José-Augusto França, “The 32nd Venice Biennale,” translated from Portuguese by Ruth Rosengarten, originally published as “A 32ª Bienal de Veneza,” in Colóquio, Revista de Artes e Letras 30 (October 1964)

Jose Augusto Franca was the most prominent Portuguese art historian of the twentieth century. He devoted himself wholeheartedly to the critique of modern and contemporary art. The year 1964 was a middling one for the Venice Biennale, neither good nor bad, with no detectable peaks. To wish to identify with international art trends without any overall schema or methodically adopted point of view, is to demand more than a fair representation of varied interests could, in effect, offer. This chapter is one of the first in Portugal to deal with American Pop art. It centers on the movement’s protagonists, distinguishing between British and American Pop and the two different cultural contexts from which they emerged. The varied techniques and ways of handling—both painterly and sculptural—and the historic, and intercontinental relationships evinced in the technique of collage constitute the principal points in a text in which the author suspends definitive value judgement, concentrating, instead, on the description of a new situation.