Moldingacontemporarysoultheempty-fullofLygiaClark.docVIP

Molding a Contemporary Soul: The Empty-Full of Lygia Clark Suely Rolnik “Literature (cf. art) thus appears as an undertaking of health: not that the writer (cf. the artist) necessarily has a strong constitution (…), but he enjoys a fragile irresistible health, which comes from the fact of having seen and heard things that are too big for him, too strong, unbreathable, whose passing exhausts him, but nevertheless permits him becomings that fat, dominating health would make impossible. (…) What kind of health would be enough to free life wherever it is imprisoned by man and in man?” Gilles Deleuze Lygia Clark is the name of an existence convulsed by the eruption of an idea that gradually took shape throughout the totality of a unique oeuvre. Being elaborated step by step from the 1950s to the 1980s, this idea situated itself on the horizon of one of the most insistent issues facing modern art–that of reconnecting art and life–as an original answer with the power to carry this project toward its very limit. This is probably why Brazilian and international culture of that time did not assimilate the artist’s work, not even half of it, especially during the period beginning with Caminhando (Walking, 1963). Some eleven years after her death this assimilation is only starting to take shape. From this seminal work emerged a path in which the idea that propelled Clark presented itself in all its radicality and took on a vitality that would remain indefatigable until her final work, Estrutura??o do self, (Structuring the Self) produced through her Objetos Relacionais (Relational Objects, 1976-88). The last of the artist’s propositions, this work completed her idea in masterful form, revealing the rigorous coherence of the whole. Throughout the century, much imagination has been dedicated to working out strategies to effect the utopia of the reconnection of art and life. Some of these strategies form the specific landscape which Clark’s work carried out its dialogue with: