Page 94 - ARTE!Brasileiros #58

ENGLISH VERSION DEMOCRACY AND REPARATION

which is unacceptable. For Kant, the artist is a means of series of standards from the colonial model of historical always sought, in its great teleological and triumphal
creating the beautiful (or the sublime), but his subjectivity narrative. The monstrous force of the aesthetic device constructions, to conceal this element of barbarism.
is in fact erased just as any political context is: “[A]ny in its colonial version cannot be overlooked. This device In other words, to be clear, when speaking of the
interest vitiates judgement of taste and takes away its is also reinforced by much of the history that narrates testimonial content of a work, we’re not “reducing it” to
impartiality” (Kritik der Urteilskraft, §13; 1959, 62). With Brazilian Black art. its “mere” historical and ethnological element. Rather,
Kant, the modern discourse of the universality of art it is breaking with the hegemony of the ideology of the
has been established, which is inseparable from its only the afro-brazilian hanD aesthetic-colonial that concealed this testimonial element
apparent “apoliticality.” I say only apparent, because Thus, even in a fundamental work in the process of self- of cultural inscription.
behind the universality there is a powerful policy of af”rmation of Brazilian Black art, such as the volume A
effacement of the “other” and of differences. Only “great mão Afro-Brasileira. Signi!cado da Contribuição Artística “there is no blaCk art in Contemporary brazilian
European art,” from ancient Greece to modernity, is e Histórica [The Afro-Brazilian Hand. Meaning of the art…”
accepted as art. Artistic and Historical Contribution], collated by none other But let us return to the historical construction of Brazilian
Classicism, which forms the basis of the birth of than the artist, collector and founder of the Afro-Brazilian Black art. Aracy Amaral, one of the country’s most
art history for Winckelmann, and also upholds Kant’s Museum, Emanoel Araújo (1988), we can identify this fact. prominent art critics, once again in the 1988 collection,
aesthetic theory of art, establishes itself as a powerful This catalogue came about together with the exhibition of proposes in her essay “A Busca da Forma de Expressão
ontotipological machine (Lacoue-Labarthe & Nancy, 1991). the same name held at The Museum of Modern Art of São na Arte Contemporânea” re!ecting on this search “in
This classic model creates the “proper” by eliminating the Paulo, which in 1988 on the occasion of marking 100 years contemporary art by epidermically not-so-white artists”
“other” that is produced in this same gesture of annihilation. since the abolition of slavery in Brazil, intended to restore (1988, 247). In other words, in a somewhat oblique manner,
We are dealing with a device, the aesthetic device, the role of Blacks in the history of national art. But, just in she raises the issue of Afro-descent as being important in
perhaps the most violent that modernity has created, for it the title, we can already see that the dominant perspective her proposal, but ends up, in the course of her work, also
is through this that the dividing line is produced between in the exhibition and in the catalogue reproduced the mentioning artists who have dealt in a merely “thematic”
those worthy of rights and compassion and those who idea that we have a unique history of art, like a great river way with issues associated with Afro-Brazilian culture.
are the “!esh” of the colonial machine (Seligmann-Silva, !owing, fed by its secondary tributaries, one of which is the She rightly recalls that:
2019a). The aesthetic device is an ally of the colonial “contribution” made by the Afro-Brazilian hand. Here we
device; both produce and annihilate their “others.” In have the powerful historicist model of an organic formation If in the colonial period most of our artistic treasures
order to exist, the “proper” (European) needs its non-self, composed of parts and we should now acknowledge came from enslaved or freed hands – mixed race of
the “other,” be it Africa or the East, as authors such as this speci”c “contribution,” which up until now has been Indians, blacks or mulattoes [sic] due to a clearly
Frantz Fanon (1952), Abdias Nascimento ([1976] 2016), barely recognised. The volume’s collator recalls the long biased tradition on the part of the Portuguese
Edward Said (1978) and Stuart Hall (2003) observed research process behind the compilation of this important whites, very recessive in dedicating themselves to
in the 20th century, and more recently, a whole series volume and exhibition aimed at recovering “at least partially, manual activities, and if we owe our artistic heritage,
of post-colonial authors have developed their works, the participation of Black and mixed-race man in the above all to artists and craftsmen of African origin,
including Achille Mbembe (2017), Walter Mignolo (2011), formation of the national culture” (1988, 9). The idea of for the same reason, in much of the country, we
Grada Kilomba (2019) and bell hooks (2014). a developing “national culture” reproduces a colonial see that the situation seems to change in the 19th
We can say that the struggle in the “eld of Afro- model of formation of the nation from the contributions century. (Id., 1988)
descendant arts in Brazil is the struggle for the recognition of different ethnicities or races.
of the violent, ideological element of effacing Blacks It is important that Araújo highlights the issue of Afro- With the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes [Imperial
and a myriad of cultures, in the midst of this “universal” descent and not Afro-Brazilian art in the book’s title itself, Academy of Fine Arts] during the “rst and second empires,
and universalising aesthetic ideology, which is “rst and but the texts will not remain faithful to the title, since, for with the painting of landscapes and still-lifes and above all
foremost white, Eurocentric and racist. Therefore, when the most part, they mix analyses of contributions from from indigenism (the romantic veneration of the original
we speak here of “black art,” whether Afrodescendant artists that are both Afro-descendant or not, but that populations of America), the Black and the caipira [yokel]
or Afro-Brazilian, I am referring to the art produced by they would all be valuing the contribution of a certain were also introduced as themes on the canvases of
artists who see themselves as part of a continuity of those African origin, which had until then been little valued. academic painters such as Almeida Junior, Abigail de
populations subjected to the history of violence and their Araújo writes: “[T]here is no legitimately Brazilian art Andrade and even the Spaniard Modesto Brocos, who
resistance to it. But, it is worth emphasising this point: today without the creative and powerful in!uence of the with his canvas “Ham’s Redemption” (1895) celebrates
for these artists, this is a conquest of that continuity. It is black man” (1988, 9). Nor will I discuss here the issue of the whitening of the Brazilian population, a theme dear
about overcoming an effacement imposed by powerful gender that permeates these positions, since there is to the aforementioned physician Nina Rodrigues. Amaral
policies of oblivion, which, in Brazil, ambiguously seek always talk of the “negro” – Black in the masculine – that recalls two academics who were discriminated against
to glamorise our history to the same extent that they is, the effacement of those Afro-Brazilian hands that because of their ethnic origin, Estevão Roberto da Silva
deny any continuity between the violence of the slave would not be of men, but I highlight again the idea of a and Antônio Rafael Pinto Bandeira, the latter of whom was
system and the biopolitical and racial violence of today. main vein of a legitimately Brazilian art (what would that driven to suicide because of this embarrassment. It is not
The history of Black art is the history of building bridges be?) that in its development receives “in!uences” from “tting here to retrace the steps of this essay, but to point out
and communication lines with the past (a traumatic the “negro.” In his presentation, Araújo also praises how it still “nds itself before the aforementioned shift in the
past that does not pass, that is stuck on hold), it is the the contribution made by psychiatrist and eugenicist understanding of the works of artists, which, in the context
history of breaking the concrete layer with which white Nina Rodrigues: “pioneer of anthropological studies in of the history of Afro-descendant art production, is also
colonial ideology sought to bury the history of class and Brazil, he was the “rst to call attention to the art of African equivalent to the decolonial shift. This same Aracy Amaral
racial violence in this country, as well as the history of settlers” (1988, 10), referring to Rodrigues’ 1904 essay, highlights the violence to which Blacks were subjected
struggles and resistance. You just have to look at our which is also part of the 1988 collection. in the 19th century and recalls the relationship between
Black cemeteries, literally under the concrete of our cities, the policies of whitening, effacement and oblivion. After
whether in Valongo, in Rio de Janeiro, or in the Liberdade art, DoCument, testimony: the Crisis in aesthetiCs presenting in rapid succession the names of artists such
(5) neighbourhood of São Paulo. To the extent that the This notion has produced a great deal of confusion in as Antônio Bandeira, Rubem Valentim, Almir Mavignier,
magma of this history of violence gushed forth, the shift the aesthetic debate of recent years and it is good not Edival Ramosa, Genilson Soares, Maria Lidia Magliani
in the history of Black art has also led to a radical break to miss the opportunity to try to shed some light on this and Octávio Araújo,(8) among others, Amaral writes:
with the ideology of aesthetics: the new Black art that issue. As I said above when I mentioned Hal Foster, he
was born from this soaking in the amniotic !uid of horror, had spotted an ethnological shift in artistic production at [I]n appreciating the work of these artists, as well
but also from the resistant struggle, is eminently political the end of the 20th century. This shift has to do with what as of their careers, it can be said that, with few
and critical of the discourse of amnestic universalism, I have called virada testemunhal na produção cultural exceptions, there is no black art in contemporary
the assimilator and destroyer of Black identity, to the [testimonial shift in cultural production] (Seligmann-Silva, Brazilian art, with a concern for af”rmation as such,
same extent that it seeks to establish the foundations 2019b, 28). This movement towards the “documentary” since the most diverse tendencies are noted in
of an afro-Atlantic culture. (hence, the high appreciation of this genre since then, these artists of colour or in those for whom this
The Black struggle also introduces new calendars and which has only increased in prestige until today) has led to characteristic has not even been de”ning in their
establishes new connections with founding pasts of new an increasingly close relationship between the production careers. (1988, 248)
presents. Black Brazilian art expresses this breakthrough and reception of works of art with the “eld of ethnology.
of the repressed past that is liberated in the course of To return to Benjamin, we can see his theses, written in Until now, therefore, we are very far from what would
its construction. It breaks with the false narrative of the threshold of the war, as a milestone in the construction soon happen with the boom in Black art at the beginning
colonial historiography, which relegates Black history of this sensitivity for a documental reading of works of of the following century. The author also “nds it dubious
to the labour camp or to pillories. Later I will address art. In his seventh thesis, he wrote, succinctly: “Es ist to hold an “exhibition of the production of artists for the
these images that function as veritable cover-up images niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein sole reason that their skin colour is darker.” It would
(Deckerinnerungen [screen memories], another Freudian solches der Barbarei zu sein” [It is never a document of only be pointing out something forgotten, or in other
concept, precious here, as we shall see). culture without also being a document of barbarism] words, the origin of these artists, since “the advanced
(2010, 86). This is, therefore, an education that involves […] stage of whitening means that in Brazil we don’t even
a paCifying history of art seeing, behind any cultural work, a structural violence consider its origin” (1988, 272). From this point of view, the
It is essential, however, before considering some that has sustained society and enabled that its cultural eugenicist project of whitening would have triumphed
examples of this new Black Brazilian art, for us to take a documents are produced in it, thereby breaking with the and there would have been no place to think of Black
look at the history of its history, i.e., where the creators aforementioned, supposedly innocuous aestheticism art in Brazil. But Aracy Amaral adds something in her
of narratives of Afro-Brazilian art history stand in this (which does so much harm) that sought to sever the ties reasoning that suggests a shift, even though she still
political-epistemological clash between the so-called between works of art and history and politics. There is, does not distinguish between Afrodescendant artists
“central,” Eurocentric history of art and the construction of therefore, something critical and emancipating in both and those who are inspired by Afro culture:
the speci”city of Black art, whether it is seen as Brazilian the subjective-ethnological shift in the arts at the end of
or positioning itself in the Afro-Atlantic space as a the 20th century and in that Benjaminian theory of culture The exceptions, of greatest interest for this very
multi-themed site of the diaspora. It is no surprise that as a document. Learning to read the testimonial content reason, are artists who let the ancestry of the
much of this history has reaf”rmed an exceptional, i.e., of the arts entails opening oneself to this reading against Afro-Brazilian rite transpire in their creations, in an
marginal, place in this history of Black art, reproducing a the grain of history, the traditional narrative of which has af”rmation of the quest for identity, as in the case of
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