Unfinished and Other permanences: Conderations About an X by Carmela Grosse ; Inacabado e outras permanências: considerações sobre um X de Carmela Gross

This article proposes to present the unfinished as a significant element of the work An X by Carmela Gross. In this sense, the text offers examples and reflections about what characterizes a finished or unfinished work of art throughout the history of art, highlighting the reframing of the issue in the contemporary context, especially from the 1960s/70s onwards. It is argued that the incompleteness of Gross's proposal reverberates political and cultural aspects of the periods in which it occurred, that is, 1968/69 (peak of the military dictatorship in Brazil), when the work was designed, and 2018, when it was exposed, unfinished, in the exhibition AI-5 50 years: still hasn’t ended yet (Tomie Ohtake Institute, São Paulo). Such an argument is developed through the approximation between An X and a portrait that the American painter Alice Neel did not finish due to the summoning of her model to the Vietnam War. Neel's painting, in its incomplete state, represents lives interrupted by conflict; in the same way that Gross's unfinished proposal invokes the unknown contingent of works that could not exist due to the persistent and repetitive repressions of artistic creation in Brazil. ; Propõe-se, neste artigo, apresentar o inacabado como elemento significativo da obra Um X de Carmela Gross. Nesse sentido, o texto oferece exemplos e reflexões em torno do que caracteriza uma obra de arte acabada ou inacabada ao longo da história da arte, destacando o reenquadramento da questão no contexto contemporâneo, sobretudo a partir dos anos 1960/70. Sustenta-se que a incompletude da proposta de Gross reverbera aspectos políticos e culturais dos períodos em que ocorreu, ou seja, 1968/69 (auge da ditadura militar no Brasil), data em que o trabalho foi projetado, e 2018, quando foi exposto, inconcluso, na mostra AI-5 50 anos: ainda não terminou de acabar (Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo). Tal argumento é desenvolvido mediante a aproximação entre Um X e um retrato que a pintora estadunidense Alice Neel não finalizou em razão da ...