The primitive technician’s look at the 'pulsing underground' of the writing gesture.

Abstract

Typography or the “black ink” related to a technical reproductive and iconographical stage closely linked to Literature, was represented by a Pernambucan group of resistance in its craftsmanship diversity. Pioneer in Brazil, O Gráfico Amador (The Amateur Graphic) had Osman Lins as a member. Its members were artists which are now recognized for their singularities since the fifties. This work tries to trace some of Lins’ singular origins when he relates word and image to an “undercurrent stream” (Norval Baitello) in his various productions such as War Without Witnesses, Nine, Novena, Avalovara and The Queen of the Grecian Prisons. There is an optical unconscious in his way of seeing: on the one hand, there are residues of a “primitive technician” (Beatriz Sarlo) such as some of the mirroring effects, play of words, letters, graphical signs, geometrical editing used in Nine, Novena as well as the specific signs in Avalovara and other writings. On the other, it also shows Osman Lins as an indubitable heir of Machado de Assis’ typographical mirrorings.