Thesis developed at the Institute of Arts won first place in the 32nd Museu da Casa Brasileira Design Award
Doctoral thesis on the visual identity of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, based on the institution's graphic memory, won first place in the 32nd Museu da Casa Brasileira Design Award, in the “Written Works” category “unpublished”. In her case study, designer and professor Jade Samara Piaia analyzed institutional graphic pieces dated in the hundred years between 1912 and 2012 – preserved in the Pinacoteca Documentation and Memory Center –, placing emphasis on the graphic signature and its transformations. The thesis supervised by professor Edson do Prado Pfutzenreuter, from the Institute of Arts (IA), is part of the exhibition that runs until January 27, 2019 at the Museu da Casa Brasileira, in São Paulo.
Jade Piaia explains that graphic memory, thinking in terms of an art museum, can be understood as any support that physically carries some mention of this museum. “This graphic memory involves catalogs of works of art, collection catalogs, posters, exhibition leaflets, internal signage for visitors, visual communication external to the building, identification of employees and even souvenirs sold in stores. In the case of the Pinacoteca, the selection is more than 100 years of pieces preserved in the collection.”
The author of the thesis adopted the museum's Documentation Center (Cedoc) as her primary research source, where she had physical access to the documents. “The first piece is a catalog of works from 1912, entirely composed in typography and in which the paintings, sculptures and other works are listed along with the names of their respective authors. I selected institutional catalogs from the Pinacoteca and also printed documents, such as letters, regardless of the content. The first letters were handwritten and then typed, only later did they start to be written on a computer and printed.”
In Jade Piaia's opinion, the case of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, in comparison with other museums, proved to be more suitable as an object of research due to the institution's length of museological activity and the extensive collection of graphic memory, in periods historical experiences experienced by the institution. In order to investigate the relationship between the visual identity of other museum institutions and their graphic memory, the researcher also traced the general lines of the artistic scene in São Paulo and the emergence of the city's main museums, such as Masp, MAM and MAC.
Troubled phases
The designer says that the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo was officially founded in 1905, following a donation of paintings from the Museu Paulista, operating in a room on the second floor of the iconic Jardim da Luz building, designed by Ramos de Azevedo to host the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts. “The first three decades were more turbulent, in terms of creating the collection, including exhibitions held in other places. But in terms of graphic memory, we have the period of an identity produced in the city’s existing printing presses, which I gathered through the printing record of each of the catalogs.”
The agents in the graphic field involved with this graphic memory were: Tipografia Siqueira Nagel, Tipografia Augusto Siqueira, Casa Vanorden, Cia. Paulista de Papéis e Artes Gráficas, Gráfica Paulista de João Bentivegna, Escolas Profissionais Salesianas, Gráfica Canton and Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo. “It is interesting to note that the printers produced the material, but someone made the decision, which was for a style art nouveau very clear”, observes Edson Pfutzenreuter, about the form that is repeated from 1912 until the 1926 catalogue.
Jade Piaia adds that, from a trend art nouveau curvilinear, like the arched composition in the catalog title, is moving towards more rectilinear, geometric and fuller elements. “The typography varied, but the composition structure remained the same. We have a catalog that is extremely stripped of visual elements, minimalist, with a centralized and synthetic structure, which reflects some characteristics of the 30s. Until then, the catalogs did not contain images, although there was already technology to print them.”
Subordination to the State
According to the author of the thesis, for a long period from the 40s to the 80s, the Pinacoteca was subordinate to different state government departments, with a visual identity always linked to the coat of arms of the State of São Paulo or the coat of arms of the Republic. “This subordination to the State has been very evident in these 40 years, under different departments such as Science and Technology, Culture, Sports and Tourism, Education, Health. We even see a campaign brand from the Carvalho Pinto government, with the coat of arms associated with the State Secretariat of Business.”
The museum's growth during this period, however, led to the achievement of its autonomy at the end of the 1980s, with the building's listing (1982) and the departure of the last institutions that operated there, such as the former Faculty of Fine Arts. “The building had already undergone several renovations, but now the sense was of ownership, of belonging. It was when director Maria Alice Milliet hired designer Rogério Lira, who I managed to interview, to create a graphic signature making the first visual relationship with the building: he redesigned the facade and used a slightly more stretched garamond typography, which he said was the trend of the time.”
Jade Piaia also interviewed designer Carlos Perrone, invited to redesign the visual identity of the Pinacoteca under the management of Emanoel Araújo, after a major renovation led by Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Eduardo Colonelli, aiming to adapt the museum to international museological standards. “Perrone worked with the geometrization of the facade, that is, maintaining this classic brand of the museum, and used the future font, which he considers the oldest among the modern ones. He created both the graphic signature and the signage produced by vinyl cutouts, glued to metal plates and fitted to rails, avoiding excessive drilling in the bricks of the listed building.”
Graphic signature
Professor Pfutzenreuter highlights that this concept of graphic signature was developed by the student herself, given the variety of elements in graphic memory. The justification is that the field of design was institutionalized from the 60s onwards, with the arrival of foreign companies and the emergence of the first schools, which prevents the use of terminologies such as logo, brand or even visual signature for the entire period. cut out in the doctoral thesis. Hence, the graphic signature to identify the institution in printed media, from analog composition techniques reaching the days when these signatures are created in graphic software.
Jade Piaia states that the selection ends in 2012, with what was in the Cedoc collection at the time of collection, while many pieces of visual identity created by the advertising agency F/Nazca were still in use by the museum. “The agency created a new identity in 2010 and another in 2016, this one launched the day before my thesis was qualified. It was a radical change, guided by management – management changes and the graphic signature changes again, which causes the Pinacoteca’s institutional identity as an art museum to be lost.”
The idea of working on the facade of the building, observes the researcher, was already lost a lot in 2010 and, with that, the pregnancy, both in the image identification and in the reading of the graphic signature. “The 2016 redesign was even interesting, as it maintains Perrone's proposal regarding the issue of the facade, but the director of the museum wanted to change the name to Pina, claiming that people called her that, which was questioned – me, particularly, I've never heard that reference. But it is an international trend, in which some museums are adapting themselves to become more 'cool', such as MoMa [Museum of Modern Art] and The Met [The Metropolitan Museum of Art], in New York.”
Design Award
A curious aspect highlighted by professor Edson Pfutzenreuter is that the beautiful layout created by his student for the volume presenting the research results was rejected in the postgraduate program, as it did not meet the standards required for a doctoral thesis at Unicamp. “But it was the volume with this layout that I distributed to the panel members and that I submitted to the Museu da Casa Brasileira Design Award”, says Jade Piaia. “It is the 32nd edition of the award, whose more traditional categories are product design – furniture, construction, utensils, lighting, textiles, electronics, transport – and, more recently, written works, in two forms: published (books already on the market) and unpublished (dissertations and theses).”