Page 103 - ARTE!Brasileiros #58

despite praising carnivalized meetings”, he concludes, Group of five is a drawing that Anita Malfatti *** [PAGE 10]
recalling that at the beginning of the century, the produced in the second half of 1922, a few months after If Anita, in the second half of 1922, finds herself
project in force since the end of the 19th century was the Semana de Arte Moderna. In it, the artist, in addition connected with issues specific to the international
the whitening. of the nation. And he warns: “When we to portraying herself lying on a divan in the studio of her art of that period – a time of avant-garde reflux and an
exchange a solemn imperial repression for another friend Tarsila do Amaral, also records Mário de Andrade adherence to an effective synthetic realism, typical of [PAGES 11 ANd 12]
repression, it is not a de-repression”. remembering and Tarsila at the piano and, lying on a rug, Menotti the aforementioned Return to Order – it can be seen,
that at the beginning of the century, the project in force Del Picchia and Oswald de Andrade. In the drawing, both by the painting that she was producing at the time
since the end of the 19th century was the whitening of therefore, five of the main modernists of São Paulo were as well as for the whole of her studio, that Tarsila do
the nation. And he warns: “When we exchange a solemn represented who, for a brief period, developed a strong Amaral still had a subjectivity linked to the period before [PAGES 13 to 15]
imperial repression for another repression, it is not a coexistence. Observing them together could lead us to the First World War, an issue that the artist would begin
de-repression”. remembering that at the beginning of imagine a coincidence of positions and purposes. But to want to overcome precisely from the knowledge she
the century, the project in force since the end of the 19th we know that things did not happen that way. This text, acquired with her new Brazilian friends, Anita, Menotti,
century was the whitening of the nation. And he warns: not without some sadness, shows some issues that Mario and Oswald.
“When we exchange a solemn imperial repression for connected the members of the group and in the future However, in 1922, his studio was closer to Helios’
another repression, it is not a de-repression”. they would become studies of the artistic and cultural description than to Anita’s drawing. And both Tarsila and
reality of São Paulo at the time. Helios would never completely abandon that attachment
moDernist women *** to the sumptuous and exotic. This fact, in the case of the
Modernism is not only made of Mário and Oswalds, Anitas What stands out in Grupo dos Cinco (pen and pencil painter, can be seen both in the maintenance of that stilted
and Tarsilas. Evidently, the Andrades, as many call the on paper) is that both the delicacy of the line and the use atmosphere in her studio – still in the late 1920s - and in
two greatest writers of modernism and who made their of color and the search for a formal synthesis – which the extravagant and showy clothes that the artist loved
first-rate appearance in Semana de 22, are unavoidable. gives it a certain purposeful “primitivism” – have nothing to wear on certain occasions. On the other hand, if we
After all, they developed over decades some of the most to do with the production that Anita carried out between want to understand how much Tarsila also sought, in her
solid cultural projects for the country, suffice it to mention the early 1910s and 1917. Here she is far from her aesthetic production, a certain interest in the exotic and mysterious,
the Anthropophagic Manifesto, formulated by Oswald motivations derived from the historical avant-gardes we only need to remember her “anthropophagic phase”:
in 1928, and the entire project to survey and preserve (Expressionisms, Futurism, etc.), now more attentive to the potent, structural dryness of a large part of her
the national heritage led by the author of Macunaíma. and adherent to a synthetic realism, linked to the Return pau-brasil production, she opposes the sensuality and
Mário, by the way, is one of the few to be remembered to Order [1] . the enigmas of the new phase.
in these celebrations with a solo exhibition, on display The affectionate design, more interested in highlighting ***
at the Afro Brasil Museum. the companionship that involved the five friends, makes In Helios, the taste for the elegant and the rare will
In the case of the two painters, it is interesting to note Anita neutralize the fin-de-siècle sumptuousness of remain, since both he and his “mentor”, Menotti Del
how they were, at the same time, elected to a prominent Tarsila’s studio, maintained throughout the 1920s. from Picchia, did not overcome their penchant for the excess
role in Brazilian art due to their proximity to the ideas of the textures of the countless pillows and rug as well as of late-century language, full of allegories, verbal juggling
the Week, but at the same time they paid a price for it. As the sophisticated shape of a chair in the background – as and far-fetched verbiage. A representative of the “B”
Ana Paula Simioni demonstrates in Mulheres Modernistas well as the decorative elements of the divan where the side of modernism, Helios - Menotti -, will adopt, after
, her involvement with the group ended up causing the gaze portraitist represents herself lying down. that joint portrait, an extreme nationalism, adhering to
on her productions to be restricted to the initial period, *** the most conservative and restrictive regimes, which
with the rest of her work being for a long time seen as If Anita is delicate and synthetic in her description of will tend to intensify his antiquated belletrist discourse.
decadent or inferior. They also end up being framed in the studio, the same would not occur with a text by Helios In fairness, however, it would also be important to note
narrow models, Anita being eternally framed in the role (a pseudonym of Menotti Del Picchia) in which he also that Menotti on certain occasions – especially in his
of “martyr”, victim of Monteiro Lobato’s attacks in the talks about a meeting that took place in that same studio. chronicles on Brazilian poetry and literature – will often
criticism of his 1917 exhibition, and Tarsila in the role of However, instead of five characters in Anita’s drawing, assume a text structure closer to the other modernists
“muse”, of the beautiful and seductive woman. Helios describes six people: the same people who formed (especially Oswald), sometimes “seriously” , sometimes
According to Simioni, one of the positive effects the group of five, with the exception of Oswald, replaced by with undisguised mockery intent.
of celebrations like this one around the Week would Jacques D’Avray – the pseudonym of senator Freitas Valle ***
be a recovery of modernism as a research topic, with [2] . Finally, Mario Amaral, popular guitarist, revered in the Without knowing for sure where the blague ended
emphasis on studies that seek to rescue artists or less early 1920s in São Paulo, but little known today [3] . The and the seriousness began, the fact is that Mário de
studied phases, especially among women artists who first five are gathered there to hear the guitarist’s music: Andrade – another of the characters in Anita’s drawing
have been relegated to a role for a long time. secondary and Helios’ chronicle -, in 1922, already shows signs of
or non-existent in the history of art. One of those figures In the large workshop of Bulgarian pillows, where having joined the Retorno à Ordem, as Anita. This is what
who, according to her, deserves to be better known is Nair the colors of Manilla’s mantles , riches of the bric- is clear in a certain part of the Prefácio Interessantíssimo
de Teffé, the first caricaturist in Brazil and possibly the á-brac nobleman of this elegant and beautiful artist that the author wrote for his book of poems, released
world, who married none other than President Hermes Tarsila do Amaral shouted, Mário’s guitar evoked that year, Pauliceia desvairada :
da Fonseca. Among the many merits of Nair is that of all the music of race...
having taken O Corta-jaca, a popular composition by (…) Now, according to moderns, Impressionism
Chiquinha Gonzaga, into the Palácio do Catete in 1914. Absorbed, vacant gaze, Jacques d’Avray, the strange is a serious error.
“We fight for the past because we live in a present of poet of the Ballads; Mário de Andrade, the long Architects flee the Gothic as well as Art Nouveau,
destruction”, says Ana Paula, in line with the idea defended taciturn Pierrot of Pauliceia’s ravings; Anita Malfatti, joining, beyond historical times, in the elementary
by Lauro Cavalcanti that more than ever it is necessary the misunderstood creator of the Yellow Man; Helios, volumes: cube, sphere, etc. Painters disdain
to celebrate modernity, as a way of counteracting the quenched their thirst for beauty in the crystalline Delacroix like Whistler, to lean on the constructive
destruction of its legacy – it is enough see the dismantling cascade of harmonies that sprouted, as in a live stream calm of Raphael, Ingres, Greco. In sculpture Rodin
of cultural structures that have been strategically of the magical and sonorous guitar… is bad, African imaginaries are good. The musicians
orchestrated by the current government, such as the One afternoon he walked [illegible], fading into violet despise Debussy, kneeling before the cathedral
dismantling of the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e lacquers, begging the reflections of the glass for alms of polyphony of Palestrina and João Sebastião Bach.
Artístico Nacional (IPHAN), one of the most important light for his dead eyes. No profane noise hurt the religious Poetry… “tends to strip man of all his contingent and
legacies of Mário de Andrade and his generation – without silence, filled only by the divine music that Mário Amaral’s ephemeral aspects, in order to capture humanity
falling into the trap of using vital contemporary issues to, nervous hands woke up. [4] in him”…I am a past-timer, I confess (…) [6]
anachronistically, make demands on the agents of the If Anita zeroes in on the heavy and exotic atmosphere
past. After all, it is necessary to be aware that, as Thiago of the studio, it seems that it is precisely the somewhat As every lie has a basis of truth, it is not strange that,
Virava says, we have an “incomplete, flawed and full of intoxicating dimension of this atmosphere that directs behind the intelligent mist thrown on the text (was it blague
holes modernity”. Helios’ writing, totally marked by a decadent bias, full or was it serious?), Mario de Andrade was glossing the
of affected adjectives, far from modern objectivity. A thought present in the manifesto After Cubismo , written
Centennial week of 22 ArtIClE [PAGES 64 to 69] little more text: in 1918 by the painters Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard
Jeanneret (Le Corbusier):
NOTES ON THE GROUP The suggestive, emotional music cut, in the (…) Cubism became a decorative art of romantic
twilight that invaded the workshop , the Brazilian
OF FIVE: A HINT OF landscape, at the still hour of the day in a death ornamentalism.
trance, sick with melopeias, whispering of favonios
MELANCHOLY IN THE rubbing the soft herbs. Then, in the “Blue Sky” a There is a hierarchy in the arts; decorative art is at
the bottom, the human figure at the top.
vast firmament expanded in our souls, a region of
CENTENARY OF THE peace and eternity... There seemed to be hearts
WEEK sobbing, up there, where passions overflow free Painting is good when the qualities of its plastic
from conventionalists and restraints.
elements are good, not because of its possibilities
of representation or narrative.
Drawing by Anita Malfatti in 1922, which Mario Amaral’s great art, however, has all the prisms.
portrays her alongside Mário de Andrade, And, to the naively grotesque “pizzicatos” of “Melindres”, PUrISMo expresses the invariant, not the variations.
Tarsila do Amaral, Menotti Del Picchia precious, bouncy, sensitive, we seemed to see bizarre The work must not be accidental, exceptional,
and Oswald de Andrade, presents authors figures of small and sprightly dancers slipping on the impressionistic, inorganic, protesting, picturesque,
but, on the contrary, general, static, an expression
lozenge of the vast Persian carpet, with skittish weights,
who with time moved away artistically, slithering gestures, gliding, smiling on their faces. mouth, of the invariable.
affectively and ideologically sliding, smile in the mouth, soul in the eyes, naked, playful
and trembling ciranda rhythmic by the systoles of our PUrISMo wants to conceive clearly, to execute
By tAdEU CHIArEllI hearts in parties… [5] loyally, without falsehoods; he abandons disorderly
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