Brazilian Modernists and the Avant-Garde: Transcultural Modernism in the Postcolonial Periphery

Silva, Patrícia

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-35546-2_8

Patrícia Silva³

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Abstract

This essay traces the reception of and reaction to mainstream European Avant-Garde Cubism and Futurism in Brazil, which coincided with the emergence of Brazilian Modernism, officially launched with the Modern Art Week of São Paulo in February 1922. According to Benita Parry’s characterisation of postcolonial peripheral modernisms, the extent and intensity of the asymmetries between modernism and modernity in those contexts engenders cultural production with a heightened degree of formal complexity and stylistic heterogeneity. This essay appraises the representation and critique of asymmetries arising from uneven modernisation and cultural (neo)colonialism in modernist poetry, manifestos and visual works produced by three key figures of the first Brazilian modernism, Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade and Tarsila do Amaral, as case studies of the dynamics of aesthetic modernism in a peripheral postcolonial context. The first section examines the dialogic relationship between Mário’s Paulicéia Desvairada [Hallucinated City] (1922) and Italian futurism, arguing that this inaugural poetry collection can be regarded as a paroxysmal response to the accelerated modernisation of São Paulo in the first decades of the twentieth century and a critique of the ‘coexistence of realities from radically different moments of history’ characteristic of what Jameson calls an ‘uneven moment of social development’. The multiple temporalities attendant on peripheral modernisms are also represented in Tarsila’s paintings from 1923–1924 and in Oswald’s poetry collection Pau-Brasil [Brazilwood] (1925), both of which transpose Cubism to a Brazilian context by incorporating cosmopolitan and indigenous cultural and formal elements. The concluding section appraises two key cultural texts of the first Brazilian modernism, Oswald’s ‘Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil’ [Brazilwood Poetry Manifesto] (1924) and ‘Manifesto Antropófago’ [‘Cannibalist Manifesto’] (1928), as enunciations of a discourse of resistance to European cultural hegemony.

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Notes

1.
Benita Parry, ‘Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms’, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 40:1, special issue Thinking Through Postcoloniality (2009), 27–56, p. 27.
2.
Parry, ‘Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms’, p. 29.
3.
Parry, ‘Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms’, p. 32.
4.
Parry, ‘Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms’, p. 36; quotes Roberto Schwarz, A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism: Machado De Assis, trans. John Gledson (Durham: Duke UP, 2001), p. 3.
5.
Parry, ‘Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms’, p. 33.
6.
Else R. P. Vieira, ‘Ig/noble Barbarians: Revisiting Latin American Modernisms’, in Postcolonial Perspectives on the Cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Africa, ed. by Robin Fiddian (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 51–78, p. 52.
7.
Leslie Barry, ‘The Tropical Modernist as Literary Cannibal: Cultural Identity in Oswald de Andrade’, Chasqui 20:2 (November 1991), 10–19, p. 12.
8.
Barry, ‘The Tropical Modernist as Literary Cannibal’, p. 12.
9.
Mariano Siskind, Cosmopolitan Desires: Global Modernity and World Literature in Latin America (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014), p. 104.
10.
Siskind, Cosmopolitan Desires, p. 104.
11.
Charles Perrone, ‘Presentation and representation of self and city in Paulicéia desvairada’, Chasqui, 31: 1 (May 2002), 18–27, pp. 20–21.
12.
Mark D. Steinberg, Petersburg Fin de Siecle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 40.
13.
Mário de Andrade, Hallucinated City/Paulicea [sic] Desvairada: a Bilingual Edition, trans. Jack E. Tomlins (Kingsport, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), pp. 74–75.
14.
Andrade, Hallucinated City, pp. 7, 11. Mário de Andrade, Poesias Completas, ed. Diléa Zanotto Manfio (Belo Horizonte; São Paulo: Itatiaia/Edusp, 1987), pp. 61, 67.
15.
Marcia Padilha Lotito, Cidade como espetáculo: publicidade e vida urbana da São Paulo dos anos 20 (São Paulo: Annablume, 2001), p. 18, my translation.
16.
Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), quoted in Parry, ‘Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms’, p. 32.
17.
Neil Larsen, Determinations: Essays in Theory, Narrative and Nation in the Americas (London: Verso, 2001), pp. 139–40, my emphasis.
18.
Parry, ‘Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms’, p. 32.
19.
Andrade, Hallucinated City, pp. 74–75: ‘Na confluência o grito inglês da São Paulo Railway…’; ‘Mas as ventaneiras da desilusão! a baixa do café!…’.
20.
Andrade, Hallucinated City, pp. 74–75: ‘Muito ao longe o Brasil com seus braços cruzados…’.
21.
Lopez, ‘Arlequim e Modernidade’, p. 86: ‘uma descoberta primeira, quase uma intuição, […] anunciando, para a continuação do movimento, o que Antonio Cândido chamará de “pré-consciência de nosso subdesenvolvimento”’, my translation.
22.
Andrade, Hallucinated City, pp. 74–75: ‘Ponhamos os (Vitória!) colares de presas inimigas! / Enguirlandemonos de café-cereja!’.
23.
Andrade, Hallucinated City, pp. 74–75: ‘escárnio para o mundo’; ‘orgulho máximo de ser paulistamente!!!’.
24.
Júlio Pinto, ‘Ruas de Borges e de seus contemporâneos’, História, São Paulo, 22: 2 (2003), 121–132, p. 124: ‘“ser paulistamente” é a marca de uma identidade que se faz pelo somatório de traços dissonantes, percepções distintas’, my translation.
25.
Mário’s letter quoted in Vinicius Dantas, ‘Entre “a negra” e a mata virgem’, Novos Estudos 45 (São Paulo: Cebrap, July 1996), 100–116, p. 103.
26.
Vinicius Dantas, ‘Entre “a negra” e a mata virgem’, p. 104: ‘“matavirgismo”, como os anteriores, é um ismo-piada que assinala sarcasticamente a relatividade dos radicalismos europeus e de seus transplantes brasílicos’.
27.
Vinicius Dantas, ‘Entre “a negra” e a mata virgem’, p. 104: ‘Abandona o Gris e o Lhote, empresários de criticismos decrépitos e de estesias decadentes! Abandona Paris! Tarsila! Tarsila! Vem para a mata virgem’.
28.
Mário da Silva Brito, História do modernismo brasileiro, 26–27; according to Brito, the original manuscript of the poem was lost.
29.
Júlia Silveira Matos, ‘As estruturas do cotidiano brasileiro na obra de Tarsila do Amaral’, Historiæ, 1:2 (Rio Grande, 2010), 85–102 (p. 87).
30.
Matos, ‘As estruturas do cotidiano brasileiro na obra de Tarsila do Amaral’, p. 90.
31.
Vinicius Dantas, ‘Entre “a negra” e a mata virgem’, Novos Estudos, 45, 100–116 (pp. 111–112).
32.
Vinicius Dantas, ‘Entre “a negra” e a mata virgem’, 109.
33.
Oswald de Andrade, Poesias reunidas (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1972), ‘Obras Completas VII’, p. 61.
34.
Jorge Schwartz, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts: the Brazilian Roaring Twenties’, Visiting Resource Professor Papers, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS), The University of Texas at Austin, p. 8, https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/4079 [accessed 13/07/2013].
35.
According to Vânia Carneiro de Carvalho, this trait was specifically associated with the ‘caipira’ in the state of São Paulo due to the large numbers of its inhabitants who were left without occupation following the end of the expansion inward in the eighteenth century. See Gênero e artefato: o sistema doméstico na perspectiva da cultura material, São Paulo 1870-1920 (São Paulo: Edusp, 2008), p. 307.
36.
Jorge Schwartz, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts: the Brazilian Roaring Twenties’, p. 18.
37.
Jorge Schwartz, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts: the Brazilian Roaring Twenties’, p. 19.
38.
Jorge Schwartz, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts: the Brazilian Roaring Twenties’, pp. 18–19.
39.
Jorge Schwartz, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts: the Brazilian Roaring Twenties’, p. 19.
40.
Andrade, Poesias reunidas, p. 61.
41.
Schwartz, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts: the Brazilian Roaring Twenties’, pp. 8–9.
42.
These include São Paulo, São Paulo Gazo, A Gare, and Estrada de ferro central do Brasil, all from 1924.
43.
Jorge Schwartz, Fervor das vanguardas: Arte e literatura na América Latina (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2013), p. 26: ‘[a] menção ao café ultrapassa o mero decorativismo ou a introdução da “cor local” como afirmação do nacional. Pelo contrário, São Paulo define nos anos 1920 o apogeu do baronato do café’.
44.
Schwartz, Fervor das vanguardas, p. 26: ‘[é] preciso compreender o modernismo com suas causas materiais e fecundantes, hauridas no parque industrial de São Paulo, com seus compromissos de classe no período áureoburguês do primeiro café valorizado’.
45.
Oswald de Andrade, ‘Manifesto of Pau-Brazil Poetry,’ trans. Stella M. de Sá Rego, Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 14, No. 27, Brazilian Literature (Jan.–Jun., 1986), 184–187, pp. 184, 187. Oswald de Andrade, ‘Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil’, Vanguarda européia e modernismo brasileiro: apresentação dos principais poemas, manifestos, prefácios e conferências vanguardistas de 1857 a 1972, ed. by Gilberto Mendonça Teles. (Petrópolis, RJ: Editora Vozes, 1983), pp. 326, 331: ‘Ser regional e puro em sua época’.
46.
Andrade, ‘Manifesto of Pau-Brazil Poetry’, Latin American Literary Review, pp. 185, 187. Andrade, ‘Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil’, Vanguarda européia e modernismo brasileiro, pp. 326, 331: ‘poesia de importação. E a Poesia Pau-Brasil, de exportação’; ‘A cozinha, o minério e a dança’.
47.
Fernando J. Rosenberg, The Avant-garde and Geopolitics in Latin America (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 2006), p. 5.
48.
Rosenberg, The Avant-garde and Geopolitics in Latin America, p. 6.
49.
Rosenberg, The Avant-garde and Geopolitics in Latin America, p. 5.
50.
Andrade, ‘Manifesto of Pau-Brazil Poetry’, Latin American Literary Review, p. 187. Andrade, ‘Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil’, Vanguarda européia e modernismo brasileiro, p. 331: ‘Tudo digerido.’
51.
The figure of the cannibal in Oswald’s manifesto was inspired by Tarsila’s painting from the same year entitled Abaporu, a Tupi word meaning ‘the man who eats people’.
52.
Barry, Chasqui, p. 13.
53.
Oswald de Andrade, ‘Manifesto Antropófago’, Revista de Antropofagia 1 (May, 1928), p. 7: ‘Absorção do inimigo sacro. Para transformal-o em totem’.
54.
Andrade, ‘Manifesto Antropófago’, Revista de Antropofagia 1, p. 3.
55.
Benedito Nunes, ‘Antropofagismo e Surrealismo’, Remate de Males 6 (June 1986), 15–26, pp. 18, 33.
56.
Irene Ramalho Santos, Atlantic Poets: Fernando Pessoa's Turn in Anglo American Modernism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2003), pp. 90–91.
57.
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, New York: Psychology Press, 1994, p. 355.
58.
Barry, Chasqui, 12.
59.
‘A luta entre o que se chamaria Incriado e a Criatura—ilustrada pela contradição permanente do homem e o seu Tabu. O amor cotidiano e o modus vivendi capitalista. Antropofagia’ (my translation).
60.
Silviano Santiago, The Space in Between: Essays on Latin American Culture, trans. and ed. Ana Lúcia Gazzola (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 16.
61.
Ángel Rama, Transculturación narrativa en América Latina (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1982).
62.
Beatriz Sarlo, Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión, 1988, pp. 28–29.
63.
Hermann Herlinghaus, Monika Walter (eds), Posmodernidad en la periferia: enfoques latinoamericanos de la neuva teoría cultural, Berlin: Langer, 1994, introduction, p. 23: ‘referência geográfico descritiva’; ‘noção funcional no marco da dependência’; ‘metáfora experimental de una perspectiva desde la cual se experimenta y se problematiza una modernidad específicamente heterogénea’.

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Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
Patrícia Silva

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Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of London, London, UK
Katia Pizzi
Department of Humanities, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
Roberta Gefter Wondrich

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Silva, P. (2024). Brazilian Modernists and the Avant-Garde: Transcultural Modernism in the Postcolonial Periphery. In: Pizzi, K., Gefter Wondrich, R. (eds) Rethinking Peripheral Modernisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35546-2_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35546-2_8
Published: 03 January 2024
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