DECONSTRUCTING THE NAÏF: THE PAINTING OF ALCIDES PEREIRA DOS SANTOS

Abstract

It is commonplace in art history and criticism, before any more consistent analysis of the production of an artist from the popular classes, often self-taught, to classify the artist as primitivist, or naïf (among other similar designations). We understand that this characterization, far from being an indicative of his poetic or the group or movement with which he is associated, by thematic or stylistic proximities (as occurs in the offi cial art circuit), works as a social indicator, a sign of origin. As occurs with knowledge, we identify, in this procedure, the perpetuation of a device of colonialism which, at the same time, imposes the western aesthetic and the art produced under its seal of approval as the model to be followed, and disqualifi es all the aesthetic experience that does not lend itself to conceptualization in western terms. Seeking to deconstruct the categories, we present the unique case of the work of Brazilian plastic artist Alcides Pereira dos Santos (Rui Barbosa BA 1932 – São Paulo SP 2001). In general terms, it can be said that the few descriptions, opinions and discourses about him up to now have contributed and reinforced the idea that his painting is the result of a naïve practice of what is seen and observed. In this case, it would serve only to reproduce a reality. However, even if Alcides seems not to refute the paradigm of the representation and the relationship between the model and the copy that it presupposes, its fi guration operates a deconstruction in that the means of creation becomes ends, turning the image produced into a mimicry that destroys the model instead of preserving it.