{"id":50025,"date":"2004-03-11T17:12:13","date_gmt":"2004-03-11T20:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=50025"},"modified":"2016-01-22T17:18:59","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T19:18:59","slug":"a-portable-museum-for-modernism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-portable-museum-for-modernism\/","title":{"rendered":"A portable museum for Modernism"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is the ideal size of a museum? Anyone who is only happy with the grand architectonic proportions of a Guggenheim or of a Museum of Modern Art in S\u00e3o Paulo is going to learn to live with a lesser form, but with a lot of content, with a Modernist Box, a true portable museum of the production of the vanguard Brazilian artists which, measuring only 38.5 cm x 30 cm, brings thirty of the most important books and documents on the 1922 Modern Art Week, some in facsimile edition. Launched by the Edusp, the Federal University of Minas Gerais Editor and the Official Press, it has been organized by Jorge Schwartz (a Professor of Hispanic-American Literature at the Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences school of the University of Sao Paulo). \u201cThe idea of having an in vivo<\/em> archive of Modernism is to organize a repertoire, by me considered essential, in a concentrated and kaleidoscopic manner, for a better understanding of this movement, by placing it face to face with the reader\u201d, Professor Schwartz explains.<\/p>\n

The Caixa modernista<\/em> is unfolds from the exhibition Da Antropofagia a Bras\u00edlia (From anthropophagy to Bras\u00edlia <\/em>, carried out at the Valencia Institute of Modern Art in Spain during 2002, and repeated at the Brazilian Modern Art Museum of the Armando \u00c1lvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP), of Sao Paulo, during 2002, both under the curatorship of\u00a0 Schwartz, which ended up rendering a priceless catalogue edited during that year by Cosac & Naify. However, the launch brought with it unprecedented \u2018fetishes\u2019. \u201cJust like every museum operation, there is a desire to place at the disposal of the public, real treasures, beautiful rare works that only some collectors or specialized libraries have the conditions to possess\u201d, he says. Among the highlights within the Modernist Box are separated facsimile editions of Hallucinated City( Paulicea desvairada) <\/em>by Mario de Andrade and of Pau Brasil<\/em> (Brazilwood<\/em>) by Oswald de Andrade, \u201cfundamental pieces in the structuring of the new poetic word\u201d, though today, the public has little access to them.<\/p>\n

The idea that guided the Modernist Box was to respect the interdisciplinary character of the Week Of Modern Art ( exhibition that shook Brazilian art in 1922), bringing together objects related to the literature; the fine arts; photography; cinema; architecture; the decorative arts; music and sculpture. For that reason, as well as the books already cited, there are also reproductions of the first edition of the Anthropophagy Magazine<\/em> of 1928; postcards with the works of Tarsila do Amaral, Di Cavalcanti, Anita Malfatti; photographs dealing with the Week of 22; a CD about Modernism Music, produced by Jos\u00e9 Miguel Wisnik and Cac\u00e1 Machado, with works by Villa Lobos, Guarnieri and Nazareth, including original recordings and an unpublished piece by Villa Lobos, recovered and played by Wisnik; as well as the invitation and catalogue of the exhibition of Tarsila at the\u00a0 Percier Gallery of Paris in 1926.<\/p>\n

Into the bargain, an important unpublished piece, \u201ca rare piece of Modernism\u201d: a typewritten program for the Week, on letter headed paper belonging to the Automobile Club and pertaining to the archive of Paulo Prado, where there is registered, in type, prior notice for three nights of the Week. Schwartz also concerned himself in attempting to de-centralize (\u201cin spite of the difficulties\u201d) the role of S\u00e3o Paulo in the modernist movement, without, nevertheless, diminishing its founder merits, equally emphasizing the importance of the foreign presence (Marinetti, Cendrars, Milhaud, among others). \u201cIn the decade of the 20s, Modernism had already spread through the entire country. Mario de Andrade, in his preface to Macuna\u00edma<\/em>, fights for the \u2018de-regionalization\u2019 of the movement\u201d, the researcher recalls.<\/p>\n

In the midst of the 450-year anniversary of the city of Sao Paulo and a mini-series on the television (Um s\u00f3 cora\u00e7\u00e3o – One Heart Only<\/em>, on TV Globo), which retraces the steps of Modernism in the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, the discussion on \u201cprovinciality\u201d has gained new colours. \u201cIt is indisputable that in 1922 S\u00e3o Paulo was a provincial city in comparison to the capital of the Republic that had been \u2018modernized\u2019 starting back in 1905, according to the Parisian model of Hausmann. But it is very different to have only spirit or modernized artists of an attitude progressively programmatic, revolutionary, and in a group, as was the movement of 22\u201d, Professor Schwartz notes. For him the polemic issue may well be settled by looking at the words of Manuel Bandeira, in a commentary made concerning the \u201cSal\u00e3o\u201d( Revolutionary Salon ) of 1931, in Rio de Janeiro, organized by L\u00facio Costa, seen by many as a confirmation of Rio\u2019s a Modernist pioneering attitude . \u201cI would like to confirm that the successful \u201cSal\u00e3o\u201d has counted upon the S\u00e3o Paulo contribution as a decisive element. L\u00facio Costa understood right from the first moment that in material of good artistic direction, S\u00e3o Paulo represents almost all of Brazil. It was from S\u00e3o Paulo that the modern movement set off. The greatest names came from there and hence poets, musicians, painters and sculptors from other states have found the environment in which they were better understood and were most definitely consecrated\u201d, the poet stated to the national daily newspaper, Di\u00e1rio Nacional<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If the epicenter is still controversial, the dimension of the rupture is clear. \u201cThe participants themselves remained \u2018stupefied\u2019 with their destinies. But when we see, for example, our medal winners on the Globo TV mini-series, that has attained national popularity, we can state that the prophecy of Oswald, that the masses will have to eat their slim fine biscuits, has ended up occurring. What does the Brazilian culture owe to this movement? More than one\u2019s imagination supposes\u201d, Schwartz observes.<\/p>\n

For example, he remembers that the debt of concrete poetry to the Modernism, having built part of its design on the presupposed cannibals of Oswald; or, even, the New Cinema (Cinema Novo) as a direct beneficiary of modernist design. Still, according to him, they are reflexes of Week 22:\u00a0 Tropicalism; the revitalization of Brazilian dramaturgy far beyond Nelson Rodrigues; the development of Brazilian architecture that, though culminating with Bras\u00edlia, was initiated with the projects of Warchavchik in Sao Paulo, the author, during 1925, of the Manifesto dealing with modern architecture. \u201cIf in this precise moment we can look with tranquillity and admiration at an exhibition on African Art in S\u00e3o Paulo, as well as a retrospective look at Picasso, I think that, in the final instance, this is all due to the pathways opened up by the generation of the Week 22, making possible a look into the direction, not always easy, of the abstract codes of modernism. This is not small fry!<\/p>\n

Rupture<\/strong>
\nBut conquests can be accompanied by malevolence. The \u2018new\u2019, as a rupture with tradition, as an opposition to the past and all of the presupposed vanguards built into this concept end up, over time, migrating towards the sphere of consumption. The market is inconceivable without this alliance, evil in my view, with the ideology of the new\u201d,\u00a0 Schwartz notes. At the root of the movement had lodged, without this being desired, its banality. \u201cWe have entered into the consumption of \u201cthe new for the new\u201d or of new as a fetish. This is very different from the ruptures proposed by the modernists, at a crucial moment in which they had proposed the internationalization of their language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some critics of Modernism also note that the movement passed like a tractor over the academic art produced at that time in Brazil, which had thus impeded a harmonization between the future and the past. \u201cThe Week, in order to have revolutionary contours, had to obstinately oppose to everything of traditional opulence. But the history of the movement shows that the compartments were not just so watertight: Anita was only a radical expressionist during a brief period of time; the cubist stage, Pau<\/em> Brazilianized and the cannibalistic of Tarsila only came into play during the most radical years\u201d, the organizer recalls. For him, a good example of the ambivalence of modernism can be explained in the famous \u201cSalon\u201d of Madame Ol\u00edvia Guedes Penteado, located at Duque de Caxias Street, where the most traditional academic styles lived within the mansion decorated by Lasar Segall, dedicated in its entirety to the vanguards and where the weekly meetings of the modernist group were carried out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, when Cendrars came to Brazil one of the group\u2019s activities was to show and to festive over our Baroque, in the famous modernistic caravan that trekked to Minas Gerais during 1924. Or that is to say, the modernists knew how to look to the past, which \u2018is a lesson to meditate on not to reproduce\u2019 as Mario de Andrade said in Pref\u00e1cio interessantissimo<\/em> [Extremely Interesting Preface<\/em>] of 1922\u201d, he explains. Elitist and revolutionary movement; aesthetic, but concerned with the social, swerving sometimes towards an admiration for fascism; no matter what it was Modernism could, with justification, be reconsidered, as Mario said, as \u201cthe greatest intellectual orgy that the artistic history of the country has registered\u201d. Could we see something similar in the future? Schwartz does not want to make \u201cesoteric forecasts\u201d, but believes that it is worrying the route of globalization of art in which the national stamp does not point towards the referent. \u201cI prefer to dedicate myself to rescuing documents and forgotten or lost papers\u201d, he says.\u00a0 Schwartz, in reality, is already preparing a Concretist box\u00a0 and dreams of a new Modernist box with more facsimile documents such as Cobra Norato<\/em> by Raul Bopp, or Macuna\u00edma<\/em>, with the designs by Pedro Nava. The remainder lies with the reader. In the end, the Modernist Box, like every good museum, may well contain the past without maltreating the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caixa Modernista brings together the important documents of the movement ","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[165],"tags":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-50025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50025","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50025"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}