Debating Neoconcretism

Abstract Neoconcretism was an international pioneer of ‘interdisciplinarity’, since its crossings of mediums and disciplines created original versions of participatory art, performance, installation art, process art, institutional critique, body art and environmental art. However, we must question whether this statement is valid throughout its history. Thus, this article investigates the First Neoconcrete Exhibition – through the detailed analysis of the works presented in the exhibition, the positions taken in the catalogue and in the Neoconcrete Manifesto, and the debates in the national press – revealing the preponderant defence of art’s autonomy, which formalises an early modernist identity for the movement that contrasts with its legacy to contemporary Brazilian art. Eventually, the transition from this ideological position to the contemporary practice of interdisciplinarity was made possible by Ferreira Gullar’s art criticism, which was based on Ernst Cassirer’s notion of ‘symbol’, whose intrinsic relativism liberated him to positively receive new proposals.