{"id":448999,"date":"2022-08-22T19:48:34","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T22:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=448999"},"modified":"2022-08-22T19:48:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T22:48:34","slug":"modernism-exposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/modernism-exposition\/","title":{"rendered":"Modernism exposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 100th<\/sup> anniversary celebration of Brazil\u2019s independence was a remarkable event hosted in Rio de Janeiro\u2014at the time the country\u2019s political hub and capital city\u2014from September 7, 1922, to July 24, 1923. The Independence Centennial Exposition attracted three million guests and attendees who purchased tickets\u2014equal to 10 percent of Brazil\u2019s total population at the time\u2014and ten thousand exhibitors from Brazil and fifteen other countries, including England, the United States, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Japan.<\/p>\n

One of the largest expositions ever held in the country, it took the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce two years to plan. Their mission was to showcase Brazil\u2019s desire to join forces with the world\u2019s most modern nations to harness nature and recover its economy, reducing the role of agriculture and increasing that of industry. However, this longing for industrialization would only begin to take shape a decade later, during the Get\u00falio Vargas administration (1930\u201345).<\/p>\n

The Rio de Janeiro Expo was the 29th<\/sup> World\u2019s Fair\u2014in 1922, the United States had already hosted eight, while France and the United Kingdom had hosted five and three, respectively. All were inspired by the inaugural fair, held in London in 1851, which attracted six million people. Next was the Paris Expo, the first to use the term \u201cWorld\u2019s Fair,\u201d which gathered five million visitors in 1855. At these events, each country showed the world its accomplishments and plans for the future. It was a space for innovation: in 1893, for example, the World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago exhibited cutting edge innovations, such as fruit flavored gum and the dishwasher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 1922 Expo distanced itself from the ethos of progress, according to which the world would always continue improving, as this belief was shattered by the First World War [1914\u201318], instead highlighting modernism, which entailed the domestication of nature through technology,\u201d comments Marly Motta, historian and retired professor at Rio de Janeiro\u2019s Get\u00falio Vargas Foundation (FGV-RJ). \u201cSteel was more important than gold, and electricity more so than waterfalls, because exploiting nature was more important than nature itself. It was thought that this would be a way for Brazil to become one of the world\u2019s most advanced countries, a long-standing dream from the days of the Brazilian Empire.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, she notes, the centennial celebration took place during a time of political tension, marked by the state of siege and press censorship imposed by then president Epit\u00e1cio Pessoa [1864\u20131942] in response to the Revolt of Copacabana Fort, in July of 1922. One of the most turbulent periods of the First Brazilian Republic (1899\u20131930), the revolt united Armed Forces officers and political groups dissatisfied with the federal government.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Augusto Malta \/ Instituto Moreira Salles<\/span>The Federal District Pavilion, one of the primary buildings used to showcase Brazil\u2019s pursuits in education, healthcare, commerce, industry, forestry, sports, and other areasAugusto Malta \/ Instituto Moreira Salles<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Grandeur
\n<\/strong>The exposition consisted of monumental buildings and the main entryway, on Avenida Rio Branco, towered 108 feet tall. The fair\u2019s national area, featuring the grandiose buildings referred to as \u201cpalaces\u201d and the more modest \u201cpavilions,\u201d spanned twenty-five sections and showcased Brazil\u2019s pursuits in education, healthcare, commerce, mechanics, chemical industry, hunting and fishing, forestry, craftsmanship, statistics, sports, and other areas. Each state occupied a pavilion. There was also a spectacular amusement park, with festivities, music, movies, and lectures on the country\u2019s natural resources.<\/p>\n

The fifteen international pavilions were positioned around Pra\u00e7a XV de Novembro, where they displayed their products and conducted business. Each pavilion was built by its respective country using traditional architecture\u2014Mexico\u2019s pavilion, for example, was inspired by Aztec architecture. Electricity was used to illuminate the buildings and streets at night. \u201cMuch like the railroad, electricity was an innovation with strong popular appeal,\u201d says Carlos de Faria J\u00fanior, a historian at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais.<\/p>\n

During the exhibition\u2019s keynote speech, delivered amid several military parades, Epit\u00e1cio Pessoa highlighted the federal capital\u2019s progress in fighting smallpox and yellow fever. In the book A na\u00e7\u00e3o faz cem anos: A quest\u00e3o nacional no centen\u00e1rio da independ\u00eancia<\/em> (The nation turns 100: The national issue with the Independence Centennial; Editora FGV, 1992), Motta recalls that at the time there were other pervasive public health issues, mainly tuberculosis and syphilis, resulting from the population\u2019s poor hygiene.<\/p>\n

As part of the early century\u2019s broad urban reform championed by Francisco Pereira Passos (1836\u20131913), Rio de Janeiro\u2019s mayor between 1902 and 1906, and to make room for the exhibition\u2019s palaces and pavilions, Morro do Castelo (Castle Hill) was demolished (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba 266<\/em><\/a>). \u201cThe exposition represented modernism and Morro do Castelo represented stagnation. It was a process of urban modernization that eliminated anything that did not align with the idea of progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Arquivo P\u00fablico Mineiro \/ RIBEIRO, F.A. Fluminense Federal University. 2020<\/span>Czechoslovakia Pavilion, one of the fifteen countries that participated in the fair, with buildings constructed using each country\u2019s traditional styleArquivo P\u00fablico Mineiro \/ RIBEIRO, F.A. Fluminense Federal University. 2020<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The city was founded in Morro do Castelo, located near the Municipal Theater and other imposing buildings along Avenida Central. It housed two churches\u2014S\u00e3o Sebasti\u00e3o do Castelo and Santo In\u00e1cio, which functions as part of a children\u2019s hospital\u2014and an astronomical observatory, surrounded by approximately four hundred homes and five thousand low-income residents. The demolition was intensely debated in the newspapers, with arguments for and against. Nonetheless, it began slowly but surely, with workers wielding shovels and pickaxes, but quickly progressed when a North American water jet company was hired. \u201cThe former residents were ousted to the suburbs,\u201d describes Motta. After the exposition, most of the buildings were demolished, with the exception of three: the Federal District Palace, which houses the Museum of Image and Sound; the Major Industries Palace, which was taken over by the National Historical Museum; and the French Pavilion, a replica of Queen Marie Antoinette\u2019s country house (1755\u201393) in the French city of Versailles, which is now home to the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters).<\/p>\n

The exposition inspired the construction of three lavish hotels with ocean views: Sete de Setembro, located in front of Sugarloaf Mountain, later incorporated into the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Gl\u00f3ria, which housed the Heads of State during the fair; and Copacabana Palace, the only hotel from the time that is still in operation, designed by the French architect Joseph Gire (1872\u20131922), who also designed Gl\u00f3ria, which closed in 2013.<\/p>\n

Samba dancers at the exposition
\n<\/strong>Journalist sponsored an educational performance on Afro-Brazilian musical expressions<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s samba dancers will be sure to dazzle in the Bam-bam-bam dance group,\u201d announced Rio de Janeiro\u2019s A Noite<\/em> newspaper in an article published front and center on January 12, 1923. It was written in anticipation of the samba performance to take place during the centennial exposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe performance by Black samba dancers revealed the disconnect between Brazil and cultural and regional Afro-Brazilian expressions, in contrast to Brazil\u2019s connection with European values,\u201d says the historian Walter Pereira, based on a study conducted by the Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation in Rio de Janeiro (FCRB). The creator behind the Bam-bam-bam dance group and the performance organizer was a white political journalist and public school professor from Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Alberto N\u00f3brega da Cunha (1897\u20131974), who combined his trips to the Senate in search of news with visits to the city\u2019s suburbs to watch the samba circles.<\/p>\n

As the exposition\u2019s Mini-Carnaval was held in open air, it was postponed twice due to the risk of rain. Finally, on the night of February 4, a Sunday, before an audience gathered at the Festivities Pavilion, Cunha showcased what would now be called an \u201caula-show\u201d (educational performance). He interspersed didactic explanations about Afro-Brazilian musical expressions with performances by sixty Bahian samba dancers from the Ara\u00fajo and Pinto neighborhoods, accompanied by twenty-five percussionists playing tambourines and traditional Brazilian instruments such as the cavaquinho, reco-reco and pandeiro. After the performance, Black women dressed as Bahians distributed Brazilian delicacies to the spectators.<\/p>\n

\u201cCunha presented the country\u2019s elite with a less segregated perspective, illustrating that popular cultural expressions should not be disregarded from the development of a national image. As much as samba dancers were the focus of marginalization, they were not marginal. Newspapers at the time emphasized that they were honest workers, and not vagrants,\u201d says Pereira. With funding from the State Secretary of Culture and Creative Economy of Rio de Janeiro (SECEC-RJ), he is working on adapting his studies on this historical chapter into a historical documentary to air by September of this year, as described in an article published in Cantareira <\/em>magazine in January of 2021.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Independence Centennial Exposition demonstrated Brazil\u2019s desire to build an increasingly industrial economy, which would only begin to take shape ten years later","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":449004,"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":[152],"tags":[203,241,265],"coauthors":[5968],"class_list":["post-448999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retrospect","tag-architecture","tag-history","tag-urbanism","keywords-brazil-200-years"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448999","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448999"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449018,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448999\/revisions\/449018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448999"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=448999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}