Modernist Brazilianness — its philosophical dimension, by Eduardo Jardim

Abstract

In this review, Flávio Brayner presents the book The Brazilian Moder-nism — its philosophical dimension, by Eduardo Jardim, who confronts common thoughts about the Modernist Movement of 1922, such as its chronological division, the sole use of “artistic indexes” to evaluate the movement, and the focus on itself as the origin of a national modernism and of a sense of Brazilianness, ignoring many other relevant influences and repercussions. Jardim considers these ideas to be “naive”, and uses primarily Graça Aranha’s book An Aesthetics of Life, in addition to the context involving the author’s production, to show that the supposed “breakthrough” and “innovation” proposed by modernism actually takes up many already existing  themes. Brayner then goes deeper into Aranha’s thoughts and ends his review with some national and regional examples which would support his argument that Graça Aranha’s influence would be much greater than Jardim supposed in his book