Exhibitions: Shape for the Future

For years, the Sao Paulo Bienal, held in odd-numbered years in Brazil's larg est city, has played poor relation to the more prestigious Venice Biennale, which is held in even-numbered years. Nonetheless, the ninth Sao Paulo Bienal, which is beginning its three-month run in the city's Niemeyer-built exhibition hall, this year bids fair to rival Venice.

It is bigger, more brilliant, jampacked with virtuosity, and more outrageous than ever before. No fewer than 65 countries, ranging from Trinidad-Tobago to the Soviet Union, sent 4,132 works of art. The U.S.'s lavish convocation of nearly 20 popartists' work, called "Environment U.S.A.," was selected by Brandeis University's William Seitz and bankrolled by the Smithsonian; it is easily the biggest crowd pleaser of the lot, although only one American, Jasper Johns, won a minor ($2,220) award. The U.S. exhibit, with its garish colors, ghoulish assemblages and grotesque figures, comes across as an eerie, lunar, angst-filled anti-advertisement for the Great Society. It also shows what dozens of artists representing other nations at Sao Paulo have begun to imitate.

The Argentines weighed in with a giddy show, which includes Julio Le Fare's kinetics, David Tamelas' 20-ft-high minimal cubes, and poppish plastic nudes by Juan Carlos di Stefano so obscene that one local official threatened to expel them. Poland's Tadeus Kantor shows that the Iron Curtain has long since popped wide open with his portrait collage of a stuffed shirt (with shirt). France's Baldaccini Cesar took another of the ten minor prizes with his sculptures of Mobil Oil cans and plastic. He disdained it, snorting "Ask Pablo [Picasso], or Sartre, or Fidel Castro. They will tell you whether I should be insulted."

At least part of Cesar's ire was occasioned by the fact that Richard Smith, 35, an Englishman who divides his time between New York and London, won the $10,000 grand prize. His particular bag is the shaped canvas, in which the aluminum frame is turned up at one corner to give the stretched canvas the smooth curve of a semi-bas-relief. There are six such squares of canvas, each painted in a light, bright acrylic color. The series bears the Beatlesque title, A Whole Year and Half Day, and seven of the nine critics on the international jury voted for it. Explained one, Mexico's Ida Rodriguez: "His is the art for a mass society. It can easily be reproduced." Added Per Remfeldt, organizer of Norway's exhibit: "The jury has selected wisely because it has chosen in terms of the future."

As for Grand Prizewinner Smith, he was understandably "surprised and delighted," will use the money to buy a house in London. "It was a good year for me," he adds, "because no country was showing a living elder statesman."