{"id":1247,"date":"2012-07-13T23:18:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-13T23:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2012-07-13T23:20:43","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T23:20:43","slug":"inhotim-no-nyt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archive.raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=1247","title":{"rendered":"INHOTIM no NYT"},"content":{"rendered":"
Deu no\u00a0New York Times<\/a>, no perfilz\u00e3o de s\u00e1bado passado:<\/div>\n
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THE SATURDAY PROFILE<\/h6>\n

A Keeper of a Vast Garden of Art in the Hills of Brazil<\/h1>\n

By\u00a0SIMON ROMERO<\/a><\/h6>\n
Published: March 9, 2012<\/h6>\n
NO wonder they call Bernardo Paz the \u201cEmperor of Inhotim<\/a>.\u201d<\/div>\n
About 1,000 employees, including curators, botanists and concrete pourers, swarm around Inhotim,\u00a0his contemporary-art complex<\/a>\u00a0in the hills of southeast Brazil. Globetrotting art pilgrims absorb stunning works like Doug Aitken\u2019s \u201cSonic Pavilion<\/a>,\u201d which uses high-sensitivity microphones placed in a 633-foot hole to deliver the bass murmur of Earth\u2019s inner depths.<\/div>\n
A whiff of megalomania seems to emanate from Inhotim\u2019s eucalyptus forests, where Mr. Paz has perched more than 500 works by foreign and Brazilian artists. His botanicalgarden<\/a>\u00a0contains more than 1,400 species of palm trees. He glows when speaking of Inhotim\u2019s rare and otherworldly plants, like the\u00a0titun arum<\/a>\u00a0from Sumatra, called the \u201ccorpse flower\u201d because of its hideous stench.<\/div>\n
Mr. Paz, a lanky, chain-smoking, 61-year-old mining magnate, speaks in barely audible whispers. He married his sixth wife in October. He has white hair down to his shoulders and pale blue eyes, giving him an appearance reminiscent of the gaunt, debauched Brazilian rancher played by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog\u2019s 1987 film, \u201cCobra Verde<\/a>.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThis is a project to last 1,000 years,\u201d Mr. Paz said of Inhotim during a rare interview, a Dunhill cigarette dangling from his lips.<\/div>\n
It is hard to say what people might make of Inhotim (pronounced in-yo-TCHEEM) centuries from now. Some masterpieces from Brazil\u2019s booms still survive as testament to past extravagance, like the celebrated\u00a0opera house<\/a>\u00a0built at the height of the rubber boom at the end of the 19th century in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon.<\/div>\n
Elsewhere in Latin America, majestic private contemporary-art collections have also been made accessible to the public, like Eugenio L\u00f3pez\u2019s\u00a0Colecci\u00f3n Jumex<\/a>\u00a0in Mexico City. And much farther afield, in an archipelago in Japan\u2019s Seto Inland Sea, the\u00a0Benesse Art Site<\/a>similarly blends cutting-edge\u00a0architecture<\/a>\u00a0with contemporary art.<\/div>\n
But none of these places have the hot-climate exuberance of Inhotim, situated in mining-scarred hills far from Brazil\u2019s collecting scenes in S\u00e3o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Art historians and curators often come away marveling at the sheer scale and chaotic vision that Mr. Paz has created at Inhotim.<\/div>\n
\u201cThe amount of space given to single artist projects is unparalleled, as is the way visitors travel from building to building, refreshing their senses, being in nature,\u201d said Beverly Adams, an authority on Latin American art who curates the private Diane and Bruce Halle Collection in Scottsdale, Ariz.<\/div>\n
Overwhelming the cognoscenti still seems to thrill Mr. Paz, a high school dropout whose first work experience involved pumping gas at filling stations owned by his father. He went on to work at Belo Horizonte\u2019s stock exchange, which he said he loathed, before going into mining for iron ore and cobbling together a privately held business empire that finances Inhotim\u2019s operations.<\/div>\n
Some works in Inhotim seem to question, if not actually insult, the concept of profiting from mining the Earth\u2019s treasures.<\/div>\n
For instance, an installation by the American artist Matthew Barney within geodesic domes includes a scene of unmistakable environmental violation: a huge mud-caked tractor clutching a tree and its roots. To arrive at this creation, visitors trek through mineral-bearing hills, largely cleared, of Mata Atl\u00e2ntica, the forest that once covered the region.<\/div>\n
Inhotim received nearly 250,000 visitors in 2011, and it expects well more this year. But Mr. Paz, who says his companies provide Inhotim with about $60 million to $70 million for operations each year, sees no need to stop there.<\/div>\n
In order to make Inhotim self-sustaining, he said he was planning to build no fewer than 10 new hotels here for visitors, an amphitheater for 15,000 people, even a complex of \u201clofts\u201d for those who want to live amid the collection. He said Inhotim, which sprawls over nearly 5,000 acres, has room for at least 2,000 more works of art.<\/div>\n
Inhotim\u2019s growth over the past decade has provided a jolt to the surrounding economy, with many of the adult residents of villages nearby employed as laborers by Inhotim, making them dependent on Mr. Paz\u2019s vision of assembling a \u201cDisneyland\u201d for contemporary art in the state of Minas Gerais.<\/div>\n
\u201cBefore Inhotim, our men worked in the mines or moved to S\u00e3o Paulo to make money,\u201d said Profira de Souza, 74, a resident of the village of Marinhos whose son and grandson work at Inhotim. \u201cGod lowered Bernardo Paz down to us, and I pray he doesn\u2019t take him back too soon.\u201d<\/div>\n
Still, Mr. Paz insisted he was no emperor. He called himself an \u201cisolated person\u201d who lacks real friends, opting to live amid hundreds of artworks, including a pavilion he built for one of his ex-wives, the Brazilian artist Adriana Varej\u00e3o.<\/div>\n
Seated in one of Inhotim\u2019s restaurants one sweltering day in February, he proceeded to quickly consume three vodka cocktails, murmuring about the machinations of bankers and the global financial crisis as he puffed on his Dunhills.<\/div>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t turn that on,\u201d he said, pointing at a digital recorder on the table.<\/div>\n
A day later, in an air-conditioned building that incorporated \u201cNarcissus Garden<\/a>,\u201d a work by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, into its design, he seemed to revel in disparaging some other titans of business in Brazil, calling them \u201cimbeciles\u201d and contending that poor visitors to Inhotim were often better able to absorb the complex\u2019s importance. He also reserved some special disdain for Brazil\u2019s richest man, Eike Batista.<\/div>\n
\u201cSuddenly, he appears with billions and billions, saying he\u2019s going to be the world\u2019s richest man,\u201d he said of Mr. Batista, a mining entrepreneur who gets\u00a0largely glowing treatment<\/a>\u00a0in the news media here as an idol for Brazil\u2019s growing number of millionaires. \u201cHe broke every company he had until he was 50 years old.\u201d<\/div>\n
Mr. Paz also waved off claims in Brazilian newspapers that Inhotim\u2019s expansion was partly due to money laundering, calling such accusations a \u201cmountain of nonsense and lies.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cClearly, no one is totally transparent,\u201d he acknowledged. Still, he asserted, \u201cThe newspapers never proved anything.\u201d<\/div>\n
For now, he seems more concerned with luring the masses to Inhotim to see works like \u201cRestore Now,\u201d a mammoth send-up of academic norms by the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, in which texts by French philosophers like Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze (yes, the ones many people pretended to read in college) are interspersed with images of mutilated bodies.<\/div>\n
Asked about specific works, Mr. Paz deftly shifts the conversation to other topics. He smiled when speaking of his new wife, Arystela Rosa, 31, pregnant with his seventh child. Other things at Inhotim draw his interest, like the towering tamboril trees or the tra\u00edra, a carnivorous fish in the ponds here that can draw blood from visitors foolish enough to dip their fingers in the water.<\/div>\n
\u201cThere are works of art here which I haven\u2019t entered yet, which everyone told me were spectacular, but why should I go in there?\u201d Mr. Paz said. \u201cI don\u2019t consider myself passionate for art. But gardens, that\u2019s what I like.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Lis Horta Moriconi contributed reporting.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the private collection in Scottsdale, Ariz. The collection is the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection, not the Diane and Bruce Halley Collection.<\/div>\n
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A version of this article appeared in print on March 10, 2012, on page\u00a0A7\u00a0of the\u00a0New York edition\u00a0with the headline: A Keeper of a Vast Garden of Art in the Hills of Brazil.<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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publicado no velho\u00a0b\u00aeogspot<\/a>\u00a0em 12\/3\/2012<\/em><\/p>\n