À "frente" da Semana de Arte Moderna: a presença de Graça Aranha e Paulo Prado

Reconhecidos como personagens centrais pelo grupo de intelectuais e artistas ligados à Semana de Arte Moderna de 1922, Graça Aranha e Paulo Prado são muitas vezes deixados de lado pelos estudiosos e, em geral, se fazem presentes nas análises de bastidores e/ou em referências de terceiros. Este artigo pretende observar mais atentamente suas redes de sociabilidade e inserção, o que revela, entre outras coisas, as ambivalências do engate de ambos os autores em um projeto "moderno", assim como certas ambivalências presentes no interior do próprio movimento modernista.

Rich task implementation: modernism meets postmodernism

School renewal', 'productive pedagogies', 'rich tasks', 'New Basics', 'key learning areas'--these are some of the discourses of change in selected Queensland schools. This paper will report on teaching as an insider/outsider in a school's Health and Physical Education department during a time of intense pressure for structural, curriculum and pedagogical shifts. As a teacher/researcher, I spent ten weeks in a government secondary school attempting to implement rich tasks as well as collect data using formal and informal interviews, field note, and document analyses, with a focus upon teachers', students' and administrators' sense of change processes and outcomes. It is suggested that the processes of, and barriers to, curriculum change in this context are best explained in terms of tensions between modernist and postmodernist phenomena.

On the threshold of forgetting: Amnesiac identities and the Brazilian capital

Centuries after Locke asserted the importance of memory to identity, Freudian psychology argued that what was forgotten was of equal importance as to what was remembered. The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw a rising interest in the nature of forgetting, resulting in a reassessment and newfound distrust of the long revered faculty of memory. The relationship between memory and identity was inverted, seeing forgetting also become a means for forging identity. This newfound distrust of memory manifested in the writings of Nietzsche who in 1874 called for society to learn to feel unhistorically and distance itself from the past - in what was essentially tantamount to a cultural forgetting. Following the Nietzschean call, the architecture of Modernism was also compelled by the need to 'overcome' the limits imposed by history. This paper examines notions of identity through the shifting boundaries of remembering and forgetting, with particular reference to the construction of Brazilian identity through the ‘repression’ of history and memory in the design of the Brazilian capital. Designed as a forward-looking modernist utopia, transcending the limits imposed by the country's colonial heritage, the design for Brasilia exploited the anti-historicist agenda of modernism to emancipate the country from cultural and political associations with the Portuguese Empire. This paper examines the relationship between place, memory and forgetting through a discussion of the design for Brasilia.

(FAB11_2_003) Authentic Japanese architecture after Bruno Taut: the problem of eclecticism

This paper will examine attitudes to eclectic stylistic borrowing in Japan in the twentieth century in light of the concept of authenticity. I am particularly interested in how an earlier claim correlating European modernist and traditional Japanese architecture continues to colour conceptions about what is an 'authentic' response for Japanese architects to make to contemporary conditions. Non-Western and vernacular architectures generally have been the repository for touristic desires for regional authenticity and difference. Yet Japan's unique role in the development of modernist architecture has given a peculiar intensity to the demand for its architecture to resist a perceived postmodern decadence.

Educational brokers in global education markets

This article undertakes a text analysis of the promotional materials generated by two educational brokers, the British Council’s Education Counselling Service (ECS) and Australia’s International Development Programme (IDP-Education Australia).By focusing on the micropractices of branding, the constructions of the "international student" and "international education" are examined to uncover the relations between international education and globalisation.The conclusion reached here is that the dominant marketing messages used to brand and sell education are unevenly weighted in favour of the economic imperative.International education remains fixed in modernist spatiotemporal contexts that ignore the challenges presented by globalisation.Developing new notions of international education will require a more critical engagement with the geopolitics of knowledge and with issues of subjectivity, difference, and power.Ultimately, a more sustained and comprehensive engagement with the noneconomic dimensions of globalisation will be necessary to achieve new visions of international education.

Body and transcendence in Virginia Woolf and Clarice Lispector = Corpo e transcendência em Virgínia Woolf e Clarice Lispector

Virginia Woolf and Clarice Lispector belong to quite different historical, political and cultural contexts. Beyond its antecedents and roots in European modernism, Brazilian modernism developed according to peculiar patterns and lines, cultivating, for example, more clearly political, nationalist and regionalist tendencies than happened in the British area. Molly Hite’s essay “Virginia Woolf’s Two Bodies” suggests the existence of two kinds of body represented and perhaps experienced by Virginia Woolf: “one kind was the body for others, the body cast in social roles”, the other, the “visionary body”, a second physical presence, which brings into play new perspectives on the female modernist body and new strategies of political and aesthetic representation. It is this “visionary body”, that, in many moments, intersects with transcendence. These two kinds of body are also present in Clarice Lispector’s work, structured, of course, around other complexities and gradations, explained by a different temporal context, but still touching common seminal questions. In Lispector, it is through the body cast in social roles that you reach the “visionary body” and transcendence. The movement is not a flight, as in Woolf, on the contrary it is a necessity, a condition to get to the essence.

The brushstroke and materials of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso combined in an authentication tool

Nowadays, authentication studies for paintings require a multidisciplinary approach, based on the contribution of visual features analysis but also on characterizations of materials and techniques. Moreover, it is important that the assessment of the authorship of a painting is supported by technical studies of a selected number of original artworks that cover the entire career of an artist. This dissertation is concerned about the work of modernist painter Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. It is divided in three parts. In the first part, we propose a tool based on image processing that combines information obtained by brushstroke and materials analysis. The resulting tool provides qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the authorship of the paintings; the quantitative element is particularly relevant, as it could be crucial in solving authorship controversies, such as judicial disputes. The brushstroke analysis was performed by combining two algorithms for feature detection, namely Gabor filter and Scale Invariant Feature Transform. Thanks to this combination (and to the use of the Bag-of-Features model), the proposed method shows an accuracy higher than 90% in distinguishing between images of Amadeo’s paintings and images of artworks by other contemporary artists. For the molecular analysis, we implemented a semi-automatic system that uses hyperspectral imaging and elemental analysis. The system provides as output an image that depicts the mapping of the pigments present, together with the areas made using materials not coherent with Amadeo’s palette, if any. This visual output is a simple and effective way of assessing the results of the system. The tool proposed based on the combination of brushstroke and molecular information was tested in twelve paintings obtaining promising results. The second part of the thesis presents a systematic study of four selected paintings made by Amadeo in 1917. Although untitled, three of these paintings are commonly known as BRUT, Entrada and Coty; they are considered as his most successful and genuine works. The materials and techniques of these artworks have never been studied before. The paintings were studied with a multi-analytical approach using micro-Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence spectroscopy, micro-Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy, micro-Spectrofluorimetry and Scanning Electron Microscopy. The characterization of Amadeo’s materials and techniques used on his last paintings, as well as the investigation of some of the conservation problems that affect these paintings, is essential to enrich the knowledge on this artist. Moreover, the study of the materials in the four paintings reveals commonalities between the paintings BRUT and Entrada. This observation is supported also by the analysis of the elements present in a photograph of a collage (conserved at the Art Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), the only remaining evidence of a supposed maquete of these paintings. The final part of the thesis describes the application of the image processing tools developed in the first part of the thesis on a set of case studies; this experience demonstrates the potential of the tool to support painting analysis and authentication studies. The brushstroke analysis was used as additional analysis on the evaluation process of four paintings attributed to Amadeo, and the system based on hyperspectral analysis was applied on the painting dated 1917. The case studies therefore serve as a bridge between the first two parts of the dissertation.

Southern Modernisms. Critical Stances through Regional Appropriations. Conference proceedings

The hegemonic definition of Modernism has been subjected to an intense critical revision process that began several decades ago. This process has contributed to the significant broadening of the modernist canon by challenging its primal essentialist assumptions and formalist interpretations in the fields of both the visual arts and architecture. This conference aims to further expand this revision, as it seeks to discuss the notion of “Southern Modernisms” by considering the hypothesis that regional appropriations, both in Southern Europe and the Southern hemisphere, entailed important critical stances that have remained unseen or poorly explored by art and architectural historians. In association with the Southern Modernisms research project (FCT – EXPL/CPC-HAT/0191/2013), we want to consider the entrenchment of southern modernisms in popular culture (folk art and vernacular architecture) as anticipating some of the premises of what would later become known as critical regionalism. It is therefore our purpose to explore a research path that runs parallel to key claims on modernism’s intertwinement with bourgeois society and mass culture, by questioning the idea that an aesthetically significant regionalism – one that resists to the colonization of international styles and is supported by critical awareness – occurred only in the field of architecture, and can only be represented as a postmodernist turn. (...)

History of Art and Art Criticism: A System in Crisis

This article aims to reconstruct the critical debate regarding the examination of the crisis in the disciplines of art history and criticism with a particular focus on the proposal formulated by U.S. theorists who contributed to October journal. The discrediting of many modernist critical methods, particularly that of Clement Greenberg – the formalist diktat – marked the birth of the journal and gave rise to proposals set forth by critics committed to a new approach. Their divergent positions, nonetheless, have contributed to undermining the traditional concepts of the autonomy of art and criticism. The proposals discussed over the course of publication were the result of a reappraisal of the disciplinary instruments of art history and criticism pursuant to the crucial cultural changes which took place in the 1980s.

Arshile Gorky: An Armenian in New York

Born in Armenia, the oldest Christian country in the world but nevertheless one of the youngest reinstated republics (1991) after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arshile Gorky flew to the United States in 1920, where he chose to reinvent himself in the struggle to become an artist. This reinvention meant the creation of a persona with, or behind, which Gorky kept alive the artistic flame inside himself. Gorky became one of the most learned voices lecturing on contemporary European modernist artists and movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States (New York) without ever visiting Europe. Moreover, he was able to survive the traumatic events he underwent during the Armenian Genocide (1915-1919) to adapt to his new country and identity, to live through the years of the Depression and, eventually, to become the protagonistof a major artistic breakthrough. This paper proposes an insight into the experience of life and frame of work of this Armenian-American artist, whose simultaneously rich, traumatic, dislocated and reenacted life and work established one of the most fertile links between his middle‑eastern origins, his dreamed of Europe and the particular transit of his American artistic creation.

Grafismo e Ilustração em Portugal nos Anos 40

Esta tese de doutoramento tem como campo de estudo o grafismo e a ilustração produzidos em Portugal durante os anos 40 do século XX. Ela foca a sua análise em quatro áreas de investigação: a) publicidade; b) grafismo e ilustração de jornais, revistas e livros; c) grafismo editorial produzido pelo Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional; d) grafismo de algumas publicações editadas por ocasião das exposições de Paris (1937), Nova Iorque e São Francisco (1939), e a Exposição do Mundo Português (1940). Através da pesquisa de fontes primárias – jornais, revistas, livros, anúncios, cartazes, material publicitário vário – em conjução com textos e artigos da época – procurámos fazer uma História do Design Gráfico em Portugal que tivesse em consideração não só a estética do material gráfico criado mas também a conjuntura histórica, económica, sociológica e ideológica em que esse material apareceu. Comparámos o grafismo realizado para as instituições públicas e aquele feito para as empresas privadas para concluir que há pontos de contacto entre os dois não só por os artistas serem quase sempre os mesmos mas também porque o mesmo discurso ideológico permeava tanto a propaganda do Estado Novo quanto a produção comercial ainda que houvesse a resistência de outras propostas estéticas e imaginários, como o surrealismo e o neo-realismo. António Ferro, director do Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional, soube aproveitar o talento de um núcleo de artistas para a criação de uma identidade visual para Portugal, uma identidade que sintetizasse elementos da arte popular com um enquadramento moderno. Através de múltiplas actividades essa identidade foi sendo desenvolvida e replicada mas é nas oportunidades de trabalho e experimentação dadas aos artistas modernistas portugueses que reside o verdadeiro legado de António Ferro para o Design Gráfico português.

Análise configuracional dos grandes conjuntos urbanos na Região de Lisboa (1945-1974) : contributos da sintaxe espacial para a história de arte como história da cidade

A presente investigação debruça-se sobre o estudo dos grandes conjuntos urbanos, tendo como referência a área de Lisboa no período entre 1945 e 1974. O seu objetivo principal é compreender o padrão espacial e respetivas variantes destas formas urbanas relativamente recentes bem como avaliar o seu impato na estrutura global da cidade e da sociedade. Tomando como ponto de partida a história de arte como história da cidade, a tese toma como objeto o grande conjunto urbano e aponta a hipótese do estudo da relação forma-fundo como meio de obter informações relevantes que relacionem o uso e função com respeito ao desenho do espaço aberto. Como diferentes arranjos entre espaços abertos e fechados implicam tipos espaciais distintos (Medeiros 2013), o estudo da relação entre a forma (cheio) e o fundo (vazio) dos grandes conjuntos urbanos e respetivas variações, pode fornecer-nos informação espacial relevante, que nos permitem compreender melhor estas formas urbanas recentes. Usando a abordagem própria da teoria da sintaxe espacial (Hillier e Hanson 1984), do tipo configuracional, determinam-se as relações entre os vários elementos constituintes dos sistemas espaciais formados nestas urbanizações. Essas relações são depois analisadas através de medidas e variáveis topológicas que nos permitem identificar qualidades e valores espaciais para a sociedade. Os resultados obtidos a partir dessas variáveis e medidas permitem-nos, depois, avaliar os graus de ‘formalidade’ e ‘urbanidade’ em cada sistema (Holanda 2002). Consequentemente, a avaliação qualitativa das características espaciais que se pretendem obter nesta investigação, tem como base a avaliação quantitativa, permitindo assim comparar mais facilmente os diversos casos de estudo. De entre o conjunto de casos analisados, o estudo revela uma série de características comuns, que nos permitem identificar um padrão específico de urbanismo modernista que reflete claramente um conjunto de ideologias associadas a uma visão reformista da sociedade através do espaço. Mas por outro lado, existem também um conjunto de características particulares de cada caso, que reportam para a estrutura morfológica da cidade tradicional. No que reporta à hipótese de estudo levantada nesta investigação sobre a relação forma-fundo, verifica-se através da amostra que esta relação aparece invertida. Esta diferenciação deve-se ao abandono dos tradicionais sistemas de rua e de quarteirão, ainda presentes nas urbanizações de Alvalade e do Areeiro e a sua substituição pelo bloco livre em espaço aberto como nos casos de Alfragide, Portela e Olivais. Tal facto, como prova a teoria da Sintaxe Espacial ou Lógica Social do Espaço, traduziu-se necessariamente em diferentes modos de vida pública e privada e consequentemente de vida espacial e social. Assim concluímos, através da análise dos casos de estudo apresentados, que embora fazendo parte duma mesma ideologia urbana com características comuns (genótipo modernista), os mesmos apresentam resultados espaciais totalmente diferenciados o que justifica a dificuldade da sua análise comparativa.

A lusofonia enquanto experiência estética: considerações em torno da existência de um cânone lusófono

A partir de um conceito alargado de estética, coincidindo com o sentido panteísta que Georg Simmel lhe atribui, discorre-se sobre a presença portuguesa nos trópicos e sobre a constituição, no decorrer do período mercantilista, do que poderá ser considerado como o núcleo duro da lusofonia: o Nordeste brasileiro, o arquipélago de Cabo Verde e as cidades de Luanda e Benguela e respetivos hinterlands. Os movimentos modernistas, emergidos nestas regiões, ao relevarem as especificidades culturais de cada uma delas, acabaram por revelar a proximidade antropológica e estética entre as mesmas, transformando essa experiência histórica num importante referente na evocação e na legitimação da lusofonia. Tecem-se, de seguida, algumas considerações sobre a s políticas públicas a serem implementadas para o aprofundamento da condição lusófona, assim com também se discute a existência de um cânone lusófono.

Iconografia de Pèl & Ploma

Treball de recerca realitzat per alumnes d'ensenyament secundari i guardonat amb un Premi CIRIT per fomentar l'esperit científic del Jovent l'any 2009. Aquesta recerca ha consistit en fer una base de dades a partir de la iconografia de la revista modernista ''Pèl&Ploma''. Es tracta de fer un inventari de les il•lustracions que hi surten des de la primera publicació -3 de juny de 1899- fins a la número 76, publicat el 15 de maig de 1901. S’ha fet una fitxa de cadascuna de les imatges on s’hi recull: el nom de l'autor, el títol de l'obra, el número de la revista i la pàgina on apareix, la tècnica utilitzada i un petit comentari. A més, inclou una introducció general sobre la revista i una fitxa bibliogràfica de cada artista que hi participa.

Jaume Brossa (1868-1919) regeneracionista i revolucionari

Treball de recerca realitzat per una alumna d'ensenyament secundari i guardonat amb un Premi CIRIT per fomentar l'esperit científic del Jovent l'any 2009. El present treball és un estudi de la personalitat humana, literària i filosòfica de Jaume Brossa així com un anàlisi del medi sociohistòric que li va tocar viure. El mètode utilitzat ha estat, en primer lloc, un rastreig de material original, articles publicats entre els anys 1892 i 1902 en diversos òrgans de premsa de Barcelona i Madrid. Una vegada obtingut el material requerit, s’ha sondejat per dins de les seves línies fins a trobar quin era el seu pensament en molts aspectes, a saber: el seu posicionament entorn els grans centres d’atenció del seu temps: el nacionalisme, el moviment obrer, l’estètica modernista en les seves parcel•les de música, literatura, teatre etc., tots aquests camps, tractats des de la base de la seva actitud regeneracionista i revolucionària. L’estudi s’ha realitzat des d’un enfocament crític: intentar esbrinar quines han estat les causes per les quals un autor certament notable de les nostres lletres ha estat marginat o, si més no, minimitzat en el seu abast intel•lectual. I, tal com es planteja al començament del treball, aquest consta d’una recerca de causes, implicacions, contextos etc. que ens permetin esbrinar per què Jaume Brossa ha estat desacreditat.