SEEKING FOR KNOWLEDGE
SEEKING KNOWLEDGE WHERE IT EXISTS
Professor António Andrade
The first observation resulting from a visit to the website of António Conceição Júnior (AC J) may be that his activity has always taken place in different creative areas in the context of design, visual arts and entertainment, even extending to animation and cultural management, centred on the same scope. And the suggestion of a dominating will to reach is also perceptible, that is, in an observation of the whole of his work, one can perceive the constant purpose of exercising, as much as possible, control of the various aspects involved in each initiative for which he is responsible.
I have always identified this desire for comprehensiveness in AC J's activity and I perfectly remember that it became evident to me, with total eloquence, in 1978, at the beginning of his activity at the head of the Luís de Camões Museum, the first position he held in Macau with obvious civic-cultural implications.
By this I mean that this vocation to lead processes, is rooted in a solid cultural awareness, pre-existing to the beginning of the management functions of that Museum, in whose performance AC J found an opportunity of application and fructification, for the benefit of the City.
What was the Museum’s assets at the time, as well as the state of lethargy and museographic amateurism in which it found itself, as well as the socio-political circumstances of the time, challenged this conscience to assume the objectives and action that, with tenacity and foresight – and, in the circumstances, even with a hint of healthy quixoticism… – AC J knew how to propose and implement.
In fact, by establishing criteria for classifying, selecting and displaying the collections, designing the proposal for remodeling the facilities, defining human resources needs and providing them with adequate training for the exercise of different functions, programming and putting into practice dissemination initiatives, conducted by pedagogically and culturally enlightened criteria and, above all, being able to defend and sustain, over several years, not only the timely adaptation of the initial intentions, but also the adoption of cultural policies based on assumptions of institutional responsibility - an indispensable condition for any cultural intervention who wants to be situated in a perspective of the future - AC J, at the age of twenty-seven, set out on a path that he immediately knew how to imprint the style that would lead him to results situated in a place of indisputable prominence in the development of Macau in recent decades.
Strategic Reach of a Museum
I closely followed the process of the revitalizing transformation of what until then had been the Luís de Camões Museum, depository of a valuable but unequal estate, lovingly protected for years by Luís Gonzaga Gomes and a small group of collaborators, confined to the corset of the smallness of means. , as, incidentally, was the stamp of those times of residual government commitment to Education and Culture policies.
I conclude, therefore, that the government's readiness after April to embark on the renewal of cultural policy in Macao was fortunately matched by the identification of a person capable of devising ways of realizing such a plan, as he had an enlightened ambition, capable of idealizing much beyond the resigned mediocrity and daring to propose the dream, without letting himself be imprisoned by the frustration of not seeing welcomed, from time to time, projects that were sometimes long elaborated (I remember, for example, a proposal by AC J to expand the facilities of the Museum that would transform it into a multicultural center, in which not only the implantation, volumetry and functions of the building were presented, but the main lines of the respective programming were suggested... And if this proposal did not expire, others, more fortunate or not, if they followed him…).
On the other hand, the natural discretion of the signs of success, in areas where it must be measured by very specific criteria, primarily attentive to the quality of the cultural product offered, but simultaneously understanding of the slowness of the processes of public formation, never seems to have shaken the convictions that fueled AC J's long-term strategic vision, committed to an investment with a secure cultural and civic scope.
An active conscience
The observation of the dates of the first initiatives under the responsibility of AC J as Conservator of the Luís de Camões Museum, allows us to immediately perceive that he was animated by an impetus for intervention that immediately projected beyond the reformulation of the Museum, as it also dates from the same year, 1978, the publication of the magazine ARTIS, and the first campaign of maintenance works on the building began the following year, which resulted in very significant improvements such as the complete remodeling of the permanent exhibition areas and the creation of a gallery of temporary exhibitions. The Museum reopened in 1980, it was in that same year that AC J held the 1st Macau Fortnight, as well as the Macau 400 years of the East exhibition, both in Lisbon, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The same year also saw the signing of a Cultural Exchange Agreement between Macau and Hong Kong, conceived and proposed by AC J.
There were, therefore, initiatives designed according to a principle of strategic coherence that, starting from the careful inventory of the Museum's assets (in some cases using the necessary expertise to verify controversial classifications), went to the respective selection, for the purpose of a carefully organized exhibition, while raising awareness among schools and the general public, successive temporary exhibitions of local and foreign artists were held, always accompanied by the edition of catalogues, a periodical was launched – the the aforementioned ARTIS magazine - and, in a book, significant works by Macanese authors were republished and some major initiatives were undertaken abroad, all of this having as operational base the restructured Luís de Camões Museum and its dissemination, inside and outside the Territory , as a reference nucleus of a Macanese culture that was developed and made known.
These were years of pioneering work in Macau, rightly considered on its merits, since not only was its continuation sustained, but it was also recognized with a higher hierarchical institutional dignity with the appointment of AC J, in 1984, to head the Department of Recreation and Cultural Services of Leal Senado. In fact, this appointment came to consecrate, and even reinforce, what had become notorious: the comprehensive dynamism of AC J had already created its own space in the cultural life of the city and made his position as programmer and coordinator of all cultural action pertinent. of the Macanese municipality.
In all these initiatives, AC J's own brand could be felt, both in the formulation of the general idea of each one of them, characteristic of an informed and speculative spirit, as well as in the respective implementation and in the control of the details, based on a very personal attention for his manuality and visualisation, aspects that are decisively characterising his work, along with an insatiable curiosity.
From solo work to team coordination
Based on a constant inner dialogue between thought and action, mental work and sensory experience, one could say that the ideal of making AC J always aims at the unity that is expected from an author's work that asserts itself as such, even when the execution is the responsibility of the employees.
This highlighted AC J's ability to form and lead teams, at the service of their projects, well defined in the specific objectives, in the form and in the spirit that would preside over their realisation, making it possible for them to present a personal brand, undertakings as diverse as and complexes such as, for example, the aforementioned 1st Macao Fortnight, in Lisbon, the exhibition cycle "Last One Hundred Years of Portuguese Painting" and the exhibition "Last One Hundred Years of Chinese Painting", (Macau, 1986 and 87 ), the exhibitions "Macau Past and Present" and "Macau Sortilégio" (Lisbon, 1990), the exhibition in Macau of the exhibition "Images of Portuguese Painting of the 20th Century – Manuel de Brito Collection" (1995), or the Macau the Silk Way (Queluz Palace, 1993) and, naturally also, as an example of capacity for initiative, creativity and organisation on a large scale, the various fashion shows that he staged, from 1990 onwards, in which the collections he designed and produced under his guidance.
This aptitude for large-scale work and organisational complexity, which requires coordination of specialties under a “baton” capable of guaranteeing the final harmony of the realisation of an Idea is, in any author, certainly a modality of development of solo work, in the which, as a rule, initial training was carried out, experience was gained, projects were developed, in short, knowledge was accumulated and horizons were opened.
But it is not common for the same person to carry out their activities, with equal ease, in very different areas, alternately (if not simultaneously!) , however, confuse the respective characteristics. Such a capacity demands great work discipline, it requires a sure knowledge of different materials and their respective techniques, it presupposes the existence of a very comprehensive sensitivity and an imaginative and courageous ambition, but therefore also a very severe sense of self-criticism, without the which the risk of failure due to incompetence is enormous.
Thus, observing the variety of specific areas in which AC J's creative path has materialised, it is inevitable to recognise that he has been based on the very broad sensitivity and tentacular sensory curiosity that guide the interests of some (rare) people. for the practice of different artistic activities, in which they can satisfy a very specific pleasure, the workshop pleasure: the taste for manipulating materials, necessary for the reinvention of forms, the attraction to experimenting with new possibilities, the fascination for the personal discovery of new contexts of meaning and so many other passionate dimensions of aesthetic creation.
Therefore, it is indeed surprising that AC J has developed into areas that are sometimes as distinct as graphic stories and jewellery, easel painting and fashion show staging, numismatics and furniture design, photography and Museology, Philatelic Design and Japanese Sword Design, etc. And what is evident in the productions corresponding to each of these areas is that the quality achieved was always, at the very least, fully satisfactory, as if the author was just waiting for the opportunity to meet the circumstances that would allow him to start producing new ones. plays in other territories of expression, with the maturity of a long-time practitioner.
Re-creative innovation
In my opinion, as a rule, the productions signed by AC J are not presented as experimental (and even less as experimental, in the sense that they correspond to any intention of avant-garde innovation), nor are they constituted as elements of a graphic demonstrating the verified evolution. in a series of unprecedented discoveries. Rather, they are presented as other achievements, made possible by the passage, in different expressive and officinal territories, of a fertilizing aesthetic thought, inherited, felt and applied for this purpose, with a purpose of reinvention, based on the assimilation of formal guidelines already known, within the which AC J chooses to work.
As AC J himself wrote, although in a very different context, I just try to get teachings where they are, a sentence that, in my opinion, sums up in a polished way the behavioral model that drives AC J's incessant creative journey.
In fact, AC J's creativity focuses more on reinvention than on the search for originality as a value in itself, in demand for pure innovation, which is impossible. In other words, the reappropriation of identifying forms of pre-existing cultural universes, rather than the attempt at the absolute invention of new forms. That is why, throughout his production, one can find both characteristic traits of a contemporary European aesthetic (in works of design, comics and painting, for example) and elements of obvious oriental influence (Chinese, Indian and Japanese, in fashion and furniture design, for example as well). And these references sometimes appear combined in the same project, sometimes even in the same object, adding, with sensitivity and a sense of harmony, elements of a diverse cultural matrix.
It is, after all, the materialization, in terms of the methodology of formal solutions, of the transcultural vision so dear to AC J and so insistently placed at the apex of all his civic and artistic intervention.
Thus, cultural miscegenation, transculturality, interculturality, are not, for AC J, empty platitudes of substance, demagogic proclamations, rhetoric without correspondence with action. Fortunately, he is not the only cultural operator in Macau that takes on a consistent and consistent practice with a cross-cultural perspective, it is necessary to recognize, however, that perhaps no other personality has had, in this domain, a commitment comparable to his.
Essentiality, elegance and solemnity
There are some concept words that represent, with reasonable precision, the most common characteristics of most of AC J's works: essentiality, elegance and solemnity.
Others can still be summoned to make the portrait of a taste more accurate whose defining traits have long been recognized: refinement, hieraticism, clarity, rituality, formal synthesis. Outside, are: the aggressiveness, the grotesque, the psychological drama, the baroque. And this will be the verbal map that can represent the borders of the aesthetic universe to which the Work of AC J belongs. Occasionally, humor and luxury also emerge. As for sensuality, it is omnipresent.
With more or less evidence, these are the ingredients chosen by AC J and present in all his production, which have been giving more and more space to the ritual solemnity component, the most obvious manifestation of the influence of the growing approach to eastern philosophies, in an affiliation that In a way, it contradicts, in terms of visual achievements, the broader transculturality (which AC J himself would have wished to be equidistant) in favor of an orientalism that, in turn, has been preferentially choosing formal affinities with oriental philosophies and the spirituality of zen expression..
Thus, it could be concluded that the journey I mentioned earlier, between different techno-expressive areas, was undertaken simultaneously with another inner journey, through which AC J has been ascending to a more refined knowledge of the philosophical universe in which seeks to evolve your understanding of Life.
I believe that the practice of aikido and other aspects of Eastern philosophies is an example of this stage, and the study and production of Japanese swords is symptomatic of this “irresistible attraction”, to which AC J has been dedicating himself with deep interest, as evidenced by theoretical studies. that he dedicated to him (which went to the publication of texts) and especially the various swords he redesigned, had produced and commercialized.
In fact, this seems to be the manifestation of the quintessence of refinement, precision and rituality, in an aspect that began to be, for us, a reason for strangeness, but that we ended up understanding as a predictable point of passage for an author who tracks, more and more decisively, the fascinating paths of oriental spirituality.
It has already been realized that it is premature to conclude that we are facing a point of arrival, the end of a journey or even the definitive closure of a cycle. It is clear, however, that, once again, AC J is getting ready to invade new territory, or to progress through one of those where he has previously traveled. In his hands, and in his mind, the constants of essentiality, elegance and ritual solemnity will meet many other opportunities...
Another instrument of the same combat
In a way that one would expect from an intellectual with the critical dynamism of AC J, the moment came when his means of direct intervention unfolded to the plan of publishing texts in a Portuguese press in Macau.
Comprising three long series of chronicles, (“Lugares de Cidadania” [Places of Citizenship] (1999), “Entreposto” [Trading post] (2002) and “Conversas do Chá e do Café” [Conversations of Tea and Coffee] (2003), they address multiple themes, sometimes preferring the less immediate paths of life. metaphor, sometimes pointing to cows by their own name, while sometimes using the most acidic irony, symptomatic of an indignation that is contained within the limits of civility, but is not available to silence itself.
In terms of civic action, these chronicles represent, in a continuous and thematically extended way – and, perhaps, in the most appropriate place – a desire to speak clearly about aspects of city life, including those that I had previously addressed, (with impertinence?) in some opening texts of exhibition catalogues.
If we duly appreciate the fact that we have been observing AC J's activity over the course of twenty-five years, granting the respective civic dimension the high importance that he clearly attaches to it, we cannot fail to point out the significance of a literary production that complements the interventionist design, present in different forms since the time when he started his activity at the head of the Luís de Camões Museum and which, with these chronicles, places the proclamation of Ideas and Principles in the plan of more explicit critical militancy.
Be that as it may, and because discussing these chronicles is not our objective, we want above all to note how frequent are, in these texts, the phrases that can illuminate the interpretation of meanings, or help to understand the multiple articulations, influences, analogies , transpositions, metamorphoses, in short, all those bridges that make it possible for AC J to circulate between different processes of mediation of meanings. We believe that the set of citations infra is sufficiently illustrative of this aspect, whose recontextualization we propose as support for a better understanding of the artistic work itself.
This reinforces the acute perception of civic and cultural coherence that manifests itself in all of AC J's action plans, all the more surprising given the multiple ways in which it expresses itself.
Never-ending journey
Apparently, the transit through different areas of expression resulted in the productive interruption in some of them, to give opportunity to others. This is what we feel, for example, with regard to Comics, Painting and Photography, in which it seems to us that AC J precociously suspended the development that the works carried out foreshadowed.
Because in AC J the impulse to discover new territories has been greater and more constant, rather than staying in one of them for a long time (and yet, as far as I know, the activities of Painter and Photographer of AC J have already , at least, two distinct cycles, in terms of time and objectives) and the fascination exerted on him by the possibility of practicing in areas to which he has not yet applied his creativity is evident. And how many more will there be…
It could be said that the poetic phrase “I don't evolve, I travel” finds in AC J's creative personality, a variant in which the journey is made, not between different personalities, but between different already demarcated regions of the visual arts, design, staging, writing… and cyberspace.
Of course, an artist who does not evolve is inconceivable. But not only are there different types of evolution, but there are also different ways in which the Work reflects this phenomenon. So, for example, if for the so-called confessional artists, it is important to explain in the Work signs that witness the mishaps of the creative process, the mood swings and even the vicissitudes of personal life, in a more or less explicit auto-biographical attitude, for others the allusion to hesitations, advances and retreats and even psycho-biographical accidents, is a matter that they decidedly intend to keep absent from the manifest content of their works.
Obviously, I would include AC J in this second type. The artistic personality that adopts its own existential drama as the central substance of the Work, will tend towards a romantic and expressionist aesthetic, while the artist who does not consider himself the subject of the Work itself will be mainly interested in the objectivity of the media. and in abstract-symbolic thinking. It seems to me that what fascinates AC J is the possibility of speculating, not about himself, but about forms – and with them – and their meanings. What feeds his creative elan is the exhilarating possibility of being able to travel in a pre-existing symbolic world, aware of the referential dimension of materials and of the anthropological scope of the organization of forms, successively visiting and rediscovering the different territories in which he can exercise, through the metamorphosis of materials and meanings, their technical sensitivity and, through this exercise, materialize inventive cycles that generate the appetite for a new journey, a new race…
It turns out that these options smell false if they do not have deep roots in the personality, necessarily formed in the interaction with the environment. Therefore, they will not be the result of arbitrarily assumed preferences as if by the whim of reason, or a voluntary, premeditated, cold-blooded programmatic design. And because the characterization of the Artistic Work is inevitably done in the context of greater or lesser proximity to concrete stylistic universes, with which the artist deeply identifies, that is, subjectively, it is in the context of multiculturalism, as a philosophical attitude, that the spirit of openness that pays close attention to ethnic diversity and its cultural manifestations, inexhaustible sources of inspiration, making them the substance of a strategic, socially and historically situated reflection, consequent in artistic and civic terms.
This is certainly why AC J's works are expressive manifestations of a multiple cultural intersection, whose references belong to the world that the Portuguese created, but in which the proximity of Far Eastern aesthetic traditions gained greater presence, tending to become predominant reference.
Nothing that hasn't found new inspiration and new pretexts for creative navigation with access to cyberspace – another backbone of AC J's mental gym and its frequent subject of reflection and civic-cultural combat!
Nothing, after all, that was not expected in a Macanese who, physically and mentally installed in Macau at the beginning of the 21st century, navigates towards cultural horizons that are less and less stagnant and more desirable, not, certainly, for reasons of irresponsible evasion, but for need for knowledge, identification, balance and growth.
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