By LUIZ RENATO MARTINS*
The Brazilian way of abstraction or discomfort in history
In memory of Luiz Recamán
Lack of history and “free-form”
Unlike Mexico and Argentina, Brazil does not have art history as an institutionalized discipline, much less in the form of a critical-reflective system.
In 1947, Lourival Gomes Machado (1917-1967) began Portrait of Modern Art in Brazil for the statement: “The first historian of Brazilian art, systematic and with a general vision of cultural development, erudite and capable of interpretation, we have not yet had”. Important critics like him – and decisive ones, like Mário Pedrosa (1900-1981) – faced the issue in 1947, 1952 and 1973, with always limited results.[I]
It will not be an exceptional book or an author that will bring about redemption; the judgment remains valid and long-lasting. There are many reasons for the gap and it is not appropriate to address them here. The fact is that monographic studies that examine an artistic movement, considered in itself, in light of its own premises and determined in isolation in its positivity, have long been consolidated as a trend. And, after the emergence of a dynamic art market in the early 1970s, resulting from the so-called “Brazilian miracle”, but also from the suffocation by political repression of the political and social engagement of the visual arts, waves of studies emerged highlighting the authorial point of view and constituting the author as positivity and commodity. We are still immersed in this scene, typical of a “system of authors”.[ii]
In contrast, history and literary criticism developed systematically in Brazil, according to their own intersections and the development of an “internal causality”.[iii] Thus, to answer the main question of this colloquium, about the continuity/discontinuity of art histories in Latin America, in the Brazilian case, it is necessary to resort to the model of systematized reflection of literature and the links it established with other national issues.
However, we can also draw on the architectural and urban discourse of Brasília, a city designed between 1956 and 1960 to be the country's capital and which was based on a systematic ambition to synthesize Brazilian visual identity. The Argentine historian Adrián Gorelik called Brasília a “museum of the avant-garde.”[iv] In fact, the Brasília project implies in its urban plan and monumental buildings a systematic narrative encompassing the colonial past and the origin and nature of Brazilian modern art, which also includes a neo-primitive discourse. Therefore, it is possible to assume that the case of Brasília also serves as an eventual objectification of a systematic discourse on modern art in Brazil.
A corollary of such a discursive complex is the so-called “free form”, engendered in the architectural work of Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) in 1940-42, during the project for the Pampulha building complex (Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais), and which, favored by “pan-Americanism” and the circumstances of the war effort, soon gained international recognition for Brazilian modern architecture.
The “free form”, in its license or deviation from Corbusian functionalism, foreshadows the analogous case, at the end of the following decade (1959 and following), of neoconcrete art, dissenting from the imperatives of concrete art and, today, also celebrated internationally. Thus, both modern architecture and neoconcrete art now appear as emblems of the proclaimed “talent” of Brazilian authors.
“Free form” is, therefore, the objectified expression of what can be called the “Brazilian propensity for formalism.” Where does this tendency come from? On what historical-social experience is it based?
The Brazilian propensity for formalism
Em Brazil roots (1936), historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1902-1982) gave an incisive answer about the origin of the propensity found among Brazilian patriarchal families for the management of forms, or for what was then called “talent”: it comes from the power that the values and customs of the big houses exercised, since the colonial period, over the Brazilian social and symbolic formation.
Ease and skill in handling forms would be rooted in the aversion to work that the rural oligarchies, when they migrated to the cities, transmitted to their descendants, who adopted the liberal professions and opted for practices and forms that were averse to objectivity, precision and the confrontation of real issues. The late and incipient Brazilian educational system, fundamentally clerical and private, adapted to such designs and combined the original segregationism with the cultivation of forms dissociated from reality.
The source of the problem is summed up perfectly by the historian: “The entire structure of our colonial society was based outside of urban areas. This fact must be taken into account in order to understand exactly the conditions that, directly or indirectly, governed us until long after our political independence was proclaimed and whose repercussions have not disappeared to this day.” [v]
The diagnosis remains valid 75 years later! A brilliant university thesis, written by Luiz Recamán in 2002,[vi] demonstrates that modern Brazilian architecture is based on non-urban principles. It thus reveals, through a strict analysis of architectural and urban discourse, the long hegemony of the active principle of the colonial order, which translates into the dictatorship of agrarian forms over urban ones.
In short, Luiz Recamán's argument is that a non-urban perspective is the constant of the system formed by modern Brazilian architecture in the 20 years that led to its first totem, that is, the project for the Ministry of Education and Health building (1936-37), by Lúcio Costa (1902-1998) and his team,[vii] passing through the second chapter, the project for the Brazilian pavilion at the New York World Fair (1939-40, L. Costa and O. Niemeyer), as well as the third icon, the Pampulha complex (1942-43), up to the projects for Brasília (c. 1957-60, O. Niemeyer and L. Costa). Always conceived as isolated units in the landscape, such buildings were surrounded by emptiness, by simulated or ephemeral situations (New York World Fair) or by a tabula rasa of social relations (the deserted area of Pampulha).[viii]
Nuptials and fruits
In short, from the scene of origin of Brazilian modernization, under the clear analysis made by Luiz Recamán, the system of Brazilian modern architecture emerges as a unique offspring of the link between the process of conservative renewal – of an oligarchic-rural social formation that moves towards industrialization – and the power of seduction of an innovative doctrine, the architecture of Corbusier (1897-1965), conceived to reform and adapt the long-lived European cities, born from local commerce (fairs) and medieval crafts, to the Taylorist program of monopolistic industry.
But where does the early maturation and unparalleled vigor of the fruit of the union of such heterogeneous spouses and such distinct origins come from? Putting the question in more detail, in the transition from the agrarian oligarchic mode to the monopolistic commercial-industrial system, in what terms was the union of interests and practices cemented between the conservative transition of the Brazilian productive system and a modernizing technique, in this case, that which, based on industrialist extraction planning, was brought by the functionalist doctrine of the Franco-Swiss architect?
It is worth noting, emphasizing, a technique atavistically related to revolutions – but revolutions, certainly, technical-productive, except, of course, the political revolution, in the order of command. Limit and specification, which guaranteed the modernizing oligarchies, in this context, to maintain the monopoly of goods and the empire over labor.
The thesis of this work is that the vector of the alliance (successfully consummated) was the common Bonapartist strategy – in the sense that Marx gave to this qualifier.[ix] – to manage the discourse, at once utopian and positivist, of modern architecture as ersatz or simulacrum of the political process, emptied in favor of the free play of modern forms.
With Bonapartist resourcefulness and state funding, the laboratory stage of experiments was quickly overcome. From the triumphant emergence of “free form” in Pampulha, as a fetish form of architecture destined for exhibition and speculation or to “enhance value”, as shown by the sharp eye of Luiz Recamán,[X] Modern architecture took on, in the warm Brazilian lands – but politically frozen by authoritarianism – a familiar air – as familiar as other transplanted seedlings and practices: sugar cane, coconut, large estates, slavery, coffee, etc.
Today, who can imagine Brazil without such pearls? The great mercantile-colonial invention was, first and foremost, the slave-owning latifundium – the molecule of the empire-form – from which derive the other qualities and comparative advantages, considered to this day as Brazilian excellences. What is the place of Brasília and its essential figure, the “free form”, in such a necklace that so well girds the imperial territorial form, another legacy of the colonial past?
A modern pearl
Therefore, beyond the affiliation of this architecture to the patronage and patriarchy that still monopolize the powers of the State today, let us examine its style, with its unique mark and power of seduction. What is the gene of the emblematic molecule of Brazilian “talent” for modern architecture, the “free form”?
It has become customary, since Max Bill's (1908-1994) criticism of “free form”,[xi] trace it back to colonial religious baroque. Such a claim merely ties in with Costa's praise of civil colonial architecture.[xii] However, Niemeyer's dissent from the lesson of functionalism, which he never failed to recognize, is not of an architectural nature, but of artistic origin – and for this reason it was endorsed, one can conclude, as filial license.[xiii] by Corbusier.
Niemeyer's deviation from the functionalist trait is linked rather to the dual and ambivalent content of his abstraction, to something naturalistic and allegedly primitive, typical of Brazilian modernism – much more Art Deco styles than was proclaimed. The “free-form” draws directly from the “neo-primitivism” of the so-called “Pau-brasil” lexicon and the so-called “anthropophagous” art of Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973). Between the wide and sinuous curves of Tarsila’s drawing and the “free-forms”, continuities are woven, evident in the mere visual comparison of Niemeyer’s forms with those of Tarsila’s painting.[xiv] In both, the features allege the essence of the “Brazilian man” and aim to stylize popular forms and Brazilian visual appearance. Underlying this order of similarities, revealing the late-modernizing and autocratic premise they share, lies the conviction that they can do so from above and through drawing.[xv]
Allegories and “comparative advantages”
The book Primitivism in Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade and Raul Bopp (2010)[xvi] Abílio Guerra's erudite, precise and acute investigation demonstrates how much the modernist bourgeois mythology surrounding the “Brazilian man”, or his multiple racial origins – European, indigenous and African – and his supposed direct connection with the telluric dimension, is tributary to notions and parameters of hygienism and the colonialist and positivist anthropology of the European powers of the 19th century. However, such a discussion, although interesting and politically very relevant, would take us away from the purpose of showing in architectural and visual terms how the “free form” and the systematized narrative of Brazilian modern art, widely accepted, are rooted in the Brazilian social and symbolic formation,[xvii] marked by latifundia.
If it is not possible to detail here the lexical and syntax kinship between the “free form” and the Pau-brasil movement, it is worth noting that the artistic origin of the “talent” of the architect’s line, which prevails in the project design over all other considerations, directly responds to the modernist oath – which claims to be neo-primitive –[xviii] to put construction and nature in symbiosis.[xx] Mythology of the direct relationship with nature and “talent”, as a natural attribute of such a relationship, explain the blatant indifference of “free-form” to the urban environment, overlooked by emptiness or immediate juxtapositions with nature.
In Pampulha, the focus of the extra-urban project consisted, Luiz Recamán noted, of the specular surface of the lake, whose reflective function was decisive for the implantation of the buildings and the reciprocal visual interpenetration of the forms.[xx] What are the terms of the power of imagination or symbiotic strategy in Brasília's projects?[xxx]
The porches and their horizons
The typical platforms in which the fulcrum of the image relationship of symbiosis or hypnotic capture of general perception lies[xxiii] are the colonnades of the balconies of the two presidential palaces: Planalto and Alvorada.
Let us examine how their symbolic value or content is shaped. Both palaces are horizontal constructions, surrounded by large porches or balconies, in the tradition of the large houses of the latifundia. The architect declared at the time: “The Palácio da Alvorada… suggests elements of the past – the horizontal direction of the façade, the large balcony that I designed with the aim of protecting this palace, the small chapel at the end of the composition reminiscent of our old farmhouses”.[xxiii]
The identification with the point of view of the large landowners in the projects of the presidential palaces, which also occurred in the palace of the Supreme Federal Court – and for good reason… –, originated a scheme of columns that soon became the logo of the so-called New City.[xxv]
Neither the architect's talented gesture – which, like Tarsila, spontaneously revives childhood memories of life on the farm – nor the advertising predestination of the architectural line, which was born as a logo and graphic piece, are accidental. The design of the columns includes an artifice that is both seductive and ambiguous, which oscillates between abstract form and ethnic-cultural allusion, and which aims to serve as an emblem. Thus, in the Planalto and Alvorada palaces, the column/sculpture hybrids evoke through their curves, arranged in one side and the other in front, another mark of the country: that of the billowing sails of the rafts, transformed into national symbols since the nationalist propaganda of the first Vargas period (1930-45).[xxiv]
At the same time, depending on the typology of the main house, the ornaments on the porches – a monument for those outside – frame the landscape for those inside.[xxv] of the cerrados and house them in a private perspective, raising the observation above the common or pedestrian plane of the city and the ground of the Central Plateau.
Brazilian mode of abstraction
In short, the building in its abstract forms claims to be modern, but also intends to nod to popular memory, while objectively, in its implementation and structural reference, it does not present itself as an urban element, but rather as a rural building, that is, as a unit in the landscape and support of the absolute privileges and prerogatives of large properties.
It is worth asking whether the architectural discourse, which associates the State with the rural manorial perspective, would be a license of authorial talent or an exception to the functionalist urban logic of the Brasília Pilot Plan – which, in fact, is supposedly republican, as claimed by those who presented the Cidade Nova and its superblocks as destined for egalitarian coexistence.
This is not what can be inferred from the terms with which urban planner Lúcio Costa declared the party of the Pilot Plan, but rather, once again, memories of the old regime. For the description of the Plan sounds like a deliberate act of possession, a gesture with a still pioneering meaning, along the lines of the colonial tradition. Thus, in his words: “[T]he present solution (…) was born from a primary gesture of someone who (…) takes possession (…) of two axes crossing at right angles, that is, the sign of the cross itself.”[xxviii]
The contradiction was not a matter of discourse and was not limited to words. Photographs by Marcel Gautherot (1910-1996) present with poignant and cutting clarity the contrast between the apparent purity of geometric forms and the rustic and intensive manual labor methods of the latifundia.[xxviii]
A similar contradiction concerns the issue of housing for workers that was not provided for. Niemeyer admitted that there was no provision in Brasília for housing for workers, who, after construction, were supposed to return to their regions.[xxix]
Utopia and malaise
Ancien Régime refigured, under operations of “transformism”, in Gramsci’s sense? The fact is that the contradictory formula of the conception of Brasilia is not far from the Bonapartist solution to the political and socioeconomic crises.
A note by Mário Pedrosa in 1957 records an observation made at the beginning of the construction of Brasília: “Lúcio, despite his creative imagination (…) tends to give in to anachronisms (…). In his plan, he foresees along the monumental axis of the city, above the municipal sector, beyond the ‘urban transport garages’ (…) the ‘barracks’ (…). What are these barracks? They are (…), according to him, the barracks of the Army troops (…). First, one must ask: what are these barracks for within the city? Second, what are the specific functions of these troops, when the New Capital (…) sheltered from a sudden enemy landing, can only be reached by air? There is no military justification for assigning ground troops to its defense (…). Unless these troops were not intended to defend it against external enemies, but at certain moments deemed opportune, to pass their tanks, in a way so well known to us, through the central axis of the city, in order to have an effect on the inhabitants themselves and weigh (…) on the deliberation of one or more powers of the Republic. But then why change? Why Brasilia? Why dream of utopias?”[xxx]
The absence of workers' housing and Mário Pedrosa's observation allow us to distinguish a mythological constant: that of the non-urban and symbiotic society, a modern version, free (sic) from the class struggle, of the majestic mercantile-baroque city restricted to the court, along the lines of the Escorial (1563-84) and Versailles (1678-82) complexes.[xxxii] Such is the utopia, according to Bonapartism – for which the Armed Forces were trained – of Luso-tropical colonial absolutism, whose fundamental feeling is that of a malaise in history.
Nostalgia and romance (family)
The malaise in history could be interpreted, in subjective culturalist terms, as a legacy of the deep-rooted Catholicism of the bourgeoisies of Iberian origin. However, on the objective historical plane, and in concrete terms, this malaise expresses a nostalgia for the form-empire in which the Iberian mercantile bourgeoisies, which are at the origin of the colonial bourgeoisies, experienced their great expansion in consortium with the aristocracies.[xxxi] Absolutism is its original and permanent political culture – one reason, among others, why Trotsky claimed that democratic revolutions in peripheral societies would never come from the local bourgeoisies.[xxxii] Neo-primitivism is its “original scene” or its “family romance”, in the sense of Freud (1856-1939),[xxxv] when such peripheral bourgeoisies wish to disguise themselves as autonomous and autochthonous entities to conceal their dependence and vassalage to the bourgeoisies of the central economies.
The malaise in history is therefore confused with a mythological complex that decisively contributes to the removal of the political process of national decisions from its proper place, which is the urban environment. Functionalist architecture, as evidenced by Letter from Athens [xxxiv] (what historical irony! Or perhaps a farce?), does not foresee agoras or political activities, but only functional or reproductive ones, in accordance with its innate Taylorism. In Brazil, once hybridized by the neo-primitivism of the Pau-brasil and Antropófago manifestos – originating from the Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922 –, the functionalist architecture of Corbusier (1887-1965) was assimilated as an allegory. As such, it was the fruit, in turn, of a consortium between the artistic avant-garde and the agrarian-commercial capitals, linked to the coffee plantation.[xxxiv]
The union of 1922 prefigured and prepared that of 1937, between Brazilian modern architecture and the Bonapartism of the Estado Novo, led by Vargas (1882-1954), which successively produced the great works that won international recognition for Brazilian architecture and consolidated its system:[xxxviii] the Ministry of Education and Health building, the New York World Fair Pavilion, the Pampulha complex and, finally, Brasília.
In short, toned down in its Bonapartist aspect, already present in Corbusier's program, modern Brazilian state architecture corroborated the confiscation of politics, confined to palaces and monopolized by restricted, regional or sectoral groups, which alternate in power.[xxxviii] always in line, beyond contingent differences, with the absolutist project of constituting not a social formation, but a productive unit.[xxxix] This historic program that unifies all sectors of the bourgeoisie in Brazil – the agrarian, commercial, industrial, financial and the new class of enriched managers, originating from the first Lula governments (2003-10)[xl] – against workers and enslaved populations and those expropriated of ancestral rights to land and other assets dates back to the colonial regime.
Thus, the historian Caio Prado Jr. (1907-1990), in Formation of Contemporary Brazil (1942), a precursor work in the studies of “decolonization”, stated that Portuguese America as a colony was formed exclusively to supply goods to the European market.[xi]
To constitute a productive unit, without any other organization other than the administration necessary to replace the forms of production, such is the utopia of the Portuguese-slave colonial mercantile absolutism, revived and updated by Brazilian Bonapartism and the introduction of forms of abstract labor – or, recently, by progressively flexible labor relations, according to current doctrine.
Order and progress
Let us conclude our reading of the social substratum and the modernist genes of Brasília’s visual forms. In addition to the presidential palaces in the image of the big houses; in addition to the ministerial palaces – glass boxes that simulate transparency, since they are situated in the void, far from the Nation’s view and adorned with useless columns that, in practice, function as hangings, whose main purpose is to stylize nationality through evocations of popular forms, such as the stilt houses (of the Itamaraty Palace), or forms of nature, such as waterfalls and tropical vegetation (of the Palace of Justice) or, last but not the least, the serialized vegetation (another sign inherited from Tarsila), which recalls the large plantations of the latifundium –; in addition to the Bonapartist device of the uniformed thugs permanently stationed around the seat of power…
And beyond, finally, the ministry buildings obediently lined up (on the Esplanade of Ministries) – like the Indian dwellings in the missionary production centers run by Jesuits –, what does the colonnade of Congress have in store for us, to complete the “numerous list” of cases of symbiosis between modern and archaic aspects?
Beneath the large bowls that house the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and which evoke – for once, amidst so many lordly emblems – the frugality and simplicity of the austere utensils of everyday life, one can see the simple, sober and uniform lines of the Congress colonnade. They function as components of a larger complex in the surrounding area, which includes the Praça dos Três Poderes, as well as the presidential palace and the palace of the Supreme Federal Court. As we have seen, this complex combines agrocolonial references that give the Praça dos Três Poderes the typically imposing air of a rural headquarters. In this context, what would be the specific symbolic function of the simple and austere Congress colonnade? Well before following the straight lesson of functionalist precepts, they also bear the features of the frontal supports that supported the sheds of the slave quarters…[xliii]
Capital of a newly industrialized country based on inequalities and semi-colonial social structures,[xiii] Brasília – the capital with the function of establishing a zone free (sic) from class struggle, according to the already geometrical pattern of the Escorial (1586), by Philip II (1527-1598), conceived as a majestic citadel and imperial capital – was made to eliminate conflicts or function as a city without politics. In fact, like the construction process of São Paulo, its apparent opposite and without any trace of an urban project, it was also built in accordance with the same historical design. Both reflect, beyond the apparent oppositions, the sinister motto of productive maximization, “Order and Progress”, inscribed on the country's flag during the first military, positivist and anti-political consulate.
They reflect Brasília and São Paulo, and the aforementioned flag, the funereal utopia-without-politics, once a Portuguese colonial mercantile utopia, then a positivist utopia, a utopia of the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India and China), a utopia congenital to capitalism and which consists of denying all social formation, to constitute only a productive complex.
PS: Luiz Recamán passed away on August 30, 2024. This text, discussed with him at the time, owes substantially to his lucidity and generous taste for dialogue.
*Luiz Renato Martins is a professor-advisor of the PPG in Visual Arts (ECA-USP); author, among other books, of The Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil (Chicago, Haymarket/HMBS).
Version chap. 2 of The Long Roots…, op. cit., originally prepared for vol. organized by Verónica Hernández Diaz, Continuous/Discontinuous: Los Dilmeas de la Historia del Arte en América Latina, XXXV International Colloquium on Art History (2011, Oaxaca, Mexico), National Autonomous University of Mexico/ Institute of Aesthetic Research, Mexico, 2017, pp. 209-29, based on the reissue and reworking of the text “Pampulha and Brasília or the Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil”, in the journal Marxist Criticism/Marxist Studies, No. 33, S. Paulo, Ed. da Unesp, 2011, pp. 105-14.
Notes
[I] Lourival continued: “Superb monographs sometimes appear and, on many occasions, a monograph – for example, on Aleijadinho – is worth the study of an era. However, it is not enough. Temporarily missing are those studies that, more than the great artist or the well-characterized period, constitute the connections, the intermediate passages, the transitions, the central interest of the historian. And, unfortunately, only true history is that which shows how culture changes and transforms, how patterns acquire a measure of evolution, of growth”. See LG MACHADO, Portrait of Modern Art in Brazil, São Paulo, Department of Culture, 1947, p. 11. On the subject, see also M. Pedrosa, “Modern Art Week” (1952, magazine Politics, pp. 15-21; repub. in idem, Dimensions of Art, Ministry of Education and Culture, 1964, pp. 127-142), rep. in M. Pedrosa, Academic and Modern/ Selected Texts III, Otília BF Arantes (org. and apres.), São Paulo, Edusp, 1998, pp. 135-52; idem, “The Biennial from here to there”, in idem, Arts Policy/ Mário Pedrosa: Selected Texts I, Otília Arantes (org. and apres.), São Paulo, Edusp, 1995, pp. 217-84; see also idem, World, Man, Art in Crisis, Aracy Amaral (org.), São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1986, pp. 251-58; see also LR MARTINS, “Formation and Dismantling of a Brazilian Visual System”, rev. Left Bank / Marxist Essays, n. 9, São Paulo, Boitempo, April, 2007, pp. 154-167; idem, “The genealogical scheme and the malaise in history”, in magazine Literature and Society, São Paulo, Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo (DTLLC-FFLCH-USP), n. 13, first semester of 2010, pp. 186-211.
[ii] See LR MARTINS, “The genealogical scheme…”, op. cit.; idem, “Formation and dismantling…”, op. cit.
[iii] For the notion of “internal causality”, central to the notion of “cultural system”, see Antonio CANDIDO, “Preface(s)/ 1st and 2nd ed.” and “Introduction”, in Formation of Brazilian Literature, Rio de Janeiro, Ouro sobre Azul, 2006, pp. 11-20 and 25-32; idem, “Variations on themes of 'Formation' (interviews)”, in idem, Intervention Texts, Vinicius Dantas (selec., apres. and notes), São Paulo, Duas Cidades/ 34, 2002, pp. 93-120. On the notion of “visual system” and its initial configuration in Brazil in the 1950s, see LR MARTINS, “Formação e desmanche…”, op. cit. On the transition from geometric abstraction (concrete and neoconcrete) to New Figuration, see idem, “Trees of Brazil”, in idem, The Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil, ed. by Juan Grigera, int. by Alex Potts, transl. By Renato Rezende, Chicago, Haymarket/ Historical Materialism Book Series, 2018, pp. 73-113, and see idem, “The New Figuration as Negation”, in revista ARS/ Journal of the Postgraduate Program in Visual Arts, n. 8, São Paulo, Postgraduate Program in Visual Arts/ Department of Plastic Arts, School of Communications and Arts, University of São Paulo, 2007, pp. 62-71. See also idem, “The genealogical scheme…”, op. cit.., pp. 188 et seq.
[iv] The idea of Brasília as a “museum of the avant-garde” was important for the elaboration of this text; however, the use extracted from such formulation is the sole responsibility of the present work. For the idea of Brasília as a museum, see Adrián GORELIK, “Brasília: O museu da janela, 1950 e 1960”, in idem, From the Avant-Garde to Brasilia: Urban Culture and Architecture in Latin America, translated by Maria Antonieta Pereira, Belo Horizonte, UFMG, 2005, pp. 151-90.
[v] “(…) It is effectively in the rustic properties that all the life of the colony is concentrated during the initial centuries of European occupation: the cities are virtually, if not in fact, a simple dependency of them”, began the critique of the basic phenomenon, which continued, pages later, in the diagnosis of the love for “talent”: “It does not seem absurd to relate to such a circumstance a constant feature of our social life: the supreme position that certain qualities of imagination and ‘intelligence’ usually hold in it (…). The universal prestige of ‘talent’, with the particular timbre that this word receives in the regions, above all, where colonial and slave farming left a stronger mark (…) undoubtedly comes from the greater decorum that the simple exercise of intelligence seems to confer on any individual, in contrast to activities that require some physical effort”. Cf. SB de HOLLANDA, Brazil roots, pref. Antonio Candido, Rio de Janeiro, José Olympio Publishing House, 1969 (5th ed.), pp. 41 and 50.
[vi] See Luiz RECAMÁN, Oscar Niemeyer, Architectural Form and the City in Modern Brazil, PhD thesis, supervised by Celso Fernando Favaretto, Dept. of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, 2002. A summarized version of some of the main lines of the thesis can be found in idem, “Form without utopia”, in Elisabeta Andreoli and Adrian Forty (orgs.), Brazilian Modern Architecture, London, Phaidon Press Limited, 2004, pp. 106-39.
[vii] The team, coordinated by Lúcio Costa and with the consultancy of Le Corbusier (1887-1965), included: Affonso Eduardo Reidy (1909-1964), Carlos Leão (1906-1983), Ernani Vasconcelos (1912-1965), Jorge Moreira (1904-1992) and O. Niemeyer.
[viii] See L. RECAMÁN, Oscar Niemeyer…, op. cit., pp. 84-122. Regarding the social and political circumstances that led to the construction of the Pampulha complex, during the Estado Novo (1937-45), Pedrosa stated in a conference in France in 1953: “The Pampulha complex was built, a true oasis, the result of the political conditions (…) of the time, when a group of rulers with full powers, for the love of their prestige, decided, like the absolutist princes of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, to build this magnificent whim (…)/ The 'miracle' of the Ministry of Education could not be achieved except because of its 'grandiosity' and its imposing program. Without the taste for great comfort, enjoyment, power and wealth of a state governor with unlimited powers, Pampulha (…) would not have been commissioned or built. Part of the opulent side of the new architecture undoubtedly comes from its initial commerce with the dictatorship. Certain aspects of experimental gratuitousness in the constructions of Pampulha come from the program of whim and luxury of the small local dictator”. Cf. M. PEDROSA, “Modern Architecture in Brazil” (lecture, The architecture of today, December 1953), in idem, From Portinari's Murals to Brasília's Spaces, A. Amaral (org.), São Paulo, Ed. Perspectiva, 1981, pp. 257-9. The priority given to the conception of the building as an isolated unit in the landscape, intended above all for display and contemplation, is also revealed in a recent text by the architect, about the project for the auditorium in Ibirapuera Park: “Architecture… How wonderful it is to see a palace, a cathedral, a new form emerge on a blank sheet of paper, something that creates the amazement that reinforced concrete allows!”, cf. O. NIEMEYER, “As if everything began again”. The State of S. Paul, 05.12.2002/3/1953, São Paulo, p. CXNUMX. Regarding the architect's reluctance regarding his project for the Copan building (XNUMX) – despite it being considered one of the symbols of the metropolis today – due to its immediate proximity to other buildings (since it is in the very center of São Paulo), see L. RECAMÁN, Oscar Niemeyer…, op. cit., pp. 14-48.
[ix] The notion of a hypertrophied bureaucracy, sometimes armed (Army) sometimes technical (planners or similar), which wields the government when a balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat prevents the direct political exercise of power by the former, belongs to the analyses that Marx made of the rise of the second Bonaparte in the third part of Class Struggles in France (1850), and also what he called “Napoleonic ideas”, in the seventh part of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). The question was taken up and updated by Trotsky in several writings; see notably chapter 1, “Bonapartism and Fascism”, in Leon Trotsky, “The Only Way Out of the German Situation”, in idem, Germany, the Revolution and Fascism, trans. anonymous, appendix Ernest Mandel, “Essay on Trotsky's writings on fascism”, México DF, Juan Pablos Editor, vol. I, 1973, pp. 177-82. Carlos Marx, “Class fights in France from 1848 to 1850”, in Carlos Marx and Federico Engels, Las Revoluciones of 1848, Selection of articles from the New Gaceta Renana, trans. W. Roces, prol. A. Cue, México DF, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006; Karl Marx, El Dieciocho Brumario by Luis Bonaparte, trans., intr. y notes by E. Chuliá, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2003; The 18th Brumaire and Letters to Kugelmann, trans. revised by Leandro Konder, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1969. The reader interested in this question may also benefit from Gramsci’s notion of “passive revolution”. For an expanded and updated discussion of the notion, see Alvaro BIANCHI, “Passive Revolution: Past of the Future”, in Marxist Criticism, n. 23, Campinas, 2006, pp. 34-57; see also Peter THOMAS, “Modernity as 'passive revolution': Gramsci and the Fundamental Concepts of Historical Materialism”, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/ Revue de la Société Historique du Canada, vol. 17, n. 2, 2006, pp. 61-78; the version Online can be found at Scholar, url:http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/016590ar>,DOI: 10.7202/016590ar.
[X] “A large part of the solutions found in Pampulha are due to its exhausting visibility, a connecting factor that gives unity to the complex. The small buildings are at the same time objects on a display to be intensely admired (hence their isolation and the great distance between them), and platforms for contemplating the complex itself. Each one stimulates, through the arrangement of its architecture, the visual connection with the other units. Distance, in order to achieve this effect of separation and connection, is fundamental. Not only the distance of the complex in relation to the city, but the separation of the architectural objects from each other, through a medium, which is the emptiness of the lake. It intensifies visual contact and establishes a vague distance of observation. This emptiness is the zero degree of sociability and history. We could add: the zero degree of geography, since it is no longer a question of the positioning of an observer in the coordinates of the perspective space, but outside it, where the cognitive relations of proportion, measurement and action (praxis) are nullified.” Cf. L. RECAMÁN, Oscar Niemeyer…, op. cit., p. 101-2. See also idem, p. 103.
[xi] One of the few to criticize the “free-form” – soon celebrated nationally and internationally – was Max Bill, architect, sculptor and mentor of the Ülm School (Switzerland). See Flávio de AQUINO, “Max Bill criticizes our modern architecture: interview with Max Bill”, in magazine Headline, n. 60, 13.06.1953, Rio de Janeiro, Bloch Editores, pp. 38-39.
[xii] For the first of Costa's many praises of colonial architecture, see L. Costa, “O Aleijadinho e a arquitetura tradicional” (1929), in idem, about architecture, Alberto Xavier (org.), 2a ed., coordinated by Anna Paula Cortez, Porto Alegre, Editora UniRitter, 2007, pp. 12-6 (facsimile edition by L. Costa, about architecture, Alberto Xavier [org.], Porto Alegre, UFRGS, 1962). The view expressed in the article was later revised with regard to the criticism of Aleijadinho's work, but reiterated with regard to the praise of colonial architecture.
[xiii] A close relationship of this nature explains Niemeyer's generous and cordial acceptance, or somewhere between magnanimous and reverent, of the late incorporation of Corbusier's proposal into the winning solution (Niemeyer's), in the competition process by an international group of architects, brought together by Wallace Harrison (1895-1981) to choose the project for the headquarters of the United Nations, in New York, in 1947. For a detailed account of the case by Niemeyer, see O. NIEMEYER, My Architecture, New York, 2000, pp. 24-9.
[xiv] For the proximity of the line, compare, for example, the combination of curved and geometric shapes in Tarsila's painting the black (1923, oil on canvas, 100 x 81,3 cm, São Paulo, Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo) with the front facade of Church of San Francisco (1940, Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, MG), by Niemeyer; it is also worth comparing the curvilinear volumes of the rear façade of this church with another work by Tarsila: Landscape with Palm Trees, c. 1928, pencil on paper, 22,9 x 16,4 cm. For more details, see LR MARTINS, “From Tarsila to Oiticica…”, in The Earth is Round, 25.08.2024, available at: https://dpp.cce.myftpupload.com/de-tarsila-a-oiticica/.
[xv] The languages of Tarsila and Niemeyer share, in addition to the lordly privilege of modernizing and legislating, some of the elements disseminated in their content, such as the memory of the gaze and tactile experience of childhood, which contain the feeling of an agrarian and pre-industrial world, typical of the landowning class, with the mnemonic identity privilege of the “continuity between childhood and adult life (…), destroyed for the majority, without the power of choice and reduced to the mere condition of labor force”. See LR MARTINS, “From Tarsila to Oiticica…”, op. cit.
[xvi] Abilio Guerra, Primitivism in Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade and Raul Bopp: Origin and Formation in the Brazilian Intellectual Universe, Sao Paulo, RG Pocket 3 Collection/ Romano Guerra, 2010.
[xvii] Even a critic with a Trotskyist background and activism, and with the reflective reach of Mário Pedrosa, comes to consider the existence of primitive populations and cultures in the country a kind of “comparative advantage” for modern Brazilian art, in the face of the situation of the European avant-gardes, which had to seek them elsewhere. Thus, he stated in 1952: “Western artists (of the European avant-garde) felt (in) the statuettes and masks of black sculpture the concrete, real presence of 'a form of feeling, an architecture of thought, a subtle expression of the deepest forces of life', extracted from the civilization from which they came. This plastic and spiritual power immanent in those sculpted objects was for them like the revelation of a new message. The formal sense of drawing had been lost by Western sculpture… /The conquest of archaic cultures by European modernism coincided with the universalist and primitive thought of Mário de Andrade (….)/ This direct – natural, anti-ideological – Brazil maintains an initial purity that Tarsila would also try to reproduce (…)/ Primitivism was the door through which the modernists entered Brazil and its letter of Brazilian naturalization. The victory of the historical and proto-historical archaic arts and that of the new contemporary primitives facilitated the discovery of Brazil by the modernists. It was under their influence that, soon after the week, the 'Pau-Brasil' and 'Antropofagismo' movements were born./ And so the Brazilian modernists did not need to go, like their super-civilized European emulators, to the exotic latitudes of Africa and Oceania to reinvigorate their forces in purer and more vitalized sources of certain primitive cultures.” Alongside Mário de Andrade’s primitivism, Pedrosa also later rescues Oswald’s: “He was the true theoretician and conscious creator of Brazilian primitivism. (…)/ Out of love for poetry, for the real and concrete sources of life, he (Oswald) also delimits Brazil to its most telluric and physical realities. Brazilwood. His is therefore a primordial nationalism, irreducible and anti-erudite like that of Mário de Andrade”. Cf. M. Pedrosa, “Semana de arte moderna”, in M. PEDROSA, Academics and Modern…, op. cit., pp. 142-5.
[xviii] Oswald de Andrade, “Manifesto of Brazilwood Poetry”, in newspaper Correio da Manhã, Rio de Janeiro, March 18, 1924, rep. in Tarsila, 20s, catalogue, texts by A. Amaral et al., Sônia Salzstein (org.), São Paulo, SESI Art Gallery, 29.09 – 30.11.1997, pp. 128-34. O. de Andrade, “Anthropophagous Manifesto”, in Anthropophagy Magazine, São Paulo, Year I, n. 1, May 1928, rep., in Tarsila, 20s, op. cit., pp. 135-141. On the neo-primitivism of Brazilian modernists, see A. GUERRA, “Brazilian modernist primitivism in Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade and Raul Bopp”, in idem, Origin and…, op. cit., pp. 241-300.
[xx] See M. Pedrosa, “Introduction to Brazilian Architecture – II” (1959), in idem, From the Murals…, op. cit., p. 329-32. See also idem, “Modern architecture in Brazil” (1953), in idem, From the Murals…, op. cit., p. 262.
[xx] “The new complex is not structured (…) on any plane or city, but around a lake, which unobstructs the views for better contemplation, doubled by the reflections in the water. All the new buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer face the emptiness of the lake. Even the chapel turns its back on the street (which would one day be the connection with the city), and opens, with its eastern façade entirely made of glass, to the structuring lake (…). The extroversion of the units is completed by the introversion of this Pampulha complex, where the dazzling interplay of views that is established between the parts and the whole – frenetic and incessant vectors – does not exceed, physically or conceptually, the limits of the restricted universe that orbits the lake.” Cf. L. RECAMÁN, Oscar Niemeyer…, op. cit., pp. 101-2; see also p. 103. Regarding the decisive role of the image in the Pampulha and Brasília projects, see also Niemeyer’s statements: “I remember my first meeting with JK, and he told me enthusiastically: ‘Niemeyer, you are going to design the Pampulha neighborhood (sic). An area on the edge of a dam with a casino, a church and a restaurant’. And, with the same optimism with which he came to build Brasília twenty years later, he concluded: ‘I need the casino project for tomorrow’. Which I did, working all night in a hotel in the city./ Pampulha was the beginning of Brasília. The same enthusiasm. (…) With what joy JK took us by boat, late at night, to see the buildings reflected in the waters of the dam! (…) I remember the casino in operation, the onyx-covered walls, the aluminum columns, and the city’s upper crust elegantly showing off on the ramps that connected the ground floor to the gaming room and the nightclub. It was the festive and sophisticated environment that JK wanted.” Cf. O. NIEMEYER, My…, op. cit., pp. 18-9.
[xxx] In this commentary, I will ignore some interesting and admirable achievements seen in certain urban buildings by Niemeyer, for example, the Copan building (1953, São Paulo), which uses mixed solutions, combining commercial use on the ground floor and residential use on the upper floors. However, the choice of focus here is due not only to the economy of argumentation, but to the priority of addressing the Brazilian combination of state power and modern architecture, the driving force behind the alliance between Kubitschek and Niemeyer, shaped on the municipal scale of the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, which took place between 1940 and 1942, and relaunched on a larger scale in the construction of the country's new capital, some 15 years later. Regarding the Copan building, see note 8, above, and L. RECAMÁN, Oscar Niemeyer…, op. cit., pp. 14-48.
[xxiii] For a discussion of the recurring regime of poetic-structural relations of symbiosis or fusion between the “I” and the “other”, and the symbolic role they play in several decisive works of Brazilian culture, see the works of José Antonio Pasta Júnior, “Volubilidade e ideia fixa: O outro no romance brasileiro”, in Minus sign, n. 4, pp. 13-25, available atwww.sinaldemenos.org>; “Rosa’s novel: themes of Great Sertão and Brazil”, in Anne-Marie Quint, (org.), La Ville, Exaltation et Distanciation: Études de Littérature Portugaise et Brésilienne, Paris, Center de Recherche sur les Pays Lusophones, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Cahier n. 4, 1997, pp. 159-70; “Singularity of the double in Brazil”, in The Clinic of Speculation in the Work of Machado de Assis, Cahiers de la journée du cartel franco-brésilien de psychanalyse, Paris, Association Lacanienne Internationale, 2002, pp. 37-41.
[xxiii] Cf. O. NIEMEYER, “Testimony”, in Revista Module, n. 9, Rio de Janeiro, Feb. 1958, pp. 3-6, apoud Matheus GOROVITZ, “About an interrupted work: Oscar Niemeyer’s theology institute” in Minha Cidade, Portal Vitruvius, year 9, vol. 2, September 2008, p. 232, available athttp://www.vitruvius.com.br/minhacidade/mc232/mc232.asp>. For a discussion of the sociocultural premises of the architectural typology of rural chapels, compared to that of urban cathedrals, see SB HOLANDA, op. cit.., 1969, p. 113
[xxv] The graphic communication power of the columns of the presidential palaces was immediately noticeable – just as in 1937 the slender and imposing raised pilotis, modified in light of the first Corbusian design of the building of the Ministry of Education and Health, in which they appear much lower and closer to the standardized and laconic sobriety of the functionalist pattern. The columns of the palaces quickly became the trademark of the new Brazilian architecture, combining the modern style with monumentality and, later, through the “free form”, the allegorical-national aspiration (see below). Thus it was the reference to the unprecedented height, thanks to Niemeyer’s suggestion, of the pilotis of the building of the Ministry of Education and Health (1937-43), which probably motivated Lúcio Costa’s metaphor about the new Brazilian architecture: “A very smart girl, with a clean face and thin legs”, apoud Otília BF ARANTES, “Lucio Costa and the 'good cause' of modern architecture”, in Paulo ARANTES, Otília ARANTES, Meaning of Formation: Three Studies on Antonio Candido, Gilda de Mello e Souza and Lucio Costa, São Paulo, Paz e Terra, 1998, p. 118. For examples of citations of the New City logo in vernacular architecture, see A. GORELIK, op. cit., p. 158.
[xxiv] The incorporation of the image of the rafts into the collection of national symbols motivated the arrival of filmmaker Orson Welles (1915-1985) to Brazil, at the invitation of the Estado Novo and within the framework of Pan-Americanism actions, to make a film about raftsmen. For photos from the filming of It's all true, Ceara, 1942, see Jorge Schwartz (org.), From Anthropophagy to Brasilia: Brazil 1920-1950. São Paulo, FAAP/ Cosac & Naify, 2002, p. 367. Filmmaker Rogério Sganzerla (1946-2004) focused directly on the project's ups and downs and tensions in two of his films, Not Everything is True (1986) and Everything is Brazil (1997)
[xxv] See, for example, the photos of Alvorada, in O. NIEMEYER, My…, op. cit., p. 94.
[xxviii] Cf. L. Costa, “Brasília: descriptive memorial of the Plano Piloto de Brasília, winning project of the national public tender” (1957), in idem, About Architecture, op. cit., p. 265. It should be noted that if the typology of Roots…, Costa’s reference is more Hispanic than Portuguese – but Costa’s famous studies on Jesuit architecture (1937), as well as his project for a museum of missionary art (1940) in São Miguel das Missões, in Rio Grande do Sul, authorized him to synthesize the Hispanic tradition with the Portuguese one. For Costa’s studies on Jesuit and Mission architecture, see L. Costa, “A arquitetura dos jesuítas no Brasil”, in Magazine of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, Rio de Janeiro, SPHAN, n. 5, 1941, pp. 9-104, reprinted in Magazine of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service - 60 years: The Magazine, Rio de Janeiro, IPHAN/ Ministry of Culture, n. 26, 1997, pp. 104-69. About the seven projects awarded in the Plano Piloto competition (1956/1957), see Milton BRAGA, The Brasilia Contest: Seven Projects for a Capital City, photographic essay by Nelson Kon, edited and presented by Guilherme Wisnik, São Paulo, Cosac Naify/ Official Press of the State of São Paulo (IMESP)/ Brazilian House Museum, 2010.
[xxviii] There are a series of photographs of the construction of Brasília, taken by Gautherot, that seem to capture in images the assumptions and developments of Costa's assertion in his memorial, linking the Pilot Plan to the colonial tradition. Thus, the photographs focus on the contradiction between the purity of geometric forms and intensive manual labor, along similar lines to that of rural large estates; lines that denote, as many have already said, that construction sites incorporate the large estate model of overexploitation of labor into the urban situation. For Gautherot's photographs, see Marcel Gautherot, Brasilia: Marcel Gautherot, Sérgio Burgi and Samuel Titan Jr. (org.), with an essay by Kenneth Frampton, São Paulo, Instituto Moreira Salles, 2010, pp. 63-75, pp. 82-101; for the workers' villages of Núcleo Bandeirante and Sacolândia, a product of “self-construction”, see especially the photos between pp. 86-101. Some images are available at . See also the short film by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 23', Serro Films, 1967, in Joaquim Pedro de Almeida: Complete Works, DVD box set, vol. 3, VideoFilmes, VFD111; available inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK0Cf8JsOn8>, accessed: 03.11.2016. See also, for the acute contradiction between the purity of forms and the brutality of working conditions, Clara Ianni's recent video, Free-form, video, B&W, 7'14'', 2013, available in https://vimeo.com/88459179.
[xxix] For Niemeyer's recognition of the “impracticality” of providing housing for workers within the Pilot Plan, see O. Niemeyer, in M. GAUTHEROT, op. cit., p. 18, originally published in the magazine Module, No. 18, Rio de Janeiro, 1960.
[xxx] Cf. M. PEDROSA, “Reflections on the new capital”, in idem, Academics…, op. cit., pp. 400-1.
[xxxii] For an acute reading of Baroque architecture and urbanism, characterized by the logic of social fracture and class segregation, in opposition to the unity of the Gothic city, see José Luís Romero, “La ciudad barroca”, in idem, La Ciudad Occidental, Urban Cultures in Europe and America. Lecciones and texts edited by Laura MH Romero and Luis Alberto Romero, Buenos Aires, Siglo Veintiuno, 2009, pp. 151-78; see also Angel Rama, The Literate City, prologue Hugo Achugar, Montevideo, Arca, 1998. For an indication of the transfiguring suppression of the workers of Brasília into abstract forms, see Gautherot's photographs of the sculpture by Bruno Giorgi (1905-93), known as The Candangos (1960), in which the shapes of the arms and shoulders reproduce the colonnade of Alvorada. M. Gautherot, op. cit., pp. 78-81.
[xxxi] See José Luís Romero, “La ciudad barroca”, op. cit.
[xxxii] See Leon Trotsky, “Backward Countries and the Program of Transitional Demands,” in idem, The Transitional Program, The Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, trans. by Ana Beatriz da C. Moreira, São Paulo, col. Marx and the Dialectical Tradition/ Týkhe, 2009, pp. 62-4.
[xxxv] Elisabeth Roudinesco and Michel Plon define the notion of “family novel” (Family romance) as “an expression created (…) to designate the way in which a subject modifies his genealogical ties, inventing for himself, through a story or a fantasy, another family that is not his own”. The notion was used for the first time by Freud in an article for the book by Otto Rank (1884-1939), The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1909, Vienna); it was later used in other works, such as A Childhood Memory of Leonardo da Vinci (1910) Totem and Taboo (1912-3), until the last Moses and Monotheism (1939). See Elisabeth ROUDINESCO and Miguel PLON, Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, trans. V. Ribeiro and L. Magalhães, supervised by MAC Jorge, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1998, pp. 668-9.
[xxxiv] IV International Congress of Modern Architecture, Athens, 1933.
[xxxiv] About this consortium and the central role of Paulo Prado, great patron of the modernists, see M. de ANDRADE, “O movimento modernista” (1942), in idem, Aspects of Brazilian Literature, New York, 1943, pp. 225-8.
[xxxviii]For the notion of the formation of a system of modern Brazilian architecture, see L. Recamán, “The formation of modern Brazilian architecture”, in idem, Oscar Niemeyer…, op. cit., pp. 90-181; idem, “Forma sem…”, op. cit., p. 114.
[xxxviii] “In a speech at the Constituent Assembly of 1891, Tomás Delfino (1860-1947) stated that the aspirations of the State and the national will could not reach the Legislative and Executive Powers, imprisoned in a large city, if they encountered before them the formidable barrier of crowds that a moment of passion causes to riot.” Cf. Israel PINHEIRO, “A reality: Brasília”, in magazine Module, n. 8, pp. 2-5, jun. 1957, apoud Aline COSTA, (Im)possible Brasilias: The Projects Presented in the New Federal Capital Pilot Plan Competition, master's dissertation, supervised by Prof. Dr. Marcos Tognon, Campinas, Dept. of History, Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences, University of Campinas, 2002, p. 15 (Aline Costa BRAGA, (Im)possible Brasilias, São Paulo, Alameda, 2011). For the persistence of the design non-urban on current government housing policies, see Pedro Fiori Arantes and Mariana Fix, “How the Lula government intends to solve the housing problem: Some comments on the housing package 'Minha Casa, Minha Vida'”, in newspaper Citizenship Mail, available at: < https://www.brasildefato.com.br/node/4241 >. Accessed: 13.04.2017. Regarding the persistence of a dimension anti-politics (which at this point we can already take as another side of the design non-urban) in Celso Furtado's (1920-2004) theory of underdevelopment – certainly, in other aspects, very innovative –, Francisco de Oliveira (1933-2019) stated: “Strictly speaking, the politics in the theory of underdevelopment is an epiphenomenon”; see Francisco de Oliveira, Venturosa Navigation: Essays on Celso Furtado, New York, New York Times, 2003, p. 18.
[xxxix] See Caio PRADO Jr., Formation of Contemporary Brazil / Colony, São Paulo, Brasiliense/ Publifolha, 2000, p. 20.
[xl] On the formation of a “new class” in the Lula governments (2003-10), made up of leaders from labor unions “transformed into financial fund operators”, see Francisco de OLIVEIRA, “O Ornitorrinco”, in idem, Criticism of Dualist Reason, The Platypus. New York, New York Times, 2003, pp. 145-9.
[xi] “If we look at the essence of our formation, we will see that in reality we were established to supply sugar, tobacco, and some other goods; later gold and diamonds; then cotton, and then coffee, for European trade. Nothing more than this.” Cf. Caio PRADO Jr., op. cit., p. 20.
[xliii] For images of the colonnades of the slave quarters, see the slave quarters of the mill Jurissaca and Kill, both in Cabo de Santo Agostinho, the sugar mill tinoko, in Rio Formoso, and the sugar mill Coimbras, all in Pernambuco, in Geraldo Gomes, Architecture and Engineering, Recife, Gilberto Freyre Foundation, 1998, pp. 43-7.
[xiii] On “semicolonial” structures, see Leon Trotsky, “The Backward Countries…”, op. cit., pp. 62-64.
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