1. A Soland goose from the north of Scotland
2. A fine large hawk
3. A piece of the sugar cane, 8 feet long
4. A curious hydrometer, or weather gage
5. The bill and craw of a pelican
6. A curious skin of a snake, six feet and a half long
7. The claws of a lobster of a surprising largeness
8. A sea fan
9. Sea weeds
10. A maucauco from the East-Indies
11. The foal of a Zebra African wild ass
12. The skeleton of a cat
13. A Chinese idol
14. The pizzle of whale
15. The head and paws of a Greenland bear
16. A sheet of paper made of silk, 12 feet long, 4 feet and a half wide, from China
17. A string of large Romish beads
18. A petrifies child
19. A Guinea deer
20. A wooden shoe that was put under the speaker’s chair in the reign of K. James II.
21. The King of Widdaw’s staff
22. The ear of an elephant
23. Pipes found in Gloucester
24. A print of the fly cap monkey
25. Ditto of a fine lizard, coloured from the life
26. Ditto of the dead warrant for the beheading of King Charles the First
27. Ditto of a flying squirrel, coloured from the life
28. Ditto of the Brazilian pye, or toucan, coloured from life
29. A sea horse’s pizzle, of which cramp rings are made
30. A large otter
31. A surprising horn of an urus, or buffaloe
*31. The cobler’s awl, plover
32. A fine horned owl
33. A Chine pheasant
*34. Chinese instrument of wind music made of reeds
34. Two fine mussel shells, 2 foot long 60, from Portmahon
35. The rhinoceros’s horn
36. The model of a mill with an overshot wheel, which works with sand (as the large ones do by water) most curiously contrived, and made in a bottle: the stopper of the bottle is most wonderfully contrived in being fastened in the inside of the bottle with cross bars and spring bolts, with various things hanging to each end of every bolt, and yet so tight as not to admit of one grain of sand to escape.
37. The horns of a West-India stag
38. A Spanish apparatus or belt to prevent cuckoldom, commonly called a Spanish padlock
39. A Romish bishop’s crosier
40. The horn of a sea unicorn, 7 foot and a half long
41. A friar’s discipline
42. A Staffordshire almanack, in use when the Danes were in England.
43. A coffin of slate for a friar’s bones, finely carved all over.
44. A joint of the back bone of a whale
45. An iron bolt shot red-hot at fort William by the rebels, 1745
46. The paws of a Russian bear
47. A large star fish
48. The paws of a seal
49. A piece of the keel of a ship eat by the worms
50. The head of a manatee or sea-cow
51. The lance ´Tow How Sham, king of the Darien Indians, with which he killed six Spaniards, and took a tooth out of each head, and put it in his spear as a trophy of victory
52. The skin of a snake, ten feet and a half long, an excellent hydrometer
53. The foot of an elk
54. The head and tusks of a moss or sea lion
55. The head of a roe-buck from Scotland
56. The fin of a shark
57. A chopchin with which the Chinese cut their gold sympum, or Chinese board
58. A soull cap found in the hat of a French officer, when taken at the battle of Dettingen
*58. The grinder of an elephant
59. The tooth of a whale
60. Bastinadoe from China
61. An Indian sword of war always left in the field of battle by the conqueror
62. An Indian leaf of the tree palmeta used by the natives as a fan
63. An almanack for a blind man
64. A Moco fan
65. The head and horns of an antelope.
66. The belt and pouches, shoe and other ornaments of Tow How-Sham, king of the Darien Indians
67. A pair of Tartar lady’s shoes
68. The coronation-shoes of King William III
69 A pair of Tripoly stockings
70. A Turkish quiver for arrows
*71. A curious brass Cremona violin
71. A pair of maucasons or shoes from Hudson’s Bay
72. A shirt of mail wore by the knights templars
73. A Chinese stocking
74. Queen Elizabeth’s stirrup
75. A Chinese boot
76. The jaws of a shark with 280 teeth
77. A scaly coat of mail
78. A pair of Turkish women’s shoes
79. A pair of Chinese women’s shoes
80. Q. Catherine’s wedding shoes, q. of Charles II.
81. A pair of Turkish men’s shoes
82. A Turkish slipper
83. A pair of Chinese men’s shoes
84, A pair of Spanish lady’s shoes
85. A pair of brashalls to play at ballon, a game used in Italy
86. A curious wooden fan
87. A curious model of a church
88. A print of the maucauco with some weeds from the gulph of Florida
89. The Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the ten Commandments, the prayers for the king and the royal family and the 21st psalm; all wrote in the bust of king George
90. A very curious triform picture of king Charles I. and his two sons
91. A dried cat
92. A Turkish bow
93. The root of a tree in the shape of a hog
94. The head of a badger
95. The saw of a saw fish
96. King Henry the eighth’s coat of mail
97. A pair of gauntlets
98. Knives of the Cannibal Indians
99. An Indian bow and arrows
100. Two javelins
101. A Negro boy’s cap made of rats skins
102. Snow shoes
103. A Chinese waistcoat, to prevent sweating
104. A Scots Highlander’s target
105. A coat made of the bark of a tree
106. A whip from Archangel
107. A Mailay’s hat
108. Queen Elizabeth’s chambermaid’s hat
109. The target of Tee-Yee-Neen-Ho-Ga-Row, Indian emperor of the Six Nations
110. Queen Elizabeth’s work basket
111. A Bohemian hat
112. A curious print, that changes viz. from a man to a woman
113. A moving picture of Hudibras and the conjurer
114. Ditto of the bottle-conjurer
115. Ditto of a bashful widow
116. Two young tarapins, or land turtles
117. Two fine large ostrich eggs
118. The shell sun fish
119. The egg of an ostrich, curiously carved
120. The star-fish
121. A bucaneer’s staff
122. A Barbary spur
123. King Henry the Eighth’s spurs
124. A print of the scarlet manakin from Surinam, coloured from life
125. Two Madagascar lances
126. An Indian bow
127. A Turkish pistol
128. A pistol with four barrels, taken from the French at the siege of Namur
129. Four Indian arrows, extraordinarily bearded
130. Two ancient broad arrows of Robin Hood
131. Two small poisoned arrows with bearded points
132. Oliver Cromwell’s broad sword
133. A Spanish spadoe
134. King James’s coronation sword
135. King William’s ditto
136. A Scots dusk
137. Two poisoned daggers of great antiquity
138. A Mallay’s Creese
139. A travelling clock, which is thirty-six hours going down, N.B. In common clocks the hand goes round, and the dial keeps its place; but in this the dial goes round and the hand keeps its direction
140. A spur of state from Mexico taken in the Acapulco ship by admiral Anson
141. The flaming sword of William the Conqueror
142. A print of the Zebra, or African wild ass, coloured from life
143. A starved cat found between the walls of Westminster-abbey when repairing
144. The horns of an antelope
145. A fine large tarapin, or land-turtle
146. An antique chissel
147. A fine East-India bow and arrows, the arrows headed with poison, to shoot birds with
148. An Indian tomohawk taken in the field of battle before Quebec
149. Fine lace imitated in paper
150. The head of the rhinoceros bird
151. The head of the spatula bird.
152. The head of a sea-horse
This is one of the many lists compiled by Shaun Usher, an anthologist of “succinct or detailed, personal or public” ones, yet lists all the same.
This list being reproduced here is a somewhat unusual one. It corresponds to Don Saltero’s coffee house, and dates from around 1700. The establishment drew crowds who came to see the objects of all kinds to be found in its “cabinets of curiosities” rather than for the refreshments being served.
On entering the coffee house, visitors were handed a copy of “A catalogue of the rarities to be seen at Don Salters Coffee-House in Chelsea”, which contained a list of the intriguing oddities displayed on its walls, shelves, and even on the ceiling.
*
Paulo’s studios could be the source of endless lists: works of art, household utensils, papers, a whole world of marvels that do not come from “nature” or afar, but instead from the city itself.
On the one hand, a list compiled by the owner of a coffee house in 1700, and on the other, the numerous lists that could be drawn up in Paulo’s ateliers in Recife, which to some extent are already lists in their own right. Whether they are or not, it seems they share the same intent, namely, to compile wonders and display them in a more or less unaltered state.
Paulo initially uses those piles of objects and items to attract us, and then goes on to reveal how the activation of the things he has gathered informs works of art that have sprung from within himself and from working with groups such as Fluxus, on projects involving mail art (arte correio), the Gutai group, and a long list of homages and references to artists he admires.
These ateliers and Paulo’s different interventions suggest “a history of art according to Paulo Bruscky”, given that the practices he has dabbled in are so different and yet so successful that they prompt the notion that all he needs to do is choose an object or piece of paper from one of these piles and turn it into a new chapter in that peculiar history. From this apparent chaos, Paulo can locate each trace of his artistic creativity, as most of his work involves actions that when displayed in the white room become museumised, without forgoing the expressive power he works with and the irony that tends to accompany his work.
Arte classificada [Classified art] is one of the sections into which the artist divides his contribution to this exhibition. We could literally think it is a taxonomy of his art, but instead these are classified adds that Paulo publishes in the cities he visits, including A Coruña. Wordplay is a constant of almost all his work, from his mail art to his street performances. The same applies to the titles of his work, in which there is always a slightly surrealistic twist present.
*
Back in Recife, Paulo has one of the finest collections of 20th century art, or at least that is what he likes to say. It involves his Artistas Achados y Apropiados, which is a series, mostly of photos of street detritus, which recall the works of his favourite artists and which he calls by the name of the artist in question. It is an arrangement that is both naïve and meaningful in that vast archive-cum-storeroom that constitutes Paulo’s life and art. Yet another endless list in that cornucopia of lists that make up his work. An infinite archive that always has enough space for just one more document. Paulo’s piles are never complete, although they are constantly aspiring to be so.
In the chapter “There are lists and lists” in the book “The Infinity of Lists”, Umberto Eco distinguishes between practical lists and poetic lists, understanding poetics to mean “any artistic end for which the list was proposed and whatever art form is used to express it […] The practical list can be exemplified by a shopping list, the list of guests invited to a party, by a library catalogue, by the inventory of objects in any place (such as an office, an archive, or a museum), by the list of assets in a will, by an invoice of goods requiring payment, by a restaurant menu …”, whereas when faced with poetic lists one may well wonder why they are drawn up, with the answer being that they cannot be quantified, and therefore escape from our ability to control and name them…
In the same book, in the chapter “A visual list”, he says “Nonetheless, there are other figurative works that make us think that what we see within the frame is not all, but only an example of a totality whose number is hard to calculate…”
Further on, he states “Think of Pannini’s picture galleries: they are not intended to represent merely what is shown but also the rest of the (indefinitely large) collection of which they are only an example”.
Thus, Paolo’s accumulation-collection of objects, papers, etc. becomes an endless visual list of both what is there and what should be there arising from the infinity of discards, discoveries, findings, stones, and other objects.
In Paulo’s case, his storerooms and his practice contain “a history of art according to Paulo Bruscky”, which is in turn as infinite as the collections in his ateliers.
He is a gatherer or hoarder, half fisherman of things and half creator, if one may actually separate the two terms in his case, as art is to be found in collecting and vice versa.
Paulo is hard to pin down because his work has many facets. That is indeed how it should be. Classification kills the tension between works of art and within the work itself when it is divided by some or other criterion.
Nevertheless, the montage that accompanies this exhibition has maintained the categories the author has proposed:
Arte Classificado – Classified Art
Arte correio – Mail art
Artistas achados e apropiados – Found and appropriate artists
Banco de ideas – Bank of ideas
Bruscky Invents
Homenagens - Homages
Libros de artista – Art books
Objetos poéticos – Poetic objects
Poesia visual – Visual poetry
Repropostaçoes - Resets
Adesivos - Stickers
Instalaçao - Installation
Video arte – Video art
Arte Sonora – Sound art
A taxonomy that responds solely to the one the author makes when selecting the work for this exhibition.
In other exhibitions, the classification has been done for him, which may be a bold decision given the variety involved in what I have called “the history of art according to Paulo Bruscky”.
Paulo’s papers are rich in expressing beauty and quality. If we take any of the papers in any one of his categories, we run the risk of being seduced by that richness, overlooking other aspects of his papers that are full of mild political outbursts, typical of anyone who has had to suffer a dictatorship at first-hand. Yet those outbursts are full of colour, contrasting with the work of artists that have darkened their work by basing it on the sombre times they may not even have witnessed. Paulo’s work is optimistic without turning its back on the past. And it does not explore the memory of dictatorial suffering to create metaphorical rites of grief.
There is something akin to “as if nothing was happening or nothing had happened” which conceals an underlying grief. His experiences with the dictatorship would have been a fruitful breeding ground for a memory-based work.
There are, of course, hints of grief in this montage, such as “Pelos Nossos Desaparecidos” [For Our Disappeared] in his works of visual poetry. They resort to the use of black and white and broken lines. His printing methods in all his other works renounce colour to adopt a more commemorative style and a language more suited to tragedy on paper.
It cannot be said that this project exhibits “works” but instead the bulk of what remains in Paulo’s procedural works. The mail art papers are what remains of the pursuit of that art form, the xeroperformances are the remains of what is depicted in the photos that capture the performance and the action, etc.
Use could be made of the categories in the Exposition Surréaliste d'Objèts held at the Galerie Charles Ratton in 1936: found objects, ready-made objects, altered objects, etc, A surrealism that Pablo enjoys, and which is present in each reference his work makes.
Xerox photocopying machines produce Paulo’s xerographs. Paulo and the machine. The photocopier’s mechanical operation produces images and compositions in which body and machine become xeroperformances, and what remains of these becomes what we commonly consign to the display case or to the frame: the rest, the vestige, the record.
In this “history of art according to Paulo Bruscky”, one cannot forget his attendance of the Venice Biennale: wearing overalls and with Paulo as foreman, a line of thirty workers carried toolboxes to the Giardini. Everything arrived by boat, and dozens of boxes were piled up in front of the exhibition’s main pavilion.
This constitutes a clear nod, intended or otherwise, to works by Yves Klein and Marcel Broodthaers in which the work is pieced together with items that are usually peripheral to the Work, with a capital C.
Another step in the “history of art according to Paulo Bruscky”.
Works such as Así Disenha o meu Cerebro take us back to Paulo creating with a machine; on this occasion, Paulo undergoes an encephalogram while he projects his mindsets and the thoughts going through his head to the machine and directly onto paper as an automatic drawing or design.
We do not know how many fragments of reality he has stored up, we know only that he is a gatherer or hoarder of the infinite. Neither do we know what has been discarded in his studios, but both actions have a creative origin and the gaps are full of meaning: of what is not there but is on its way, the archives are also part of this quality.
The actual way he gathers things is also clearly an artistic accumulation, a visual list that is involved both in the construction of the “work” and in everything around it, without which it would not exist.
A visit to Paulo’s ateliers gives rise to the temptation to call them archives. They are definitely not archives in the strictest sense of the word, and there is not even a description of what they contain -something that strictly speaking only Paulo knows for certain-, we do not know whether there is an inventory, any tool to guide us, so in this case the “artist archivist” is the only one that can guide us through his piles, categories of objects etc.
It is an “archive” that you cannot turn to in search of something, quite the opposite, it is a space for coincidences, serendipity, where it must be extremely frustrating to go looking for a specific item.
His mail art turns the paperwork of fully automated postage systems into attractive and effective documents that travel from one country to another by becoming part of the machinery that distributes the post. Furthermore, as noted earlier, humour and irony are a feature of his work. It suffices to see an envelope that says “address unknown” and the number of interpretations this may entail depending on whether it is a lack of future or a work that always returns to itself.
Paulo’s work in this project lies midway between document and art. The large number of artistic documents the artist has produced poses problems in terms of their exhibition because it seems they should be in filing-cabinets rather than in display cases. Nonetheless, it is also Paolo and other artists like him that question their montage and which do not come with a preordained display arrangement that reduces that tension which is so present in an artist like Bruscky, and which does not appear to require curators, as his files cannot be organised in the exhibition in any way other than how he decides, for it is his logic that gathers, purchases and intervenes.
Jorge Blasco Gallardo