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 ive centuries of cultural fermentation and evolution in one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations has produced a body of artistic expression so aesthetically rich and captivating that it is finally attracting the attention of the art capitals of the world. Last year's observance of the five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Portuguese explorers saw a concerted effort among Brazil's major art institutions to reexamine the country's art legacy.
Spearheaded by the S? Paulo--based Brazil 500 Association (recently renamed Brasil Connects to reflect an expanded role), tantalizing exhibits of the country's varied art traditions were organized and sent on tour. Since then, the best of Brazil's popular and academic painters, sculptors, fabric artists, and photographers, both historic and contemporary, have been featured in cities throughout North and South America and Europe. It should come as no surprise that Latin America's largest and most populous nation has produced its share of art worthy of international attention. But until recently, the totality of its art traditions has been little known or appreciated beyond its borders. Geographic isolation, accentuated by the impenetrable Amazon Basin in the country's northern reaches and thinly populated rural expanses along its western borders, is one factor that has kept Brazilians looking inward and neighbors at a distance. Their strong sense of uniqueness and separation is further heightened by these factors: Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Western Hemisphere, and its cultural mores differ considerably from those of the Spanish-speaking countries surrounding it. The breadth of Brazil's artistic expression is enormous, providing explicit--and often contradictory--perspectives on a country that remains an enigma to the world and its own citizens. Traditions range widely: from rustic ceramic folk art created by landless peasants in the country's arid and impoverished interior to ornate eighteenth-century statuary expressive of the prevailing Catholic religion, to the works of urban painters associated with the neo-concrete movement fashionable in major metropolitan centers in recent decades. Always in the mix are such potent influences as Brazil's large African community, its indigenous peoples, and the immigrants constantly flowing in from Europe, the Middle East, and the Orient. Baroque Takes Hold  t is fitting that the roots of the word baroque can be traced to the Portuguese language. Barr?o, according to one school of thought, was initially used as a derogatory description of a deformed pearl. In time, the word came to be associated with European traditions of art, architecture, and music between roughly 1600 and 1750, following the Renaissance. Commenting on Baroque music, Rousseau wrote in 1776 of a style in which "harmony is confused, loaded with modulations and dissonance, difficult intonation, and strong movement." Baroque art and architecture have also been described in terms of stylistic excess.
"The Baroque style is a study of contrasts," comments Jorge Glusberg, director of Buenos Aires' Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which
Baroque art flourished in Brazil about a century after the movement attained its zenith in Europe. Icons were brought to the vast colony to put the stamp of the church on what in time would become the nation with the world's largest Catholic population. Meant to inspire the native masses with the ways of the Catholic Church, the religious statuary, in particular, caught the imagination of indigenous artists, who began to make replicas in clay. The social interaction between the conquered and their Portuguese masters--a more dynamic and less oppressive relationship than that which existed in the Spanish colonies--resulted in an exchange of ideas that would in time play a role in defining the Brazilian Baroque school. Natives passed along their intimate knowledge of working with clay, while in exchange Europeans taught them the art of wood carving. "I believe that Brazilian Baroque art attained its distinct character in the eighteenth century," states Edward Sullivan, professor of art history and chairman of the Department of Fine Arts at New York University (NYU). He headed the curatorial team that organized Brazil: Body and Soul, an exhibit of 350 pieces of Brazilian art from the Baroque and twentieth-century periods that will be on display at New York City's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through January 27, 2002. "During the eighteenth century, foreign stimuli, particularly from Portugal, Italy, and even Germany, had filtered in through many artists from Europe working there as well as from print sources. By the end of that century, Rococo (a style of profuse and delicate ornamentation developed in reaction to the Baroque) had come into vogue, and as a result, Brazilian art became lighter, more delicate, and more expressive and theatrical than before," Sullivan adds. Many Schools Emerge  razil's expansive territory fostered the growth of what would become distinctive regional styles of Baroque art. Rio de Janeiro, the colony's largest and most sophisticated city of the Baroque period, was greatly influenced by trends on the Continent, particularly in Portugal. To the south, Jesuit priests developed a local tradition strongly influenced by indigenous aesthetic values. In the arid northeastern region of the colony, port cities such as Salvador, the gateway to Brazil for the country's African population, and Recife, which was a Dutch enclave in the seventeenth century, cultivated local schools of Baroque art that reflected subtle regional variations. (An altarpiece from the Monastery of S? Bento in Olinda, a town not far from Recife, is a centerpiece of the Guggenheim exhibit.)
The landlocked state of Minas Gerais, a gold-rich mountainous region east of Rio, provided the most fertile setting for the development of a true "Brazilian" Baroque school. It was here that a local artist who became known as "the Michelangelo of Brazil" spent the latter part of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth creating many Baroque masterpieces. The son of a Portuguese father and an African mother, Antonio Francisco Lisboa, known as O Aleijadinho (Portuguese for "the Little Cripple"), exhibited a creative genius that has been compared with that of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance. The highly expressive character of his sculptures (some of which will be on display at the Guggenheim), generally attributed to the influence of his mother's
"I believe that Mexican and Peruvian Baroque art, the other great Latin American schools in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are heavily invested on the dark side of spirituality," comments NYU's Sullivan, "while the Brazilians tended to lighten things quite considerably. That isn't to say that much of the Brazilian work is not dramatic as well. However, color is used in a very different way in Brazil, where it is lighter and often pastel." The Baroque tradition here often includes large-scale religious pieces, created, observes Sullivan, "to represent an interactive participation between the worshiper and the object in a public setting such as a church or chapel." More reflective of the personal side of Brazilian spirituality are the equally ornate home altars (oratorios) and portable shrines. In Bahia and other regions where the influence of African culture is particularly strong, such personalized altars may incorporate symbols associated with West African religions in a melding of Christian and African religious expressions. Folk Traditions  any among the general population create, as a natural expression of their faith, small wooden figures known as milagres (miracles), a form of ex-voto. Seeking divine intervention for a physical malady, they usually craft these figures in the shape of that part of the body needing healing. One of the most ubiquitous art forms in Brazil, it is most prevalent in the northeast, where a number of the country's famous pilgrimage centers are located.
"The popular art of Brazil," says Nora Hochbaum, general director of the Recoleta Cultural Center of Buenos Aires, "is an excellent example of the heterogeneous richness of a regional culture and its art. It is the most genuine manifestation of a community that honors the difference between art and craft." Small-scale earthen sculptures, often unpainted, depict the daily routine of poor farmers--from visiting the dentist to tending animals to carrying out the ceremony of courtship. They have come to epitomize the folk art associated with the country's northeast region. These snapshots in clay document a rural lifestyle that has changed little in hundreds of years. Other examples of popular art that capture the cultural pulse of a neighborhood are papier-m?h?and wood masks often used for ritualistic observances such as Carnaval, feathered body ornaments worn by native peoples from the Amazon, and constructions of fiber, glass, wood, and other materials that reflect the influence of candombl? the Afro-Brazilian religion still popular in areas such as Bahia. Dynamic Modern Art  hroughout the centuries, Brazilian artists have periodically either assimilated foreign themes and techniques or rejected them in favor of indigenous approaches. One era of wholehearted embrace of overt European values occurred in the early 1800s, when a group of French artists known as the French Artistic Mission arrived in Rio de Janeiro and introduced a highly formalized, stylistically conservative approach to fine art.
Later that century, however, industrialization,
Fueled by the sudden burst of prosperity, democratization, and intellectual liberation in the 1950s that produced the visionary new capital city of Bras?ia, a flurry of nationalistic-oriented music, cinema, sculpture, architecture, photography, and painting announced to the world that a cultural superpower was beginning to flex its muscles. In the following decades, nativist themes were increasingly promoted in many areas of the arts, while painters embraced the concepts of nonrepresentational abstractionism, concrete art, and other modernist trends. The rapidly changing nature of Brazilian society--exacerbated by growing urbanization, economic globalization, and instant communication--is further influencing the country's artistic output. "The countryside is changing, losing its memory, and destroying its traditions by imitating the lifestyles of the large centers," observes Miguel Aun, a photographer from Belo Horizonte, sounding the alarm that some of the most hallowed aspects of Brazilian culture are currently undergoing profound changes. These changes are certain to shape the vision of future generations of artists. All of which makes the various exhibitions displaying Brazil's artistic accomplishments both timely and valuable. "The exhibit is not a survey but a 'conversation' or 'dialogue' between the Baroque period and the twentieth century," cautions curator Sullivan. "But we hope that Brazil: Body and Soul will provoke greater curiosity about Brazilian culture. If it functions as a catalyst for in-depth exhibitions of the work of individual artists or movements, or serves as a stimulus for further specialized scholarly studies, it will have served a worthwhile purpose."  Select Exhibits The extensive collection of art amassed in celebration of Brazil's five hundredth anniversary has been divided for exhibits in various countries. Below is a partial listing. United States Virgin Territory: Women, Gender, and History in Contemporary Brazilian Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., through January 6, 2002. Brazil: Body and Soul, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, through January 27, 2002. O Fio da Trama: Arte Contempor?ea Brasileira, Museo del Barrio, New York City, through February 3, 2002. Various exhibits by contemporary Brazilian artists at some fifteen galleries in New York. England The Amazon Collection, Kew Gardens, London, through November 4, 2001. Heroes and Artists: Popular Art and the Brazilian Imagination, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, through December 9, 2001. Opulence and Devotion: Brazilian Baroque Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, through February 3, 2002. Unknown Amazon, British Museum, London, through April 1, 2002. France Mira Schendel et Tunga, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, through November 18, 2001. C?e ?C?e: L'art contemporain de BrÄsil, CAPC MusÄe d'art contemporain, through February 10, 2002. Spain Brazil: Body and Soul, Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao, March 11 through August 29, 2002. Mark Holston is a regular contributor to The World & I. He travels frequently to Latin America and writes about political, cultural, social, and economic issues for a number of international publications. |
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