Forging the Myth of Brazilian Modernism

269 RAFAEL CARDOSO FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM Thus takes shape our avant-garde, amid confusion and struggling against the obstacles it creates for itself. —Nestor Victor1 Like modern movements elsewhere, Brazilian modernism can trace its existence back little more than a century. Yet, in contrast to the shifting historical constructs that obtain in other national contexts, subject to constant revisions, the prevailing account of artistic modernism in Brazil has settled into a stable narrative that borders on the timelessness of myth. Although not a canon in the restricted sense of an index of approved books or works, it does possess certain traits that are suspiciously reminiscent of a religious cult. Modern art in Brazil has its prophets (Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade), its saints (Victor Brecheret, Di Cavalcanti, Lasar Segall, Tarsila do Amaral, Cândido Portinari), at least one purported martyr (Anita Malfatti), a quasi heretic or two (Vicente do Rego Monteiro, for example), and a smattering of apocryphal sects that define deviations from the true path (the Verde-Amarelo and Anta groups, among others). All else is cursed as the anathema of the “academic” or relegated to the purgatory of what came immediately prior to the anno Domini of 1922. The cornerstone of the historiographic edifice is an event titled Semana de Arte Moderna, or Modern Art Week (hereafter the Semana), which took place in São Paulo in February 1922.2 Sponsored by prominent figures of the local elite—under the decisive leadership of coffee magnate and art collector Paulo Prado—and staged in the city’s Theatro Municipal, this cultural festival brought together musical performances, lectures, poetry readings, and an exhibition of about a hundred works of art. Although the event is well documented and has 270 CARDOSO been extensively researched, the details of what transpired are of remarkably little import for upholding the myth.3 Most of the works shown are unknown today, and about half of the twelve exhibiting artists have been largely forgotten or, to put it less generously, conveniently ignored for not fitting into the modernist paradigm as it later took shape. The prime importance of the Semana lies in the narrative. Famously, writer Mário de Andrade was booed and insulted. Not so famously, the only parts of the program that actually attracted a wider audience were the musical performances.4 At least two participants later insisted the whole venture was little more than a prank among a group of youngish intellectuals and their bored society patrons, intended to épater la bourgeoisie in a particularly provincial cultural context.5 Even though the Semana aroused heated debate in the literary and society pages of the São Paulo newspapers, it failed to attract much attention in the national press, which was mostly based in Rio de Janeiro, then the nation’s capital.6 News spread gradually to other regions of the country via a network of personal contacts and correspondence between the major modernist players, weaving the fabric of the myth. Two important developments did ensue, indisputably, from the event itself. One was the consolidation of a core group of artists who came to view themselves as a modern movement, in avant-garde vein, with concomitant disputes over leadership and doctrine.7 The other was a certain succès de scandale, entirely localized at first but gaining notoriety in the continual retelling of the story. Years after the event, the Semana became one of those episodes in which few had taken part but many remembered fondly.8 It was transmuted into the object of continual invention and reinvention—“born to become a myth,” as Francisco Alambert has noted.9 A founding narrative was cobbled out of discrete fragments, covering what came to be known as the heroic phase of the movement, between 1917 and 1931, complete with precursors and offshoots. Ever since the fiftieth anniversary, in 1972, this account has become so enshrined that few pause to question its evident flaws and contradictions. The meanings behind the story, however, have undergone continual transformation as successive and even opposing political forces appropriated the legend’s power for their own ends. Despite a growing consensus among scholars that the Semana was simply one aspect of a complex history of modernism and modern art in Brazil, its mythic importance continues to hold sway.10 The purpose of this essay is to dissect the historical circumstances that allowed loose discourses and vague claims to become entrenched as self-evident truth. The challenge is to understand how and why the myth was forged and what purposes it still serves. FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM Modernism Caught in the Political Crossfire Between the actual event and its twentieth anniversary, the Semana gradually became forgotten. In the decade after 1922, it still “reverberated as a living fact,” as Alambert put it, among other memorable events of that year.11 The centennial of Brazil’s independence from Portugal invited reflections on national identity and the perceived failure of Brazilian society to achieve the lofty promises of the nation’s future. The major centennial exposition held in Rio de Janeiro in 1922–23 (Exposição Internacional do Centenário da Independência) provided a showcase for the country’s achievements as well as the perfect backdrop for debating its shortcomings.12 Three other events of enduring political significance took place in 1922: the founding of the Catholic lay association Centro Dom Vital, in January; the founding of the Partido Comunista do Brasil, in March; and the abortive military uprising in Rio de Janeiro, in July, which became known as the 18 do Forte revolt (in remembrance of eighteen young men gunned down by legalist forces). The resulting tenentista movement provided the political ferment that paved the way for the so-called Revolução de 1930, which elevated Getúlio Vargas to national power. By 1930, the original group of the Semana was largely dispersed. Its two rival leaders, writers Oswald de Andrade and Mário de Andrade—not related, despite the common surname—split definitively in mid-1929. Repeated gibes against Mário in the short-lived modernist journal Revista de Antropofagia (Review of anthropophagy), owned and operated by Oswald, led to a parting of ways. In April 1929, the Revista angrily asked, “After seven years, what has the Semana de Arte Moderna given us?”13 The Wall Street crash of October 1929 and subsequent economic crisis debilitated the personal fortunes of some of the artists, as well as their backers and patrons. That crisis took a heavy toll on Oswald de Andrade and his wife, painter Tarsila do Amaral, whose marriage ended abruptly. To make matters worse, following the coup in October 1930, both found themselves on the losing side of the political divide, due to close personal ties to the deposed president and president-elect. Other members of the group—particularly Mário de Andrade and his circle—were shielded by links to the Partido Democrático, which supported Vargas in São Paulo. Still, the net result of the financial and political crises of 1929–30 was a rupture of the social networks and bonds of patronage in which the São Paulo modernists had thrived.14 Political fortunes, which for decades had kept pace with the rising economic might of São Paulo, now veered toward other regional power centers as well as toward the capital, Rio de Janeiro, leaving the ruling elite of the 271 272 CARDOSO Partido Republicano Paulista increasingly disgruntled. Favoring centralization of power, the new regime began to shift cultural initiatives away from private patronage toward greater direct control by national government. The so-called revolutionary salon of 1931—in which modern works were noisily admitted into and even given pride of place at the annual exhibition of the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes—was hailed as a triumph for modernism. However, the leaders of 1922 played only a secondary role, since the school’s young director, architect Lúcio Costa, attained his position through contacts and interests far removed from those of the São Paulo group.15 Soon after the tenth anniversary of the Semana, political circumstances in São Paulo deteriorated further still. Underlying tensions between the national government and leadership in the region reached a breaking point, and a full-scale civil war ensued. The so-called Revolução Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Revolution) between July and October of 1932 cost thousands of lives and led ultimately to a military defeat of the paulista forces. By the end of the conflict, most São Paulo modernists were worse off than ever. Their patrons and backers were now out of favor and out of power, since Partido Democrático and Partido Republicano Paulista had joined forces in the failed revolt against Vargas. Immediately afterward, in the final months of 1932, two modernist associations were formed—Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna (under the leadership of Lasar Segall) and Clube dos Artistas Modernos (led by Flávio de Carvalho)—regrouping the remnants of the 1922 movement as well as adding newer artists and supporters of modern art. Founded almost simultaneously, these organizations functioned largely as social clubs, the former more elegant and prosperous, the latter rougher and more leftist.16 Di Cavalcanti, Oswald de Andrade, and Tarsila do Amaral, all active in Clube dos Artistas Modernos, had explicit ties to the Partido Comunista do Brasil at this time. Even after the end of the civil war, the political situation remained volatile. Like many parts of Europe, Brazilian society became increasingly polarized between communism and integralismo, an ultraconservative, authoritarian doctrine aligned with integral nationalist currents in France and Portugal and with fascism in Italy. The Ação Integralista Brasileira (Brazilian Integralist Action) was organized into a formal movement in October 1932 under the leadership of Plínio Salgado, a writer formerly linked to the original 1922 São Paulo modernist group and a bona fide veteran of the Semana.17 Salgado’s shift from literary modernism to reactionary politics paralleled that of Catholic intellectual Alceu Amoroso Lima—better known in literary circles by his pseudonym Tristão de Athayde. One of the first critics to embrace modernism, he became director of Centro Dom Vital after 1928 and served there as a powerful spokesperson for church positions on education and culture.18 Torn between these factions and FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM their interests, the Vargas government struggled to maintain political power and placate demands for a return to constitutional order. Between 1932 and 1937, when the regime descended into outright dictatorship, cultural politics played a decisive role in shaping perceptions of official favor and thus became a prime ideological battleground, especially in the realm of education.19 In 1934, Vargas appointed a young politician, Gustavo Capanema, to head the powerful Ministry of Education and Health (Ministério da Educação e Saúde; hereafter referred to as Ministry of Education). For the circle around Mário de Andrade, the appointment meant an opening to official patronage, since Capanema’s chief of staff was poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, longtime friend of the São Paulo modernists and Mario’s personal correspondent since 1924. In that charged political atmosphere, however, Drummond did not have a free hand, particularly during his first years in the capital. A new military uprising in November 1935, headed by communist sympathizers, led to armed revolts in Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Natal. Though the movement was crushed after just four days, it sparked a backlash that was skillfully manipulated into a purge of suspected communists in the public sector. Among the first victims of the ensuing witch hunt: the capital’s secretary of education, Anísio Teixeira; the rector of the newly founded Universidade do Distrito Federal, Afrânio Peixoto; and Celso Kelly, head of the school’s arts institute, where numerous modernist artists were employed as teachers. Between 1935 and 1936, reactionary critics such as Carlos Maul and José Flexa Ribeiro published scathing attacks in the press, decrying the links between modern art and bolshevism.20 Against this backdrop, Drummond ended up accused of being a communist sympathizer. In March 1936, at the height of the hysterical crusade, the minister tried to protect his chief of staff and pacify the bloodlust by inviting conservative stalwart Amoroso Lima to lecture on education and communism, thereby signaling the Ministry of Education’s anticommunist stance. Pressured by his superior to attend that event, Drummond threatened to resign. Any public support for Amoroso Lima would betray his friends in the modernist movement.21 Even for those not overtly engaged in the Partido Comunista do Brasil, the battle lines were clearly drawn. From Social Art to State Patronage The declining fortunes of the São Paulo group were due not only to shifting political winds. In the 1930s, new groups and spaces emerged for modern art. A major exhibition of about sixty works by nearly fifty artists linked to the school of Paris—including Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Maurice 273 274 CARDOSO de Vlaminck—was assembled by the French magazine Montparnasse and taken to Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo between March and June 1930.22 The organizers in Paris were the French critic Géo-Charles, directeur of the periodical, and painter Vicente do Rego Monteiro, originally from Pernambuco—an ally, but not a member, of the 1922 movement.23 The complex reception of this event demonstrates that, already by 1930, no unified leadership could speak for modernism as a whole. More organizations began to vie for a share in the broader movement around modern art. Among these, four private initiatives in Rio de Janeiro deserve mention: First, the Associação de Artistas Brasileiros, founded in 1928 under the leadership of Celso Kelly, sponsored a series of exhibitions of modern artists at the Palace Hotel in the 1930s and 1940s. Second is the short-lived Fundação Graça Aranha, established in 1930 under writer Graça Aranha, who had delivered the keynote address at the Semana and was widely perceived outside São Paulo as the leader of the movement. Third is the Sociedade Pró-Arte, founded in 1931 by art dealer Theodor Heuberger to promote exchanges with German modernist circles and import exhibitions. Last is the Clube de Cultura Moderna, an artists’ association founded in 1934 with a decidedly leftist political slant. Several members and organizers of the Clube had links to the Partido Comunista do Brasil; and, in July 1935, the organization declared official support for the Aliança Nacional Libertadora, a broad antifascist front intended to counter the growing affinity between Vargas and the Ação Integralista Brasileira. In September 1935, the club sponsored an exhibition of social art (Exposição de arte social) in Rio curated by Anibal Machado, Álvaro Moreyra, and Tomás Santa Rosa that included many major names in Brazilian modernism: Di Cavalcanti, Cícero Dias, Oswaldo Goeldi, Alberto da Veiga Guignard, Ismael Nery, Cândido Portinari, and Lasar Segall, among others.24 In the wake of the anticommunist campaign after December 1935 and its targeting of modern art, most such initiatives ended abruptly. Between 1936 and 1945, the major haven for the adherents of modernism became the national Ministry of Education, safeguarded by Capanema, whose political prestige continued to grow. Due to his unique ability to reconcile the aesthetic preferences of the modernizing few with the conservative educational positions of the Centro Dom Vital, Capanema managed to carry out a small number of highprofile projects that employed modern artists, including some with communist sympathies. The most important of these was the new building erected to house the Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro; based on a sketch by Le Corbusier, it was executed between 1937 and 1945 by a team of architects and artists led by Lúcio Costa.25 In the prevailing narrative of Brazilian modernism, construction of the Palácio Capanema (as it is known today) is almost universally cited as the FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM link that bridged the gap between the Semana and its subsequent reinvention after World War II. However, this transition was far from seamless. On the contrary, the fate of the modern movement remained murky over the eight years of the Estado Novo (New State) dictatorship. One illuminating piece of evidence is the lecture “A pintura moderna no Brasil” (Modern painting in Brazil), delivered in June 1936 by critic Luis Martins and published as a booklet in 1937, just prior to the regime’s shift to a harder line. At the time, the twenty-nine-year-old Martins was beginning his long career as an art critic and had recently married Tarsila do Amaral. Significantly, given the frenzied political context, he chose to add a preface to the printed edition of the lecture, appealing directly to Capanema to charge the Ministry of Education with “the organization of a series of albums on modern Brazilian art,” with his own little book as a model.26 Though his proposal achieved no immediate result, it suggests that the minister was perceived as a potential source of patronage for modern art. The content of Martins’s booklet is ambitious, not only covering broad topics such as modern painting in Brazil, cubism, and social art but also examining the works of individual artists such as Picasso, de Chirico, Tarsila, Di Cavalcanti, and Portinari, who is presented as the great hope of the modern movement. With naive enthusiasm, Martins attributes the “modernist revolution in Brazil” solely to French influence, claiming that it owed nothing to the Brazilian past, with its “inferior culture and extremely limited artistic material.”27 Such a reading sits awkwardly with attempts by Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade to ground modernist practice in some sort of nationalism. Considering the author’s position with respect to Oswald—the ex-husband of Martins’s wife, Tarsila—it is no surprise that Martins dismisses Oswald’s journal Revista de Antropofagia outright as a “movement of false literature.”28 What is surprising in light of his later art criticism is how the youthful Martins denounces the idea of socially engaged art. Citing Mexican muralism as positive proof, paradoxically, he argues that politically motivated art “cannot satisfy the critic, because the thematic import of a painting does not solve its vital problem, which is purely of an aesthetic order.”29 The lecture was delivered at the above-mentioned Associação de Artistas Brasileiros, the organization then responsible for staging the most important exhibitions of modern art in Rio de Janeiro. Coming from the inner circle of a vibrant modernist milieu with unabashed leftist sympathies, Martins’s rejection of “social art” is noteworthy indeed. Alongside politically engaged themes, the critic further disparages two other broad currents: cubism, which he describes as “hermetic, incomprehensible, and selfish,” and what he labels the “resurrection of the Renaissance.” Modern art, then, was to be neither too socialistic nor 275 276 CARDOSO too analytical nor too quick to posit a return to order. In hindsight, the remarkable aspect of this lecture is its utter lack of any appeal to history or antecedents. There is little sense of a movement upon which to build—a point implicit in a section titled “The inauguration of Brazilian painting,” which deals with living artists and makes no reference to 1922.30 The publication of Luis Martins’s lecture is not an isolated incident. The first attempts to record a history of Brazilian modernism began at about this time. Given the subsequent historiography, it is surprising that those attempts focused so little on the Semana. When influential literary critic Nestor Victor died in 1932, he had been working on a volume dedicated to those whom he considered the most important contemporary writers of the day—Os de hoje (Those of today) was the title he penned for the book, which was eventually published in 1938 with the subtitle Figuras do movimento modernista brasileiro (Figures of the Brazilian modernist movement). Many major names of the São Paulo 1922 group are included, and Mário de Andrade is given special prominence. Their significance, however, is diluted by the inclusion of a broad range of other contemporaries, who today are little known or not considered modernist at all. Not that Nestor Victor’s grasp of what it meant to be modern, in the context of the 1920s, was confused. His writings leave no doubt that he was familiar with debates surrounding the avant-gardes, as well as the strategies and struggles underpinning their competing claims.31 One year later, in 1939, Tristão de Athayde (that is, Amoroso Lima), published a book titled Contribuição à história do modernismo (Contribution to the history of modernism) and subtitled I: O Premodernismo (vol. 1: Premodernism). A collection of previously published newspaper articles and reviews from 1919–20, the volume stakes out the territory of modernism by cleverly setting it apart from what came before. Revived as a literary alter ego, Tristão de Athayde reasserted his claim to be “the critic of the new Brazil,” as the Revista de Antropofagia had dubbed him before his turn to Catholic militancy made him an enemy of the São Paulo modernists.32 In light of the ongoing power struggles within the Ministry of Education between the left-leaning educationalists of the so-called Escola Nova movement (especially Anísio Teixeira, founder and ideologue of the Universidade do Distrito Federal) and the conservative Catholic reaction, the timing of Amoroso Lima’s decision to cast himself in the role of historian of the modernist movement deserves greater scrutiny. The anticommunist backlash of 1935–36 had been sufficient to ensure Amoroso Lima’s political triumph over the escolanovistas, paving the way for dismantling the Universidade do Distrito Federal and building up two new Catholic universities under his direct control—a process largely underway by 1939. At this late date, the target of his renewed interest in literary and artistic FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM affairs was likely a different one: to preempt the rise of Mário de Andrade as a collaborator in the Ministry of Education and thereby to check the continued influence of Drummond, his most able rival for the minister’s favor. True to the example set by Vargas, Capanema masterfully played off different interests, made concessions to opposing sides, and ultimately centralized power in himself. The achievements of Carlos Drummond, Mário de Andrade, and Lúcio Costa within the Ministry of Education have long been celebrated by the historiography of Brazilian modernism. Further scrutiny shows, however, that Amoroso Lima was even more successful in his efforts to lobby for the Catholic position.33 Mário de Andrade drew closer to the Ministry of Education after 1937, when Vargas tightened his grip on power and established the Estado Novo—in which the congress was closed and political parties of all shades were banned but several new cultural institutions were created. Dismissed after three years as director of the city of São Paulo’s Departamento de Cultura, Mário moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1938 and took up a position at the same arts institute of the Universidade do Distrito Federal that had been the focus of communist baiting a few years earlier; he held the position until the university was finally phased out in 1939. He would remain in Rio for three years, working with Drummond and Capanema on various projects, but his time in the capital was far from rewarding. As his letters and other biographical evidence attest, he bemoaned the obstacles in his path, pined for São Paulo, and became generally discouraged.34 Dismal current events, both national and international, between 1937 and 1942 hardened Brazil into a quasi-fascist dictatorship whose leadership flirted openly with Nazi Germany, just as the world exploded into war and the Allies suffered their greatest setbacks. Under intense pressure from the United States, the Vargas government finally joined the war effort on the side of the Allies in August 1942. Just months before, in April, Mário de Andrade had delivered a lecture in Rio de Janeiro that has since become notorious for its explicit condemnation of the modernist movement. The central thesis of “O movimento modernista” is that the movement had failed, succumbing to individualism when it should have endeavored to effect political change and contribute to the improvement of society. Twenty years after the event that launched him to prominence and led to his leadership of a movement, Mário concluded: “I believe we the modernists of the Semana de Arte Moderna can serve as an example to no one. But we can serve as a lesson.”35 This bitter critique has long reverberated through the literature on Brazilian modernism, as followers and heirs have rushed to reinterpret it or downplay its harsh implications.36 Apart from this melancholy farewell to an idea, the memory of the Semana continued to fade into oblivion. In the year 277 278 CARDOSO of its twentieth anniversary, the whole episode “seemed ready to be buried,” according to Alambert.37 Actually, it was ripe for reinvention. The Semana de Arte Moderna Rediscovered Mário de Andrade’s death in February 1945 occurred just before the end of World War II and the subsequent demise, in October, of Vargas’s Estado Novo. He did live long enough, however, to hear of Oswald de Andrade’s own lecture on the modernist movement, something of a reply and a rebuttal to Mário’s, though Oswald made almost no mention of his former friend. Delivered in mid-1944 in Belo Horizonte as part of Exposição de arte moderna, an exhibition of modern art sponsored by Juscelino Kubitschek, who was then mayor of that city and would later become president of Brazil, “O caminho percorrido” (The path trodden) deliberately attempted to charge the modernist movement with a grand historical destiny. Oswald’s main discursive gambit was to connect the currents of the Semana—giving special prominence to the Antropofagia group, which he led—to the tenentista movement and its efforts to effect political change during the 1920s. Skillfully shifting his rhetorical position throughout the lecture, he alternated between artistic facts and political ones to forge a narrative of democracy versus fascism that culminates in a battle cry for the youth of Brazil to rally behind him against the “ideologues of American neofascism” and to fight the good fight.38 Despite his tenuous historical argument, Oswald’s claim to antifascist credentials was consistent enough. Active in the Partido Comunista do Brasil since the early 1930s and maintaining links to its leadership even during the years when the party was banned, the fiery orator could be perceived by his listeners as a legitimate opponent of the Vargas regime—or, at least, as one of its victims.39 The contrast is stark between Oswald de Andrade’s position, spinning the legacy of Modern Art Week into a tale of resistance against the ailing dictatorship, and that of Mário de Andrade, whose dark lament two years earlier implicitly recognized the sins of collaborating with dictatorial power. Mário’s remorse was made explicit in an interview with him published in January 1944 in the antifascist magazine Diretrizes. He not only expressed his extreme regret for having written for an organ linked to the Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda, the government’s official propaganda department, but also intensified his attack on fellow modernist intellectuals for having “sold out to the owners of life.”40 Art was obliged to serve a social purpose, he asserted, echoing the conclusion of his earlier lecture. “March with the masses,” he had stated in that lecture.41 Something dramatic changed Mário’s mind between late 1941 and early 1942. Less than a year before his lecture in Rio, he had disparaged “the FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM thesis of ‘social art’” as a danger even more pernicious than “artistic experimentalism” and insisted on technical accomplishment as the true path to artistic achievement.42 This conservative stand was set out in an article published in the first issue of a new review, Clima, organized by a group of young critics in São Paulo, but the appeal to technique and formalism had been building in his art criticism for several years. Oswald de Andrade shared the view that “social art” was the path forward, as he made clear in a lecture in August 1944, delivered at the behest of a group called the American Contemporary Arts, in which he extolled the virtues of the Mexican muralists and the painters of the Soviet Union for “laying the foundations of the constructive art of the future.”43 During that brief time when the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, Oswald must indeed have felt exultant and vindicated. The side with which he had aligned himself since the early 1930s was poised for victory; finally, he would be recognized as the undisputed leader of Brazilian modernism, especially after his great rival had publicly disparaged the movement. Well into his fifties at that point and self-obsessed, Oswald failed to gauge the strength of a new generation that was poised to claim the legacy of the Semana de Arte Moderna. Three other speakers delivered lectures at the 1944 exhibition of modern art in Belo Horizonte: Sérgio Milliet, a member of the original 1922 group and longtime ally of Mário de Andrade; Luis Martins, the young writer and critic mentioned above, whose marriage to Tarsila do Amaral thrust him somewhat into Oswald’s shadow; and an even younger critic, Lourival Gomes Machado, editor of Clima. Published between 1941 and 1943, this journal succeeded in projecting its organizers onto a national stage as a new generation of cultural critics, solidly grounded in the social science curriculum they had absorbed as the first class of graduates produced by the Universidade de São Paulo. The group leaned to the left—democratic socialism, they called it—but rejected the Stalinist line that still dominated the Partido Comunista do Brasil. Claiming no interest in producing art or literature but instead preferring to analyze it, they soon appropriated the legacy of the modern movement and refashioned it in their own scholarly image.44 By 1945, after some initial mistrust and even angry polemic, they obtained the support of the major remaining representatives of the 1922 group, including both Oswald de Andrade and Mário de Andrade. Following the death of the latter, Gomes Machado tried to affirm himself as successor to the role of leading interpreter of artistic modernism. The key text in Gomes Machado’s reinvention of the São Paulo modern movement is the essay “Retrato da arte moderna do Brasil” (Portrait of modern art of Brazil); it was awarded a prize by the São Paulo section of the Associação Brasileira de Escritores (Brazilian Association of Writers) when it appeared in 279 280 CARDOSO 1945 and was subsequently published by São Paulo’s Departamento de Cultura in 1947. Here, Gomes Machado establishes the mythic narrative of the Semana that has since come to prevail. He further develops the argument by grounding Brazilian modernism in the native soil of colonial art—that is, the art produced in Brazil before the importation of Parisian beaux-arts training in the nineteenth century. He thus situates the modern movement as a reaction to a presumed artificial academicism of the recent past and as the recovery of an older “authentic” past. Modernism, in this account, becomes a process of looking outward to Europe in order to see what had always been there—if only one knew to look inward with proper analytical scrutiny. His major methodological task is to establish convincing parallels between modern art and the interpretations of Brazilian culture emerging in the work of immigrant European scholars like Hannah Levy and Roger Bastide. Recovery of the colonial past became a touchstone not only for Gomes Machado in his subsequent writings on the Brazilian baroque but also for the preservation policy of the Serviço do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, the national heritage service, under the leadership of Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade.45 “Retrato da arte moderna do Brasil” also documents the position of the modernist movement with respect to the outgoing Vargas regime. Drawing heavily on the critical writings of Mário de Andrade and Sérgio Milliet, the book seeks to establish a basis for the continued progress of modernism after “the long interregnum of political dominion during which the action of totalitarianism developed along the well-established and complementary paths of control through repression and the official mechanism.”46 The unusual phrase “official mechanism” refers to the co-opting of intellectuals into the service of the state, and the passage is defiantly frank about the ideological pressures exerted under the Estado Novo. The author commends the persistence of those intellectuals who resisted the dictatorship and foregrounds their role in voicing protest. He also references Mário de Andrade’s 1942 lecture “O movimento modernista,” which Gomes Machado describes as “an admirable work” and whose negative political implications he glosses over. Gomes Machado’s desire to exonerate the recently deceased writer from his own mea culpa is discernible in a vague reference to “the exaggerated pessimism” of certain positions on modernism.47 This crucial passage of the work seeks to salvage the modernist movement from Mário’s self-condemnation and redeem its credentials as a progressive movement, despite the notorious collaboration of many modernists with the Estado Novo project, particularly through the Ministry of Education and the Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda. Lourival Gomes Machado’s 1945 reinterpretation of Brazilian modern art has become so ingrained that it is difficult to comprehend how radically it departed FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM from previous readings. Unlike Nestor Victor, Gomes Machado denies the existence of modernizing and avant-gardist currents outside São Paulo. Indeed, he sweeps aside “the sly and stultifying character of the maritime and cosmopolitan capital” and refuses to attribute any relevance to what he acknowledges was the “evolved intellectual nucleus in Rio de Janeiro.” In opposition to Tristão de Athayde’s conception of premodernism, which implies a gradual progression through stages, Gomes Machado interprets the Semana as radical historical departure, taking great pains to explain away the importance of its antecedents. He compares it to a “razor” cutting through “dead tissue” and to the outbreak of an epidemic—just two among other medical metaphors. In stark contrast to Luis Martins, who affirmed modern art as pure cosmopolitan import, Gomes Machado posits Brazilian modernism as a phenomenon grounded in the national past, and he constructs his argument from carefully selected historical examples. Finally, he confronts other competing interpretations, either overtly (as in his dismissal of art critic Ruben Navarra, who published a text earlier in 1945 downplaying the role of the Semana) or covertly (as in his gibe, possibly aimed at Oswald de Andrade, that, after twenty years, there were postulants still struggling for “this or that little bit of glory”).48 The Clima group’s appropriation of the legacy of the Semana was clearly viewed as a changing of the guard. For the older modernists, veterans of 1922, this led to both resentment and resigned reflection. In his public declarations on the subject, Milliet supported the new “sociological” inflection ushered in by the younger generation. To his diary, however, he confided his doubts: To ignore the existence of the Semana de Arte Moderna is as childish as it is absurd to lend it excessive importance. To forget it is as grave a mistake as to have it continually before one’s eyes. To lend it political significance, reactionary or leftist, is to not understand what occurred in Europe from 1908 (the time of cubism) to 1922; it is to forget the multicolored career of the various groups that preceded our massacre of the academics and our reconstruction of the art world.49 To some, the modernist movement was being commandeered for ends different from its original aims; politically, at least, that impression was justified. A movement that had been broadly aligned with the rise of Vargas (1922–30), subsequently viewed with suspicion and even persecuted during the regime’s early years in power (1930–37), and then actively courted and co-opted by the state as an instrument of propaganda and control (1937–45) was now being cast in the role of steadfast resistance to the dictatorship. It must be said that such shifts had more to do with the backbiting intricacies of Brazilian politics than 281 282 CARDOSO with the individual choices and personal decisions of specific people. That fact, however, provided little comfort to a set of cultural agents consigned within their lifetimes to the realm of biography. A new generation was affirming its own rereading of recent history, and this was taking place with strategic selfawareness, as evidenced by the publication of two books deriving from surveys conducted among Brazilian intellectuals in the early 1940s. The first, Testamento de uma geração (Testament of a generation), contained interviews with prominent figures of the 1920s; the second, Plataforma da nova geração (Platform of the new generation), reacted by positioning itself as the defining judgment of the younger critics upon their elders.50 With the shift from a disputed living memory to a straitened historical narrative, the idealogical ground was prepared for the removal of the Semana from the context that had witnessed its flowering. During the late 1940s and 1950s, a range of new institutions arose that were dedicated to promoting and preserving the modernist legacy; these included museums of modern art in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (both established 1948) and the São Paulo biennial (1951).51 Following the thirtieth anniversary of the Semana, the Ministry of Education and Culture (Ministério da Educação e Cultura; thus renamed in 1953, after the creation of a separate ministry of health) produced three booklets devoted to explaining and popularizing the modernist movement.52 Strange convolutions of the political scene brought Vargas back to power in January 1951, this time as an elected president bent on erasing the vestiges of his dictatorial past. Modernism was now part of a democratic heritage that could be put to good use within the context of the nascent Cold War. After Vargas’s suicide in August 1954 and Oswald de Andrade’s death in October of the same year, the reinvention of the movement’s history was freed from any obligation to the troublesome facts of political enmity. During the period of democratic governance leading up to the military coup of 1964, two important publications attempted to historicize the modernist movement: Mário da Silva Brito’s História do modernismo brasileiro (1958), specifically focused on the “antecedents of the Semana,” as indicated in its subtitle, and Wilson Martins’s O modernismo (1965), published as the last of a six-volume series on the history of Brazilian literature. Though each brought new sources to the debate, the essence of Gomes Machado’s narrative remained intact—in particular, the twin notions that (1) the modernist movement had been somehow ignited in São Paulo as a rupture with the immediate past and (2) any competing claims to cultural modernization could be dismissed as “premodernism.” By the fiftieth anniversary of the Semana, in 1972, a new wave of celebratory accounts had to filter through no less than three layers of critical reception. The competing interpretations by contemporaries such as Nestor FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM Victor and Tristão de Athayde, as well as by both Oswald de Andrade and Mário de Andrade, gave way to the radical reinterpretation of that legacy by its immediate successors, people like Luis Martins and Lourival Gomes Machado. Later, that legacy was subjected to exegesis by a new wave of heirs apparent. After so many twists and turns, the Semana was ripe for marketing as the fruit of mythical invention. It became all things to all people, a welcome ornament, even for the hardline generals of the military regime, who saw themselves as distant heirs to the tenentismo movement of 1922. At that dark moment in Brazilian history, there was little sense in trying to deny the place of the myth and its magical ability to wash away conflict and contradictions. After all, history can only do so much when confronted with its own value as propaganda and entertainment. Notes Unless otherwise noted, all translations of quoted passages are mine. 1. Nestor Victor, Os de hoje: Figuras do movimento modernista brasileiro (São Paulo: Cultura Moderna, 1938), 154. 2. Among the standard accounts of the Semana de Arte Moderna and its consequences, see Aracy A. Amaral, Artes plásticas na Semana de 22 (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1970); Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Semana de 22: Antecedentes e consequências (São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna, 1972); José Miguel Wisnik, O coro dos contrários: A música em torno da Semana de 22 (São Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1977); Eliana Bastos, Entre o escândalo e o sucesso: A Semana de 22 e o Armory Show (Campinas: Unicamp, 1991); Marcia Camargos, Semana de 22: Entre vaias e aplausos (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2002); Marcia Camargos, 13 a 18 de fevereiro de 1922: A Semana de 22: Revolução Estética? (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional / Lazuli, 2007); and Marcos Augusto Gonçalves, 1922: A semana que não terminou (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012). A few summaries are available in English, largely drawn from the preceding literature. See Randal Johnson, “Brazilian Modernism: An Idea Out of Place?” in Modernism and Its Margins: Re-Inscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America, ed. Anthony L. Geist and José B. Monleon (New York: Garland, 1999), 186–214; and Ruben George Oliven, “Brazil: The Modern in the Tropics,” in Through the Kaleidescope: The Experience of Modernity in Latin America, ed. Vivian Schelling (London: Verso, 2000), 53–71. 3. See Camargos, Semana de 22, 4; and Sérgio Miceli, Nacional estrangeiro: História social e cultural do modernismo em São Paulo (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003), 99–100. The best compilation of primary sources remains Marta Rossetti Batista, Telê Porto Ancona Lopez, and Yone Soares de Lima, eds., Brasil: 1o tempo modernista–1917/29; Documentação (São Paulo: Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, 1972). 4. On pianist Guiomar Novaes’s strategic importance for the success of the event and her outspoken opposition to its “distinctly exclusive and intolerant character,” 283 284 CARDOSO 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. see Nicolau Sevcenko, Orfeu extático na metrópole: São Paulo, sociedade e cultura nos frementes anos 20 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992), 268–277. This critique was formulated by the writer who managed the event and was given bitter echo by one exhibiting artist; see René Thiollier, A Semana de Arte Moderna (depoimento inédito)–1922 (São Paulo: Cupolo, [ca. 1953]), 35–38; and Yan de Almeida Prado, A grande Semana de Arte Moderna (São Paulo: Edart, 1976), 11–41. On contemporary reception of the Semana, see Annateresa Fabris, O futurismo paulista: Hipóteses para o estudo da chegada da vanguarda ao Brasil (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1994), 135–79; and Maria Eugenia Boaventura, ed., 22 por 22: A Semana de Arte Moderna vista pelos seus contemporâneos (São Paulo: Edusp, 2000). On the strategic avant-gardist attitude of the movement and its peculiar sociability, see Fabris, O futurismo paulista, 135–38; and Miceli, Nacional estrangeiro, 91–149. A prime example is poet Raul Bopp, who was close to the São Paulo modernist movement, especially the Antropofagia current led by Oswald de Andrade after 1928, but who, by his own admission, was not present in 1922. Nonetheless, he repeatedly recounted and described what happened, often with glaring inaccuracies. See Raul Bopp, Movimentos modernistas no Brasil, 1922–1928 (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria São José, 1966), 18–25; and Raul Bopp, Vida e morte da Antropofagia (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1977), 25–30. Francisco Alambert, “A reinvenção da Semana (1932–1942),” Revista USP, no. 94 (2012): 107–18. Mônica Pimenta Velloso, História e modernismo (Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2010), 22–29; and Lisbeth Rebollo Gonçalves, “Apresentação (Dossiê Semana de Arte Moderna),” Revista USP, no. 94 (2012): 6. The critical deconstruction of 1922’s mythical status began in the late 1980s and proceeds to this day; see, among others, Silviano Santiago, “Sobre plataformas e testamentos,” in Oswald de Andrade, Ponta de Lança (São Paulo: Globo, 1991), 7–19; and Mônica Pimenta Velloso, Modernismo no Rio de Janeiro: Turunas e Quixotes (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1996). Alambert, “A reinvenção,” 110. See Anamaria Rego de Almeida, “Uma exposição internacional no Rio de Janeiro,” Anais do Museu Histórico Nacional 34 (2002): 371–82; and Thais Rezende da Silva Sant’Anna, “Fincando estacas: A Exposição do Centenário da Independência do Brasil nas fotografias da Coleção Augusto César de Campos Malta do Museu Histórico Nacional,” 19&20, no. 2 (2007). Tamandaré, “Moquem. III-Entradas,” Revista de Antropofagia, phase 2, no. 6, in Diário de S. Paulo (24 April 1929): 10. See also Aracy A. Amaral, ed., Correspondência Mário de Andrade e Tarsila do Amaral (São Paulo: Edusp, 2001), 106; and Lélia Coelho Frota, ed., Carlos e Mário: Correspondência entre Carlos Drummond de Andrade e Mário de Andrade (Rio de Janeiro: Bem-Te-Vi, 2002), 437n10. FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM 14. See Nádia Battella Gotlib, Tarsila do Amaral: A musa radiante (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983), 79–80; Miceli, Nacional estrangeiro, 24–27, 142–49; and Maria Augusta Fonseca, Oswald de Andrade: Biografia (São Paulo: Globo, 2007), 218–21. 15. Maria Lucia Bressan Pinheiro, “Lucio Costa e a Escola Nacional de Belas Artes,” Anais do 6º Seminário Docomomo (2005). See also Lúcia Gouvêa Vieira, Salão de 1931: Marco da revelação da arte moderna no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 1984); and the thematic issue edited by Afonso Luz, “Salão de 31: Diferenças em processo,” Cadernos Proarq 12 (2008): 6–45. 16. Graziela Naclério Forte, “CAM e SPAM: Arte, política e sociabilidade na São Paulo dos anos 1930” (unpublished master’s thesis, Programa de Pós-graduação em História Social, Universidade de São Paulo, 2008), 29–80. 17. Stridently nationalist and traditionalist, integralismo appealed to a broad swath of Brazilian society, including segments of the military and the Catholic Church. At its height, in 1937, the Ação Integralista Brasileira managed to attract a million members to its green-shirted ranks. See João Henrique Zanelatto, De olho no poder: O integralismo e as disputas políticas em Santa Catarina na era Vargas (Criciúma: EdiUnesc/EdiPUC-RS, 2012), 38; and Alexandre Pinheiro Ramos, “O Integralismo de Hélgio Trindade, quarenta anos depois: Uma crítica à sua recepção,” Antíteses 14 (2014): 324–47. 18. See Fátima R. Nogueira, “Modernidade e tradição no ‘país do desconcerto’: Uma leitura sociocultural de Memórias sentimentais de João Miramar,” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 12 (2008): 52–54. See also Antônio Arnoni Prado, 1922–Itinerário de uma falsa vanguarda: Os dissidentes, a Semana e o Integralismo (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983), 61–63. 19. On the cultural politics of this period, see Simon Schwartzman, Helena Maria Bousquet Bomeny, and Vanda Maria Ribeiro Costa, Tempos de Capanema (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2000), esp. chap. 5 and chap. 6; Clarice Nunes, “As políticas públicas de educação de Gustavo Capanema no governo Vargas,” in Constelação Capanema: Intelectuais e política, ed. Helena Bomeny (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 2001), 103–25; and Daryle Williams, “Cultural Management, 1930–1945,” chap. 3 in Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime, 1930–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 20. See Gilda de Mello e Souza, “Vanguarda e nacionalismo na década de vinte,” Almanaque: Cadernos de Literatura e Ensaio, no. 6 (1978): 76; Frederico Morais, Cronologia das artes plásticas no Rio de Janeiro (1816–1994) (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1995), 152–57; Mauricio Lissovsky and Paulo Sérgio Moraes de Sá, Colunas da educação: A construção do Ministério da Educação e Saúde, 1935–1945 (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. do Patrimônio, 1996), 26; and Rafael Cardoso, “Modernismo e contexto político: A recepção da arte moderna no Correio da Manhã (1924– 1937),” Revista de História (USP), no. 172 (2015): 357–59. 21. Schwartzman, Bomeny, and Costa, Tempos de Capanema, 101–2. See also Bomeny, Constelação Capanema, 17. 22. Moacir dos Anjos Jr. and Jorge Ventura Morais, “Picasso ‘visita’ o Recife: A exposição da Escola de Paris em março de 1930,” Estudos Avançados 12 (1998): 313–35. See also “L’École de Paris au Brésil,” Montparnasse, no. 58 (January 1930): 1. 285 286 CARDOSO 23. Although ten of Rego Monteiro’s works were shown at the Semana (on loan from a mutual friend), the artist himself was in Paris at the time and kept a respectful distance from the São Paulo group throughout his life. Cf. Edith Wolfe, “Paris as Periphery: Vicente do Rego Monteiro and Brazil’s Discrepant Cosmopolitanism,” The Art Bulletin 96 (2014): 98–119. 24. See Morais, Cronologia das artes plásticas, 136–57; and Cardoso, “Modernismo,” 350–54. 25. See Lissovsky and Moraes de Sá, Colunas da educação. See also Lauro Cavalcanti, When Brazil Was Modern: Guide to Architecture, 1928–1860 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003). 26. Luis Martins, A pintura moderna no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Schmidt, 1937), vii–ix. 27. Martins, A pintura moderna, 47–53. 28. Martins, A pintura moderna, 27. 29. Martins, A pintura moderna, 12. 30. Martins, A pintura moderna, 22, 26, 47–53. 31. Victor, Os de hoje, 153–58, 174–78. 32. Antônio de Alcântara Machado, “1 crítico e 1 poeta,” Revista de Antropofagia, phase 1, no. 9 (January 1929): 4. The magazine would reverse its position and direct repeated attacks against Tristão de Athayde after March 1929. On the contemporary perception of Athayde as the critic of modernism, see Edgard Cavalheiro, ed., Testamento de uma geração (Porto Alegre: Livraria do Globo, 1944), 144. 33. Schwartzman, Bomeny, and Costa, Tempos de Capanema, 191–98, 223–29; Ana Waleska P. C. Mendonça, “A universidade no Brasil,” Revista Brasileira de Educação, no. 14 (2000): 131–94; and Nunes, “As políticas públicas,” 103–25. 34. See Francini V. de Oliveira, “Intelectuais, cultura e política na São Paulo dos anos 30: Mário de Andrade e o Departamento Municipal de Cultura,” Plural, no. 12 (2005), 11–19; and Eduardo Jardim, Eu sou trezentos: Mário de Andrade, vida e obra (Rio de Janeiro: Edições de Janeiro, 2015), 175–76, 185–86. See also Schwartzman, Bomeny, and Costa, Tempos de Capanema, chs. 6 and 7; and Williams, “Cultural Management,” chap. 4. 35. Mário de Andrade, “O movimento modernista,” in Aspectos da literatura brasileira (São Paulo: Martins, 1974), 231. 36. See, among others, Cavalheiro, Testamento, 9, 274–77; Alfredo Bosi, “O movimento modernista de Mário de Andrade,” Literatura e Sociedade, no. 7 (2004): 296–301; and José de Paula Ramos Jr., “Mário de Andrade e a lição do modernismo,” Revista USP, no. 94 (2012): 49–58. 37. Alambert, “A reinvenção,” 112. 38. Oswald de Andrade, “O caminho percorrido,” in Ponta de lança: Polêmica (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira/INL, 1971), 93–102. 39. His appeal that “all the political prisons of Brazil be opened” may even have caused a stir, considering that censorship was still prevalent; Oswald de Andrade, “O caminho percorrido,” 99. Oswald’s career had certainly suffered, never recovering the prestige he enjoyed before 1930. See Maria Eugênia Boaventura, O salão e a selva: Uma biografia ilustrada de Oswald de Andrade (São Paulo: Ex Libris, 1995), 184–85; Marília de Andrade and Ésio Macedo Ribeiro, eds., Maria FORGING THE MYTH OF BRAZILIAN MODERNISM 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. Antonieta d’Alkmin e Oswald de Andrade: Marco zero (São Paulo: Edusp, 2003), 16–18, 66–69; and Fonseca, Oswald de Andrade, 300. Telê Porto Ancona Lopez, “‘A arte tem de servir’: Transcrição de uma entrevista de Mário de Andrade,” Almanaque, no. 8 (1978): 35–39. On the collaboration of modernist intellectuals with the Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda (DIP), see Helena Bomeny, “Infidelidades eletivas: Intelectuais e política”; and Lucia Lippi Oliveira, “O intelectual do DIP: Lourival Fontes e o Estado Novo,” in Bomeny, Constelação Capanema, 28–29, 37–58. Mário de Andrade, Aspectos da literatura brasileira, 255. Mário de Andrade, “A elegia de abril,” in idem, Aspectos da literatura brasileira 185, 188, 194. Oswald de Andrade, “Aspectos da pintura através de ‘Marco Zero,’” in idem, Ponta de lança, 105–7. Heloisa Pontes, Destinos mistos: Os críticos do grupo Clima em São Paulo (1940–68) (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998), 58–62. See also Alambert, “A reinvenção,” 112–14. See also Antonio Candido “Sérgio Milliet, o crítico,” in Diário crítico de Sérgio Milliet, by Sérgio Milliet (São Paulo: Martins/Edusp, 1981), xi–xv. Pontes, Destinos mistos, 21–42. Lourival Gomes Machado, Retrato da arte moderna do Brasil (São Paulo: Departamento de Cultura, 1947), 95. The author’s preface to the volume is dated December 1945, just months after Vargas was deposed. Gomes Machado, Retrato, 97. Gomes Machado, Retrato, 6, 32–34, 37–39, 87–91. Milliet, Diário crítico, 109–11. Cf. Sérgio Milliet, “Meu depoimento,” in Cavalheiro, Testamento, 241. See also Alambert, “A reinvenção,” 114–16. Cavalheiro, Testamento; and Mário Neme, ed., Plataforma da nova geração (Porto Alegre: Livraria do Globo, 1945). See also Santiago, “Sobre plataformas,” 7–9; and Alambert, “A reinvenção,” 114. See Maria Cecília França Lourenço, Museus acolhem moderno (São Paulo: Edusp, 1999), esp. 87–131; Aracy A. Amaral, Textos do Trópico de Capricórnio: Artigos e ensaios (1981–2005), 3 vols. (São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2006), esp. 2:238–79; and Marta Rossetti Batista, Escritos sobre arte e modernismo (São Paulo: Prata Design, 2012), esp. 14–77. These were Flávio de Aquino, Três fases do movimento modernista (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Saúde, 1952); Peregrino Júnior, O movimento modernista (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1954); and Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Uma tese e algumas notas sobre a arte moderna (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1956); all three are part of the series Os cadernos de cultura, which covered all aspects of cultural knowledge in an accessible format, under the direction of art critic José Simeão Leal. 287