Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This series reflects the coming of age of the new, multidisciplinary field of Afro Latin
American Studies, which centers on the histories, cultures, and experiences of people of
African descent in Latin America. The series aims to showcase scholarship produced by
different disciplines, including history, political science, sociology, ethnomusicology,
anthropology, religious studies, art, law, and cultural studies. It covers the full tem
poral span of the African Diaspora in Latin America, from the early colonial period to
the present and includes continental Latin America, the Caribbean, and other key areas
in the region where Africans and their descendants have made a significant impact.
RAFAEL CARDOSO
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro &
Freie Universität Berlin
University Printing House, Cambridge 2 8, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, 3207, Australia
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www.cambridge.org
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© Rafael Cardoso 2021
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Para minha Tierchen.
So is Brazil, of an ineffable grandeur in which civilization and
savagery do not contrast but blend, mingle, become wedded in an
active and troubling manner. It takes one’s breath away, from
admiration and often from terror or passion.
Blaise Cendrars, 19551
1
Blaise Cendrars, “Mort subite”, Trop c’est trop, In: Oeuvres complètes, tome VIII (Paris:
Denoël, 1987), 163. “Tel est le Brésil, d’une grandeur ineffable où la civilisation et la
sauvagerie ne contrastent pas mais se mêlent, se conjuguent, s’épousent d’une façon active
et troublante. On reste le souffle coupé d’admiration et, souvent, de terreur ou de passion.”
Contents
Index 255
ix
Figures
xi
xii List of Figures
Research for this book first began in 2007 when I was awarded a grant
from Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, to study the relation-
ship between art and bohemianism in Brazil, circa 1900–1930, especially
with regard to graphic design and illustrated periodicals. The task proved
to be much larger than originally envisioned and led to a dispersion of
efforts in what often seemed to be opposing directions. The idea for a
book began to take shape in 2015 when I was a guest scholar at the Getty
Research Institute, Los Angeles, and subsequently a visiting researcher at
the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris. I am grateful to all three
institutions for their receptivity and material support, without which the
project would never have got off the ground.
A number of colleagues have played a vital role, over the years, as
intellectual peers or in terms of advancing specific aspects of the research
for this project. I wish to thank Caroline Arscott, Maria Berbara, João
Brancato, Amy Buono, Lauro Cavalcanti, Roberto Conduru, Sérgio
Costa, Pedro Duarte de Andrade, Joaquim Marçal Ferreira de Andrade,
Uwe Fleckner, Lúcia Garcia, Paulo Herkenhoff, Hu Xudong, Jennifer
Josten, Margit Kern, Paulo Knauss, Julia Kovensky, Anne Lafont,
Aleca Le Blanc, Laura Karp Lugo, Marize Malta, Sérgio Bruno Martins,
Andrew McNamara, Eric Michaud, Anders Michelsen, Valéria Piccoli,
Paula Ramos, Kim Richter, Stefan Römer, Silviano Santiago, Alexa
Sekyra, Elena Shtromberg, Vera Beatriz Siqueira, Michi Strausfeld,
Nataraj Trinta Cardozo, Arthur Valle, Joan Weinstein, Marcus Wood,
among others too numerous to list here, for their support, encourage-
ment, advice or collaboration. I also wish to record, in memoriam, my
debt to the irreplaceable Lélia Coelho Frota.
xvii
xviii Acknowledgements
Images are a decisive component of any art historical study, and that is
certainly the case here. A large part of the illustrations in this book derive
from the superlative collections, physical and digital, of Fundação Bib-
lioteca Nacional. The following individuals played a decisive role either
in granting permissions to use images or helping to obtain them: Tarsila
do Amaral, Ana Sueli Baldas, Noemia Buarque de Hollanda, Mônica
Carneiro Alves, Eduardo Mendes Cavalcanti, Andrea Chambelland, Joel
Coelho de Souza, Elisabeth Di Cavalcanti Veiga, Martha Fadel, Luciana
Freire Rangel, Valéria Lamego, Matias Marcier, Alvaro Marins, Gustavo
Martins de Almeida, Laura Nery, Christina Gabaglia Penna, Max Perlin-
geiro, Karin Philippov, João Cândido Portinari, Diana dos Santos Ramos,
Heloisa Seelinger, Priscila Serejo, Julieta Sobral, Afrísio de Souza Vieira
Lima Filho, Mônica Azevedo Velloso, Tobias & Isabel Visconti, Mônica
F. Braunschweiger Xexéo. Thanks to all for generously making accessible
the works of art included in this book.
Almost needless to say, this book would not exist without the interest
of series editors Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews. My
heartfelt gratitude to them for casting a sympathetic gaze upon a topic
that might otherwise have fallen between the boundaries separating dis-
ciplines. Thanks also to the anonymous peer reviewers whose suggestions
have made the arguments here stronger. A final word of thanks to the
many people at Cambridge University Press who produced this volume –
especially, Thomas Haynes, Cecelia Cancellaro, Rachel Blaifelder and
Vicki Harley. I hope you can follow William Morris in saying: “The
books that I would like to print are the books I love to read and keep.”
Notes on Usage of Brazilian Portuguese
xix
Introduction
Ambiguous Modernities and Alternate Modernisms
São Paulo possesses the virtue of discovering tree honey in an owl’s nest.
Every so often, they send us some ancient novelties of forty years ago. Now,
through the auspices of my congenial friend Sergio Buarque de Hollanda,
they wish to impose upon us as their own discovery, São Paulo’s, so called
‘futurism’.
Lima Barreto, 19221
1
Lima Barreto, “O futurismo”, Careta, 22 July 1922, n.p.
1
2 Modernity in Black and White
himself with his readers for “what there is of sourness in this little
article”.2
Lima Barreto had every reason to be bitter. Five months later, in
November 1922, he would pass away at the age of 41, twice committed
to a mental asylum for complications stemming from chronic alcoholism,
twice rejected in his ambition to become a member of the Brazilian
Academy of Letters, essentially unable to find a publisher for his later
works, several of which were destined to appear posthumously. An Afro-
descendant writer of recognized talent but modest social standing, his
acerbic criticism and radical politics did little to open doors for his career.
As Berthold Zilly has observed, he occupied an ambiguous position,
enough of an insider to aspire to become part of the establishment but
too much of an outsider to know how to make the requisite concessions.3
Nearly a century after his death, he is revered as one of the great names in
Brazilian literature and his claim to modernity finally recognized as
having preceded the young upstarts from São Paulo.4 At the time, how-
ever, they were the rising stars; he was on his way out; and both sides
were attuned to their respective destinies.
Over the latter half of the twentieth century, and even more recently in
some quarters, the contention that Lima Barreto’s oeuvre was modern
was pointedly rejected. To call it modernist, then, was unthinkable.
Rather, it was shoehorned into the category of pre-modernism, along
with a hodgepodge of other writers active over the first decades of the
twentieth century. That label is so meaningless in its historicist overdeter-
mination that it is best jettisoned right away and altogether. Simply put,
no one sets out to be pre- anything at the time they are doing something
(unless, that is, the action is done in prophetic vein, à la John the Baptist,
or is intended to reclaim a lost tradition, as in Pre-Raphaelitism). To cast
Lima Barreto as a precursor of the group of young authors and poets
around Klaxon, whom he testily dismissed, is to presume their work is
somehow a fulfilment of stylistic or artistic qualities he failed to achieve.
2
Ibid., n.p.
3
Berthold Zilly, “Nachwort: das Vaterland zwischen Parodie, Utopie und Melancholie”, In:
[Afonso Henriques de] Lima Barreto, Das traurige Ende des Policarpo Quaresma (Zurich:
Ammann, 2001), pp. 309 336. See also Renata R. Mautner Wassermann, “Race, nation,
representation: Machado de Assis and Lima Barreto”, Luso Brazilian Review, 45 (2008),
84 106.
4
See Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Lima Barreto: Triste visionário (São Paulo: Companhia das
Letras, 2017), pp. 430 461; and Irenísia Torres de Oliveira, “Lima Barreto, modernidade
e modernismo no Brasil”, Revista Terceira Margem, 11 (2007), 113 129.
Introduction 3
5
See, among others, Flora Süssekind, Cinematograph of Words: Literature, Technique and
Modernization in Brazil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997 [1987]); Eduardo
Jardim de Moraes, “Modernismo revisitado”, Estudos Históricos, 1 (1988), 220 238;
Centro de Pesquisas/Setor de Filologia, Sobre o pré modernismo (Rio de Janeiro: Funda
ção Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1988). See also Beatriz Resende, “Modernização da arte e da
cultura na Primeira República”, In: Paulo Roberto Pereira, ed., Brasiliana da Biblioteca
Nacional: Guia das fontes sobre o Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira/Fundação
Biblioteca Nacional, 2001); and Silviano Santiago, The Space In between: Essays on Latin
American Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
6
Paulo Herkenhoff, “O moderno antes do modernismo oficial”, In: Arte brasileira na
coleção Fadel (Rio de Janeiro: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, 2002), pp. 22 29; and
Gilda de Mello e Souza, “Pintura brasileira contemporânea: Os precursores”, Discurso, 5
(1974), 119 130. See also Ana Paula Cavalcanti Simioni & Lúcia K. Stumpf, “O moderno
antes do modernismo: Paradoxos da pintura brasileira no nascimento da República”,
Teresa Revista de Literatura Brasileira, 14 (2014), 111 129.
4 Modernity in Black and White
anything short of that rupture belongs squarely on the other side of the
divide, no matter how much it may tend in a modernizing direction. For
all its clever rhetorical appeal, the formulation modernity before
modernism falls short of dislodging the essential premise of teleological
progress towards formal truth. The present book partakes of the belief
that there is no such thing as evolution in the history of art. For all
that artists borrow from each other and build upon the achievements of
the past, which they undoubtedly do, this in no way entails a positive
progression. Nor does the borrowing that takes place necessarily imply
that some works are wholly original while others are derivative. Influence,
as Partha Mitter has pointed out, does not operate in a single direction
but, rather, is a process of mutual exchange, emulation and paradigm
change.7
Neither does the author of this book subscribe to the orderly period-
ization of artistic styles through the pinpointing of major works and the
dates they were produced. Continuity and rupture, canon and revolution,
classic and modern, exist in a dialectical relationship, subject to continual
hermeneutical analysis.8 Like any other historical construct, the validity
of stylistic categories must be reexamined in the light of documentary
evidence and questioned at every turn. Thus, the impossibility of thinking
about the significance of ‘modern art’ from within the parameters
imposed by modernism’s inflated conception of itself. Any historical
evaluation worth its salt must reject the contention, all too often taken
as an unspoken assumption, that what is or is not modernist can be
determined by distinctive features within the works or aesthetic principles
espoused by their makers.9
The present book is not the place for a full-blown discussion of
modernism: what it was, when it was, whether to embrace it or bid it
farewell. Rather, it aims to contribute one more case study to the larger
investigation of cultural modernization as a diverse and dispersed histor-
ical phenomenon. Variations in what is meant by ‘modern art’ are not
7
Partha Mitter, “Decentering modernism: art history and avant garde art from the periph
ery”, The Art Bulletin, 90 (2008), 538 540.
8
Cf. Larry Silver, “Introduction: Canons in world perspective definitions, deformations
and discourses”, In: Larry Silver & Kevin Terraciano, eds., Canons and Values: Ancient to
Modern (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2019), pp. 1 21; and Hubert Locher, “The idea
of the canon and canon formation in art history”, In: Matthew Rampley et al., eds., Art
History and Visual Studies in Europe: Transnational Discourses and National Frame
works (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 29 40.
9
See Stephen Bann, Ways around Modernism (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 58 61,
92 101, 107 111.
Introduction 5
10
Andreas Huyssen, “Geographies of modernism in a globalizing world”, New German
Critique, 100 (2007), 193 199. See also Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural
Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Geeta
Kapur, When was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India (New
Delhi: Tulika, 2000); Laura Doyle & Laura Winkiel, eds., Geomodernisms: Race, Mod
ernism, Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Kobena Mercer, ed.,
Cosmopolitan Modernisms (London: International Institute of Visual Arts & Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2005); Partha Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the
Avant Garde, 1922 1947 (London: Reaktion, 2007); Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali
& Marion von Osten, eds., Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past Rebellions for the
Future (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010); and Harri Veivo, ed., Transferts, appro
priations et fonctions de l’avant garde dans l’Europe intemédiaire et du nord (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2012).
11
Perry Anderson, “Modernity and revolution”, In: Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg,
eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (London: Macmillan, 1988), 323; and
Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism (London: Verso, 1989), pp. 31 35.
12
On the possibilities of interpreting modernism as a unified concept, see Fredric Jameson,
A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London: Verso, 2002),
pp. 1 13, 32 55, 94 99, 161 179; and Raymond Spiteri, “A farewell to modernism?:
Re reading T. J. Clark”, Journal of Art Historiography, n.3 (2010), 1 13.
6 Modernity in Black and White
spheres of literature, fine art, architecture and classical music, says much
about how the term has been construed in Brazil.
13
Summaries in English and French include: Randal Johnson, “Brazilian modernism: an
idea out of place?”, In: Anthony L. Geist & José B. Monleon, eds., Modernism and its
Margins: Re inscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America (New York:
Garland, 1999),pp. 186 214; Ruben George Oliven, “Brazil: the modern in the tropics”,
In: Vivian Schelling, ed., Through the Kaleidescope: the Experience of Modernity in Latin
America (London: Verso, 2000), pp. 53 71; Ana Paula Cavalcanti Simioni, “Le moder
nisme brésilen, entre consécration et contestation”, Perspective, 2013 2, 325 342; and
Saulo Gouveia, The Triumph of Brazilian Modernism: the Meta Narrative of Emancipa
tion and Counter Narratives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
Recent reappraisals in Portuguese include: Marcia Camargos, 13 a 18 de fevereiro de
1922: A Semana de 22: Revolução Estética? (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional/
Lazuli, 2007); Marcos Augusto Gonçalves, 1922: A semana que não terminou (São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012); Frederico Coelho, A semana sem fim: Celebrações
e memória da Semana de Arte Moderna de 1922 (Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Palavra, 2012);
as well as the special edition of Revista USP, 94 (2012), edited by Lisbeth Rebollo
Gonçalves and published to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the event, which
contains a range of scholarly assessments.
Introduction 7
in its legendary status.14 At the time the event took place, its impact was
limited to an elite audience in São Paulo, then a very prosperous but still
provincial capital. What happened there hardly made a dent in national
debates during the 1920s and 1930s. One of the few organs of the
mainstream press to give it attention in Rio de Janeiro, then the nation’s
capital and cultural centre, was the magazine Careta, for which Lima
Barreto wrote. The periodical was aware of the São Paulo group even
before the event took place. In late 1921, it published a piece distancing
writers Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, Menotti del Picchia and
Guilherme de Almeida, among others, from the label ‘futurism’, under
which they were often categorized, and emphasizing their claim to be
considered ‘modernist’.15 A few months after the Semana took place, an
article with a São Paulo dateline, titled “The death rites of futurism”,
concluded the event had been a flop and castigated the participants for
their pretentiousness.16 Over one year later, the magazine ran a strongly
worded attack on the ‘futurists’ and defence of traditional values in art.17
The editors were open-minded enough, though, to publish a poem by
Mário de Andrade on the same page, under the title “Brazilian futurism in
poetry”, thus allowing readers the opportunity to judge for themselves.
Careta’s reactionary stance was hardly typical of the mainstream press,
which mostly ignored the goings-on in São Paulo. Contrary to the widely
held belief that the Semana scandalized bourgeois Brazilian society – a
myth propagated strategically, between the 1940s and 1960s, by the
remnants of paulista modernism and their heirs – the truth is that the
cultural milieu in the nation’s capital had other things on its mind.18
1922 was a watershed year in Brazil, overshadowed by the centennial of
independence from Portugal and filled with charged political
14
See Monica Pimenta Velloso, História e modernismo (Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2010),
pp. 22 30; and Rafael Cardoso, “Forging the myth of Brazilian modernism”, In: Silver &
Terraciano, Canons and Values, pp. 269 287.
15
Y Juca Pirama, “A morte do futurismo”, Careta, 5 November 1921, n.p. On the ‘futurist’
versus ‘modernist’ debate in the 1920s, see Annateresa Fabris, O futurismo paulista:
Hipóteses para o estudo da chegada da vanguarda ao Brasil (São Paulo: Perspectiva,
1994), pp. 70 76, 139 153.
16
Ataka Perô, “O mortorio do futurismo”, Careta, 1 April 1922, n.p.
17
Ildefonso Falcão, “A idiotice que pretende ser arte”, Careta, 28 July 1923, n.p. For more
on Careta, see Chapter 3.
18
See Angela de Castro Gomes, Essa gente do Rio. . .: Modernidade e nacionalismo (Rio de
Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1999), pp. 12 13; Francisco Alambert, “A reinvenção
da Semana (1932 1942)”, Revista USP, 94 (2012), 107 118; and Cardoso, “Forging the
myth of Brazilian modernism”.
8 Modernity in Black and White
19
See Rafael Cardoso, “Modernismo e contexto político: A recepção da arte moderna no
Correio da Manhã (1924 1937)”, Revista de História (USP), 172 (2015), 335 365.
20
See Rafael Cardoso, Impresso no Brasil, 1808 1930: Destaques da história gráfica no
acervo da Biblioteca Nacional (Rio de Janeiro: Verso Brasil, 2009), p. 133.
21
The reference is to British furniture maker, Maple & Co.; João do Rio, A profissão de
Jacques Pedreira (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa & São Paulo: Scipione,
1992), p. 109.
Introduction 9
22
Vera d’Horta Beccari, Lasar Segall e o modernismo paulista (São Paulo: Brasiliense,
1984), pp. 48 64. See also Jasmin Koßmann, “Will Grohmann, Lasar Segall und die
Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919”, In: Konstanze Rudert, ed., Zwischen Intuition und
Gewissheit: Will Grohmann und die Rezeption der Moderne in Deutschland und Europa
1918 1968 (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2013).
10 Modernity in Black and White
23
See Jameson, A Singular Modernity, pp. 100 101. Cf. Daniel Link, “Rubén Darío: la
Sutura de los Mundos” In: Gesine Müller, Jorge J. Locane & Benjamin Loy, eds.,
Re mapping World Literature: Writing, Book Markets and Epistemologies between
Latin America and the Global South (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 81 90; and Alejan
dro Mejías López, The Inverted Conquest: the Myth of Modernity and the Transatlantic
Onset of Modernism (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), pp. 85 124. The first
major work in English to recognize Darío’s precedence was: Matei Calinescu, Five Faces
of Modernity: Modernism, Avant Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2006 [1977]), pp. 69 74.
24
Monica Pimenta Velloso, Modernismo no Rio de Janeiro: Turunas e Quixotes (Rio de
Janeiro: Ed. Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1996), esp. ch.2.
Introduction 11
25
See Rafael Cardoso, “White skins, black masks: Antropofagia and the reversal of primi
tivism”, In: Uwe Fleckner & Elena Tolstichin, eds., Das verirrte Kunstwerk: Bedeutung,
Funktion und Manipulation von Bilderfahrzeugen in der Diaspora (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2019), pp. 131 154.
26
See Nelson Schapochnik, ed., João do Rio: Um dândi na Cafelandia (São Paulo: Boi
tempo, 2004).
12 Modernity in Black and White
and rise of São Paulo, especially after the national capital was moved to
Brasília in 1960. Another important aspect is generational conflict, as
many participants in the Carioca modernism identified by Pimenta
Velloso were, on average, fifteen years older than the paulista modernists.
Last but certainly not least, the comparison between the two movements
is riddled with disparities of race and class.
The construction of a “Paulista Modern” identity, as Barbara
Weinstein has labelled it, was accompanied by an enabling rhetoric of
racial supremacy that posited São Paulo as separate from and superior to
the rest of Brazil.27 Though this antagonism only became patent in 1932 –
with the so-called Constitutionalist Revolution, through which the state
of São Paulo attempted to secede from the federal union – its existence can
be traced back to the 1890s when prominent voices began to affirm the
region as an alternative in racialized terms. Weinstein’s assertions about
how paulista ideals of modernity were inflected by colour is more than
germane to the argument here. Her frank admission of glossing over the
situation in Rio de Janeiro, with the intent of not diluting the thrust of her
book’s argument, should be complemented with an equal acknowledge-
ment that the present book privileges the viewpoint from the Federal
District.28 In that sense, the discussion at hand is also about the difficulties
of imparting a sense of unified nationhood in a country that has long
struggled against centripetal tendencies. The tensions manifested in the
Brazilian case by the contradistinction between Rio and São Paulo might
usefully be compared to those between criollismo and vanguardia that
Beatriz Sarlo identified as the driving force behind modernization in
1920s Buenos Aires.29
The title of the present book proposes a dialogue with Weinstein’s
conception of ‘the colour of modernity’. The idea of a modernity in black
and white refers not only to disparities of race, but also to the tensions
between elite culture and a rising mass culture that found expression in
media like photography, graphics and printed periodicals, traditionally
(though inexactly) classed as ‘black and white art’. The overlap between
exclusions based on race and on class in the Brazilian context makes it
difficult to examine one without taking the other into account. The
27
Barbara Weinstein, The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and
Nation in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), pp. 27 68.
28
Ibid., pp. 14 17.
29
Beatriz Sarlo, Una modernidad periferica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930 (Buenos Aires:
Nueva Visión, 1988), pp. 15 18.
Introduction 13
30
Perhaps the earliest and most explicit formulation of this argument occurred in a
1940 text by American historian Robert C. Smith; see Chapter 5. The endurance of its
premises is exemplified in Jorge Schwartz, Fervor das vanguardas: Arte e literatura na
América Latina (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2013), pp. 30 31, 69 75.
31
See Rafael Cardoso, “The problem of race in Brazilian painting, c.1850 1920”, Art
History, 38 (2015), 488 511; and Roberto Conduru, Pérolas negras, primeiros fios:
Experiências artísticas e culturais nos fluxos entre África e Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Ed.
Uerj, 2013), pp. 301 313.
14 Modernity in Black and White
32
Mário de Andrade [E. A. Goodland, translator], Macunaima (New York: Random
House, 1984), pp. 57 64. See also Bruno Carvalho, Porous City: a Cultural History of
Rio de Janeiro (from the 1810s onwards) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013),
pp. 116 131. Macumba is a generic term for Afro Brazilian religions, used today in a
largely pejorative sense.
33
For more on Péret’s writings on candomblé and macumba, see Chapter 4. On the specific
context, see Roberto Moura, Tia Ciata e a Pequena África no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de
Janeiro: Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro/Bilblioteca Carioca, 1995).
34
Roberto Schwarz, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture (London: Verso, 1992),
pp. 19 32.
35
Esther Gabara, Errant Modernism: the Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 13 15.
Introduction 15
36
On the deeper historical sense of ‘archaism’ in the Brazilian context, see João Fragoso &
Manolo Florentino, O arcaismo como projeto: Mercado atlântico, sociedade agrária e
elite mercantil em uma economia colonial tardia: Rio de Janeiro, c. 1790 1840 (Rio de
Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2001).
37
Florencia Garramuño, Primitive Modernities: Tango, Samba and Nation (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2011), esp. pp. 17 33.
38
Nestor Garcia Canclini, “Modernity after postmodernity”, In: Gerardo Mosquera, ed.,
Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America (London: Insti
tute of International Visual Arts, 1995), pp. 20 23.
16 Modernity in Black and White
39
Mário de Andrade, Aspectos da literatura brasileira (São Paulo: Martins, 1974),
pp. 253 255. See also Rafael Cardoso, “O intelectual conformista: Arte, autonomia e
política no modernismo brasileiro”, O Que Nos Faz Pensar, 26 (2017), 179 201.
40
For a discussion of political modernity, its relationship to Enlightenment thinking and
applicability to non European contexts, see Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe:
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2008), pp. 4 6.
Introduction 17
41
Cf. Adauto Novaes, “Introdução”, In: Enio Squeff & José Miguel Wisnik, O nacional e o
popular na cultura brasileira (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983), pp. 9 11.
42
Benjamin Péret [Samuel Beckett, translator], “Black and white in Brazil”, In: Nancy
Cunard, Negro: Anthology (London: Nancy Cunard at Wishart & Co., 1934),
pp. 510 514.
43
Blaise Cendrars, “Utopialand” & “La voix du sang”, Trop c’est trop, In: Oeuvres
complètes, tome VIII (Paris: Denoël, 1987), pp. 191 193, 235 237. Cendrars’s abiding
interest in Brazil eventually took other avenues through his contacts with artist Oswaldo
Goeldi, who produced a series of illustrations for La vie dangereuse (1938) depicting
diverse aspects of popular culture, including images of maxixe, macumba, and the bandit
Lampião; see Roberto Conduru, “Feitiço gráfico a macumba de Goeldi”, In: Conduru,
Pérolas negras, primeiros fios, pp. 25 35; and Eulalio, A aventura brasileira de Blaise
Cendrars, pp. 504 512.
44
See Aracy A. Amaral, Blaise Cendrars no Brasil e os modernistas (São Paulo:
Ed.34/Fapesp, 1997), pp. 15 20; and Luciano Cortez, “Por ocasião da descoberta do
Brasil: Três modernistas paulistas e um poeta francês no país do ouro”, O Eixo e a Roda,
19 (2010), 15 37. On the enduring repercussions of the 1924 trip, see Renata Campello
18 Modernity in Black and White
the phrase might have been apposite. For the remaining members of the
so-called modernist caravan – Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade,
Tarsila do Amaral, René Thiollier, Olívia Guedes Penteado, Gofredo da
Silva Telles – a visit to the neighbouring state of Minas, travelling in
comfort and welcomed by local authorities, was hardly an encounter with
some remote and unfathomed cultural entity. Excepting Mário, all were
members of the haute bourgeoisie of the great coffee-producing state, one
of the richest places in the world in the 1920s. The notion that they were
uncovering deep archaic truths only reveals how sheltered a life they led in
São Paulo and underscores the cluelessness of their quasi-colonialist
enterprise. That this episode continues to be transmitted, unironically,
as a ‘discovery’ attests to the endurance of social structures that allow
Brazilian elites to live out their lives with little experience of the majority
culture in their own country.
one of many possible critical routes and ignoring other potential read-
ings.46 Three decades on from that evaluation, the accumulation of paths
trodden makes it easier to map the terrain in its entirety.
A fresh look at archival evidence indicates that greater experimentation
and formal innovation were going on in previously neglected arenas of
visual and material culture, such as graphic design, than in the heavily
scrutinized domain of fine art.47 As shall be seen in Chapter 3, illustrated
magazines were producing vibrant expressions of artistic modernism at a
time when most painters and sculptors were engaged in work that was
timid, at best. That such objects managed to reach a mass audience and
impact attitudes and behaviour beyond the restricted circle of Brazilian
elites makes them more interesting, rather than less, from a historical
perspective and raises the troubling question of why scholars have largely
been unwilling to engage with them. Over the decades, students of
modernism in Brazil have tended to focus so intently on erudite forms
of expression that they have conditioned their gaze to exclude all else. The
most telling recent example is a study of the impact of modernism on
periodicals in 1920s Brazil that gives precedence to literary magazines of
avowedly “low popularity and extremely short duration” and excludes,
without further justification, “cultural magazines” such as Kosmos, Fon-
Fon!, O Malho and Para Todos, which its author nonetheless acknow-
ledges reached a broad readership and impacted influential modernist
agents.48 The very currency of the cultural objects is written off, puz-
zlingly, as somehow detracting from their importance.
Such unabashed elitism is nothing new to the cult of 1922 modernism.
The same wilful blindness to the facts at hand can be identified in Mário
de Andrade’s appreciation of popular culture, which he studied under the
rubrics of folklore and ethnomusicology, but without ever giving equal
consideration to its ramifications in the rising urban culture of the day.
The writer compiled a wealth of documentary evidence on rural musical
46
Silviano Santiago, “Calidoscópio de questões”, In: Sete ensaios sobre o modernismo (Rio
de Janeiro: Funarte, 1983), pp. 25 26. See also Eduardo Jardim de Moraes, A brasilidade
modernista: Sua dimensão filosófica (Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 1978).
47
See, among others, Rafael Cardoso, ed., O design brasileiro antes do design: Aspectos da
história gráfica, 1870 1960 (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2005); Julieta Sobral, O desenhista
invisível (Rio de Janeiro: Folha Seca, 2007); and Paula Ramos, A modernidade impressa:
Artistas ilustradores da Livraria do Globo Porto Alegre (Porto Alegre: UFRGS Editora,
2016).
48
Ivan Marques, Modernismo em revista: Estética e ideologia nos periódicos dos anos 1920
(Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Palavra, 2013), pp. 14 16. Cf. Aracy A. Amaral, Artes plásticas
na Semana de 22 (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1970), pp. 27 28.
20 Modernity in Black and White
49
José Miguel Wisnik, “Getúlio da Paixão Cearense”, In: Squeff & Wisnik, O nacional e o
popular na cultura brasileira, pp. 131 133. Cf. Avelino Romero Pereira, Música, socie
dade e política: Alberto Nepomuceno e a República musical (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. UFRJ,
2007), pp. 26 28.
50
Mário de Andrade, Taxi e crônicas no Diário Nacional (São Paulo: Duas Cidades/
Secretaria de Cultura, Ciência e Tecnologia, 1976), p. 254.
51
Leocádio Pereira, “Romanceiro de Lampeão”, In: Mário de Andrade, O baile das quatro
artes, pp. 85 119. For a brief introduction to cordel literature and further references, see
Rafael Cardoso, “Cordel collection”, Getty Research Journal, 9 (2017), 219 225.
Introduction 21
52
Abilio Guerra, O primitivismo em Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade e Raul Bopp:
Origem e conformação no universo intelectual brasileiro (São Paulo: Romano Guerra,
2010), pp. 260 264.
53
Antônio de Alcântara Machado, “Vaca”, Revista de Antropofagia, I, n.6 (October
1928), 1.
54
Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and Postmodernism
(London: Macmillian, 1986), pp. vii ix, 16 18, 56.
22 Modernity in Black and White
55
See Antônio Herculano de Lopes, ed., Entre Europa e África: A invenção do carioca (Rio
de Janeiro: Topbooks/Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 2000).
56
See Hermano Vianna, O mistério do samba (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/Ed.UFRJ,
1995); and Carlos Sandroni, Feitiço decente: Transformações do samba no Rio de
Janeiro, 1917 1933 (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/Ed.UFRJ, 2001).
57
Renato Ortiz, A moderna tradição brasileira (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988), pp. 38 76.
Introduction 23
58
See Beatriz Resende, “A volta de Mademoiselle Cinema”, In: Benjamim Costallat, Made
moiselle Cinema: Novela de costumes do momento que passa (Rio de Janeiro: Casa da
Palavra, 1999 [1923]), pp. 9 27. See also Maite Conde, Consuming Visions: Cinema,
Writing and Modernity in Rio de Janeiro (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2012). On the existence of a mass reading public even earlier, see Alessandra El Far,
Páginas de sensação: Literatura popular e pornografia no Rio de Janeiro (1870 1924)
(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004).
59
See, among others, Micol Seigel, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil
and the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 104 115; and Marc A.
Hertzman, Making Samba: a New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2013), pp. 109 125.
60
See Nicolau Sevcenko, “A capital irradiante: Técnica, ritmos e ritos do Rio”, In: Nicolau
Sevcenko, História da vida privada no Brasil 3. República: da Belle Époque à Era do
Rádio (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998), pp. 513 620. See also Nicolau Sev
cenko, Orfeu extático na metrópole: São Paulo, sociedade e cultura nos frementes anos
20 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992).
24 Modernity in Black and White
By the time of the manhunt for Lampião and the media furore it
provoked between 1930 and 1938, mass culture had undoubtedly galvan-
ized the nation into awareness of its own modernity. Considering the
pervasiveness of cinema, recorded music, graphic arts and their unequivo-
cal relationship to urban conditions and technological change, the
inescapable question is: why has the discussion of modernism in Brazil
been centred almost exclusively on elite arenas of cultural production?
Compared to Lampião’s clever manipulation of the media through
photography and cinema, Oswald de Andrade’s strategies to promote
Antropofagia resemble the antics of a naughty schoolboy. Compared to
the raw power of a carnival parade, Mário de Andrade’s ideas on music
echo the emptiness of the ivory tower. Compared to the boldness of
K. Lixto or J. Carlos, many artworks produced with the declared inten-
tion of being revolutionary appear hopelessly tame. Yet, scholars and
journalists continue to propagate a modernist canon that is somewhat less
than ground-breaking, even by the relatively modest artistic standards set
by those who wrote it.
A point worth stressing before drawing this introduction to a close is
how the prevailing paradigm on artistic modernism has side-lined Afro-
descendant artists. In any other cultural context, a pioneering graphic
artist like K. Lixto would probably be revered as one of the great names of
his day. Instead, he has been largely forgotten. Arguably, that has only
partly to do with race. The equally talented J. Carlos, who was not only
white but blatantly racist, has also been mostly left out of histories of
modern art in Brazil. The difficulty seems to have more to do with the
divide between fine art and graphic art, high and low. Yet, the case of
Arthur Timotheo da Costa, an academically trained painter, gives pause
for thought. Arthur Timotheo died one month before Lima Barreto, in
October 1922, just short of his fortieth birthday, also committed to a
mental asylum.61 The coincidence of their trajectories as talented Afro-
descendant artists condemned to a grim fate is chilling. Timotheo’s extra-
ordinary contributions to Brazilian painting over the years between
1906 and his death remained mostly obscure until the inauguration of
the Museu Afro Brasil, in São Paulo, in 2004. Though he is now recog-
nized as a great Afro-Brazilian artist and a pioneer in the self-
representation of blackness, his work has yet to be reconciled with the
61
Adalberto Pinto de Mattos, “Bellas artes. O pintor que morreu”, O Malho, 14 October
1922, n.p.
Introduction 25
62
Cardoso, “The Problem of Race in Brazilian Painting”, pp. 501 505.
1
I gazed sadly at the houses of Mangue, the side streets of Cidade Nova;
those of Morro da Favela, I could just barely glimpse . . . I thought to myself:
why didn’t they get rid of ‘that’? Was such a repoussoir necessary to set off
the beauty of the so called chic neighbourhoods?
Lima Barreto, 19211
1
LB [Lima Barreto], “O poderoso dr. Matamorros”, Careta, 5 February 1921, n.p.
2
See Teresa A. Meade, ‘Civilizing’ Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City
1889 1930 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
26
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 27
painting to increase the illusion of depth, suggesting that its purpose was
to serve as the obverse of elegance. He was not alone in his apprehension
of the poorer reaches of the city as places of archaic squalor and blight,
fit only to be razed in order to make way for a new and modern Brazil.3
The present chapter will examine how depictions of favelas in writings,
paintings, photographs and cartoons created a foil of alterity and
subalternity against which the modernizing aspirations of Brazil’s elites
could be opposed.
The convoluted nature of this process, shaped by conflicting demands
and hidden tensions, engendered a situation of such complexity that, by
the 1920s, the rise of favelas could be made to bear the blame for no less
than the decline of art. An anonymous commentator in the popular
weekly magazine Fon Fon fumed that journalists lent greater weight to
what he viewed as a spurious alliance between modernity and blackness
than to traditional values of art and literature:
Art is something secondary to the contemporary journalist and those who read
him. Literature, then, elicits nothing from him. Why report on a book when the
horrendous feats of a thick lipped negro from the Favela attract more, much more,
attention from a modern public spoiled by jazz, automobile horns and futurism?4
3
For virulent condemnations of the old colonial city and the wish to erase the past
physically, see “A avenida projectada”, A Avenida, 1 August 1903, 7; and Olavo Bilac,
“Inauguração da avenida” (1905), In: Olavo Bilac, Melhores crônicas (São Paulo: Global,
2005), p. 173. Cf. Marcia Cezar Diogo, “O moderno em revista na cidade do Rio de
Janeiro”, In: Sidney Chalhoub, Margarida de Souza Neves, & Leonardo Affonso de
Miranda Pereira, eds., História em cousas miúdas: Capítulos de história social da crônica
no Brasil (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2005), p. 468.
4
“Commentarios da semana”, Fon Fon, 16 January 1926, 3.
5
See Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2001), esp. ch. 3 &
4; Marcos Chor Maio & Ricardo Ventura Santos, eds., Raça, ciência e sociedade (Rio de
Janeiro: Fiocruz/CCBB, 1996); Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, O espetáculo das raças: Cientistas,
instituições e questão racial no Brasil 1870 1930 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras,
1993); and Roberto Ventura, Estilo tropical: História cultural e polêmicas literárias no
Brasil, 1870 1914 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1991), pp. 46 66.
28 Modernity in Black and White
6
Manoel Bomfim, A América Latina Males de origem (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2005
[1905]). See also Dain Borges, “The recognition of Afro Brazilian symbols and ideas,
1890 1940”, Luso Brazilian Review, 32 (1995), 59 78.
7
Roberto Moura, Tia Ciata e a Pequena África no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria
Municipal de Cultura/Coleção Biblioteca Carioca, 1995), pp. 120 154. See also Bruno
Carvalho, Porous City: a Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro (from the 1810s onwards)
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 1 15.
8
See Octavio Ianni, A idéia de Brasil moderno (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1992), 61. Cf. Vivian
Schelling, ed., Through the Kaleidoscope: the Experience of Modernity in Latin America
(London: Verso, 2000).
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 29
9
John Schulz, The Financial Crisis of Abolition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008),
pp. 8 9 & ch.6; Kris James Mitchener & Marc D. Weidenmier, “The Baring Crisis and
the Great Latin American Meltdown of the 1890s”, Journal of Economic History, 68
(2008), 462 500; Gail D. Triner & Kirsten Wandschneider, “The Baring Crisis and the
Brazilian Encilhamento, 1889 1891: an early example of contagion among emerging
capital markets”, Financial History Review, 12 (2005), 199 225.
10
An introduction to the political situation is available in: Renato Lessa, “A invenção da
República no Brasil: Da aventura à rotina”, In: Maria Alice Rezende de Carvalho, ed.,
República no Catete (Rio de Janeiro: Museu da República, 2001), pp. 11 58.
30 Modernity in Black and White
The second half of the decade was only slightly less turbulent, though. An
attempt to resolve the ongoing financial crisis, via a refunding loan
negotiated with the London-based house of Rothschild, resulted in a
new round of bank failures and bankruptcies after 1898.11
Meanwhile, in the hinterland (sertão) of the state of Bahia, a self-styled
holy man named Antônio Conselheiro began to preach against the
Republic and attracted so many followers that, by 1896, the community
they established at a place called Canudos numbered around 25,000
inhabitants.12 Two detachments sent by the state government to quell
the so-called ‘fanatics’ were rebuffed, in 1896–1897, after which the
federal government took over, dispatching more than a thousand regular
army troops under the command of an officer renowned for his suppres-
sion of rebels in the recent civil war in the south. When this expedition
was likewise defeated by the professedly monarchist conselheiristas, the
tiny rebellion took on national security proportions. A fourth expedition-
ary force, consisting of about 10,000 heavily armed troops, arrived at
Canudos in June 1897. After considerable initial losses, the army finally
crushed all resistance and burned down the settlement in early October.
The barbarity with which they meted out punishment, including brutal
mass executions that raised the death toll to between 20,000 and 30,000,
prompted public concern and undermined confidence in the Republican
regime as a standard-bearer of civilized values.13
This was the political and economic backdrop for life in 1890s Rio de
Janeiro, a city struggling against a reputation as the ‘tomb of foreigners’,
driven by surging rates of tuberculosis, smallpox, malaria and yellow
fever.14 The main sociological factor in this public health crisis was a
shortage of adequate housing. After the abolition of slavery, migrants
11
Gail D. Triner, “British banking in Brazil during the First Republic”, Locus: Revista de
História, 20 (2014), 157 159. See also Schulz, Financial Crisis of Abolition, ch.7 & 8.
12
For more on ideas of sertão and sertanejo, see Chapter 5.
13
See, among others, Robert M. Levine, Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in
Northeastern Brazil, 1893 1897 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006 [1995]).
The trauma of Canudos inspired one of the great documents of twentieth century Brazil
ian literature: Euclides da Cunha [Samuel Putnam, translator], Rebellion in the Backlands
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010 [1902]).
14
Despite the pithy epithet, proportionally fewer non Brazilians perished than the city’s
urban poor, who were the population most at risk. See Sidney Chalhoub, “The politics of
disease control: Yellow fever and race in nineteenth century Rio de Janeiro”, Journal of
Latin American Studies, 25 (1993), 441 463; and Thales Augusto Zamberlan Pereira,
“Mortalidade entre brancos e negros no Rio de Janeiro após a abolição”, Estudos
Econômicos, 46 (2016), 439 469. See also Carvalho, Porous City, ch.1.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 31
from rural areas began to stream into the capital, adding to the rising tide
of immigrants from Europe, especially Portugal. According to the 1890
census, approximately 20 per cent of the city’s residents consisted of
Portuguese immigrants. Between 1890 and 1900, the population of Rio
swelled from about half a million to just over 800,000 – a growth rate of
over 55 per cent in one decade – with a severe imbalance between males
and females.15 Inadequate housing and underinvestment in waste and
sewage treatment meant poor sanitary conditions. Local authorities
became convinced that the way to combat the problem was to stamp
out the multi-family lodging houses, called cortiços, in which much of the
poorer population lived. From the early 1890s onwards, the municipal
government began to implement a policy of demolishing tenements and
ejecting their inhabitants onto the streets, often with tragic consequences
in terms of social unrest.16
15
See Lilian Fessler Vaz, Modernidade e moradia: Habitação coletiva no Rio de Janeiro,
séculos XIX e XX (Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras/Faperj, 2002), pp. 26 27; and Sidney Chal
houb, Trabalho, lar e botequim: O cotidiano dos trabalhadores no Rio de Janeiro da
Belle Époque (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2001 [1986]), pp. 42 50.
16
Fessler Vaz, Modernidade e moradia, pp. 32 36; José Murilo de Carvalho, Os bestiali
zados: O Rio de Janeiro e a República que não foi (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras,
1987), ch.1; and Sidney Chalhoub, Cidade febril: Cortiços e epidemia na Corte imperial
(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996), ch.1. For an English language account, see
Brodwyn Fischer, A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth Century
Rio de Janeiro (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 19 49.
17
Maurício de Almeida Abreu & Lilian Fessler Vaz, “Sobre as origens da favela”, Anais do
IV Encontro Nacional da ANPUR, 4 (1991), 481 492; Maurício de Almeida Abreu,
“Reconstruindo uma história esquecida: Origem e expansão das favelas no Rio de
Janeiro”, Espaço & Debates, 37 (1994), 34 46; Lilian Fessler Vaz, “Dos cortiços às
favelas e aos edifícios de apartamentos a modernização da moradia no Rio de Janeiro”,
Análise Social, 29 (1994), 590 592.
32 Modernity in Black and White
18
Aluizio Azevedo [David Rosenthal, translator], The Slum (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000).
19
Fischer, A Poverty of Rights, pp. 32 34; Richard Negreiros de Paula, “Semente de favela:
Jornalistas e o espaço urbano da Capital Federal nos primeiros anos da República o
caso do Cabeça de Porco”, Cantareira, 2 (2004), 1 23; Lilian Fessler Vaz, “Notas sobre o
Cabeça de Porco”, Revista do Rio de Janeiro, 1 (1986), 33.
20
Abreu, “Reconstruindo uma história esquecida”, 36; and Fessler Vaz, Modernidade e
moradia, p. 55.
21
The painting dates from Visconti’s period as a student in the Escola Nacional de Belas
Artes and is certainly prior to 1893, when he went to study in Paris. The title may have
been added later. See Mirian Nogueira Seraphim, “A carreira artística”, In: Tobias
Stourdzé Visconti, ed., Eliseu Visconti: A arte em movimento (Rio de Janeiro: Hólos
Consultores/Projeto Eliseu Visconti, 2012), pp. 64 140.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 33
. Eliseu Visconti, Uma Rua da Favela, circa 1890, oil on canvas, 72
41 cm. For color version of this figure, please refer color plate section.
Brasília: collection of Tatiana and Afrisio Vieira Lima
is thus denied the crucial information of whether they are bare or shod.
That would be a significant detail to the contemporary viewer since, in
nineteenth-century Brazil, slaves were not allowed to wear shoes. A large
area of shadow occupies the bottom left-hand corner of the composition.
The length of rounded shapes along its right edge suggests roofing tiles on
the cornice of a taller house. The woman is standing almost in the shadow
of a sobrado, the typical two-story dwelling inhabited by families with
proper housing. Visconti’s pioneering depiction encapsulates the early
history of the favela, casting a critical eye upon the plight of the black
population recently delivered from slavery only to be flung out cruelly
into a society that provided neither land nor opportunity.22
22
This critique was most prominently voiced, at the time, in the writings of engineer André
Rebouças advocating land, work and education for the newly freed. See Martha
V. Santos Menezes, “A utopia agrária e democrática de André Rebouças”, Revista Três
34 Modernity in Black and White
Pontos, 5 (2008), 131 140; and also Inoã Pierre Carvalho Urbinati, Idéias e projetos de
reforma agrária no final do Império (1871 1889): Uma análise do seu sentido político e
social (unpublished MA thesis, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2008), ch.1.
23
References to the heights of Favela, from which vantage point Canudos was bombarded,
are common in press coverage of the military campaign during 1897. Exactly when the
term began to be used as a designation for Morro da Providência is uncertain. In 1901,
there is a mention of an “arraial da Favela” connecting to Morro da Providência via
Ladeira dos Melões; see “Morro da Providência”, Gazeta de Notícias, 10 May 1901, 2.
24
Licia do Prado Valladares, A invenção da favela: Do mito de origem à favela.com (Rio de
Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 2005), pp. 28 36. See also Romulo Costa Mattos,
“Militares de baixa patente na Primeira República: Os primeiros moradores das favelas
cariocas?”, Anais do XXVI Simpósio Nacional de História ANPUH (2011), 1 15.
25
Abreu, “Reconstruindo uma história esquecida”, 42. After favela became a generic
appellation, and a pejorative one at that, the original Morro da Favela reverted to its
earlier name, Morro da Providência, which it retains to this day. For more on this
ongoing history, see Brodwyn Fischer, “A century in the present tense: Crisis, politics,
and the intellectual history of Brazil’s informal cities”, In: Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan
McCann & Javier Ayuero, eds., Cities from Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Latin
America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), pp. 9 67; and Alba Zaluar & Marcos
Alvito, Um século de favela (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 2006).
26
See Romulo Costa Mattos, “Heavenly heights, or reign of the dangerous classes? F. T.
Marinetti’s visit to the Morro da Favela (1926)”, In: Marina Aguirre, Rosa Sarabia,
Renée M. Silverman & Ricardo Vasconcelos, eds., International Yearbook of Futurism
Studies, 7 (2017), pp. 288 306. See also Romulo Costa Mattos, “Shantytown dwellers’
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 35
resistance in Brazil’s First Republic (1890 1930): Fighting for the right of the poor to
reside in the city of Rio de Janeiro”, International Labor and Working Class History, 83
(2013), 54 69; and Andrelino Campos, Do quilombo à favela: A produção do “espaço
criminalizado” no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2005).
27
“Na Favella. Trecho inédito do Rio”, Gazeta de Notícias, 21 May 1903, 1 2. In 2015,
the newspaper O Globo reprinted this text and attributed it to João do Rio, based on
stylistic grounds, but this attribution is by no means certain. It is not included in the
volume of the author’s 1903 1904 chronicles written for the Gazeta de Notícias, edited
by Julia O’Donnell & Lara Jogaib; see João do Rio, A cidade (Rio de Janeiro: Contra
Capa/Faperj, 2017).
28
“Na Favella”, 1.
29
Nicolau Sevcenko, “Peregrinations, visions and the city: from Canudos to Brasília, the
backlands become the city and the city becomes the backlands”, In: Schelling, Through
the Kaleidoscope, pp. 78 98.
30
See Rafael Cardoso, “Do Valongo à Favela: A primeira periferia do Brasil”, In: Clarissa
Diniz & Rafael Cardoso, eds., Do Valongo à Favela: Imaginário e periferia (Rio de
Janeiro: Museu de Arte do Rio/Instituto Odeon, 2015), pp. 12 35.
36 Modernity in Black and White
shunned activities including not only the commerce of humans, but also
cemeteries, a prison, a hospital for contagious diseases, as well as illicit
pursuits related to the port, including prostitution.31 In many ways, it was
the dingy, dirty counterpart of the formal urban centre clustered around
Morro do Castelo and Largo do Paço (today, Praça XV de Novembro),
where the city had its origin and government. After Rio de Janeiro was
elevated to colonial capital in 1763 and, even more importantly, to seat of
the Portuguese empire in 1808, rapid growth ensued, and new districts
were incorporated to the city. The area corresponding to the present-day
neighbourhoods of Saúde and Gamboa – encompassing Morro da Provi-
dência – was relegated to purposes considered undesirable in the city
centre. By the early twentieth century, this region was widely perceived
as dangerous and infested with crime and vice. It became a focus for
rebellion and played a dramatic role in the Vaccine Revolt of 1904, the
largest popular uprising in the history of Rio de Janeiro.32
One of the first texts to give favelas serious consideration was part of a
series of reportages by engineer Everardo Backheuser titled “Where the
poor live”, published in Renascença magazine in 1905, complete with
photographs and even floor plans. Backheuser describes the Favela as
“a thriving village of shacks and shanties in the very heart of the capital of
the Republic, eloquently affirming by its mute contrast with the Great
Avenue, a few steps away, what is the rest of Brazil in its millions of
square kilometres”.33 The engineer was among the earliest to describe the
favela as a separate enclave within the city and to consider it a vestige of
31
Nina Rabha coined the term “usos sujos” [dirty uses] to refer to the territorial segregation
that marked the urban development of the colonial city and relegated undesirable
activities to the port area. See Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro & Nina Maria de
Carvalho Elias Rabha, Porto do Rio de Janeiro: Construindo a modernidade (Rio de
Janeiro: Andrea Jakobsson, 2004).
32
On the Vaccine Revolt, see Nicolau Sevcenko, A Revolta da Vacina: Mentes insanas em
corpos rebeldes (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2010 [1984]); Jane Santucci, Cidade rebelde: As
revoltas populares no Rio de Janeiro no início do século XX (Rio de Janeiro: Casa da
Palavra, 2008); and Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, As barricadas da Saúde:
Vacina e protesto popular no Rio de Janeiro da Primeira República (São Paulo: Fundação
Perseu Abramo, 2002). In English, see Jeffrey D. Needell, “The Revolta Contra Vacina of
1904: the revolt against modernization in belle époque Rio de Janeiro”, The Hispanic
American Historical Review, 67 (1987), 233 269.
33
Everardo Backheuser, “Onde moram os pobres”, Renascença, March 1905, 92. Back
heuser worked as a consultant on workers’ housing for the Ministry of Justice and
Interior Affairs and produced the first detailed report on their living conditions in
1906; see Abreu, “Reconstruindo uma história esquecida”, 37; and Prado Valladares,
A invenção da favela, pp. 36 39. He was also a contemporary of Lima Barreto during
their mutual studies at the Escola Politécnica.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 37
34
These reforms included a refurbishment of the port as well as the opening of avenues and
widening of streets. See, among others, Jaime Larry Benchimol, Pereira Passos, um
Haussmann tropical: A renovação urbana da cidade do Rio de Janeiro no início do
século XX (Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura /Biblioteca Carioca, 1992);
and Augusto Ivan Pinheiro de Freitas, Rio de Janeiro: Cinco séculos de história e
transformações urbanas (Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Palavra, 2008). In English, see Meade,
“Civilizing” Rio, ch. 3; and Carvalho, Porous City, pp. 75 83.
35
Cesare Lombroso’s ideas on criminal anthropology were influential in Brazil, at the time;
see Marcos César Alvarez, “A criminologia no Brasil ou como tratar desigualmente os
desiguais”, Dados, 45 (2002), 677 704. Purportedly scientific notions about the physi
ognomy of criminals filtered out to a wider audience through the writings of Elysio de
Carvalho; see Diego Galeano & Marília Rodrigues de Oliveira, “Uma história da
38 Modernity in Black and White
eyes, protruding ears and broad rounded nose are all characteristic of
what would then be taken by readers as a criminal type. The huge gaping
mouth – in which the letters of the word favella stand in for crooked
teeth – is especially effective in conjuring a mean and mongrel appear-
ance, in stark contrast to the well-groomed Cruz.
The prevailing conception of favelas, over the first decades of their
existence, was as blight or scourge. They were an evil to be combated
through aggressive intervention, like the problems of crime and disease to
which they were routinely associated; and the designated agents for the
task were engineers, doctors and the police. However, the official threat to
clear the Favela and summarily evict its residents seems to have been a
tipping point in public perceptions. A little over a week after the above
cartoon was published, the illustrated weekly Revista da Semana featured
eight photographic views of Morro da Favela, including one showing a
large group of residents, all orderly and respectably dressed, posing in
História natural dos malfeitores”, In: Elísio de Carvalho, Escritos policiais (Rio de
Janeiro: Contracapa/Faperj, 2017), pp. 15 27.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 39
dejection next to reporters from the magazine (Fig. 3).36 In this image,
favela dwellers are given a human face, and, unusually for the press
coverage of the time, it was not a headshot of a criminal. A few pages
later, a column expressed outrage at the prospect of turning thousands of
families out onto the street, suggesting that the government should instead
dislodge “the one hundred or so idlers who reap while doing nothing in
the lugubrious and foul place that is the house of Congress”.37
Revista da Semana was a Sunday supplement to the popular daily
newspaper Jornal do Brasil, much read among the middle and even lower
classes of Rio. It was certainly not averse to sensationalist coverage of
crime and often featured stories about violence on Morro da Favela,
complete with photographs of victims and perpetrators, even dead ones.
The fact that it was widely read lent additional political weight to its
criticism. In the following issue, the magazine hit back hard against the
36
“Rio de Janeiro diversos pontos do Morro da Favella, por occasião da visita do
representante do Jornal do Brasil”, 16 June 1907, 4839 4840. Further examples of
photographic depictions of favela dwellers as ordinary people can be found in: Careta,
21 December 1912, n.p.
37
“Chroniqueta”, Revista da Semana, 16 June 1907, 4843.
40 Modernity in Black and White
38
Revista da Semana, 23 June 1907.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 41
39
João do Rio, “A cidade do Morro de Santo Antonio. Impressão nocturna”, Gazeta de
Notícias, 5 November 1908, 1. This text was later republished as “Os livres acampa
mentos da miséria” in the volume of collected essays, Vida Vertiginosa (1911).
40
João do Rio [Anna Lessa Schmidt, translator], Religions in Rio (Hanover, CT: New
London Librarium, 2015). On these reportages and the author’s career at the Gazeta
de Notícias, see João Carlos Rodrigues, João do Rio: Vida, paixão e obra (Rio de Janeiro:
Civilização Brasileira, 2010), pp. 50 57, 139 150; and Julia O’Donnell, “A Cidade em
construção”, In: João do Rio, A Cidade, pp. 13 29. In English, see Carvalho, Porous
City, pp. 83 91.
42 Modernity in Black and White
I then saw that they were ducking into a sort of passageway concealed by high
grass and some trees. I followed them and came out into another world. The lights
had disappeared. We were in the countryside, the back country [sertão], far from
the city. The path, winding in descent, was at times narrow, at times wide, but full
of craters and holes. On either side, narrow houses made of boards from crates,
with enclosures suggesting backyards.41
41
João do Rio, “A cidade do Morro de Santo Antonio”, 1.
42
“Premios conferidos pelos jurys da Exposição Geral de Bellas Artes”, Correio da Manhã,
14 September 1913, 7; “Artes e artistas”, O Paiz, 14 September 1913, 2.
43
LF, “O Salão de 1913 (VI)”, O Paiz, 3.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 43
style and emphasis on narrative genre, it is likely that the jury’s interest
was sparked by the novelty of the theme the painter chose to portray.44
There are few depictions of favela themes in Brazilian art before the
1920s, which makes the presence of Dall’Ara’s paintings in the 1913 Salon
all the more intriguing.45 Tarefa Pesada: Favela (Heavy Chore) (Fig. 5)
provides an early representation of one of the enduring clichés of favela
life: women carrying cans of water on their head.46 The background sets
the scene on a hillside, with tropical vegetation and similar visual markers
to the painting by Visconti. In the middle ground stands a ramshackle
house built of wattle and daub (pau-a-pique), old roofing tiles and other
discarded materials. A small figure, possibly a child, sits on the ground
next to it. On the right, white washing hangs out to dry on a clothesline.
Two women approach the gate carrying cans of water on their heads. On
the left, another woman sets washing out on the ground to bleach in the
sun, a wash-basin at her side. In the foreground, a lone woman carrying a
can of water stops to rest, left hand poised on her hip and posture slightly
stooped. Her expression is downcast and weary, though her facial fea-
tures remain less than distinct because of the shadow cast by the strong
sunlight. Next to her, a small dog sniffs along the ground. Refuse – an old
can, a rusty hoop, a piece of metal sheeting – is scattered at their feet. The
image is of hard work, as the title suggests, far removed from the tropes of
idleness and vice that prevailed in journalistic accounts of the time.
Dall’Ara’s other painting, Ronda da Favela (The Favela Patrol)
(Fig. 6), is even more remarkable in its portrayal of favela dwellers as
victims rather than perpetrators. The far background shows a hillside and
a mountain chain in the distance. In the nearer background, traffic can be
seen circulating along a sunlit street bordering a wall, behind which the
chimneys and smoke of trains can just be glimpsed. On the other side of
the tracks, well-built houses stand regularly aligned. For an audience
familiar with the geography of Rio de Janeiro, the location is clear. The
viewer’s standpoint is situated just behind the central train station, at the
foot of Morro da Providência, looking south. The outcrop of rocks and
44
Ten years later, in his obituaries, the painting is singled out as one of Dall’Ara’s most
important; Escragnolle Doria, “O pintor da cidade”, Revista da Semana, 15 September
1923, n.p.; and “Dall’Ara”, Fon Fon, 15 September 1923, n.p.
45
The 1913 Salon was exceptional in many ways, as discussed further in Chapter 2.
46
This became a stock image by the 1930s and was turned into a musical cliché in 1952 in
the carnival marchinha “Lata d’água na cabeça”, composed by Luís Antônio and Jota
Júnior, and sung by Marlene; see José Ramos Tinhorão, A música popular no romance
brasileiro. Vol. III: Sec. XX (2ª parte) (São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2002), pp. 354 355.
44 Modernity in Black and White
. Gustavo Dall’Ara, Tarefa Pesada: Favela, 1913, oil on canvas, 120.4 90 cm
Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional de Belas Artes/Ibram (photo: Museu Nacional de Belas
Artes/Ibram)
scrub, on the left, with the ubiquitous washing hung out to dry and laid
out to bleach, is the visual signifier of the favela’s proximity. As in Heavy
Chore, the foreground is emptied of major incident. A fallen branch,
potholes in the cobbled street filled with puddled water, a hen leading a
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 45
brood of chicks along the broken pavement. Signs of neglect and a lack of
modern amenities, contrasting with the streetlamp and utility poles visible
in the sunny zone.
In the centre of the middle ground, two mounted policemen advance
into the space of the composition, moving from the favela towards the
centre of the city. The painter has depicted them strategically at the
threshold between a zone of shadow that takes up the foreground and
most of the right-hand side and a zone of intense sunlight that bathes the
rest of the picture. Due to this careful positioning, the horses’ legs and
hooves are in the shade but the bodies of the policemen are thrust up into
the sunny area. The mounted figures partake of both worlds: shadow and
light. Otherwise, there is a rigid spatial division. The background figures,
along the sunny street, are properly attired in the fashion of the day. The
four figures in the area of shadow – two women and two children – are
more shabbily dressed, hatless and, in the case of one child, even naked.
46 Modernity in Black and White
The meaning of the picture is given by the woman in the dark skirt who
approaches the viewer, carrying a small parcel in her right hand. She casts
an uneasy glance at the two policemen who do not appear to return the
gaze. Dall’Ara’s painting captures the relationship of mutual suspicion
between police and Rio’s poor residents that exists to this day. The
policemen are there to patrol the shadowy world of the favela and keep
it from spilling over into the sunny mainstream. The work is exceptional
in the subtlety with which it evokes the favela without recourse to the
visual tropes that have become stereotypes since that time. Not a shack or
shanty in sight, nor a water can. It also stands out from more usual
representations by placing the viewer within the space of the favela,
looking out.47 The policemen’s backs are turned to us. The faces we do
see, and with which we are meant to identify, belong to the denizens of the
neglected margin of the composition. Both paintings by Dall’Ara further
partake of a telling precedent: neither depicts male favela residents, only
women and children.
47
Dall’Ara lived nearby, in Rua da América, one of the streets most impacted by the growth
of Morro da Favela; see Escragnolle Doria, “O pintor da cidade”.
48
See, among others, “No Morro da Favela”, Revista da Semana, 23 June 1907, 4874;
“Cantata na Cidade Nova”, O Malho, 22 June 1907, n.p.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 47
49
Nataraj Trinta, “O Rio maldito de Augusto Malta”, In: Diniz & Cardoso, Do Valongo à
Favela, pp. 80 101. On other early photographs of favelas, see Cláudia de Oliveira,
“A iconografia do moderno: A representação da vida urbana”, In: Cláudia Oliveira,
Monica Pimenta Velloso & Vera Lins, O moderno em revistas: Representações do Rio de
Janeiro de 1890 a 1930 (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2010), pp. 162 165, 170 175.
50
The painting was featured under the alternate title Brazilian Village in: Robert C. Smith,
“Lasar Segall of São Paulo”, Bulletin of the Pan American Union, 74 (1940), 383.
48 Modernity in Black and White
in contrast not only to Malta’s photographs but also to the social concern
of older works like those by Visconti and Dall’Ara.51
Tarsila’s Morro da Favela was painted in the same year as the publica-
tion of Oswald de Andrade’s “Manifesto of Brazilwood Poetry”.52 The
image of the favela it depicts is strikingly analogous to that evoked in
the manifesto’s opening lines: “Poetry exists in facts. The saffron and
ochre shanties on the green slopes of Favela, under the Cabralian blue, are
51
Arthur Timotheo da Costa produced a painting in 1919 depicting Morro da Favela. Its
composition foregrounds a couple of shacks, on the right, and washing left out to bleach
in the sun, on the left, against an outcrop of rock in the background and a cloudless sky.
The palette, dominated by blue, yellow, pink and white, is light and airy. There are no
figures or incident. This little known painting is presently in a private collection in Rio de
Janeiro. There is no conclusive indication whether it is a study or a finished work.
52
For more on the relationship between Tarsila, Oswald and Antropofagia, see Chapter 4.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 49
aesthetic facts.”53 To saffron and ochre, green and blue, the painter added
judicious daubs of pink and red, yellow and white . . . plus, a dog, a rare
bird, an exotic cactus, a tunnel (that really does exist), a clothes-line and a
smattering of tiny black figures. With its colourful palette and naïf treat-
ment, Tarsila’s composition provides a distinctively upbeat representation
of favela life – one at odds both with the prevalent view of crime and
danger, on the one hand, and with a critique of social injustice, on the
other. Its pursuit of decorative effect begs numerous questions about what
we might today consider an aestheticization or romanticizing of poverty.
Blinkered by their interest in aesthetic facts, Tarsila and Oswald seem
to have been unable to apprehend that the favela was an actual place
where people live. This flippant attitude is explained by social and geo-
graphical circumstances. Both were inordinately wealthy, came from São
Paulo and were more familiar with the streets of Paris, where Tarsila lived
at the time, than Rio de Janeiro. Their mutual interest in the favela was
driven by a sort of primitivism in reverse in which they played up
their links to subaltern identities in Brazil in order to make themselves
more interesting in Parisian artistic circles and thereby more consum-
mately modern.54 Despite Oswald’s nominal appeal to facts, even aes-
thetic ones, the favela depicted in the dialogue between their works is
more pictorial motif and literary device than anything remotely linked to
the concerns of real life.
Given that there was no automatic correlation, at the time, between
favelas and Afro-Brazilian culture, it is worth pondering why Tarsila
chose to represent all the figures in her Morro da Favela as black. The
most prominent one – a rotund woman with a blue skirt, white top and
red headscarf – is analogous to a similar figure in another painting of the
same year, Carnival in Madureira (1924), standing directly under a
colourful Eiffel Tower.55 Tarsila’s repeated recourse to such faceless
effigies would seem to hark back to the use of black figures in
53
Oswald de Andrade, Do Pau Brasil à antropofagia e às utopias (Obras completas de
Oswald de Andrade) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1970), p. 5.
54
See Cardoso, “White skins, black masks”, pp. 131 154.
55
A replica Eiffel Tower was actually erected in the working class district of Madureira
during the carnival festivities of 1924; see Felipe Ferreira & Roberto Conduru, “Carnaval
à Madureira: Modernisme et fête populaire au Brésil”, In: Samba etc.: Carnaval du Brésil
(Binche: Musée International du Carnaval et du Masque, 2011), pp. 65 68. Cf. Rafael
Sento Sé, “Torre Eiffel de Madureira: Instituto do Irajá desvenda mistério”, Veja Rio,
25 February 2017. See also Michele Greet, Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American
Artists in Paris between the Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), ch.6.
50 Modernity in Black and White
56
Oswald de Andrade, “L’effort intellectuel du Brésil contemporain”, Revue de l’Amérique
Latine, 2 (1923), 197 207. See also Alejandro de la Fuente & Rafael Cardoso, “Race and
the Latin American Avant gardes, 1920s 1930s”, In: David Bindman & Alejandro de la
Fuente, eds., The Image of the Black in Latin America and the Caribbean (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming, 2021).
57
See, for example, João da Cidade, “Um sorriso para todas. . .”, Careta, 5 June 1926, n.p.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 51
58
“Na cidade da multidão turbulenta e soffredora”, Correio da Manhã, 22 July 1923, 3.
Cf. Abreu, “Reconstruindo uma história esquecida: Origem e expansão das favelas no
Rio de Janeiro”, 46. Bambambã, or bambambam, is a still current colloquialism for a
powerful or important person (roughly akin to ‘top cat’), but was also used at the time to
refer to a hoodlum or tough. It is a variant of bamba, but higher up in the hierarchy. The
expression was popularized by the book: Orestes Barbosa, Bambambã! (Rio de Janeiro:
Secretaria Municipal de Cultura/Biblioteca Carioca, 1993 [1922]).
59
“Na cidade da multidão turbulenta e soffredora”, 3. For more on cangaço, see Chapter 5.
60
Ibid.
61
See Rafael Cardoso, “Ambivalências políticas de um perfeito modernista: Di Cavalcanti e
a arte social”, In: José Augusto Ribeiro, ed., No subúrbio da modernidade Di Caval
canti 120 anos (São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 2017), pp. 41 53.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 53
62
“Doces aspirações”, Fon Fon!, 16 December 1911, n.p.
54 Modernity in Black and White
63
See Rafael Cardoso, “O moderno e o arcaico em J. Carlos”, In: Cássio Loredano, Julia
Kovensky & Paulo Roberto Pires, eds., J. Carlos: Originais (São Paulo: Instituto Moreira
Salles, 2019), pp. 178 187.
64
“Aristocracia de sabbado”, Careta, 9 January 1915, n.p.; and “Quem é pobre também
véve”, Careta, 3 April 1920, n.p.
56 Modernity in Black and White
65
“Nunca mais”, O Malho, 23 July 1927, n.p. Cf. “Na Favella”, D. Quixote, 5 March
1924, n.p.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 57
66
See “Looping the loop”, Careta, 4 August 1923, s.p, on the trope of Argentinian tourists
taking home photographs of the favela. The favela’s potential as an embarrassment in
comparisons with Buenos Aires is taken up in LB [Lima Barreto], “Leitura de jornaes”,
Careta, 19 March 1921, n.p.
67
Rômulo Costa Mattos, “‘Reino do céu’ ou território das ‘classes perigosas’?: O Morro da
Favela no contexto da visita de Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1926)”, In: Diniz &
Cardoso, Do Valongo à Favela, pp. 39 40. See also Orlando de Barros, O pai do
futurismo no país do futuro: As viagens de Marinetti ao Brasil em 1926 e 1936 (Rio de
Janeiro: E papers, 2010), pp. 52 68.
58 Modernity in Black and White
68
“Marinetti e a Favela”, Fon Fon, 29 May 1926, 58. See also “Uma caravana do papa
mitrado do futurismo na Favella”, Correio da Manhã, 19 May 1926, 3, 5, which closely
details the tour, pointing out that the community was sound asleep, secured by a curfew
imposed by local gangs.
69
“Futura. . . acção”, Careta, 29 May 1926, 29.
70
This was the Sociedade Sujos e Limpos, run by community leader José da Barra, who was
rudely awakened by Marinetti and friends after midnight; see “Uma caravana do papa
mitrado do futurismo na Favella”, 3; and Costa Mattos, “‘Reino do céu’ ou território das
‘classes perigosas’?”, p. 50.
60 Modernity in Black and White
back, like a hunter proudly posing with the game he has bagged. The two
local guides, standing to his immediate right, appear distinctly less com-
fortable with their role as trophies. The prominent Brazilian companions –
among whom Assis Chateaubriand, Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco,
Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade – mostly look bored or uncomfortable.
Only the two policemen appear alert. The following week, Careta
returned to the topic, commenting sarcastically on the bad influence
exerted on “our modern, overly complicated poets” by Marinetti,
“who, thank God, has already gone”.71
On the same date that Careta compared Marinetti to an olive oil
salesman, competing weekly O Malho dedicated its cover to his visit
[Fig. 14]. Illustrated by J. Carlos, it depicts the futurist leader standing,
arms crossed, contemplating the sky, like a colossus atop Morro da
Favela. At the foot of the page, three grotesquely caricatured black
residents – two men and a woman – discuss the matter. Again, the
dialogue between them is written in a style mimicking the broken speech
of the poor and uneducated:
It’s that Marinetti so and so.
Police?
No, scout [‘gaforinha’]. He’s come to examine the routes to lay down motor
cars, railroads, electric trams; porgress, porgress.72
The middle character bends in close to catch the speaker’s whisper, eyes
closed, lighting his cigarette with a match. The ink-black woman on the
right, with a red bandanna on her head, bulges her eyes and lets her
mouth hang open, astonished at what she sees and hears. The disparity
71
“Um sorriso para todos”, Careta, 5 June 1926, 16. Marinetti’s arrival was preceded by
extensive discussion of futurism in the press. The term was loosely employed, often
misinterpreted and misapplied, and became a sort of catch all for anything modern or
transgressive. It recurs in cinema advertisements as a form of hype for films as diverse as
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and an Esther Ralston picture suggestively titled A epidemia
do jazz in Portuguese. Journalists were well aware that Marinetti’s brand of futurism was
passé in the artistic centres of Europe; see, for example, Luiz, “Para ler no bonde.
Futurismo”, Correio da Manhã, 13 May 1926, 2. For an overview of the tensions
surrounding the term futurism and Marinetti’s visit, see Annateresa Fabris,
O futurismo paulista: Hipóteses para o estudo da chegada da vanguarda no Brasil (São
Paulo: Perspectiva, 1994), pp. 219 236.
72
“Favella!”, O Malho, 29 May 1926, cover. The precise meaning of the term gaforinha
here has been lost. The use of quotation marks indicates it was a colloquialism or slang;
and the context makes clear that it refers to Marinetti’s role as some sort of spy or scout
for the purported road and transportation works. The literal meaning of the term
gaforinha is quiff or forelock, and it possesses mildly racial undertones; see Chapter 3.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 61
his head. Though Marinetti is clearly ridiculed by the cartoon, its deroga-
tory portrayal of the residents also provokes uneasiness in Brazilian
viewers – a disquiet graphically captured in the exclamatory nature of
the title, “FAVELLA!”. Both culturally and pictorially, readers would
have found themselves nearer to the trio in the foreground than to the
lofty Italian poet, whose bizarre stance was all but incomprehensible. His
absurdity must have irked the sensibilities of a public baffled by the
interest of a representative of European high culture in something most
Brazilians considered the lowest of the low.73
The discomfiture occasioned by Marinetti’s bout of slumming is intri-
guing. Echoes of the episode continued to well up in the press throughout
the following months and well into 1927. The magazine D. Quixote ran a
cartoon, previously published in the São Paulo newspaper Folha da
Noite, in which a white-suited Marinetti, presides over shacks, dog, goat,
ducks and a pigsty and exclaims: “Oh, how sublime! How enchanting!
What a marvellous place to write a poem.”74 In that image, a companion
in a dark suit holds his nose and clasps his belly, while a group of white
intellectuals look on in bemusement and assorted black residents in
bewilderment. A black male figure also appears, with cocked hat and a
knife in his belt, a stereotype of the bamba. Informed opinions were
divided between those embarrassed that a distinguished foreigner should
be shown an aspect of the city most elite citizens preferred to hide and a
few who championed the favela as a symbol of deepest Brazil. Recurring
discursive structures already linked favelas to imagined tropes of the
sertão, and the capital was in thrall to a vogue for all things sertanejo in
the 1920s and 1930s. The coverage generated by Marinetti’s visit thrust
the favela into the epicentre of debates about what could be considered
authentic or typical of a supposed ‘real’ Brazil.
With the new interest evinced by artists and intellectuals, especially a
celebrity like Marinetti, some observers became alarmed that favelas
might be glamourized. Augusto de Mattos Pimenta, a physician by
73
Cf. I. Grego, “Belleza condicional”, Careta, 25 June 1927, 12, which comments that no
beauty is more conditional than “the futurist beauty of the Favella”. Further in the same
issue of O Malho, another cartoon by Fritz shows two ragged figures, towering over a
minute favela, engaged in conversation. One bends in and whispers to the other that
“This man of futurism understands nothing. He really came after some sort of
macumba.”; O Malho, 29 May 1926, 25.
74
Romulo Costa Mattos, “A Brazilian cartoon about Marinetti’s visit to a favela in 1926”,
In: Aguirre, Sarabia, Silverman & Vasconcelos, eds., International Yearbook of Futurism
Studies (2017), pp. 384 387.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 63
training, member of the Rotary Club, active in the real estate and con-
struction sectors, led a concerted campaign over late 1926 and 1927 to
combat this threat, lecturing, publishing articles in various newspapers
and even producing a short film that was probably the first to document a
favela in moving images.75 Alongside the usual concerns with hygiene and
crime, Mattos Pimenta took pains to couch his critique in aesthetic terms
too, as evidenced in a lecture delivered at a Rotary Club luncheon and
reprinted in the newspaper Correio da Manhã:
Gentlemen, deplorable and incomprehensible, pernicious and dangerous, is the
habit some of our intellectuals have acquired of glorifying the favelas through
some unfathomable perversion of taste, discovering poetry and beauty in these
agglomerations triply abject as anti aesthetic, anti social and anti hygienic.
Ridiculous and revolting is the tendency ever more pronounced among us, incited
by certain bohemian spirits, of accepting favelas as a characteristic of ours, a
happy and interesting institution, worthy of being bequeathed to coming gener
ations as a national tradition.
No. To those extravagant intellectuals who make excuses for ruffianism
[malandragem] and filth, who would exalt swindles and squalor, who celebrate
the quarters of slavery [senzalas] and stench, and proclaim that this is Brazilian,
that this is Carioca, we shall oppose the voice of common sense, the incorruptible
rules of true Art, the legitimate precepts of true Science, saving from futurist
demolition this masterpiece of nature that is Rio de Janeiro.76
75
Prado Valladares, A invenção da favela, pp. 41 45. See also Américo Freire & Lucia
Lippi Oliveira, eds., Novas memórias do urbanismo carioca (Rio de Janeiro: FGV
Editora, 2008), pp. 172 174. The contents of the film are partially described in Jacintho,
“Poeira das ruas. As favellas da cidade”, Fon Fon, 5 February 1927, n.p.
76
“Acabemos com as ‘favellas’. Uma interessante exposição feita pelo dr. Mattos Pimenta
ao Rotary Club”, Correio da Manhã, 18 November 1926, 3.
77
Abreu, “Reconstruindo uma história esquecida”, pp. 41 42. On the links between
Mattos Pimenta and the urban renewal plan of Alfred Agache, see Fischer, A Poverty
of Rights, pp. 38 44.
64 Modernity in Black and White
78
“Acabemos com as ‘favellas’, 3. Mattos Pimenta was not alone. Lima Barreto repeatedly
approximated Rio’s favelas to Africa in a pejorative sense. See, among others, Lima
Barreto, “O prefeito e o povo”, Careta, 15 January 1921, n.p.; LB, “Leitura de jornaes”,
Careta, 19 March 1921, n.p.; and LB, “Hospede illustre”, Careta, 26 August 1922, n.p.
79
The term “Europa possível” was coined in an essay of 1979; see Afonso Carlos Marques
dos Santos, A invenção do Brasil: Ensaios de história e cultura (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. UFRJ,
1997), pp. 19 37. Cf. Ventura, Estilo tropical:, pp. 36 46.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 65
Pimenta – who had lived in both France and Germany – would be more
aware of the sins of European colonialism than those of his own social
milieu.80 No sense of common destiny bound these elites to their country-
men of other regions and backgrounds.
The discourse constructed between 1900 and 1930 associating favelas
and blackness served the purpose of ensuring their alterity in the world-
view of Brazil’s ruling classes. The thought that men, women and children
were obliged to live in degrading conditions, lacking any comfort and
amenities, exposed to all manner of dangers, abandoned to the worst
possible lot and essentially left to languish and perish, could only remain
tolerable so long as the disadvantaged were not considered people on the
same level as those who governed them. The inhumanity of their living
conditions demanded to be understood as a product of their own lack of
dignity and worth; otherwise, it would be unconscionable by the ethical
standards of a society premised on Republican ideals, Catholic virtues
and family values. For the authorities, favela dwellers did not need to be
treated humanely, because they were less than human. Within the cultural
mindset of the time, only one factor was powerful enough to determine
such a perception of radical otherness – and that was racial difference, the
cumulative force of four centuries of chattel slavery that systematically
reviled and vilified anything of African origin.
For Brazil’s establishment, favelas were part of the same dusky trap-
pings of backwardness that also included the distant sertão and Europe’s
African colonies, to which modernization and modernity were counter-
posed. They were a separate enclave, a city within the city, a cyst in the
tissue of the social body. As the nation’s capital, Rio de Janeiro had to be
maintained sound and virtuous, untainted by barbaric influences; thus,
the emphasis on its pristine natural beauty as the ultimate measure of
worth. Given such assumptions, nothing could be more threatening than
to see white intellectuals enthusing about favelas as expressive of genuine
Brazilianness, particularly if they happened to be European. Di
Cavalcanti could be easily written off as a libertine, an agitator or an
exemplar of lower-middle-class resentment. Oswald de Andrade and
Tarsila do Amaral could be conveniently indulged or ignored, as rich
and clueless paulistas. Marinetti was another matter. It was necessary to
disown him publicly as a charlatan and a fool. The notion that favelas
were to be considered anything other than a problem to be solved or a
80
For a contemporary critique of French colonialism in Africa, see Mario Poppe, “Africa
civilizada”, Fon Fon, 23 February 1924, n.p.
66 Modernity in Black and White
81
Barros Vidal, “Morro de São Carlos”, Para Todos, 11 May 1929, n.p.
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 67
the fact that the remaining figures are undefined in terms of race or
ethnicity. This favela is a place like any other.
The woman in front, with a huge bundle on her head and a water can
in each hand, has a ringlet of black hair curled into a hook. A little ways
behind her, a blonde woman leads a child by the hand. They are indistin-
guishable from figures that would illustrate other cartoons by J. Carlos,
unrelated to a favela theme. They are ordinary Cariocas. The boy with a
dog, dragging a huge bundle, in the lower right, is just another cute kid,
except that his short trousers are ragged and patched. Significantly, no
grown men are depicted. Despite the fact that the main character in
Barros Vidal’s sob story is a widower, J. Carlos must have judged that
images of women and children would be more effective in garnering the
sympathies of middle-class readers. Notwithstanding the affirmative view
of favelas revealed by both article and illustrations, the respectable public
was perhaps not prepared to deal with the dangers attendant upon
mingling with malandros, bambas and bambambãs. At this critical junc-
ture in the visual discourse surrounding favelas, there was still no ques-
tion of rehabilitating the ‘dangerous class’ of poor black men.
Public opinion of the time should not be underestimated in its ability to
deal with the tangled discourses surrounding favelas. When French urban
planner Alfred Agache was hired in 1928–1930 to develop a master plan
for the city of Rio de Janeiro, one of the first measures he announced was
the eradication of all existing favela settlements.82 After decades of
wavering, municipal authorities seemed set to move in the direction
envisaged by Mattos Pimenta and other antagonists of the hillside settle-
ments. Agache’s authority as an expert imported from Europe endowed
him with a pedigree that could easily eclipse Marinetti’s outlandish utter-
ances about Brazilian raciality. With the backing of Rio’s political and
economic elites, there was no reason why the proposals should not go
ahead. Yet, even after it was finalized, Agache’s plan was never fully
implemented, and the favelas remained in place. One reason was the
vocal reaction of the city’s populace against their removal.
Soon after Agache’s intentions first came to light, in 1927, composer
Sinhô – then known as ‘the king of samba’ – wrote a song titled “A Favela
82
José Teles Mendes, “O Plano Agache: Propostas para uma cidade jardim desigual”,
Revista Habitus: Revista eletrônica dos alunos de graduação em Ciências Sociais, 10
(2012), 116 127. See also Maurício de Almeida Abreu, A evolução urbana do Rio de
Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Pereira Passos, 2010 [1987]), pp. 76 79; and Carlos
Kessel, A vitrine e o espelho: O Rio de Janeiro de Carlos Sampaio (Rio de Janeiro:
Prefeitura da Cidade/Coleção Memória Carioca, 2001).
68 Modernity in Black and White
. J. Carlos [José Carlos de Brito e Cunha], Para Todos, 11 May 1929
Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Memória Gráfica Brasileira
Heart of Darkness in the Modern Metropolis 69
. (cont.)
70 Modernity in Black and White
vai abaixo” (the favela is coming down). It was recorded by the popular
singer Francisco Alves and quickly became a hit. The lyrics speak tenderly
of Morro da Favela, its special ambience, its place as home of samba and
malandragem, and of how much it will be missed. The community’s
intended demise is attributed to the resentment and ingratitude of the
money-grubbing powers who live in the city below, envious of the favela’s
music and moonlight.83 Sinhô’s lyrical defense of favela life struck a
chord in the public imagination. During the 1928 carnival, Tenentes do
Diabo – one of the three ‘Great Societies’ that still dominated carnival at
the time – included a critical float called “A Favela vai abaixo” in its
pageant [Fig. 16].84 Public opinion, or at least a significant portion of it,
had apparently tipped in favour of the favelas. The curious coalition
between modernist attitudes and Afro-Brazilian identity, denounced by
the likes of Mattos Pimenta, was no longer a sentiment restricted to
the intellectual few. A wider public was ready and willing to rally
around the favelas.
83
Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha, “De sambas e passarinhos: As claves do tempo nas
canções de Sinhô”, In: Chalhoub, Neves & Pereira, História em cousas miúdas, 566;
Fischer, A Poverty of Rights, pp. 15 16; and Carvalho, Porous City, 158. See also Marc
A. Hertzman, Making Samba: a New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 121 123, 132 134.
84
For more on carnival and the Great Societies, see Chapter 2. On Sinhô, see Chapter 4.
2
The present chapter contends that the relationship between the visual arts,
bohemianism and carnival was an important avenue for bridging the
social chasm that separated elite and popular cultures in Rio de Janeiro
over the early twentieth century. Previous evaluations of that cultural
context have focused mainly on literature or music and have thereby
failed to account for the transformations taking place in the visual arts.
Jeffrey D. Needell’s A Tropical Belle Époque – still an important refer-
ence – takes a superficial view of the history of Brazilian art, collapsing a
century of painting into a single paragraph and writing off a dense and
variegated tradition as derivative.2 Closer scrutiny of the Escola Nacional
de Belas Artes (hereafter, ENBA), and the lesser-known Liceu de Artes e
Ofícios (literally, School of Arts and Crafts) demonstrates that
artistic institutions of the early twentieth century operated as sites of
exchange and assimilation, much more permeable to new currents than
1
Terra de Senna [Lauro Nunes], “O carnaval na pintura brasileira contemporanea”,
D. Quixote, 10 February 1926, n.p.
2
Jeffrey D. Needell, A Tropical Belle Époque: Elite Culture and Society in Turn of the
century Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 179 180. In
Needell’s defense, it should be stated that Brazilian art historians had hardly begun to
revise this view up to the time he was writing.
72
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 73
3
Avelino Romero Pereira, Música, sociedade e política: Alberto Nepomuceno e a ruptura
musical (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. UFRJ, 2007), pp. 22 28, 290 291.
4
See Introduction.
74 Modernity in Black and White
the Estado Novo regime, requires addressing the works within the context
of their own place and time.5
5
The expression ‘Brazilian Brazil’ was coined in 1925 as title of Joaquim Inojosa’s pamphlet
in defense of modernism, “O Brasil brasileiro”. Ary Barroso’s hit song “Aquarela do
Brasil” (1939) popularized the term. It begins with the line “Brasil, meu Brasil brasileiro /
meu mulato inzoneiro / vou cantar te nos meus versos” (Brazil, my Brazilian Brazil / my
wily mulatto / I will sing you in my verses). First recorded by Francisco Alves, the song
became an international success after its inclusion in the Walt Disney film Saludos Amigos
(1942). Over the 1940s and 1950s, under the title “Brazil”, it was covered by Xavier
Cugat, Django Reinhardt and Frank Sinatra and is considered by many as a sort of
unofficial anthem of Brazilianness.
6
See Andrea Marzano & Victor Andrade de Melo, eds., Vida divertida: Histórias do lazer
no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Apicuri, 2010); Sidney Chalhoub, Margarida de Souza
Neves & Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, eds., História em cousas miúdas: Capí
tulos de história social da crônica no Brasil (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2005); and Rosa
Maria Barboza de Araújo, A vocaçao do prazer: A cidade e a família no Rio de Janeiro
republicano (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1995).
7
Alice Gonzaga, Palácios e poeiras: 100 anos de cinemas no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro:
Funarte/ Record, 1996), pp. 94 97. See also Maite Conde, Consuming Visions: Cinema,
Writing and Modernity in Rio de Janeiro (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2012); Antônio Herculano Lopes, “O teatro de revistas e a identidade carioca”, In:
Antônio Herculano Lopes, ed., Entre Europa e África: A invenção do carioca (Rio de
Janeiro: Topbooks/Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 2000), pp. 13 32; and Flora Susse
kind, As revistas do ano e a invenção do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira,
1986).
8
Muza Clara Chaves Velasques, A Lapa boêmia: Um estudo da identidade carioca (unpub
lished MA thesis, Programa de Pós Graduação em História, Universidade Federal Flumi
nense, 1994), pp. 27 28, 50 71. See also Nicolau Sevcenko, “A capital irradiante:
Técnica, ritmos e ritos do Rio”, In: Nicolau Sevcenko, ed., História da vida privada no
Brasil, 3. República: Da Belle Époque à Era do Rádio (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras,
1998), pp. 513 619.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 75
9
See Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, Footballmania: Uma história social do futebol
no Rio de Janeiro, 1902 1938 (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2000).
10
See Ana Luiza Martins, Revistas em revista: Imprensa e práticas culturais em tempos de
República (1890 1922) (São Paulo: Edusp, 2008); and Cláudia Oliveira, Monica
Pimenta Velloso & Vera Lins, O moderno em revistas: Representações do Rio de Janeiro
de 1890 a 1930 (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2010). See also Chapter 3.
11
See Márcia Abreu & Nelson Schapochnik, eds., Cultura letrada no Brasil: Objetos e
práticas (Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2005); Rafael Cardoso, “O início do design de
livros no Brasil”, In: Rafael Cardoso, ed., O design brasileiro antes do design: Aspectos
da história gráfica, 1870 1960 (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2005), pp. 160 196; and
Alessandra El Far, Páginas de sensação: Literatura popular e pornográfica no Rio de
Janeiro (1870 1924) (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004).
12
See Arthur Valle, “Ver e ser visto nas Exposições Gerais de Belas Artes”, 19&20,
8 (2013).
13
Carlos Rubens, Impressões de arte (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. do Jornal do Commercio, 1921),
pp. 39 43.
76 Modernity in Black and White
14
For more on Rio’s territorial divisions by class, see Bruno Carvalho, Porous City: a
Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro (from the 1810s onwards) (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2013), ch. 3; and Conde, Consuming Visions, pp. 105 111.
15
See André Nunes de Azevedo, “A grande reforma urbana do Rio de Janeiro:
A modernização da cidade como forma de sedução estética a serviço de um horizonte
de integração conservadora sob a égide da civilização”, In: Carmem Negreiros, Fátima
Oliveira & Rosa Gens, eds., Belle Époque: Crítica, arte e cultura (Rio de Janeiro: Labelle/
Faperj & São Paulo: Intermeios, 2016), pp. 293 304.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 77
It was in these marginal locations that the musical culture of samba, in its
present urban style, came into being between the 1910s and 1930s.16
It is often presumed that the two sides of Belle Époque Rio de Janeiro
did not mix or even meet. A Eurocentric elite culture is thought to have
remained aloof from contemporary developments in popular culture.
Though there is much truth to allegations of elitism, the situation was
never quite so clear-cut.17 Given Rio de Janeiro’s peculiar geography and
rapidly changing demographics, some sort of coexistence had to be
hammered out. Police oppression of the urban poor was part of the
picture, as has been seen in Chapter 1; and the Republican period is
renowned for repressive measures against the ‘dangerous classes’ of soci-
ety, a category routinely taken to include religious and cultural traditions
of Afro-Brazilian origin like candomblé and capoeira. At the opposite end
of the equation, historians have long recognized an undercurrent of
resentment against the Republic and its values among segments of the
working classes, along with a residual survival of monarchist senti-
ments.18 These tensions occasionally boiled over into overt hostility and
even outright rebellion, as in the Vaccine Revolt and other lesser instances
of popular protest. Direct confrontation, however, was the exception and
not the rule. An ability to sidestep conflict, accommodate contradictions
16
Lira Neto, Uma história do samba: As origens (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017),
pp. 27 82; Marc A. Hertzman, Making Samba: a New History of Race and Music in
Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), ch. 4; Magno Bissoli Siqueira, Samba e
identidade nacional: Das origens à era Vargas (São Paulo: Ed. Unesp, 2012),
pp. 144 155; Carlos Sandroni, Feitiço decente: Transformações do samba no Rio de
Janeiro, 1917 1933 (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/Ed.UFRJ, 2001), pp. 90 97, 131 142;
Hermano Vianna, O mistério do samba (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/Ed.UFRJ, 1995),
ch. 6; and; Roberto Moura, Tia Ciata e a Pequena África no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de
Janeiro: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura/Biblioteca Carioca, 1995).
17
See Micol Seigel, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United
States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 98 101; Pereira, Música, sociedade e
política, pp. 286 287; Maria Alice Rezende de Carvalho, “O samba, a opinião e outras
bossas. . . na construção republicana do Brasil”, In: Berenice Cavalcante, Heloisa Starling
& José Eisenberg, eds., Decantando a República: Inventário histórico e poético da canção
popular moderna brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira & São Paulo: Fundação
Perseu Abramo, 2004), pp. 37 68; Vianna, O mistério do samba, pp. 44 51, 111 117.
18
José Murilo de Carvalho, Os bestializados: O Rio de Janeiro e a República que não foi
(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2011 [1987]), pp. 30 41; Ricardo Salles, Nostalgia
imperial: Escravidão e a formação da identidade nacional no Brasil do Segundo Reinado
(Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1996), ch. 1; and Júlio Braga, “Candomblé da Bahia:
Repressão e resistência”, Revista USP, 18 (1993), pp. 54 59. See also Sidney Chalhoub,
Trabalho, lar e botequim: O cotidiano dos trabalhadores no Rio de Janeiro da Belle
Époque (Campinas: Ed.Unicamp, 2005 [1986]); and Lúcio Kowarick, Trabalho e vadia
gem: A origem do trabalho livre no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1994 [1987]).
78 Modernity in Black and White
19
For an anthropological appreciation of Brazilian carnival, see Maria Laura Cavalcanti,
Carnaval, ritual e arte (Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras, 2015); and Maria Laura Viveiros de
Castro Cavalcanti, O rito e o tempo: Ensaios sobre carnaval (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização
Brasileira, 1999).
20
On the history of carnival, see Felipe Ferreira, Inventando carnavais: O surgimento do
carnaval carioca no século XIX e outras questões carnavlaescas (Rio de Janeiro: Ed.
UFRJ, 2005); Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha, ed., Carnavais e outras f(r)estas: Ensaios
de história social da cultura (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2002); Maria Clementina Pereira
Cunha, Ecos da folia: Uma história social do carnaval carioca entre 1880 e 1920 (São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001). The former book has been published in French as:
Felipe Ferreira, L’invention du carnaval au XIXe siècle: Paris, Nice, Rio de Janeiro (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2014).
21
See Monica Pimenta Velloso, A cultura das ruas do Rio de Janeiro (1900 1930) (Rio de
Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 2014); and Monica Pimenta Velloso, As tradi
ções populares na Belle Époque carioca (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Folclore,
1988). On the role of the botequim as a meeting place, see Sandroni, Feitiço decente,
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 79
pp. 143 146. See also Martha Abreu, O império do divino: Festas religiosas e cultura
popular no Rio de Janeiro , 1830 1900 (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1999).
22
See Valdeci Rezende Borges, “Em busca do mundo exterior: Sociabilidade no Rio de
Machado de Assis”, Estudos Históricos, 28 (2001), 49 69; Rachel Soihet, A subversão
pelo riso: Estudos sobre o carnaval carioca da Belle Époque ao tempo de Vargas (Rio de
Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1998), ch. 6; and Barboza de Araújo, A vocaçao do
prazer, pp. 63 96. On urban slavery in Rio de Janeiro, see Luis Carlos Soares, O ‘povo de
Cam’ na capital do Brasil: A escravidão urbana no Rio de Janeiro do século XIX (Rio de
Janeiro: 7Letras, 2007).
23
Maxixe was already a phenomenon in the 1890s, became ubiquitous by the time of the hit
revue O maxixe (1906) and sparked a dance craze in Paris and New York, circa
1912 1915. On its importance and complex history, see Luís Carlos Saroldi, “O maxixe
como liberação do corpo”, In: Lopes, A invenção do carioca, pp. 35 48; Antonio
Herculano Lopes, “Da tirana ao maxixe: A ‘decadência’ do teatro nacional”, In: Antonio
Herculano Lopes, Martha Abreu, Martha Tupinambá de Ûlhoa & Monica Pimenta
Velloso, eds., Música e história no longo século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa
de Rui Barbosa, 2011), pp. 239 262; and Marcelo Balaban, Estilo moderno: Humor,
literatura e publicidade em Bastos Tigre (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2016), ch. 6. On the
origins and musical structure of maxixe, see Sandroni, Feitiço decente, pp. 62 83. On the
reception of maxixe in Europe and the USA, see Monica Pimenta Velloso, “A dança como
alma da brasilidade: Paris, Rio de Janeiro e o maxixe”, Nuevo Mundo, Mundos Nuevos
(Colloques 2007); and Seigel, Uneven Encounters, ch. 2.
24
Rafael Nascimento, “Catete em ré menor: Tensões da música na Primeira República”,
Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, 67 (2017), 38 56; Rezende de Carvalho,
“O samba, a opinião e outras bossas”, pp. 41 42; Saroldi, “O maxixe como liberação do
corpo”, pp. 36 42; and Enio Squeff & José Miguel Wisnik, O nacional e o popular na
cultura brasileira: Música (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983), pp. 156 157.
80 Modernity in Black and White
25
See Arthur Valle, “Sociabilidade, boêmia e carnaval em ateliês de artistas brasileiros em
fins do século XIX e início do XX”, In: Arthur Valle, Camila Dazzi, Isabel Sanson Portella
& Rosangela de Jesus Silva, eds., Oitocentos tomo IV: O ateliê do artista (Rio de
Janeiro: Cefet, 2017), pp. 43 55; Marcelo Balaban, Estilo moderno, ch. 5; Conde,
Consuming Visions, ch. 2; Marcelo Balaban, “Memória de um demônio aposentado:
Literatura e vida literária em Bastos Tigre”, In: Sidney Chalhoub, Margarida de Souza
Neves & Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, eds., História em cousas miúdas (Cam
pinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2005), pp. 379 387; Berenice Cavalcante, “A República às avessas:
Boemia carioca e crítica literária”, In: Cavalcante, Starling & Eisenberg, Decantando a
República, pp. 117 132.
26
Uelba Alexandre do Nascimento, “‘Deus me deu essa vida por prêmio, serei o boêmio
enquanto ele quiser’: Música e boemia nas primeiras décadas do século XX”, Anais do
XXVIII Simpósio Nacional de História Anpuh, 39 (2015), 14. See also Elton Nunes &
Leonardo Mendes, “O Rio de Janeiro no fim do século XIX: Modernidade, boemia e o
imaginário republicano no romance de Coelho Netto”, Soletras, 16 (2008), 82 97. The
term is used in this broad sense by Vagalume, legendary chronicler of Rio’s nightlife in
1904, who divides bohemios into three classes Vagalume [Leonardo Affonso de
Miranda Pereira & Mariana Costa, eds.], Ecos noturnos (Rio de Janeiro: Contracapa,
2018), pp. 331 335.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 81
27
“Chronica do Lyrico. Bohemia”, Correio da Manhã, 27 July 1901, 2 and “Correio dos
theatros”, Correio da Manhã, 26 July 1902, 2 & advertisement on 6.
28
Gonzaga Duque, “Chronica da saudade”, Kósmos, October 1908, n.p.
29
Sancho, “Vida airada”, Tagarela, 10 May 1902, 7. Cf. Camerino Rocha, “A grande arte
nos pequenos ateliers”, Atheneida, April 1903, 55 56, where Seelinger’s bohemianism is
discussed in light of his connections to German culture.
30
J. Carlos, “O artista art nouveau”, Tagarela, 11 October 1902, 4. On the implications of
the term art nouveau, see Chapter 3.
82 Modernity in Black and White
. Helios Seelinger, Bohemia, 1903, oil on canvas, 103 189.5 cm.
For color version of this figure, please refer color plate section.
Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional de Belas Artes/Ibram (photo: Jaime Acioli)
emerges on the far left of the composition – but rather that of Raul
Pederneiras (hereafter, Raul), the tall figure in a high collar standing in
front of the window in the background. Flanking him, on either side, are
Calixto Cordeiro (hereafter referenced under the pseudonym K. Lixto),
on the right, and, on the left, a discreet self-portrait of the painter. At the
time the painting was produced, all three men were active primarily as
illustrators and caricaturists and were regular contributors to a satirical
weekly titled Tagarela.31 From the rear of the picture, tucked away in half
shadow, they eye the agitated goings-on and talk amongst themselves.
They are depicted as observers – by far, the least active participants in the
overall merrymaking – and, yet, the fact that the author has placed
himself among them casts the trio into the role of bearing witness to the
veracity of the scene. The position of Seelinger’s tilted head and the
direction of Raul’s gaze suggest they are aware of the female figure in
the centre of the composition. The painter identified this personage as
Bohemia herself, the presiding spirit of the gathering. Right arm out-
stretched in a gesture almost of benediction, she is seated on an ambigu-
ous perch, more pedestal than armchair, and draped in a costume that
exposes her shoulder, more akin to classical mythology than to the
fashions of 1900. Yet, she remains sufficiently undifferentiated that the
31
Raul and K. Lixto were also artistic directors of another weekly, O Malho. Seelinger, in
turn, was artistic director of the short lived Atheneida. For more on these magazines and
the sociability surrounding them, see Chapter 3.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 83
viewer might plausibly interpret the figure as a real woman, of flesh and
blood. Her mouth, slightly agape, even suggests she might be singing.
This mixture of reality and unreality should alert the viewer to the
allegorical nature of the composition. Even by the standards of allegory,
though, it is a strange picture. Excepting lady Bohemia, the remaining
eighteen figures depicted are portraits of contemporaries who would have
been recognizable to a substantial portion of the viewing public.32 It is
necessary to know who they are in order to understand the artist’s
intentions. Starting from the left, writers João Luso, profile half cropped
by the edge of the canvas, and Paulo Barreto (João do Rio) enter the room
and glance inwards. Seated in the foreground, in relaxed intimacy, both
gazing contemplatively, actress Plácida dos Santos reclines against archi-
tect Gelabert Simas, who holds a coffee cup. Around a table littered with
cups, glasses, a bottle, painters Lucilio de Albuquerque and João
Timotheo da Costa laugh and converse warmly. Just above them, painter
Rodolpho Chambelland leans in to light his cigarette in the flame of a
lamp on the table. This light source draws attention to the three painters’
faces, rendered garish and almost mask-like by its luminosity. Standing a
little further behind the table are journalist Trajano Chacon, hatless, and
noted writer and art critic Gonzaga Duque, wearing a high light-coloured
fedora. The two men are engaged in reading a newspaper. Completing the
left-hand side of the composition, journalist Cezar Lima Campos stands
in the far background, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette.
To his right, Araújo Vianna plays the piano, Bohemia’s outstretched arm
hovering weirdly over his head.33
The female allegory divides the composition into two distinct halves.
The only other figure who crosses the imaginary central axis running
vertically through her torso is sculptor Honório Cunha Mello, in the right
foreground, in vest and shirtsleeves, hat tilted back, playing a guitar. The
slight inclination of his body and head suggest a gaze that seeks out his
32
The portraits are identified from a sketch in which the painter listed them by name see
Américo de Almeida Gonçalves Neto, “Seelinger: Um pintor da ‘nossa belle époque’”,
Boletim do Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, 7 (1988), 19, 20, 21. See also Rafael
Cardoso, A arte brasileira em 25 quadros (1790 1930) (Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2008),
pp. 132 140. Judging from contemporary photographs, not all the portraits appear to
correspond to the names indicated on the list, which was likely composed in retrospect.
33
The precise identification of Araújo Vianna is complicated by the fact that two different
public figures used the same name around this time. One was Ernesto da Cunha Araújo
Vianna, architect, art critic and professor at ENBA. The other was pianist and maestro
José de Araújo Vianna, who is presumably the one depicted in Bohemia.
84 Modernity in Black and White
fellow musician in the back of the room, almost craning his neck to
glimpse around the figure of Bohemia. Again, this reinforces her ambigu-
ous presence – part spiritual allegory, part flesh and blood. To the
sculptor’s right, three men engage in conversation: journalist Luiz
Edmundo, young and tall, looking to the right; painter Heitor Malagutti,
sporting a large moustache and facing the viewer; and painter and scen-
ographer José Fiuza Guimarães, practically invisible along the right-hand
edge of the canvas.34 Behind them, in the background, the trio of illustra-
tors rounds out the composition.
To an untutored eye, the picture is a chaotic depiction of a bunch of
artist types engaged in late-night camaraderie. The mixed company, with
women given wantonly to amusement among men, would have been
morally dubious by prevailing social standards.35 The various states of
dress – some in formal evening apparel, others in day suits, all manner of
hats worn indoors – betray a disregard for social convention. Alcohol,
coffee and cigarettes mingle with music, papers and playing cards. Every-
thing seems to be going on at once, and no one is at all concerned with
decorum or propriety. This disorderliness is apparent not only in what the
work represents but also in how the artist chooses to depict it. By the
prevailing artistic criteria of 1903, the painting appears sketchy and
unfinished, the composition agitated and jumbled. Quite apart from the
issue of whether the central figure is intended as real or allegorical, the
different degrees of pictorial finish and the unconventional way individual
portraits are staggered in position and size might suggest to a censorious
eye that the painter was less than proficient in draughtsmanship and
composition. Indeed, contemporary critics said as much, describing the
painting as incurring in errors of proportion and perspective, albeit
34
Fiuza’s presence is impossible to detect in photographs of the painting. However, he is
clearly indicated and named in the artist’s sketch. His figure is just barely discernible in
the painting itself.
35
Cf. Valle, “Sociabilidade, boêmia e carnaval em ateliês de artistas brasileiros”, pp. 46 47.
Placida dos Santos was no ordinary woman, but rather one of the better known actresses
and singers of the day, renowned for having performed at the Folies Bergères in Paris. See
Monica Pimenta Velloso, “A invenção de um corpo brasileiro”, In: Música e história no
longo século XIX, pp. 281 283 and Luiz Edmundo, “O Rio de Janeiro do meu tempo”,
Correio da Manhã, 10 May 1936, “Supplemento de domingo”, 1 2. She was also
known, in carnival circles, as the ‘queen of Democráticos’ see “Chronica de Momo”,
Correio da Manhã, 5 January 1910, 3; “Correio dos Theatros”, Correio da Manhã,
7 January 1910, 3; and Vagalume, Ecos Noturnos, 230.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 85
enthusing about its originality as well as the freedoms they imagined were
permitted in artists’ studios.36
Both in terms of subject and stylistically, Bohemia breaks radically
with the tradition of Brazilian painting up to that time; and it is this
freshness of approach that led critics and jury to attribute qualities of
boldness and brilliance to its author, regardless of what might be under-
stood as technical imperfections. The supposed deficiencies were part of
its appeal. The painting’s looseness of handling endows it with a lack of
distinctness – a formlessness that infers informality. The uneven distribu-
tion of figures and details over the composition suggest immediacy, as if
the work had been painted in haste, hurrying to capture an instant like a
snapshot. The sketchiness of several of the portraits adds to this sense of
urgency and impetuosity, although it contradicts any claim to photo-
graphic realism. Brushstrokes are left visible, and effects of colour and
chiaroscuro heightened, endowing the scene with a sombre appearance
that contrasts with the gaiety it depicts. The artist lovingly deployed
painterly technique to subvert the established pictorial order.
Given that Bohemia is an unusual work for its place and time, prob-
lematic in many senses, it is surprising that the jury of the 1903 ENBA
Salon, where it was exhibited, chose to reward Seelinger with the highest
accolade available to a young artist: the travel prize to study in Europe.
That decision is even more remarkable given the artist had only recently
returned to Rio de Janeiro after nearly five years abroad, between
1896 and 1901.37 Seelinger was reputed as something of an outlier to
the artistic currents prevailing in Brazil. The tropes that most often crop
up in critical appraisals of his work revolve around adjectives like bizarre,
extravagant and even demonic. He was routinely compared to Arnold
Böcklin, James Ensor, Felicien Rops and Franz von Stuck.38 Indeed,
Seelinger laid claim to having studied under the latter painter during his
first sojourn in Europe, and his status as a pupil of the Munich
36
A. Morales de los Rios, “Exposição de Bellas Artes”, O Paiz, 2 September 1903, 2 and
“Notas de arte”, Jornal do Commercio, 9 September 1903, 3. See also “No vernissage”,
Atheneida, July 1903, 149.
37
See Arthur Valle, “Helios Seelinger: Um pintor ‘salteado’”, 19&20, 1 (2006).
38
G. Deo, “Helios Seelinger”, Correio da Manhã, 31 January 1908, 3; José Marianno
Filho, “Helios Seelinger”, Correio da Manhã, 2 February 1908, 1; Gonzaga Duque,
“Helios Seelinger”, Kósmos, March 1908, n.p.; Elysio de Carvalho, Five o’Clock (São
Paulo: Antiqua, 2006 [1909]), 62 66; and “A nossa capa”, Fon Fon!, 12 December
1908, n.p.
86 Modernity in Black and White
Secessionist was taken for granted in the Brazilian press.39 The distinct-
ness of his work was partly credited to this influence. A few months before
Bohemia was exhibited, a leading daily newspaper referred to him as a
“disciple of the modern German pictorial spirit”.40 A decade later, in
1914, another magazine still considered him “the most original of our
modern painters”.41 There was no doubt in anyone’s minds that he
was attempting something new, different and quite apart from the Paris-
ian Beaux-arts influences that prevailed in the Brazilian painting world
at the time.
Though more than one critic situated Bohemia as a studio scene, there
is little visual evidence to support that contention.42 Nowhere in the
image are any studio props depicted; nor is any actual work, artistic or
otherwise, taking place. Rather, the picture shows numerous artists and
writers pointedly not working, having a good time instead. Bohemia is
not readily classifiable into any of the then accepted genres of painting. At
103 190 cm, it is larger than a conventional genre scene and distinctly
lacking in narrative. As portraiture, it is erratic in the attention devoted to
its subjects, some of whom are hardly visible. It could be considered an
allegory, in the sense enshrined by Gustave Courbet’s ‘real allegory’ in
The Painter’s Studio (1855), with which it shares the characteristic of
including portraits of living artists, but no contemporary source made this
connection. More than an allegory, Bohemia is akin to a visual manifesto,
announcing a new artistic spirit unbound by conventions, moral or
39
Although Gonzaga Duque asserted categorically that Seelinger was von Stuck’s pupil,
there is no record of his passage through the Academy in Munich. See Horst Ludwig,
“Franz von Stuck als Lehrer an der Akademie von 1895 1928 und das breite Spektrum
seiner Schüler”, In: Gabriele Fahr Becker et al., Franz von Stuck und die Münchner
Akademie von Kandinsky bis Albers (Milan: Mazzotta, 1990), pp. 38 46. Archival
evidence does suggest Seelinger studied under Anton Ažbe, particularly photographs
contained in a scrapbook titled “München Rio de Janeiro Paris 1896 1914” currently
in possession of his granddaughter, Heloisa Seelinger. For a detailed account of Brazilian
artists in Munich, see Arthur Valle, “‘A maneira especial que define a minha arte’:
Pensionistas da Escola Nacional de Belas Artes e a cena artística de Munique em fins
do oitocentos”, Revista de História da Arte e Arqueologia, 13 (2010), 109 144 and
Arthur Valle, “Bolsistas da Escola Nacional de Belas Artes em Munique, na década de
1890”, Artciencia, 7 (2012), 1 16.
40
“24 horas”, Gazeta de Noticias, 3 July 1903, 1. Cf. “Notas de arte”, Jornal do Com
mercio, 1 September 1903, 2.
41
Fon Fon!, 10 October 1914, n.p.
42
Cf. João Carlos Rodrigues, João do Rio: Vida, paixão, obra (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização
Brasileira, 2010), p. 39, which posits that the painting is a depiction of Seelinger’s studio
in Catete, known as ‘a Furna’ [the cave]. See also Carvalho, Five o’Clock, 64, 121 and
Chapter 3.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 87
43
“No vernissage”, Atheneida, July 1903, 149. This review of the Salon in the nominal July
issue (no. 7) indicates that the latter edition could not have been published before
September, when the Salon took place. The photographic reproduction of the work
appears in the enlarged final issue of Atheneida (no. 8, 9, 10), which was published
without a date. For more on Atheneida, see Chapter 3.
88 Modernity in Black and White
context in which it was painted. For over a century, the Brazilian art
world had been dominated by an establishment that placed a premium on
hierarchy and imposed distinctions between fine art and other forms of
artistic expression. Bohemia takes a stand in favour of the unity of art and
artists – a consummately modern proposition around 1900. It shows
painters and illustrators, sculptors and architects, writers and journalists,
poets and musicians, all mingling together in companionship, bonded by
music and drink and laughter. The painter’s decision to depict himself
among the illustrators is perhaps the most pointed expression of the
equivalence made between fine and graphic arts. The mere admission of
such a painting to the Salon was a shrewd challenge to the pecking order
that ENBA was supposed to enforce. The fact that it was singled out for
praise and approval by an ENBA jury suggests that perhaps the establish-
ment was not so averse to becoming disestablished.
44
See Rogério Souza Silva, Modernidade em desalinho: Costumes, cotidianos e linguagens
na obra humorística de Raul Pederneiras (1898 1936) (Jundiaí: Paco, 2017), esp. ch. 2;
Giovanna Dealtry, “Margens da Belle Époque carioca pelo traço de K. Lixto Cordeiro”,
Alceu, 9 (2009), 117 130; Laura Nery, “Cenas da vida carioca: O Rio no traço de Raul
Pederneiras”, In: História em cousas miúdas, pp. 435 458 and Laura Nery, “Nostalgia e
novidade: Estratégias do humor gráfico em Raul Pederneiras”, In: Isabel Lustosa, ed.,
Imprensa, humor e caricatura: A questão dos estereótipos culturais (Belo Horizonte: Ed.
UFMG, 2011), pp. 225 249.
45
“Fête cabaretière”, Revista da Semana, 30 September 1906, 3939; “Conferencia do Fon
Fon”, Fon Fon!, 10 August 1907, n.p. “Exequias artisticas de Chrispim do Amaral”,
Revista da Semana, 27 January 1912, n.p.; “Humoristas em Petropolis”, Revista da
Semana, 9 March 1912, n.p.; “A festa do Boqueirão do Passeio”, Revista da Semana,
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 89
sets and costumes for the stage; authored popular plays, like Pierrots e
Colombinas (1911) and Podre de Chic (1915); and even starred in a
comedy film titled Amor e Bohemia (1918), the cast of which included
other real-life bohemians like Raul, Seelinger, João Luso, J. Carlos and
illustrator Fernando Correia Dias. In 1906, K. Lixto decorated the head-
quarters of the carnival society Tenentes do Diabo and, in 1913, was
charged with designing their carnival pageant, which increased his
already considerable celebrity.46 Raul was equally active in theatre and,
in 1917, became one of the founding members and vice-president of the
Brazilian Society of Theatrical Authors.47
K. Lixto and Raul were among the most recognizable figures in Rio
during the first decade of the twentieth century. In an age when the culture
of celebrity around film stars, musicians and athletes was in its infancy,
they were as famous as could be, and their portraits featured regularly in
the press. Seelinger, though less well known to the general public,
achieved notoriety in his own way, as a sort of peintre maudit, and was
celebrated within the group for the audacity of his exploits. All aged
between 25 and 29 when Bohemia was painted, united by their profes-
sional activities and passion for nightlife, the three men came from
distinct backgrounds. Raul (born 1874) was the best positioned in terms
of social class. He was schooled at the respected Colégio Pedro II and
completed a law degree at the age of 22. This formal education later
allowed him to teach at ENBA, from 1918 to 1938, and at the law college
of the University of Brazil after 1938. K. Lixto (born 1877) came from a
working-class background, having trained at the National Mint and
subsequently ENBA and worked as a lithographer at the National Press
before achieving fame as an illustrator. Seelinger (born 1878) followed a
1 May 1912, n.p.; “O jornal falado”, Correio da Manhã, 30 July 1914, 2; “Horas
alegres”, Correio da Manhã, 24 July 1915, 4; “A festa da canção regional, no Recreio”,
Correio da Manhã, 20 March 1917, 5; Para Todos, 19 December 1925, 23. On Bastos
Tigre, see Balaban, Estilo moderno, esp. ch. 2 and Balaban, “Memória de um demônio
aposentado”, esp. pp. 379 392.
46
Correio da Manhã, 5 December 1906, 3; Correio da Manhã, 10 September 1911, 16;
“Notas, impressões e novidades sobre o glorioso carnaval de 1913”, Correio da Manhã,
6 February 1913, 2; Correio da Manhã, 25 September 1918, 10. Cf. Conde, Consuming
Visions, 74 75.
47
Nery, “Cenas da vida carioca”, 436 and Mônica Pimenta Velloso, Modernismo no Rio
de Janeiro: Turunas e Quixotes (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1996),
pp. 65 74.
90 Modernity in Black and White
48
Herman Lima, História da caricatura no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1963), III,
pp. 988 1048.
49
A. Morales de los Rios, “Fiuza, Ribeiro e Seelinger”, Correio da Manhã, 3 January 1903,
1 2; G. Deo, “Helios Seelinger”, 3; and Gonzaga Duque, “Helios Seelinger”, Kósmos,
March 1908, n.p. The whereabouts of the painting Samba are presently unknown. On
origins and usage of the term samba, see Lira Neto, Uma história do samba, pp. 51 53;
Hertzman, Making Samba, ch. 4; Bissoli Siqueira, Samba e identidade nacional,
pp. 17 33; and Sandroni, Feitiço decente, pp. 84 97.
50
“Helios Seelinger”, Gazeta de Notícias, 7 March 1904, 2; K. Lixto, “A linha na dança ou
a dança na linha”, Fon Fon!, 5 December 1908, n.p. “Berliques e berlóques”, Revista da
Semana, 12 August 1916, n.p.; Má Lingua, “Vida Alheia”, Careta, 30 April 1921, n.p.
Cf. Carvalho, Five o’Clock, 64.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 91
in hand. Raul returned the favour, further in the same article, caricaturing
K. Lixto as a high-collared, hip-thrusting dancer of samba – a foulard
wrapped multiple times around his neck, long fingernails, rings on both
little fingers, a skull-shaped trinket dangling from his watch chain
92 Modernity in Black and White
51
Fantasio, “A dansa no Rio de Janeiro”, Kósmos, May 1906, n.p. See also Martha Abreu &
Carolina Vianna Dantas, “Música popular e história, 1880 1920”, In: Música e história no
longo século XIX, 49. A 1908 cartoon by J. Carlos depicting K. Lixto and Raul as cut out
silhouettes, identified only by their high collars and big hats, is reproduced in Cássio
Loredano, O bonde e a linha: Um perfil de J. Carlos (São Paulo: Capivara, 2002), p. 28.
52
Dealtry, “Margens da Belle Époque carioca”, 121. See also Balaban, Estilo moderno, 72;
Ricardo Martins Porto Lussac, Entre o crime e o esporte: A capoeira em impressos no Rio
de Janeiro, 1890 1960 (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Programa de Pós graduação
em Educação, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2016), pp. 301 306; and
Cláudia de Oliveira, “A iconografia do moderno: A representação da vida urbana”, In:
Oliveira, Pimenta Velloso & Lins, O moderno em revistas, p. 188.
94 Modernity in Black and White
. K. Lixto [Calixto Cordeiro] & Raul [Pederneiras], Kósmos, May 1906
Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (BN Digital/Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira)
Though not always evident behind the accoutrements, he was the only
Afro-descendant member of the trio of illustrators.53 This fact was subtly
53
Though light skinned, as evidenced in photographs, K. Lixto was perceived as a ‘man of
colour’ by the social standards of his time and place; see “O anniversario de Fon Fon!”,
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 95
inscribed in the humour of his double act with Raul due to the contrast
between the two men in terms of class, complexion and height.54 Their
role as entertainers opened the doors of elegant salons and high society
that might otherwise have remained closed to someone of his modest
background.
K. Lixto’s affirmation of a street-smart urban identity – mixing elem-
ents of high and low, black and white – demands to be understood as
performative. In a society riddled with racial tensions and prejudices, it set
him apart as artist and celebrity.55 As far as the press was concerned, his
eccentric self-presentation conveyed him from the status of mere illustra-
tor, one who portrays and represents others, to that of someone worth
depicting in his own right. Even these depictions often carry a performa-
tive dimension, made visible in his trademark signature. K. Lixto was by
no means shy about caricaturing himself or his friends. The line dividing
the illustrator from the performer was effectively indistinct. In fact, draw-
ing caricatures in front of an audience was one of the performances for
which the Raul and K. Lixto double act was most in demand.56
The multiple references to the cakewalk are evidence of how music and
dance served as sites for defusing tensions and mediating between the
private salons of the upper classes and life on the streets.57 Lima Campos
published an article drawing attention to the new dance craze in 1904.
Fon Fon!, 19 April 1913, n.p. A newspaper column of 1925 posits him as authoring the
statutes of a hypothetical “centre for the resistance of coloured men” and pits him against
a racist senator Orozimbo a recurring character in the column who refuses even to
address anyone of colour; see Luiz, “Para ler no bonde. Os inimigos de Cham”, Correio
da Manhã, 12 December 1925, 2. In 1901, Gonzaga Duque provided the following
physical description of K. Lixto: “He was, around that time [1898], a youth of about
twenty, sprouting the fine fuzz of a skimpy moustache, short in stature, smooth skin the
colour of a light ochre watercolour and beautiful teeth of the translucent white of white
pearls”; Gonzaga Duque, “Dos caricaturistas novos. III Calixto Cordeiro”, O Paiz, 5 June
1901, 1.
54
Pimenta Velloso, Modernismo no Rio de Janeiro, pp. 97 98.
55
The creative use of apparel and trappings as a means of overcoming racial prejudice harks
back to the experience of Dom Obá II d’África during the imperial period; see Eduardo da
Silva, Prince of the People: the Life and Times of a Brazilian Free Man of Colour
(London: Verso, 1993).
56
See Maria Odette Monteiro Teixeira, “Raul Pederneiras entre Compadres e Bocós”,
Anais ABRACE, 18 (2017); see also de Oliveira, Velloso & Lins, O moderno em revistas,
p. 88.
57
See Pimenta Velloso, “A invenção de um corpo brasileiro”, 263 285. A cartoon lam
pooning residents of a working class district opposes the cake walk (mispronounced as
carque varque) to the ‘national dance’ maxixe; “Na Gambôa”, Tagarela, 1 September
1904, n.p.
96 Modernity in Black and White
58 59 60
Lima Campos, “Cake walk”, Kósmos, August 1904, n.p. Ibid. Ibid.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 97
João do Rio’s 1910 short story, “O bebê de tarlatana rosa” (The baby
in pink tarlatan) has rightly gained notoriety for its daring narrative
structure and sexual ambiguity. It tells the tale of a romantic encounter
at a masked carnival ball between the protagonist and a character dressed
as a baby whose gender identity is purposefully left unclear through
strategic shifts between masculine and feminine articles and pronouns.61
The story is sometimes taken as an anomaly, a one-off product of the
author’s propensity for literary extravagance as well as his own
homosexuality. Yet, other contemporary sources bear out that masked
carnival balls were cherished precisely for a blurring of identities that
facilitated unconventional and even illicit encounters. The question “você
me conhece?” (do you know me?), posed by masked revellers to one
another, often in a falsetto voice, became a narrative convention for
recounting same-sex liaisons in barely disguised terms.62 In one journal-
istic account of 1921, the male narrator falls asleep in a theatre box
during a ball and awakens to find “a Pierrot in black satin” bent over
him, caressing his hand and staring into his eyes:
Through the small mask that covered half the face, I could see he was young and
beautiful. For five minutes, he stood in the same position. The ether on his hot
breath scorched my face. His mouth, however, was fresh and healthy.63
A few lines later, the Pierrot – a popular carnival costume at the time and
invariably a male figure in the Commedia dell’Arte – effortlessly meta-
morphoses into a woman, though the author continues to shift back and
forth between ‘she’ and ‘he’, as in João do Rio’s story, and to keep the use
of pronouns as ambiguous as possible.64 Behind the masks, literal and
literary, the identity of the other person could be obscured, not least of
which in terms of gender, class and race.
61
Rodrigues, João do Rio, 82 88. See also Anna Carolyna Ribeiro Cardoso,
“A ambiguidade e o fantástico em O bebê de tarlatana rosa”, Caletroscópio, 5, 9
(2017), pp. 114 127.
62
João da Avenida, “Um sorriso para todas. . .”, Careta, 5 February 1921, n.p. See also
“O carnaval nos clubs. Você me conhece?”, Fon Fon!, 1 February 1913, n.p; Garcia
Margiocco, “Pamphletos. . . uma aventura reveladora”, Careta, 12 February 1921, n.p.
Cf. Pereira Cunha, Ecos da folia., 26 40 and Soihet, A subversão pelo riso, p. 154.
63
João, “Um sorriso para todas. . . O Pierrot dos olhos cinzentos”, Careta, 5 February
1921, n.p.
64
This is easily done in Latin languages, in which the gender of the possessive pronoun is
determined by the object, rather than the subject. For instance, in the quotation above,
“o seu hálito” could be variously translated as his or her breath; likewise, “a sua boca” as
his or her mouth.
98 Modernity in Black and White
Significantly, in many such references over the 1920s, the masked ball
where such encounters take place is the Baile dos Artistas, or Artists’ Ball.
The first such ball was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1917, modelled on the
Parisian Bal des Quat’z’Arts, and organized by a group of young artists.65
Like most outlets for celebrating carnival, it started out small and incon-
spicuous but grew to outsize proportions as word of mouth spread. The
second ball, held at the Teatro Fênix in 1918, marks the occasion when it
started to garner photographic coverage in the press, which became
abundant over the course of the 1920s in magazines like Fon-Fon! and
Careta. A page from Revista da Semana (Fig. 23) shows two group
photographs of the event, the bottom one flanked by enlarged figures of
Seelinger dressed as a Roman wrestler, on the left, and K. Lixto as a
pharaoh, on the right. The two artists were mainstays in the festivities,
and Seelinger was instrumental in providing information about similar
festivities in Europe.66 Their interest in carnival, as has been seen, ante-
dated the Artists’ Ball. An article of 1916, in the popular Revista da
Semana, singles out Seelinger as a proud exception to the presumed rule
that fine artists disliked carnival. K. Lixto’s involvement with carnival ran
even deeper, culminating in his role as scenographer for the society
Tenentes do Diabo in 1913–1915.67 The fact that Seelinger and
K. Lixto appear prominently in this photograph of the Artists’ Ball of
1918 may seem circumstantial, but it is a token of an entrenched rela-
tionship between the bohemian milieu of artists/illustrators and the wider
conviviality of the carnivalesque.
65
“Bilhetes brancos”, Fon Fon!, 10 February 1917, n.p. See also “O baile dos ‘quatz’arts’”,
Revista da Semana, 9 February 1918, n.p.; “Vultos que passam. (O baile dos artistas)”,
Careta, 3 January 1920, n.p.; “O baile dos artistas”, Careta, 29 January 1921, n.p.; and
Dégas, “O baile dos artistas”, Careta, 25 February 1922, n.p.
66
Seelinger took part in both the Bal des Quat’z’Arts in Paris and the Lumpen Fest in
Munich, as documented in the scrapbook preserved by his granddaughter (see note 39).
On these experiences, see Valle, “Sociabilidade, boêmia e carnaval em ateliês de artistas
brasileiros”, pp. 52 55. Over many decades of existence, the Baile dos Artistas mutated
into different shapes and forms, becoming noticeably more conventional after 1930, by
which time it was organized by other groups, not necessarily of artists, though it retained
the name.
67
“A semana elegante. Carnaval!”, Revista da Semana, 4 March 1916, n.p. See also
“Notas, impressões e novidades sobre o glorioso carnaval de 1913”, Correio da Manhã,
6 February 1913, 2; “Ultimas do carnaval”, Correio da Manhã, 25 February 1914, 2. See
also Carlos Frederico da Silva Reis, Os Tenentes do Diabo: Carnaval, lazer e identidades
entre os setores médios urbanos do Rio de Janeiro (1889 1932) (unpublished master’s
thesis, Programa de Pós graduação em História Social da Cultura, Pontifícia Universi
dade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, 2012), pp. 114 116.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 99
68
“Os caricaturistas”, Revista da Semana, 1 February 1913, n.p. The second stanza states
that in the court of His Majesty the Pencil, grand duke K. Lixto will this year dress up as
prince Raul. The third stanza suggests that the thin J. Carlos will use a borrowed body to
pass himself off as Julião Machado, an older and more heavy set illustrator. The fourth
stanza affirms that Luiz Vianna will celebrate carnival disguised as himself.
69
Pimenta Velloso, Modernismo no Rio de Janeiro, ch. 2.
70
“Na Escola de Bellas Artes. O vernissage da exposição geral”, Correio da Manhã,
13 August 1916, 5.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 101
backgrounds.71 It was hardly unusual for artists to engage with the festiv-
ities; and even established and relatively conventional names – like Rodol-
pho Amoedo, deputy director of ENBA – were known to design banners and
pennants for carnival societies.72 K. Lixto’s involvement with carnival was,
nonetheless, precocious and particularly intense. An illustrated elegy
(Fig. 24) published in Fon-Fon! in 1910 – with drawing by Raul (under the
pseudonym O.I.S.) and verse by K. Lixto – is one of the earliest printed
tributes to samba as a phenomenon of black urban culture, providing a
glimpse of the style at its inception and preserving some of its vivid period
jargon, of which K. Lixto evidently was a master.73
K. Lixto was not the only artist to work as scenographer for a carnival
society. His debut in that capacity, on behalf of theTenentes do Diabo,
rounded out a trio of pageant directors who came to personify the three
Great Societies and brought the rivalry between them to a head in the
press between circa 1913 and 1919. The longest-serving was Publio
Marroig, employed by the Democráticos over many years and, paradox-
ically, about whom the least is known.74 The most successful during the
71
Seigel, Uneven Encounters, 98. See also Antônio Herculano Lopes, “Vem cá, mulata!”,
Tempo, 13 (2009), 80 100.
72
A selection of banners is reproduced as photos in: “Rio de Janeiro estandartes das
sociedades carnavalescas”, Revista da Semana, 18 March 1906, 3283; and “Estandartes
de sociedades carnavalescas”, Revista da Semana, 25 March 1906, 3307.
73
“Samba”, Fon Fon!, 10 December 1910, n.p. The poem is untranslatable, especially as
many of the words are used in a colloquial or slang sense, no longer current. Roughly, it
reads: “Casting aside the yoke of honest labour / Chico Bastião, after the yada yada / Of
style, plunges into the samba and makes his speech of greeting while knotting his thong. /
The batuque is boiling hot inside, and next to the joint a crioula, joyous and coquettish,
wiggles / her rigid hips. Next enters a stumbler / wobbling and teetering rolls up his sleeve
/ and next to the crioula prances and saunters / a grand strident dance step of conga /
while in back some are sampling a taste of pinga. / Then comes a mulatto and sings in
coarsest lewdness / Belting out the voice in his breast, he juts his thick lip / and drools and
cries and laughs and spits and dances and snorts.”
74
Remarkably little has been published on these forerunners to the current profession of
carnavalesco the artistic directors who conceive, plan and direct the annual pageants of
the escolas de samba. On carnavalescos, see Nilton Silva dos Santos, “Carnaval é isso aí.
A gente faz para ser destruído!”: Carnavalesco, individualidade e mediação cultural
(unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa
de Pós Graduação em Sociologia e Antropologia, 2006); Renata de Sá Gonçalves, Os
ranchos pedem passagem: O carnaval no Rio de Janeiro do começo do século XX
(unpublished master’s thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Pós
Graduação em Sociologia e Antropologia, 2003); and Helenise Monteiro Guimarães,
Carnavalesco, o profissional que “faz escola” no carnaval carioca (unpublished master’s
thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Pós Graduação em Artes
Visuais, 1992).
102 Modernity in Black and White
1910s was Fiuza Guimarães – the artist almost unseen on the right-hand
side of Seelinger’s Bohemia – who led the Fenianos to repeated triumphs
from at least 1908 until his retirement in 1921, when he was succeeded by
André Vento, a disciple and painter who decorated the club’s facilities in
1920.75 K. Lixto’s tenure at the Tenentes do Diabo was shorter-lived, as
were the careers of other noted carnival scenographers like Alexandre de
Concilis, Jayme Silva and Angelo Lazary.76 Before discussing the role
played by these artists, a brief word is in order regarding the relevance
of the pageants they directed.
The historiography of Rio’s carnival has long been premised on the
notion that the heyday of the Great Societies, between the 1850s and
1920s, represents an attempt by elites to tame the anarchical nature of the
older entrudo festivities and impose an artificial veneer of European
‘civilization’ upon them. According to this view – put forward by pion-
eering carnival historian Eneida de Moraes in the 1950s – the advent of
the escolas de samba, after 1928, marked a return to the authentic Afro-
Brazilian roots of carnival. Several foundational histories of carnival
establish a teleology that progresses from the “infancy” of entrudo to
the “maturity” of the escolas de samba, after overcoming “the conceited
and snobbish adolescence of Venetian corteges of the Frenchified oli-
garchs”.77 Though still widely repeated, the claim that the Great Societies
were restricted to elite membership is unsubstantiated. During the 1910s,
they appear to have enjoyed immense popularity, at least if their
75
“Pelos clubs”, Gazeta de Notícias, 9 December 1920, 4; “O que ouvimos hontem nos
Democraticos, nos Fenianos e nos Tenentes”, Gazeta de Notícias, 17 January 1921, 3.
76
“Carnaval”, Gazeta de Notícias, 31 January 1908, 4; “Carnaval de 1908. O dia de
hontem”, Gazeta de Notícias, 3 March 1908, 1; Revista da Semana, 7 March 1909,
1368; “Os que fazem os prestitos carnavalescos deste anno”, Revista da Semana,
17 February 1912, n.p.; “Os prodromos do carnaval”, Fon Fon!, 25 January 1913, n.
p.; “Carnaval. Fallam os tres scenographos K. Lixto, Fiuza e Marroig”, Fon Fon!,
1 February 1913, n.p.; “Carnaval”, Correio da Manhã, 19 March 1916, 5 “Columna
de Momo”, Correio da Manhã, 24 January 1917, 4; “O carnaval de 1917. O que foram
os tres grandes prestitos de hontem”, Correio da Manhã, 21 February 1917, 1; “O
carnaval levado a serio”, A Noite, 17 February 1919 [page “Ultima Hora”]; “O carnaval
de 1919. Fenianos”, Fon Fon!, 1 March 1919, n.p.; “Carnaval”, A Noite, 18 January
1921, 3; “Carnaval”, Correio da Manhã, 8 February 1921, 1.
77
Pereira Cunha, Ecos da folia, 15. Cf. Cristiana Schettini Pereira, “Os senhores da alegria:
A presença das mulheres nas grandes sociedades carnavalescas cariocas em fins do século
XIX”, In: Pereira Cunha, Carnavais e outras f(r)estas, pp. 311 339; Hertzman, Making
Samba, p. 56 Lira Neto, Uma história do samba, esp. pp. 33, 46, 56; and Soihet,
A subversão pelo riso, ch. 3.
104 Modernity in Black and White
78
Pereira Cunha’s Ecos da folia contains the most in depth study of the subject, but its
discussion is heavily weighted towards the nineteenth century and does not account for
transformations undergone after 1900, which appear to have been considerable. Refer
ences to Democráticos and Fenianos recur constantly in Vagalume’s 1904 column on
Rio’s nightlife; see Vagalume, Ecos noturnos. Their popularity circa 1900 is confirmed by
other press sources; see, for instance, J. Reporter, “Carnavalescos”, O Paiz, 14 February
1904, 2. On the perception of their decline, see Mario Pederneiras, “Tradições”, Kósmos,
February 1907, n.p. See also Silva Reis, Os Tenentes do Diabo, pp. 101 108.
79
Ferreira, Inventando carnavais, pp. 16 19, 156 161, 170 173.
80
Following the death of Barão do Rio Branco, Brazil’s leading statesman of the time, the
1912 carnival was overshadowed by debates about whether or not it should be staged at
all and even attempts to prohibit the festivities; see Hertzman, Making Samba, pp. 53 54.
See also “O carnaval vai correr frio”, A Noite, 3 February 1912, 2; and “As festas da
Paschoa promettem tomar extraordinario brilhantismo”, Correio da Manhã, 14 February
1913, 5. The success of the 1913 edition continued to echo fifty years later: Sousa Rocha,
“O carnaval da Carabu”, Correio da Manhã, 24 February 1963, “3º Caderno”, 1.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 105
81
Many aspects of this pageant organization were subsequently appropriated by the escolas
de samba.
82
For photographic depictions, see, among many others, “Carnaval”, Revista da Semana,
7 March 1909, 1369 1378; and “O carnaval no Rio”, Revista da Semana, 28 March
1914, n.p.
83
“O carnaval levado a serio”, A Noite, 1919; Terra de Senna, “Bellas artes”, D. Quixote,
18 February 1920, n.p.
84
See, for example, Correio da Manhã, 8 February 1913, 6; and Correio da Manhã,
22 March 1916, 7. See also “Carnaval. Fallam os tres scenographos K. Lixto, Fiuza e
Marroig”, Fon Fon!, n.p.
85
“Os prestitos de hontem”, Correio da Manhã, 9 February 1910, 1 2.
106 Modernity in Black and White
86
Ibid. The claim would not have rung hollow. Fiuza was widely known for having studied
in Munich. See “Notas sobre arte. Exposição de Bellas Artes”, Jornal do Commercio,
12 September 1901, 3; and “José Fiuza”, Gazeta de Notícias, 14 December 1902, 2.
87
“Carnaval. Fallam os tres scenographos K. Lixto, Fiuza e Marroig”, Fon Fon!, n.p.
88
Pereira Cunha, Ecos da folia, 115.
108 Modernity in Black and White
89
“Carnaval. Fallam os tres scenographos K. Lixto, Fiuza e Marroig”, Fon Fon!, n.p.
90
Morales de los Rios, “Fiuza, Ribeiro e Seelinger”, 2. Fiuza was a member of the Salon
jury at least three times in 1903, 1907 and 1911 always filling one of the two slots
elected by the exhibiting artists. Revealingly, he was on the jury that awarded the travel
prize to Seelinger.
91
In 1916, both Fiuza and Belmiro de Almeida, a painter long active as a caricaturist, were
disqualified from competing for the post of professor of painting at ENBA; see “Escola
Nacional de Bellas Artes”, Correio da Manhã, 10 June 1916, 2. The motives for this
development remain unclear. The jury composed of Lucilio de Albuquerque, Modesto
Brocos and José Octavio Correia Lima would not have been particularly hostile to
carnival or bohemianism. In 1916, Fiuza took up a position teaching drawing at the
Escola Normal, or teacher training school, which he held for many years.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 109
92
[Fenianos advertisement], Gazeta de Notícias, 18 March 1905, 5 and [Fenianos adver
tisement], Correio da Manhã, 17 January 1913, 6. For a photograph of the directors of
Fenianos, including Fiuza, see O Malho, 7 March 1914, n.p.
93
See Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, “E o Rio dançou. Identidades e tensões nos
clubes recreativos cariocas (1912 1922), In: Pereira Cunha, Carnavais e outras f(r)estas,
pp. 419 444. See also Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, “A dança da política:
Trabalhadores, associativismo recreativo e eleições no Rio de Janeiro da Primeira Repúb
lica”, Revista Brasileira de História, 37 (2017), 1 26.
94
“Os heróes de um mundo magico”, A Noite, 4 February 1921, 1.
110 Modernity in Black and White
André Vento, Jayme Silva and Publio Marroig became household names,
their photographs gracing front pages, their caricatures appearing in
illustrated magazines. Like Fon-Fon! had done, over a decade earlier,
the satirical weekly D. Quixote undertook a visit to the depots of the
three Great Societies in 1924.95 The tropes of secrecy, insider knowledge
and assurances of victory for all three societies remained in place, but the
tone is markedly more sarcastic. The author was probably Lauro Nunes,
who wrote in the magazine under the pseudonym Terra de Senna,
authoring a regular column on the art world titled “Bellas-artes”. The
relationship between art and carnival was a frequent theme, and the
columnist’s attitude to it far from unambiguous. Although he regularly
featured artists engaged with carnival, the treatment dispensed to them
was mostly satirical.96 A column of January 1920 contains the cryptic
note: “André Vento told an evening newspaper that Carnival does not
need Art. Nor does Art need Carnival, someone remarked, remembering
the 1919 Salon.”97
While Terra de Senna considered carnival important enough to focus
on the topic repeatedly, his text begrudges the artists their success and
often insinuates they are wasting their talents on something of lesser
value. This is most openly formulated in a 1921 column that begins:
If Arthur Timotheo, instead of painting The Day After or the curtain for the São
Pedro Theatre, had dedicated himself to the art of Mardi Gras, his name would be
acclaimed in the streets like that of André Vento, which was, by the way, always
his only ambition in life.98
95
“D. Quixote nos grandes clubs. Uma visita aos Fenianos, Democraticos e Tenentes”, D.
Quixote, 27 February 1924, n.p.
96
See, among others, Terra de Senna, “Bellas artes”, D. Quixote, 20 August 1919,
3 September 1919, 28 January 1920, 18 February 1920, 16 February 1921, 2 March
1921, n.p.
97
Terra de Senna, “Bellas artes”, D. Quixote, 28 January 1920, n.p.
98
Terra de Senna, “Bellas artes”, D. Quixote, 16 February 1921, n.p.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 111
strategic choice of O Dia Seguinte (The Day After) (Fig. 26), a carnival-
themed painting, as a foil to the success of fine artists who worked
producing carnival festivities. Later, in 1926, when he authored the piece
“Carnival in contemporary Brazilian painting”, cited in epigraph to this
chapter, Terra de Senna still did not seem to be sure about the relation-
ship. He laments that Brazilian artists were not interested in carnival, yet,
at the same time, lists several who did represent carnival themes and
castigates them for their shortcomings. Interestingly, the latter article
made no mention of Timotheo da Costa.
addressed head-on as a driving force in their art. That year, two painters,
both in their early thirties and both familiar to the bohemian social circle
described above, presented carnival-themed pictures to the ENBA Salon.
The elder of the two, Rodolpho Chambelland, is the figure depicted in
Seelinger’s Bohemia lighting his cigarette in the flame of the lamp. The
other, Arthur Timotheo, was the younger brother of João Timotheo da
Costa, seated at the table in the 1903 painting. Besides their age and
interests, Chambelland and Timotheo shared the peculiarity of both
belonging to pairs of artist brothers. Carlos Chambelland, Rodolpho’s
younger brother, was a painter too. The four men engaged in a convivial
relationship that dated back to student days at ENBA and was reinforced
by work and projects in common over many years.99 Their proximity
makes it likely that the simultaneous presentation of Chambelland’s
Masked Ball and Timotheo’s The Day After to the 1913 Salon was a
concerted decision on both men’s parts. Despite their discrepancy in size –
the former is almost twice as large as the latter – the paintings can be read
as companion pieces or, at the very least, as an artistic dialogue.100
It would be tempting to situate the scene in Baile à Fantasia (Masked
Ball) (Fig. 27) as a depiction of one of the Artists’ Balls described above,
but the work was painted four years before the first edition in 1917. The
relationship in this instance is likely the opposite, with life imitating art. In
any event, the painting was a success. It was awarded one of the highest
accolades, an acquisition prize – in the value five contos de réis, the largest
sum paid out that year – and thereby entered the collection of ENBA. The
extremely dynamic composition is structured around revellers in fancy
dress taking turns on the dance floor. The position of their bodies – tightly
enlaced, strongly diagonal, thrusting back and forth rhythmically – sug-
gests they are dancing the maxixe.101 The range of costumes is
99
See, among others, Revista da Semana, 7 October 1906, 3958; “Fon Fon em Turim”,
Fon Fon!, 18 February 1911, n.p.; “Um quadro histórico”, O Malho, 10 January 1914,
n.p.; “Cine Palais”, Fon Fon!, 25 July 1914, n.p.; “Os nossos artistas fundam sua
cidade”, A Noite, 9 April 1915, 1.
100
At least one contemporary critic interpreted the works as a pair: Ant., “Pintura.
O ‘Salon’ de 1913 J. Baptista da Costa Arthur Timotheo Rodolfo Chambel
land”, O Imparcial, 10 September 1913, p. 3; and another drew comparisons between
them: MP, “O Salão de 1913”, Fon Fon!, 13 September 1913, n.p. See Arthur Valle,
“Baile à fantasia, de Rodolpho Chambelland: A figuração do frenesi”, 19&20, 3 (2008)
and Cardoso, A arte brasileira em 25 quadros, pp. 160 171.
101
One contemporary critic identified the dance as such: Gonçalo Alves, “Notas do
‘Salon’”, A Noite, 8 September 1913, 2. On the contradistinctions between forms of
dancing maxixe, lundu, samba and tango, see Sandroni, Feitiço decente, pp. 62 83.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 113
102
“Notas de arte”, Jornal do Commercio, 5 September 1913, 6.
103
LF, “O Salão de 1913 VI”, O Paiz, 20 September 1913, 3.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 115
C’est vilain, il y a du bleu, du jaune, du vert ; les figures sont zébrées de bleu et de
rose et de vert ; je n’ai jamais vu cela!
C’est un travail très difficil[e]. Éloigne toi, tu les verras harmonisées et fraiches,
tandis que dans le tableau d’en face, académique et archaïque, les tons sont
sales.104
There are multiple takeaways from this strange dialogue. Firstly, the
effort to explain divisionism in technical terms implies that readers (even
those capable of reading French) might not have been familiar with the
concept. The female companion finds the picture ugly (vilain) and
exclaims: “I’ve never seen anything like it!” Secondly, the assertion “that
many misunderstood and others did not wish to understand”
Chambelland’s painting suggests the work was the object of dispute and
negative appraisals. Thirdly, the counterpoint between a similar work
hanging “in a museum of modern art” and the painting in front, described
as “academic and archaic”, reveals that the opposition between modern
and academic was already operative in discussions of art in Rio de Janeiro
in 1913. The sum of these three points is that Masked Ball was perceived
by its audience as much more innovative in formal terms than it may
appear in retrospect, over a century later.
The coincidences between Chambelland’s and Timotheo’s paintings
are not only thematic but also stylistic, with distinct visual echoes between
104
Bolognese, “Arte e artistas. Salon 1913”, O Paiz, 20 September 1913, 3. This was not
the first article signed by Bolognese to appear in French in O Paiz, but part of a recurring
feature.
You don’t know, my dear. It’s the method, the theory, that involves separating hues
by observing the movements and transformations of luminous points of the solar
spectrum upon objects as well as people, both in landscapes and in portraiture; such
work demands absolute certainty of eye and hand. One divides the hues, as opposed
to mixing them. Six years ago, a painter friend of mine brought me some pastels
executed according to divisionist theory. Blue, green, yellow, orange and a few
complementary hues; Prussian blue instead of black. A self portrait that today hangs
in a museum of modern art, the head of a Portuguese mason, and other studies done
in Paris and Lisbon.
I should very much like to see a divisionist painter at work!
Look at Chambelland’s painting, which many misunderstood, and others did not
wish to understand. Admire the pretty flesh tones!
It’s ugly, there is blue, yellow, green; the figures are striped with blue, pink and
green; I’ve never seen anything like it!
It’s a difficult work. Stand away from it, and you will see them harmonious and
fresh, while in the work across from it, academic and archaic, the tones are dingy.
[Author’s translation]
116 Modernity in Black and White
them. The Day After likewise features a man dressed in a Pierrot outfit,
very similar in its details to the figure in Masked Ball, with two differ-
ences: his hat has fallen to the ground and is just visible along the lower
edge of the composition, and the whiteface is distinctly more pronounced.
He is being propped up by a sturdy labourer who knocks on the door of a
house, one of a group of men working on the pavement, another of whom
points out the incident. From the right-hand side of the composition, a
uniformed driver looks on watchfully from a car covered in colourful
streamers. The narrative structure of the image is conventional. After a
night of revelry, Pierrot is being dropped off at home but is so exhausted,
or drunk or both, that he can hardly stand. It is certainly a more critical,
and even moralistic, depiction of the theme of carnival than Chambel-
land’s. While those with money to ride in chauffeured automobiles can
drink and party, others must get up early to work. Given that the painter
was Afro-descendant and prone to provocative representations of black
subjects, the whiteface mask is further susceptible to reading as a veiled
critique of racial inequalities.105
As regards the painterly dialogue with Chambelland’s Masked Ball,
two crucial points emerge. Firstly, the relative paucity of facial features
discernible in either painting reflects a shared understanding of the
carnivalesque. In both works, the most visible physiognomy is that of
the Pierrot, and even his face is reduced to a painted mask, to differing
degrees in one and the other. Both painters have gone to great lengths to
hide or shade the faces of the remaining figures in their respective com-
positions, suggesting a blurring of identities. This reinforces the idea of
carnival as a site for reversing social roles and transgressing prohibitions,
particularly through drunkenness and sexuality. The second point is to do
not with the subject of the works but with painterly handling. The mutual
use of streamers as a pretext for painting almost abstract patterns of pure
chromatism indicates that both artists were exploring the relationship
between representation and vision. Which is to say: they were engaged
in experimenting with techniques contemporary viewers would have
regarded as ‘modern’. Furthermore, both elected the theme of carnival
as an appropriate pretext to try out such innovations – largely absent
from other works produced by either of them around the same time –
evincing an intent to apply up-to-date treatment to a subject pertaining to
modern life.
105
For more on this, see Rafael Cardoso, “The problem of race in Brazilian painting,
c.1850 1920”, Art History, 38 (2015), 502 505.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 117
106
The image was produced using a typographic cliché produced from a retouched photo
graph, possibly airbrushed. It is signed J. Garcia, an engraving workshop that advertised
its services including photogravure, zincography, photozincography and phototyping
in Atheneida magazine, for which it produced several plates. For more on this, see
Chapter 3. It is worth noting that K. Lixto was art director of Fon Fon! at the time.
107
“O que foi a festa de hontem no Salão deste anno”, Correio da Manhã, 9 September
1913, 3; Bueno Amador, “Bellas artes”, Jornal do Brasil, 9 September 1913, p. 6;
“A hora musical no palácio das belas artes”, Correio da Manhã, 16 September 1913,
3; Bueno Amador, “Bellas artes”, Jornal do Brasil, 16 September 1913, p. 6; and Bueno
Amador, “Bellas artes”, Jornal do Brasil, 22 September 1913, p. 4. For photographs of
these events, see Revista da Semana, 13 September 1913 & 20 September 1913 and
Careta, 13 September 1913.
118 Modernity in Black and White
108
“O Salão de 1913. São seis os candidatos à medalha de prata”, Correio da Manhã,
11 September 1913, 5; Jack, “Chronica”, Fon Fon!, 6 September 1913, n.p.
109
“Artes e artistas”, O Paiz, 14 September 1913, 2; and LF, “O Salão de 1913 V”,
O Paiz, 18 September 1913, 7. The jury was composed of João Baptista da Costa,
Henrique Bernardelli, Modesto Brocos, Alberto Delpino, Pedro Peres, Carlo de Servi and
João Timotheo da Costa.
110
Among the major institutional struggles of the period were the reorganization of its
statutes in 1890 and the controversy around Modesto Broco’s polemical A questão do
ensino das bellas artes (1915). See Camila Dazzi, “Pôr em prática a reforma da antiga
Academia: Dificuldades enfrentadas pela Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (1891 1895)”,
Visualidades, 15 (2017), 171 198; and Heloisa Selma Fernandes Capel, “Entre o riso e o
desprezo: Modesto Brocos como crítico na ‘Terra do Cruzeiro’”, 19&20, 11 (2016).
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 121
The author of the text posits that this would not happen, “without a great
national occurrence that strongly impacts the sensitive nature of the
people or a profound social revolution that intimately modifies the pre-
vailing sentiment”.112 Instead, he suggested, change would continue to be
processed piecemeal, on an individual basis. This canny observation was
borne out by developments over the following years. Instead of under-
mining the system, challenges to prevailing norms were co-opted through
conviviality, in keeping with the Carioca culture of sidestepping conflict
and channelling it into humour and divertissement. Significantly, the
paintings singled out here as examples of formal innovation take as their
subject nocturnal pleasures.
The free and easy sociability among artists of all sorts – anticipated in
Seelinger’s Bohemia – evolved over the 1910s into broader networks and
even managed to establish itself on an organizational level. Fine artists
and graphic artists increasingly frequented the same spaces of exhibition
and education; and the crossover between the two fields, which had been
a constant trickle over the latter half of the nineteenth century, flowed
more freely after 1916. The main institutional locus for these exchanges
was the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios. Inaugurated 1858 as a school of arts and
crafts, with the express purpose of training workers for manufacturing
industry, the Liceu gradually encroached into the arena of fine art and
came to function almost as a preparatory school for ENBA, with which it
shared numerous personnel. From 1882 onwards, it also began promot-
ing art exhibitions independently of the Salon.113 Two interrelated
111
Rapin, “A exposição de 1905”, Renascença, October 1905, 174 182.
112
Ibid., 174.
113
See Alba Carneiro Bielinski, “O Liceu de Artes e Ofícios sua história de 1856 a
1906”, 19&20, 4, (2009); and Rafael Cardoso, “A Academia Imperial de Belas Artes
e o Ensino Técnico”, In: 180 Anos de Escola de Belas Artes: Anais do Seminário EBA
180 (Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1997). In 1906, the Liceu
obtained one of the best lots on the new Avenida Central and began erecting a building
that would only be inaugurated in 1916. This real estate transaction ultimately proved a
boon to the institution’s finances, as the ground floor of the building became a
122 Modernity in Black and White
groupings that congregated around the Liceu during the latter half of the
1910s are significant for fleshing out the social networks engaged in Rio’s
artistic modernization: namely, the Centro Artístico Juventas and the
Salão dos Humoristas.
In 1910, a group under the leadership of twenty-four-year-old painter
Annibal Mattos (brother of printmaker Adalberto Pinto de Mattos and
sculptor Antonino Pinto de Mattos) established an art students’ league
named Juventas to exhibit the work of younger artists.114 Other painters
like Henrique Cavalleiro, Galdino Guttmann Bicho, José Marques Júnior,
Sylvia Meyer and Navarro da Costa, almost all in their twenties, were
among the early members; and their first group exhibition was held in
August 1911 on the premises of ENBA.115 The league’s fifth exhibition, in
1916, represented a breakthrough in size and scope. Held in the newly
inaugurated building of the Liceu, it showed 217 works, including not
only artists of the “new generation”, so-called, but also recognized
masters like João Baptista da Costa (then, director of ENBA), Henrique
Bernardelli and Belmiro de Almeida.116 Several of the artists depicted in
Seelinger’s Bohemia also took part: Malagutti, Fiuza Guimarães and
Cunha Mello, as well as Arthur Timotheo. Held in October, immediately
after ENBA’s annual exhibition in September, the Juventas show elicited
favourable comparisons with the official Salon across the Avenida.
In 1913, artists linked to Juventas and Liceu were singled out for
awards at the ENBA Salon. That same year, Carlos Oswald was hired
to set up a printing workshop at the Liceu which became a focal point for
encounters between fine and graphic artists. Several of the names featured
in this chapter – Seelinger, Arthur Timotheo, Mazzuchelli, Raul and
sought after location for shops and cafés. The rents paid by these businesses financed the
activities of the Liceu until the late 1930s, when the building was expropriated under the
Estado Novo regime.
114
For more on Annibal Mattos, see Rodrigo Vivas, “Aníbal Mattos e as Exposições Gerais
de Belas Artes em Belo Horizonte”, 19&20, 6 (2011); and Rodrigo Vivas Andrade,
“Análise da produção do pintor Aníbal Matos em Belo Horizonte 1917 1944”, III
Encontro de História da Arte (CHAA/Unicamp, 2007), pp. 66 75.
115
Fon Fon!, 12 August 1911, n.p. See also Fon Fon!, 25 May 1912, n.p.; Fon Fon!,
3 August 1912, n.p.; Fon Fon!, 14 September 1912, n.p.; “Comissão organizadora da
3ª Exposição Juventas”, Revista da Semana, 26 July 1913, n.p.; “Juventas”, Revista da
Semana, 23 August 1913, n.p.
116
“Bellas artes. Inauguração da exposição do Centro Juventas”, Correio da Manhã,
5 October 1916, 3; “A exposição do circulo Juventas”, Gazeta de Notícias, 22 October
1916, 2; and “Exposições de arte. Centro Artistico Juventas”, Correio da Manhã,
25 October 1916, 2. See also “Centro Artistico Juventas”, Careta, 14 October 1916,
n.p.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 123
K. Lixto, among others – printed their work there or took part in related
exhibitions, over the 1910s (Fig. 30).117 Oswald’s initial contact with the
Liceu occurred through Adalberto Pinto de Mattos, printmaker and later
art critic.118 A network of sociability developed around these and other
artists who shared an interest in printmaking which crossed over, via
personal contacts, into the fine arts milieu of ENBA. A group photograph
at the 1913 Salon shows both Chambelland and both Timotheo brothers,
posing together with younger artists, Adalberto Mattos, Guttmann Bicho
and Navarro da Costa. Other photographs of 1916 and 1919, published
117
Born, raised and trained in Italy, son of the Brazilian composer Henrique Oswald,
Carlos Oswald moved to Brazil in 1913. In 1911, he worked with the Chambelland
and Timotheo brothers designing the Brazilian pavilion for the Turin International. See
Maria Isabel Oswald Monteiro, Carlos Oswald, 1882 1971: Pintor da luz e dos reflexos
(Rio de Janeiro: Casa Jorge, 2000), pp. 85 102.
118
Ibid., 85. See also João Brancato, “Um mestre da arte da gravura: Adalberto Pinto de
Mattos”, Anais da XXX Semana de História Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora
(2013), 348 362; and João Brancato, Crítica de arte e modernidade no Rio de Janeiro:
Intertextualidade na imprensa carioca dos anos 20 a partir de Adalberto Mattos
(1888 1966) (unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de Pós Graduação em História,
Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, 2018).
124 Modernity in Black and White
in the press, cast many of the same names together in other group
situations, as colleagues or allies.119 Their recurrence in various overlap-
ping contexts points to the permeability between artists’ groups.
Though the institutions may have existed apart, key figures of ENBA,
Liceu and Juventas are frequently cited together, in varying constellations
and contexts. This porosity between different parts of the art world
extended to illustrators and caricaturists, as well. In November 1916,
one month after the Juventas exhibition, the first Humourists’ Salon was
staged in the Liceu. On show were 518 works by well-known caricaturists
and illustrators like Raul, K. Lixto, Belmiro de Almeida, Luiz Vianna,
Amaro and Nemesio, plus newcomer Di Cavalcanti, who would go on to
become a key player in the Modern Art Week of 1922 and one of the most
famous names in Brazilian modernism.120 In a city accustomed to one
general exhibition per year, suddenly three back-to-back shows featuring
hundreds of artists represented nothing less than a gravitational shift
in the art world. Both the Humourists’ Salon and the Juventas exhibition
continued to be staged over the following years, pointing to a segmenta-
tion of the art world but also indicating greater room to manoeuvre
in contact zones and intermediate spaces. Encounters between individuals
in the informal arenas of carnival and bohemianism facilitated
exchanges that may remain barely perceptible from examining only the
daytime evidence.
In 1919, Centro Artístico Juventas was renamed Sociedade Brasileira
de Belas Artes (SBBA). The decision was taken at a general assembly of
league members held on 1 July, at the Liceu, and the motion was pro-
posed by an odd couple: Raul Pederneiras and Rodolpho Chambelland.
Aged 45 and 40 respectively, they were senior representatives of a
membership that apparently no longer identified with the youthfulness
of the former name. At the time, the celebrated Raul was just beginning
to take on teaching duties at ENBA. Chambelland had already been
employed as a professor of life drawing there since 1916. Between them,
119
“A Sociedade de Aquarellistas”, Fon Fon!, 23 September 1916, n.p.; and Fon Fon!,
5 July 1919, n.p. The Timotheo brothers also shared a studio with Seelinger, as
evidenced by photographs in the scrapbook referenced in note 39. For further links
between Seelinger and Timotheo, see also Niclo, “Artistas e arteiros”, Fon Fon!, 16 July
1910, n.p.
120
“O ‘vernissage’ do ‘Salão’ dos Humoristas”, Correio da Manhã, 14 November 1916, 2.
See also “Salão dos Humoristas”, Revista da Semana, 30 September 1916, n.p.; and
“Nem só do pão vive o homem”, O Malho, 2 December 1916, n.p. Cf. Lima, História da
caricatura no Brasil, II, pp. 430 448.
A Pagan Festival for the Up to Date 125
121
The best source of information on the early history of Juventas is a rare pamphlet housed
in the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (Seção de Iconografia, 109.1.5) which bears no
bibliographical information (location, publisher, date) but was printed around 1935:
A Sociedade Brasileira de Bellas Artes, no seu primeiro jubileu. 1910 1935. See also
Nogueira da Silva, “Na exposição do Centro Artistico Juventas”, Gazeta de Notícias,
6 June 1914, 1; FM, “A exposição do circulo Jeventas”, Gazeta de Notícias, 25 October
1916, 5; Adalberto Pinto de Mattos, “Bellas artes. Intercambio artistico”, O Malho,
22 August 1922, n.p. In 1931, Raul and Chambelland teamed up again to depose Lúcio
Costa as director of ENBA; see Maria Lucia Bressan Pinheiro, “Lúcio Costa e a Escola
Nacional de Belas Artes”, Anais do 6º Seminário Docomomo Brasil (2005).
126 Modernity in Black and White
the war, his art changed noticeably. Between mid-1917 and late 1918,
Seelinger produced several colourful covers for Fon-Fon! and O Malho
on patriotic themes, depicting Brazilian flags and effigies of the Republic,
in a cartoonish and hardly recognizable style.
Like many artists of his generation, Seelinger was little attuned to the
new artistic currents taking hold in Europe. Their reflexes would soon be
felt in Brazil and particularly in São Paulo. Nonetheless, however dated or
even reactionary the members of the group depicted in his Bohemia may
have become after 1918, that does not alter the significance of their
actions before that date. To deny them recognition of what they accom-
plished in their own time and place is not only historicist, but also
colonialist in its fixation with Paris-centred categories of modernism.
Between around 1903 and 1916, in Rio de Janeiro, the conjunction
between carnival and theatre, art and illustration engendered unique
and vibrant expressions of visual culture. These were avowedly modern
in the Baudelaireian sense – transient, fleeting, contingent – and unequivo-
cally attuned to an urban experience of rapid modernization. They were
perceived as timely and contemporary by the public that experienced
them. No matter what others may have made of them in retrospect, the
artists who created them conceived of themselves as consummately
modern. Significantly, this carnivalesque Carioca modernism was also
permeable to Afro-descendant artists, such as K. Lixto or Arthur
Timotheo. The paulista modernism that succeeded it – and to a great
extent, erased its memory – possessed a very different relationship to
themes of blackness, as shall be seen in Chapter 4.
3
Leave out the sermonizing, because those days are gone. The country is
transformed; everything now is art nouveau.
Fon Fon!, 19071
1
“A successão”, Fon Fon!, 22 June 1907, n.p.
127
128 Modernity in Black and White
it has been very hard to notice because it blends in so well with its
surroundings.
The present chapter will focus on three interrelated aspects that shed
light on the conception of modernity existing in Rio de Janeiro over the
first two decades of the twentieth century: 1) the conceptual categories
and ideological premises that underpinned it; 2) the artists and intellec-
tuals who constituted its core; 3) the extensive oeuvre they produced in
the domain of illustrated periodicals. The last topic is examined in detail
because it is crucial to understanding the extent to which the
modernization in question was bound up with the rise of new media
and technologies. The Brazilian modernism that took shape over the first
two decades of the twentieth century is fascinating because it blossomed
directly out of commercial practices and urban culture, rather than as
critical commentary by elite observers. This is consistent with the circum-
stances of a country in which literature and fine art were traditionally
restricted to a privileged few. As seen in the preceding chapter, no painter
could hope to achieve the level of societal impact readily available to a
carnival scenographer.
Vibrant and original expressions of modernity were produced, over the
1910s and 1920s, in the domain of graphic arts and design. Many works
by K. Lixto (Calixto Cordeiro) and J. Carlos (José Carlos de Brito e
Cunha) rival analogous productions anywhere in the world in terms of
novelty and inventiveness. Cutting-edge where more erudite forms of
expression faltered, they exemplify the erosion of hierarchies subordin-
ating ‘lesser’ forms of artistic labour to ‘higher’ ones. This inversion of
categories makes historical sense, considering that some of the earliest
articulations of European modernism – such as the Belgian group Les XX
or the Franco-German network around La Maison Moderne in Paris –
were committed to breaking down barriers artificially erected between
fine and applied arts. Ideas that held artistic modernity to be the
unification of craft and industry, style and purpose, spread out from a
few hotbeds in 1890s Europe and gained currency throughout the world
over the period 1900 to 1914. In Brazil, they largely arrived under the
epithet art nouveau – new art – via the Francophile intellectual groupings
that dominated academies, galleries, publishers and press.
The reception given to such ideas of modern art – mostly northern
European in origin – was further complicated in Brazil by the existence of
a competing conception of modernismo in the Spanish-speaking context.
Nicaraguan poet and essayist Rubén Darío’s work was known and
admired in early twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro, and he visited the city
The Printing of Modern Life 129
2
On the precocious use of the term modernism in the Spanish speaking context and its
relations to European modernism, see Andrew Reynolds, “The Enduring Scholarly and
Creative Legacies of Rubén Darío and Modernismo”, Review: Literature and Arts of the
Americas, 51 (2018), 175 179; Andrew Reynolds & Bonnie Roos, eds., Behind the Masks
of Modernism: Global and Transnational Perspectives (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 2016), pp. 11 15; Alexandra Ortiz Wallner & Werner Mackenbach, “Escribir en
un contexto transareal: Rubén Darío y la invención del modernismo como movimiento”,
In Jeffrey Browitt & Werner Mackenbach, eds., Rubén Darío: Cosmopolita arraigado
(Managua: IHNCA UCA, 2010), pp. 350 382; and Alejandro Mejías López, The
Inverted Conquest: the Myth of Modernity and the Transatlantic Onset of Modernism
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), esp. ch.3.
3
Luiz Gonzaga Duque Estrada gained early prominence with A arte brasileira (1888), the
first book on Brazilian art to take a decidedly historical approach. He was also active as a
writer, with close ties to the symbolist movement over the 1890s, culminating in his novel
Mocidade morta (1899). See Vera Lins, Novos pierrôs, velhos saltimbancos: Os escritos de
Gonzaga Duque e o final do século XIX carioca (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Uerj, 2009); and Vera
Lins, Gonzaga Duque, a estratégia do franco atirador (Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro,
1991). See also Elaine Durigam Ferreira Pessanha, Gonzaga Duque: Um flâneur brasileiro
(unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de Pós graduação em Estudos Linguísticos e
Literários em Francês, Universidade de São Paulo, 2008).
130 Modernity in Black and White
Another new name in the catalogue, with a new and characteristic oeuvre, is that
of Raul Pederneiras; and, if there were space enough, now would be the occasion
to bear witness to the important role of the illustrators and caricaturists of the
nineteenth century, bringing modern life into the domain of art and how, through
the direct, immediate and constant observation of daily life which they are obliged
to undertake as caricaturists, they translate and better represent the life and
customs of the epoch in which they live.4
The critic had evidently been reading Charles Baudelaire’s “The Painter
of Modern Life” (1863), which famously argued that a caricaturist,
Constantin Guys, provided the model for the role of the artist in capturing
and defining modernity. The inclination to view graphic art on a par with
fine art was not a quirk of the critic hiding behind the pseudonym Rapin.
Rather, it reflects the outlook of a whole contingent of enthusiasts seeking
a new art for the new century.
4
Rapin, “A exposição de 1905”, Renascença, October 1905, 182. In French, rapin is a term
for an artist’s apprentice or a bohemian artist of dubious talent.
5
Despite the profusion of art nouveau graphics over the period, surprisingly little has been
published on the subject. See Maurício Silva, “Da fièvre ornamentale ao estilo floreal:
A estética art nouveau no grafismo e na literatura pré modernistas brasileiras”, In: Car
mem Negreiros, Fátima Oliveira & Rosa Gens, eds., Belle Époque: Crítica, arte e cultura
(Rio de Janeiro: Labelle/Faperj & São Paulo: Intermeios, 2016), pp. 69 84; and Rafael
Cardoso, ed., Impresso no Brasil, 1808 1930: Destaques da história gráfica no acervo da
Biblioteca Nacional (Rio de Janeiro: Verso Brasil, 2009), pp. 142 145. See also Michele
Bete Petry, Revistas como exposições: Arte do espetáculo e arte nova (Rio de Janeiro,
1895 1904) (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Programa de Pós Graduação em Educa
ção, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2016); and Ligia Cosmo Cantarelli, A Belle
Époque da editoração brasileira: Um estudo sobre a estética art nouveau nas capas de
livros do início do século XX (unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de Pós Graduação
em Ciências da Comunicação, Universidade de São Paulo, 2006).
The Printing of Modern Life 131
. Heitor Malagutti, Atheneida, March 1903. For color version of this
figure, please refer color plate section.
Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Biblioteca Nacional
132 Modernity in Black and White
chic that the French language evoked for Brazilian audiences of the time,
the term summed up an aspiration towards modernity.6 In fact, the two
concepts were frequently conjoined in contemporary discourse, as in a
1901 critic’s mention of “the modern French artists of art nouveau”.7
Moreover, because of its modishness and ready availability, the modern-
ization it stood for was of an alarmingly democratic kind.
The term art nouveau found its way into the Brazilian imagination
around 1900. Before that date, there are few references to it. Afterwards,
and for well over a decade, it was seemingly everywhere. The timing of
this shift is attributable to the influence of the Universal Exposition of
1900, in Paris, which popularized the style internationally. Nonetheless,
the inflection it gained in Brazilian usage is unique. Alongside the usual
mentions of art nouveau as stylistic label, the term came to signify
anything novel or new-fangled or faddish. Thus, a political columnist of
1901 discussing the recent assassination of US president William
McKinley speaks of “a sort of art nouveau holy alliance” among the
peoples of the world to combat anarchism. In 1904, another article in
Revista da Semana bears the unusual title “Art nouveau police”.8 That
same year, roving reporter Vagalume, of the newspaper Tribuna, defined
his popular column on Rio’s nightlife as “art nouveau reportage”.9
Even more perplexingly, the term also took a pejorative turn. In 1902,
yet another newspaper chronicler, discussing the education provided to
girls at Rio’s Escola Normal, comments favourably on their ability to talk
about art and literature “without malice, without effort, without pursing
their lips and rolling their eyes like any art nouveau darling”.10 A few
months later, the editors of satirical magazine Tagarela registered a
complaint about the sluggishness of “the art nouveau paving men”
engaged in repair work on Rua do Ouvidor.11 The following year, a
theatre critic reproached a character in a play for sitting on a table, a
“habit revealing an art nouveau upbringing”.12 In 1904, when the
6
See Angela de Castro Gomes, Essa gente do Rio. . .: Modernismo e nacionalismo (Rio de
Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1999), pp. 39 40.
7
Souza Bandeira, “Immortalidade pelo bronze”, Correio da Manhã, 10 November 1901, 1.
8
“Chronica”, Revista da Semana, 29 September 1901, 596; and “Policia art nouveau”,
Revista da Semana, 18 December 1904, 1877.
9
Vagalume [Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira & Mariana Costa, eds.], Ecos notur
nos (Rio de Janeiro: Contracapa, 2018), pp. 47, 168.
10
Jacques Bonhomme, “Chronica”, Revista da Semana, 30 March 1902, 98. In the original:
“revirar os olhos como qualquer preciosa art nouveau”.
11
“Tagarelando”, Tagarela, 11 October 1902, 2.
12
“Theatrices”, O Malho, 2 May 1903, n.p.
The Printing of Modern Life 133
12
“Theatrices”, O Malho, 2 May 1903, n.p.
13
B. Mol. “Maestro Arthur Napoleão”, Renascença, July 1904, p .189.
14
Fantasio, “A eloquencia de sobremeza. Oratoria e estomago”, Kósmos, June 1906, n.p.
The article was reprinted in Careta, 26 September 1959, 6 7, 34; and, more recently, in:
Lúcia Garcia, Para uma história da Belle Époque: A coleção de cardápios de Olavo Bilac
(São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial, 2011).
15
See Bruno Carvalho, Porous City: a Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro (from the 1810s
onwards) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), ch. 4.
134 Modernity in Black and White
16
For a sampling of racialist connotations in usage of the terms gaforinha and pernóstico,
cf. Vol Taire, “Almanach das glorias. XXV J. Carlos”, Careta, 8 October 1910, n.p.;
Alfio, “Em columna de pelotões”, Fon Fon!, 15 September 1917, n.p.; João Pitanga,
“A Ritinha”, Careta, 22 October 1921, n.p.; Simeão Pechisbeque, “Jequi”, Careta,
14 February 1925, 29.
17
For more on K. Lixto’s relationship to samba and carnival, see Chapter 2.
The Printing of Modern Life 135
18
Correio da Manhã, 20 October 1901, 6; O Paiz, 29 September 1902, 3; O Paiz,
30 October 1904, 6; O Paiz, 8 December 1905, 6; O Paiz, 22 July 1907, 6. On the
Moulin Rouge, see Elysio de Carvalho, Five o’Clock (São Paulo: Antiqua, 2006 [1909]),
pp. 41 43.
19
“Bengalas ‘Art nouveau’”, Tagarela, 22 March 1902, 3.
20
Thomaz Lopes, “Pintura”, Kósmos, May 1906, n.p.
136 Modernity in Black and White
21
See Chapter 1.
22
See Arthur Valle, “‘A maneira especial que define a minha arte’: Pensionistas da Escola
Nacional de Belas Artes e a cena artística de Munique em fins do oitocentos”, Revista de
The Printing of Modern Life 137
História da Arte e Arqueologia, 13 (2010), 109 144; and Arthur Valle, “Bolsistas da
Escola Nacional de Belas Artes em Munique, na década de 1890”, Artciencia, 7 (2012),
1 16. See also Chapter 2.
23
See Ana Paula Simioni, “Souvenir de ma carrière artistique. Uma autobiografia de Juleita
de França, escultora acadêmica brasileira”, Anais do Museu Paulista, 15, 1 (2007),
249 278; and Ana Paula Simioni, Profissão artista: Pintoras e escultoras acadêmicas
brasileiras (São Paulo: Edusp/Fapesp, 2008).
24
Both paintings are reproduced in Revista da Semana, 7 October 1906, 3954 3958.
25
Gonzaga Duque, “Salão de 1906”, Kósmos, September 1906, n.p.; CN, “O Salão de
1906”, Correio da Manhã, 9 September 1906, 5; Bueno Amador, “Belas artes. O Salão de
1906”, Jornal do Brasil, 26 September 1906, 2. See also “O Salão de 1906.
A inauguração”, O Paiz, 2 September 1906, 2; “Notas de arte”, Jornal do Commercio,
23 September 1906, 4.
138 Modernity in Black and White
26
See Michele Asmar Fanini, “Júlia Lopes de Almeida: Entre o salão literário e a antessala
da Academia Brasileira de Letras”, Estudos de Sociologia, 14 (2009), 320 324; Avelino
Romero Pereira, Música, sociedade e política: Alberto Nepomuceno e a República
musical (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. UFRJ, 2007), pp. 131 136; and Hilda Machado, Laurinda
Santos Lobo: Mecenas, artistas e outros marginais em Santa Teresa (Rio de Janeiro: Casa
da Palavra, 2002), pp. 66 69. On other intellectual salons of the time, see Carvalho, Five
o’Clock, 35 41.
27
An illuminating perspective on the art market at around this time is available in: Domicio
da Gama, “O ‘Salão’ de Petrópolis”, Renascença, April 1904, 77 81.
28
Rafael Cardoso, “Dois ramos do mesmo tronco: Arte e design na obra de Eliseu
Visconti”, In: Eliseu Visconti Arte e Design (Rio de Janeiro: Holos Consultores/Caixa
Cultural, 2007), pp. 17 26. On Brazilian artists in Paris, see Ana Paula Cavalcanti
Simioni, “A viagem a Paris de artistas brasileiros no final do século XIX”, Tempo Social,
17 (2005), 343 366.
29
Years later, Visconti complained that the exhibition went unnoticed; see Angyone
Costa, A inquietação das abelhas (Rio de Janeiro: Pimenta de Mello & Co., 1927),
pp. 77 81. This recollection is imprecise. Besides the reviews referenced here, the exhib
ition was noticed in the British magazine The Studio, which included two photographic
reproductions; CAS “Studio talk”, The Studio, 26, 111 (June 1902), 70 71. The
The Printing of Modern Life 139
artist’s work effusively but went out of his way to distance it from the
likes of Victor Horta or Hector Guimard, pontificating that it was by no
means linked to:
the mercantile industrialism which, labelled Modern style or Art nouveau [terms
written in English and French, in the original], goes about the world impinging
debasements of the baroque with mangled mixtures of japonisme, the byzantine
and banalities of a supposed new, as a modern style in art.30
exhibition was even visited by Epitácio Pessoa, then Minister of Justice and Internal
Affairs and future President of Brazil; A Notícia, 16/17 May 1901, 1.
30
Araújo Vianna, “A pintura decorativa”, A Noticia, 24/25 May 1901, 3. This was
presumably Ernesto da Cunha de Araújo Vianna; see chapter 2, note 33.
31
“Notas sobre arte. Exposição E. Visconti”, Jornal do Commercio, 16 May 1901, 2 3.
32
“Salão de 1903”, Gazeta de Noticias, 2 September 1903, 2; A. Morales de los Rios,
“Exposição de Bellas Artes”, O Paiz, 5 September 1903, 1; and “Ceramica aristica
nacional”, Atheneida, no. 8/9/10 [December 1903], 195.
140 Modernity in Black and White
33
Gonzaga Duque, “Elyseu Visconti”, O Paiz, 2 July 1901, 1.
34
Gonzaga Duque, “A remodelação das artes applicadas”, Atheneida, January 1903, 3 6.
35 36
Ibid., 4. Ibid., 4, 6.
142 Modernity in Black and White
37
Elysio performed an about face on anarchism after 1909. His writings turned deeply
conservative and increasingly aligned with Catholicism, as well as occasionally anti
Semitic. He subsequently became a specialist in police forensics and criminal
anthropology. He also went on to edit the nominally modernist magazine America
Brasileira (1923 24), in proximity with members of the Semana group. See Lená
Medeiros de Menezes, “Elysio de Carvalho: Um intelectual controverso e controvertido”,
Revista Intellectus, 4 (2004); Luiz Edmundo Bouças Coutinho, “O diário de um esteta
decadentista”, In: Carvalho, Five o’Clock, 7 15; Maria Vânia de Souza, Modernismo e
modernidade: A trajetória literária do alagoano Elysio de Carvalho (Maceió: Edufal,
2013); and Diego Galeano & Marília Rodrigues de Oliveira, “Uma história da História
natural dos malfeitores”, In: Elísio de Carvalho, Escritos policiais (Rio de Janeiro:
Contracapa/Faperj, 2017), pp. 15 27.
38
Elysio de Carvalho, As modernas correntes esthéticas na literatura brazileira (Rio de
Janeiro: H. Garnier, 1907), pp. vii, 20, 77 87, 239 245, 260 261.
39
Ibid., 83.
40
João do Rio, “O momento litterario. Elysio de Carvalho”, Gazeta de Noticias, 28 May
1905, 4. This survey of contemporary writers originally appeared in instalments between
The Printing of Modern Life 143
March and May 1905. It was published in book form in 1909, with added material. See
João Carlos Rodrigues, João do Rio: Vida, paixão, obra (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização
Brasileira, 2010), pp. 53 57. For analogous references, see João do Rio, O momento
literario (Rio de Janeiro: H. Garnier, [1909]), pp. 119, 206, 256, 260 262.
41
Gonzaga Duque, “Chronica da saudade”, Kósmos, October 1908, n.p. On Fabio Luz, see
Alex Brito Ribeiro, “Entre a literatura e a história: Fábio Luz e o Ideólogo”, Veredas da
História, 8 (2015), 41 68. To some extent, the contention that radical politics had roots
in the literary world is further applicable to José Oiticica, who went on to become a
leading figure in the Brazilian anarchist movement. See Antonio Arnoni Prado, “Elucu
brações dramáticas do professor Oiticica”, Estudos Avançados, 14 (2000), 267 297; and
Antonio Arnoni Prado, “Boêmios, letrados e insubmissos: Nota sobre cultura e anar
quismo”, Revista Iberoamericana, 70 (2004), 721 733. See also F. Luizzetto, “Letras
rebeldes: Escritores brasileiros e o anarquismo no início do período republicano”, Teoria
e Pesquisa: Revista de Ciência Política, 1 (1992).
42
João do Rio, O momento literario, p. 217; see also pp. 81, 256. Mario Pederneiras
recalled being labelled the “dernier cri do nephelibatismo” by a critic in the 1890s and
taking it as an “insult”. For more on the trio and their impact on the literary scene around
1900, see Rodrigo Octavio (Filho), Velhos amigos (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1938),
pp. 55 65.
144 Modernity in Black and White
43
O Mercurio, June 1898, 1 2. See Petry, Revistas como exposições, pp. 242 269; Leticia
Pedruzzi Fonseca, Uma revolução gráfica: Julião Machado e as revistas ilustradas no
Brasil, 1895 1898 (São Paulo: Blucher, 2016), pp. 252 277; and Mônica Pimenta
Velloso, Modernismo no Rio de Janeiro: Turunas e Quixotes (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação
Getúlio Vargas, 1996), pp. 60 63.
44
“A familia de ‘Fon Fon!’”, Fon Fon!, 10 April 1909, n.p. See also Vera Lins, “Em
revistas, o simbolismo e a virada de século”, In: Claudia de Oliveira, Monica Pimenta
Velloso & Vera Lins, O moderno em revistas: Representações do Rio de Janeiro de
1890 a 1930 (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2010), pp. 18 26; and Fon Fon! Buzinando a
modernidade (Cadernos de Comunicação, Série Memória, 22) (Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria
Especial de Comunicação Social, 2008).
45
Gonzaga Duque, “Dos caricaturistas novos. III Calixto Cordeiro”, O Paiz, 5 June 1901,
1. Cf. Gonzaga Duque, Contemporaneos (pintores e esculptores) (Rio de Janeiro: Typ.
Benedicto de Souza, 1929), pp. 236 237, 241 242.
46
Suggestively, Gonzaga Duque’s novel Mocidade morta (1899) revolves around the clash
between a group of young artists and writers, described as rebels [insubmissos], and the
established powers of the academy. The rebels organize themselves into a group called
Zut but fail in their challenge to upend the system and eventually succumb to the
contradictions of their own bohemianism. See Lins, “Em revistas, o simbolismo e a virada
de século”, 30 34; and Castro Gomes, Essa gente do Rio, 33 38. See also Peregrino,
“Um sorriso para todas”, Careta, 1 February 1930, 28 29, which credits Gonzaga
Duque with having been the gravitational centre of Rio’s literary youth at the turn of
the twentieth century.
The Printing of Modern Life 145
. Eliseu Visconti, Retrato de Gonzaga Duque, 1908, oil on canvas, 92.5
65 cm
Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional de Belas Artes/Ibram (photo: Jaime Acioli)
47
Gonzaga Duque, “Remodelação do mobiliário”, Kósmos, February 1907, n.p.
146 Modernity in Black and White
unite art and industry.48 Consistently over the first decade of the twentieth
century, the critic put forward a vision of modernity in art as the applica-
tion of aesthetic principles to the practical necessities of life and the trans-
formation of social relationships. Yet, this politically committed vision was
never utilitarian. True to his symbolist sensibilities, he advocated stylistic
refinement alongside revolutionary ideals.
If Gonzaga Duque provided an abstract model for the modernizing
spirit of a generation, at least a part of the following he inspired mani-
fested its concrete existence in more mundane spaces of coexistence. Most
of them were writers or artists, and several are portrayed, along with their
aesthetic mentor, in Seelinger’s painting Bohemia.49 Many were engaged
in producing the three art nouveau magazines – Atheneida, Renascença
and Kósmos – that refashioned the graphic arts scenario in Rio between
1903 and 1909. They congregated at the Café Paris (Largo da Carioca), a
location notorious in the early years of the twentieth century for its
debauchery and raucous nocturnal carousal – including drunken disturb-
ances, knife fights and even gunshots – amply reported in the police and
crime pages of the newspapers.50 Although it appears to have been more
respectable during the daytime, it became a “focus of disorders” after the
doors closed at one a.m. and, later still, when customers spilled out into
the street in the early morning.51 By 1904, its reputation was such that the
police reportedly responded to a call to an incident there with the reply:
“We have better things to do!”52 The other location where the inner
sanctum of the Bohemia group could meet in private was Seelinger’s
48
Gonzaga Duque, “A caricatura no Brasil. Os caricaturistas de costumes”, Renascença,
March 1904, 36 39. Cf. Gonzaga Duque, Contemporâneos, in which other texts consti
tuting this study were published posthumously.
49
See Chapter 2. This group was remembered as “os promptos do Café Paris” by Luiz
Edmundo in his memoirs of 1938. Pronto (in current spelling) means ready, but its slang
use at the time referred to having no money. The term appeared in the magazine
A Avenida, in 1903, to designate a series of portraits of artists and writers; cf. Domingos
Ribeiro Pinho, “O Gil”, Renascença, March 1906, 138 141. See Marcelo Balaban, Estilo
moderno: Humor, literatura e publicidade em Bastos Tigre (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp,
2016), pp. 183 192; and Pimenta Velloso, Modernismo no Rio de Janeiro, pp. 44 56.
50
See, among others, O Paiz, 29 March 1901, 2; Gazeta de Noticias, 2 June 1901, 2;
O Paiz, 3 June 1901, 2; “Roubado”, Correio da Manhã, 17 June 1901, 2; “No Café
Pariz”, Gazeta de Noticias, 22 October 1901; “Na policia e nas ruas”, Correio da
Manhã, 2 September 1902, 2; “Crime?”, Gazeta de Noticias, 27 November 1902, 1;
Gazeta de Noticias, 1 January 1903, 3; “Na policia e nas ruas”, Correio da Manhã,
15 June 1903, 2; “Na policia e nas ruas”, Correio da Manhã, 13 December 1903, 2; “Na
policia e nas ruas”, Correio da Manhã, 3 May 1904, 2; O Paiz, 15 April 1905, 2.
51
“Reclamações”, Correio da Manhã, 3 November 1901, 3.
52
“No Café Paris”, Correio da Manhã, 14 November 1904, 2.
The Printing of Modern Life 147
53
A contemporary description of the studio and its owner is available in: Camerino Rocha,
“A grande arte nos pequenos ateliers”, Atheneida, April 1903, 55 56.
54
Carvalho, Five o’Clock, pp. 63 64, 121. Cf. Rodrigues, João do Rio, p. 39. By 1906, the
Café Paris group had become dispersed and its heyday was consigned to memory; see
Jayme Guimarães, “Theorias”, Correio da Manhã (Supplemento Illustrado), 17 June
1906, 2; and Oswaldo Shondali, “Um pintor”, Correio da Manhã, 7 July 1908, 1. The
group recurs, in sanitized terms, in the memoirs of Luiz Edmundo, O Rio de Janeiro do
meu tempo (Brasília: Senado Federal, 2003 [1938]), p. 345. Cf. Rodrigues, João do Rio,
pp. 37 38.
55
Carvalho, Five o’Clock, pp. 30, 32 35, 69.
56
Elysio de Carvalho, Rubén Darío (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1906), pp. 15,
35 36.
57
Camerino Rocha, “Sympathia humana na arte moderna”, Atheneida, January 1903, 1 3.
This essay was rediscovered and reprinted by Lima Barreto in 1919 in a text titled “As
pequenas revistas” which, in its turn, was included in the anthology Feiras e mafuás, first
published in 1953. It is possibly the only writing by Camerino Rocha to have achieved
any sort of posterity, after his death from tuberculosis in 1906. Although he was revered
by his contemporaries, like Gonzaga Duque and Elysio de Carvalho, Lima Barreto affirms
that Camerino was already forgotten in 1919. See Beatriz Resende & Rachel Valença,
eds., Toda crônica: Lima Barreto (Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 2004), pp. I, 505 510. See also
148 Modernity in Black and White
Gonzaga Duque, “Chronica da saudade”; and Carvalho, Five o’Clock, pp. 43 47. Cf.
Balaban, Estilo moderno, pp. 187 189.
58
Paulo Barreto, “O ideal de Helios Seelinger”, Atheneida, January 1903, 7 8; Gonzaga
Duque, “Helios Seelinger”, Kósmos, March 1908, n.p.; Carvalho, Five o’clock, 62 66.
59
Although Paulo Barreto was the only one openly identified as homosexual in contempor
ary gossip, a residual undercurrent of animosity against the dandyism shared by all three
authors has tended to obscure the importance of their artistic opinions. Cf. Rodrigues,
João do Rio, pp. 65 69.
60
See Arthur Valle, “Helios Seelinger: Um pintor ‘salteado’”, 19&20, 1 (2006).
The Printing of Modern Life 149
61
Confusingly, the issues are numbered 1 10, but the final one is a composite of three
(nos. 8, 9, 10) and was published without a date. The first seven issues are dated
consecutively January to July 1903 but were not necessarily published on time. The July
issue, for instance, contains coverage of the 1903 Salon, which only took place in
September. Fundação Biblioteca Nacional houses a complete collection.
150 Modernity in Black and White
inner pages too. This quality is also reflected in the price: one issue of
Atheneida cost one mil-réis, ten times the price of competitors like
Tagarela or A Avenida, still produced using simpler techniques of com-
bined lithographic and typographic printing, typical of nineteenth-
century periodicals.62
Although Atheneida was short-lived, its influence was outsized among
the bohemian coterie who went on to produce two other monthly maga-
zines that followed in its wake in 1904: Kósmos and Renascença. Writing
in the former in 1908, Gonzaga Duque recalled “the gorgeous magazine”
with utmost sympathy: “Atheneida holds for me the sweetness of
longing [saudade].”63 Yet, if Atheneida laid the foundations in terms of
graphic arts, Kósmos and Renascença represent the complete built edifice.
In the inaugural editorial of the former, poet Olavo Bilac dwelt on its
material perfection:
Kósmos [. . .] would not be novel in Europe or North America, where the illus
trated magazine [in English, in the original] is today a marvel, in the variety of
literary and artistic matter, in the perfection of its graphic processes, and in its
affordability. But, in Brazil, I believe it represents major progress.64
62
Atheneida does not appear to have relied on sales and subscriptions for income. The
magazine possessed an abundance of advertisers which grew to a proportion of almost
half the edition in its bumper 72 page final issue. The motives for its demise were
probably not financial. Trajano Chacon was deeply involved in political disputes, espe
cially in his native Pernambuco, and actually died in a politically motivated assassination
in 1913.
63
Gonzaga Duque, “Chronica de uma saudade”, n.p.
64
OB, “Chronica”, Kósmos, January 1904, n.p.
65
Cardoso, Impresso no Brasil, 144 145.
152 Modernity in Black and White
66
For more on the magazine’s textual content, see Antonio Dimas, Tempos eufóricos:
Análise da revista Kósmos 1904 1909 (São Paulo: Atica, 1983). Brazilian literary histor
ians traditionally emphasize disputes between parnassianism and symbolism as the
dominant stylistic debate of the period. The group around Kósmos is strongly aligned
with symbolist currents, but the leading parnassianist Olavo Bilac was among the
magazine’s frequent contributors.
67
Mario Behring was employed in the manuscripts department of the National Library, in
Rio de Janeiro, and served as that institution’s director from 1924 to 1932. After his time
as editor in chief of Kósmos, he went on to direct the magazines Careta and Para Todos,
the latter alongside Alvaro Moreyra. In 1926, he founded the cinema magazine Cinearte,
which he edited together with Adhemar Gonzaga, until his death in 1933. In addition, he
was extremely active as a Freemason and is regarded as one of the modernizers of
Masonic rites in Brazil. See “Dr. Mario Behring”, Cinearte, 1 July 1933, p. 5. Cf. Para
Todos, 6 October 1923, 22; and Para Todos, 22 March 1924, n.p.
68
Nina Rodrigues, “As bellas artes nos colonos pretos do Brazil. A esculptura”, Kósmos,
August 1904, n.p. See Roberto Conduru, Pérolas negras, primeiros fios: Experiências
artísticas e culturais entre África e Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Uerj, 2013), pp. 315 325.
The Printing of Modern Life 153
69
Renascença, March 1904, 1 2. The use of the term “renaissance” echoes Gonzaga
Duque’s affirmation of the previous year. See note 35.
70
Elysio de Carvalho, “Max Stirner”, Renascença, February 1907, 61 69; and Everardo
Backheuser, “Onde moram os pobres”, Renascença, March 1905, 89 94. On the latter,
see Chapter 1.
71
Rodrigo Octavio was to become extremely influential in Brazilian government, serving as
chief attorney (consultor geral da República), between 1911 and 1929, and subsequently
as a justice on the Supreme Court, from 1929 to 1934. He was also a member of the
Brazilian Academy of Letters from its foundation in 1897.
72
Henrique Bernardelli was known to produce occasional works of graphic art, such as
designs for diplomas. Among the over 500 works on paper by him in the collections of the
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, almost a dozen are studies for graphic design.
73
Gonzaga Duque, A arte brasileira (Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1995 [1888]),
187 190; and “Bellas artes”, Gazeta de Notícias, 31 March 1890, p. 1. See also Camila
Dazzi, “Revendo Henrique Bernardelli”, 19&20, 2 (2007).
154 Modernity in Black and White
the workshop training provided in the private studio he shared with his elder
brother Rodolpho, director of ENBA from 1890 to 1915.74
Renascença’s graphic design was ground-breaking. Sharing Kósmos’s
taste for art nouveau borders, titles and ornaments, it pushed the aesthetic
even further, extending it to the covers of its frequent musical supplements and
even to advertisements (Fig. 37). More importantly, it set itself apart from its
predecessors through modernized page design, including greater attention to
typography and fonts, as well as purposeful use of white space in layouts. The
aspect in which it departed most markedly from either of its predecessors was
the way it employed photography. Differently from Atheneida, still heavily
illustrated by hand, and Kósmos, more densely occupied by text, Renascença’s
distinguishing feature is the quantity and variety of photographic reproduc-
tions. By 1904, printed photographs were a common feature of the Brazilian
media landscape, but the magazine made innovative use of them. It was the
first publication in Brazil to print colour photographs via a three-colour
process (trichromy), in 1904.75 Another remarkable example is a two-page
spread in the January 1908 issue featuring a photograph of the Second Hague
Conference (1907). A few pages later, a second spread blows up a detail of the
image (Figs. 38–39). It has been retouched to heighten faces and emphasize the
role of the Brazilian delegation at the plenary conference. This kind of experi-
mentation with photo manipulation was certainly not standard practice.
Renascença’s editors were justifiably proud of their graphic achieve-
ments. The retouched photo is marked with the monogram EBC, signa-
ture of the magazine’s proprietors, E. Bevilacqua & Cia., a major
producer of sheet music and musical editions. The firm had much experi-
ence in the domain of printing, which they showcased in the magazine via
expensive materials like metallic inks and complicated processes of colour
reproduction. Bevilacqua’s printing services were openly advertised in
Renascença, which further discussed the technological capabilities of the
firm’s new machines in its articles.76 Among the magazine’s regular
74
A steady stream of artists and, notably, many women artists passed through the doors
of their successive studios in Lapa and in the newly developing beach front district of
Copacabana, where they set up house after 1908. Visconti, Seelinger, Lucilio de Albu
querque and Arthur Timotheo da Costa numbered among Henrique’s many pupils. See
Costa, A inquietação das abelhas, 27 31.
75
These were reproductions of a watercolour of a Japanese street scene and a painting by
Victor Meirelles, respectively in March and June 1904.
76
João de Barro, “Eugenio Bevilacqua”, Renascença, February 1907, 54 56. For more on
the firm, see Mônica Neves Leme, “Isidoro Bevilacqua e filhos: Radiografia de uma
empresa de edição musical”, In: Antonio Herculano Lopes, Martha Abreu,
Martha Tupinambá de Ûlhoa & Monica Pimenta Velloso, eds., Música e história no
The Printing of Modern Life 155
longo século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 2011), pp. 117 160;
and Rosa Maria Zamith, A quadrilha, da partitura aos espaços festivos: Música,
dança e sociabilidade no Rio de Janeiro oitocentista (Rio de Janeiro: E papers, 2011),
19 38.
156 Modernity in Black and White
advertisers were other companies linked to graphic arts and the printing
industry, including the aforementioned A. Niklaus & Co. and Compan-
hia Typographica do Brazil, as well as the photographer L. Musso & Co.
whose signature appears on many photo-engravings that illustrate the
magazine. Luiz Musso was an active member of the Rio de Janeiro Photo
Club.77 At least one member of the Bevilacqua family, Sylvio Bevilacqua,
was also a member; and the exhibitions staged by that society received
ample coverage in Renascença.78 These manifold links to the printing
industry and the milieu of commercial photography help shed light on the
magazine’s graphic prowess, which it marketed unabashedly. Captions
accompanying images make frequent reference to the quality of photo-
graphic reproductions or to breakthroughs in colour printing and even go
so far as to name suppliers of special inks.
The interrelationships between artists, authors, editors and publishing
firms in these three art nouveau magazines indicate that a vibrant period-
ical publishing industry was taking shape over the first decade of the
twentieth century. It is important to bear in mind that printing was
prohibited in Brazil during the colonial period, which means that the
periodical press only effectively got underway after 1808. Despite rapid
advances and an abundance of publications over the course of the nine-
teenth century, the publishing trade remained comparatively small, with a
handful of entrepreneurs and a limited reading public.79 Most commer-
cial enterprises were dedicated to putting out a single periodical, as was
the case with several of the major newspapers of the time. Between the
1860s and 1890s, even the most influential illustrated magazines – such as
77
First such organization in Brazil, the Photo Club do Rio de Janeiro is generally held to
have been started in 1910, but the references in Renascença leave no doubt that it was
already active in 1905; see Maria Teresa Bandeira de Mello, Arte e fotografia:
O movimento pictorialista no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 1998), p. 68.
78
Von Ab. Eff, “Segunda exposição do Photo Club”, Renascença, September 1905,
95 101; and Alvaro de Lima, “Terceira exposição artistica do Photo Club”, Renascença,
December 1907, 246 256. Another member of the family, painter Eduardo Bevilacqua,
was obliged to give up the ENBA travel prize in 1907 due to his father’s recent demise,
according to the magazine; “Exposição de 1907. Salão annual de arte”, Renascença,
November 1907, 222.
79
On the reading public and editorial practices, see Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva & Sandra
Guardini Vasconcelos, eds., Books and Periodicals in Brazil 1768 1930: a Transatlantic
Perspective (London: Legenda/MHRA, 2014); Alessandra El Far, O livro e a leitura no
Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2010); Márcia Abreu & Nelson Schapochnik, eds.,
Cultura letrada no Brasil: Objetos e práticas (Campinas: Mercado das Letras/ALB,
2005); and Marisa Lajolo & Regina Zilberman, eds., A leitura rarefeita: Livro e literatura
no Brasil (São Paulo: Ática, 2002).
158 Modernity in Black and White
80
See Rafael Cardoso, “Projeto gráfico e meio editorial nas revistas ilustradas do Segundo
Reinado”, In: Paulo Knauss, Marize Malta, Cláudia de Oliveira & Monica Pimenta
Velloso, eds., Revistas ilustradas: Modos de ler e ver no Segundo Reinado (Rio de Janeiro:
Mauad X/Faperj, 2011), pp. 17 40; and Rafael Cardoso, “Origens do projeto gráfico no
Brasil”, In: Cardoso, Impresso no Brasil, esp. pp. 68 73.
81
Julieta Sobral, O desenhista invisível (Rio de Janeiro: Folha Seca, 2007), pp. 35 38,
129 132; and Cassio Loredano, O bonde e a linha: Um perfil de J. Carlos (São Paulo:
Capivara, 2002), pp. 43 45.
82
See Monica Pimenta Velloso, “As distintas retóricas do moderno”, In: Oliveira, Pimenta
Velloso & Lins, O moderno em revistas, pp. 43 50; Marcia Cezar Diogo, “O moderno
em revista na cidade do Rio de Janeiro”, In: Sidney Chalhoub, Margarida de Souza Neves
& Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, eds., História em cousas miúdas: Capítulos de
história social da crônica no Brasil (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2005), pp. 459 489; and
Ana Luiza Martins, Revistas em revista: Imprensa e práticas culturais em tempos de
República, São Paulo (1890 1922) (São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial/Edusp, 2001),
pp. 38 44.
The Printing of Modern Life 159
83
See Joaquim Marçal Ferreira de Andrade, “Processos de reprodução e impressão no
Brasil, 1808 1930”, In: Cardoso, Impresso no Brasil, pp. 62 63; and Joaquim Marçal
Ferreira de Andrade, História da fotorreportagem no Brasil: A fotografia na imprensa do
Rio de Janeiro de 1839 a 1900 (Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier/Biblioteca Nacional, 2004),
pp. 229 231.
84
“Trabalhos de luxo”, Revista da Semana, 27 May 1900, 19.
85
The distinction between newspaper and magazine is fluid in nineteenth century Brazil.
The names jornal and revista were used interchangeably and often in ways inconsistent
with later distinctions. See Cardoso, “Projeto gráfico e meio editorial nas revistas ilus
tradas do Segundo Reinado”, pp. 17 40.
160 Modernity in Black and White
relatives attending the birth consists largely of regular contributors to the art
nouveau publications discussed in the preceding section: Gonzaga Duque,
Mario Pederneiras, Mario Behring, Raul and K. Lixto, among others.86
For reasons that remain unclear, Schmidt quickly withdrew from Fon-
Fon! Alexandre Gasparoni took over as one of the proprietors in 1908,
joining Giovanni Fogliani and presumably pushing or buying out the
former owner.87 The editors-in-chief were Gonzaga Duque, Lima
Campos and Mario Pederneiras, who formed a triumvirate the magazine
referred to jokingly as “the three Siamese brothers”. K. Lixto was the
“artistic director”, responsible for numerous early covers and illustra-
tions, with additional support from Raul and Seelinger.88 Apart from
Gonzaga Duque, who passed away in 1911, this core editorial group
remained intact until 1915, when K. Lixto’s departure put an end to the
magazine’s most creative phase, visually. Over the following few years,
other major names in the history of Brazilian caricature would pass
through its pages: Max Yantock, Torquato Tarquino, Fernando Correia
Dias, Alfredo Storni and Seth. In 1914, a second magazine, Selecta, was
spun off from the first. Together, the two publications possessed nearly
one hundred employees in 1916, including a complete photographic
service with four photoengravers (Luiz Brun, Alfredo Bioleto, J. Garcia,
Alois Fabian) who often signed the images they produced.89 In 1922,
Fon-Fon was sold and thereafter took a conservative turn, falling under
86
Eu Mesmo, “O meu carnaval”, Fon Fon!, 13 April 1907, n.p. Cf. Monica Pimenta
Velloso, “Fon Fon! em Paris: Passaporte para o mundo”, In: Fon Fon! Buzinando a
modernidade, 11 21; and Pimenta Velloso, Modernismo no Rio de Janeiro, 68 69.
87
“Declaração”, Fon Fon!, 9 May 1908, n.p. For more on the magazine’s history, see
Renata Franqui, O processo de modernização no Brasil e a educação das mulheres na
revista Fon Fon! (Curitiba: Editora CRV, 2017), pp. 47 74; Fabiana Francisca Macena,
“Além do modernismo paulista: A revista Fon Fon e os debates sobre a modernidade no
Rio de Janeiro da Belle Époque”, Em Tempo de Histórias, 16 (2010), 131 153; Maria
Cecilia Zanon, “A sociedade carioca da Belle Époque nas páginas do Fon Fon!”, Patri
mônio e Memória, 4 (2009), 217 235; and Semiramis Nahes, Revista Fon Fon: A imagem
da mulher no Estado Novo (1937 1945) (São Paulo: Arte e Ciência, 2007).
88
“A familia de ‘Fon Fon!’”, Fon Fon!, 10 April 1909, n.p. See also “A familia de
‘Fon Fon!’”, Fon Fon!, 22 April 1911, n.p.; and “O anniversario de Fon Fon!”,
Fon Fon!, 19 April 1913, n.p. Many of Raul’s illustrations in the magazine are signed
O.I.S., a pseudonym intended to be read as ‘oh, yes!’; see Herman Lima, História da
caricatura no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1963), pp. 3, 1006.
89
“Fon Fon! e Selecta na intimidade”, Fon Fon!, 1 January 1916, n.p. See also “Fon Fon
no Fon Fon”, Fon Fon!, 27 December 1919, n.p.
162 Modernity in Black and White
90
Gustavo Barroso, “Vinte e um annos de vida”, Fon Fon, 14 April 1928, n.p.; Mario Sette,
“Uma visita que me fez recordar”, Fon Fon, 21 March 1941, 13; and Bastos Portela,
“Mario Poppe”, Fon Fon, 12 December 1942, 3. Under its new management, the
magazine dropped the dash in its title, having already lost the exclamation point in
1920. Fon Fon was purchased by colonel Sergio Silva, employed as a manager since at
least 1912. The general manager at Sociedade Anônima O Malho, from 1919 until
August 1922 was also named Sergio Silva (A. Sergio da Silva Junior). They may or may
not have been the same person, a worthy topic for further research.
91
See Lins, “Em revistas, o simbolismo e a virada de século”, 16 26.
92
See Petrônio Domingues, “‘Vai tudo ficar preto’: Monteiro Lopes e a cor na política”,
Novos Estudos (Cebrap), 95 (2013), 59 81; and Carolina Vianna Dantas, “Monteiro
Lopes (1867 1910): Um ‘líder da raça negra’ na capital da República”, Afro Ásia, 41
(2010), 167 209.
The Printing of Modern Life 163
abolished; yet, both his feet are shackled to an iron ring labelled ‘oligarch-
ies’.93 Over its first decade of existence, Fon-Fon! took sympathetic
positions towards women’s suffrage and the plight of the dispossessed.
True to its announced editorial policy, though, it mostly steered clear of
contentious issues. In a media landscape in which the purpose of period-
icals was traditionally to support one or another political party, it was
refreshingly nonpartisan.
The arena in which Fon-Fon! stands out most prominently is its visual
construction and graphic design. Heir to the technological advances that
made Kósmos an exquisite but expensive publication, its more popular
successor managed to replicate some of those improvements at a lower
cost, particularly in the domain of photographic reproduction. Fon-Fon!
was astoundingly modern by the standards of circa 1910 and, on occa-
sion, even given over to experimentation of a sort not usually encountered
in mass-market publications. A perusal of the magazine’s covers over its
first decade reveals a dizzying array of formats and styles (Fig. 41), from
conventional cartoons and outmoded painterly scenes, reminiscent of
nineteenth-century chromos, to bold visual effects and complex overlays
of photography and illustration. A series of covers illustrated by K. Lixto
between 1910 and 1913 makes clever use of colour contrasts and
framing devices to simulate a photographic aesthetic (Figs. 42–43). Other
covers of the same time mix photography and illustration in
astonishing composites that belie the commonly held notion that early
twentieth-century audiences were not attuned to the possibilities of image
manipulation (Fig. 44).
Fon-Fon!’s major competitor was Careta, the latter launched by Jorge
Schmidt in June 1908, immediately after he lost his proprietorial role at
the former magazine.94 Careta was less daring visually, but also managed
to keep its price slightly lower, at 300 réis. Its inner pages were sober, and
its covers stuck to a tried and true format: the same masthead on every
issue (though it evolved over the years), always at the top, bearing title
and publication information; a cartoon underneath, usually contained
within a linear border (though it sometimes burst the frame); a caption
93
The fact that K. Lixto was himself of Afro descendant identity lends an additional layer of
meaning to the image. For more on this aspect, see Chapter 2.
94
See Vol Taire, “Almanach das glorias. Jorge Schmidt”, Careta, 3 June 1911, n.p.; “Justas
referencias”, O Malho, 11 December 1920, n.p.; and “Jorge Schmidt”, Fon Fon,
2 November 1935, n.p.
164 Modernity in Black and White
. Raul [Pederneiras], Fon Fon!, 25 July 1914. For color version of this
figure, please refer color plate section.
Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (BN Digital/Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira)
The Printing of Modern Life 165
. K. Lixto [Calixto Cordeiro], Fon Fon!, 3 September 1910. For color
version of this figure, please refer color plate section.
Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (BN Digital/Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira)
at the foot of the page.95 Though the layout of the inner pages was initially
quite elegant, in an art nouveau vein, the magazine eventually declined in
visual and material quality, especially after Schmidt’s death in 1935. The
range of topics covered was similar to Fon-Fon!, although Careta was more
attuned to politics and also discernibly more conservative. Current events
and political satire dominated its covers. The magazine’s editorial content
was closer to O Malho, the oldest of the weeklies along with Revista da
Semana. Over the 1910s, the visual and graphic quality of the latter two
publications remained distinctly inferior to their two newer competitors.
Careta was also much more willing to provoke and even offend than Fon-
Fon!, often indulging in blatantly racist and xenophobic covers.
One contributor was of key importance to Careta: illustrator J. Carlos.
Having begun his career at Tagarela, under the guidance of K. Lixto and
Raul, he continued to work at A Avenida and O Malho over the early
1900s and subsequently took on a leading role at Schmidt’s magazine. At
Careta, J. Carlos was single-handedly responsible for the majority of
covers and illustrations. Between circa 1908 and 1919, he appears to
have worked exclusively for Schmidt and even signed many of the early
covers of Careta with the company name ‘Kósmos’ underneath his own
distinctive signature. The commercial rivalry between the three leading
weeklies was intense. Besides the graphic input of J. Carlos, Schmidt also
had sole recourse to the talents of Mario Behring, formerly editor of
Kósmos. In February 1909, the magazines belonging to the Kósmos
group announced a radical overhaul of their graphic facilities that would
endow them with “model workshops, the likes of which have not yet been
seen in South America”.96 Indeed, the quality of printing and design
showed noticeable improvement over the first half of 1909, including
experiments with colour reproduction of photographs.97 For unknown
95
This three part structure was maintained with remarkable consistency until 1954, when
the frame in the middle was abolished and the text integrated with the image. The images
continued to be cartoon illustrations, almost never photographs, until the magazine’s
demise in 1960. For more on its history, see Clara Asperti Nogueira, “Revista Careta
(1908 1922): Símbolo da modernização da imprensa no século XX”, Miscelânea, 8
(2010), 60 80; and Sheila do Nascimento Garcia, Revista Careta: Um estudo sobre
humor visual no Estado Novo (1937 1945) (unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de
Pós graduação em História, Universidade Estadual Paulista, 2005), esp. pp. 45 68.
96
“Kósmos e Careta”, Careta, 20 February 1909, n.p. See also Gonzaga Duque, “Bilhete à
‘Careta’”, Careta, 5 June 1909, n.p.
97
In February 1909, Kósmos published a photographic plate of Corcovado mountain, in
Rio de Janeiro, in full colour. In the 6 March 1909 issue, Careta published two colourized
photographs of beach scenes; on 5 June 1909, two colourized photographic portraits of
168 Modernity in Black and White
reasons, these advances were not sustained, and Careta soon fell behind
Fon-Fon! in terms of visual and graphic innovation.
Eventually, Careta failed to retain its one competitive edge when it lost
exclusive access to the art of J. Carlos. After a decade of astonishing
productivity working for Schmidt, the artist resumed activities for
O Malho, producing several covers in 1919, although he would remain
Careta’s chief illustrator until March 1922. The extreme popularity he
achieved around this time eclipsed the celebrity enjoyed by his mentors,
Raul and K. Lixto, and indeed has remained unsurpassed in the history of
illustration and graphic arts in Brazil.98 In April 1922, the revamped
Sociedade Anônima O Malho – under the ownership of Pimenta de
Mello – announced J. Carlos as “artistic director” of its seven magazine
titles, under exclusive contract, a position he would retain until 1931.99 In
his new capacity, he began a fruitful partnership with another offspring of
the former Kósmos milieu: writer Alvaro Moreyra, who had served as
editor at Fon-Fon! under Mario Pederneiras and took on the role of
editor-in-chief of its competitor O Malho in 1918.100 Together, as art
director and editorial director, respectively, the pair would revive the
glory years of precursors like Renascença, under Henrique Bernardelli
and Rodrigo Octavio, or Fon-Fon!, under K. Lixto and the triumvirate of
Gonzaga Duque, Lima Campos and Mario Pederneiras. After Fon-Fon!
was sold in 1922, Mario Behring likewise went to work for Pimenta de
Mello, further concentrating the human resources of the Kósmos period
under the corporate oversight of O Malho.
The magazines J. Carlos and Alvaro Moreyra produced together
between 1922 and 1931 represent the maturity of a process of experimen-
tation and endeavour that altered visual culture in Brazil over the preced-
ing decades. Without the interpersonal and organizational developments
arising out of the luxurious literary and artistic magazines of the early
actors; and, on 19 June 1909, the cover of the magazine was exceptionally graced by a
photograph a colourized portrait of recently deceased president Afonso Penna. See
“Kósmos”, Careta, 19 June 1909, n.p.; and also Cardoso, Impresso no Brasil, p. 145.
98
See Loredano, O bonde e a linha, pp. 13 15, 54 55. The work of J. Carlos is viscerally
bound up with the visual culture of 1920s Brazil. Its distinctive style epitomizes art deco
and the jazz age in the Brazilian context. On the enduring legacy of his work, see
Loredano, Kovensky & Pires, eds., J. Carlos: Originais.
99
“J. Carlos, director artistico das publicações desta Empeza”, O Malho, 15 April 1922, n.
p. Cf. Sobral, O desenhista invisível, 35 38; and Loredano, O bonde e a linha, 65 69.
100
“Fon Fon! e Selecta na intimidade”, Fon Fon!, 1 January 1916, n.p.; “Do mestre e do
discipulo”, O Malho, 14 September 1918, n.p.; “Ecos da sociedade”, O Malho,
25 December 1918, n.p.
The Printing of Modern Life 169
101
For an analysis of these magazines, see Sobral, O desenhista invisível.
102
See, among others, “Encantadores e melindrosas”, O Malho, 5 October 1918, n.p.;
Olegario Marianno, “Dor de recordar”, O Malho, 11 January 1919, n.p.; Rodrigo
Octavio Filho, “Livros e autores”, O Malho, 22 March 1919, n.p.; “Encantadores e
melindrosas”, O Malho, 12 April 1919, n.p.; Lima Campos, “Sambanette”, O Malho,
24 May 1919, n.p.; Rodrigo Octavio Filho, “Meu jardim cheio de sonhos”, O Malho,
31 May 1919, n.p.; Alvaro Moreyra, “Folha morta”, O Malho, 7 June 1919, n.p.;
“Bagatellas”, O Malho, 6 September 1919, n.p.; “Bagatellas”, O Malho, 25 October
1919, n.p.; “Bagatellas”, O Malho, 24 January 1920, n.p.
103
Alvaro Moreyra, “Tudo é novo sob o sol”, Para Todos, 10 February 1923, n.p.; Para
Todos, 1 March 1924, n.p.; Oswald de Andrade, “Modernismo atrazado”, Para Todos,
5 July 1924, n.p.; “Oswald de Andrade candidato a uma vaga na Academia Brasileira de
Letras”, Para Todos, 24 October 1925, 27; “Oswald de Andrade candidato a uma vaga
na Academia Brasileira de Letras. O que pensa sobre isto Felippe d’Oliveira”, Para
Todos, 31 October 1925, 20. After 1929, Alvaro Moreyra also maintained close ties to
the Antropafagia group; see Chapter 4.
104
See Sobral, O desenhista invisível; and Julieta Sobral, “J. Carlos designer”, In: Rafael
Cardoso, ed., O design brasileiro antes do design: Aspectos da história gráfica,
1870 1960 (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2005), pp. 124 159.
170 Modernity in Black and White
photography that go beyond the cover art for which he has come to be
celebrated and cherished in Brazil. Even less known, however, are the
experimental efforts of other graphic artists of the 1920s, such as
the ambitious redesign proposals implemented by Andrés Guevara at
the men’s magazine A Maçã, circa 1925, or the exuberant work of Sotero
Cosme and João Fahrion at the magazines Madrugada and Revista do
Globo, in Porto Alegre.105 K. Lixto’s efforts as art director of Fon-Fon!
between 1907 and 1915 are nothing short of astonishing, especially to the
extent that they precede and anticipate the more widely known work of
the 1920s. Taken in conjunction with the work of J. Carlos, Guevara,
Cosme and others, they prove that there was much more to the graphic
arts renaissance of the period than can be ascribed to the talent of any
single artist.
What needs to be underscored is that the work produced by K. Lixto at
Fon-Fon! or J. Carlos at Para Todos was self-consciously expressive of
modernizing aspirations at a time when definitions of modernism
remained largely undetermined. Unlike the efforts of artists and intellec-
tuals in the worlds of literature and fine art, these works were accessible to
a mass audience which relished the aesthetic they promoted. The fact they
have not generally been recognized as expressions of modern art says
much about the elitism that historically surrounds the idea of ‘high’
modernism. Like their turn-of-the-century predecessors who reacted with
nervous derision to uppity art nouveau as a symptom of lower-class
tastes, the arbiters who canonized the modernist movement in Brazil,
between the 1940s and 1960s, remained indifferent to manifestations of
modernity occurring in arenas of mass culture not under their control.
Their keen attention to the feeble tootle of Klaxon and deafness to the
horn blast of Fon-Fon! bespeaks a perverse unwillingness to see the
elephant in the room.
105
See Aline Haluch, A Maçã: O design gráfico, as mudanças de comportamento e a
representação feminina no início do século XX (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Senac, 2016); Aline
Haluch, “A Maçã e a renovação do design editorial na década de 1920”, In: Cardoso,
O design brasileiro antes do design, pp. 96 123; and Paula Ramos, A modernidade
impressa: Artistas ilustradores da Livraria do Globo Porto Alegre (Porto Alegre:
UFRGS Editora, 2016), pp. 129 155.
4
1
Oswaldo Costa, “Da antropofagia”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 9, In: Diário de S. Paulo,
15 May 1929, 10.
2
See Rafael Cardoso, “White skins, black masks: Antropofagia and the reversal of primi
tivism”, In: Uwe Fleckner & Elena Tolstichin, eds., Das verirrte Kunstwerk: Bedeutung,
Funktion und Manipulation von Bilderfahrzeugen in der Diaspora (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2019).
3
See Rafael Cardoso, “Forging the Myth of Brazilian Modernism”, In: Larry Silver &
Kevin Terraciano, eds., Canons and Values: Ancient to Modern (Los Angeles: Getty
Research Institute, 2019), pp. 269 287. See also Randal Johnson, “Brazilian modernism:
172
The Cosmopolitan Savage 173
more deeply contentious, and the present chapter will focus on teasing out
some of the complexities of that mythical construct.
Like any avowedly avant-gardist grouping, the inner dynamics of
paulista modernism were shaped by the conflicts between its members.
Foremost among these was the rivalry between Oswald de Andrade and
Mário de Andrade for leadership.4 The encounter between them ener-
gized the movement in its early years but degenerated into a rift that
separated them permanently after 1929, in large part due to attacks
against Mário in the Revista de Antropofagia. Unrelated despite the
common surname, the two writers were utterly opposed in temperament.
Whereas Oswald was brash and entitled, Mário was demure and contriv-
ing. Something of a libertine, Oswald became the prototypical alpha male
of modernist lore. Mário maintained his homosexuality so deeply hidden
that it was only made fully public in recent years.5 Politically too, they
often found themselves on opposite sides, especially after 1937 when
Mário collaborated with the Estado Novo dictatorship and Oswald was
proscribed as one of its opponents.6
Beyond issues of personality, the differences between them can be
traced to a pronounced contrast in background and social standing.
Oswald descended from a rural slave-holding family in Minas Gerais.
His father moved to São Paulo after Abolition, got rich during the
Encilhamento, became an alderman and one of the largest owners of real
estate in what was then, by his son’s account, a “small and dusty town”.7
An idea out of place?”, In: Anthomy L. Geist & José B. Monleon, eds., Modernism and Its
Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America (New York:
Garland, 1999), esp. pp. 193 197; and Kenneth David Jackson, “A view on Brazilian
literature: Eating the Revista de Antropofagia”, Latin American Literary Review, 7
(1978), 1 9. One of the first commentators to emphasize the point was Augusto de
Campos in his introduction to the facsimile edition of the Revista de Antropofagia;
Augusto de Campos, “Revistas re vistas: Os antropófagos”, Revista de Antropofagia
(São Paulo: Cia. Lithographica Ypiranga, 1976), n.p.
4
Sérgio Miceli, Nacional estrangeiro: História social e cultural do modernismo em São
Paulo (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003), pp. 108 115.
5
Eduardo Jardim, Mário de Andrade: Eu sou trezentos: Vida e obra (Rio de Janeiro:
Edições de Janeiro, 2015), pp. 128 134.
6
Rafael Cardoso, “O intelectual conformista: Arte, autonomia e política no modernismo
brasileiro”, O Que Nos Faz Pensar, 26 (2017), 179 201.
7
Oswald de Andrade, Um homem sem profissão: Memórias e confissões. I volume
1890 1919. Sob as ordens da mamãe (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1954), pp. 30 34,
69 70. For more on Oswald’s biography, see Maria Augusta Fonseca, Oswald de
Andrade: Biografia (São Paulo: Globo, 2007); and Maria Eugênia Boaventura, O salão
e a selva: Uma biografia ilustrada de Oswald de Andrade (São Paulo & Campinas: Ex
Libis & Ed. Unicamp, 1995).
174 Modernity in Black and White
Oswald then spent the rest of his life living off the proceeds of properties
sold to develop prime sections of the burgeoning city. His 1954 autobiog-
raphy was self-deprecatingly titled “a man without a profession” and
comically subtitled “under the orders of Mama”. Mário, on the other
hand, came from lower-middle-class origins, attended the musical conser-
vatory and worked his way up as a teacher, critic and cultural adminis-
trator.8 In his memoirs, Oswald narrated the first encounter between
them, circa 1917, during a graduation ceremony at the conservatory:
“The speaker was a tall student, a mulatto, with a broad grin and glasses.
His name was Mário de Andrade. He delivered a speech that struck me as
awe-inspiring.”9 Then working as a reporter, Oswald had the text pub-
lished. This early dynamic of patronage, with Oswald in charge, gave way
to competition following Mário’s success as a poet after 1922 and even-
tually to a bitter sense of mutual betrayal after they fell out.
Such interpersonal relationships would hardly seem important as his-
torical explanation except for the outsize role they played in fleshing out
the discourses and meanings of Antropofagia. Proper contextualization
casts doubt upon the status the movement has since acquired as a sort of
postcolonial theory, avant la lettre.10 Scholarly readings of Antropofagia
usually reduce the concept to Oswald’s 1928 Manifesto antropófago
which, like any avant-gardist manifesto, is a literary device and statement
of ideas.11 To take its aphorisms as a theory, much less a praxis, is
8
See Jardim, Mário de Andrade, pp. 17 36.
9
Andrade, Um homem sem profissão, p. 176.
10
See, among others, Luís Madureira, Cannibal Modernities: Postcoloniality and the
Avant garde in Caribbean and Brazilian Literature (Charlottesville: University of Vir
ginia Press, 2005), ch.1; Carlos A. Jáuregui, “Antropofagia (cultural cannibalism)”, In:
Robert McKee Irwin & Monica Szurmuk, eds., Dictionary of Latin American Cultural
Studies (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2012), pp. 22 28; Antonio Luciano de
Andrade Tosta, “Modern and postcolonial?: Oswald de Andrade’s Antropofagia and the
politics of labelling”, Romance Notes, 51 (2011), 217 226; Gazi Islam, “Can the subal
tern eat?: Anthropophagic culture as a Brazilian lens on post colonial theory”, Organiza
tion, 19 (2012), 159 180; Kalinca Costa Söderlund, “Antropofagia: an early arrière
garde manifestation in 1920s Brazil”, RIHA Journal, 132 (2016); and Luis Fellipe Garcia,
“Only Anthropophagy unites us Oswald de Andrade’s decolonial project”, Cultural
Studies, 2018, 1 21. On the pitfalls of the comparison with postcolonial theory and the
necessity of problematizing Antropofagia, see Heloisa Toller Gomes, “The uniqueness of
the Brazilian case: a challenge for Postcolonial Studies”, Postcolonial Studies, 14 (2011),
405 413; and Luiz Costa Lima, “A vanguarda antropófaga”, In: João Cezar de Castro
Rocha & Jorge Ruffinelli, eds., Antropofagia hoje?: Oswald de Andrade em cena (São
Paulo: É Realizações, 2011), pp. 363 371.
11
Oswald de Andrade, “Manifesto antropófago”, Revista de Antropofagia, I, 1 (May
1928), 3, 7. English translations are available in: Stephen Berg, “The Cannibalist
The Cosmopolitan Savage 175
Manifesto”, Third Text, 13 (2008), 92 95; and Leslie Bary, “Cannibalist Mani
festo”, Latin American Literary Review 19 (1991), 38 47. For reappraisals of the
manifesto and its implications, see Castro Rocha & Ruffinelli, Antropofagia hoje?; and
Madureira, Cannibal Modernities, pp. 35 51.
12
See “De antropofagia”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 4, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 7 April
1929, n.p.. The claim was later reinforced by one of the members of Antropofagia, Raul
Bopp, who unambiguously credited Tarsila with being “the chief [chefa] of the move
ment”; Raul Bopp, Vida e morte da Antropofagia (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira,
1977), p. 69. See also Raul Bopp, Movimentos modernistas no Brasil, 1922 1928 (Rio de
Janeiro: Livraria São José, 1966), p. 97.
13
On the vogue for Antropofagia circa 1967 and Oswald’s sudden rise to celebrity, see
Marilia de Andrade, “Oswald e Maria Antonieta Fragmentos memória e fantasia”, In:
Castro Rocha & Ruffinelli, Antropofagia hoje?, pp. 33 45.
14
The standard source on the movement and its history is Benedito Nunes, “Antropofagia
ao alcance de todos”, In: Oswald de Andrade, Do Pau Brasil à Antropofagia e às Utopias
(Obras completas 6) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1972), xi liii. See also
Madureira, Cannibal Modernities, pp. 23 34.
15
Bopp, Movimentos modernistas no Brasil, pp. 68 73. See also “Antropofagia Piolin
Comido”, Para Todos, 13 April 1929, 23.
176 Modernity in Black and White
(before he fell out with the others), Raul Bopp, Jayme Adour da Câmara,
Oswaldo Costa, Geraldo Ferraz and Pagu (Patricia Galvão), as well as a
loose network of contributors that included important voices from out-
side São Paulo (José Américo de Almeida, Manuel Bandeira, Cícero Dias,
Ascenso Ferreira, Rosário Fusco, Oswaldo Goeldi, Fabio Luz, Murilo
Mendes, Alvaro Moreyra, Benjamin Péret).16
Despite its cliquish elitism, the movement was combative and sought to
achieve notoriety through carefully staged polemics. Over its brief exist-
ence, the Revista pointedly antagonized many major names associated
with the history of Brazilian modernism. Besides Mário de Andrade,
Guilherme de Almeida, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Victor Brecheret,
Graça Aranha, Alceu Amoroso Lima, Menotti del Picchia and Paulo
Prado were all singled out for personal abuse in its pages. In a series of
articles by Oswaldo Costa (penned under the pseudonym Tamandaré), it
also violently denounced the Semana itself, repudiating it as false mod-
ernism, derivative, imported, academic and merely aesthetic when it
should have been transformative.17 Any interpretation that posits Antro-
pofagia as a continuation of the Semana does so against the repeatedly
expressed views of the anthropophagists themselves.
Through the networks it established, Antropofagia achieved greater
immediate impact on the national scene than the Semana had, a few years
earlier. Alvaro Moreyra – one of the most influential journalists of the
time and heir to the modernizing currents discussed in Chapter 3 – was
instrumental in lifting the movement out of the self-contained world of
literary coteries and into the mainstream by devoting sustained coverage
to Tarsila, Oswald and company in the pages of the widely read and
16
The Revista de Antropofagia was published in two phases, which the editors dubbed first
and second teethings. During the first, lasting from May 1928 to February 1929, it was a
four page monthly, of which ten issues were published. From March to August 1929, it
ceased independent circulation and featured as a semi weekly page in the newspaper
Diário de S. Paulo, running to a further sixteen instalments. Alcântara Machado was the
principal editor during the first phase and Oswaldo Costa during the second, though
Oswald de Andrade was always firmly in charge. Geraldo Ferraz was mostly responsible
for the design.
17
Tamandaré, “Moquém. II Hors d’oeuvre”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 5, In: Diário de
S. Paulo, 14 April 1929, 6; Tamandaré, “Moquém. III Entradas”, Revista de Antro
pofagia, II, 6, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 24 April 1929, 10; Tamandaré, “Moquem. IV.
Sobremesa”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 7, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 1 May 1929, 12;
Tamandaré, “Moquem. V. Cafezinho”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 8, In: Diário de
S. Paulo, 8 May 1929, 12.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 177
18
See, among others, “De Bellas Artes Tarsila do Amaral”, Para Todos, 19 May 1928,
36 37; Raul Bopp, “Coco de Pagu”, Para Todos, 27 October 1928, 24; Peregrino Junior,
“A progenie de Brumell”, Para Todos, 24 November 1928, 1; “Tarsila por ella mesma”,
Para Todos, 11 August 1928, 29; Oswald de Andrade, “Hip Hip Hoover”, Para Todos,
12 January 1929, 22; Samuel Tristão, “Futurismo”, Para Todos, 26 January 1929, 17;
Salvador Roberto, “Da terra da garoa”, Para Todos, 23 March 1929, 27; “Antropofagia
Piolin Comido”, Para Todos, 13 April 1929, 23; “Tarsila”, Para Todos, 27 July 1929,
14; Bezerra de Freitas, “Antropophagia”, Para Todos, 27 July 1929, 17; “Pagu”, Para
Todos, 27 July 1929, 21; Clovis de Gusmão, “Na exposição de Tarsila”, Para Todos,
3 August 1929, 21; “De João da Avenida. Reminiscências”, Para Todos, 5 April 1930,
27. Cf. Luís Martins, Um bom sujeito (São Paulo: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura & Rio
de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1983), pp. 21 22, who remembered Para Todos as a “bastion of
modernism” in Rio de Janeiro.
19
Alvaro Moreyra, “Visita de São Thomé”, Revista de Antropofagia, I, 1 (May 1928), 8;
Freuderico, “Ortodoxia”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 3, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 31 March
1929, 6; “A propósito do teatro sem nome entrevista de Alvaro Moreyra”, Revista de
Antropofagia, II, 5, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 14 April 1929, 6; “Expansão antropofágica”,
Revista de Antropofagia, II, 10, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 12 June 1929, 10. Cf. Raul Bopp’s
comments on Alvaro Moreyra in: Bopp, Movimentos modernistas no Brasil, 32.
20
“Cartas na mesa (os Andrades se dividem)”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 11, In: Diário de
S. Paulo, 19 June 1929, 10.
21
See Rafael Cardoso, “Modernismo e contexto político: A recepção da arte moderna no
Correio da Manhã (1924 1937)”, Revista de História (USP), 172 (June 2015), 339.
178 Modernity in Black and White
distributed throughout the country.22 Moreyra, for his part, would not
have been oblivious to the advantages of an alliance with the wealthy and
well-connected couple from São Paulo. Tarsila and Oswald’s wedding in
1926 was attended by no less than the president of Brazil, Washington
Luiz, as well as congressman and future president-elect, Júlio Prestes, both
stalwarts of the Partido Republicano Paulista (PRP), who were designated
the couple’s padrinhos (godfathers).
Around the time of his involvement with the anthropophagists,
Moreyra was struggling to achieve success with a side project of his
own: a modernizing theatrical venture called Teatro de Brinquedo (liter-
ally, toy theatre), which he directed along with his wife, poet Eugênia
Alvaro Moreyra.23 The feminist Eugênia then outpaced Tarsila as the
fashionable female face of modernity. Her distinctive bobbed hair fea-
tured frequently in press photographs and even caricatures that graced the
society pages of the capital.24 In August 1929, the two women appeared
together in Para Todos, flanking poet Jorge de Lima and adding what the
magazine called “a very expressive note” to the occasion (Fig. 46).25 The
bond between Tarsila and Eugênia reaffirmed the status of both as
modern artists and reinforced their husbands’ mutual ambitions to dom-
inate the scene. Between 1927 and 1929, a budding friendship between
the two couples bridged the distance between elites in São Paulo and Rio
and threatened to overshadow other competing groupings with its novel
22
“Alvaro Moreyra e outras questões que não são para todos”, In: Oswald de Andrade,
Telefonema (Obras completas 10) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1976),
pp. 39 43.
23
“Theatro de brinquedo”, Revista da Semana, 19 November 1927, 29; Mário Nunes, “De
theatro”, Para Todos, 19 November 1927, 21; Benjamin Lima, “Brincadeira que faz
pensar”, Para Todos, 17 December 1927, 22 24. See also Severino J. Albuquerque,
Tentative Transgressions: Homosexuality, AIDS and the Theater in Brazil (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), pp. 62, 196. For more on the couple, see Joelle
Rouchou, “Um arquivo amoroso: Alvaro e Eugênia Moreyra”, XXXII Congresso Bra
sileiro de Ciências da Comunicação (Intercom), 2009.
24
See, among others, “Poesia brasileira no Theatro Municipal de São Paulo”, Para Todos,
5 May 1928, 21; Mário de Andrade, ‘Senhora Eugenio Alvaro Moreyra”, Para Todos,
9 June 1928, 21; “Poesia nova do Brasil”, Revista da Semana, 9 June 1928, 25; “Poesia
nova do Brasil”, Para Todos, 23 June 1928, 22; “Noticias e commentarios”, Revista da
Semana, 23 June 1928, 27; “Noticiario elegante”, Revista da Semana, 29 June 1929, 27;
“Noticiario elegante”, Revista da Semana, 6 July 1929, 30; “Figuras e factos”, Revista da
Semana, 9 November 1929, 5. See also the extraordinary 1931 portrait of her painted by
Dimitri Ismailovitch and exhibited in the so called Revolutionary Salon of 1931.
25
“Homenagem a Jorge de Lima”, Para Todos, 17 August 1929, 28.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 179
26
They shared political affinities, as well, as would be borne out by the increasing leftist
militancy of all four over the 1930s. After splitting up from Oswald, Tarsila grew even
closer to the Alvaro Moreyra couple, who helped mediate her encounter with and subse
quent marriage to Luís Martins. See Martins, Um bom sujeito, pp. 25 36. Their friendship
with Oswald also endured, as attested by the fact that he dedicated his play “O rei da vela”,
published 1937, to Eugênia and Alvaro Moreyra; see Oswald de Andrade, Teatro (Obras
completas 7) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1973), p. 59.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 181
was present”.27 Of the three major factions that splintered off from the
Semana – including not only Mário’s cohort but also the ardently nation-
alist Verde-Amarelo group – only Antropofagia was thus graced with the
spotlight of the national press.28
The result was unambiguous, launching Tarsila to a new level of public
visibility. One week later, the leading daily Correio da Manhã reported on
a homage to the painter at the Palace Hotel, with songs performed by
Elsie Houston; poems declaimed by both Eugênia and Alvaro Moreyra, as
well as the prominent Catholic poets Augusto Frederico Schmidt and
Murilo Mendes; plus the presence of two congressmen from the PRP,
Altino Arantes and Eloy Chaves; a member of the Brazilian Academy of
Letters, Claudio de Souza, and the “communist writers” Mário Pedrosa
and Antônio Bento.29 The entire spectrum of cultural influence in the
capital was present. Triumph must have seemed certain to Oswald. In
August 1929, the headline of the final edition of the Revista de
Antropofagia proclaimed that “Tarsila do Amaral’s exhibition at the
Palace Hotel, in Rio de Janeiro, was the first great battle of Antropofa-
gia”.30 As luck would have it, the first great battle proved also to be
the last.
27
“Tarsila”, Para Todos, 27 July 1929, 14. In an article published 15 September 1929, in
Recife, Manuel Bandeira also emphasized the large number of people present at the
opening, as well as the fact that various groups were represented; Manuel Bandeira,
Crônicas da província do Brasil (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006 [1937]), p. 294.
28
The nativist and regionalist Verde Amarelo (green and yellow) group, founded 1926,
included writers and veterans of the Semana de Arte Moderna, Plínio Salgado, Cassiano
Ricardo, Menotti del Picchia and Cândido Motta Filho. To varying degrees, they would
become associated with the Brazilian fascist movement of Integralismo after 1932.
Salgado went on to become supreme leader of the Ação Integralista Brasileira and its
candidate for the presidency. See Madureira, Cannibal Modernities, pp. 31 33; Monica
Pimenta Velloso, “O modernismo e a questão nacional”, In: Jorge Ferreira & Lucília de
Almeida Neves Delgado, eds., O Brasil republicano. 1. O tempo do liberalismo exclu
dente: da Proclamação o da Republica a Revolução de 1930 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização
Brasileira, 2003); Monica Pimenta Velloso, “A brasilidade verde amarela: Nacionalismo
e regionalismo paulista”, Estudos Históricos, 6 (1993), 89 112; Daniel Pécaut, Entre le
peuple et la nation: les intellectuels et la politique au Brésil (Paris: Ed. de la Maison des
Sciences de l’Homme, 1989); and Antonio Arnoni Prado, 1922 Itinerário de uma falsa
vanguarda: Os dissidentes, a Semana e o Integralismo (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983).
29
“Homenagens”, Correio da Manhã, 7 August 1929, 7. Eloy Chaves was a staunch
defender of paulista identity, casting São Paulo as birthplace of the nation; Barbara
Weinstein, The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in
Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), pp. 45 46.
30
“A exposição de Tarsila do Amaral no Palace Hotel, do Rio de Janeiro, foi a primeira
grande batalha da Antropofagia”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 16, In: Diário de S. Paulo,
1 August 1929, 10.
182 Modernity in Black and White
In October 1929, the Wall Street crash brought Brazil’s coffee export
economy to a grinding halt. The fortunes of Tarsila’s family – an exorbi-
tantly wealthy clan of rural landowners in São Paulo – were ravaged; and
Oswald’s finances too were hard hit. His romantic entanglement with the
young poet and artist Pagu precipitated the end of the marriage to Tarsila.
The network around Antropofagia fell apart swiftly and permanently.31
The political situation too began to unravel in the countdown to the self-
proclaimed Revolution of 1930, which would usher Getúlio Vargas into
the presidency one year after the stock market crash. Oswald and Tarsila,
with their close personal ties to the deposed president and the PRP,
suffered a major loss of prestige and influence. On the opposite side,
Mário de Andrade, who wrote for the newspaper Diário Nacional –
organ of the Partido Democrático (PD), which supported Vargas in São
Paulo – suddenly saw his professional fortunes take an upswing.32
The first half of the 1930s witnessed seismic shifts in politics and
society that directly impacted the relationships among modernist group-
ings.33 Chief among these was the so-called Constitutionalist Revolution
of 1932, in which the state of São Paulo attempted to secede from the
federal union and was crushed militarily after three months.34 One result
of this defeat was to deprive São Paulo’s elites of their influence, tempor-
arily, and shift the momentum of the modernist movement back to the
nation’s capital. In 1934, Gustavo Capanema, an ally of Vargas from
Minas Gerais, was appointed to head the powerful new Ministry of
Education and Health, which came to exercise unprecedented ascendancy
over cultural affairs. In his move to Rio, he took along with him poet
Carlos Drummond, who rose to new heights of influence as Capanema’s
chief-of-staff, vying with Catholic leader Alceu Amoroso Lima for sway
over the minister’s policies.35 Drummond, in turn, was instrumental in
enticing Mário de Andrade to exchange São Paulo for Rio, where he
31
See Bopp, Vida e morte da Antropofagia, pp. 53, 70.
32
On the PD’s challenge to PRP dominance, see Weinstein, Color of Modernity, pp. 64 68.
33
See Cardoso, “Modernismo e contexto político”, pp. 354 357.
34
On the Constitutionalist Revolution and its implications in terms of regional and racial
identites, see Weinstein, Color of Modernity, chs. 2 & 3.
35
See Simon Schwartzman, Helena Maria Bousquet Bomeny & Vanda Maria Ribeiro
Costa, Tempos de Capanema (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2000), esp. chs. 5 & 6; Daryle
Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil: the First Vargas Regime, 1930 1945 (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2001), esp. ch. 3; and Jerry Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness: Race and
Social Policy in Brazil, 1917 1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 62 67.
See also Helena Bomeny, ed., Constelação Capanema: Intelectuais e política (Rio de
Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 2001).
The Cosmopolitan Savage 183
remained between 1938 and 1941.36 Over the decade and a half after
1930, the Antropofagia group was left out in the cold; and Oswald, in
particular, would remain a virtual outcast from patronage until the end of
the Estado Novo in 1945.37
36
See Jardim, Mário de Andrade, ch. 7.
37
Marilia de Andrade & Ésio Macedo Ribeiro, eds., Maria Antonieta d’Alkmin e Oswald
de Andrade: Marco zero (São Paulo: Edusp, 2003), pp. 16 18, 66 69.
38
See Cardoso, “White Skins, Black Masks”, pp. 131 138. See also Renata Gomes Car
doso, “A Negra de Tarsila do Amaral: Criação, recepção e circulação”, VIS (Revista do
Programa de Pós graduação em Artes da UnB), 15 (2016), 90 110.
184 Modernity in Black and White
race was coming to the fore in intellectual debates of the time.39 The place
of blackness in Brazilian culture was an object of concern in artistic circles
in Rio de Janeiro since the early 1900s, as has been seen in previous
chapters, including the work of black artists such as Arthur Timotheo da
Costa, who was attuned to the topic of racial self-representation.40 By the
mid-1920s, the theme was also being unambiguously addressed by an
artist well-known to paulista modernist circles, Lasar Segall, even if in a
more ethnographic vein as evidenced in his paintings Boy with geckos
(1924) and Banana grove (1927).41
The topic of race only crops up in the Revista de Antropofagia in
November 1928, seven months into the journal’s existence, and, even
then, as a negative trope. A front-page article on the proposed construc-
tion of a monument to honour the figure of the black nursemaid, or mãe
preta – sarcastically titled “Wet nurse contest” and signed by Alcântara
Machado – begins by affirming that such a monument was being built
“I don’t know where (but always in Brazil).”42 Given the noisy campaign
to erect a mãe preta monument in Rio de Janeiro in 1926 and subsequent
debates regarding a similar initiative in São Paulo, the author’s professed
ignorance of location can only be understood as facetious.43 The article
39
Heloisa Toller Gomes, “A questão racial na gestação da antropofagia oswaldiana”,
Nuevo Texto Critico, 12 (1999), 249 259. See also Darién J. Davis, Avoiding the Dark:
Race and the Forging of National Culture in Modern Brazil (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999),
ch. 2.
40
See Alejandro de la Fuente, “Afro Latin American art”, In: Alejandro de la Fuente &
George Reid Andrews, eds., Afro Latin American Studies: an Introduction (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 374 375; Rafael Cardoso, “The problem of race
in Brazilian painting, c.1850 1920”, Art History, 38 (2015), 488 511; and Roberto
Conduru, “Afromodernidade representações de afrodescendentes e modernização artís
tica no Brasil”, In: Roberto Conduru, Pérolas negras, primeiros fios: Experiências artí
sitcas e culturais nos fluxos entre África e Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Uerj, 2013),
pp. 301 313.
41
See Alejandro de la Fuente & Rafael Cardoso, “Race and the Latin American Avant
gardes, 1920s 1930s”, In: David Bindman & Alejandro de la Fuente, eds., The Image of
the Black in Latin America and the Caribbean (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
forthcoming, 2021).
42
Antônio de Alcântara Machado, “Concurso de lactantes”, Revista de Antropofagia, I, 7
(November 1928), 1.
43
See Paulina L. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth century
Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), pp. 69 74. See also
Weinstein, Color of Modernity, pp. 289 293; Marcus Wood, Black Milk: Imagining
Slavery in the Visual Cultures of Brazil and America (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), pp. 1 4; Isabel Löfgren & Patricia Gouvêa, Mãe preta (São Paulo: Frida Projetos
Culturais, 2018), esp. pp. 54 55; and Kimberly Cleveland, Black Women Slaves Who
The Cosmopolitan Savage 185
warns that building the monument entails the risk that other groups will
also demand monuments of their own:
One for each colour. Then one for each nationality. The homage will provoke a
competition between races and origins and even types of milk. In the end, the
manufacturers of condensed milk will also lay claim to a statue, with good motive.
And all hell will break loose when the Dutch government demands a statue for
their cows, its subjects. I do not mean to offend, only to give fair warning.44
He did mean to offend, of course. Offence was the modus operandi of the
Revista de Antropofagia, even during its comparatively restrained first
phase. The question remains open to whom this rhetorical pretence at not
causing offence was directed, since there were likely to be few black
readers among the journal’s public. Possibly, the author had in mind the
offence caused by describing cows as Dutch subjects.
Given that this first extended reference to blackness occurred within
the context of debates around the mãe preta monument, the absence of
A Negra from the pages of the journal is worth pondering. Illustrations by
Tarsila were a constant feature of the Revista de Antropofagia, from the
very first issue – in which the Manifesto antropófago is accompanied by a
line drawing of Abaporu (1928), a work Oswald claimed as its inspir-
ation – to the final editions, illustrated with photographs of the paintings
Forest (1929) and Antropofagia (1929). Indeed, if text and image are
given equal weight, Tarsila was one of the most frequent contributors to
the journal. It would have made perfect sense to reproduce A Negra in the
context of a discussion about mãe preta, particularly since, by the artist’s
own account, the work was related to the theme of wet nursing.45 That
did not happen. One obvious reason is that the painting was not in Brazil,
at the time, but instead in Paris. Yet, it would have been entirely possible
to reproduce the composition the way most of Tarsila’s works were
46
See Alexandre Eulalio, A aventura brasileira de Blaise Cendrars (São Paulo: Edusp, 2001
[1978]), pp. 23 30, 112 126; and Aracy A. Amaral, Blaise Cendrars no Brasil e os
modernistas (São Paulo: Ed.34/Fapesp, 1997 [1970]), esp. pp. 21 27, 133 141.
47
Menelik, “A pedidos. Com o Centro Cívico Palmares”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 7, In:
Diário de S. Paulo, 1 May 1929, 12.
48
Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, 89 101; and Kim D. Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms
Won: Afro Brazilians in Post Abolition São Paulo and Salvador (New Brunswick: Rut
gers University Press, 1998), pp. 101 107. An early Afro Brazilian newspaper in São
Paulo, founded 1915, was titled O Menelick; see Giovana Xavier da Conceição Côrtes,
“’Leitoras’: Gênero, raça, imagem e discurso em O Menelik (São Paulo, 1915 1916)”,
Afro Ásia, 46 (2012), 163 191.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 187
Nonetheless, its appeal to the black mother and the longsuffering slave is
in line with approved bourgeois sentiment since the heyday of
abolitionism.
The Revista de Antropofagia was not particularly racist, by the stand-
ards of its day, but neither can it be construed as a champion of Afro-
Brazilian identity. Its attitudes to race were more ambiguous, and that
ambiguity can be better understood by assessing the movement’s relation-
ship to the slippery trope of primitivism. In one of the series of articles
castigating “the Semana de Arte Moderna and its derivative currents”,
Oswaldo Costa criticizes Brazilian modernism for not having created
any new and original ideas, but rather perpetuating “the old imported
thinking”. He expounds on this accusation with an unusual reference to
“negro art”:
Now, some of these modernists are starting to say that São Paulo is ugly, that
Brazil is ugly. Don’t be dismayed. They are copying the European, whom ugly
Europe has cast into the arms of negro art and of all exoticisms. This is the
psychology of failure.49
49
Tamandaré, “Moquem. II. Hors d’oeuvre”, p. 6.
50
Keyserling visited São Paulo in 1929 and became personally acquainted with Tarsila and
Oswald, who cited him in a crucial passage of the “Manifesto Antropófago”. See Daniel
Faria, “As meditações americanas de Keyserling: Um cosmopolitismo nas incertezas do
tempo”, Varia Historia, 29 (2013), 905 923; and Abilio Guerra, O primitivismo em
Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade e Raul Bopp: Origem e conformação no universo
intelectual brasileiro (São Paulo: Romano Guerra, 2010), pp. 257 263, 270 275,
287 291.
188 Modernity in Black and White
They are mistaken, those who think we are only against the abuses of Western
civilization. We are against its uses. [. . .] Against mental servitude. Against colo
nial mentality. Against Europe.51
51
Costa, “De antropofagia”, 10. For more on Costa’s relevance to the movement, see
Carlos A. Jáuregui, “Oswaldo Costa, Antropofagia and the cannibal critique of colonial
modernity”, Culture & History Digital Journal, 4 (2015), 1 17. See also Carlos Rincón,
“Antropofagia, reciclagem, hibridação, tradução ou: como apropriar se da apropriação”,
In: Castro Rocha & Ruffinelli, Antropofagia hoje?, pp. 551 557.
52
Poronominare, “Manipulações etnologicas”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 6, In: Diário de
S. Paulo, 24 April 1929, 10.
53
See Cunhambebinho, “Péret”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 1, In: Diário de S. Paulo,
17 March 1929, 6; and Adour, “História do Brasil”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 4, In:
Diário de S. Paulo, 7 April 1929, n.p.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 189
54
Poronominare, “Uma adesão que não nos interessa”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 10, In:
Diário de S. Paulo, 12 June 1929, 10. Poronominare is the name of a divine hero in the
mythology of some peoples of the Amazon region, renowned for his cunning.
55
Costa, “De antropofagia”, 10. See also Tamandaré, “Moquem. II. Hors d’oeuvre”, 6, on
the deforming gaze cast upon indigenous peoples by Romantic authors like Gonçalves
Dias and José de Alencar.
56
Poronominare, “Uma adesão que não nos interessa”, p. 10.
57
Freuderico, “De antropofagia”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 1, In: Diário de S. Paulo,
17 March 1929, 6. In the manifesto, this was phrased: “The transfiguration of the Taboo
into totem”, see Andrade, “Manifesto antropófago”, 7.
58
Oswald de Andrade, “Antropofagia e cultura”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 9, In: Diário
de S. Paulo, 15 May 1929, 10.
59
Tamandaré, “Moquem. IV. Sobremesa”, 12; and Tamandaré, “Moquem. V. Cafezinho”,
12. Cf. Bopp, Vida e morte da antropofagia, p. 41.
190 Modernity in Black and White
60
Freuderico, “De antropofagia”, 6.
61
See Cardoso, “White Skins, Black Masks”, 152 154. Interestingly, this position of
standing outside prevailing paradigms, in a sort of ideological no man’s land, bears
strong parallels to that occupied by Mattos Pimenta in his repudiation of favelas. It is
perhaps a hallmark of the in between position of Brazilian elites. See Chapter 1.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 191
62
Bezerra de Freitas, “Antropophagia”, Para Todos, 27 July 1929, p. 17. For contemporary
opinions on modernism, see José Clemente, “Sobre o modernismo”, Correio da Manhã,
19 June 1925, 6; and Leoncio Correia, “Arte moderna. José de Lubecki”, Revista da
Semana, 31 December 1921, n.p.
192 Modernity in Black and White
63
Márcio Alves Roiter, “A influência marajoara no Art Déco brasileiro”, Revista UFG, 12
(2010), 19 27.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 193
. J. Carlos [José Carlos de Brito e Cunha], Para Todos, 27 July 1929
Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Memória Gráfica Brasileira
64
On disputes around primitivism, see Uwe Fleckner, “The naked fetish: Carl Einstein and
the Western canon of African art”, In: Silver & Terraciano, Canons and Values,
pp. 245 268; Daniel J. Sherman, French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire,
1945 1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); Laurick Zerbini, “Sur les
traces des arts africains”, In: Oissila Saaïdia & Laurick Zerbini, eds., La construction du
discours colonial: l’empire français au XIXe et XXe siècles (Paris: Karthala, 2009),
pp. 63 89; and Uwe Fleckner, The Invention of the Twentieth Century: Carl Einstein
and the Avant Gardes (Madrid: Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2009).
65
Guerra, O primitivismo em Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade e Raul Bopp,
pp. 17 18, 217 219, 244 245. See also Viviana Gelado, Poéticas da transgressão:
Vanguarda e cultura popular nos anos 20 na América Latina (Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras
& São Paulo: Ed. UFSCar/Fapesp, 2006), pp. 132 193.
66
See Rincón, “Antropofagia, reciclagem, hibridação, tradução”, 549 551; and João Cezar
de Castro Rocha, “Uma teoria de exportação? ou: ‘Antropofagia como visão de
mundo’”, In: Castro Rocha & Ruffinelli, Antropofagia hoje?, pp. 647 668.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 195
gloated over having won its first great battle, suggesting they expected
more and greater battles to come.
Given its cosmopolitanism, Antropofagia’s appeal to nativism should
be understood more as a clever discursive gambit than a genuine attach-
ment to deeper strata of Brazilian culture and society. Though the anthro-
pophagists spoke forcefully about the Amerindian and (to a lesser extent)
African roots of Brazil, they by no means spoke for these subaltern
groups. The strategic essentialism of positing all Brazilians as equal heirs
to an unequal past involved appropriating the cultures of others in ways
that subtly silenced them. Though they might claim to be anti-colonialist,
the actions it empowered frequently involved a further usurpation of
marginalized groups whose identities were exploited in the name of
modernity. Thus, Antropofagia’s greatest discursive strength – its deliber-
ate code-switching – is ultimately also its fatal flaw.
67
See Chapter 1.
68
Toller Gomes, “A questão racial na gestação da antropofagia oswaldiana”, 252 253. See
also Weinstein, Color of Modernity, 194; and Davis, Avoiding the Dark, 62 63. Cf.
Manoel Correia de Andrade, “Uma visão autêntica do Nordeste”, In: Gilberto Freyre,
Nordeste (São Paulo: Global, 2013), pp. 9 10.
69
Eulalio, A aventura brasileira de Blaise, pp. 24 43; and Amaral, Blaise Cendrars no
Brasil e os modernistas, pp. 15 28. Cf. Hermano Vianna, O mistério do samba (Rio de
Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/Ed. UFRJ, 1995), pp. 95 96, 99 103.
196 Modernity in Black and White
70
“A conferência de Péret”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 2, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 24 March
1929, n.p. See also Cunhambebinho, “Péret, 6.
71
See M. Elizabeth Ginway, “Surrealist Benjamin Péret and Brazilian modernism”, Hispa
nia, 75 (1992), 545; and Carlos Augusto Calil, “Fascínio e rejeição: Blaise Cendrars e
Benjamin Péret no Brasil”, In: Leyla Perrone Moisés, ed., Cinco séculos de presença
francesa no Brasil (São Paulo: Edusp, 2013), pp. 188 189.
72
On Elsie Houston, see Micol Seigel, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in
Brazil and the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 166 178. See
also Elsie Houston Péret, Chants populaires du Brésil (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul
Geuthner, 1930).
73
On Péret’s political affiliations, see Mário Maestri, “Benjamin Péret: Um olhar hetere
doxo sobre Palmares, In: Victorien Lavou, ed., Les noirs et le discours identitaire latino
américain (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan/Crilaup, 1997), pp. 170 171;
and Robert Ponge, “Desse pão, eu não como: Trajetória no Brasil, na França e alhures de
Benjamin Péret, militante e poeta permanente”, Revista História & Luta de Classes, 1
(2006), 29 43. On Péret’s stay in Mexico from 1941 to 1948, see Fabienne Bradu,
Benjamin Péret y México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2014).
The Cosmopolitan Savage 197
took part in the Trotskyite dissidence from the PCB, whose Stalinist line
they opposed. The group went on to form the self-proclaimed Inter-
national Communist League, in 1931, a schism from the PCB, in which
Péret took active part.
In Brazil, Péret was close not only to Pedrosa but also to Antônio
Bento – the previously cited ‘communist writer’, as the Correio da Manhã
labeled him, who would later gain recognition as an art critic – and to
artist Flávio de Carvalho, who also became a member of the PCB. Due to
his connection with the Houston family, Péret moved in the same social
circles as other noted modernists like poets Jorge de Lima and Murilo
Mendes, painter Ismael Nery and critic Annibal Machado, some of whom
shared his taste for surrealism though not necessarily his militant anti-
clericalism.74 Péret was friendly with the anthropophagists too, and both
he and Elsie appear prominently in photographs taken at the opening of
Tarsila’s exhibition at the Palace Hotel in 1929. The peculiar bonds that
bound surrealism to communism in Paris and later Mexico appear to
have extended to Brazil as well and to have spilled over into the circle
around Antropofagia.75 In December 1931, Péret was arrested under the
accusation of spreading communist propaganda and expelled from Brazil.
The direct spur for this move was a study he authored on João Cândido,
leader of the 1910 naval mutiny Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash),
a figure popularly known as ‘the black admiral’, which was the title the
poet chose for his work.76 Through personal contacts, Péret managed to
research his book directly in military archives, a detail that outraged navy
commanders sensitive to the memory of the revolt and its ramifications in
public opinion. The book was seized at the press, the entire edition
destroyed and Péret deported under a decree signed by no less than
74
Ginway, “Surrealist Benjamin Péret and Brazilian modernism”, 544 546; and Calil,
“Fascínio e rejeição”, pp. 189 191.
75
See Pierre Taminiaux, “Breton and Trotsky: the revolutionary memory of surrealism”,
Yale French Studies, 109 (2006), 52 66; Floriano Martins, “El surrealismo en Brasil”,
Alpha (Osorno), 21 (2005), 187 20; and Diane Scillia, “A world of art, politics, passion
and betrayal: Trotsky, Rivera and Breton and manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary
Art (1938)”, In: Anna Teresa Tymieniecka. ed., Does the World Exist?: Plurisignificant
Ciphering of Reality, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), pp. 447 466. See also Michael Löwy,
Morning Star: Surrealism, Marxism, Anarchism, Situationism, Utopia (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2009).
76
See Joseph L. Love, The Revolt of the Whip (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012);
and Zachary R. Morgan, Legacy of the Lash: Race and Corporal Punishment in the
Brazilian Navy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014).
198 Modernity in Black and White
77
Ginway, “Surrealist Benjamin Péret and Brazilian modernism”, 547; Calil, “Fascínio e
rejeição”, p. 191; and Maestri, “Benjamin Péret”, p. 172.
78
Geraldo Galvão Ferraz, ed., Paixão Pagu: Uma autobiografia precoce de Patrícia Galvão
(Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 2005), pp. 75 76. See also Valdeci da Silva Cunha, “O Homem do
Povo: Oswald de Andrade e o jornalismo engajado”, Em Tese, 16 (2010), 36 55; and
Aurora Cardoso de Quadros, Oswald de Andrade no jornal O Homem do Povo (unpub
lished doctoral dissertation, Programa de Pós graduação em Teoria Literária e Literatura
Comparada, Universidade de São Paulo, 2009), pp. 29 51.
79
Cardoso, “Modernismo e contexto político”, 354 355. See also Gabriela Naclério Forte,
CAM e SPAM: Arte, política e sociabilidade na São Paulo moderna, do início dos anos 30
(unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de Pós graduação em História Social, Universi
dade de São Paulo, 2008), esp. ch. 2.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 199
80
On Péret’s links to Afro Brazilian culture, see Emerson Giumbelli, “Macumba surrealista:
Observações de Benjamin Péret em terreiros cariocas nos anos 1930”, Estudos Histór
icos, 28 (2015), 87 107; and Maestri, “Benjamin Péret”, pp. 159 187.
81
Ginway, “Surrealist Benjamin Péret and Brazilian modernism”, 548 551. For a current
appraisal of terreiros as visual cultural phenomenon, see Arthur Valle, “Afro Brazilian
religions, visual culture and iconoclasm”, IKON, 11 (2018), 217 223.
82
Giumbelli, “Macumba surrealista”, 97 100.
83
Arthur Valle, “Arte sacra afrobrasileira na imprensa: Alguns registros pioneiros,
1904 1932”, 19&20, 13 (2018), n.p.
200 Modernity in Black and White
84
Giumbelli, “Macumba surrealista”, 93 98, 105 n17.
85
After 1932, Rubens do Amaral would prove to be a stalwart of paulista regional identity,
defender of separatism and the bandeirante myth, even going so far as to credit the
bandeirantes with contributing to Brazilian unity by defeating the “African cyst” of
Palmares; Weinstein, Color of Modernity, pp. 45, 355 256 n75, 325, 413 n101.
86
Juliana Neves, Geraldo Ferraz e Patricia Galvão: A experiência do suplemento literário
do Diário de S. Paulo, nos anos 40 (São Paulo: Annablume/Fapesp, 2005), pp. 35 42;
and Bopp, Vida e morte da antropofagia, p. 53.
87
“Os mysterios da macumba”, O Malho, 14 July 1928, n.p.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 201
88
See Rafael Cardoso, “Ambivalências políticas de um perfeito modernista: Di Cavalcanti e
a arte social”, In: José Augusto Ribeiro, ed., No subúrbio da modernidade Di Caval
canti 120 anos (São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 2017), pp. 41 53. See Chapter 1, for
Di’s illustrations of favela themes.
202 Modernity in Black and White
quite possibly, one of the things that kept him aloof from Antropofagia at
a time when the latter movement still declared itself anti-bolshevist.
Di’s 1928 macumba illustration is interesting in its use of contrasts of
light and dark to create drama in the faces as well as patterns in the
clothes. This stark visual opposition is nuanced by the curious mottled
grey used for the skin of the woman with spiky hair in the upper right
hand corner, as well as patches of skin and clothing on other figures. The
jagged black border that compresses the figures around the curved
lettering of the title creates a confined pictorial space. Alternation between
figurative and geometric elements, black, white and grey, generates visual
rhythms that are suggestive of the drums used in rituals, although only
two figures in the lower corners actually hold objects resembling percus-
sion instruments. Taking as its subject supposedly archaic forms of popu-
lar religious belief, it is an image of modernity in black and white like few
others. Akin to his favela illustration of 1923, discussed in Chapter 1, Di
is here in engaged in the fabrication of visual archetypes.89
Like Di Cavalcanti, Péret was fascinated with a presumed primal
essence that both men recognized in the culture of the urban poor and
downtrodden, particularly in the black working-class existence of Rio de
Janeiro. The Revista de Antropofagia, on the contrary, displayed almost
no interest in such themes, sharing neither Péret’s peculiar fascination
with the power of Afro-Brazilian rituals nor his deep hatred of organized
religion. The anthropophagists were unmoved by sectarian distinctions,
coming out in favour of: “All religions. But no church. And, above all,
lots of witchcraft.”90 This flippant attitude towards the sacred derived
loosely from Freudian ideas about the origin of religion in totem and
taboo, as well as from a quasi-Nietzscheian contempt for the humility
professed by Christianity.91 In the March 1929 article assessing Péret, the
journal scorned the “final despair of the Christianized” and exulted over
the liberation of man through the dictates of the unconscious: “one of the
most vigorous spectacles to warm an anthropophagic heart which has
witnessed in recent years the despair of the civilized”.92 Again, religion
and civilization are amalgamated as negative tropes.
Antropofagia was not averse, however, to using the faith of others to
advance its aims. As Oswald put it in the pages of the journal,
89
See Conduru, Pérolas negras, primeiros fios, pp. 37 47.
90
Japy Mirim, “De antropofagia”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 2, In: Diário de S. Paulo,
24 March 1929, n.p.
91 92
See Madureira, Cannibal Modernities, p. 34. Cunhambebinho, “Péret”, 6.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 203
93
Oswald de Andrade, “Schema ao Tristão de Athayde”, Revista de Antropofagia, I, 5
(September 1928), 3.
94
On distinctions between candomblé and macumba in ethnological writings, see Gium
belli, “Macumba surrealista”, 98 99.
95
Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha, “De sambas e passarinhos: As claves do tempo nas
canções de Sinhô”, In: Sidney Chalhoub, Margarida de Souza Neves & Leonardo
Affonso de Miranda Pereira, eds., História em cousas miúdas: Capítulos de história social
da crônica no Brasil (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2005), pp. 547 587. See also Marc A.
Hertzman, Making Samba: a New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2013), 121 125; and Lira Neto, Uma história do samba: Volume I (As
origens) (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017), pp. 126 139.
204 Modernity in Black and White
96
Bandeira, Crônicas da província do Brasil, 98. See also André Gardel, O encontro entre
Bandeira e Sinhô (Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura/Biblioteca Carioca,
1996), pp. 23 27.
97
Bandeira, Crônicas da província do Brasil, pp. 98, 153.
98
“Sinhô”, Para Todos, 15 June 1929, 13; and Pereira Cunha, “De sambas e passarinhos”,
559, 584 n23. Cf. Aracy A. Amaral, Tarsila: Sua obra e seu tempo (São Paulo:
Ed. 34/Edusp, 2003), 474.
99
José Adriano Fenerick, Nem do morro, nem da cidade: As transformações do samba e a
indústria cultural (1920 1945) (São Paulo: Annablume/Fapesp, 2005), 207 210; and
Pereira Cunha, “De sambas e passarinhos”, pp. 559 560, 579 580.
The Cosmopolitan Savage 205
Sinhô was, in fact, born in Rio de Janeiro, though Mário’s remarks might
be taken to imply he was not. The author goes on to explain that “the
Carioca exists as a psychological entity” and chastises this presence for its
banality, vulgarity and excessive sensuality, all of which he correlates
with the music of Sinhô. The contention that the national capital was
not a part of Brazil is intriguing in the context of mid-1929 and confirms a
grudge the author had vented at greater length, the preceding year, in his
essay on the baroque sculptor Aleijadinho, in which he claimed that
Aleijadinho was not Brazilian either and pilloried Rio de Janeiro as
symbolic of “the bureaucratic tropical instinct of our nationhood”.102
100
Monica Pimenta Velloso, “Sensibilidades finisseculares: Intelectuais e cultura boêmia”;
In: Carmem Negreiros, Fátima Oliveira & Rosa Gens, eds., Belle Époque: Crítica, arte e
cultura (São Paulo: Intermeios, 2016), pp. 38, 47.
101
Mário de Andrade, Taxi e crônicas no Diário Nacional (São Paulo: Duas Cidades/
Secretaria de Cultura, Ciência e Tecnologia, 1976), p. 103.
102
Mário de Andrade, Aspectos das artes plásticas no Brasil (Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia,
1984), pp. 11 12. On resentment of paulista intellectuals against Rio and its strategic
206 Modernity in Black and White
His rather unhinged attack on the capital in that text – and, by extension,
on the very idea of nationhood – demands to be unpacked.
At that specific juncture in 1928–1929 – when Antropofagia was at its
height and Mário under siege from the movement – his propensity to view
himself as the victim of cosmpolitan conspiracies in the capital was
nourished to paranoia-inducing heights. The Revista de Antropofagia’s
attacks began in March 1929, casting him as fussy, feminine and
scheming, and hit a low point in July with an article by Oswaldo Costa
in which he was ridiculed as “the cosmetic of Northeastern poetry” and
reprehended for not allowing “to explode within himself the good negro
he wishes vainly to hide for fear of the Holy Mother Church”.103 The
unusually phrased latter remark is a veiled allusion both to his
homosexuality and his mixed racial background, and its victim undoubt-
edly picked up on these meanings.104
Given that Mário avoided confronting the fact that he was identified as
a mulatto by others – as evidenced in Oswald’s autobiographical account
of the day they met – his emphasis on a conflict between ethnicity and
nationality is troubling. It goes against the grain of the then ascendant
view, espoused by Gilberto Freyre among others, that racial mixture was
the positive defining characteristic of Brazilianness.105 Mário’s thesis that
Aleijadinho was not Brazilian was premised on the contention that the
sculptor’s identity was shaped foremost by his racial condition as a
mulatto. He was, according to the author, “more a mestizo than a
national” and “is only Brazilian because, by God!, he happened in
106
Andrade, Aspectos das artes plásticas no Brasil, pp. 22 25, 41 42.
107
In Sinhô’s case, he preferred to designate himself as a caboclo; Pereira Cunha, “De
sambas e passarinhos”, 96. On disputes around blackness and authenticity in the world
of samba during the 1930s, see Hertzman, Making Samba, ch. 5.
108
Mário’s unpublished manuscript “A guerra de São Paulo” reveals that he was not
immune to racist ideology and even subscribed to ideas of São Paulo as standard
bearer of a “European Christian civilization” versus the rest of Brazil as semi civilized;
Weinstein, Color of Modernity, pp. 148 149.
109
Andrade, Taxi e crônicas no Diário Nacional, 236. On Mário’s deafness to urban
popular music, see José Miguel Wisnik, “Getúlio da Paixão Cearense”, In: Enio Squeff
& José Miguel Wisnik, O nacional e o popular na cultura brasileira (São Paulo:
Brasiliense, 1983), pp. 131 133.
110
Andrade, Taxi e crônicas no Diário Nacional, p. 322.
208 Modernity in Black and White
sense, versus the evils of the urban present and its pandering to the
corrupted taste of the masses.111
Mário de Andrade’s qualified disavowal of Sinhô stands in instructive
contrast to Antropofagia’s crass embrace of him for his value as a celeb-
rity. The former attitude shares traits with the European primitivist
fantasy of seeking purity elsewhere, in the lost past or distant reaches of
the earth. The fact that Sinhô is Carioca disqualifies him, in Mário’s eyes,
because it means he is a sly cosmopolitan, open to outside influences,
much as European ethnographers would sometimes rate peoples uncon-
tacted by foreign civilizations as more authentic, for purposes of study,
than those who engaged in trade or cultural exchange. Mário, the ethno-
musicologist, seeks to preserve the primitive in order to set it apart from
the present. On the opposite side of the scale, Antropofagia’s entrepre-
neurial espousal of Sinhô shares ground with the negrophilia of Parisian
night clubs and the jazz age. It partakes of primitivism too, but of a
different sort since its aim is to mix and mingle and incorporate alterity
into the self. It is distinctly less prudish and austere, though equally tinged
by claims of supremacy. Presumed authority versus de facto entitlement.
In both cases, the subaltern is left to fend for itself.
111
See Martha Abreu & Carolina Vianna Dantas, “Música popular e história,
1890 1920”, In: Antônio Herculano Lopes, Martha Abreu, Martha Tupinambá de
Ulhôa & Monica Pimenta Velloso, eds., Música e história no longo século XIX (Rio
de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 2011), pp. 40 43; Guerra, O primitivismo
em Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade e Raul Bopp, pp. 248 252; Avelino Romero
Pereira, Música, sociedade e política: Alberto Nepomuceno e a República musical (Rio
de Janeiro: Ed. UFRJ, 2007), 27 28; Carlos Sandroni, “Adeus à MPB”, In: Berenice
Cavalcante, Heloisa Starling & José Eisenberg, eds., Decantando a República: Inven
tário histórico e político da canção popular moderna brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Nova
Fronteira & São Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2004), p. 27; and Vianna, O mistério
do samba, pp. 106 108.
5
The idea of the sertão looms large in accounts of Brazilian culture and
identity. Variously translated as hinterland, backlands, outback, back
country, among other terms, a rugged and sparsely populated interior is
often cast in opposition to a corrupt coastal civilization. This is the spatial
premise for conceptions of the ‘two Brazils’ or ‘the Brazil that does not
know Brazil’, which have been popular tropes since at least the early
twentieth century.2 Following the triumphant reception of Euclides da
Cunha’s Os sertões, published 1902, various interpreters came to posit
the interior as the place of the ‘real’ nation, a territory unfamiliar to
European-fixated elites but home to the deeper currents of national
identity, sometimes encapsulated by the term Brasil profundo (deep
Brazil). This imagined non-community reinforces a simplified dichotomy
between authentic values of the rural/natural versus the artificial culture
1
Arthur Ramos, Introdução à antropologia brasileira. 2º volume: As culturas européias e os
contatos raciais e culturais (Rio de Janeiro: Casa do Estudante do Brasil, 1947), p. 361.
2
Nísia Trindade Lima, Um sertão chamado Brasil: Intelectuais e representação geográfica
da identidade nacional (Rio de Janeiro: Revan/Iuperj, 1999), pp. 17 33. See also Rex
Nielsen, “The unmappable sertão”, Portuguese Studies, 30 (2014), 5 20; and Margarida
de Souza Neves, “O sertão (en)cantado: Cores e sonoridades”, In: Berenice Cavalcante,
Heloisa Starling & José Eisenberg, eds., Decantando a República: Inventário histórico e
poético da canção popular moderna brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira & São
Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2004), pp. 93 111.
209
210 Modernity in Black and White
3
See Trindade Lima, Um sertão chamado Brasil, pp. 55 89; and Nicolau Sevcenko,
Literatura como missão: Tensões sociais e criação cultural na primeira República (São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009 [1983]), esp. ch. 4. See also Vanderlei Sebastião de
Souza, “Arthur Neiva e a ‘questão nacional’ nos anos 1910 e 1920”, História, Ciências,
Saúde Manguinhos, 16 (2009), 249 264.
4
Janaína Amado, “Região, sertão, nação”, Estudos Históricos, 8 (1995), 145 151. See also
Janaína Amado, Walter Nugent & Warren Dean, Frontier in Comparative Perspectives:
the United States and Brazil (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for International
Scholars, 1990).
5
Armando Magalhães Corrêa [Marcus Venício Ribeiro, ed.], O sertão carioca (Rio de
Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional, 2017 [1936]). See also José Luiz de Andrade Franco & José
Augusto Drummond, “Armando Magalhães Corrêa: Gente e natureza de um sertão quase
metropolitano”, História, Ciências, Saúde Manguinhos, 12 (2005), 1033 1059.
6
Marc A. Hertzman, Making Samba: a New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 107 108; Micol Seigel, Uneven Encounters: Making
Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009),
The Face of the Land 211
pp. 99 101; Larry Crook, Focus: Music of Northeast Brazil (London: Routledge, 2009),
pp. 154 157; Rafael José de Menezes Bastos, “Les Batutas, 1922: une anthropologie de la
nuit parisienne”, Vibrant, 4 (2007), 28 55. See also Izomar Lacerda, Nós somos batutas:
Uma antropologia da trajetória musical do grupo Os Oito Batutas e suas articulações com
o pensamento musical brasileiro (unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de Pós graduação
em Antropologia Social, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2011).
7
Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, “Cousas do sertão: Coelho Netto e o tipo nacional
nos primeiros anos da República”, História Social, 22/23 (2012), 93 110.
8
See Maria Cecilia França Lourenço, ed., Almeida Júnior: Um criador de imaginários (São
Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 2007). The word caipira is used to refer to a rural inhabitant
and is roughly akin to bumpkin, yokel, hayseed or rube in English speaking contexts,
though not necessarily pejorative.
9
Nicolau Sevcenko, Orfeu extático na metrópole: São Paulo, sociedade e cultura nos
frementes anos 20 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992), pp. 238 248.
212 Modernity in Black and White
10
Carolina Casarin, “‘Caipirinha vestida de Poiret’: O traje de Tarsila do Amaral em sua
primeira exposição individual”, Anais do Primeiro Seminário em Artes, Cultura e Lin
guagens (Instituto de Artes e Design/UFJF) (2014), pp. 139 149. See also Aracy A.
Amaral, Tarsila: Sua obra e seu tempo (São Paulo: Ed. 34/Edusp, 2003 [1975]),
pp. 143 147.
11
See Avelino Romero Pereira, Música, sociedade e política: Alberto Nepomuceno e a
República musical (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. UFRJ, 2007), pp. 24 28; Martha Abreu,
O império do divino: Festas religiosas e cultura popular no Rio de Janeiro, 1830 1900
(Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1999), pp. 144 156; and Roberto Ventura, Estilo
tropical: História cultural e polêmicas literárias no Brasil, 1870 1914 (São Paulo: Com
panhia das Letras, 1991), pp. 47 52. See also Renato Ortiz, Cultura brasileira e identi
dade nacional (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986), pp. 127 142.
12
Manuel Bandeira, Crônicas da província do Brasil (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006
[1937]), p. 144. Cf. a drawing by Raul for the cover of O Malho, 28 June 1919, titled
“Luar do sertão”, satirizing the vogue for images of the rural poor.
13
See Jerry Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917 1945
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 28 30; Aluizio Alves Filho, As Metamor
foses do Jeca Tatu (a questão da identidade do brasileiro em Monteiro Lobato) (Rio de
Janeiro: Inverta, 2003); and Márcia Regina Capelari Naxara, Estrangeiro em sua própria
terra: Representações do brasileiro 1870/1920 (São Paulo: Annablume, 1998).
14
Ruy Barbosa, “A questão social e política no Brasil”, In: Pensamento e ação de Rui
Barbosa (Brasília: Senado Federal, 1999), pp. 367 369. See also Maria Cristina Gomes
Machado, Rui Barbosa: Pensamento e ação: Uma análise do projeto modernizador para
a sociedade brasileira com base na questão educacional (Campinas: Ed. Autores
The Face of the Land 213
Associados & Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 2002). Caboclo is another
epithet of variable meaning. It can be used to refer to anyone from the backwoods, but in
racialist discourses usually refers to a mixture of European and Amerindian ancestries,
with a predominance of the latter.
15
See Monica Pimenta Velloso, “A mulata, o papagaio e a francesa: O jogo dos estereótipos
culturais”, In: Isabel Lustosa, ed., Imprensa, humor e caricatura: A questão dos ester
eótipos culturais (Belo Horizonte: Ed. UFMG, 2011), pp. 365 387.
214 Modernity in Black and White
the white female allegory of the Republic consciously derived from the
French Marianne.16 Nevertheless, the figure of República did find its way
16
José Murilo de Carvalho, A formação das almas: O imaginário da República do Brasil
(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990), pp. 75 107.
The Face of the Land 215
into the public discourse, not only through official representations (e.g.,
postage stamps) but also in illustrated magazines and cartoons, where
it took its place alongside other embodiments of nation and people,
such as Zé Povo, Jeca Tatu and Cardoso. The multiplicity of figures
216 Modernity in Black and White
17
See Mônica Pimenta Velloso, “Os intelectuais e a política cultural do Estado Novo”,
Revista de Sociologia e Política, 9 (1997), 57 74; and Lucia Lippi Oliveira, “O intelectual
do DIP: Lourival Fontes e o Estado Novo”, In: Helena Bomeny, ed., Constelação
Capanema: Intelectuais e política (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 2001), pp. 37 58. See also
Alejandro Groppo, The Two Princes: Juan D. Perón and Getulio Vargas: a Comparative
Study of Latin American Populism (Villa María: Eduvim, 2009), ch. 5.
18
“Lampeão Antropófago”, Revista de Antropofagia, II, 8, In: Diário de S. Paulo, 8 May
1929, 12.
The Face of the Land 217
own image. By the late 1920s, Lampião was already a household name,
more famous – or, at least, infamous – even than the sambista Sinhô,
though he was not yet as media-savvy as he would grow over the
following decade. Upon his death in 1938, Lampião was arguably the
biggest celebrity in Brazil, vying with Vargas as the most recognizable face
of the nation.
Lampião first rose to prominence in 1926 in connection with the
federal government’s efforts to contain the rebel military movement
known as Coluna Prestes, led by Luiz Carlos Prestes, the outlaw’s
anthithesis as a symbol of political resistance. Already feared as a bandit
leader in the northeast of Brazil, Lampião entered a new phase in which
he expanded his group – which grew into a small army, at some points –
and restructured its organization, including the radical step of admitting
women. His legend grew exponentially over the following years, and he
became known as ‘king of the cangaço’, leading a lifestyle of raucous
luxury and sought after by journalists curious to enquire about which
type of perfume he wore and which brand of whisky he drank.19 In 1930,
the state government of Bahia instituted a substantial reward for his
capture, soon doubled by funds from a commercial sponsor in Rio de
Janeiro. Later that same year, he was the subject of an article in the New
York Times. In 1931, he became the object of a popular song titled “I’m
going to catch Lampião” and, in 1933, of a hit theatrical revue in the
nation’s capital. By 1934, two biographies of the bandit leader had been
published, a feature-length film drama made about his escapades, and his
image appeared increasingly in advertisements.20
Managing celebrity was a challenge, and it was not one Lampião took
lightly. After all, the bandit leader’s image was preyed upon by strangers
exploiting it for their own ends, commercial, literary or otherwise. During
the early 1930s, his band undertook an overhaul of its appearance,
introducing a new wardrobe and colourful accessories, designed by one
of their members and openly geared to ostentation and aestheticizing self-
aggrandizement. They did their own sewing and embroidering, including
the men, which intensified prurient interest in their lifestyle. The
19
The term cangaço refers to the system of exercising authority through the employment of
armed militias, hired by local landowners to control the disperse population in the rural
interior of northeastern Brazil. A cangaceiro is a member of one of these groups.
20
Élise Grunspan Jasmin, Lampião, senhor do sertão: Vidas e mortes de um cangaceiro
(São Paulo: Edusp, 2006), pp. 27 30; and Frederico Pernambucano de Mello, Estrelas de
couro: A estética do cangaço (São Paulo: Escrituras, 2012), pp. 49 50, 82 85, 188 191,
199, 208.
218 Modernity in Black and White
21
Élise Jasmin, “A guerra das imagens: Quando o cangaço descobre a fotografia”, In: Elise
Jasmin, ed., Cangaceiros (São Paulo: Terceiro Nome, 2006), pp. 23 29; Frederico Per
nambucano de Mello, Benjamin Abrahão: Entre anjos e cangaceiros (São Paulo: Escri
turas, 2012), pp. 136 139, 171 173; and Pernambucano de Mello, Estrelas de couro,
pp. 189 191.
22
Authorship of the image is uncertain but has been attributed to João Damasceno Lisboa,
a local painter, sculptor and photographer. The photograph was taken on the day of
Lampião’s death, with the heads displayed on the steps of the town hall of Piranhas,
Alagoas; Pernambucano de Mello, Estrelas de couro, pp. 205 207.
23
Grunspan Jasmin, Lampião, senhor do sertão, pp. 286 290.
24
Jasmin, “A guerra das imagens”, pp. 15 32. See also Pernambucano de Mello, Benjamin
Abrahão, pp. 136 173; and Marcos Edilson de Araújo Clemente, “Cangaço e canga
ceiros: Histórias e imagens fotográficas do tempo de Lampião”, Fênix Revista de
História e Estudos Culturais, 4 (2007), 1 18.
The Face of the Land 219
25
Pernambucano de Mello, Estrelas de couro, 190 192. See also, Jasmin, “A guerra das
imagens”, 29 31.
The Face of the Land 221
26
Renato Ortiz, A moderna tradição brasileira: Cultura brasileira e indústria cultural (São
Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988), pp. 38 49. In all fairness, most of the research on printed media
and photojournalism that contradicts Ortiz’s thesis had not yet been produced at the time
of his writing. For a recent perspective on his pioneering contributions, see Paul Schle
singer, “Cultural industries, nation and state in the work of Renato Ortiz: a view from the
anglosphere”, Ciências Sociais Unisinos, 54 (2018), 172 177.
27
See Nadja Peregrino, O Cruzeiro: A revolução da fotorreportagem (Rio de Janeiro:
Dazibao, 1991); and Daniela Queiroz Campos, “Um fazer imagem: A produção gráfica
da revista O Cruzeiro”, Diálogos, 20 (2016), 102 116. See also Joaquim Marçal Ferreira
de Andrade, História da fotorreportagem no Brasil: A fotografia na imprensa do Rio de
Janeiro de 1839 a 1900 (Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier, 2004).
28
See Angela Alonso & Heloisa Espada, eds., Conflitos: Fotografia e violência política no
Brasil, 1889 1964 (São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles, 2017), pp. 214 262.
222 Modernity in Black and White
29
On the building and its place in architectural history, see Mauricio Lissovsky & Paulo
Sérgio Moraes de Sá, Colunas da educação: A construção do Ministério da Educação e
Saúde, 1935 1945 (Rio de Janeiro: Iphan/MinC & CPDOC/FGV, 1996); Lauro Caval
canti, Moderno e brasileiro: A história de uma nova linguagem na arquitetura
(1930 1960) (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2010); Carlos Eduardo Dias Comas, “Protó
tipo e monumento, um ministério, o Ministério”, In: Abilio Guerra, ed., Textos funda
mentais sobre a história da arquitetura moderna brasileira. Parte 1 (São Paulo: Romano
Guerra, 2010), pp. 79 108; and Roberto Segre, Ministério da Educação e Saúde Ícone
urbano da modernidade brasileira (São Paulo: Romano Guerra, 2013). In English, see
Lauro Cavalcanti, When Brazil Was Modern: Guide to Architecture, 1928 1960 (Prince
ton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003).
30
Paulo Knauss, “O homem brasileiro possível: Monumento da juventude brasileira”, In:
Paulo Knauss, ed., Cidade vaidosa: Imagens urbanas do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro:
Sette Letras, 1999), pp. 29 30. See also Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness, ch.1; and Darien
J. Davis, Avoiding the Dark: Race and the Forging of National Culture in Modern Brazil
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 101 103.
The Face of the Land 223
31
Rafael Alves Pinto Júnior, “Memórias de um monumento impossível”, 19&20, 9 (2014),
n.p.; José Barki, José Kós & Naylor Vilas Boas, “O Ministério da Educação e Saúde
(1936 1945): Museu ‘vivo’ da arte moderna brasileira”, Arquitetxos, 6 (2006), n.p.;
Cláudia Piantá Costa Cabral, “Arquitetura moderna e escultura figurativa:
A representação naturalista no espaço moderno”, Arquitextos, 10 (2010), n.p.; and Anna
teresa Fabris, Fragmentos urbanos: Representações culturais (São Paulo: Studio Nobel,
2000), pp. 171 172.
32
M. Paulo Filho, “Homem brasileiro”, Correio da Manhã, 23 September 1938, 4. Cf.
Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness, pp. 23 24.
224 Modernity in Black and White
Paulo Filho concludes that neither sculptor nor minister was correct in his
appraisal of the complex question of racial type. Citing the social scientific
authority of Sylvio Romero, whom he references in a long excursus, the
editor argues that a true ‘Brazilian man’ did not yet exist and would only
come into being in another two or three centuries through further mixture
of the multiple ethnic groups that made up the population.
Celso Antônio’s account, as reported by the Correio da Manhã, differs
in one crucial respect from surviving correspondence between Capanema
and his scientific advisers. According to the sculptor, the minister sug-
gested an Aryan type and expressed contempt for the mestizo. In his
letters, Capanema stated that his intention was to establish, “I wouldn’t
say the Brazilian type (which does not yet exist), but the ideal figure we
could permit ourselves to imagine as representative of the future Brazilian
man.” He emphasized that he was interested not in “the vulgar or inferior
man, but [. . .] the finest exemplar of the race”.33 In their replies, the
scientific advisers fretted about the lack of uniformity and homogeneity
of the Brazilian population, but both Roquette Pinto and Rocha Vaz came
out in favour of the moreno, an ambiguous term in the context of
purportedly scientific racial distinctions.34 In another letter, to writer
Mário de Andrade, the minister echoed that verdict, describing the figure
he wanted as a “moreno type, of good quality, with the countenance
displaying intelligence, high-mindedness, courage, and the capacity to
create and achieve”.35 Those familiar with the discourses of physical
anthropology, at the time, will recognize in these terms coded references
to what were perceived as essentialist racial characteristics.
It is possible that Celso Antônio may have distorted Capanema’s
position intentionally, out of spite at having his sculpture rejected and
not being paid for his work, or even that he simply misunderstood it.
Equally plausibly, the minister’s coded language may have served to
hedge his real meaning. Capanema’s insistence on an ideal racial type
taking shape in an indefinite future may well have been a way of dissem-
bling his preference for a European-looking figure. According to the
33
Knauss, “O homem brasileiro possível”, pp. 31 33.
34
The term moreno bears an extremely wide range of meanings, including tanned, brown,
olive skinned, coppertone, swarthy and brunette. In this context of ethnological classifi
cation, it can be taken as indicating generally southern European features with traces of
Amerindian descent. Celso Antônio’s appraisal that the sculpture should not represent
‘the immigrant’ refers to recent arrivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centur
ies, as opposed to the preexisting ‘three races’: Amerindian, Portuguese and African.
35
Knauss, “O homem brasileiro possível”, p. 36.
The Face of the Land 225
36
See Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness, pp. 24 27; and Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in
Science: Great Britain 1800 1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982), ch. 5.
37
Another article on the same page makes this argument unequivocally; Americo Silvado,
“As raças humanas e o Brasil”, Correio da Manhã, 23 September 1938, 4.
38
The only known photograph of Celso Antônio’s proposal does not show the facial
features of the statue clearly and thus sheds little light on the discussion; see Alves Pinto
Júnior, “Memórias de um monumento impossível”, n.p.
226 Modernity in Black and White
39
Though commissioned in 1936, the murals were actually painted between 1939 and
1943; see Annateresa Fabris, Portinari, pintor social (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1990).
40
Fabris, Portinari, pp. 29 36; and Annateresa Fabris, Cândido Portinari (São Paulo:
Edusp, 1996), pp. 51 87. See also Carlos Zilio, A querela do Brasil: A questão da
identidade da arte brasileira: A obra de Tarsila, Di Cavalcanti e Portinari, 1922 1945
(Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará, 1997 [1982]), pp. 90 118.
The Face of the Land 227
his favela-themed painting Morro was purchased for the collection of the
Museum of Modern Art, in New York.41
Portinari’s rise to prominence over the 1930s cannot be dissociated
from contemporary debates around the issue of ‘social art’. Upon
returning to Brazil in 1931, after two years studying in Europe, he came
to be perceived as a specialist in portraiture, a genre in which he achieved
considerable success.42 The critical acclaim he craved eluded him, how-
ever, until he began to work on themes of ethnicity and labour. Upon the
occasion of his exhibition in São Paulo in December 1934, two such
works – Mestizo and Black man with a hoe – were both lauded for their
perceived depiction of deeper currents in Brazilian society. Mário de
Andrade acclaimed Mestizo as a masterpiece, singling out the statuesque
quality of the figure, and linked it to the German neue Sachlichkeit for not
shying away from depicting even the subject’s dirty fingernails. Oswald de
Andrade agreed about the merit of the pictures, though he preferred to
associate their qualities with Mexican muralism. Then a member of the
PCB, Oswald enthused about the mural potential of both paintings and
praised Portinari for aligning himself with the revolutionary artists of the
time. As black working men, he affirmed, the depicted subjects were
“splendid raw material of the class struggle”. The young Trotskyite critic
Mário Pedrosa, an early enthusiast of mural painting, also praised the
“monumental plasticity of the figure” in Black man with a hoe.43
Despite such interpretations, Portinari’s works of the period 1933 to
1935 are far from unambiguous in terms of political affiliation or even in
their adherence to prevailing conceptions about modern art. Both Mestizo
and Black man with a hoe display a tension between an almost niggling
attention to detail in the figures and the self-consciously naïve, dreamlike
41
See Aleca Le Blanc, “Building the tropical world of tomorrow: the construction of
brasilidade at the 1939 New York World’s Fair”, Hemisphere: Visual Culture of the
Americas, 2 (2009), 27 45; and Marcelo Mari, “Controvérsias sobre a arte brasileira na
Feira Mundial de Nova York, 1939”, Anais do 26º Encontro da Anpap (2017),
3961 3871. See also Daryle Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil: the First Vargas Regime,
1930 1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 215 220.
42
See Sérgio Miceli, Imagens negociadas: Retratos da elite brasileira (1920 1940) (São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996), pp. 57 110. Cf. Florence Horn, “Portinari of
Brazil”, In: Portinari of Brazil (Detroit: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1940), p. 7. For
Portinari’s place in the discourses surrounding social art, see Raúl Antelo, ed., Parque de
diversões Aníbal Machado (Belo Horizonte: UFMG & Florianópolis: UFSC, 1994),
pp. 150 154.
43
Quoted in Fabris, Portinari, pintor social, pp. 8 9, 85 86; and Fabris, Cândido Portinari,
pp. 34 36.
228 Modernity in Black and White
44
Ibid., pp. 34, 37.
45
Ibid., pp. 44 48, 81 82; and “Um pintor que volta da Europa”, Correio da Manhã,
31 January 1931, 3.
46
“Nomeações e designações para a Universidade do Districto Federal”, Correio da
Manhã, 18 June 1938, 2. See also Rafael Cardoso, “Modernismo e contexto político:
A recepção da arte moderna no Correio da Manhã (1924 1937)”, Revista de História
(USP), 172 (2015), 358 362.
47
Fabris, Portinari, pintor social, pp. 26 36.
The Face of the Land 229
he flipped back to the left, joined the PCB and even ran for congress on
the party ticket.
The premise that Portinari’s depictions of black and indigenous figures
approximated him to the Mexican muralists gained wider currency
through an essay historian Robert C. Smith wrote for the catalogue of a
solo exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1940. The first para-
graphs of the text establish a mythical teleology that has proven as
enduring as it is false:
The debt that modern Brazilian culture owes to the folklore, the dances, the music,
the cult art of the negro was acknowledged by the intellectuals of São Paulo in that
Week of Modern Art of 1922 which was the first public recognition of indigenous
and regional art in Brazil. Since then a school of startling vigor inspired to a large
extent by the negro has grown up. Forswearing the artificial picturesqueness of
their francophile predecessors the modern Brazilians have tried to understand the
negro and his relation to themselves, and upon the resulting conceptions they have
based their art.48
48
Robert C. Smith, “The art of Candido Portinari”, In: Portinari of Brazil, 10 11. Cf.
Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil, pp. 220 222. Smith’s criticism was strategic in pos
itioning Brazilian modern art in the USA; see Renata Gomes Cardoso, “As exposições de
arte latino americana no Riverside Museum de Nova York em 1939 e 1940: Trâmites da
organização da seção brasileira”, Modos: Revista de História da Arte, 3 (2019), 9 24.
49
Smith, “The art of Candido Portinari”, p. 11. On the impact on modernism of Smith’s
writings on Brazilian colonial heritage, see Sabrina Fernandes Melo, Robert Chester
Smith e o colonial na modernidade brasileira: Entre história da arte e patrimônio
(unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa
de Pós graduação em História, 2018), see ch. 4.
50
Smith, “The art of Cândido Portinari”, p. 11.
230 Modernity in Black and White
51
See Daryle Williams, “Civicscape and memoryscape: the first Vargas regime and Rio de
Janeiro”, In: Jens R. Hentschke, ed., Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 63 66; and Ruben George Oliven, “Cultura brasileira:
Retratos de uma identidade”, In: Elisa Reis & Regina Zilberman, eds., Retratos do Brasil
(Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS, 2004), pp. 120 121. On the repression of Afro Brazilian
religions, see Nathália Fernandes de Oliveira, A repressão policial às religiões de matriz
afro brasileira no Estado Novo (1937 1945) (unpublished master’s thesis, Universidade
Federal Fluminense, Programa de Pós graduação em História Social, 2014).
52
See Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness, 27; Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha, “Sua alma em sua
palma: Identificando a ‘raça’ e inventando a nação”, In: Dulce Pandolfi, ed., Repensando
o Estado Novo (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1999), pp. 257 288; Giralda
Seyferth, “Os imigrantes e a campanha de nacionalização do Estado Novo”, In: Pandolfi,
Repensando o Estado Novo, pp. 199 228; and Davis, Avoiding the Dark, ch. 3.
53
Pernambucano de Mello, Benjamin Abrahão, pp. 175 176.
The Face of the Land 231
54
An English edition was later published: Fernando de Azevedo, Brazilian Culture: an
Introduction to the Study of Culture in Brazil (New York: Macmillan, 1950). On the
inception and history of IBGE, see Eli Alves Penha, A criação do IBGE no contexto da
centralização política do Estado Novo (Rio de Janeiro: IBGE/Centro de Documentação e
Disseminação de Informações, 1993), esp. pp. 65 84. See also Dávila, Diploma of
Whiteness, pp. 58 60.
55
See Libânea Nacif Xavier, “Retrato de corpo inteiro do Brasil: A cultura brasileira por
Fernando de Azevedo”, Revista da Faculdade de Educação, 24 (1998), 70 86. The
frontispiece of the book is a portrait of Vargas.
232 Modernity in Black and White
56
The other living artists whose works appear in the book are Celso Antônio, José Wasth
Rodrigues and Percy Lau, who is not credited.
57
Annateresa Fabris, ed., Portinari, amico mio: Cartas de Mário de Andrade e Candido
Portinari (Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1995), pp. 109, 111. Two of the works are
credited in the book as belonging to Mário’s collection and a third to that of Carlos
Drummond de Andrade.
58
See Alexandre de Paiva Camargo, “A Revista Brasileira de Geografia e a organização do
campo geográfico no Brasil (1939 1980)”, Revista Brasileira de História da Ciência, 2
(2009), 23 39; Ana Maria Daou, “Tipos e Aspectos do Brasil: Imagens e imagem do
Brasil por meio da iconografia de Percy Lau”, In: Zeny Rosendahl & Roberto Corrêa,
eds., Paisagem, imaginário e espaço (Rio de Janeiro: Ed.Uerj, 2001); and Licia Ruben
stein, O censo vai contar para você: Design gráfico e propaganda no Estado Novo
(unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de Pós graduação em Design, Pontifícia Univer
sidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, 2007). A few of Lau’s illustrations reappear in
Azevedo’s book.
The Face of the Land 233
59
Christovam Leite de Castro, “Nota explicativa”, Tipos e aspectos do Brasil (Rio de
Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística/Conselho Nacional de Geografia,
1949), pp .v vi.
60
See Mara Loveman, Jeronimo O. Muniz & Stanley R. Bailey, “Brazil in black and white?
Race categories, the census, and the study of inequality”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35
(2012), 1466 1483; and Peter Fry, “The politics of ‘racial’ classification in Brazil”,
234 Modernity in Black and White
Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 95 (2009), 261 282. On the place of the mestizo
in Brazilian society, see Yuko Miki, Frontiers of Citizenship: a Black and Indigenous
History of Postcolonial Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), ch. 3.
61
Paulina L. Alberto & Jesse Hoffnung Garskof, “‘Racial democracy’ and racial inclu
sion”, In: Alejandro de la Fuente & George Reid Andrews, eds., Afro Latin American
Studies: an Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 287 288;
and Maria José Campos, Arthur Ramos: Luz e sombra na antropologia brasileira: Uma
versão da democracia racial no Brasil nas décadas de 1930 e 1940 (Rio de Janeiro:
Edições da Biblioteca Nacional, 2004), pp. 57 72. See also Antonio Sérgio Alfredo
Guimarães, “Africanism and racial democracy: the correspondence between Herskovits
and Arthur Ramos (1935 1949)”, EIAL Estudios Interdisciplinares de América Latina
y el Caribe, 19 (2008), pp. 53 79; Kevin A. Yelvington, “The invention of Africa in Latin
America and the Caribbean: political discourse and anthropological praxis, 1920 1940”,
In: Kevin A. Yelvington, ed., Afro Atlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora
(Santa Fé: School of American Research Press & Oxford: James Currey, 2006), pp. 51,
65 67; and George Reid Andrews, “Brazilian racial democracy, 1900 1990: an Ameri
can counterpoint”, Journal of Contemporary History, 31 (1996), 483 507.
62
Arthur Ramos, O folk lore negro do Brasil: Demopsychologia e psychanalyse (Rio de
Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1935), p. 7. On Ramos’s relationship to the escolanovista
The Face of the Land 235
educational project, see Fabíola Sircilli, “Arthur Ramos e Anísio Teixeira na década de
1930”, Paidéia (Ribeirão Preto), 15 (2005), 185 193; and Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness,
pp. 34 40.
63
Ramos was in constant contact with Christovam Leite de Castro, secretary general of the
Conselho Nacional de Geografia, which published Lau’s illustrations; see Campos,
Arthur Ramos, pp. 309 310, 313 n6.
64
Campos, Arthur Ramos, p. 274 and ch. 3.
65
Ramos, Introdução à antropologia brasileira. 2º volume, pp. 361 462.
66
The illustrations are reproduced and discussed in Campos, Arthur Ramos, pp. 263 286.
236 Modernity in Black and White
. Maria Margarida [Soutello], Três Meninas da Mesma Rua, circa 1942
Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (BN Digital/Coleção Arthur Ramos)
‘Chinese boy of Rio’ – but the illustrations extend their remit to the subject
of racial harmony, represented through photographs depicting black and
white children together, as well as the two works by Maria Margarida.
These paintings, respectively titled Três Meninas da Mesma Rua (Three
girls from the same street) (Fig. 55) and First communion, are reproduced
in the book alongside the disingenuous caption “Race relations in Brazil”.
The presence of Maria Margarida’s paintings is revealing of the ulter-
ior ambitions of Ramos’s project. They are the only images in the book to
stray from the presumed indexical quality of photographs – or, at least, of
carefully observed portraiture in a naturalist vein – into the arena of
openly idealized representation. With their symmetrical compositions,
high contrast between sketchiness and finish, and the stiff hieratic poses
of the figures, they border on religious icons. Their inclusion betrays the
difficulty of achieving a valid visualization of a concept as reified as racial
mixture. They deflate Ramos’s pretence to move the study of mestiçagem
onto solid scientific ground and, instead, approximate his argument to the
shifting sands of Azevedo’s culturalism. Their insertion into the discursive
fabric of Ramos’s book is important for understanding how images
contribute to the persuasiveness of his arguments.67 The book’s recourse
67
Cf. Campos, Arthur Ramos, p. 265.
The Face of the Land 237
68
See, among others, “Dimitri Ismailovitch e sua arte”, Vida Doméstica, February 1932,
n.p.; “Dimitri Ismailovitch”, Vida Doméstica, February 1934, n.p.; “Da Russia czarista
ao Solar de S. Clemente”, Revista da Semana, 27 October 1945, 9 12; “A arte de Dimitri
Ismailovitch”, Vida Doméstica, August 1956, n.p.; and Carlos Drummond de Andrade,
“O pintor, a cidade, o santo”, Correio da Manhã, 26 April 1964, 6.
238 Modernity in Black and White
the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts, the artist lived in Turkey for a
period of about eight years before moving to Brazil in late 1927.69 He
quickly achieved recognition as a society portraitist and, by the early
1930s, was much in demand. His painted portrait of Eugênia Alvaro
Moreyra, exhibited at the ‘revolutionary’ Salon of 1931, captures fash-
ionable modernity with such flair that it has since become an iconic image
of both the woman and the event. From 1932 onwards, the women’s
magazine Vida Doméstica took uncommon interest in his career, writing
articles about him, publishing reproductions of his works, dedicating
extensive photographic coverage to his many exhibitions and appear-
ances at society functions. In one article, the magazine classed him along-
side Picasso and Foujita.70 Ismailovitch soon acquired a group of artistic
followers, the most faithful of whom was Maria Margarida, a Portuguese
painter routinely presented as his disciple. He began to portray her in
works from the early 1930s, and the pair exhibited together regularly
between at least 1943 and 1951.71
Over his long lifetime (he died in 1976), Ismailovitch painted likenesses
of numerous influential figures – politicians, socialites, artists and intel-
lectuals. Many of these ended up gracing the pages and even covers of
Vida Doméstica, to which he was a contributor for over a decade. In
August 1937, at the Salão dos Artistas Brasileiros, one of his portraits was
purchased by none other than Getúlio Vargas. In October of that year, a
little over a month before the Estado Novo was decreed, he became a
naturalized Brazilian citizen. His 1937 portrait drawing of Mário de
Andrade can be found in the writer’s art collection, alongside a painting
of a church. His 1939 group portrait centred around the legendary
69
Very little has been published on the life of Dimitri Ismailovitch, and even his birth date is
uncertain (1890 or 1892). The artist seems to have spun a personal mythology that
requires archival verification. The Museu Villa Lobos, in Rio de Janeiro, dedicated an
exhibition to him in 2013/2014, curated by Eduardo Mendes Cavalcanti: A ceia brasileira
de Ismailovitch: Homenagem ao Aleijadinho (Rio de Janeiro: Museu Villa Lobos, 2014).
On his passage through Turkey, see Ayşenur Güler, “Tale of an émigré artist in Istanbul:
the impact of Alexis Gritchenko on the 1914 Generation of Turkish artists”, In: Chris
toph Flamm, Roland Marti & Ada Raev, eds., Transcending the Borders of Countries,
Languages and Disciplines in Russian Émigré Culture (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2018), p. 124.
70
“Quartos de creança”, Vida Doméstica, March 1933, n.p. See also “O sonho imperial da
gloriosa cidade de São Sebastião (Sobre motivos pictóricos do admiravel artista Dimitri
Ismailovitch)”, Vida Doméstica, August 1933, n.p.; and “Retratos de D. Ismailovitch”,
Vida Doméstica, October 1935, n.p.
71
Oscar D’Alva, “Notas de arte. Grupo Ismailovitch”, Fon Fon, 12 December 1935,
50 51.
The Face of the Land 239
72
See Cavalcanti, A ceia brasileira de Ismailovitch.
240 Modernity in Black and White
73
The three terms are used almost interchangeably today. Within studies of carnival
folklore and ethnography, however, there are subtle differences between them. These
were the subject of much dispute among the authors who codified and classified the
history of carnival between the 1950s and 1960s, such as Eneida de Moraes, Jota Efegê
and Edigar de Alencar.
74
The bibliography on Villa Lobos and the Estado Novo is extensive. For recent appraisals,
among many others, see Mauricio Barreto Alvarez Parada, “O maestro da ordem: Villa
Lobos e a cultura cívica nos anos 1930/1940”, Artcultura, 10 (2008), 173 189; and Rita
de Cássia Fucci Amato, “Villa Lobos, nacionalismo e canto orfeônico: Projetos musicais e
educativos no governo Vargas”, Revista HISTEDBR Online, 27 (2007), 210 220. In
English, see Carmen Nava, “Lessons in patriotism and good citizenship: Nationalism and
national identity in public schools during the Vargas administration, 1937 1945”, Luso
Brazilian Review, 35 (1998), 39 63.
75
Lira Neto, Uma história do samba: Volume I (as origens) (São Paulo: Companhia das
Letras, 2017), pp. 11 18; and Ermelinda A. Paz, Sôdade do cordão (Rio de Janeiro: ELF/
Fundação Universitária José Bonifácio, 2000), pp. 25 55.
The Face of the Land 241
76
“‘Sodade do cordão’ embaixada que veiu lembrar o Momo dos bons tempos”, Correio
da Manhã, 6 February 1940, 1.
77
Paz, Sôdade do cordão, pp. 34 43. Cf. “Ao som dos clarins, numa expansão que faz
esquecer muita coisa em quatro dias, a população carioca affluiu ao centro, para demon
strar que o Carnaval do Rio não morreu”, Correio da Manhã, 4 February 1940, 1.
242 Modernity in Black and White
78
These were sold to the Biblioteca Nacional by Ramos’s widow in 1956 and are held in the
Divisão de Iconografia under the call number ARC.30 E:j:III Ismailovtich, Dimitri. They
can all be viewed online at the website BN Digital: http://acervo.bndigital.bn.br. The
collection contains over one hundred drawings by Ismailovitch, mostly signed and dated
and often labelled “Col. Arthur Ramos” or dedicated to him. Many bear titles, sometimes
visible on the front but mostly annotated on the backs, which cannot be viewed online.
These are duly referenced in the website’s listings.
The Face of the Land 243
right-hand corner, the face of the man in the green jacket and yellow vest,
with a bow tie, derives from a portrait in the BN collection (no. 299087)
titled “Yoruba type”. The contour of a bow tie is just visible in the
drawing, suggesting that the costumes in the painting are not entirely
imagined. Behind him and Villa-Lobos, wearing a red collarless pullover,
is a face that derives from a drawing in the BN collection (no. 299082)
titled “King of the devils (macumba of Rio)”. The title possibly refers to a
role in the cordão presentation. The painted figure differs slightly from the
sketch, however, suggesting that the artist’s intention was less of portray-
ing the person who played the part and more of appropriating his features
to depict a type.
Moving further back, the upper left-hand of the middle panel is occu-
pied by two faces in extreme proximity, almost as if they were two facets
of one Janus-type head. The lighter-skinned, older man on the right is a
portrait of Zé Espinguela, charged by Villa-Lobos with leading the cor-
dão. His position behind and above Villa-Lobos, scowling down at the
maestro, is suggestive of his importance. His is the face highest up in the
middle panel, and he occupies a strategic place in the entire composition –
visually, the power behind the throne. Yet, the juxtaposition of his head
and expression to the giant Pulcinella mask immediately to the right is
troubling. The sinister-looking, blue-eyed mask seems almost to bite into
Villa-Lobos’s scalp, and this is perhaps an inside joke or an allusion to
some aspect of their relationship that has been lost to posterity. A portrait
(no. 299124) titled “Pai Alujá” does exist in the BN collection, depicting
very much the same features as the Zé Espinguela figure in the painting.
This is a misspelling (or alternate version) of alufá and confirms the
identity of the sitter. Curiously, Ismailovitch did not feel moved to record
the subject’s name on the drawing, as he did with a few of the portrait
sketches, preferring instead to consign him to his religious function. The
face on Zé Espinguela’s left, just behind his, does not correspond to any
surviving sketch. It is one of the two figures that remains unidentified.
The right-hand panel, representing the ‘Indians and caboclos’ group,
contains four portraits from the BN collection. The face of the woman in
the lower left-hand corner derives from a drawing (no. 299127) titled
“Arená” and subsequently reproduced in the first volume of Ramos’s
book under the alternate title “Curuaia Indian (Tupi of the River Tapa-
jós)”. In the painting, she is clearly a female figure, with earrings and long
flowing hair; but, in the book, the same face is listed as an índio, mascu-
line, rather than the equally current índia. Standing next to her in the
foreground, with an elaborate necklace bearing a blue-and-red
246 Modernity in Black and White
Villa-Lobos), arrayed among the gods and saints. Ismailovitch has seen
the face of Brazil, and its great lizard eye stares back at him like an image
in a mirror.
As a naturalized citizen of Brazil and figurative citizen of the world,
Ismailovitch embodied the conundrum of defining brasilidade. The spuri-
ous concepts of ‘raciality’ and racial purity are particularly risible in a
society composed largely from the progeny of immigrants and forced
migrants and notorious for its pliancy in fusing them into every possible
permutation of commixture and hybridization. The ‘real’ face of Brazil is
every face and no face at all. As a last resort for those who insist on a pure
source for the nation, there is always the appeal to the population’s
Amerindian roots – a constant from Romanticism to Antropofagia to
the Estado Novo – but the continent’s first peoples are rarely called upon
to endorse their involuntary induction into a national project based on the
spoliation and murder of their ancestors. Discounting this one group (in
actuality, many groups) that could lay claim to authenticity, all else is
triumphalist bluster. Ismailovitch, plunging into the swirling anthropo-
logical currents paddled by Arthur Ramos and allowing himself to be
swept up by the whirlwind of artistic nationalism agitated by Villa-Lobos,
manages to come out the other side. His triptych transforms types,
characters and individuals into the commonality of so many masks in a
carnival parade.
Epilogue
Images of a Culture at War with Itself
Each and every day, poetry crops up where you least expect it: in the crime
pages of the newspapers, on the signboard of a factory, in the name of a
hotel in Rua Marechal Floriano, in advertisements for Casa Mathias . . .
Manuel Bandeira, undated fragment, 1930s1
1
Manuel Bandeira, Crônicas da província do Brasil (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006 [1937]),
p. 208.
248
Epilogue 249
2
“Uma data auspiciosa para o commercio carioca”, Correio da Manhã, 8 November
1931, 9.
3
A variety of fonts was employed, creating a conspicuous visual arragement on the page, in
the typical style of broadsheet advertising since the nineteenth century.
4
The term negrada can be used colloquially to refer to a group of people, almost independ
ently of its racial composition. Its roots are, nonetheless, explicitly racial.
250 Modernity in Black and White
5
The term crioulo possesses varied meanings in different regional contexts. In Rio de
Janeiro, it is a mostly pejorative designation for a black person.
6
On Seth (Álvaro Marins), see Herman Lima, História da caricatura no Brasil (Rio de
Janeiro: José Olympio, 1963), pp. IV, 1330 1343.
7
Correio da Manhã, 16 February 1932, 7.
8
On the manhunt for Lampião, see Chapter 5.
Epilogue 251
odour and often used to disparage black people): “your smell does not
deny [that] you are of the capybara race”. The most shocking aspect of
this contemptible dialogue is that it was seen as fit for publication in a
respectable newspaper like Correio da Manhã and, indeed, must have
been perceived as funny or entertaining. No matter how crazy the real-life
Mathias da Silva purported to be, he would certainly not want to alienate
potential customers.
The unusual choice of the name Virgulina for Mathias’s bride-to-be
adds a further layer of meaning to the text. The outlaw Lampião’s given
name was Virgulino, and that association would have been evident to the
reading public even without the explicit reference to him. In his rejection
of the brown-skinned Virgulina, Mathias embodies the white self-image
of the middle-class readers of Correio da Manhã. Independently of their
own skin colour, they would be disposed to view both Virgulina and
Virgulino with a mixture of fascination and contempt, as residues of an
ancient blight on the social body. The contrast between the prosperous,
fast-talking Mathias and the depleted scrawny body of Virgulina is
instructive. Further into the dialogue, he refers to her as skeletal, and
she is distressed that he should think of her as bony. The discursive trope
of the malnourished and physically underdeveloped sertanejo seeps
through the cracks of their relationship, echoed visually in the stained
and crumbling plaster of the wall behind his raised right hand.
In light of all that has been discussed in the preceding chapters, the
fictional coupling of Mathias and Virgulina is a powerful symbol of
Brazilian society’s relationship to its non-European components.
Mathias’s treatment of her is scornful and degrading, yet must have been
motivated by desire on the eve of the depicted scene. He wants her, and
ends up marrying her, but is violent and abusive nonetheless. She is
longsuffering and puts up with his manhandling, presumably out of a
lack of self-esteem. He is the owner of shop and story, after all. It is easy
enough to recognize traces of the sertão and favelas in Virgulina’s awk-
ward body and fate. It is not that hard to see through the bluster of
Mathias’s banter and identify the bullying nature of his humour. The tone
has much in common with the entitled brashness of Antropofagia. That
the vehicle for conveying these complex discourses was an organ of the
press, and its language commercial illustration, says much about the
modernity that was taking shape by the 1930s. That their purpose was
to sell articles and supplies for carnival says even more about the con-
flicted nature of a society content to wring pleasure out of its deepest pain.
Index
255
256 Index
mestizo, 207, 224 5, 230, 232 3 N.M. Rothschild & Sons (bank), 30
Mexican muralism, 201, 227, 229 nativism, 190, 195
Meyer, Sylvia, 122 naturalism, 137
Ministry of Education and Health, 182, Navarro da Costa, Mário, 120, 122 3, 125
222, 226, 231 nazism, 225
Mitter, Partha, 4 Needell, Jeffrey D., 72
modern style, 135, 141 négritude, 183, 195
modernism, 1 4, 6, 8 9, 11, 13, 15 19, 24, negrophilia, 183, 187
50, 126 7, 142, 148, 169, 173, 177, Nemesio (Dutra), 124
180, 183, 187, 190, 194, 204, 211, Nery, Ismael, 197
222, 227, 229, 248 Nestor Victor, 9
alternate modernisms, 5 neue Sachlichkeit, 227
and formal experimentation, 19, 116 17 New York Times, 217
and nationalism, 73 New York World’s Fair, 1939, 226
in Rio de Janeiro, 10, 100, 129, 136 48 Niemeyer, Oscar, 222
mass culture and popular culture, 18 24, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 10, 202
128, 203 8, 220 1 Nina Rodrigues, Raymundo, 152, 199, 234
meanings of, 3 6, 171 Nóbrega da Cunha, Carlos Alberto, 199
modern versus academic, 3, 9, 73, 115, Novecento (movement), 228
120
modernity and modernization, 4, 8 11 O Cruzeiro, 218, 241
new medias and technologies, 8, 128 9, O Malho, 37, 56, 60, 88, 126, 136, 158 9,
163 167 9, 200, 213
paulista modernism. See Semana de Arte O Mercurio, 143
Moderna (Modern Art Week, 1922) O Paiz, 114, 139
Spanish American modernismo, 128, 147 O Tico Tico, 158
modernismo. See modernism Oiticica, José, 143
moleque, 52 Oito Batutas, 23, 210
Monteiro Lobato, José Bento de, 75, 212 Oliveira Vianna, Francisco José de, 222
Monteiro Lopes, Manuel da Motta, 162 Ortiz, Renato, 22, 221
Moraes e Barros, Prudente José de, 29 Oswald, Carlos, 120, 122
Moraes, Eneida de, 103, 240
Morales de los Rios, Adolfo, 149 Pagu (Patricia Galvão), 176, 198
moreno, 224 5 Paixão Cearense, Catullo da, 212, 239
Moreyra, Alvaro, 152, 168, 176 8, 181, Palace Hotel, Rio de Janeiro, 11, 75, 181,
190, 194, 198, 204 197
Morris, William, 129, 139 Para Todos, 66, 136, 158, 169, 177 8, 180,
Morro da Providência, 31, 34 5, 42 3 190 1
Morro de Santo Antônio, 31, 41, 47 parnassianism, 152
Mucha, Alphonse, 130 Partido Comunista do Brasil (Brazilian
mulatto, 74, 101, 174, 206, 243, 250 Communist Party), 8, 16, 196 8, 200,
Municipal Theatre, Rio de Janeiro, 227, 229
74, 74 Partido Democrático (Democratic Party),
Municipal Theatre, São Paulo, 6, 204, 211 16, 182
Murger, Henri, 80 Partido Republicano Paulista (São Paulo
Museo de Arte Moderno, Madrid, 135 Republican Party), 16, 178, 181 2, 198
Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo, 24 Paulo Filho, Manoel, 223, 225
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 227 Pederneiras, Mario, 143, 152 3, 161, 168
Musso, Luiz, 157 Pederneiras, Raul, 53, 82, 87 90, 93, 100,
Mussolini, Benito, 228 109, 117, 122, 124 5, 129, 144, 147,
Mutt and Jeff, 21 149, 152, 161, 167 8
Index 261