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Lot Essay
Executed in 1991, O Milagre dos Peixes (Miracle of the Fishes) is the first of Brazilian-born artist Adriana Varejão's 'Sea and Tiles' series of paintings. Deftly employing her deep understanding of those qualities intrinsic to painting - composition, scale, perspective, colour - Varejão recreates the unfathomable sense of depth and abundance of the ocean. Challenging the traditional two-dimensional picture plane, O Milagre dos Peixes has a sculptural physicality, immersing the viewer in an almost trompe l'oeil illusion. Vegetation, fish, shells and crustaceans are immortalised on its textured surface, playing an eternal game of hide and seek with each other within the undulating cool blue folds of an artificial sea. Fragmenting the picture plane into an irregular but rhythmic pattern, partly dictated by physical cracks on the surface of the work, O Milagre dos Peixes captures, as Varejão has said, 'the sea when it is rough, where the waves crash and the shells break' (A. Varejão, quoted in Adriana Varejão: chambre d'échos, exh. cat., Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris 2005, p. 89).
Rendered in subtle variegations of cobalt blue on a thick, fractured plaster base, O Milagre dos Peixes is the first work in which Varejão began to physically recreate the azulejo, the Portuguese tiles that are of utmost significance to her oeuvre. A square terracotta tile used widely in Portugal from the Middle Ages, the azulejo itself is a material reminder of the dialogue of the expansive path of colonialism. A major cultural export of the Portuguese empire, these exuberant blue and white ceramic tiles decorate both the interior and exterior of Baroque churches in Brazil, homogenising architecture, history and culture in the process. The dynamic delirium of imagery that abounds in O Milagre dos Peixes directly reflects Varejão's description of these resplendent interiors, which she described as appearing as though 'the matter was 'dancing'; bold alive, powerful, teeming... The churches are like jewel boxes containing complex, fascinating carnivorous jewels that are capable of ingurgitating any foreign element, taking disseminated fragments and accumulating them, deforming them and integrating them into their sacred universe' (A. Varejão, quoted in Adriana Varejão: chambre d'échos, exh. cat., Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris 2005, p. 81).
O Milagre dos Peixes is not only an expert example of visual layering, but also metaphorical layering. Woven into the surfaces of the work is a richly allegorical narrative, as well as a deliberately lavish evocation of the Baroque. The sea itself has rich associations with the Baroque; etymologically the Portuguese word barroco, is an imperfect pearl, while Rococo, derives from the French coquillage, for shell. The dynamic composition of the present work references the apparently random way in which broken azulejos were often used to create new Baroque panels in a technique known as embechado (decorating with shards of porcelain), or even the bounty of a ship-wreck. Varejão traces the history of Brazil in referencing these decorative tiles; first imported from China to Holland, and later made to order in colonial cities world-wide.
A direct inspiration for the work was therefore Chinese Song ceramics, evident in the masterfully recreated crocodilian surfaces, chromatic hues and traditional Chinese imagery. Fascinated by Chinese philosophy and ceramics from the late 1980s, the artist has increasingly interwoven Eastern and Western visual references in her work as a way of verifying the 'dialectical processes of power and persuasion' in her attempt to 'bring back to life processes which created them and use them to construct new versions' (A. Varejão, quoted in R. Carvajal, 'Adriana Varejão: Travel Chronicles', Virgin Territory: Women, Gender, and History in Contemporary Brazilian Art, exh. cat., National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. 2001, p. 116). Fish are used by the artist within her oeuvre because of their rich connotative associations. Marrying Baroque imagery with Eastern symbolism, in O Milagre dos Peixes they explicitly refer to the Biblical story of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand with loaves and fish, while in Chinese culture they symbolize abundance, wealth and success.
O Milagre dos Peixes is a very early example of the artist allowing deep cracks to carve through the work. A pivotal compositional and representational device, the cracked surface creates textural interest, forming different pictorial surfaces depending on the way in which the plaster mix cracks. Redolent of shards of broken azulejos, the work can be seen as symbolic of the dissonance and eclecticism wrought on Brazilian culture and society in the wake of imperialism. Using paint and canvas to form a new, conceptually and aesthetically composite work of art, Varejão has subsumed various cultures within a coherent ocean scene while emphasising the divisions between them with visible fissures. O Milagre dos Peixes is a prime example of Varejão's capacity for formal innovation and creative strength. It demonstrates how for her, painting itself is an intellectual activity, a complex process of investigation that is analogous with the culture of civilization. Mobilising rich vocabularies of visual artefact that have been inherited and elaborated over time, Varejão uses the artificial surfaces of painting to reflect the construction of history, creating lyrical work that resounds on figurative, allegorical, and painterly levels.
Rendered in subtle variegations of cobalt blue on a thick, fractured plaster base, O Milagre dos Peixes is the first work in which Varejão began to physically recreate the azulejo, the Portuguese tiles that are of utmost significance to her oeuvre. A square terracotta tile used widely in Portugal from the Middle Ages, the azulejo itself is a material reminder of the dialogue of the expansive path of colonialism. A major cultural export of the Portuguese empire, these exuberant blue and white ceramic tiles decorate both the interior and exterior of Baroque churches in Brazil, homogenising architecture, history and culture in the process. The dynamic delirium of imagery that abounds in O Milagre dos Peixes directly reflects Varejão's description of these resplendent interiors, which she described as appearing as though 'the matter was 'dancing'; bold alive, powerful, teeming... The churches are like jewel boxes containing complex, fascinating carnivorous jewels that are capable of ingurgitating any foreign element, taking disseminated fragments and accumulating them, deforming them and integrating them into their sacred universe' (A. Varejão, quoted in Adriana Varejão: chambre d'échos, exh. cat., Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris 2005, p. 81).
O Milagre dos Peixes is not only an expert example of visual layering, but also metaphorical layering. Woven into the surfaces of the work is a richly allegorical narrative, as well as a deliberately lavish evocation of the Baroque. The sea itself has rich associations with the Baroque; etymologically the Portuguese word barroco, is an imperfect pearl, while Rococo, derives from the French coquillage, for shell. The dynamic composition of the present work references the apparently random way in which broken azulejos were often used to create new Baroque panels in a technique known as embechado (decorating with shards of porcelain), or even the bounty of a ship-wreck. Varejão traces the history of Brazil in referencing these decorative tiles; first imported from China to Holland, and later made to order in colonial cities world-wide.
A direct inspiration for the work was therefore Chinese Song ceramics, evident in the masterfully recreated crocodilian surfaces, chromatic hues and traditional Chinese imagery. Fascinated by Chinese philosophy and ceramics from the late 1980s, the artist has increasingly interwoven Eastern and Western visual references in her work as a way of verifying the 'dialectical processes of power and persuasion' in her attempt to 'bring back to life processes which created them and use them to construct new versions' (A. Varejão, quoted in R. Carvajal, 'Adriana Varejão: Travel Chronicles', Virgin Territory: Women, Gender, and History in Contemporary Brazilian Art, exh. cat., National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. 2001, p. 116). Fish are used by the artist within her oeuvre because of their rich connotative associations. Marrying Baroque imagery with Eastern symbolism, in O Milagre dos Peixes they explicitly refer to the Biblical story of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand with loaves and fish, while in Chinese culture they symbolize abundance, wealth and success.
O Milagre dos Peixes is a very early example of the artist allowing deep cracks to carve through the work. A pivotal compositional and representational device, the cracked surface creates textural interest, forming different pictorial surfaces depending on the way in which the plaster mix cracks. Redolent of shards of broken azulejos, the work can be seen as symbolic of the dissonance and eclecticism wrought on Brazilian culture and society in the wake of imperialism. Using paint and canvas to form a new, conceptually and aesthetically composite work of art, Varejão has subsumed various cultures within a coherent ocean scene while emphasising the divisions between them with visible fissures. O Milagre dos Peixes is a prime example of Varejão's capacity for formal innovation and creative strength. It demonstrates how for her, painting itself is an intellectual activity, a complex process of investigation that is analogous with the culture of civilization. Mobilising rich vocabularies of visual artefact that have been inherited and elaborated over time, Varejão uses the artificial surfaces of painting to reflect the construction of history, creating lyrical work that resounds on figurative, allegorical, and painterly levels.