Page 105 - ARTE!Brasileiros #59

Born in Pará in 1900, he moved to Rio de Janeiro supposedly shy modernism of Mario de Andrade the triumphal advance of modernism, when Mr. [page 10]
in the early 1920s to study law and, by the end of the and others, Costa placed himself outside that Getúlio Vargas makes the Week official, forcing
decade, was in São Paulo working on the Paulista movement, understanding himself and the other well-known pachyderms to publicly pronounce
Post Office and later also in Anthropophagy Journal. “anthropophagous” as the overcoming of the confused adesista nonsense, as well as the Brazilian
In the newspaper, in some of his texts, he signed with Modernism of 1922, and not its continuity. Academy to bend the rheumatic knee before us, when [pages 11 aND 12]
the pseudonym Antônio Raposo (which he also used Juscelino Kubitschek, the man who many years ago
in the Magazine), curiously a name that referred to *** called Oscar Niemeyer and Guignard to give aesthetic
Antônio Raposo Tavares, a pioneer active in Brazil But this way of thinking about São Paulo modernism continuity to the great Minas dos Inconfidentes and [pages 13 to 15]
between the 16th and 17th centuries. as a tree that, after the Semana de Arte Moderna, Aleijadinho, it’s difficult to be a pastime. [14]
It was in Mail that Costa published articles on some would have borne many and diverse fruits, as is well
modernists, among them Gregori Warchavchik known, is not only found in Augusto de Campos. Interestingly, in Oswald’s triumphalist vision of the
[3]
and Tarsila do Amaral. About the latter, Costa, as Other authors persisted and persist in this grandiose country’s artistic and cultural phenomenon, from
far as is known, would publish two texts: the first, understanding of São Paulo’s modernism and its 1917 to 1952, he is closer to Paulo Mendes de Almeida
on September 21, 1929, the author did not sign the hegemonic influence on the country’s art and culture. than his anthropophagous partner, Oswaldo Costa.
article; the following day, however, using the same When reading Oswald de Andrade’s recently
arguments and signing as Antônio Raposo, the released diary – Diáconfessional river – it is clear ***
[9]
critic places Tarsila as the most significant name in how, even for the main name of the Anthropophagic It is interesting to know and reflect on how Oswaldo
Brazilian painting at the time, and Cartãthe postcard, Movement, it was difficult to think of 1928, the date of Costa referred to both the production of Victor
as his main work . the Anthropophagous Manifesto, as a fundamental Brecheret and that of Anita Malfatti.
[4]
Some of his texts published in Anthropophagy split with the Modernism of 1922. In Moquem II - hors d’artwork, noting the growing
Journal, make it clear that, for cannibals, the In a certain part of his notes on the 30th anniversary decadence of Modernism, Costa explains his point

modernism of 1922 had foundered in a sea of cronyism of the Modern Art Week, hitherto unpublished, he of view on Brecheret’s career:
and lack of creativity. And this, not only in the field seems to have positioned himself as a supporter of
of literature, but also – or, above all – in the field the break between the Anthropophagous Movement … That’s why the Brecheret of Eva, capable of giving
of visual arts. and Modernism: “[…] and the commitment [sic] us an interesting work – only interesting, in my
politics in which the new Brazil would be forged. It opinion, because I don’t believe in mr. Brecheret
*** was there that the watershed that emerged in 1922. – was exchanged for the unbearably mediocre
Before bringing some data to the question, it is Antropofagia, through its magazine, brought together Brecheret of Mestrovic’s pastiches, fake, decadent,
important not to forget that Oswaldo Costa did not those who would later go with me to Marxism and to expressionless, superficial, boring, bourgeois art [15]
go unnoticed, either by the critic and researcher jail.” But for him, the division didn’t mean breakup
[10]
Aracy Amaral or by the intellectual and poet either. So much so that, later on, he continues his By this comment that disqualified the sculptor’s
Augusto de Campos. The author, of the book she reflection on the Anthropophagic Movement as a trajectory after his first European internship, it is
published about Tarsila do Amaral , pays attention “divider of waters that sprouted in 1922”: clear that the critic had some intimacy with the
[5]
to Oswaldo Costa’s critical position in relation sculptor’s production, and that he was attentive
to Tarsila, visible in the two articles cited, from […] The watershed of 1928 had provoked a to the adhesion of the then young artist to the
1929. However, despite citing him, Amaral leaves manifestation of content that separated the formulations of Ivan Mestrovic, a Croatian sculptor
no clues for the reader to become familiar with modernists into four groups, forcing them to display, with important presence in the rest of Europe,
Costa’s writing, discovering that, for him, modern after all, a political identification. engaged in the constitution of a corpus sculptural at
painting in Brazil would have started with Tarsila the same time distanced from the canons of verista
(and not with Anita, or Di or Lasar Segall or any In 1922, there had been a unity proclaimed by sculpture – so strong in Italy at the beginning of
other artist linked to the Week of 1922). the leadership of São Paulo [...] but, with the the last century –, and committed to a moderately
Augusto de Campos, in the introduction to the transformations of the world in the 1920’s, it was synthetic language, with a measured adherence to
facsimile edition of Anthropophagy Journal , urgent that everyone put on their ideological shirt. [11] the modernity of the period.
[6]
stresses the importance of the intellectual within Although this passage may suggest that Oswald
the Anthropophagic Movement. Although, arguably, understood that, in 1928, this division of waters ***
he treats Costa as a “duplicateé of Oswald (even in could mean an effective break with the modernist In the April 24 issue of Magazine, continuing the
name)”. In any case, the poet considers him the only past, a little later he expresses himself, without article, Oswaldo Costa displaces Mário de Andrade
intellectual who, in Magazine, “fully identified with ceremony, about the “maturity of the Week”, as an intellectual and critic (the only Andrade
the revolutionary ideas of the Manifesto” conceived demonstrating, then, that for him there would production that Costa seemed to respect was
by Oswald de Andrade, and published in the first have been no rupture between 1922 and 1928 (to macunaíma). He once again displaces Brecheret
issue of Magazine. stick to these symbolic dates): and, with the intention of continuing the attack
Although Campos emphasizes that, for cannibals, on Mário de Andrade, involves a work by Anita
São Paulo’s modernism would have been “a The maturity of the Week has already produced three Malfatti, more specifically a painting that the artist
transitional phase, a simple reconnaissance operation figures of exceptional confidence and importance: had produced in Paris and that had the support of
and nothing more”, the author does not deepen the one unknown, that of the young São Paulo critic Mário de Andrade for the State of São Paulo to buy
climate of division that existed in Oswaldo Costa’s Mário da Silva Brito […] The two others are those of it: the resurrectedtion of therescrub: “Well, who
texts, which, At one point, he even asks: “in the seven the novelist Gustavo Corção and the poet Cassiano drools over the cretin pastiches of Brecheret – art
years that resulted from the Modern Art Week for Ricardo. There are three derivatives of the Week and of Saint Sulpice, as Fosca said so well. The one
us?” [7] in them the triumph of our concerns and research who highlights in Anita’s exhibition what was bad
I believe that the question should be asked here: from 1922 [12] . about her, Lázaro”. [16]
why did Aracy Amaral and Augusto de Campos, such
astute intellectuals, not deepen the elements of split Another fact to emphasize is that, in this balance, ***
in relation to the modernism of 1922, made explicit Andrade will show even more concern with the If these texts by Oswaldo Costa went unnoticed
in Costa’s text? If Amaral says nothing about this, literature and poetry of Brazil, dedicating little in the constitution of historiography on the visual
the maximum that Campos allows himself is the to the visual arts. In any case, he recognizes the arts during Modernism, they obtained a certain
following consideration: importance of “historical” Modernist artists such resonance at the time they were published.
as Di Cavalcanti and Victor Brecheret. . In March 1929, Helios (pseudonym of one of the
[13]
If they are not exclusively concerned with literature, In a certain paragraph, even, Oswald 1922 modernists, Menotti Del Picchia), published
they do not stop the “anthropophages” from making demonstrates an unequivocal satisfaction in in Paulista Post Office, in the “Social Chronicle”
[17]
the internal critique of modernism and the corpus recognizing how Modernism was institutionalized section, the article “Crisis in Modernism” . The
delicti of all those who, first-time followers of the among the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro elites, poet begins the text by stating that the “aesthetic
movement, have drifted towards a moderate or receiving the support of the President of the modernism” of São Paulo was experiencing a crisis
reactionary attitude. Oswaldo Costa is systematically Republic himself: from which, perhaps, he could not escape. Ironically,
in charge of this… [8] he states that perhaps the Anthropophagy “of
Today, when the most civilized people in Brazil, Oswald d’Andrade” had awakened in the “vanguard
Oswaldo Costa’s criticism of Modernism was Ciccillo and Yolanda Matarazzo, in São Paulo, artists” , a gluttony that would see them consumed.
[18]
not “internal”. When giving an opinion on the Niomar and Paulo Bittencourt, in Rio, direct Without mentioning Oswaldo Costa’s name and
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