Relatos de la modernidad brasileña.
Tarsila do Amaral y la apertura antropofágica como descolonización
estética*
María Elena Lucero[1]
Universidade Federal da Integraçâo Latino Americana-Brasil
Universidad Nacional de Rosario-Argentina
Reception:
07/07/2014
Evaluation: 09/07/2014
Approval: 05/09/2014
Research and innovation article
Resumen
Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) inició su fase
antropofágica en 1928 tras materializar Abaporú, una pintura que sugirió a
Oswald de Andrade la posterior escritura del Manifiesto antropófago en el mismo
año. Estas propuestas formularon la antropofagia como devoración del
colonizador, asimilando ciertos aspectos, descartando otros y promoviendo una
versión del indígena que comía al otro sin culpa. Por lo tanto, el perfil
político de la antropofagia cultural en Brasil creó dispositivos que, desde la
retórica visual o literaria, llevaron a desmontar los mecanismos de dominación
ligados al colonialismo.
Este trabajo propone leer la trayectoria
de Tarsila teniendo como epicentro Antropofagia de 1929, una obra que apostó
por la descolonización de la estética eurocéntrica proveniente de la
iconografía occidental. En aquella imagen las figuras establecían una fusión
con el propio entorno, imbuidas en un gigantismo visual que por momentos las
tornaba amenazantes. La selva recreaba una versión del tropicalismo como
espacio de fortaleza o sinergia en una atmósfera local que se distanció de las
maneras preconcebidas de simbolizar el paisaje brasileño, reconstruyendo una visualidad
vigorosa que confrontaba la invención estereotipada sobre el escenario
americano.
Palabras
clave: Tarsila do Amaral, visual, modernismo,
antropofagia, descolonización
Narratives of Brazilian Modernism. Tarsila
do Amaral and the Anthropophagic Movement as Aesthetic Decolonization
Abstract
Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) began her anthropophagic
phase in 1928, after the creation of Abaporú,
a painting that suggested to the
Oswald de Andrade the later subsequent
writing of the Anthropophagic Manifesto in the same year.
These proposals formulated ´anthropophagy´ as a
devouring of the colonizer, assimilating certain aspects, discarding others and promoting a version of the
native that ate the other without
shame. In this way, the political
profile of cultural anthropophagy
in Brazil created visual or literary rhetorical strategies to undo colonialist
mechanisms of domination.
This article attempts to read the
trajectory of Tarsila, taking
the painting Anthropophagy, from 1929, as its epicenter, a work that operated as a decolonizing challenge to the dominant
eurocentric aesthetics based on Western iconography. In this image the figures
blend into their own environment, imbued in a visual gigantism that can seem
threatening. The surrounding jungle recreated a version of tropicalism as a
space of power or synergy set in a local atmosphere,
which distanced itself from preconcieved ways of symbolizing the Brazilian
landscape, and reconstructed a vigorous visuality that confronted the
stereotyped invention of the American landscape.
Key words: Tarsila do Amaral, visual, modernism,
anthropophagy, decolonization.
Récits de la modernité brésilienne. Tarsila do Amaral et l’ouverture anthropophagique comme décolonisation
esthétique
Résumé
Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) a entamé sa phase
anthropophagique en 1928 après avoir réalisé Abaporú, une peinture qui a
suggéré la même année à Oswald d’Andrade l’écriture du
Manifeste anthropophage. Ces œuvres ont permis de présenter l’anthropophagie
comme dévoration du colonisateur, en assimilant
certains aspects, en écartant d’autres et en promouvant une version de
l’indigène qui mangeait l’autre sans remords. Par conséquent, le profil politique de l’anthropophagie culturelle a créé au
Brésil des dispositifs qui, du point de vue de la rhétorique visuelle ou
littéraire, ont démonté les mécanismes de domination liés au colonialisme.
Ce travail propose une lecture de la trajectoire de
Tarsila dont l’épicentre est l’œuvre Antropofagia, de 1929, qui a parié sur la
décolonisation de l’esthétique euro-centrique provenant de l’iconographie
occidentale. Dans cette image, les figures établissaient une fusion avec
l’environnement, pleines d’un gigantisme visuel qui à certains moments devient
menaçant. La forêt recréait une version du
tropicalisme comme espace de force ou synergie, dans une atmosphère locale
prenant des distances avec les manières préconçues de symboliser le paysage
brésilien. Le résultat était une visualité vigoureuse qui contestait
l’invention stéréotypée sur la scène américaine.
Mots-clés: Tarsila do Amaral, visuel, modernisme,
anthropophagie, décolonisation.
Relatos da
modernidade brasileira.
Tarsila do
Amaral e a abertura antropofágica como descolonização estética
Resumo
Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) iniciou sua fase
antropofágica em 1928 após materializar Abaporú,
uma pintura que sugeriu a Oswald de Andrade a escrita do Manifesto antropofágico no mesmo ano. Estas propostas formularam a
antropofagia como a devoração do colonizador, assimilando certos aspectos,
descartando outros e promovendo uma versão do indígena como aquele que comia o
outro sem culpa. Portanto, o perfil político da antropofagia cultural no Brasil
criou dispositivos que, a partir da retórica visual ou literária, levaram a
desmontar os mecanismos de dominação ligados ao colonialismo.
Este trabalho propõe uma leitura da
trajetória de Tarsila centrada na Antropofagia
de 1929, uma obra que operou como aposta descolonizadora da estética
eurocentrista proveniente da iconografia ocidental. Nesta imagem as figuras
estabeleciam uma fusão com o próprio entorno, imbuídas de um gigantismo visual
que em alguns momentos as tornava ameaçadoras. A selva recriava uma versão do
tropicalismo como espaço de fortaleza ou sinergia em uma atmosfera local que se
distanciou das maneiras pré-concebidas de simbolizar a paisagem brasileira,
reconstruindo uma visualidade vigorosa que confrontava a invenção estereotipada
sobre o cenário americano.
Palavras chave: Tarsila do Amaral, visual, modernismo,
antropofagia, descolonização.
1. Introduction
In the cultural panorama of the 1920s in São
Paulo-Brazil, the plastic declarations and enunciations linked with aesthetics,
ethics and politics were revealed, grouped in a utopic dimension that acquired
visibility from the manifests, proclamations, programs or journals. “It is the
aesthetic, political and ethical vertigo in permanent conflict with the
convention and logic. The utopia within the artistic vanguards was installed in
the complexity of language and the social relations that bring it to life[2].”
In this framework, Brazilian modernism was
born, a cultural emergence that promoted a substantial change in the
intellectual and artistic environment, and that would deserve to be assessed
with new eyes. In the last few years, Raúl Antelo (2009) has posed a question:
“What image of modernism can any hegemonic power still, after 80 years,
transmit to us?[3]”, particularly, in our contemporariness where the
transgressor disposition of the modern gesture is understood in a different
way. It emerged after the well-known Modern Art Week in 1922, the
anthropophagic theme (included and re-elaborated in the 24th Biennal
of São Paulo) continued to bring up expectations due to its strategy of
artistic, literary and, above all, humanistic rupture, which has transcended
time. The exaltation of what it means to be Brazilian as the core of São Paulo modernity[4] worked as a way of confrontation with the racist ideology, which had
been installed in America from Europe for centuries.
In the pictorial plane, Tarsila do Amaral would be the protagonist of an artistic development
that put her at the center of the anthropophagic movement, as from an energic
and solid image. In this article, we will present a panorama of Brazilian
modernism: its tensions and struggles in the cultural field to later detail the
visual dynamic developed in some of Tarsila’s works. In particular, we will
highlight those manifestations related to anthropophagy, seeking to expand the
historical and social connotations of the concept, also closely related with
cannibalism. For this reason, the painting Antropofagia
(Anthropophagy) by Tarsila can be read as an image that proposed a starting
point for the decolonization of an occidental and pro-European aesthetic,
fostering a new visual perspective focused on issues and problems of historical
Brazil.
2. Modernists and anthropophagi
In 1918, the writer Monteiro Lobato
had published Urupês,
a collection of stories and chronicles where he outlined an idealistic and
romantic Brazil (in the same way as José de Alencar[5]), like the equivalent of the national ethos of the landscape of the interior,
the representatives of which were the caipira, rustic person, or the coboclo, aboriginal and white
mestizo. Later on, in a completely divergent direction, Mário de Andrade would
bring about a complete transformation in the literary field by writing Macunaíma in 1926, a novel that summarized, in
the same body of work, cosmopolitism and nationalism, social practice and written
work. In that scenario of artistic renewal, cultural modernism “(…) urged
artists to an aesthetic disconformity and stimulated intellectuals, such as Mário de Andrade
and Oswald de Andrade to an implacable diagnosis of our provincialism[6]."
The period of greater exacerbation for the
vanguardist process in Latin America extended
approximately from 1920 to 1930. In this context, the Modern Art Week in São
Paulo was the corollary of an intense intellectual dynamic, fostering the vanguardist irruption in Brazil, not only because of the break
from a 19th century past, stagnated in obsolete values, but also because of the
airs of renewal that was promoted in the cultural arena[7]. In the framework of the celebrations of
the centenary of the Independence of Brazil, the Week took place between the 13th
and the 17th of February, 1922, in three venues of the Municipal
Theater of São Paulo. Despite the fact that it only
lasted 4 days, its after effects have
had a great impact.
On February 11th, 1922, Oswald de Andrade
wrote an article in the Jornal do Comércio, where
he called himself a "reactionary", in the sense that he reacted
against the preponderant academicism in the 19th century, constructing a new
artistic proposal from verbal sarcasm. The tone used resembled the rhetoric of Marinettian[8] futurism despite that, as he himself
clarified in Klaxon magazine, Brazil was not futuristic: "Klaxon is not
futuristic/ Klaxon is klaxist[9]." Graça Aranha opened the proceeding of the Week on the 13th,
pronouncing words referring to the emergence of Brazilian art, highlighting the
vital sense of the "yellow man," "the superb carnival,"
"the inverted landscape," as interpretations of nature and life,
different from the implicit mediocrity and sadness in academic tradition."
In this aspect, writers, artists and
musicians shared the same objective, which was to break away from an obsolete
past. On the 15th day of that same month, Menotti Del Picchia
delivered his conference using expressions of a futuristic root, such as the
"speed of the modern world," glorified and acclaimed, in detriment of
the "tuberculous lyrical woman," represented by Romanticism[10].
He cited Mars, Zeus, Menelaus, Troy and the discobolus of Sparta, leveling Brazilian modernists and
those who expected "to see the sun behind the Parthenon in ruins[11]." The old days were described in
contrast to the lights, the fans, the airplanes, the engines, the demonstrations
of laborers or a woman-fetish, active and practical that danced to the tune of
a tango and wrote on the typewriter[12]. Different from the European vanguard, in
Brazil, there was not tabula rasa with
the historical past. Mario as well as Oswald de Andrade promoted a literary
break in relation to the archaisms from the Parnasian
fashion of 1850 (which sought inspirational themes in exoticisms or pagan
mythologies), but settling the roots, the narrations and the legends from the
native culture prior to the colony.
In response to the modernization processes
that Brazil went through in the 20s, the Week had broad consequences in the
cultural plane, due to the aesthetic rupture it brought about, defying colonial
heritage and setting the precedents for the Manifiesto Pau Brasil and the anthropophagic
movement. Once the event was over,
discussions continued in the core of the Group of the Five, constituted by Tarsila (who had just arrived from Europe), Anita Malfatti,
Mário and Oswald, who were joined by Paulo Menotti Del Picchia.
The meetings in Tarsilas's workshop were frequent,
where, apart from the permanent exchange of ideas on the local cultural climate
and the hopes for renovation, readings and music were shared[13].
3. Visual poetry, rupture and synthesis
Tarsila do Amaral was born in 1886
in Capivari, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and
died in 1972 in São Paulo. She started her studies in sculpture with Mantovani and Zadig and, later, her
painting studies with Pedro Alexandrino and Fischer Elpons. Later on, she continued her studies in the Julian
Academy in Paris, a city to which she travelled in 1921. She would go back to
São Paulo a year later, and would get in contact with her friend, the painter
Anita Malfatti, whom she had met in 1919, when they were Aleixandrino
students. Once again in Paris, she took classes in the ateliers of André Lhote, Gleizes and Fernánd Léger. In 1923, she painted A Negra (Figure 1), a magnificent canvas that set a precedent for her
anthropophagic phase. Although the lessons of Lhote and Léger can be detected in this
image, the painting broke with the cubist constructions. And, on the other
hand, she transformed the 19th century canon of feminine representation, which
was in accordance with a neoclassic, romantic vision, with measures and
parameters established by the academy[14] and incorporated a black woman who,
according to positivist and colonialist versions, was associated with poverty
and slavery.
During 1924, Tarsila
made two trips, one to Rio de Janeiro and the other to Minas Gerais together
with Oswald and Mario de Andrade, Blaise Cendrars,
and other intellectuals, in search for the Brazilian interior, its tradition
and its roots. In Belo Horizonte, Sao João del Rei, Tiradentes, Ouro Preto and Congonhas do Campo, she would take notes and keep records[15]. This scenario full of colors was the
basis of a body of paintings that belong to her Pau Brazil period. At the same time, Oswald wrote Manifesto Pau Brazil, a medullar text in
the Brazilian vanguard. In Tarsila's
canvases, vegetation transformed into organic stylizations, some round, where
the planes were constructed from superstitions and size gradations.
Morro da favela, of 1924, exhibited a careful pictorial
treatment with cacti and plants, in a geometrical structure of colorful houses,
caipiras, and
hues of pink, cerulean blues, ochres, and oranges. In the modernistic Brazilian
view, the incorporation of the caipira and of rural life were exacerbated, a re-elaboration
of visual signs from the caipira/country/sertanejo[16].
Tarsila reinterpreted the peripheral environment and her
visual potential in Carnaval em Madureira after having walked the Brazilian suburb in
the area of Madureira, where the scolas do samba and
Imperio Serrano were. During those celebrations "she recorded, in less than 20
sketches, people from the street, details of their garments and ornaments from
the carnival[17]." A year later, in O mamoeiro of
1925 (Figure 2), she showed a landscape with plants that looked like huge
seeds, with a volumetric intention marked by different degrees of lights and
shades. The choice of the landscape as a theme responded to a symbolic choice,
a synthesis of the national imaginary, where the subject of the village is re-signified
in its daily chores.
Figure 1. Tarsila do Amaral Figure 2. Tarsila do Amaral
A Negra, oil on canvas, 1923. O Mamoeiro, oil on canvas, 1925.
Tarsila explored the purity of the natural shapes of Brazil,
unspoiled by the vertiginous European civilization. Despite her Parisian
training, her 1924 paintings are distanced from the French urban topic, such as
in the train station with electric posts, which included designs of tress and
palm trees. In Manacá, of 1927 (Figure 3), the figures
simulated gigantic masses, which reinforced the constructive order around
masses of color. The full forms ranged between greens and pinks, with blue
flowers of well- shaped petals that anticipated her later pictorial treatments.
In 1928, Tarsila
had finished Abaporú
(Figure 4), "the division of modernity in Brazil[18]." When he received it as a birthday
present, Oswald expressed to his friend, the poet Raúl Bopp, that the painting
represented man on Earth. In the Tupí-Guaraní dictionary by Montoya, which belonged to Tarsila's father,
they found the term Abaporú
(Aba: man, Porú: who eats), which was
registered as the title of the painting. A reproduction of the painting
appeared in the first issue of the Revista de Antropofagia (Anthropophagic magazine), where Oswald founded
the movement that would radically change modernist literature. Cultural
anthropophagy retook the symbolism of cannibal action carried out by the Tupinambás aboriginals,
and assumed the inclusion of cultural elements with the aim of processing,
assimilating and giving an account of the Brazilian identity and its
singularities.
Figure 3. Tarsila do Amaral, Figure 4. Tarsila do Amaral,
Manacá, oil on
canvas, 1927. Abaporú, oil on canvas,
1928.
In relation to cannibalism and
anthropophagy, although both terms refer to the act of eating human flesh, they
have significant differences. Cannibalism emphasizes a destructive action, the
event of castigating the body of the victim or the enemy, while anthropophagy
accentuates the processes of swallowing, assimilating and absorbing. In this
sense, the elements that connote cannibalism in visual formulations underline
the rupture, violence, and grotesque deformation. In turn, anthropophagy
manifest from re-appropriation, irony and sarcasm, as Oswald himself depicted
it in the Manifiesto Antropófago (Anthropophagic
Manifesto) by highlighting critical swallowing. From that platform, Tarsila projected herself in an artistic environment that
had already been shaken by the proposals of the Modern Art Week of 1922. Plinio Salgado himself, a member of the Academia Paulista
de Letras, redeemed in the work of the artist the
seminal idea of a movement in Brazilian literature, due to her sense of “cosmic
means”, “racial truth” and “prophetic revelation[19].”
Abaporú made reference to a local and warm environment of the
tropics. The technique applied and the language used marked a change with
respect to the Pau Brasil
phase. The stylized main figure, as the artist admitted years later, was the
expression of certain “nightmarish” stories that the maids at his father ranch
told her at bedtime. This process revealed a sign of cultural anthropophagy,
which preceded the literary formulation of Oswald de Andrade. Another canvas of
1928, Urutú (Figure 5), represented the formal exacerbation of an egg of great
dimensions. The transformation in the scale of size with respect to the
landscape dislocated the eye in a suspended space. The white oval (a risky
plastic recourse handled with dexterity) was supported by a magenta object
which, contorted, resembled a reptile holding on to a red spike that emerges
from the soil. The contrast with the rest of the palette opened a space to an
oneiric atmosphere, a trend that will be repeated in works like Distância, A lua also from 1928,
or Floresta,
Sol poente of
1929 (Figure 6). In June of 1928, the artist met Oswald in Paris, and there she
had her second individual exhibition, with a diversified French critique, which
highlighted the growing stylization in her works, mainly as from Abaporú.
Figure 5. Tarsila do Amaral, Figure 6. Tarsila do Amaral,
Urutú, oil on canvas, 1928. Sol poente, oil
on canvas, 1929.
4. Anthropophagy
and aesthetic decolonization
In 1929, Tarsila made some
sketches (Figure 7) that she used in Antropofagia (Figure
8). In the image two naked bodies can be seen, immersed in a high and exuberant
tropical environment, human and vegetal morphology interacting (in the same way
as in Abaporú). The atmosphere portrayed emitted an “involving warmth that consumes the main characters
as well as the environment itself, achieving a formal permutation between
man/nature[20].” The female figure came from A Negra of 1923 and the male silhouette
from Abaporú
of 1928, in a similar position but facing the other direction, like a mirror.
The cut of the protagonists in first plane was accentuated by the choice of
colors. The use of fleshy tones with shades of orange unified the couple that,
from the expressive deformations in the relation of the size of their heads,
bodies, legs and feet, recreated a dynamism of curves
and counter curves with a background of deep greens. The sun ambiguously
simulated a slice of orange or lemon, a star in the sky. The plain, serene and
almost imperceptible fracture was, at the same time, exulting and sensitive, in
the midst of a geometric drawing which evoked ghostly areas linked to the
anthropophagic rite.
Actually, cultural anthropophagy paved the
way for a radicalized vanguardism in which the break
from artistic pre-established canons (a quest started by the modernists in the
Week in 1922) and the polemic response revolving around an exotic
representation of Brazil coincided. Tarsila’s
painting, from its very title, referred to the mechanism of absorbing and
assimilating the virtues of the enemy. Let us remember that this fact had
negative connotations in the time of the conquest because the habits of the
anthropophagic groups (according to the narrations of travelers) were appalling
under the eyes of the Europeans, a perception that would be modified after the
Freudian theories of instinct and the unconscious[21].
Figure 7. Tarsila do Amaral, Figure 8. Tarsila
do Amaral,
Sketches on Anthropophagy, Abaporú, oil on canvas, 1929.
Drawing, 1929.
In this case, Tarsila
underlined the anthropophagic notion re-signifying the cannibalistic act,
accentuating the processing and symbolic absorption as a factor of resistance
to European hegemony, which it finally swallowed in a reaffirmation of the constant
functions of life and death. The artist new the tacit link
between anthropophagy and the Tupinambás[22], who established a relation between
sacrificial food (anthropophagy), courage, and bravery. These natives
were characterized by their intelligence and a constant inclination for war,
which had a fundamental role for them, as it was considered a sacred attitude,
reserved just for some. The bravery and the warlike attitude of the chief were
deduced by the number of enemies he killed, who were afterwards eaten by the
community in a ritual ceremony. In the graphic descriptions of the 16th
century captured by Théodore de Bry,
there were many scenes of these natives, taking prisoners and dismembering them
so as to put them in a steaming pot, killing their victims with a voracious
attitude, grilling the pieces of human bodies that would be avidly eaten by
them, or left to the mercy of animals to be killed, as punishment. Said
representations have promoted a partial and despotic construct, functional to
the civilizing project and, therefore, arguable that, in its way, is confronted
by the pictorial anthropophagy of Tarsila.
At the same time, in certain anthropophagic rites
their deities were fed with hearts, constituting an element of exchange between
men and gods. In other cases, there existed a process of symbolic synthesis, as
was the case of cannibalistic dancing in the Kwakiutl, in which cannibal desire was subject to a power that was
integrated to the personality of the individual. Débora
Root (1998) has noted the banalization and simplification of cannibalism articulated
by the colonial occidental culture by reconstructing the ritual Kwakiutl objects, taking them out of
context and conceiving their cannibal practices as monstrous[23]. Later on, the appropriation of European
vanguards emerged, with respect to these material cultures, exemplified in
surrealism and its search for irrational structures seen under the lens of
exoticism. The aboriginal was described as a predatory cannibal, when many
times their rituals implied an allegoric and not real anthropophagy.
Decontextualized appropriation, described by Root, as well as the virulent view
about the native is reconstructed in all the anthropophagic proposals of Tarsila.
In the painting Antropofagia, the tridimensionality of spherical
echoes of the human bodies in the vegetable volumes proposed a game of profiles
where physical nudity was integrated with the tropical environment. In the
colonial centuries, tropicalims in the Brazilian
landscape was represented in an aseptic way. The Dutch painter Frans Post, in
the 17th century, translated real climates, of voluptuousness and exuberance,
into quiet and distant landscapes, perhaps as atemporal
fictions. These biased visual legends made the sustantivity
of American geography plain, like postcards that cooled a disruptive idea of
tropicalism. The work of Tarsila overcame the
representation of alterity from the Occidental idea (in which paradise-like
geography was leveled with unrestrained sexuality) and from the discrepancy,
she proposed new distinctive icons of national identity. It was a time of the pictorial
phase that opened questions about the genuine nature of Brazilian culture and
that viewed the anthropophagic exercise as an instrument of anti-hierarchy or
as a promoter of an ethnic and poetic valuation, impossible to dissociate from
the writing of Oswald and the figurative interpretations of the artist herself.
After the circulation of the news about
the existence of anthropophagic groups in the area of the Amazon, in 1928 there
was a semantic twist focused in the cannibalization of the culture, activating
the mechanism that reverses the colonizer/colonized equation. When the
colonizing discourse attempted to minimize the differences, and neutralize
alterities with the objective of carrying out a task of whitening, not only
politically speaking but also eminently in physical and racial elements,
cultural anthropophagy was the answer to hegemonic tactics. Overcoming the
fixed positions, Antropofagia dissolved the notions of time and
occidental space, a reminder of the initial time of the Matriarcado de Pindorama, anticipated by the
premises of the anthropologist Bachofen, the Tierra de Palmeras, the
non-colonized territory. The preponderance of the racial way of thinking was
articulated with the colonialism of knowledge. The doubtful “scientific
ideology of what is popular”, questioned by Roberto Da Matta (1983)[24] installed, for a long time, the notions
of “race” and “racism”, perpetuating the curiosity for the indigenous from a
segregationist phase. In this sense, Antropofagia activated a collision mechanism, reinforcing
the questionings with regard to the America/Europe relationship. In the local/universal
equation, painting assumed a cosmopolitan role that, in the vanguard was rooted
in its territorial habitat, and understood as a national and cultural
discourse, defied social prejudices, reaffirming a position in front of the
colonizer.
The modernity of the 20s in Brazil
appealed to areas of primitivism as an event that was connected with a native
past, a past mobilized from aesthetic codes. The notion of anthropophagic
primitivism as a vanguardist refunctionalization
of an indigenous ritual matrix[25] is present in the work of Tarsila. It can be observed in the configuration of the
bodies, in the puzzling vegetation that broke from the mimetic nature in the
art and the pictorial carnality, which reinforced the cultural difference. The
primitive sign exacerbated the indigenous virtues, proposing a change in the
conceptual order and in the plastic approach, creating a peculiar image framed
in the Brazilian context. The range of tools used by the
artist incorporated vanguard resources and made visible the confluence of modernization
processes and the local landscape. From a different angle, Antropofagia
eroded the bases of the classical visual codes already instituted in order to disembark
in the peculiarity of indigenous Brazil.
5. Conclusions
Tarsila's production stimulated Oswaldian
literature and its derivatives towards anthropophagy. She fostered aesthetic
decolonization and the dislocation of classical schemes of power, present in a
19th century society, which condemned the morality associated with the life and
the customs of the aboriginal or the black people. Her work promoted debates on
local culture, giving rise to a proteic sense of
identity in a social community with substantial indexes of ethnic mixes. Antropofagia
summarized an almost tautological mark, that is, the very same process of
national social formation, the absorption of the other and of the others from
an exchange which postulated the regional aspect in the mixture. This
anthropophagic modality adopted foreign, chewed on and processed aesthetic
components, marking a history characterized by complex mechanisms that took
place in Brazil from the European conquest until contemporary times. The
decolonizing inflexion of Antropofagia can
be seen in the aesthetic affront, which it introduces with respect to a
colonial condition, in the visual twist that it brings about as from a concise,
concrete, and plastically suggestive drawing. The audacity in the planes of
color and their pronounced level of synthesis make of this painting a disruptive
icon, the result of a vanguardist transformation
process in Brazil and Latin America.
During 1929[26], Tarsila would
also create an important series of Dibujos antropofágicos [Anthropophagic drawings] (Figure 9)
with ink on paper, where she synthetized what Aracy Amaral expressed in her writings in the 70s and Jorge
Schwartz confirmed afterwards, what it took to be Brazilian, which made an
allusion to the fusion of nationalism and current renewal from a summarized
iconography. The artist herself admitted in an interview: "(...) if there
is one good thing I have in my art, it is its spontaneous "Brazilianness", from 1924 up to now, that is, the
phase I call Pau Brazil and, lately, the anthropophagic phase[27]." To emphasize the decolonizing
aesthetic proposal of Tarsila do Amaral
takes us to re-read her contributions from the visual sphere in the framework
of a dialogic, national project in a permanent pursuit of the Latin American identity,
as it happened in the vanguards of the first decades of the 20th century.
Figure 9. Tarsila do Amaral
Paisaje antropofágico IV, graphite on paper
1929.
Bibliography
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Altamirano, Carlos (director). Términos críticos de Sociología de
la cultura. Buenos
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__________ “As ideais no contexto da
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Bienal / Banco Santos, 1998.
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cultural: sentidos y desplazamientos”. En: Campos Alicia y Rocchietti, Ana
María (comp.). Coloquio Binacional
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CIP-ISPJVG-DOCUPRINT, 2009.
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To cite this article:
María Elena Lucero, “Narratives of Brazilian
Modernism. Tarsila do Amaral
and the Anthropophagic Movement as Aesthetic Decolonization”, Historia y Memoria N°10 (January-June,
2015): 75-96.
* This article is the product of the doctoral thesis: Tarsila modernista desde América
Contemporánea (Tarsila, a modernist from Contemporary America).
[1] Doctor of Humanties and Arts (Special mention:
Fine Arts), Universidad Nacional de Rosario,
Argentina. Professor at the Universidade Federal da Integraçâo
Latino Americana, Brazil; Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina. Research groups: Red de Estudios Visuales
Latinoamericanos (REVLAT, by its acronym in Spanish) - Centro de Estudios
Visuales Latinoamericanos (CEVILAT, by its acronym in Spanish) [Network of
Latin American Visual Studies – Center of Latin American Visual Studies,
respectively]. Lines of research: Latin American Art, Visual Studies,
Decoloniality-Feminism. Email
address: elenaluce@hotmail.com
[2] Miguel Ángel Esquivel, “Utopía, estética y revolución en las
vanguardias artísticas de América Latina 1920-1930”, in: Alberto Híjar, Arte y utopía en América Latina (México:
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes / Centro Nacional de Investigación,
Documentación e Información de Artes Plásticas, 2000), 134.
[3] Raúl Antelo, “Una enciclopedia modernista”, in: Abraza Brasil. Hilos modernos y tramas
contemporáneas, ramona Nº 92, revista de artes visuales (Buenos Aires:
Fundación Start, 2009), 10.
[4] Modernity in the artistic field refers to
the transformations linked to what was new and to aesthetic experimentation,
although without connoting the aggressive and rupturist profile of the
vanguard. However, modernism in Brazil (from there come the notion of São Paulo
modernity) was included in the vanguard movements initiated as from 1922, due
to the disruptive tone that was exhibited in relation to their prior artistic
tradition. Gonzalo Aguilar, “Modernismo”, in: Carlos Altamirano, (director), Términos críticos de Sociología de la cultura (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2008), 180.
[5] In 1857, El guaraní by Alencar was published, where the national identity
was forged in the link between a young blond woman and an aboriginal chief.
Thus, the Brazilian character depended on a blood mix, where blackness was
excluded.
[6] Reynaldo Roëls Jr,
“Lo moderno y el modernismo: 30 años de arte brasileño”, in: Panorama del Arte del Brasil en el Siglo XX.
Colección Gilberto Chateaubriand / MAM-RJ. Catálogo de Exposición (Buenos
Aires: MAMBA, 1999), 42.
[7] The Week of 1922 gathered artists such as
Anita Malfatti (who had launched an avant
garde premise in her exhibitions), Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, John Graz,
Martin Ribeiro, Zina Aita, Yan de Almeida Prado, Ferrignac and Vicente do Rego
Monteiro. There were also other participants, for example: the composer Héctor
Villa Lobos; the architects Antonio García Moya and Przyrembel; and the sculptors
Victor Brecheret and Wilhelm Haarberg. Many of the works presented were later
part of a special collection of the poet Mário de Andrade.
[8] Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) was
the author of the Manifiesto Futurista
of 1909, published by Le Figaro. His
prose emphasized modern speed, energy, danger, and venerated war as the “only
possible hygiene for the world.” As from 1919, he took part in the Italian
fascist movement.
[9] The writing of Klaxon was the product of those debates, a manifest included in the
magazine of the same name (1922-1923). Of an ironic tone, Klaxon referred to the horn of the car; a metaphor that alluded to
the noise, the call of attention and the awakening of a new and modern
sensitivity. It marked the differentiation and the affirmation of a national
and unique position which led the past behind to celebrate the present, where
jazz, Charles Chaplin and laughter are synonyms of modernity against the
romanticism of the previous century. In: Jorge Schwartz, Vanguardia y
cosmopolitismo en la década del Veinte. Oliverio Girondo y Oswald de Andrade (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2002),
73.
[10] Aracy Amaral, “As ideais no contexto da
Semana”, in: Aracy Amaral, Artes
plásticas na Semana de 22. Subsídios para uma história da renovação das artes
no Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, Debates-Arte, 1979), 209.
[11] Aracy Amaral, “As ideais no contexto da...199.
[12] The discourse of Menotti was criticized
and questioned by authors like Amadeu Amaral, who accused him of lacking faith
in the modernists and revealed, in his exclamations, the acritical penetration
of foreign influences.
[13] On occasions, both female artists took as
their axis one same image. They started to design the sketches and continued the
following pictorial phase, as was the case of Mário de Andrade, portrayed by
both of them: Tarsila painted him in shades of blue and oranges, a more geometrical
composition; and Anita, prioritizing the greens and yellows, with a free and
expressive gesture. Writers
accompanied them by reading their poems.
[14] Artists of the late 19th century, such as
Décio Villares, recreated aboriginal women as romantic women without real ties
with society, as apparent bearers of a fragility that kept them distant. The
profile of a classical Athena in the feminine synthesis of the Republic was
applied. Pedro Américo de Paraíba, Brazil, painted La carioca in France. In it, he described the nudity of a Brazilian woman under the
neoclassical imprint, creating an allegory of an apolitical, paradise-like,
distant, and idealized femininity. This canvas was, at that time, offered to
Emperor Peter II and rejected by him because it did not fulfill the moral
criteria of the time. In 1919, Pedro Bruno painted La Patria, where a group of daughters, mothers and grandmothers
could be observed, embroidering a large national flag. Apart from underlining
symbols like the motherland and the flag, the role of women was highlighted, as
the support of the education of their children, the family and the nation
itself. In: José Murilo
de Carvalho, La formación de las almas.
El imaginario de la República en el Brasil (Buenos Aires: Colección
Intersecciones, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1997).
[15] In general lines, between 1920 and 1933, the artist traveled not only
around Brazil and Latin America, but also around Europe –including the Soviet
Union- and the Middle East. She collected diverse objects, which were part of
her trips, such as photographs, plane tickets, theater tickets, to which she
added her graphic notes.
[16] Maria Alice Setubal,
“A visão hegemónica da mîdia: transmutações do
caipira”, in: Setubal, Maria Alice, Vivèncias caipiras. Pluralidade cultural e diferentes
temporalidades na aterra paulista (São Paulo: Coleção Terra Paulista,
CENPEC, Imprensa oficial do Estado de São Paulo, 2005), 66.
[17] Regina Texeira de Barros, “Tarsila viajante”
in AAVV, Tarsila viajante-viajera, Catálogo de Exposición (Brasil: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo,
Brasil, 19 January to 16 March, 2008 / Buenos Aires; MALBA Fundación
Costantini, 27 March to 2 June,
2008), 28
[18] Herkenhoff,
Paulo, “A cor no modernismo brasileiro – a navegação com muitas bússolas”, in Núcleo histórico: Antropofagia é Histórias de Canibalismos, Catálogo de XXIV Bienal de São
Pablo, (São Paulo: Fundação Bienal / Banco Santos, 1998), 340.
[19] Aracy Amaral, “Antropofagia: No País de la Cobra Grande”, in: Aracy
Amaral, Tarsila – Sua obra e seu tempo,
Vol. I. Arte (São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva S.A., Editora da Universidade de
São Paulo, 1975), 259.
[20] Lucero, María Elena, “El Arte Latinoamericano como patrimonio
cultural: sentidos y desplazamientos”, in Campos Alicia and Rocchietti,
Ana María (comp.), Coloquio Binacional Argentino Peruano. Perspectiva Latinoamericana (Buenos Aires: CIP-ISPJVG-DOCUPRINT,
2009), 320.
[21] With respect to cannibalism, Peggy Reeves
Sanday has defined the practice of cannibalism as a cultural system that was
beyond the notions of life or death, where ritual cannibalism contains
ontological structures that are equivalent to a particular way of being in the
world. In Peggy Reeves
Sanday, El Canibalismo como sistema
cultural (Barcelona: Editorial Lerna, 1987).
[22] During 1922, Monteiro Lobato organized a
series of narrations corresponding to expeditioners in Brazil, in the 16th
century, among them Staden, de Léry
and Thevet. In 1926, the Diário da Noite,
from São Paulo, published the texts translated by Lobato
about the experiences of
Staden, the aboriginals in Brazil and the
anthropophagic practice in Hans
Staden entre os Selvagens do Brasil, information that started to circulate and that was
read by Tarsila and Oswald. In Ferreira de Almeida, Maria Cândida, “Só a antropofagia nos une”,
in: Daniel Matto (comp), Cultura,
política y sociedad. Perspectivas latinoamericanas. Colección Grupos de
Trabajo (Buenos Aires: CLACSO Libros, 2005), 83-106.
[23] Deborah Root, “Devorando o caníbal: um conto de precaução da apropiação
cultural”, in: Sección Roteiros. Roteiros. Roteiros. Roteiros.
Roteiros. Roteiros. Roteiros, Catálogo XXIV Bienal de São Pablo (São Paulo:
Fundação Bienal / Banco Santos, 1998), 180-184.
[24] Roberto Da Matta, Relativizando: Uma Introdução à Antropología
Social (Petrópolis, Brasil: Editora Voçes Ltda, 1983).
[25] Viviana Gelado, “El primitivismo
antropofágico del modernismo brasileño como forma de valorización de lo
popular”, in: Poéticas de la
Transgresión. Vanguardia y Cultura Popular en los Años Veinte en América Latina
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Corregidor, 2008), 161-236.
[26] On that year, the surrealist poet
Benjamin Péret, arrived in São Paulo. He delivered a
conference where he postulated the direct relation between surrealism and
anthropophagy, both concepts linked with the emancipation of men’s contentions
and repressions, and with ways of reestablishing psychic liberation.
[27] Aracy Amaral, “Antropofagia...277.