2 - Intermedial Landscapes in the Work of Cao Guimarães

Summary

In 2009, the Brazilian artist Cao Guimarães made a series of seven photographs entitled Paisagens reais – homenagem a Guignard (Real Landscapes – Homage to Guignard). These depict banks of clouds in delicate crepuscular hues, with just the tops of tower blocks and the spires of churches poking through. Guimarães describes how he took the photographs from his home, high in the hills of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, on a morning when ‘the city woke up suspended in clouds’. The title refers to a series of paintings entitled Imaginary Landscapes by Alberto da Veiga Guignard, an artist based in Minas Gerais. The photographs do indeed resemble these paintings, in which churches and other buildings are depicted rising from the clouds, as if floating in the air. A similar view appears in several shots of the experimental documentary film Acidente (Accident, Cao Guimarães and Pablo Lobato, 2006), but with trees and hilltops instead of buildings showing through layers of cloud (filmed in a town named Descoberto, which, ironically, means ‘uncovered’). As an artist working with reproductive media, Guimarães simultaneously inserts his cinematic and photographic work into art history and draws art history into photography and cinema. Through the indexical basis of these arts, he brings Guignard's imaginary landscapes back down to earth in real locations like those that inspired the painter. In an illuminating article on the ‘aesthetic relation’ in his work, Picado and Lins (2017: 285) note that, along with an acute eye for the real, the artist also brings to bear ‘a look formed by the experience of works of art, which makes him perceive a vision in the chance appearance of a cloudy morning’ (my translation).

Guimarães exemplifies the intermedial practice of the contemporary artist filmmaker, moving fluently between media forms and artistic conventions as well as between the institutions of fine art and cinema. After studying philosophy and photography, he began his career as a photographer, but quickly branched out into film and video. He has directed or co-directed nine feature films, mostly documentaries. His videos have been shown as installations in art galleries, including a recent exhibition – titled Locus – with Apichatpong Weerasethakul at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam (16 September to 3 December 2017).