In conclusion, then, I want to look at the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica's work as something that brings together in a new light all these components: the recuperated and commodified avant-garde, the function of intimacy, and the transformative potential of intoxication. It may even help us to think about the content of art school teaching.

The current interest in Oiticica's work after its long neglect has to be in response to some kind of need on the part of artists and audiences. He died in 1980, but only recently have we seen much of his work in Europe and America. Different bodies of work have recently been shown in the last ten or so years at PS1, Documenta, the Tate, and at the New Museum. Oiticica is increasingly recognized as a pioneer in many aspects of late twentieth-century practice, particularly in reinventing the terms of spectator engagement.

[slide 19: Oiticica installation] In his initial work, he made painting environments of monochrome paintings in the early 60s in a productively sensual misinterpretation of Suprematism [slides 20, 21: Bolidès] [slide 22: Parangolé], to the interactive boxes containing pigment, earth, and photographs that he called Bolidès, to the costumes [slides 23, 24: Cosmococas] called Parangolés that he designed for friends of his.

And here, Oiticica indicated how art's modernist forms might take on ecstatic and transformative potential. In the Cosmococas installations, we luxuriate in hammocks, blasted by Jimi Hendrix's War Heroes, and washed by projected slides of cocaine drawings made on the album's cover.