“Brasília is a future that happened in the past.”

June 6, 2021 Brasilia Brazil Clarice Lispector Marcel Gautherot Oscar Niemeyer Lúcio Costa

Marcel Gautherot: Esplanada dos Ministérios em construção. Brasília, 1958.

In 1962 and then again in 1974, Clarice Lispector visited the Brazilian capital, designed by the modernist planner Lúcio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer. The essays are fused together in her book The Complete Stories. It’s a stark juxtaposition, the modernist fever dream that is the city and Lispector’s trademark meandering prose, and I find they fit perfectly to the dreamy pictures Marcel Gautherot took of Brasília’s construction.

Brasília is constructed on the line of the horizon. Brasília is artificial. As artificial as the world must have been when it was created. (…) Brasília badly needs roaming white horses. At night they would be green in the moonlight.

– Clarice Lispector

Marcel Gautherot: Palácio do Congresso Nacional. Brasília, 1960.

Marcel Gautherot: Palácio do Congresso Nacional. Brasília, 1960.

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