PROGRAMA | Program
12 Outubro | October
10-10.15h Boas-vindas JCL e MPS
10.15 -10.45h Joana Brites e Marta Ribeiro (videoconferência)
Regressar ao que nunca se foi: primitivismos em Canto da Maya
10.45-11.15h Llüisa Faxedas (videoconferência)
Más allá del Noucentisme: modernidad y primitivismo en el arte catalán de principios de siglo
11.15-11.45h Begoña Farré Torras
Primitivismo na pintura mural – pintura mural enquanto primitivismo: os casos de Joaquín Torres-García e Joan Miró
11.45-12.15h debate
12.15h-14h almoço
14-14.30h Maria José Marcondes (videoconferência)
Modernismos na América Latina: entre os dois lados do Atlântico
14.30-15h Paulo Duarte Feitoza (videoconferência)
Imaginários primitivistas transatlânticos: Tarsila do Amaral e Vicente do Rego Monteiro
15-15.30h debate
15.30-15.50h Intervalo – coffee break
15.50-16.20h Joana Cunha Leal
Nacionalismo, cosmopolitanismo e (anti-) colonialismo nos modernismos ibéricos
16.20-16.50h Noemi de Haro (videoconferência)
Uma aproximación a la noción de ‘primitivo’ en la historiografía del arte en España después de 1945
16.50-17.20h Mariana Pinto dos Santos
O modelo primitivista e o paradigma da civilização na narrativa portuguesa da modernidade
17.20-17.50h debate
13 Outubro | October
10.30-11h Antonio Sáez Delgado (videoconferência)
Sobre la ‘estrategia ibérica’ en la literatura española de la edad de plata
11-11.30h Marta Soares
Animação e primitivismo na Granada dos anos 1920: os cenários, as marionetas e o ‘teatro planista’ de Hermenegildo Lanz
11.30-12h Carlos Bártolo
Um apropriado lar moderno português: evocando valores políticos através do design de interiores durante uma ditadura
12-12.30h debate
12.30-14h Almoço
14-14.30h Eduardo Reynaud e Margarida Moura
O “Outro” no Sempre Fixe [1926-1940]
14.30-14.50h Madalena Freitas
A V Exposição Internacional de Artes e Indústrias Artísticas [1907]
14.50-15.10h debate
10-10.15h Boas-vindas JCL e MPS
10.15 -10.45h Joana Brites e Marta Ribeiro (videoconferência)
Regressar ao que nunca se foi: primitivismos em Canto da Maya
10.45-11.15h Llüisa Faxedas (videoconferência)
Más allá del Noucentisme: modernidad y primitivismo en el arte catalán de principios de siglo
11.15-11.45h Begoña Farré Torras
Primitivismo na pintura mural – pintura mural enquanto primitivismo: os casos de Joaquín Torres-García e Joan Miró
11.45-12.15h debate
12.15h-14h almoço
14-14.30h Maria José Marcondes (videoconferência)
Modernismos na América Latina: entre os dois lados do Atlântico
14.30-15h Paulo Duarte Feitoza (videoconferência)
Imaginários primitivistas transatlânticos: Tarsila do Amaral e Vicente do Rego Monteiro
15-15.30h debate
15.30-15.50h Intervalo – coffee break
15.50-16.20h Joana Cunha Leal
Nacionalismo, cosmopolitanismo e (anti-) colonialismo nos modernismos ibéricos
16.20-16.50h Noemi de Haro (videoconferência)
Uma aproximación a la noción de ‘primitivo’ en la historiografía del arte en España después de 1945
16.50-17.20h Mariana Pinto dos Santos
O modelo primitivista e o paradigma da civilização na narrativa portuguesa da modernidade
17.20-17.50h debate
13 Outubro | October
10.30-11h Antonio Sáez Delgado (videoconferência)
Sobre la ‘estrategia ibérica’ en la literatura española de la edad de plata
11-11.30h Marta Soares
Animação e primitivismo na Granada dos anos 1920: os cenários, as marionetas e o ‘teatro planista’ de Hermenegildo Lanz
11.30-12h Carlos Bártolo
Um apropriado lar moderno português: evocando valores políticos através do design de interiores durante uma ditadura
12-12.30h debate
12.30-14h Almoço
14-14.30h Eduardo Reynaud e Margarida Moura
O “Outro” no Sempre Fixe [1926-1940]
14.30-14.50h Madalena Freitas
A V Exposição Internacional de Artes e Indústrias Artísticas [1907]
14.50-15.10h debate
RESUMOS DAS APRESENTAÇÕES | Abstracts
Regressar ao que nunca se foi: primitivismos em Canto da Maya
Returning to what has never been: primitivisms in Canto da Maya
Joana Brites e Marta Barbosa Ribeiro, Universidade de Coimbra - CEIS20-UC, Portugal
Nesta comunicação apresentam-se algumas propostas interpretativas preliminares da investigação em curso sobre o “impulso primitivista” do escultor português Canto da Maya (Ponta Delgada, 1890 — Ponta Delgada, 1981). Com base na análise da obra e da correspondência pessoal do artista, pertencente ao espólio do Museu Carlos Machado, em Ponta Delgada, a procura de Canto da Maya pelo “intocado”, “simples”, “autêntico” e “imutável” é contextualizada e interpretada, na sua poliédrica declinação, como reação ao processo de modernização e via de “regeneração”. A (inescapável) ambivalência desta busca é sublinhada, tanto ao nível do percurso de vida e mundividência do artista, como no âmbito do seu processo criativo.
Más allá del Noucentisme: modernidad y primitivismo em el arte catalán de principios de siglo XX
Beyond Noucentisme: modernity and primitivism in catalan art from the beginning of the Twentieth century
Lluïsa Faxedas, Universitat de Girona, Espanha (videoconferência)
Taking as the study case the painting Pastoral (1910-11), one of the iconic works of the Catalan artist Joaquim Sunyer (1874-1956), I will examine the established link between Mediterraneanism and Noucentisme in Catalan culture in the first decades of the twentieth century. A look at how this work was received when it was first exhibited, and the subsequent re-reading of its iconography, enables us to understand Pastoral nowadays not as much as a symbol of Noucentisme, but more as a potential meeting point between the different aesthetic trends of the period.
Also, and in relation to it, I would like to address specifically the question of primitivism in the work of the painter Celso Lagar, who spent some important years in Catalonia, between 1915 and 1918, during which he became very related to the Catalan artistic scene.
Primitivismo na pintura mural – pintura mural enquanto primitivismo: os casos de Joaquín Torres-García e Joan Miró
Primitivism in mural painting – mural painting as primitivism: the cases of Joaquín Torres-García and Joan Miró
Begoña Farré Torras, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
From the turn of the 20th century mural painting struggled to assert its relevance in the modern art scene. On the one hand, the generally conservative requirements of institutional commissions tended to exclude the public wall as a place for the kind of formal or conceptual experimentation that was taking place in modernist easel painting. On the other, architectural modernism’s call for bare walls made the mural effectively redundant.
Yet, mural painting continued to be a concern for a number of avant-garde artists otherwise better-known for their easel work, such as Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Terk Delaunay, Joan Miró and Joaquín Torres-García, among others. In some cases, including the latter two, their interest in mural painting led them also to theorize on the subject. Their writings reveal that, in certain regards, easel and mural painting shared considerable theoretical common ground: key issues of modernist easel painting, such as flatness, decorativism, non-mimetism and primitivism were also central to the debate on mural painting. Conversely, however, certain idiosyncrasies of mural painting – namely its relationship with architecture and its intended public reception – required muralists to grapple with these very issues in ways that were distinct to mural painting.
The notion of the primitive provides an illustrative example of a term that had a distinct significance in mural painting theory. The writings and works of Torres-García and Miró are used here to explore the various meanings of ‘primitive’ in mural painting theory as well as its diverse manifestations in practice – including how the notion was used to champion the mural over its easel counterpart as the way forward for modern art.
Modernismos na América Latina: entre os dois lados do Atlântico
Modernisms in Latin America: between the two sides of the Atlantic
Maria José Marcondes, Universidade de Campinas, Brasil (videoconferência)
The research project seeks to analyze cultural transfers between Latin America and Europe between the 30s and 50s of the 20th century and their aesthetic and historical implications. In a first phase, the so-called "Brazilian Constructive Project" was researched, in its various manifestations, in specific works in the visual arts, building and landscape architecture. In a second stage, the project will extend to the cities of Buenos Aires and Mexico, starting from works by selected architects and artists: João Batista Vilanova Artigas and Waldemar Cordeiro (Brazil); Alberto Prebisch and Tomás Maldonado (Argentina) and Luis Barrágan and Mathias Goeritz (Mexico). The hypothesis we worked on considers that geometric abstraction - in the arts and also in building and landscape architecture in its various manifestations: constructivism, concretism, and other expressions - is welcomed in Latin America through the migrations of artists, circulation of ideas and works, exhibitions and exiles. Thus, distant from universal and formalist geometric abstraction. Another hypothesis investigated refers to the proposition of the artist Joaquín Torres Garcia and his artistic heritage presented in the texts and documents about the visual arts, aesthetics, and theory of abstract art. Garcia's proposition included the principles of pre-Columbian art, which had a fundamental role in some Latin American countries
given the migrations of architects and artists mentioned; and, above all, the circulation of magazines such as Arturo (1944, Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Amauta (Lima, Peru, 1926- 1930). His proposition also inserted new questions in the scope of this research.
Imaginários primitivistas transatlânticos: Tarsila do Amaral e Vicente do Rego Monteiro
Transatlantic primitivist imaginary: Tarsila do Amaral and Vicente do Rego Monteiro
Paulo Duarte Feitoza, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brasil (videoconferência)
Nas primeiras décadas do século XX, o modernismo brasileiro procurou realizar uma arte nacional e cosmopolita revisando e atualizando seus referentes históricos locais e europeus. Tarsila do Amaral em São Paulo e Vicente do Rego Monteiro no Recife, em ambientes distintos, absorveram, dialogaram e transformaram as linguagens das vanguardas europeias, em particular o cubismo e o surrealismo. No contexto das relações e (des)encontros transatlânticos, ambos artistas reinterpretaram os imaginários primitivistas em suas pinturas, do barroco mineiro aos imaginários amazônicos. Esta pesquisa repensa as relações do modernismo brasileiro com seus imaginários primitivistas e a vanguarda europeia.
English version:
In the first decades of the 20th century, Brazilian modernism realized a national and cosmopolitan art by revising and updating its local and European historical references. Tarsila do Amaral in São Paulo and Vicente do Rego Monteiro in Recife, in different environments, absorbed, dialogued and transformed the languages of European avant-garde, in particular Cubism and Surrealism. In the context of transatlantic relations and (dis)encounters, both artists reinterpreted the primitivist imaginary in their paintings, from the Baroque of Minas Gerais to the Amazonian imaginary. This research rethinks the relations of Brazilian modernism with its primitivist imaginary and the European vanguard.
Nacionalismo, cosmopolitanismo e (anti-) colonialismo nos modernismos ibéricos
Nationalism, cosmopolitanism and (anti-)colonialism in Iberian Modernisms
Joana Cunha Leal, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
This paper takes Ramón Gomez de la Serna’s writings of the 1920s on Portuguese culture and African art as the trigger for analyzing contradictory expressions of primitivism in the work of Iberian and Latin American painters associated to cubism. Following Patricia Leighten’s insight on how an “anticolonial crisis” can be associated to the praise of African art, and the concurrent pluralization of the political, historical and aesthetic implications in modernist uses of primitivism arising from there, this paper specifically confronts the cosmopolitan-colonial and national-rustic Ramón Gomez de la Serna’s primitivist imaginary with the landscape painting produced by the Mexican painter Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and the Portuguese Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887-1918) and Eduardo Viana (1881-1967). This contention in discourses and visual representations of the 1910s and the 1920s is important because, on the one hand, it allows us to analyze conceptions and expressions of primitivism that are different from each other. Over and above, and on the other hand, it allows the study of those ideas and expressions that incorporated contradictory terms in themselves and are therefore structurally antinomic. As we shall see, the association of cubism’s international language to landscape painting — landscape painting being often one of the key players in the visual construction of nationalisms —, or the use of regional-national worlds-of-reference to defy cosmopolitan hegemonic colonialism are examples of such antinomic expressions. The enhanced level of complexity brought about by Rivera’s, Cardoso’s and Viana’s landscapes is irreducible to binary or any other formulas of straightforward identification or stylist definition. As I will show, they undermine common assumptions on how primitivism engaged with colonialism and on the definition of the periphery as provincial.
Una aproximación a la noción de lo "primitivo" en la historiografía del arte en España después de 1945
An approach to the notion of the ‘primitive’ in art historiography in Spain after 1945
Noemi de Haro García, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Espanha (videoconferência)
The category of the ‘primitive’ only exists, as Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten indicate, in a relationship of binary opposition to that of the ‘civilized’. Frequently the notion of the ‘primitive’ has been instrumental for artists and authors in the West who aimed at transforming the making and understanding of art. This idea has often played a relevant role in moments that were perceived as crisis.
In the case of art criticism and art history written in Spain after 1945, this idea was crucial in the discourses on art initiatives which intended to renovate the panorama. This was important for francoist Spain after the defeat of the Axis in the Second World War. That was the case of the Indaliano group (1945) and the Escuela de Altamira (1948) whose very names evoked prehistoric models. It was also important for the understanding (and nationalization) of abstract art in the 1950s. It is hardly a coincidence that José Camón Aznar, one of the supporters of the Escuela de Altamira, published the monograph Las artes y los pueblos de la España primitiva in 1954. In the 1960s the art critic José María Moreno Galván stressed the importance of the primitive/s in the progress both of modern art and, more importantly, of society. For an antifrancoist intellectual, this led to the end of the dictatorship and the inauguration of a democratic period. Finally, since the mid-1970s, there was a growing feeling that the discipline of art history was in crisis. For the art historian Juan Antonio Ramírez, it was necessary to overcome the limits of the discipline to force it to change its methods. According to him, paying attention to the primitive, among other things, could help achieve this. In line with this idea, he published several books on this and related topics.
In this presentation, I will analyse the texts produced on these art groups and by the above-mentioned authors in order to understand the relevance of the notion of the ‘primitive’ in specific turning points in the narrative of the history of art in Spain. This will also include how the discipline understood itself throughout that period.
O modelo primitivista e o paradigma da civilização na narrativa portuguesa da modernidade
The primitivist model and the civilisation paradigm in the Portuguese narrative of modernity
Mariana Pinto dos Santos, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
Since the second half of nineteenth-century, Portuguese narration of modernity was haunted by the idea of civilisation. The European peripheral southern condition of Portugal, as well as its dimension, was counter-balanced by an often expressed desire for a cosmopolitanism that thrived from an imperial past and a colonial present, which were both parts of Europe’s construction of modernity. Modernity was identified with civilisation, which was determined not only by economic and technological development but also by cultural achievements, namely in art. On the other hand, modernity in art meant the rupture with classical representation, to embrace the modern quest for the new, and to a radical change of taste. That was mainly due to the development of a “preference for the primitive” (Gombrich, 2002), in its diverse possibilities (art of children, African art, folk art, return to Middle Ages references, interest in the alienated and pursue of alienation, etc.). However, the “preference for the primitive” is part of a broader history of which the change of western taste is only a symptom. The crisis of the present relationship of art history with modernity (art history being itself a product of modernity) has to do with the failure of concepts like ‘civilisation’, ‘primitivism’ and even ‘art’, in providing other than a Eurocentric narrative.
The quest for modernity in Portugal started earlier, but it is intrinsically connected with the dictatorship that lasted from 1926 to 1974, and particularly with colonial policies which were intensified since the thirties and until the outbreak of the colonial war in 1961.
Considering that “there is no modernity without coloniality” (Walter Mignolo, 2018) and that modernity relied on the “denial of coevalness” (Joahannes Fabian, 1982), this paper intends to analyse how ‘civilisation’ and ‘primitivism’ worked as antithetical cornerstones in Portuguese art history and art practice. In particular, how both concepts responded to the quest for the modern — either by trying to emulate the European paradigm of modernity or by relating to it from a critical stand.
Sobre la ‘estrategia ibérica’ en la literatura española de la Edad de Plata
The 'iberian strategy' in Spanish literature from La Edad de Plata
Antonio Sáez Delgado, Universidade de Évora – Centro de Estudos Comparatistas da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal (videoconferência)
Desde los años veinte, en plena dictadura de Primo de Rivera, fue gestándose en el seno de una parte de la cultura española (visible en revistas como La Gaceta Literaria o Revista de las Españas y en proyectos como la Sociedad de Artistas Ibéricos) una estrategia de aproximación panhispánica que se desdobló, en aras de la defensa de una supuesta pluralidad intelectual española, en maniobras tanto a escala americana como ibérica. Esa estrategia, interesantísima desde el punto de vista de las relaciones entre las diferentes culturas peninsulares, estuvo casi siempre teñida de intereses ideológicos, y tuvo a Portugal como uno de sus objetivos prioritarios. A finales de los años veinte son ya notorios los escritores españoles, encabezados por Ernesto Giménez Caballero, que transitan del liberalismo nacionalista al fascismo y el conservadurismo, desarrollando, en paralelo a una agresiva política americana, una poderosa arquitectura oficial de aproximación a Portugal y a las llamadas ‘culturas periféricas’ (Cataluña, Galicia, País Vasco). Sin embargo, esta retórica de aproximación y entendimiento ibérico se realizó casi siempre desde la convicción irrenunciable de la unidad de España y la defensa ferviente del centralismo castellano, que pretendían convertir en el faro cultural del universo iberoamericano. Este discurso se convertirá, tras la llegada al poder del general Franco, en uno de los tópicos culturales más destacados del nuevo régimen, creándose una amplia y potente plataforma oficialista de acercamiento a Portugal, especialmente visible hasta finales de los años cuarenta a través del trabajo desarrollado por António Ferro y Eugenio Montes.
Animação e primitivismo na Granada dos anos 1920: os cenários, as marionetas e o ‘teatro planista’ de Hermenegildo Lanz
Animation and primitivism in the 1920s Granada: the sets, puppets and the ‘teatro planista’ by Hermenegildo Lanz
Marta Soares, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
Para além das potencialidades anti-miméticas e anti-burguesas que os modernistas tanto apreciavam na marioneta, esta cruza-se com o primitivismo através das categorias da cultura popular, da criança e do grotesco. Partindo de discursos modernistas sobre marionetas e da noção de "animação mecânica" do historiador da arte Hans Henrik Jørgensen, abordarei o teatro de marionetas como uma forma arcaica de animação e focar-me-ei num estudo de caso na Andaluzia.
Em Granada, no seio das tertúlias do grupo “El Rinconcillo”, o interesse de Federico García Lorca, Manuel de Falla e Hermenegildo Lanz (1893-1949) pela marioneta revelar-se-ia vital para o desenvolvimento de El Retablo de Maese Pedro, uma ópera para marionetas baseada num capítulo sobre marionetas no Dom Quixote, de Cervantes. Antes da estreia de El Retablo em Junho de 1923, em Paris, Falla, Lorca e Lanz encenaram um espectáculo de marionetas no dia de reyes de 1923 na casa da família García Lorca em Granada. Lanz pintou os cenários, esculpiu mãos e cabeças para marionetas de luva, pintou e recortou 150 figuras planas que combinavam as técnicas do teatro de papel (toy theatre) com um manuscrito iluminado – o Codex Granatensis.
Os cenários, as marionetas e as 150 figuras do “teatro planista” reforçam o interesse modernista pela arte infantil, o medieval e a arte popular enquanto expressões de primitivismo. Por fim, mostrarei como a própria palavra ‘primitivo/a’, transita para os discursos sobre a marioneta com um sentido positivo e associada ao modernismo, quer no discurso de Lanz, nos anos 1940, quer no de marionetistas contemporâneos, como Roman Paska, em 1990.
Um apropriado lar moderno português: evocando valores políticos através do design de interiores durante uma ditadura
The ‘Proper’ Modern Portuguese Home: channeling the political values of a dictatorship through the stimulus of folk arts on Interior Design
Carlos Bártolo, Universidade Lusíada, Portugal
Throughout Estado Novo — the far-right regime that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974 — architecture, visual and performative arts, folklore, literature, and the culture in general, were used as instruments to express the values that formed the regime.
This occurred more convincingly during the first two decades when a cultural programme, the Policy of the Spirit, was implemented by the state Bureau of National Propaganda [SPN] director Antonio Ferro, a journalist and writer associated to the Portuguese and European modernist milieu.
If the study of art as instrument of propaganda is nothing new in art history, Interior Design is usually overlooked, subordinated to the other ‘major arts’. Nonetheless, the Portuguese dictatorship didn’t neglect home decoration as a possible vehicle of ideology, even considering the difficulties on steering something so profoundly distinctive as it is the personal taste.
This would result from a regime top-down approach that followed a more widespread indoctrination of aesthetic values based on the rediscovery of the popular arts as the genuine outcome of the Portuguese soul. This action would culminate on the development of a decorative style that embodied the renaissance of this new nation, a Home for the New Portuguese.
This presentation is an enhanced version of a paper presented last year on the Interior Provocations Symposium, at New York Pratt Institute. It presents a summary of my PhD investigation in Design History where I follow the complex relation between aesthetic and ideological values experienced throughout the Portuguese dictatorship first decades and its lasting consequences to the design discipline and to the assertion of a national identity.
O “Outro” no Sempre Fixe [1926-1940]
The ‘Other’ in Sempre Fixe [1926-1940]
Margarida Moura e Eduardo Reynaud, IHA - NOVA FCSH
Sempre Fixe was a weekly satirical newspaper published in Lisbon from 1926 to 1959. It was highly popular and its contents, both written and drawn, caricatured contemporary national and international society. It featured contributions from many authors, including Carlos Botelho, Almada Negreiros, Stuart Carvalhais, Jorge Barradas, Bernardo Marques, Amarelhe, and Francisco Valença. This paper aims at shining a new light on the caricature featured in Sempre Fixe from 1926 up to 1940, focusing on the satiric representation of the ‘Other’, namely its typified depiction of black people. The discussion departs from a selection of images, produced in the early period of the Portuguese dictatorship, that illustrate common tropes which simultaneously “include the ‘Other’ through inferiorization, while also excluding the ‘Other’ through expulsion” (Weaver, 2011), in a practice of representation that is entirely dominated by the ‘coloniser’. By framing the satirical images of black people featured in Sempre Fixe within the context of Portuguese humoristic periodicals, while also analyzing their shared aspects with other racist humor traditions, this paper intends to showcase how racist caricature in Sempre Fixe works to maintain national stereotypes, further cementing a deeply embedded divisive discourse. In doing so, this paper further debates questions such as: how did the primitivist imaginary feed the typified representation of black people in Sempre Fixe?; can this type of racist caricature be found in other national contemporary publications?; does the typified satire of Sempre Fixe fit into a north-Atlantic tradition of mocking the ‘Other’ as a mechanism of asserting difference?
A V Exposição Internacional de Artes e Indústrias Artísticas [1907]
The Fifth International Exhibition of Arts and Artistic Industries [1907]
Madalena Freitas, IHA - NOVA FCSH
The Fifth International Exhibition of Arts and Artistic Industries took place in Barcelona in the year of 1907, and it gathered representations from many European countries. This paper’s goal is to make a brief analysis on this art exhibition, focusing on its deception within the local newspapers, without forgetting to look for the reasons why after a period gap of nine years – between the fourth and fifth exhibition - the executive committee and other responsible entities decided to organize this art showcase. It also addresses the Portuguese presence in this event.
Returning to what has never been: primitivisms in Canto da Maya
Joana Brites e Marta Barbosa Ribeiro, Universidade de Coimbra - CEIS20-UC, Portugal
Nesta comunicação apresentam-se algumas propostas interpretativas preliminares da investigação em curso sobre o “impulso primitivista” do escultor português Canto da Maya (Ponta Delgada, 1890 — Ponta Delgada, 1981). Com base na análise da obra e da correspondência pessoal do artista, pertencente ao espólio do Museu Carlos Machado, em Ponta Delgada, a procura de Canto da Maya pelo “intocado”, “simples”, “autêntico” e “imutável” é contextualizada e interpretada, na sua poliédrica declinação, como reação ao processo de modernização e via de “regeneração”. A (inescapável) ambivalência desta busca é sublinhada, tanto ao nível do percurso de vida e mundividência do artista, como no âmbito do seu processo criativo.
Más allá del Noucentisme: modernidad y primitivismo em el arte catalán de principios de siglo XX
Beyond Noucentisme: modernity and primitivism in catalan art from the beginning of the Twentieth century
Lluïsa Faxedas, Universitat de Girona, Espanha (videoconferência)
Taking as the study case the painting Pastoral (1910-11), one of the iconic works of the Catalan artist Joaquim Sunyer (1874-1956), I will examine the established link between Mediterraneanism and Noucentisme in Catalan culture in the first decades of the twentieth century. A look at how this work was received when it was first exhibited, and the subsequent re-reading of its iconography, enables us to understand Pastoral nowadays not as much as a symbol of Noucentisme, but more as a potential meeting point between the different aesthetic trends of the period.
Also, and in relation to it, I would like to address specifically the question of primitivism in the work of the painter Celso Lagar, who spent some important years in Catalonia, between 1915 and 1918, during which he became very related to the Catalan artistic scene.
Primitivismo na pintura mural – pintura mural enquanto primitivismo: os casos de Joaquín Torres-García e Joan Miró
Primitivism in mural painting – mural painting as primitivism: the cases of Joaquín Torres-García and Joan Miró
Begoña Farré Torras, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
From the turn of the 20th century mural painting struggled to assert its relevance in the modern art scene. On the one hand, the generally conservative requirements of institutional commissions tended to exclude the public wall as a place for the kind of formal or conceptual experimentation that was taking place in modernist easel painting. On the other, architectural modernism’s call for bare walls made the mural effectively redundant.
Yet, mural painting continued to be a concern for a number of avant-garde artists otherwise better-known for their easel work, such as Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Terk Delaunay, Joan Miró and Joaquín Torres-García, among others. In some cases, including the latter two, their interest in mural painting led them also to theorize on the subject. Their writings reveal that, in certain regards, easel and mural painting shared considerable theoretical common ground: key issues of modernist easel painting, such as flatness, decorativism, non-mimetism and primitivism were also central to the debate on mural painting. Conversely, however, certain idiosyncrasies of mural painting – namely its relationship with architecture and its intended public reception – required muralists to grapple with these very issues in ways that were distinct to mural painting.
The notion of the primitive provides an illustrative example of a term that had a distinct significance in mural painting theory. The writings and works of Torres-García and Miró are used here to explore the various meanings of ‘primitive’ in mural painting theory as well as its diverse manifestations in practice – including how the notion was used to champion the mural over its easel counterpart as the way forward for modern art.
Modernismos na América Latina: entre os dois lados do Atlântico
Modernisms in Latin America: between the two sides of the Atlantic
Maria José Marcondes, Universidade de Campinas, Brasil (videoconferência)
The research project seeks to analyze cultural transfers between Latin America and Europe between the 30s and 50s of the 20th century and their aesthetic and historical implications. In a first phase, the so-called "Brazilian Constructive Project" was researched, in its various manifestations, in specific works in the visual arts, building and landscape architecture. In a second stage, the project will extend to the cities of Buenos Aires and Mexico, starting from works by selected architects and artists: João Batista Vilanova Artigas and Waldemar Cordeiro (Brazil); Alberto Prebisch and Tomás Maldonado (Argentina) and Luis Barrágan and Mathias Goeritz (Mexico). The hypothesis we worked on considers that geometric abstraction - in the arts and also in building and landscape architecture in its various manifestations: constructivism, concretism, and other expressions - is welcomed in Latin America through the migrations of artists, circulation of ideas and works, exhibitions and exiles. Thus, distant from universal and formalist geometric abstraction. Another hypothesis investigated refers to the proposition of the artist Joaquín Torres Garcia and his artistic heritage presented in the texts and documents about the visual arts, aesthetics, and theory of abstract art. Garcia's proposition included the principles of pre-Columbian art, which had a fundamental role in some Latin American countries
given the migrations of architects and artists mentioned; and, above all, the circulation of magazines such as Arturo (1944, Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Amauta (Lima, Peru, 1926- 1930). His proposition also inserted new questions in the scope of this research.
Imaginários primitivistas transatlânticos: Tarsila do Amaral e Vicente do Rego Monteiro
Transatlantic primitivist imaginary: Tarsila do Amaral and Vicente do Rego Monteiro
Paulo Duarte Feitoza, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brasil (videoconferência)
Nas primeiras décadas do século XX, o modernismo brasileiro procurou realizar uma arte nacional e cosmopolita revisando e atualizando seus referentes históricos locais e europeus. Tarsila do Amaral em São Paulo e Vicente do Rego Monteiro no Recife, em ambientes distintos, absorveram, dialogaram e transformaram as linguagens das vanguardas europeias, em particular o cubismo e o surrealismo. No contexto das relações e (des)encontros transatlânticos, ambos artistas reinterpretaram os imaginários primitivistas em suas pinturas, do barroco mineiro aos imaginários amazônicos. Esta pesquisa repensa as relações do modernismo brasileiro com seus imaginários primitivistas e a vanguarda europeia.
English version:
In the first decades of the 20th century, Brazilian modernism realized a national and cosmopolitan art by revising and updating its local and European historical references. Tarsila do Amaral in São Paulo and Vicente do Rego Monteiro in Recife, in different environments, absorbed, dialogued and transformed the languages of European avant-garde, in particular Cubism and Surrealism. In the context of transatlantic relations and (dis)encounters, both artists reinterpreted the primitivist imaginary in their paintings, from the Baroque of Minas Gerais to the Amazonian imaginary. This research rethinks the relations of Brazilian modernism with its primitivist imaginary and the European vanguard.
Nacionalismo, cosmopolitanismo e (anti-) colonialismo nos modernismos ibéricos
Nationalism, cosmopolitanism and (anti-)colonialism in Iberian Modernisms
Joana Cunha Leal, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
This paper takes Ramón Gomez de la Serna’s writings of the 1920s on Portuguese culture and African art as the trigger for analyzing contradictory expressions of primitivism in the work of Iberian and Latin American painters associated to cubism. Following Patricia Leighten’s insight on how an “anticolonial crisis” can be associated to the praise of African art, and the concurrent pluralization of the political, historical and aesthetic implications in modernist uses of primitivism arising from there, this paper specifically confronts the cosmopolitan-colonial and national-rustic Ramón Gomez de la Serna’s primitivist imaginary with the landscape painting produced by the Mexican painter Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and the Portuguese Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887-1918) and Eduardo Viana (1881-1967). This contention in discourses and visual representations of the 1910s and the 1920s is important because, on the one hand, it allows us to analyze conceptions and expressions of primitivism that are different from each other. Over and above, and on the other hand, it allows the study of those ideas and expressions that incorporated contradictory terms in themselves and are therefore structurally antinomic. As we shall see, the association of cubism’s international language to landscape painting — landscape painting being often one of the key players in the visual construction of nationalisms —, or the use of regional-national worlds-of-reference to defy cosmopolitan hegemonic colonialism are examples of such antinomic expressions. The enhanced level of complexity brought about by Rivera’s, Cardoso’s and Viana’s landscapes is irreducible to binary or any other formulas of straightforward identification or stylist definition. As I will show, they undermine common assumptions on how primitivism engaged with colonialism and on the definition of the periphery as provincial.
Una aproximación a la noción de lo "primitivo" en la historiografía del arte en España después de 1945
An approach to the notion of the ‘primitive’ in art historiography in Spain after 1945
Noemi de Haro García, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Espanha (videoconferência)
The category of the ‘primitive’ only exists, as Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten indicate, in a relationship of binary opposition to that of the ‘civilized’. Frequently the notion of the ‘primitive’ has been instrumental for artists and authors in the West who aimed at transforming the making and understanding of art. This idea has often played a relevant role in moments that were perceived as crisis.
In the case of art criticism and art history written in Spain after 1945, this idea was crucial in the discourses on art initiatives which intended to renovate the panorama. This was important for francoist Spain after the defeat of the Axis in the Second World War. That was the case of the Indaliano group (1945) and the Escuela de Altamira (1948) whose very names evoked prehistoric models. It was also important for the understanding (and nationalization) of abstract art in the 1950s. It is hardly a coincidence that José Camón Aznar, one of the supporters of the Escuela de Altamira, published the monograph Las artes y los pueblos de la España primitiva in 1954. In the 1960s the art critic José María Moreno Galván stressed the importance of the primitive/s in the progress both of modern art and, more importantly, of society. For an antifrancoist intellectual, this led to the end of the dictatorship and the inauguration of a democratic period. Finally, since the mid-1970s, there was a growing feeling that the discipline of art history was in crisis. For the art historian Juan Antonio Ramírez, it was necessary to overcome the limits of the discipline to force it to change its methods. According to him, paying attention to the primitive, among other things, could help achieve this. In line with this idea, he published several books on this and related topics.
In this presentation, I will analyse the texts produced on these art groups and by the above-mentioned authors in order to understand the relevance of the notion of the ‘primitive’ in specific turning points in the narrative of the history of art in Spain. This will also include how the discipline understood itself throughout that period.
O modelo primitivista e o paradigma da civilização na narrativa portuguesa da modernidade
The primitivist model and the civilisation paradigm in the Portuguese narrative of modernity
Mariana Pinto dos Santos, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
Since the second half of nineteenth-century, Portuguese narration of modernity was haunted by the idea of civilisation. The European peripheral southern condition of Portugal, as well as its dimension, was counter-balanced by an often expressed desire for a cosmopolitanism that thrived from an imperial past and a colonial present, which were both parts of Europe’s construction of modernity. Modernity was identified with civilisation, which was determined not only by economic and technological development but also by cultural achievements, namely in art. On the other hand, modernity in art meant the rupture with classical representation, to embrace the modern quest for the new, and to a radical change of taste. That was mainly due to the development of a “preference for the primitive” (Gombrich, 2002), in its diverse possibilities (art of children, African art, folk art, return to Middle Ages references, interest in the alienated and pursue of alienation, etc.). However, the “preference for the primitive” is part of a broader history of which the change of western taste is only a symptom. The crisis of the present relationship of art history with modernity (art history being itself a product of modernity) has to do with the failure of concepts like ‘civilisation’, ‘primitivism’ and even ‘art’, in providing other than a Eurocentric narrative.
The quest for modernity in Portugal started earlier, but it is intrinsically connected with the dictatorship that lasted from 1926 to 1974, and particularly with colonial policies which were intensified since the thirties and until the outbreak of the colonial war in 1961.
Considering that “there is no modernity without coloniality” (Walter Mignolo, 2018) and that modernity relied on the “denial of coevalness” (Joahannes Fabian, 1982), this paper intends to analyse how ‘civilisation’ and ‘primitivism’ worked as antithetical cornerstones in Portuguese art history and art practice. In particular, how both concepts responded to the quest for the modern — either by trying to emulate the European paradigm of modernity or by relating to it from a critical stand.
Sobre la ‘estrategia ibérica’ en la literatura española de la Edad de Plata
The 'iberian strategy' in Spanish literature from La Edad de Plata
Antonio Sáez Delgado, Universidade de Évora – Centro de Estudos Comparatistas da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal (videoconferência)
Desde los años veinte, en plena dictadura de Primo de Rivera, fue gestándose en el seno de una parte de la cultura española (visible en revistas como La Gaceta Literaria o Revista de las Españas y en proyectos como la Sociedad de Artistas Ibéricos) una estrategia de aproximación panhispánica que se desdobló, en aras de la defensa de una supuesta pluralidad intelectual española, en maniobras tanto a escala americana como ibérica. Esa estrategia, interesantísima desde el punto de vista de las relaciones entre las diferentes culturas peninsulares, estuvo casi siempre teñida de intereses ideológicos, y tuvo a Portugal como uno de sus objetivos prioritarios. A finales de los años veinte son ya notorios los escritores españoles, encabezados por Ernesto Giménez Caballero, que transitan del liberalismo nacionalista al fascismo y el conservadurismo, desarrollando, en paralelo a una agresiva política americana, una poderosa arquitectura oficial de aproximación a Portugal y a las llamadas ‘culturas periféricas’ (Cataluña, Galicia, País Vasco). Sin embargo, esta retórica de aproximación y entendimiento ibérico se realizó casi siempre desde la convicción irrenunciable de la unidad de España y la defensa ferviente del centralismo castellano, que pretendían convertir en el faro cultural del universo iberoamericano. Este discurso se convertirá, tras la llegada al poder del general Franco, en uno de los tópicos culturales más destacados del nuevo régimen, creándose una amplia y potente plataforma oficialista de acercamiento a Portugal, especialmente visible hasta finales de los años cuarenta a través del trabajo desarrollado por António Ferro y Eugenio Montes.
Animação e primitivismo na Granada dos anos 1920: os cenários, as marionetas e o ‘teatro planista’ de Hermenegildo Lanz
Animation and primitivism in the 1920s Granada: the sets, puppets and the ‘teatro planista’ by Hermenegildo Lanz
Marta Soares, IHA - NOVA FCSH, Portugal
Para além das potencialidades anti-miméticas e anti-burguesas que os modernistas tanto apreciavam na marioneta, esta cruza-se com o primitivismo através das categorias da cultura popular, da criança e do grotesco. Partindo de discursos modernistas sobre marionetas e da noção de "animação mecânica" do historiador da arte Hans Henrik Jørgensen, abordarei o teatro de marionetas como uma forma arcaica de animação e focar-me-ei num estudo de caso na Andaluzia.
Em Granada, no seio das tertúlias do grupo “El Rinconcillo”, o interesse de Federico García Lorca, Manuel de Falla e Hermenegildo Lanz (1893-1949) pela marioneta revelar-se-ia vital para o desenvolvimento de El Retablo de Maese Pedro, uma ópera para marionetas baseada num capítulo sobre marionetas no Dom Quixote, de Cervantes. Antes da estreia de El Retablo em Junho de 1923, em Paris, Falla, Lorca e Lanz encenaram um espectáculo de marionetas no dia de reyes de 1923 na casa da família García Lorca em Granada. Lanz pintou os cenários, esculpiu mãos e cabeças para marionetas de luva, pintou e recortou 150 figuras planas que combinavam as técnicas do teatro de papel (toy theatre) com um manuscrito iluminado – o Codex Granatensis.
Os cenários, as marionetas e as 150 figuras do “teatro planista” reforçam o interesse modernista pela arte infantil, o medieval e a arte popular enquanto expressões de primitivismo. Por fim, mostrarei como a própria palavra ‘primitivo/a’, transita para os discursos sobre a marioneta com um sentido positivo e associada ao modernismo, quer no discurso de Lanz, nos anos 1940, quer no de marionetistas contemporâneos, como Roman Paska, em 1990.
Um apropriado lar moderno português: evocando valores políticos através do design de interiores durante uma ditadura
The ‘Proper’ Modern Portuguese Home: channeling the political values of a dictatorship through the stimulus of folk arts on Interior Design
Carlos Bártolo, Universidade Lusíada, Portugal
Throughout Estado Novo — the far-right regime that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974 — architecture, visual and performative arts, folklore, literature, and the culture in general, were used as instruments to express the values that formed the regime.
This occurred more convincingly during the first two decades when a cultural programme, the Policy of the Spirit, was implemented by the state Bureau of National Propaganda [SPN] director Antonio Ferro, a journalist and writer associated to the Portuguese and European modernist milieu.
If the study of art as instrument of propaganda is nothing new in art history, Interior Design is usually overlooked, subordinated to the other ‘major arts’. Nonetheless, the Portuguese dictatorship didn’t neglect home decoration as a possible vehicle of ideology, even considering the difficulties on steering something so profoundly distinctive as it is the personal taste.
This would result from a regime top-down approach that followed a more widespread indoctrination of aesthetic values based on the rediscovery of the popular arts as the genuine outcome of the Portuguese soul. This action would culminate on the development of a decorative style that embodied the renaissance of this new nation, a Home for the New Portuguese.
This presentation is an enhanced version of a paper presented last year on the Interior Provocations Symposium, at New York Pratt Institute. It presents a summary of my PhD investigation in Design History where I follow the complex relation between aesthetic and ideological values experienced throughout the Portuguese dictatorship first decades and its lasting consequences to the design discipline and to the assertion of a national identity.
O “Outro” no Sempre Fixe [1926-1940]
The ‘Other’ in Sempre Fixe [1926-1940]
Margarida Moura e Eduardo Reynaud, IHA - NOVA FCSH
Sempre Fixe was a weekly satirical newspaper published in Lisbon from 1926 to 1959. It was highly popular and its contents, both written and drawn, caricatured contemporary national and international society. It featured contributions from many authors, including Carlos Botelho, Almada Negreiros, Stuart Carvalhais, Jorge Barradas, Bernardo Marques, Amarelhe, and Francisco Valença. This paper aims at shining a new light on the caricature featured in Sempre Fixe from 1926 up to 1940, focusing on the satiric representation of the ‘Other’, namely its typified depiction of black people. The discussion departs from a selection of images, produced in the early period of the Portuguese dictatorship, that illustrate common tropes which simultaneously “include the ‘Other’ through inferiorization, while also excluding the ‘Other’ through expulsion” (Weaver, 2011), in a practice of representation that is entirely dominated by the ‘coloniser’. By framing the satirical images of black people featured in Sempre Fixe within the context of Portuguese humoristic periodicals, while also analyzing their shared aspects with other racist humor traditions, this paper intends to showcase how racist caricature in Sempre Fixe works to maintain national stereotypes, further cementing a deeply embedded divisive discourse. In doing so, this paper further debates questions such as: how did the primitivist imaginary feed the typified representation of black people in Sempre Fixe?; can this type of racist caricature be found in other national contemporary publications?; does the typified satire of Sempre Fixe fit into a north-Atlantic tradition of mocking the ‘Other’ as a mechanism of asserting difference?
A V Exposição Internacional de Artes e Indústrias Artísticas [1907]
The Fifth International Exhibition of Arts and Artistic Industries [1907]
Madalena Freitas, IHA - NOVA FCSH
The Fifth International Exhibition of Arts and Artistic Industries took place in Barcelona in the year of 1907, and it gathered representations from many European countries. This paper’s goal is to make a brief analysis on this art exhibition, focusing on its deception within the local newspapers, without forgetting to look for the reasons why after a period gap of nine years – between the fourth and fifth exhibition - the executive committee and other responsible entities decided to organize this art showcase. It also addresses the Portuguese presence in this event.