by luca Johnson on November 23,2025
The Museum de arte de São Paulo (MASP) sits on Avenida Paulista,dramatically interrupting the canyon of towers that line the city’s main artery. Designed by Lina Bo Bardi, the museum is a glass-walled prism suspended above the ground by two red prestressed concrete beams. Bo Bardi saw this vão livre (open space) beneath the structure as critical to complementing and embracing the energy of the city – a vision that persists today, as the large shaded span has become a civic stage frequently occupied by markets, protests, and cultural events.
Bo Bardi’s vision for the building included a lasting curatorial imprint. In the picture gallery, paintings rest on “crystal easels”: thick glass sheets set into concrete blocks, with the labels fixed to the backs. the layout encourages a more democratic viewing experience where visitors gravitate toward works that speak to them rather than simply famous names. The easels are organized in horizontal, parallel rows, beginning with contemporary Brazilian artists before moving backward thru art history. mounted on these sheets of clear glass, the paintings float in space, allowing viewers to peek between canvases and spot a work two or three rows back.
The gallery layout transforms the hierarchy of art history into an evolution, creating a space where viewers are freed from the traditional groupings of the canon and can instead explore natural connections between artists working across centuries.It was in this setting that, as I considered a contemporary figurative painting by Brazilian artist Wallace Pato, I caught a glimpse of a familiar figure on a canvas several rows back – could it be Chardin?
Stepping forward, I found Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s Portrait of Auguste Gabriel Godefroy, a 1741 variant of his Boy with a Spinning-Top at the louvre. Having always seen Chardin in period rooms alongside contemporaries such as Watteau or Fragonard, encountering his work among modern and contemporary pieces underscored the timelessness of his painting.His quiet reflection on everyday bourgeois life, in many ways, has more in common with Pato’s scene than with the flowery, stylized depictions of opulence favored by Chardin’s peers.The act of the young boy spinning a top – his trained eyes tracking it, his preference for play over study conveyed in a single gesture – has a universality that mirrors Pato’s figure, shirt half unbuttoned, leaning against a doorframe with a glass of beer in hand.
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