"The Aleijadinho at Home and Abroad" (original) (raw)

Aleijadinho: A Brief Commentary on His Life and Work

International Jornal of Advances in Social Science and Humanities, 2017

This article deals with some aspects of the life and work of the Brazilian artist Antônio Francisco Lisboa (1738?-1814), dubbed Aleijadinho ("the small cripple") due to the physical deformations he had to cope with. In spite of his physical disability, he became the protagonist of Brazilian colonial art. Slave by birth, Aleijadinho is a living metaphor of the mix of races that influenced and still influences the process of cultural formation not only of Brazil, but of America as a whole.

The Problem of Race in Brazilian Painting, c. 1850–1920

Art History, v.38, n.3, 2015

The traditional appraisal that artists in Brazil were unable or unwilling to depict black subjects, during the Imperial and early Republican periods, is at odds with much of what was actually produced. Following from the success of abolitionist imagery in the mid-nineteenth century, a number of visual artists in Brazil were actively establishing a critical discourse that linked race and inequality as early as the 1890s, two decades before such critiques became widespread in literature and the social sciences. Specific works by Eliseu Visconti, Antonio Ferrigno and Modesto Brocos are singled out and examined, in this respect. The final section of the text examines the issue of self-representation, focusing on the work of Arthur Timótheo da Costa in the 1900s and 1910s. A marked contrast exists between the relatively neglected efforts of these artists and the much lauded drive of Brazilian Modernism to embrace the theme of race, after 1922.

Machado de Assis: From " Tragic Mulatto " to Human Tragicomedy

Critics historically interpreted Machado de Assis as a mulatto who broke through the wall of second-class citizenship and studiously avoided any reference to his racial origins. His life and writings refl ect a disinterest in slavery and race relations as well as other contemporary social issues. Critics argued that Machado’s literary works, far from concerning themselves with questions of race, much less slavery, focus on the upper echelon—the urban bourgeoisie—which was a small and overwhelmingly white segment of Brazilian society By the mid-twentieth century, critics discovered that Machado did in fact display an interest in slavery, race relations, and other social concerns. The plantation on which Brazil’s political economy depended appears in its most developed form in his later novels, yet even in those works it is not central. Indeed, later scholarship asserted that Machado’s public pronouncements, as well as the treatment of slavery and race relations in his writings, seem both meek and sparse compared to several prominent late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Afro-Brazilian writers such as Luís Gama (1830–82), José do Patrocínio (1853–1905), and Lima Barreto (1881–1922). Drawing from Machado’s own statements, as well as his prose fiction, I provide an alternative interpretation as to how Machado’s writings were inflected by the experience of his racial identity. I argue that Machado endeavored to transcend , rather than deny , his racial background by embracing his greater humanity. In his writings, Machado sought to reflect this by universalizing the experience of racial ambiguity and duality regarding the “mulatto” condition in Brazil into a fundamental mode of human existence. For Machado, the struggle with duality and ambiguity is both personal and universal.

The Laws of Image-Nation: Brazilian Racial Tropes and the Shadows of the Slave Quarters

Law and Critique volume, 2018

The commemorative edition of the 80th anniversary of Casa Grande & Senzala, the founding book of Brazilian modern sociology written by Gilberto Freyre and published in 2013, shows on its cover a glamorous ‘Casa Grande’ (Big House, the Lord’s house), lit like an architectural landmark, ready to serve as the set for a film or a TV soap opera. What happened to the ‘Senzala’ (the Slave Quarters) that appeared on the covers of the dozens of previous editions? This paper investigates, following some changes in Brazilian Visual Culture in the twentieth century, how such an astonishing disappearance could take place. The paper examines the image of the slave quarters as part of a racial trope: a foundational and colonial trope, one that is capable of institutionalizing subjects and producing a subaltern mode of subjectivity. It also explores connections between critical legal studies and visual and cultural studies to question how and why knowledge produced over the status, nature and function of images contributes to institute—and institutionalize subjectivity. In order to explain this disappearance we propose a legal-iconological experiment. We will enunciate, and attempt to enact, the Statute of Image-nation: the laws of the image that constitute subjectivity in Brazilian racial tropes. In doing so, we might be able to point out the ways in which law and image function together in institutionalizing subjectivity—and subjection.

Interfacial Archetypes in Afro-Brazilian Cultural Studies: The Pan-African Consciousness of Márcio Barbosa, Paulo Colina, and Salgado Maranhão

The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2012

This article explores the works of writers who are innovative and traditional at the same time with a keen eye on the "universal" to reach towards humanism via Paulo Colina, Salgado Maranhão, and Márcio Barbosa. Hence, their comparative commonality within the trope of "interfacial archetypes" is conceived since all these cultural producers choose the urban setting for their imaginative works even when their subject matter transcends a fixed setting and includes a traditional or rural setting. The choice between the urban and the rural is a false option for the exigency of modernity and postmodernity demands that even the "rural" become subject to the critique of "primitivism" and "exoticism" that is usually associated with subaltern and indigenous societies. The very urban nature of slavery in Brazil especially in the geo-economics and politics of Coffee in São Paulo, Sugarcane in the Northeast, and Gold in Minas Gerais, ensured the post-emancipation location of African descendants in the urban areas. Even with the effects of labor migration from "arid" to "greener" pastures, such as from the Northeast to the South, did not have a significant economic reconfiguration or betterment of life as these "migrant populations" were contained within a space that is now known as favela [Slum]-a space that may be seen as both private and public. Within this shifting space and location, African cultures and religions survived in Brazil to the extent that the relics take on their own identity with universal ethos-hence the interfacial connections between the ancestral, the urban, and the human condition. This essay was originally part of the book, Afro-Brazilians: Cultural Production in a Racial Democracy (2009) which partly explains the 1987-2003 references, the period wherein Afro-Brazilian cultural production was at its best due to the centennial celebration of the abolition of slavery (1888) in Brazil in 1988 that allowed Afro-Brazilian artistic and cultural production to flourish.

Portrait And Biography. Lisboa/rio De Janeiro. From 1770 To 1820

Scopus, 2014

This article addresses the portrayal of men in government, especially the Constituent Cortes in 1820, in the Luso-Brazilian world. It focuses especially on two imagistic series, the collection of Silva Oeirense and the other gallery made by Domingos Antonio de Sequeira noticing in which ways these images have become a sort of biographical device for these deputies capable of expressing their character pronounced by moderation. Searches also point out some distinctions in these images on the portraiture of the time. Overall, it indicates a self ordinance through the senses and changes in the portraiture of a layer of scholars, Luso-Brazilian merchants, bachelors, editors, who have become invested in and have self-invested from the capacity to govern. Keywords: portrait; visual culture; Luso-Brazilian empire. Resumo: Este artigo aborda o retrato dos homens de governo, especialmente das Cortes Constituintes em 1820, no mundo luso-brasileiro. Atenta especialmente para duas séries imagéticas, uma coleção de Silva Oeirense e outra galeria feita por Domingos Antonio de Sequeira, notando-se de que maneiras tais imagens se tornaram uma espécie de dispositivo biográfico para estes deputados capaz de expressar seu caráter vincado pela moderação. Busca ainda apontar algumas distinções dessas imagens na retratística da época. No geral, indica uma ordenação de si por meio dos sentidos e das mudanças na retratística de uma camada de letrados, comerciantes, bacharéis, redatores, luso-brasileiros que se viram investidos e se autoinvestiram da capacidade de governar. Palavras-chave: retrato; cultura visual; império luso-brasileiro. I There has been a remarkable historiographical investment in historical studies since the late 1980s in Brazil, around the biographies and trajectories, which greatly affects the forms of writing history, the accounting of events and plots, in the documentary work of rebuilding what is defined, with differences, such as life. 1 Moreover, this investment, in overall academics, has a driving force in the publishing of printed books and ebooks, by reaching a considerable audience on a varied palette, from

Afro-Brazilian Manifestations, An Urgent Recognition

Contemporary And, 2016

The image of afro-descendants always figured in the Brazilian national imaginary, since colonial times. But it was just during the early 20th early century, the modern period, that some artworks started to portray them differently, seeking to cherish the then freed slaves as a sociocultural symbolic element of a new era. These modern artworks embodied the popular and national, the heroic and prosaic in the construction of a new Brazilian identity, in a country that was seeking to be free from its past. In some extent, these images accomplished that without, however, addressing the social dramas that slavery, captivity and the consequent abolition caused. Contradictorily, this new imagery inaugurated an allegedly rich social imaginary (by being interbred) within a society that did not accepted itself as mixed. In the left, a wet nurse that worked for Tarsila do Amaral family, supposedly inspiring the painting 'A negra' from 1923. These visual representations functioned also as contrapositions to the social bleaching policies of the young Brazilian Republic, where the government would regulate the entrance of immigrants (...)

Fetishes and Monuments: Afro‐Brazilian Art and Culture in the 20th Century by Roger Sansi

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2008

have been redefined as territories of Afro-Brazilian culture, semi-public spaces becoming places of mediation through which the axé (power, vital force) is transformed into a 'cultural value'. He insists that objects of cultural value must be known, seen, and reproduced, but in Candomblé you are not allowed to see or depict these objects. The question, therefore, is how to transform secret values into cultural values so that they become public. Sansi defines this process as the outcome of extended interaction between intellectuals and Candomblé leaders during the course of a century. Anthropologists, writers, and painters, some of whom became practitioners (and vice versa), combined the changing attitudes of both those in power and practitioners, including a definite hierarchy in which Candomblé Ketu is the accepted model, emphasizing its 'pure African' cults, while all other manifestations are neglected or even rejected. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 focus on modern art and Afro-Brazilian culture. During the Vargas regime's search for nationalism, 'progress' and an 'authentic' Brazilian culture emerged. The popular became exotic and was given a political role. During the dictatorship, artistic elites were recognized and acknowledged as representing Afro-Brazilian art, corresponding to the accepted Candomblé houses. All others were considered as mere 'popular' artists who created works for tourists. Sansi stresses the contradiction between the innovations of contemporary modern art and the standard, hierarchic, 'traditional' concept of Afro-Brazilian art. The Orixás of Tororó exemplifies the complexity of these changes. This is a public monument, the purpose of which was to glorify African-Brazilian culture but at the same time symbolize the secret world of the orixás and the axé. Pentecostals' recent attacks see the monument and Candomblé as fetishism, the devil's work, and attempt to shake the perception of Candomblé as symbolizing national identity. The concluding chapter, 'Re-appropriations of Afro-Brazilian culture', claims that while Candomblé has now attained official recognition, religious people who once were its practitioners dispute its credibility when they turn to Protestantism. Sansi concludes that the Afro-Brazilian cultural renaissance is characterized by the 'objectification of new, unprecedented cultural values attached to objects' (p. 188). Values have changed and will continue to change, opening a route to new conflicts and transformations of values. Book reviews 175