV Painting” is Romanita’s interpretation of an old question in the history of art: how do people actually see the world?
Claude Monet was one of the pioneers in this field. He painted the same scene outdoors at different times of the day, studying how colors changed according to the light, and how this could transform the way we see reality. Georges Seurat, later, reduced human perception to infinite dots of color. Romanita revisits Seurat’s dots, except that, for her, the dots have names: the squares are the pixels of TV screens, which blend together and interfere with each other.
In the best style of Pop Art, the artist sees television and computer images as the most essential and characteristic way of seeing the world in her time – the basis of human communication. The repertoire of images is, moreover, very contemporary to the 1993 painting: in 1992, Madonna was wearing that same gold tooth in the promotion of her newly released album Erotica; Batman Returns, with Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer, had also been released in 1992. More than just old influences, Romanita’s superheroes and pop stars are the saints to whom we pray at the altars of television.
Batman, Madonna and Wonder Woman is, therefore, more than a “futile” painting – a word often used against Pop Art. It is the synthesis made by Romanita Disconzi of the spirit of an era, which operates with icons different from those of the Classic Pop Art by Andy Warhol, but with icons nonetheless, and which is so saturated with screens and advertisements. More than Monet’s Sunshine, this art has become the default way of seeing the world – and of making art.
Batman, Madonna and Wonder Woman, 1993
Acrylic on canvas, 143.5 x 230 cm
Art Collection of the Art Gallery Barão de Santo Ângelo
Luís Eduardo Hofmeister is an undergrad in Art History.
Every two weeks, students and researchers present works from the Art Gallery Barão de Santo Ângelo from different perspectives. The section is curated by Camila Monteiro Schenkel.
Translated into English by Gabriela Lima Dionísio, undergraduate student enrolled in the course “Supervised Translation Training II (English)” of the Undergraduate Program in Language and Literature, under the supervision and translation revision of Professor Elizamari R. Becker (P.h.D.) – IL/UFRGS.