A pixação paulista e as vanguardas: poesia concreta no concreto

Abstract

This research analyses the "pixação", a phenomenon of communication that occurs exclusively in Brazilian cities, specifically in São Paulo, where it was created. This is a type of intervention on the city walls which shall not be confused with graffiti nor other definitions posted hereof, such as tags for marketing purposes or any other kind of striking people by means of written statements. The pixação presented herein had begun in São Paulo‟s outskirts in the 1980s, along with the punk movement, due to a dispute over the superiority between punk gangs. Spelled with an "x" by their makers it assumed visual forms, spelling rules and features that distinguish it as a folk cultural movement, which surrounds the suburban city of São Paulo as a media for their everyday designations. This research aims to show how and why pixação is an urban-poetic and outskirts communication. Associating the phenomenon to the modern and modernist movements, the hypothesis is: we also have a kind of "art". The pixação has the same segmentation, breaking with tradition, structure/letters and avant-garde deconstruction and fragmentation, which radically rethink the shape, tending to close it to chaos. Examples of artistic movements from the late nineteenth century are influenced by modern cities and their new modus vivendi, pixação carries urban noise to the art and poetry. In addition to the reference avant-gardes, these figures are verbal and visual interesting explorations assignable to those performed by the concrete poetry. The importance of this academic work to the Communication area comes from the city is being used as a medium for this particular kind of art. It will also be shown that graffiti writters in communicating the suburban modus vivendi by means of the formal spelling subversion, calligraphic forms innovation and full use of metropolitan space; they transform what would be a simple communication of a group in a poetic or artistic act. Methodologically, this is a bibliographic and documentary research, and its corpus is made up of photographic records, field survey and notes made by the author. The main theoretical frameworks include history of art, avant-garde and late avant-garde and critical theories to modern and contemporary art, including those related to the Brazilian concrete poetry