CULTURE-BRAZIL: Modern Art Week, A Maturing Debate

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 26 2002 (IPS) - Brazil is celebrating the 80th anniversary of Modern Art Week, the central event of a cultural liberation movement that brought the country into the 20th century and fuels inspiration, study and controversy even today.

In February 1922, the activities at the Municipal Theatre of Sao Paulo scandalized the public with talks about “new art”, exhibitions of painting and sculpture and recitals of poetry and music. But some applause was heard amid the whistles and angry shouts.

A group of young artists, with the support of some of their elders, rebelled against the literary and artistic cannon of the day. Armed with European influences, particularly from France, they used “shock therapy” to break the rigid formal rules and depart from “naturalism”.

It was an “aesthetic storm”, according to the press at the time. Some expressionist paintings on display and certain innovative works of literature had caused a commotion during previous years, but Modern Art Week brought all their new ideas together for a single event.

The apparent contradiction between adhesion to foreign artistic movements and the creation of a Brazilian art identity was clarified later with the “Anthropophagy Manifesto” of 1928, which defends importing techniques and aesthetics from abroad for their “digestion” and transformation into a national product.

The notion of cultural “cannibalism”, developed by Oswald de Andrade, organiser of the most irreverent of Modern Art Weeks, ultimately turned into a vaccine against xenophobia and resistance to innovation in Brazil.

This stance served as the foundation for different movements later in the century, such as the “concrete poetry” of the 1950s and the “tropicalismo” of popular Brazilian music in the late 1960s, spearheaded by singer-songwriters Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.

There are several initiatives in Sao Paulo that underscore the transcendence of Modern Art Week today.

One exhibition unites 140 works related to the movement, produced over the last 40 years, while the “Week 22” film festival focuses on the first Modern Art event.

The unconventional opera “22: Before and After” will premiere in Sao Paulo Feb 28. The work of composers Arribo Barnabé and Tim Rescala and artist Guto Lacaz celebrates “the spirit and the reflections of the Week in Brazilian art.”

The absence of “aesthetic unity” and of criteria was one of the aspects that stood out during the first Modern Art Week, Barnabé said in an interview with ‘O Estado de Sao Paulo’ newspaper.

In fact, the movement begun in February 1922, a hundred years after Brazil’s political independence, did not produce a literary or artistic “school”. Ten years after, its leaders were completely divided on aesthetic, philosophical and political questions.

Oswald de Andrade took up the communist cause in 1922 when the Communist Party was born in Brazil, while others with nationalist tendencies joined “integralismo”, Brazilian fascism. Some had been stars at the first Modern Art Week, but critics say they did not share or understand the bases of modernist ideas.

Nevertheless, the mythical Week of 1922 unleashed national creativity, opening the way for artists from different currents of literature, plastic arts, architecture, music and anthropology.

It was the most influential cultural milestone for Brazil, and the economic moment of the country contributed to its success.

Coffee production was booming in Sao Paulo state, and Brazil had begun to urbanise and industrialise as a result of World War I. And the samba, the most typical Brazilian rhythm, had recently come to the fore in 1917.

Mario de Andrade, the most influential and coherent ideologue of Brazilian modernism, was a prolific author. He wrote the literary works that most represent the movement, the poetry of “Pauliceia desvairadas” and the novel “Macunaíma”, as well as essays on music, folklore and literature.

He also produced a great deal of material that was never published but has fuelled research and debate about Modern Art Week and the subsequent development of modernism.

Mario de Andrade left 8,000 documents, mostly letters, to the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of Sao Paulo, with the condition that they could not be read until 50 years after his death, that is, in 1995.

Access to Mario de Andrade’s collection has revealed the inside of the conflicts and the private opinions shared by the personalities of the modernist movement, a sort of intellectual version of the popular “reality shows” on Brazilian television today.

In some of his missives, he virulently criticises one of the “heroes” of 1922 and of Brazilian music history, Heitor Villa-Lobos, who he charged lacked knowledge of the fundamentals of music, such as harmony and orchestration, and that he was politically submissive to the government.

Some of the paintings representative of Brazilian modernism can be seen on the Internet, at websites including: www.mac.ups.br-projetos-percursos-modernistas-index.html, www.dicavalcanti.com.br, www.e4e.com.br-malfatti.html, www.uol.com.br-bienal-24bienal-edu-tarsiladoamaral.htm or www.uol.com.br-pinasp.