Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier in Rio – A Transatlantic Affair - (MAr 15/04)

The Museum of Art of Rio- MAR proudly presents: Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier in Rio – A Transatlantic Affair

In 1929, Rio de Janeiro witnessed the encounter between the architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and the dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker (1906-1975), considered key avant-guard figures of the twentieth-century. Both disembarked at the port in front of the MAR, after sharing a transatlantic crossing.

At first glance, their encounter seems to represent the gathering of two opposing ways of understanding the body in modernity. Le Corbusier is synonymous with the grand paradigm of modern architecture, where the behavior of the body is disciplined in relation to the functionalism of design and urbanism. For her part, as the world’s first black star, Josephine Baker subverted the dance canon of her time with a nude body and through a choreography of savage and cathartic movements that claimed subjective emancipation. Yet are the aesthetic programs of Le Corbusier and Josephine Baker distinct? Could it not be that, on the contrary, they nurture and inform each other?

Rather than following a biographical or historicist curatorial approach, this exhibition explores the Baker-Le Corbusier affair and their direct and indirect legacies, through a constellation of documents, contributions from popular culture and primarily contemporary works from the visual arts as well as from dance, performance and cinema.

More info: www.museudeartedorio.org.br