O Paraiso
Artist
Beatriz Milhazes
(Brazilian, born 1960)
Date1997
Mediumacrylic on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 177.8 x 189.2 cm (70 x 74 1/2 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineCharlotte E.W. Buffington Fund
Object number1999.2
Descriptiontranslation: "A Heaven"Label TextAlthough her paintings have many sources of inspiration, Beatriz Milhazes believes they are always indebted to her Brazilian home, Rio de Janeiro, and its “excess of nature, excess of beauty.” The overabundance of visual stimuli in O Paraiso results in a multi-layered image where determinations of above and below, foreground and background are constantly in flux. Profoundly decorative, Milhazes’ painting attests to her fascination with feminine finery and ornament—strings of jewels, labyrinths of lace, folds of fabric, and stylized flora—all depicted in an abstract space and with a disciplined frenzy. She once declared, “The decorative is normally pejorative when it’s applied to art. I don’t have any fear of beauty.” Milhazes’ unusual process begins by painting on a smooth plastic surface from which the resulting physical sheets of paint, once dry, are peeled and affixed like collage to a canvas she has prepared with background color. Because of this stencil-like application of the paint, there are no visible marks of the artist’s hand, resulting in a cool detachment that tempers the hot palette and sensuous, samba-inspired rhythms of the image.
On View
On viewCurrent Location
- Exhibition Location Gallery 321
