Envisioning Brazil: A Guide to Brazilian Studies in the United States

Chapter 6. Arts and Music

CHAPTER 6 Arts and Music JOSE NEISTEIN THE ARTS INTRODUCTION Initially, the interest in Brazilian visual arts came from scholars in the United States in a wide variety of fields of study. It was only after 1960, however, that a broader interest emerged and an overview was produced. As had already occurred with ethnomusicology, the ethnologists were among the first U.S. scholars to show an interest in Brazilian Indian art from the Amazon and Mato Grosso, as well as from the central and southern regions of Brazil. Roger Bastide, a French sociologist who conducted research in Brazil and taught at the Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP) for many years, summarized that interest and the status of the research on Brazilian art up through the 1960s in the English version of the Encyclopedia ofWorld Art (1960), which was a translation of the Italian Enciclopedia Universale dell'Arte, published in 1958. He also included a comprehensive bibliography on the visual arts in Brazil. Another point of departure for the systematic study of Brazilian arts in the United States were the set of books, articles, and reviews by Robert Chester Smith, published in the United States, Portugal, and Brazil from the 1930S to the 1960s. Robert C. Smith wrote pioneering studies in English on Brazilian colonial architecture, painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, as well as on Brazilian modern architecture of the period from 1940 to 1960, and on Candido Portinari's paintings. On the occasion of the unveiling of Portinari's large mural paintings at the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, in 1941, Robert C. Smith wrote an 133 134 JOSE NEISTEIN essay on the work of the Brazilian artist, with a special emphasis on those murals. That essay was one of the first systematic and consistent studies written outside Brazil about the "boy from Brodosqui" (as the artist was known in Brazil) and was certainly one of the best of its time. In addition, it was the publication Modern Architecture in Brazil (1956), by Henrique E. Mindlin, that launched Brazilian modern architecture onto the international scene, with all of its styles and forms. This systematic study on the aesthetic and technical characteristics of Brazilian architecture remains current as, in addition to being a scholar, the author was also a well-known architect. HISTORY 1. General Overviews The Encyclopedia ofWorld Art featured an introduction to Brazilian colonial and modern art periods written by Mario Barata, accompanied by a bibliography, in conjunction with an entry on "Arte India" by Roger Bastide. Ten years later, in 1970, the Brazilian publishing house Livraria Kosmos Editora published Profile of the New Brazilian Art, by Pietro Maria Bardi, translated from Italian by John Drummond. The book was intended for international readers. It was the first time an overview of Brazilian arts was published, although with a greater emphasis on the modern period. Thirteen years later, Harper and Row published The Art of Brazil (1983), by Carlos Lemos, Jose Roberto Teixeira Leite, and Pedro Gismonti, translated by Jennifer Clay. The Art of Brazil, which was more extensive than Bardi's book, introduced the u.s. reader to a more systematic and detailed perspective on Brazilian arts throughout the country's history, encompassing virtually all areas of visual art creativity and supported by an essential bibliography. Also in 1983, the Walter Moreira Salles Institute published, in two large volumes, the Hist6ria Geral da Arte no Brasil, containing essays written by a wide variety of authors under the editorial direction of Walter Zanini. This was the first such extensive overview of the Brazilian arts ever published. Although this book was published in Portuguese, it became well known in the United States and had a significant impact on U.S. scholars of the arts in Brazil. This book is still influential, despite being somewhat outdated, since nothing so comprehensive has been published since 1983. Each essay in the Hist6ria Geral da Arte no Brasil has its own bibliography. Arts and Music 135 2 . THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1500-1822) With the possible exception of the modern period, colonial art has been the most studied of the arts in Brazil, in several different languages and by a wide range of scholars, both in Brazil and abroad. In the United States, Robert Chester Smith's pioneering studies date to the late 1930S, when he published in the Handbook of Latin American Studies (coordinated by the Hispanic Division of...