The Rise of Popular Modernist Architecture in Brazil

5. Lessons from Popular Modernism

5 Lessons from Popular Modernism This chapter presents my conclusions on the phenomenon of Brazilian popular modernism. Beginning with a discussion of what it means to examine Brazilian modern architecture through popular lenses, I proceed by investigating the applicability of this phenomenon to the larger debate over the course of modernism. Located between modernism and postmodernism , between center and periphery, popular modernism offers a contribution to contemporary reinterpretations of the modern movement. At the same time, popular modernism encourages the broadening of the architectural field to include middle-class houses not designed by architects and traditionally considered unworthy of study. Popular modernism can also be seen as a unique phenomenon. Its uniqueness is the topic of the third section, where I discuss its place in the broader framework of Brazilian culture. The book ends with a discussion of lessons to be learned from the study of popular modernism. The Popularity of Modernism Since the 1920s, Brazilian intellectuals have extensively debated popular culture, arguing for and against it. This debate continues today and every addition to it contributes to the “construction” of a different notion of popular culture, one that fits the ideals and goals of the individual scholar. Defining what is truly Brazilian and truly popular has always challenged the intellectual mainstream. 123 Lessons from Popular Modernism The difficulty of defining these terms permeates any discussion of identity and popular culture in Brazil. If in the 1930s an intellectual elite led by Gustavo Capanema, Vargas’s minister of education, pushed for a definition of Brazilianness, that concept was challenged in the 1950s by the rise of a middle class eager to consume cultural goods. The old definitions of what was truly Brazilian ceased to be valid in the 1950s. The accelerated pace of urbanization and industrialization brought improvements in transportation and mass media, generating a new Brazilianness. The emerging urban middle class promoted its own icons of Brazilianness based on what its members saw in the newspapers, the magazines, and the movies. A primary concern in the debates around the definition of a national identity revolved around the issue of foreign influences. The “antropofagistas” of the 1920s defined Brazilian culture as the “eating” and “digesting” of every foreign novelty, a phenomenon exacerbated by the development of mass media in the 1950s. Among Brazilian intellectuals, the debate over whether to accept or reject foreign influences dominated the 1960s. In music festivals, for instance, an intense conflict arose over whether new instruments could be used for performing Brazilian music.1 This argument put composers and performers in two opposing camps in a debate over whether electric guitars, for instance, should be incorporated in música popular Brasileira (Brazilian popular music). Even the very expression música popular Brasileira was challenged. Some argued that when electric guitars were used the music should not be called Brazilian popular music, while others argued that the very roots of Brazilian music incorporated African rhythms and European melody. This was another manifestation of the broad struggle to define what was Brazilian and what was popular. But according to Renato Ortiz (1985, 130), the dispute around the definition of a national identity and popular culture also revolved around the political and economic agenda of the Brazilian government. It is important to remember that the Kubitschek government was precariously balanced between two opposing ideals: nationalism and foreign investment. Roberto Schwarz, reflecting on the same problem from the perspective of a literary theorist, proposes the concept of “ideas out of place” to describe the Brazilian tradition of importing cultural trends. For him, the very dislocation of imported foreign ideas incorporated into the Brazil- 124 Chapter 5 ian reality defined most of the national movements. Schwarz articulates a question that challenges the traditional interpretation of popular culture: if the search for the genuine drives the discussion about Brazilianness, what would popular culture be if it could be isolated (Schwarz 1992, 3)? What seems like a theoretical problem poses many interesting challenges to our discussion about national and popular trends versus foreign cultural ones. Faced with the impossibility of isolating any aspect of popular culture, one should consider natural the flow of influences among different cultures. Or as I have argued before, one of the answers might be to develop a new approach in which the counterinfluences, or reverse path of dissemination, would be considered as seriously as the traditional path. The phenomenon of popular modernism should be somehow brought...