Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte

Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH

Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

Título da Disciplina: TEHA IX – Tópicos Especiais em História da Arte IX: Arte e alteridades.
Diásporas africanas e as artes visuais- estudos sobre as artes visuais nos Estados Unidos e suas
articulações

Nível: Mestrado Acadêmico/Doutorado

Obrigatória: Não
Área(s) de Concentração: História da Arte
Carga Horária:60
Créditos:4

Professor/a Responsável: Letícia Squeff / Marta Jardim

Professore(s) Colaborador(es): profa. Dra. Anne Lafont (EHESS, Paris- França) e outros professores
do Brasil e do exterior
O curso é parte de uma ação que congrega universidades públicas de São Paulo
(MAC/USP, IFCH/UNICAMP, DHA/UNIFESP) e um museu (Pinacoteca do Estado de São
Paulo), com apoio da Terra Foundation for American Art (Chicago, EUA). As aulas serão
ministradas em inglês, no auditório do Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP.

Horário: 14h00 – 17h00

Data de início: 08/08/2023
Local: Museu de Arte Contemporânea USP.
Sala: Auditório do Museu de Arte Contemporânea USP [Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, 1301.
04094-050 - São Paulo - SP – Brasil

Vagas para Alunos Especiais:

() sim ( X ) não, Em caso positivo, assinale o número de vagas: 0
Vagas para Alunos ouvintes
( X ) sim ( ) não, Em caso positivo, assinale o número de vagas: 1
Vagas para matrícula de discentes do PPGHA: 9
Em caso de muitos interessados, será feita uma seleção, com base na análise dos
seguintes documentos:
1) Carta de intenção/interesse no curso (em inglês);
2) Projeto de pesquisa
3) Histórico escolar da graduação
* ENVIO dos documentos até 14 de julho de 2023 para [email protected]; [email protected]
Resultado em 23 de julho de 2023

Ementa:
O objetivo da disciplina é levar a pensar sobre processos e objetos artísticos sob uma perspectiva plural e
interdisciplinar, seja discutindo formas expressivas tradicionais, populares e não-hegemônicas; seja
analisando formas de representação da alteridade; seja examinando como se constroem identidades
culturais; seja estudando a transformação/apropriação de práticas e objetos culturais em novos contextos.
Situada na interface entre a História da Arte e as Ciências Sociais, propõe-se, sempre que possível, a
dialogar com questões e métodos da Antropologia, como etnografia/pesquisa de campo, agência de
imagens e objetos, performances e rituais, coleções etnográficas, entre outros.

Objetivos Específicos:
- Problematizar as relações entre arte e raça
- Discutir imagens produzidas no contexto da colonização das Américas
- Comparar os contextos imagéticos da representação de pessoas negras no contexto norte-americano e
brasileiro
- Promover uma aproximação e trocas acadêmicas entre alunos de pós-graduação do programa de
história da arte da Unifesp com alunos da Unicamp e da USP
- Oferecer aos alunos a possibilidade de ter contato com professores de diversos lugares do mundo, e
 Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH
Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

diversas abordagens e modos de conceituação das problemáticas do curso.

Conteúdo Programático:
- Artes no Atlântico negro
- Modelos africanos e as teorias da arte no Iluminismo
- O fetiche: um tema da teoria da arte africana?
- Exposições de Arte Brasileira nos EUA
- Artistas negros e curadoria
- Intercâmbios de ativistas e Solidariedade inter-racial: A gravura nas Américas em meados do século
XX
- Racialização e arte no Brasil
- Coleções e exposições nas artes visuais no Brasil
- Brasil e a historiografia da arte na diáspora africana
- Os retratos de Obama e a política de representação negra

Método de Avaliação: - pelo menos 5 relatórios de leituras preparatórias para as aulas;

- 17 de outubro - entrega de resumo (300 palavras) com uma bibliografia inicial (mínimo de 10 itens),
descrevendo o tópico proposto. 1º de dezembro: entrega de ensaio (10 páginas)
comparando uma obra de um afro-americano com a de um artista afro-brasileiro.
Bibliografia:
CLIFFORD, James. Colecionando Arte e Cultura. In: Revista do Patrimônio. No. 23. 1994. pp. 69-89.
GEERTZ, Clifford. A arte como sistema cultural. In: O Saber Local. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997.
GELL, Alfred. A rede de Vogel: armadilhas como obras de arte e obras de arte como armadilhas In:
Revista Arte e Ensaios No. 8. Disponível em:
http://www.eba.ufrj.br/ppgav/doku.php?id=revista:arte_e_ensaios_08. Acesso em 16/04/2013.
GELL, Alfred. Art and Agency. An anthropological theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
GONÇALVES, José Reginaldo. Antropologia dos objetos: coleções, museus e patrimônios. Rio de
Janeiro: IPHAN, 2007.
INGOLD, Tim (Ed.). Key debates in anthropology. London, Routledge, 1996.
MARCUS, George: Estética Contemporânea do Trabalho de Campo. In: BARBOSA, Andréa; CUNHA,
Edgar Teodoro; HIKIJI, Rose Satiko Gitirana. Imagem-Conhecimento: Antropologia, cinema e outros
diálogos. Campinas: Papirus, 2009. pp. 12-32.
MORPHY, Howard. Arte como um modo de ação: alguns problemas com Art and Agency de Gell.
PROA: Revista de Antropologia e Arte, v. 1, n. 3, 2011/2012. Disponível em:
http://www.ifch.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/proa/article/viewFile/2626/2033.
PRICE, Sally. Arte Primitiva em Centros Civilizados. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ, 2000.
SCHNEIDER, A; WRIGHT, C. Contemporary Art and Anthropology. Berg Publishers, 2005.

Bibliografia Complementar:
AMANCIO, Kleber; PEREIRA, Bethania; OLIVEIRA, Patrícia. Kleber Amancio:Reflexões
sobre raça e história da arte no Brasil. 2021.
https://revistas.pucsp.br/revph/article/download/53547/37575

AMARAL, Aracy, "As experiências dos Clubes de Gravura,” Arte para quê? A preocupação
social na arte brasileira, 1930–1970, 3rd ed (São Paulo: Studio Nobel,2003), 173–225.
 Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH
Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

CULLEN, Deborah, “Contact Zones: Places, Spaces, and Other Test Cases / Zonas de
contacto: Lugares, espacios y otros laboratorios,” in 3ra Trienal Poli/gráfica de San
Juan: América Latina y el Caribe: El Panal / The Hive (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriqueña, 2012), 20–45 (Spanish, English).
GONZALES, Lélia. “A mulher negra na sociedade brasileira” [1979], em Lélia
Gonzalez: Por um feminismo afro-latino-americano; Ensaios, intervenções e diálogos,
compilado por Flávia Rios e Márcia Lima (Rio de Janeiro, 2020), pp.58–59.
https://www.mpba.mp.br/sites/default/files/biblioteca/direitos-humanos/direitos-das-
mulheres/obras-digitalizadas/teorias_explicativas_da_violencia_contra_a_mulher/por_
um_feminismo_afro-latino-americano_by_lelia_gonzalez_gonzalez_lelia_z-lib.org_.mobi_.pdf

MERCER, Kobena. Travel And See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the
1980s.Duke University Press : London, 2016.
MORAES, Igor. Todo cubo branco tem um quê de Casa Grande: racialização,
montagem e histórias da arte brasileira. Revista PHILIA | Filosofia, Literatura & Arte,
Porto Alegre, volume 3, número 1, p. 314 329, maio de 2021.
https://www.seer.ufrgs.br/philia/article/download/113790/pdf
RAMÍREZ, Mari Carmen, “Beyond ‘The Fantastic’: Framing Identity in US Exhibitions of
Latin American Art,” Art Journal 51, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 60–68.
SIMÕES, Igor. Entre a raça e as constelações: uma abordagem curatorial sobre o acervo do
MAC USP.
https://estudosdecoloniais.mac.usp.br/painel-curatorial/igor-simoes/.

PROGRAMA (O curso será ministrado quase todo em inglês):

AUGUST - Guest Professor: Anne Lafont, EHESS, Paris, France

Session 1 (August 8th) - Art and Race
This session will examine the various facets of the visualization of race, and in this case black
people, over the long eighteenth century, from the publication of the first conceptualizations
of human diversity on the scale of colonial empires in connection with their pictorial
counterpart: The appearance of black pages in the portraits of the white European aristocracy,
until the time of the Atlantic revolutions and the first abolitions of slavery, around 1800, when,
in the realm of images, the violence of the slave trade and the slave system was represented
to sensitize European societies to the brutal reality of the colonial process.
Reading for this session: Anne Lafont, "How Skin Color became a racial Marker? Art Historical
Perspective on Race" Eighteenth-Century Studies, thematic issue on color edited by Steven
Pincus, October 2017, volume 51, no. 1, pp. 89-113.
Complementary reading:
Anne Lafont, L’art et la race. L'Africain (tout) contre l'oeil des Lumières, Paris,
Presses du Réel, 2019.
 Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH
Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

Session 2 (August 15th) - The Art of the Black Atlantic

This second session responds to the first one and focuses on the ways in which enslaved
Africans expressed themselves in the plastic arts around the Atlantic during the four centuries
of the slave trade. The aim is to rethink the categories of art history by considering the Atlantic
as a center, and by paying particular attention to the art of African societies in diaspora at the
time of the first colonization, in order to allow the emergence of a black artistic production
whose form and contours require to leave the framework of the picture – tableau-, the matrix
of the only European fine arts.
Reading for this session: Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness,
London, verso Books, 1993.

Session 3 (August 22th) - The African Object and Art Theory in the Enlightenment
This session will provide an opportunity to understand how the first writings on African objects
(travelogs, art theory, collection inventories, abolitionist writings... from the 17th and 18th
centuries) described, analyzed and participated in thetransformation of these ritual or magical
pieces into African art. The aim is to identify the processes of appropriation at work in texts
that do not assert their project of conquest but which are concretely in a dynamic of
acclimatization of African objects. This process will be considered insofar as it was at the basis
of the huge European collections made in Africa from the 1860s onwards.
Reading for this session: Johann-Joachim Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, Los
Angeles, Getty editions, 2006.
Session 4 (August 29th) - The fetish: an African theoretical object?
This session intends to evoke different paths taken by the notion of fetish from the ritual
objects of the African coast, such as they were described by the Portuguese in the early days of
their trade with the African continent: the fetissos. This session, more exploratory, is intended
to be an interpretation of the survival of African objectality and religiosity in the
conceptualizations that the fetish has known from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
This interpretation will be based on three cases: the fetish of Abbé de Brosses, the fetishism of
Auguste Comte and the "defetichizing mission of art" of Georg Lukàcs.
Reading for this session: William Pietz, The Problem of the Fetish, Chicago, Chicago University
Press, 2022.

SEPTEMBER - Guest Professor: Adele Nelson, UTexas at Austin, United States

Session 5 (September 12th) - Discussion with coordinators of the seminar course from the
three universities
Summary of August sessions and first round of discussions on the final assignment.

Session 6 (September 19th) - Prof. Adele Nelson: US Exhibitions of Brazilian

Art: Black Artists and Curatorial Citation, Translation, and Representation
 Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH
Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

This class will examine the history of US exhibitions of Brazilian art from the mid-20th century
to today, focusing on the large number of recent shows focused on Afro-descendant artists
and the exhibition I co-organized at UT Austin, Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary
Brazil. Consideration of Zanele Muholi’s term “visual activism” and what Mari Carmen Ramírez
calls the “identity-projecting role” of exhibitions will ground discussion of agency, extractivism,
and ethics of access and attribution.
Readings for this session: Vivian A. Crockett, “A Place to Call Home: Reflections on
Transnational Translations,” in Afro-Atlantic Histories, eds. Adriano Pedrosa and Tomás Toledo
(New York: DelMonico, 2021), 52–62. Zanele Muholi, “Faces and Phases,” Transition 107, no. 1
(2012): 112–24. Mari Carmen Ramírez, “Beyond ‘The Fantastic’: Framing Identity in US
Exhibitions of Latin American Art,” Art Journal 51, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 60–68.
Also watch & look through:
Diane Lima, “Negros na piscina / Blacks in the Pool: Hypervisibility, Art, and Curatorship in
Brazil, lecture, March 1, 2023, The University of Texas at Austin. Available at <link TK>.
(Portuguese); Proof of Maria Emilia Fernandez, Adele Nelson, and MacKenzie Stevens, eds.,
Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil (Austin: Visual Arts Center and Tower
Books, University of Texas Press, forthcoming November 2023). (English/Portuguese)

Session 7 (September 26th) - Prof. Adele Nelson: Activist Exchanges and

Interracial Solidarity: Printmaking in the Americas in the mid-20th century

Deborah Cullen has argued that print studios are vital “contact zones.” We will test out this
proposal by examining multivalent exchanges among leftist artists and printmakers, print
workshops, and publications explicitly committed to social and, in some cases, racial justice.
We will study, on one hand, African American artists Robert Blackburn, Elizabeth Catlett, and
Charles White and their contact with the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) in Mexico City and, on
the other, the presence of the ideals and works of the TGP in Brazilian clubes de gravura.
Readings for this session: Aracy Amaral, "As experiências dos Clubes de Gravura,” Arte para
quê? A preocupação social na arte brasileira, 1930–1970, 3rd ed (São Paulo: Studio Nobel,
2003), 173–225. Deborah Cullen, “Contact Zones: Places, Spaces, and Other Test Cases / Zonas
decontacto: Lugares, espacios y otros laboratorios,” in 3ra Trienal Poli/gráfica de San Juan:
América Latina y el Caribe: El Panal / The Hive (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña,
2012), 20–45 (Spanish, English). John P. Murphy, “Charles White: The Politics of Print,” Print
Quarterly 36, no. 2 (June 2019): 146–56.
Look through: Scans of Horizonte (Porto Alegre), vol. 1–6 (1950–1955). Benson Latin American
Collection, UTAustin <link to Box folder of scans created by UT Libraries TK>

OCTOBER - Guest Professor: Igor Simões, Universidade Estadual do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Session 8 (October 3rd) - Racialization and art in Brazil

 Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH
Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

In order to discuss Afro-Brazilian art, it is also necessary to have an understanding of the racist
dimension that runs through the history of Brazil and the field of visual arts. It is not just a
matter of focusing on social issues, but of understanding how these issues impact the very
historiography of art in Brazil. At the same time, it is urgent to discuss which terms and marks
will be used to think about the other art that is not named Afro-Brazilian. It is also urgent to
discuss methodological paths for these investigations.
Readings for this session: MORAES, Igor. Todo cubo branco tem um quê de Casa Grande:
racialização, montagem e histórias da arte brasileira. Revista PHILIA | Filosofia, Literatura &
Arte, Porto Alegre, volume 3, número 1, p. 314 329, maio de 2021.
https://www.seer.ufrgs.br/philia/article/download/113790/pdf ; AMANCIO, Kleber; PEREIRA,
Bethania; OLIVEIRA, Patrícia. Kleber Amancio: Reflexões sobre raça e história da arte no Brasil.
2021. https://revistas.pucsp.br/revph/article/download/53547/37575

Session 9 (October 10th) - Race, Gender, and Dissidences

Issues of gender and their intersections are still a landmark to be more deeply researched and
pondered for a broad understanding of the art produced by Black subjects in Brazil. Even
today, publications and curatorial approaches show considerable disparity when considering
the presence of women and gender dissidents. Therefore, this discussion requires detailed
attention and presence in research that encompasses both critical readings of these
productions and historical revisions of the role of these presences in the interpretation of art
named as Afro-Brazilian.
Readings for this session: SIMÕES, Igor. Between the Suture and the Abyss. Black Women
Artists in Brazil: A Brief Introduction. Em Empowerment Art and Feminisms. Kunstmuseum
Wolfsburg Compilado por BEITIN, Andreas; KOCK, Katharina; RUHKAMP, Uta. 2022. p 60-65.
English version:
https://www.kunstmuseum.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220920_empowerment
_puplikation_en_interactive.pdf
GONZALES, Lélia. “A mulher negra na sociedade brasileira” [1979], em Lélia Gonzalez: Por um
feminismo afro-latino-americano; Ensaios, intervenções e diálogos, compilado por Flávia Rios e
Márcia Lima (Rio de Janeiro, 2020), pp. 58–59.
https://www.mpba.mp.br/sites/default/files/biblioteca/direitos-humanos/direitos-das-m
ulheres/obras-digitalizadas/teorias_explicativas_da_violencia_contra_a_mulher/por_
um_feminismo_afro-latino-americano_by_lelia_gonzalez_gonzalez_lelia_z-lib.org_.
mobi_.pdf

Session 10 (October 17th) - Collections, exhibitions, systems, and histories for the visual arts
in Brazil
In a scenario marked by orchestrated attempts at silencing in the historiography of Brazilian
art, exhibitions play a central role in the construction of readings that are often absent.
Exhibitions such as "A Mão Afro-Brasileira" (1988) forced the rise of new categories of
theoretical frameworks that could account for the political dimension of the concepts of art
 Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH
Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

produced in Brazil. In the 21st century, in addition to the continuity of these curatorial
practices, exhibitions are also pathways for reading collections, as well as recurrences of
contemporary art systems that impact selections, choices, and acquisitions.
Reading for this session: SIMÕES, Igor. Entre a raça e as constelações: uma abordagem
curatorial sobre o acervo do MAC USP. https://estudosdecoloniais.mac.usp.br/painel-
curatorial/igor-simoes/.

Session 11 (October 24th) - Visit to the exhibition “Dos Brasis: Arte e pensamento Negro”,
SESC
The exhibition, curated by Igor Simões and Hélio Menezes, is the result of a 2-year research
and studio visits to Afro-Brazilian artists all over the country - both living and historical artists.
The show intends to be a comprehensive updated narrative on Afro-Brazilian visual arts.
Reading for this session: Curatorial essay for the exhibition catalog. Exhibition and project
website:
https://www.sesc.com.br/atuacoes/cultura/artes-visuais/dos-brasis/

Session 12 (October 31th) - Brazil and the historiography of art in the African diaspora.
The project proposed here explores the absence of Brazilian Black artists in the context of the
international debate on Afro-diasporic art and art history, speculating on the US context that
projects itself as occupying the forefront of this production in the Americas. The question that
drives the research seeks to understand elements that contribute to this absence. It is worth
noting that Brazil was the largest destination of the African diaspora and has the largest
contingent of Black subjects outside the African continent. How, then, to understand the
absence that has been confirmed through the analysis of publications, exhibitions, and
institutional collections that are dedicated to the theme?
Readings for this session: SIMS, Lowery; KING-HAMMOND, Leslie. The Global African Project.
Prestel. 2010. MERCER, Kobena. Travel And See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s.
Duke University Press : London, 2016. COPELAND, Huey; NELSON, Steven. Black Modernisms in
the Transatlantic World. Yale University Press.

NOVEMBER - Guest artists and Guest Professor: artists Rosana Paulino and
Fred Wilson (pending confirmation), and Prof. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw,
University of Pennsylvania, United States

Session 13 (November 7th) - Conversation with artists Rosana Paulino and

Fred Wilson (pending confirmation)

Session 14 (November 14th) - Professor Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw: David

Driskell’s Two Centuries of Black American Art, 1976
 Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Arte
Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas / EFLCH
Universidade Federal de São Paulo / UNIFESP

In 1976, the year that the United States celebrated its 200th year of independence from Great
Britain, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted a comprehensive exhibition of art by
African American makers. Curated by the late David Driskell, Two Centuries of Black American
Art was a watershed exhibition that brought together examples of fine art and material culture
to present a history of Black creativity that had been largely ignored by mainstream museums.
This seminar will focus on the particularities of that exhibition and on its legacies, including the
recent U. S. presentation of the Brazilian exhibition, Afro-Atlantic Histories. We will debate the
merits of massive historical exhibitions of this kind that seek to cover multiple centuries and
media and ask ourselves what curatorial and historical alternatives might be imagined.
Reading for this session: David Driskell (ed.), exh. cat. Two Centuries of Black American Art. Los
Angeles:Random House, 1976.

Session 15 (November 21st) - Professor Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw:The Obama Portraits and
the Politics of Black Representation
In 2018 when the National Portrait Gallery, a part of the federal government’s Smithsonian
Institution in Washington DC, unveiled the portraits that it had commissioned of former
President Barack Obama, by Kehinde Wiley, and First Lady Michelle Obama, by Amy Sherald,
they were greeted by an outpouring of excitement and controversy. Made by avant garde
Black artists in their own unique styles, each of the portraits diverged from expectations set by
earlier, more aesthetically conservative presidential portraits. This seminar will focus on the
debate they generated in popular culture and the museum world; and engage the ways in
which they influenced the art market’s interest in paintings of Black people. We will examine
exhibitions devoted to portraits of Black sitters and consider the history of Black portraiture
from the 18th century to the current moment.
Reading for this session: Taína Caragol, Dorothy Moss, Richard Powell & Kim Sajet (eds.). The
Obama Portraits. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.