Paper short abstract:

The centenary of Modern Art Week in 2022 did not reproduce the glorification narrative institutionalized by the fiftieth anniversary. Several exhibitions confronted the event and its repercussions with the expressive strength of artistic production underestimated by the modernist movement.

Paper long abstract:

Whether through visits from foreigners, access to books or study trips, young artists from the city of São Paulo did not come into contact with modern European art to give a voice to the excluded, but to refine their own sensibility and, thus, like modern European artists, they appropriated other forms, or the forms of others, as means of expression. These forms, however, remain alive in other modernities and resurface. Traditionally, images of spiritual beings occupied more of the collective imagination than material culture. Making them visible is not a simple task for contemporary indigenous artists, although modernist artists and writers did so with aplomb operating under the motto that “anthropophagy unites us”. Jaider Esbell, Denilson Baniwa and Daiara Tukano highlight the persistence of this imaginary by “trampling” colonialist physical images with a modality of image that modern, normative and deritualized society is no longer capable of producing. Among other important productions inside and outside the city of São Paulo, we consider "Once upon a time there was modern (1910-1944)" at the FIESP Cultural Center, "This extraordinary Mário de Andrade" at the Afro Brasil Museum, "Raio-que-o-parta: fictions of the modern in Brazil" at SESC and "Countermemory", first visual arts exhibition held at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo since the 1922 Modern Art Week. The comparative examination of specific curatorial gestures from each exhibition might open a window for understanding the process of memorialization of Brazilian Modernism.