Brazilian Neo-Concrete Art
Please look at the work from 1958 named Metaesquema 464 by the Brazilian artist, Helio Oiticica. The title means meta structure but I like the relation to the word schema in English meaning a diagrammatic representation or outline. The misleading term Concrete art comes from the Dutch De Stijl group some decades before Oiticica. To the De Stijl group and Oiticica their art is concrete in the sense that it is directly conceived, not derived from worldly objects. They argue that shape, and color are real and concrete.
The black and tan colors look good in the piece and that color combination is popular for uniforms. As an aside, the Irish were for hundreds of years oppressed by the English before the Irish finally acquired their independence in 1922. The Irish referred to English troops on Irish soil in the early 1900’s as the “black and tans”.
If the square buckles were oriented to match the tilt of the three middle belts, I think the work would lose some abstraction. The buckles then would seem to snake through the composition.
Notice the white spaces between buckle and belt are slightly wedge shaped and because the buckles are all horizontal they form a visual identification even though the buckles are not directly stacked vertically. The work is regular enough for unity and irregular enough for interest.
Notice the white spaces between buckle and belt are slightly wedge shaped and because the buckles are all horizontal they form a visual identification even though the buckles are not directly stacked vertically. The work is regular enough for unity and irregular enough for interest.
Oiticica made a number of varied Metaesquema works that have something in common according to one critic. He says they look jostled. In the case of our example, you could picture all the belt pieces lined up as cardboard pieces in a box and then jostled out of position.