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21/11/2005

Raul Mourao

Lurixs Arte Contemporanea, Rio de Janeiro

NO ONE KNEW
Raul Mourão introduced me to this work in July 2005 when, over the course of a pleasant lunch we had together in Ipanema, I became one of the privileged few who knew about it. Well, if only a few people knew about it then, many people will agree with it now: luladepelúcia is a visionary work. It all started as a joke one week after the President took office and now, almost three years later, it still carries in itself the potential to represent the best artistic synthesis of the ethical and moral hangover that the country is undergoing at present. Something that transformed TV Câmara [Congress TV] in a phenomenon of audience with high ratings, something that managed to elevate the Coronel’s grandson and the Mayor’s son to the position of exponential examples of honesty. I prefer to use the word hangover for we all know that this crisis did not exactly start today. Therefore, just as corruption is not an evil that is haunting Brazil only, it isn’t by any means restricted to the public administration sphere. Corruption is like a cancer, like AIDS, or the flu – an illness created by mankind that societies have grown accustomed to. Luladepelúcia attacks not only the symptoms, it makes us think about the causes. Is there politics without politicking? Is there power without a racket? Is there a lie without a liar? Is there corruption without a corruptor? Is there an election without a catchy publicity point?
Hope has won over fear and I’m more and more convinced of my innocence. I swear I didn’t know it. Raul didn’t know it. Zé didn’t know it, Inácio didn’t know it, neither Maria did. We are all perplexed, in need and ungoverned: Brazil 0 X Corruption 2. He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone. But beware, it’s only a plush doll and it’s a glass house. Didn’t you know it?
André Eppinghaus
Rio-born creative promoter, Fluminense soccer team fan.

LULADEPELUCIA [PLUSHLULA]
Contrariwise to what one may think, this series of works created by Raul Mourão based on the image of president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva is not an indignant attack at the political scandal that has been sweeping the country since June 2005.
The initial idea of the luladepelucia series first popped up in January 2003, when the enthused population and the media euphorically hailed the new president. As Mourão recalls it, “the president couldn’t make any public appearances, for a crowd of people was always there, ready to ask for an autograph or wanting to take pictures or to touch him at least”. Realizing that our top national leader was being treated as a pop star, Mourão launched the idea: to create Lula-like dolls made of plush to be distributed to the bedazzled population so they would let the man do his job in peace. In 2004, after a whole year of jokes, the idea became an artwork.
Mourão employs irony and humor in a good deal of his works. Here again these characteristics appear, anticipating a denunciation de facto. In general, his works are focused on elements that belong to everyday urban life and to the public administration sphere. Things like security fences, soccer fields, mongrel dogs and even artists, hanging on the gallery walls, encouraging subtle reflection on cultural, political and social systems.
In addition to the plush piece, the series also includes some impressive drawings (graphite on paper) of the skeleton of the doll-president, and a digital animation of the virtual construction processes of the toy-sculpture that lends its name to the series. The animation, which was intended to be a ‘making of’, ended up as an autonomous work that resulted in a most intriguing one.
The set of works exhibited are outgrowths of the same idea and the same subject: the fuzzy doll of amigo Lula for the militants to cuddle up and sleep with, and for the opposition to stick voodoo pins in it, as Mourão would put it. The manufacture of the plush Lula dolls via an industrial process allows for large-scale production and turns the work into a metaphor of a popular object conceived for the joy and consumption of the ‘masses’.
The appropriation of the image of a public and influential personality approximates the works of Raul Mourão to those of artists who employ irony and humor to comment on the media universe and its political or cultural stars, such as Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and American artist Jeff Koons.
Mourão turned the joke into art but the moment coincided with the windstorm of accusations cramming the newspapers, the TVs and the Brazilian political consciousness. Thus, the sardonic tone of the work got intensified by media and political contexts that are external to it. If, prior to the scandals, Luladepelúcia was no more than an irony, today and according to the news tomorrow, it might be understood as a vehement attack or a graceful homage to the president of the republic.
The work is by the artist but his call to order will remain open to the public and to the denouement of this presidential mandate.
Daniela Labra

LULA’S NOT FOR REAL, HE’S MADE OF PLUSH
Everybody knows that Brazil is an abyss that never comes true – a powder keg of crises and vertiginous vortices based on slaveries, colonialisms and patrimonial plutocracies. In short: nuclei of excellences surrounded by the powers of bureaucratic backwardness or of unabashedly poker-faced incompetence. We are like the region of Thrace in the Roman Empire – a faraway corner mistaken about its importance, which is none whatsoever. Paradoxically, and in contradiction with Nelson Rodrigues, we have to be proud of our mongrel features, proud of the peripheral barbarian power of the third, fourth and fifth worlds.
I repeat: Brazil is an abyss that never comes true. Now that the shadow of Mad Max hovers above the world, pricking our consciousness with images of futuristic rubble, now that social disintegrations and natural catastrophes are getting increasingly intense, it is certain that the rule of the mafias will finally be revealed as being more powerful than all the liberal and socio-democratic (isn’t it social-democratic?) states or the blah-blah-blahs of various social organizations.
Within this context, together with all the Chinas, Indias, Middle Easts, Mexicos, Croatias, Patagonias and, you name it, Brazil will serve as a virile hideaway and an emporium for all sciences, moneys, peoples and technologies blessed by the world of the absolutistic traffic. We are living in an era of trafficking absolutism for everything and everyone.
The shadow of Mad Max hovers over the world. Futuristic rubble and the rowdy rule of concentrated mafias will stab our minds with the following questions: Who’s the boss here? Who owns what? Who is sponsoring you? Haven’t you been cloned yet, man? Go to the locksmith around the corner and he’ll fix it for you in a jiffy. He’s got the key to the genetic chain.
Brazil is an abyss that never comes true possessing a barbaric peripheral power but the goody-goody feeling of socialistic self-righteousness inherited from christianity (which, in a certain way, conducted all the little modernities, all the isms, enlightenment, positivism, communism, nazism) ended up by sweeping away the tattered consciousness of the so-called giant laid on a splendid cradle. Thence, a country fascinated by all sorts of royalty (musical, children’s) had to generate in politics the messianic figure of a country Savior coming from the lowest strata. Perfect. The Christian dream of the poor man’s life strewn with calvaries who gets into the paradise of the maximum social recognition. Ok, if this weren’t a synonym of a huge farce engendered in the final rattle of dictatorship and driven by nasty resentment. I remember (sorry, but I can’t resist mentioning this personal remembrance that well illustrates the PT-oriented atmosphere) that every little fraternity group at PUC was deceitful, lazy and imbued with a rascal-like reactionaryism protected by the shielding of communist propaganda that was anti everything that could be democratic. And here you have them: Mao, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Fidel and other pop stars of the carnage that renders all of them equal. Even Pol Pot used to be ok, as long as everyone was equal in poverty, in obtuseness and in the socialist mental goofiness.
At first, PT [Labor Party] sounded interesting as a laborite organization that, with the aid of the judiciary and the legislative bodies and other entities, acted as a regulator of the state, but everything I said in the previous paragraphs devoured this noble regulating function of the said social injustices. Namely: the sanctification of its existence via promises of salvation of the poor and the oppressed, combined with an effort towards an unintelligent demonization of the recent Brazilian governments, of all world trade, of all globalization, of the U.S. and so on and so forth. Brother (Brown or Chao), we must always keep in mind that the world is an American fetish. The other factor that corroded the noble regulating function was exactly the said rascal fraternity attitude allied to a huge ineptness and an archeological resentment that provoked the frenzy of getting their hands on the whole state, sweeping away from the map those who did not belong to the bunch and at the same time buying off all the other groups.
Lula is the perfect embodiment of all this. From the long-ago-retired vibrant orator in a Volkswagen yard he became a mediocre politician, a nullity as a political representative, always sustained by that dream of national salvation that is deeply ingrained in the Brazilian hearts filled with plushy sentimentality. But it so happens that the PT den has been debunked by the successive scandals that generated an unprecedented tsunami of revelations unveiling the mafia-like corruption scheme that rules the country. Lula is the embodiment of the mushy sentimentality and of the moron plushy attitude that haunted the country via the PT for years. Now you, man, an inhabitant of the abyss that never comes true, don’t be afraid, face up to your panic, acknowledge your peripheral fifth-world barbarian strength and keep the ball running, for no one knows what is going to happen to this continent. Hold back your inner apocalypse because you will need it in a short while. Forget about PT because it’s the end of it. This type of political party is coming to an end. Many things are coming to an end. And, most of all, forget about Lula, because his den has been invaded and razed to the ground. We are free of this babbling that has tormented us for more than 20 years. He ascended to presidency only to show us what he is not doing. Forget about Lula because he’s not for real, he’s made of plush. I have spoken.
Fausto Fawcett
30 Oct 2005
Copacabana-born writer and songwriter, author of Rio 40 Graus [Rio 40 Degrees], Santa Clara Poltergeist and Básico Instinto [Basic Instinct].

THE ARTWORK IN THE ERA OF PROVOCATIVE REPRODUCIBILITY
If Walter Benjamin and his famous essay came to your mind, the one that took the artistic milieu by storm and that made everybody re-think the bulk of cultural output, this is not happening by chance. The new work by Raul Mourão – luladepelúcia – is also based on the principle of reproduction triggering reflection. But if Benjamin was, among other things, questioning the value of the work, which was no longer singular but disseminated and reproduced, and also the principle of authorship in an industrial production scale, there are some artistic manifestations like the cinema where the author perhaps ceases to be a loner to turn himself into a collective being. Raul Mourão once more appropriates urban daily-life elements to transform the gallery in a ludic, playful space of unusual sensations that insist on accompanying you even after you’ve left.
Mourão brands his works with an affectionate and at the same time critical look upon the urbis that surrounds him. Such is the case in Casinhas [Little Houses], a series where he planted interventions in unusual spots in town and in the works grouped under the title Futebol [Football], where he set the national craze into familiar and uncomfortable geometries due to the strangeness of the non-organic materials that represented it. Perhaps this streak reached its highest peak with the suffocation brought about by Grades [Fences], in which the gallery space became the mirror and the prison of the common citizen, stifled and unconscious due to the conflict-landscape in which he lives.
Even when this link is not so evident, it is there: Cartoon deals with the universe of animation; Rua [Street] is composed of reflections that are similar to those penned by João do Rio. In luladepelúcia [Plush Lula] Raul Mourão weaves a dialogue with the biggest icon produced in Brazil lately. And he does it in an affectionate way, for when representing it as a plush doll, RM sends us at once to a precious nook of interpretation – the time past of childhood when we protected our dreams translated by our toys, being at the same time protected by them against the hardships of the grownup world.
We can also detect the echoes of the relationship between the political figure and the nation that elected him: we never believed so much, we were never so sure of the changes, we never cheered as much, wishing that it all would work out fine. We wanted, yes, to have Lula just for us, someone to hug and to caress, someone who represented a new era for a country so in need of dreams and hopes. Raul reflects that when he covers an entire wall with his plush presidents – and this is where Benjamin seeps through again, because the impact of this image starts to disassemble its own seduction game.
Finally, we come near it looking for minimal differences between one and the other. We step back and try to find some hidden message in the drawing formed by the group. We see so many Lulas that we start asking ourselves if this is not good-humored criticism aimed at the overexposure of our president in the media. In the cinema, the repetition of the same image places the spectator in an uncomfortable situation for it breaks with the imperious naturalism to which he is used to and unveils the process of artistic construction. Likewise, when Raul Mourão multiplies an object that is so sweet and so representative of our longing for happiness over the gallery space, he inaugurates the artwork in the era of provocative reproducibility. You get out of there considering the possibility of refusing a cute little critter like that, if by chance someone offered you one. The recent events added to the dialogue contained in Lula de Pelúcia may leave a somewhat bitter aftertaste in our palate. A taste of, let’s say, maturity.
Piu Gomes

THE DOLL OF DORIAN GRAY
Luladepelúcia was ideated by Raul Mourão during the initial days of Lula’s administration. In those days, Brazil was experiencing a feeling of great enthusiasm related to the figure of the new leader. Such enthusiasm, unprecedented in the country’s recent history, was expressed by the humble folks in the trust they deposited on the worker-president, by the intellectuals, in the at-long-last rise into power of a major symbol of their leftist aspirations and in the press, by their immediate adherence. It seemed that we were going to get by.
Luladepelúcia was, back then, an ironical comment related to a given state of things, something like a figurine president, a bearded teddy bear, a soft and fluffy thing to squeeze, to cuddle up and to sleep with in moments of anxiety. A good-luck charm, so to speak.
However, luladepelúcia was materialized by Raul Mourão in the third year of Lula’s government in a totally different atmosphere. The president, his government and his political party are involved in a sequence of scandals that unraveled the most widespread corruption scheme that we have ever witnessed. Lula is no longer the miracle worker of the olden days – the emperor is naked and the dream is over.
Luladepelúcia has also undergone a few mutations: in addition to the irony and adoration of the initial times, there’s an irony related to the passing of time that boosts the power of the work. If we take a good look at him, he is not as fluffy and soft and huggable as he used to be. We now think twice before wishing to hug him. There’s something ‘chucky’ about him: a murderous toy with his not-so-friendly expression, a bristle-haired, second-phase gremlin, the doll of Dorian Gray.
Luladepelúcia reaffirms the bluntness of Raul Mourão’s work, as evidenced in A Grande Área [Penalty Box], Grades [Fences] and Cão Leão [Lion Dog]. A punch in the eye. Affectionately.
Marcelo Pereira

AN ELEPHANT DISTURBS A LOT OF PEOPLE
Surrealism has not left its mark in Brazil, a highly surrealistic country where reality has always overpowered fantasy so that dream and automatism could establish their rules. The opera buffa has been on stage since the arrival of the Portuguese ships: religious theatricality for a population that was totally alien to that sort of staged drama. Five hundred years in search of the other – an ungoverned otherness, I would say. Nowadays, reality ceases to be surreal to become supra-real. Facts that could easily come from a comedy of errors played by João Caetano, but that were more likely taken from a smash hit comedy written by popular playwright João Bethencourt titled Dollars, Briefs, Baldheads, Payolas and Such, something that will never attain that refined Wildean irony about the importance of being earnest.
It is from this less-than-plausible view that the artist Raul Mourão elaborates a sharp and even laughable but no less acrid critique on something that is sad and tragic… After all, the artist experiences a reality that is common to everyone and, as he has the capability of transubstantiation, he offers us art. The show luladepelúcia at Lurixs consists of an installation with plush dolls, graphite-on-paper drawings and four-hand works, all of them using the figure of President Lula as a basic motif. It’s not an homage, it’s a redress-seeking act.
The same way as Mourão uses everyday objects that injure our eyesight and offend us – like the fences that pollute urban spaces – the artist appropriates an image that invades our retina and overwhelms our lives. To face resignation, clever humor used as a weapon. According to the artist, the series started to exist as early as in January 2003, but since then a lot of things have changed. In his own words: “What was only an artwork filled with irony and good humor became a murderous toy. It seems that PT rose into power only to destroy the country. Lula is a disoriented character. Once again reality outdid fiction. Ready-to-use jokes pop up: briefs stuffed with money, primitive instincts, a treasurer called Jacinto Lamas [Feel Mudcoming], a Kojak-looking publicity man and a bishop-congressman carrying suitcases packed with money. The government is a source of inspiration for humorists and cartoonists, and it would be comical if it weren’t tragic”.
The riddle has been solved. If luladepelúcia dolls were sold in the street market, they would run the risk of becoming pin-pierced voodoo dolls laid at crossroads, or beheaded and beaten up like Judah dolls on Holy Friday in Brazil. For now, the character is safely harbored within the gallery walls but it still amazes us to see them as automatons, as clones, disoriented, and with those weird ‘chucky’ expressions. A portrait of a ship adrift for, after all, “the man dies, the fame stays”, so the song goes. Better still, arts stays, Raul Mourão would say, with his army of plush lulas. A souvenir of our times. Hope is the last thing to die, but the hopeful die sooner.
Paulo Reis

A COURAGEOUS WORK
Luladepelúcia is a courageous work. Making art requires a certain dosage of this quality but not all artworks bear this characteristic. Raul Mourão took the risk and this, in itself, is very good. Making art is no joke, although it might be fun and ironic in many cases. To see the dear president of Brazil as a doll calls forth numerous metaphors and, being a good work, luladepelúcia bears many of them and some that probably even Raul didn’t think of. I could name a few but I don’t want to restrict the interpretation of the viewer. Nonetheless, I will explain why I think this is a courageous work.
The representation of a figure in power in no news in art history, in many commissioned portraits, paintings, statues, or satirized in newspaper cartoons. Lula never asked to become a doll and so far never a publicity agent commissioned the item to the government publicity department or to some agency that renders service to it with money that transits via subterranean ways, this being exactly what ended up happening: the president became a doll. This provocation that the work brings about makes us laugh not only at the situation but at ourselves as well, be it in the wish to spank the president-doll shared among some congressmen or in the militant desire that some people nurture of sleeping all cuddled up with it.
Also integrating the exhibition, there are drawings made with pencil on paper that were mechanically achieved with the use of an automatized plotting machine and fed with the various stages of the digital three-dimensional construction of the doll and, in spite of the appearance of electronic printing, they were in fact achieved by the graphite in contact with the paper surface with a few small interferences subsequently made by Mourão or by the guest artists. They are fake real drawings or real counterfeit drawings. They reveal the process of construction of the president-doll and this insight can be useful in the attempt to grasp other situations, artistic or not, including the political ones.
The artists and their works are a reflection of the realization of the reality that surrounds us, and the brave are not opportunists, they cast a keen look on the world events and transform all this into intelligent, sensitive and/or beautiful art, which is not always a glorious activity. Raul Mourão, with his luladepelúcia, will playfully collect honey with no fear of getting stung.
André Sheik

Translated by Paulo Andrade Lemos
Rio de Janeiro, November 2005

Paramarelos
José Bechara
24 nov - 08 jan 05

Lurixs Arte Contemporanea
RUA PAULO BARRETO 77, BOTAFOGO 22280-010 RIO DE JANEIRO RJ BRAZIL
Hours:
mon-fri 2 pm - 7 pm / sat 4:30 pm - 8 pm

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