{"id":148579,"date":"2014-05-29T18:10:27","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T21:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=148579"},"modified":"2014-05-29T18:10:27","modified_gmt":"2014-05-29T21:10:27","slug":"body-art-19th-century-master","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/body-art-19th-century-master\/","title":{"rendered":"The body of art of a 19th-century master"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mata

IMS public domain image<\/span>Mata virgem<\/em> (Virgin forest), circa 1850-1860, pencil and watercolor on paperIMS public domain image<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

As a key figure in the plan to establish a national culture in 19th<\/sup>-century Brazil, Manuel de Ara\u00fajo Porto-Alegre (1806-1879) is \u2013 paradoxically \u2013 the victim of an unfortunate Brazilian tendency to perpetuate myths and take shortcuts in research. Faced with the difficulty of gathering together his far-flung works and comprehending how someone can be a neoclassicist and a romanticist, an artist, literary figure and public man, painter of history and advocate of watercolors and of tropical nature studies all at the same time, many generations were content to simply allow him to have his fame without questioning his achievements, without pointing out his contradictions and without observing the set of his works from close up. So difficult was it that only now, more than two centuries after his birth, Bar\u00e3o de Santo \u00c2ngelo (as he was also known) is having his first one-man show in the main building of the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS) in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

Based on an album from the artist acquired by the Institute in 2008, the show, entitled Ara\u00fajo Porto-Alegre Singular & Plural<\/i>, also includes works provided by several national institutions, such as the National Library, the National History Museum, the National Museum of Fine Arts and the Julio de Castilhos Museum. Due to space limitations, the exhibit in Rio is small, but the show in S\u00e3o Paulo, which will open officially in June, will boast more than 100 paintings, engravings, drawings and watercolors along with a broader curatorial cross-section. However, even now, thanks to a large catalog with more than 360 pages, the diversity of the themes, techniques, styles and media that Porto-Alegre used as his career progressed has become evident.<\/p>\n

\"Estudo

Drawings IMS public domain image<\/span>Estudo para uma cena de batalha<\/em> (Study for a battle scene), undated, pencil, India ink and watercolor on paperDrawings IMS public domain image<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The publication, which brings together a considerable amount of iconographic material, also includes a selection of unpublished essays signed by guest researchers from many fields. The catalog scrutinizes different aspects of Porto-Alegre\u2019s career path, for example: his relationship with the teacher Debret (Val\u00e9ria Picolli); the importance he attributes to tropical landscapes as the symbol of Brazil and the coexistence of neoclassical formation and romantic sensitivity (Claudia Valad\u00e3o de Mattos); his reflections on music (Paulo M. Kuhl); and a critical rereading of the difficult and paradoxical work of the first generation of romanticists \u2013 of which Porto-Alegre is part \u2013 who symbolically founded a Brazilian nationality (Jo\u00e3o Cezar de Castro Rocha).<\/p>\n

Another unquestionable value of the publication is that it compiles and makes accessible a large number of texts written by Ara\u00fajo Porto-Alegre that had been difficult to locate yet essential for cultural historians in general. Actually, Porto-Alegre is a nearly omnipresent figure in 19th<\/sup>-century Brazilian history. He was in the first group of students at the Imperial School of Fine Arts (Aiba) and later a teacher and director of the school. He was also the beloved student of Jean-Baptiste Debret, and he traveled to France with him in 1831. He did not limit himself to the visual arts, however: He was an architect, scenographer, writer, playwright, music and art critic (a pioneer in the effort to start a Brazilian art school), member of the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute (IHGB) and prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Dom Pedro I and his son, Dom Pedro II. He was also a consul of Brazil abroad, etc.<\/p>\n

\"Cher

Drawings IMS public domain image<\/span>Cher compagnon de voyage<\/em> (Dear travel companion), 1834, pencil on paperDrawings IMS public domain image<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Although this eclecticism (it comes as no surprise that he was called a \u201crenaissance man\u201d by an adversary) is to a great extent responsible for the widely held idea that he was a mediocre artist, it nonetheless helped to elucidate his rich career path and the tumultuous period in which he lived. Let\u00edcia Squeff, whose master\u2019s work was devoted to studying Porto-Alegre\u2019s critical production, was able to understand the softer side of his efforts through contact with his works of art. \u201cWe are attempting to treat him more holistically,\u201d explains Squeff, curator of the exhibit in partnership with J\u00falia Kovensky, coordinator of iconography at the IMS. \u201cThe only reason he was not a better artist was because to him, art was present in everything,\u201d she says in an attempt to explain the unending criticism of the quality of his painting. In a text published in the catalog, Rafael Cardoso raises an interesting flag about the error of relegating the works on paper to a lower status: \u201cThe only explanation for the erroneous thinking that insists on relegating anything that is not painting (using an easel), sculpture and architecture to the status of \u2018minor art\u2019 is that he did not research in detail his watercolors and drawings, or his caricatures whose importance is unparalleled, or his scenographic sketches and projects for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ara\u00fajo Porto-Alegre attempted to set the stage for a Brazilian art school","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[204],"coauthors":[142],"class_list":["post-148579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","tag-visual-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148579"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=148579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}