Investigating primitivism beyond modernism

Abstract

This Research Internship Abroad (BEPE) proposal foresees a twelve-month period at the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, under the supervision of Professor Irene V. Small. Such internship shall contribute to the advancement of my ongoing doctoral research, which focuses on a critical investigation of the discursive formation of "primitivism" in modern art and its different manifestations in Brazilian Modernism in the first decades of the 20th century. The research currently being developed at University of São Paulo conjoins a theoretical approach along with the analysis and interpretation of selected works by Brazilian artists (e.g. Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Tarsila do Amaral and, later on, Cândido Portinari), which are considered as privileged axes to explore the relationship between "primitivism" in modern European and Brazilian art. The internship at Princeton will contemplate three interconnected activities, which are closely related to the objectives of my main project. They are: 1) to undertake an in-depth bibliographical research on the debate on "primitivism" through the access to unavailable sources in Brazilian libraries, aiming to provide theoretical precision, methodological accuracy and analytical complexity to the discussions on the thesis; 2) to visit museum collections and exhibitions 3) to attend scheduled research appointments in museum archives (e.g. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, The Robert Goldwater Library and The Visual Resource Archive), in order to gather documental and visual resources related to the subject of "primitivism" in modern art collections and to enrich our understanding on how museum narratives deal with the relation between modern European, Latin American and non-Western art. As a result, I hope to improve the analysis of the artworks discussed in the thesis and to enhance the epistemological framework of my main project in contact with new theoretical and methodological perspectives. (AU)