Neo-Concrete Art vs Tropicália
ネオ・コンクリート・アート / トロピカリア
Both sit in Brazilian Avant-garde, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Neo-Concrete Art
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Releases geometric abstraction from a fixed visual order and opens the work to touching, moving and entering, so that it becomes an experience that changes as the body takes part.
Tropicália
Mixes vivid color, music, sand, plants, temporary structures and audience participation to criticize both the repression of military rule and the outsider's image of a 'tropical paradise.'
| Neo-Concrete Art | Tropicália | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1959–1966 | mid-1960s– |
| Family | Brazilian Avant-garde | Brazilian Avant-garde |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Movable geometry / Bodily participation / Folds and hinges / Sensuous color and space | Blazing hybridity / Participatory space / Music and costume / The tropical image inverted |
| Best used for | Interactive exhibits and teaching objects that visitors are meant to open and move · Printed pieces and invitations that change shape through folds and hinges | Music festivals and cultural events that want to celebrate mixture and unruliness · Critical advertising or covers that quote the tropical cliche in order to invert it |
| Type | Run type across the fold so it resolves only when opened | Mix handwriting, sign painting and printed faces, breaking unity on purpose |
| Composition | Design several valid states rather than one, reached by opening or turning | Build paths and places to linger so the audience completes the piece |
| Material | Thin metal or board with hinges tuned to move under the hand's weight | Sand, raw wood, cloth, temporary boards and primary paint left rough |
| Caution | Read it through the revolt against objectivism and the transformation the viewer's body performs, not as Brazilian geometric abstraction, and note that fragile moving parts go untouched and leave only ornament. | Reducing it to colorful tropical taste reproduces the tourist paradise it set out to criticize, so the Brazilian military regime, the favelas and the political mixing of music and art have to be read. |