Heart to heart

Curated by Rita Gomes Ferrão with Pedro Bebiano Braga

Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905) and Querubim Lapa (1925-2016) are two artists from different times. The death of one is separated by twenty years from the birth of the other. But while Bordalo never met Querubim, the latter certainly knew him from his vast artistic legacy. The younger man’s gaze at the older man’s work reveals admiration and identification, resulting in a private dialogue that continued throughout Querubim Lapa’s career,  a Heart-to-heart providing guidance like the counsel of an elder.

These conversations between Bordalo and Querubim began in 1956, just two years after the latter began his work in ceramics. Querubim winked at  the master and continued to do so periodically throughout his career. The two artists are linked by a common Heritage of the history of art and ceramics, each of them integrating these disciplines in different ways, according to the languages of their day. Querubim also inherited Bordalo’s legacy and, rather than rejecting it like most modern ceramicists, he used it in countless Quotes, transporting it into modernity. Humour is one of the strongest common features between the two artists, and it is therefore natural that the first conversations would be Satirical. Looking Bordalo in the eye, as if challenging him, Querubim composed wine jugs with human shapes and other caricature pieces that he sometimes called his ‘bordalos,’ explaining that they were his interpretation of Bordalo’s work in a modern visual language.

Over time, the Affinities between the two artists become more intense. Contrasting mass production with the artist’s intervention, utilitarian pieces emerge in the shapes of animals or hybrids, masks of classical inspiration and representations of animals and vegetables. At times, the artists seem to have whispered secrets into the other’s ear, only revealing in public fragments of these Confidences. Like Bordalo, Querubim depicts in images elements of his intimate daily life, a pair of shoes, a glove, hints of stories kept secret. It is in self-portraiture that the two artists mutually confess, revealing an ironic look at themselves. This mode of public exposure  is also a form of confidence. Erotic conversations emerge in a tone of intimacy and humour. In these, phallic elements and the representation of the nude appear associated with satire, in alignment with the tradition of Caldas da Rainha.

SECTIONS

Heritage

In Bordalo Pinheiro’s work, as in that of Querubim Lapa, we can identify elements from the history of art and ceramics. The cultures and traditions of the past are materialised and reinterpreted in diverse ways. Hispano-Moresque geometric tiles and the motif of armillary spheres, both from the 15th century and notably present in Sintra Palace, were adopted by Bordalo at the Fábrica de Faianças das Caldas da Rainha, later serving as a base for countless compositions developed by Querubim Lapa, in which geometry and symbolism intertwine. References from the Far East, particularly China, as well as use of the ‘aresta’ technique (in which an embossed imprint is made on the surface) and the selection of colours, present in Querubim’s ‘Narcissus’ series, seem to find an echo in Bordalo’s ‘Byzantine’ spittoons. Clearly influenced by figurative tile panels which covered 18th-century kitchens Querubim developed, over several years, a series of panels and objects found in kitchens, where the Bordalian world shines through in the representation of animals, fruits and vegetables, following a naturalistic approach. In this work we can recognise formulas that recover the proto-surrealist compositions of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Like the 16th-century Italian painter, both Querubim and Bordalo developed in their graphic work series of connected figures that, through  optical illusion, give the impression of other figures.

Quotes

In experiments that began at the start of the 1960s, at the time of the creation of a vast group of ceramic plaques commissioned by the architect Francisco da Conceição Silva for the Hotel do Mar, in Sesimbra, Querubim Lapa first introduced the Bordalian reference. One of these plaques shows a small sculptural element, a naturalistic reproduction of a crab, as if part of one of Bordalo Pinheiro’s chargers. In a career that continued until the 1980s, Querubim made direct reference to Bordalian elements on various occasions. Lobsters, crabs and other crustaceans would be attached to ceramic plaques or more complex supports, that might also include fragments of plates and other pieces, giving rise to composite objects that integrate past and present.

Satirical

In 1956, responding to architect Francisco da Conceição Silva’s invitation to design a series of three-dimensional studio pottery pieces, to be exhibited and sold at the Rampa store, in Lisbon, Querubim Lapa created a collection of satirical pieces. These jugs, boxes and vases, with human shapes, would be his first deliberate homage to the work of Bordalo Pinheiro. Querubim chose to weave direct relationships with Bordalo’s anthropomorphic pieces, giving them a modern language. Satirical touches continued throughout Querubim’s work, revealing an absurd sense of humour close to Bordalo Pinheiro’s most inspired satire.

Affinities

Countless affinities can be established between the work of Bordalo and Querubim. The integration of studio pottery in a factory context is one of them. At the Fábrica de Faianças das Caldas da Rainha or in the workshop in the Fábrica de Cerâmica Viúva Lamego, in Lisbon, Bordalo and Querubim designed utilitarian and decorative objects such as boxes, lamp bases, plates, dishes or jugs, transformed into unique pieces by artistic intervention and manual labour. Objects with animal shapes, hybrid representations (part animal, part human), animalistic or human masks, with classical roots, are interspersed through several of these pieces, as is the representation of vegetable elements.

Confidences

Not all conversations can be held in public. Secrets and what is left unsaid can also be a form of communication. The need to represent everyday elements outside their context exists in both Bordalo and Querubim. A slipper, a shoe or a glove appear as fragments of untold private stories, working their way into the spectator’s imagination. Self-portraiture is also a form of confidence, revealing the artists taking an ironic look at themselves.

Erotic

Humour of a sexual nature, so characteristic of the vernacular ceramics of Caldas da Rainha, seems to intersperse Bordalo’s satirical world, without ever dominating it. Querubim, too, tried out a practice in which more or less veiled eroticism dominates a large part of his production. The two artists meet once again through sense of humour and satire, parodying phallic elements and representations of the nude approaching cartoon and comic strips.

Rita Gomes Ferrão