Tarsila
July 2003
60 x 80 cms
Oil on canvas
Private collection of Tarsila Pereira Tirapelli
Excerpt from the book "Retratos" ["Portraits"], final work from the BA Fine Arts course at FAAP:
Tarsila: an artist's name. Explained by the fact that her father was an artist. A painter, researcher and teacher of Brazilian baroque named Percival Tirapeli. Tarsila was not an artist herself. She didn't paint, except for the times when she was having fun with her father's paints and canvases. Nor did she sculpt of etch. She took no photos other than the ones with her friends. She had some knowledge of artists, taught to her mostly by her father. I've heard that talent skips a generation. It applies to my case, as the son of a doctor who was in turn the daughter of artists. And it applies to Tarsila. Would her children one day be artists too?
How important Tarsila was in my life! We met during teenage. But I feel as if we had been childhood friends. My teenage was spent mostly in the company of girls. I had no interest for the company of boys and their constant tests of manhood, the rough and tumble, the lacking maturity. Girls were far more placid. She was the one who introduced me to Tinkerbell. She was responsible for a chain of events. Meanwhile, she had her own boyfriend. But we exchanged secrets, curiosities, our first times, we grew up together.
Tarsila had a carefree and likewise lascivious manner. I found it disconcerting that her lovers always had something that she would link back to me. They were either shy, with an animosity to their gaze; or were people with artistic pretence. She would say they were amalgamations of her father and her best friend. In tandem with our simultaneous discoveries of love, she presented me to her father, and I got my first tips in painting. And the first quarrels between my girlfriend and my art. I evolved: Tarsila was constantly reminding me of my potential for the arts, and becoming indignant when I showed any sign of not carrying on with my "gift". And thus, encouraged by her more than anyone else, I enrolled in the art course.
Tarsila enrolled in a management course at USP. I've often wondered if she wasn't going to end up doing something related to the arts: managing museums, institutions, galleries, etc. In college, Tarsila vanished. Despite the advertising and management colleges being close to one another at USP, we seldom met. I heard news from her every now and then, on her birthdays and at the end of the year: Tarsila loved parties. In a way, hearing from Tarsila only in those occasions was like circumscribing her, eliminating from my memory any reference that she, at any point in life, went through any hardship. She became nothing but parties and happiness. Nothing but her playfulness. Of course I had news of her fights with her boyfriends, the endless doubts about the management course, those trivial sorrows. But I couldn't remember her putting on a sad face.
One day, she missed me and we scheduled to meet in college. I had told her of my portraits and, excited as she was, she brought a bag-full of clothes, jewelry and props. It was good to see her again: happy, talking fast and loud. At least for an afternoon, I was brought back to that feeling of the Tarsila from our schooldays. The one who was eager to tell me about her life.
I photographed Tarsila in an open park at USP. Many pictures. Countless. It was all a huge game: she would dress up, ask me which was the prettiest jewel, strike a pose. In the end, of all the pictures, I chose the more serious ones. It might have been more appropriate to portray her smiling. But there was far more personality to that half-opened, seductive mouth. She would rarely bestow her more serious side upon anyone.
And then, right before we parted, she addressed me by my full name, no diminutives or abbreviations. Perhaps she had been doing that from the start and I had just then realised it. I felt silly asking her to call my by the tender nicknames of our teenage, and therefore said nothing, concealing a spell of melancholy. Were we already so distant?
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