Between Universalism and Difference: The Singular Movement of the São Paulo Biennials

− Abstract

This article examines the extent to which the Bienal de São Paulo’s was successful in achieving its main goal of presenting avant-garde art to the public from 1951 to 2002. To do so, it focuses on the conception and materiality of four important exhibitions that occurred in the second half of the 20th century. The notion of the avant-garde was based on a concept of modern linear time, which guaranteed the privilege of future time and was based on a universalist notion of art. Such a conception was part of the concept of modernity that prevailed throughout most of the 20th century, until the advent of postmodern theories.

The idea of exhibiting avant-garde art contributed to banishing the art of the past and the cultural, national, ethnic, and racial differences associated with it. Traditional subjects and cultural differences should, in modernism, give way to new artistic expressions that are more equal in formal constitution and universalist in aspiration. Nevertheless, the argument presented here is that such artistic expressions, despite ostensibly being considered outdated, remained in the discourse of the event's organisers, as well as in the conception and materiality of the exhibitions, thus defining a thread of continuity between them. Ultimately, the desired vanguardist view of art remained deeply entwined with artistic expressions perceived as outdated or surpassed due to national, ethnic, or racial differences, and it was this which shaped the singularity of São Paulo Bienal in the last century.