Undivided object: language, ethnography and sources

Undivided object: language, ethnography and sources

Heloisa Pontes

ABSTRACT

This article argues that anthropology should not avoid studying the world of art and the specialized fields of cultural production. To do this it is necessary to examine the relationship between ethnography, language and social processes, as well as the way in which we make use o four sources (written, oral and visual) in our research. While this is the basic argument of the text, it also moves into a discussion of the sources that are available for the social history of the theater and Brazilian intellectual life from 1940 to 1960: photographs, interviews, reminiscences, biographies, autobiographies as well as books and theater repertories.

Keywords: ethnography; sources; the social history of culture; intellectuals; actresses; Brazilian theater

RESUMO

O artigo defende a idéia que a antropologia não pode se furtar à análise do mundo da arte e dos campos especializados de produção cultural. Para tanto, é preciso examinar, de um lado, a relação entre etnografia, linguagem e processos sociais. De outro lado, o uso que fazemos das fontes (escritas, orais e visuais) em nossas pesquisas. Tal é o pressuposto geral do texto, desdobrado em uma discussão mais pontual sobre as fontes disponíveis para a reconstituição da história social do teatro e da vida intelectual brasileira nas décadas de 1940 a 1960: fotografias, entrevistas, memórias, biografias, autobiografias, somadas aos livros e ao repertório teatral encenado.

Palavras-chave: etnografia, fontes, história social da cultura; intelectuais, atrizes, teatro brasileiro

Aware of the symbolic forms and foundations of social life, anthropology cannot avoid analyzing the world of art and the specialized fields of cultural production, as shown by recent studies by anthropologists dealing with the subject and, indirectly, sociologists and historians attentive to the interconnections between culture, power and symbolism. These include Auerbach, Becker, Baxandall, Bourdieu, Geertz, Gell, Goody, Elias, Miceli, Schorske, Williams and Beatriz Sarlo, to mention an expressive set of authors who have explored intensively the questions of the autonomy and dependence of symbolic systems.¹ While the pathbreaking work of these authors leaves no doubt as to the importance of including intellectual life, specialized cultural production and the world of art and its practitioners in the range of objects studied by anthropology, other doubts exist, relating to the question of language and the use we make of these written and oral sources in our research, which I intend to explore in this article.

To examine the problem of language and its repercussion on ethnography, I utilize a framework different to that proposed by postmodern anthropology in the debate on the anthropologist's authorship and authority and their implications for ethnographic writing.² Rather than cover this debate, I turn here to the discussion of the relations between language and social processes made by the literary critic, writer, translator and, for a long time, university professor Modesto Carone. In 2003 he wrote a short and remarkable article on the prefaces of the novelist Henry James, edited in Brazil under the title A arte do romance. In this text Carone makes a series of observations concerning the activity of the novelist that seem to me extremely valuable for thinking about – with the necessary adjustments – the work of writing involved in the production of ethnographic accounts and descriptions. Let's turn, then, to Carone's observations, beginning with the thorny problem of truth and realism, which, diluted under postmodernity, had and still has an enormous impact on the constitution and consolidation of both anthropology and modern literature.

Tracing the shift from the quest for objectivity pursued by 19^th century French realism (and exacerbated by naturalism) to a literature attentive to the domains of subjectivity, Modesto Carone states: "what seems to have happened is that around the 20^th century, when the 'scanning' of objective reality had already been accomplished, the novelists interested in the real began to search for it in the sphere of subjectivity, to where it [the real] had migrated and assumed contours that demanded a new form of realism" (Carone 2003:3). Namely: a realism that renounces appearances in name of the truth. Or, to use Adorno's terms, a realism that, wishing to remain loyal to its realist heritage and say how things are, rejects fake realism.

In this movement and in the words of Modesto Carone, "the objectivity of subjectivity became the goal of authors in search of the real and the true" (ibid). Here we can already see that the author's reflections matches perfectly the dilemmas of modern literature. And contemporary anthropology too. Aware of the analytic effort involved in this revealing of the 'real' that we call ethnography, anthropologists can no longer content themselves with the deceitful appearance of a fake realism. The objectification of subjectivity in this case is double. On one hand it implies the objectification of the anthropologist's own subjectivity as part of a specific culture and a particular social group. On the other the objectification of the subjectivity of the 'others' who the anthropologist studies, achieved through the use of the discipline's conceptual and methodological arsenal. This double movement affirms the ethnographic encounter and delineates the analytic challenge pursued by those who defend the idea that ethnography has much to say about the social world. The intellectual work needed to reveal, interpret or explain the latter involves recognizing that anthropology too is also in search of the real produced by the objectification of the subjectivity of all the social subjects involved in the ethnographic encounter.

But in anthropology as in literature, this does not happen merely by an act of will or belief. It implies work. Or rather, it implies a particular kind of work that only occurs through language and writing. Work over writing, therefore, as the essayists and writers who have thought hard about the topic know very well, among them Henry James. For James, "the 'germ' that gives origin to the work of art comes from 'life.' But the chaotic nature of 'life' means that it needs to be organized by the constraining force of art" (Carone 2003:3). Continuing with Modesto Carone's acute reflections on the American writer, "James moves from an emphasis on life over art to the emphasis on artistic endeavour over life." Something which is only realized in writing. Following the trail and words Carone, it is impossible therefore to "separate what James meant to say from the way he said it." In other words, for him, "as for every artist who honours this name, the form is already a content" (ibid) – a sedimented social content to complete this thought via Adorno.

Something very similar occurs, or should occur, with the ethnography produced by anthropologists. As the privileged way of apprehending the symbolic dimensions of social life, the social foundations of symbolism and the unusual aspects of social interaction, ethnography is above all a work of writing. Immersed in the broad understanding of different social and symbolic logics, ethnography is only realized through writing and is only accomplished in writing. Hence it is not enough to say that the real is always constructed and that the senses are negotiated in a complex web of power devices. It is necessary to describe: to show how and in what form, in which contexts, with what intonation and modulation of voice, in public or private, whether by men or women, and so on. Those "imponderables of social life" (Malinowski 1922) that so enchant anthropologists first need to be described. And here we touch on one of the key observations of Modesto Carone and all the other great thinkers of culture and the symbolic who know that the content of what one says, does, paints and dances is inseparable from the way in which one says, does, paints and dances, and writes.

This entanglement, when applied to the analysis of social marks transmuted into literary form, can reveal unexpected dimensions. An eloquent example is the article 'Teatro ao Sul,' written by Gilda de Mello e Souza. Published in the journal Teatro Brasileiro in 1956, a year after the première of one of the most important plays from the Paulista repertoire, A moratória, by Jorge Andrade (1922-1984), the article explores an intriguing question: the absence of first-rate Paulista novelists, particularly when compared to Northeasten writers, at a moment when the city of São Paulo had assumed the role of the main articulator of modern Brazilian culture. More provincial and paradoxically more cosmopolitan than Rio de Janeiro – then the political capital of the country and, in various aspects, its cultural capital – from the mid-1940s São Paulo became the centre of cultural experimentations (Pontes 2009). Simultaneous with the alterations rapidly sweeping through the city, the theatre anticipated "social studies, assuming the task undertaken in the Northeast by the novel" (Mello e Souza 1980:110). In the words of Gilda de Mello e Souza,

"The decline of an entire sector of society [the agrarian oligarchy] was compensated for by the development of another and the loss of the farmer's prestige intersected with the economic and social rise of the immigrant. A breathless symmetrical substitution of lifestyles was seen, rather than the slow disappearance of a world whose death throes could be accompanied with lucidity" (ibid).

The retranslation of this social experience at the formal level of language took place in São Paulo through drama (and also the social sciences). In a clear process of metropolitanization, a correlate of the creation of new languages, as Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda shows (2001), São Paulo became the pole for the modern university and theatre in the country, partly due to the presence and contribution of the foreign nationals who linked themselves to these enterprises.³ Pressed by the stark political choices imposed by the Second World War in Europe or feeling the effects of the post-War period and the limited possibilities for professional careers, many of these foreigners remained longer in the country than first intended. This encounter between a new contingent of students and amateur actors (the majority coming from intellectualized middle class families, various of them with distinct ethnic backgrounds), a city like São Paulo (which quickly acquired the airs and stature of a metropolis, attested by significant changes in the social structure) and foreigners at the start of their career (like the teachers from the French Mission) or more experienced (like the theatre directors who had come to Brazil because of the War) resulted in the implantation of a complex cultural and intellectual system without precedents in Brazilian history.

But what about language? We can locate this question in the overlapping of form and social content revealed by the dramatic works of Jorge Andrade. Explored by the foreign directors more attuned to the Brazilian theatre scene and culture, performed by the actresses with the most artistic talent, interpreted by the most perceptive cultural critics of the period, this overlapping reaffirms in fresh terms what had already been identified but insufficiently developed in my book Destinos mistos (1998). A kind of portrait of the entire body of the generation of cultural critics linked to the Climate Group (Grupo Clima), composed of some of the leading figures from the first generation of academics trained at the University of São Paulo – including Gilda de Mello e Souza, Décio de Almeida Prado, Antonio Candido, Lourival Gomes Machado, Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes and Ruy Coelho – the book analyzes the question of language, but through the prism of its impact on the shaping of the intellectual profile of these 'mixed destinies.'

Intellectually oriented towards cultural critique, they examined the cinema, literature, theatre and the visual arts with the conceptual and methodological tools learnt at the University of São Paulo. Fascinated by literature, they had little interest while students in sociological production in the strict sense. At the same time they sought to remain abreast of the cultural production of the period, both national and international. Their social origins, their cultural experiences during childhood and adolescence, combined with the intellectual influence received from their parents, close relatives and above all their French teachers, were reflected in the choice of cultural objects and in the analytic treatment given to them. The works that they produced at different stages and moments of their careers are anchored in a well-grounded intellectual project, one of the most successful of Brazil's history: the analysis of how Brazilian erudite culture was formed.⁴

The singularity of the Climate Group and the privileged position occupied by its members within the São Paulo cultural system resulted from a triple effect: the recuperation of core elements of intellectual production in the past, namely essay writing and criticism; their transformation into properly academic analytic and methodological moulds; the prognosis of what would happen next. As critics they diverged from the modernists – most of whom were writers and artists – but shared the same taste for literature and for aesthetic and cultural innovation. As university academics they contributed to the intellectual sedimentation of the modernist tradition. As critics and academics they differed from social scientists not only by their choice of themes but above all by the treatment given to the chosen subject matter. In place of the specialized monographic study, they favoured the essay, sweeping views, the localization of the cultural object in an ampler system of connections and correlations.

To deepen this analysis of the intellectual and social profile of the Climate Group, we need to introduce a counterpoint here, the sociologist Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995), who was never part of the social universe of this circle. Nonetheless he was a strong presence in the space in which all of them were trained as academic intellectuals: the Faculty of Philosophy, Science and Letters. An 'other' in relation to them, Florestan allows us to see them better through an upside-down lens. Like them, he also constructed a powerful intellectual project centred on the analysis of the formation of bourgeois society in Brazil and its structural foundations. But differently to them, he executed this project through a specialized academic language governed by the idea of scientific methodology. From being merely a formal question, his style of exposition and explanation of social phenomena became one of the core elements in forging the identity of sociology as a discipline and its practitioners at the time. Taking essay writing as a synonym for amateurism, Florestan, like Durkheim before, engaged in a symbolic struggle at the level of language in his attempt to legitimize sociology within São Paulo's intellectual field and separate scientific procedures from literary ones.

However rather than accentuating this contrast, what matters to me here is tracing the marks left by the passage of these 'mixed destinies' through the social sciences and the essay writing that they practiced. By analyzing their careers and trajectories, the projects pursued, the alliances made, the contentious issues confronted and the impact achieved, I was lead to reapproach the issue of the correlation between language and apprehension of the social world.

Performers of the metropolis

After finishing my study of the Climate Group, I began a new research project with the aim of widening my exploration of the relations between language and the social world. I therefore expanded my empirical universe to compare the intellectual field and the world of Brazilian theatre. The widest analytic issue linking these two investigative fronts, the theatre and the intellectual field, relates to the equation between name, body and gender and their connections to the problem of authorship and cultural and intellectual authority between 1940 and the end of the 1960s. Apprehending the differences and similarities in these two domains via a comparative approach, at a moment when they were more closely connected than they are today, allowed me to discern the constraints, the potential spaces and the distinct career perspectives that opened up during the period for female intellectuals and actresses.

The results of this research, covering the disciplinary areas of social history, the sociology of culture and the anthropology of gender, are found in Intérpretes da metrópole (Pontes 2010).⁵ In the first part of this work, focused on apprehending gender relations and inflections in the intellectual field, I looked to explore the intersections between urban space, academic institutions, cultural organizations, political stances and forms of sociability in the shaping of intellectual groups. Interested in understanding the implications of São Paulo's metropolitanization on the theatre scene and intellectual life, I used a comparative device to situate and contrast the 'Paulistas' of Clima magazine (published between 1941 and 1944) and the 'New Yorkers' associated with the Partisan Review (launched in 1937) and, at the same time, highlight important internal differences within these groups. At once similar and distinct to the Paulistas of Clima, the New Yorkers of Partisan provide an excellent counterpoint for a sociology of intellectual life. Indeed this function can be enhanced if, along with recovering the specificity of the cultural and intellectual history of the cities of New York and São Paulo, we focus on five key sets of questions: the relation between social origin (and ethnic origin, in the American case), intellectual trajectory and transformations in the social structure and cultural field of the two cities; the role of the essay in shaping the intellectual identity of these groups; the relations (and tensions) between these intellectuals and the academic and political culture of the period; the influence of European intellectuals and artists who, fleeing from the political and ethnic persecutions or unemployment caused by the Second World War, took refuge in New York and São Paulo; the gender relations and inflections involved in the formation of these groups and the type of sociability that they practiced (Pontes 2004 a).

Next I shifted the counterpoint from New York to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and examined the trajectory and work of three intellectuals who made their 'name' as cultural critics, particularly in the sphere of literature, and to a varying degree as authors: Lúcia Miguel Pereira (1901-1959), Patrícia Galvão (1910-1962) and Gilda de Mello e Souza (1919-2005). All striking presences, their trajectories are inseparable from the amorous and professional partnerships, the expressive and intellectual resources mobilized, and the way in which they were involved (or not) with the political divisions of the period. Comparing the three women allowed me to discern important differences in their biographies, trajectories and work. It also allowed the detection of points in common, related to the conditioning factors that shaped the spaces in which women could act during the period, and to the way in which they dealt with the constraints posed by the gender relations and inflections in the intellectual field (Pontes 2008a; 2010b). So as not to essentialize these social markers under the anaemic label of the 'female condition' and to show that they should be apprehended in relation to and in the relation with other dimensions equally important to understanding the specific structure and dynamic of the fields of cultural production, the work turned to the theatre.

To establish the context in which modern Brazilian theatre was implanted, I traced the impact of two French artists active in the theatre scene during the 1940s and 50s, Louis Jouvet (1887-1951) and Henriette Morineau (1908-1990), taking as a backdrop an examination of the movements of these performers both of whom crossed national and gender frontiers. A man of the theatre in the full sense of the term, Jouvet was a great actor and director committed to revitalizing French theatre. He was also an astute observer and essayist keenly aware of the multiple dimensions of the theatrical experience. In 1941, following the outbreak of the Second World War and the German occupation of France, Jouvet and his company departed for South America. His presence in the country at the start of the 1940s enabled the Brazilian public to see at first-hand some of the latest theatrical shows in Europe and influenced the staging of Vestido de Noiva, by Nelson Rodrigues, taken as the symbolic landmark of modern Brazilian drama. Henriette Morineau was an actress who formed part of Jouvet's theatre company during its second season touring the continent. Instead of continuing the voyage and returning to France, she returned to Brazil. She made the country her home and she played an important role in Rio's theatre world, helping train various actors and actresses, including her most famous student, Fernanda Montenegro (Pontes 2008b).

After tracing the foreign presence in Brazilian theatre, I concentrated on the analysis of two of the people most responsible for the revival of São Paulo's theatre: Décio de Almeida Prado (1917-2000) and Cacilda Becker (1921-1969). As she grew as an actress, she became recognized as the 'privileged conscience' (Magaldi 2002:IX) of the renewal taking place among São Paulo's amateur groups and the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (Brazilian Theatre of Comedy). Interwoven, their careers shed light on each other. Among the numerous sources available to measure the impact of the actress's performances and to analyze the twists and turns taken by her career, none surpasses the testimony of Décio de Almeida Prado. Consequently it was through him and his rigorous prose as a critic that I first approached Cacilda, complemented later by the views of the foreign directors who worked with her, among them the Polish Ziembinski (1908-1978), who recognized the actress's 'luminous body,' and extracted some of her best stage performances (Pontes 2004b).

Working from the premise that personal naming is a "privileged entry point for studying the form taken by the major factors of social differentiation and the way these are put into practice through individual action" (Pina Cabral e Viegas 2007:30), I analyzed the artistic name and renown achieved by the 'great dames' of the Brazilian theatre: Fernanda Montenegro, Cacilda Becker, Tônia Carrero, Nydia Lícia, Cleyde Yáconis and Maria Della Costa. I approached names as dynamic devices with the aim of discovering the logic governing the choice of stage names beyond the discursive rationality proper to each individual case. Markers of gender, class and generation combine in the social construction of the artist and the person harbouring them. It is no coincidence, therefore, that in societies as unequal and hierarchical as Brazil's, activities that depend on the body become an essential symbolic capital in 'making' a name for oneself. This is testified by theatre actresses (Pontes 2008c).

Finally, having analyzed the careers, trajectories and repertoire performed by these actresses, I looked to show that the renown they acquired is inseparable from their amorous and professional partnerships.⁶ In making this claim I have no intention of diminishing the brilliance and talent of these performers, nor of minimizing the dedication with which they built their careers. Contrary to female intellectuals of the period, who faced numerous constraints in trying to affirm themselves and 'make a name' for themselves – including the reconciliation of career and family, or, when married to renowned intellectuals, the conflicts derived from feeling or being seen in the 'shadow' of their husbands – the actresses were raised to the status of protagonists with the consent and support of their partners. Following the tradition in the theatre world of self-entrepreneurship, these women created their own companies in which they figured as the main magnet, while their partners worked as directors, actors or businessmen, sometimes mixing all three activities. It is important to stress, though, that the different endeavour of these 'significant others' (partners, husbands or lovers) was not down to isolated personal attitudes, explicable as individual 'temperament' or 'goodwill.' Instead the difference resided in the particular dynamics of the fields of symbolic production, more or less resistant to gender inflexions and women's participation in the area.

Sources for the social history and ethnography of gender relations in the theatre

The history of Brazilian theatre in the 1940s, while not complete, is relatively well documented and analyzed thanks to the work of various researchers and scholars, especially those who played a part in implanting the institutional, artistic and intellectual conditions needed for the movement of renewing the country's theatre. Contemporaneous with this movement, some of them began as critics prior to becoming scholars of the subject, including Sábato Magaldi, Bárbara Heliodora, Yan Michaski and, in particular, Décio de Almeida Prado, whose trajectory as a critic at the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo (for 22 years) and as a professor at the Faculty of Philosopher of the University of São Paulo contributed decisively to the Brazilian theatre acquiring full citizenship as an object of study and research in the academic world.⁷

Alongside the historical or panoramic reconstructions, there are monographs on amateur groups, professional companies, and foreign and Brazilian directors, as well as biographies, autobiographies and memoirs by actresses, directors and playwrights. Two other invaluable documentary sources are the iconography from the shows (photos of actresses and actors, stage sets and the audiences) and the Aplauso Collection (an important initiative of the São Paulo State Official Press) responsible for publishing the testimonies of actors and actresses, as well as theatre and cinema directors. We can also highlight the various volumes of interviews with actors and actresses conducted by the journalist and actor Simon Khoury. The National Theatre Service similarly published testimonies from actresses and actors, directors and critics. Among the sources available on DVD, we can cite the television series 'Great Dames.' This consists of a set of interviews conducted by theatre director Eduardo Tolentino with a number of Brazil's most talented actresses. Also notable among the material available on DVD are the interviews with actors, actresses and directors broadcast by the channel TV Cultura of São Paulo on the 'Roda Viva' program during the 1990s.

Some general observations on the consulted sources are needed to discern the specificity of this material in various formats: photographs, biographies, memoirs and interviews. In relation to the photos of the shows and performers, it needs to be underlined that "a hiatus always persists between the stage representation, the art of movement, unfolding in time as well as space, and the immobility of the photograph" (Prado 1993:95). If they can be used as a document, therefore, it is because they are simultaneously realist records and "testaments to a period and a way of representing" (ibid:94). This especially applies when they are taken by people from the theatre world, like Fredi Kleemann (1927-1974), the photographer who best documented the stage productions of the leading São Paulo theatre company between 1948 and 1958 (the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia) due to the fact he was also an actor in this group.

While this is an important dimension when it comes to explaining the importance of the visual record as one of the key sources for reconstructing the social history of Brazil's theatre, there is another dimension relating to the specificity of this artistic experience. While movies can be seen again and again, thus ensuring a kind of immortality to the performers, in theatre, by contrast, actors and actresses are subject to the 'misfortunes' of temporality. "When an actor stops acting, nothing remains, apart from the memory of those who saw [the performance]" (1998:13), to cite the words of the woman considered the greatest living actress of Brazilian theatre, Fernanda Montenegro.

Despite having their portraits painted in the past and being recorded with visual precision after the invention of photography, this fails to minimize the ephemerality to which stage actors and actresses are subject in practicing an art form that leaves few material proofs of its existence. While the text of the play can be consulted centuries after the first production, the performance only survives in the testimony of those present, in printed programs and in published reviews. Even when a play is filmed in its entirety, it becomes something else. An important part of the 'mystery,' 'enchantment' and 'magic' – to use a terminology native to the theatre – is lost when reproduced on film, since the latter is unable to transmit what happens live on stage, which depends essentially on the acting talent of the performers and its capture by the audience. This is why photography, despite being a frozen image, proves to be better equipped to capture the 'deformation' produced by theatre conventions – including the expansive and exaggerated gestures, the heavy makeup, the intense facial expressions of the actors and actresses – so distinct from the supposedly 'natural' images created by television and cinema.⁸

As for the biographies and monographs of actresses from the period, they are an unequivocal sign of the system of prestige and reputation achieved (or not) by the performers in question. As a kind of pantheon authorized and enthroned (by everyone involved in the theatre) as a form of discovering and recognizing the actresses who marked a period, these texts are also an invaluable source of information. Both through what they say and through what they keep silent. One example of this is the treatment given to the love affair between Cacilda Becker and the Italian director Adolfo Celi. It was only in 2002, following the publication of a biography of the actress by the journalist Luis André Prado, that the subject became known to the wider public. In the theatrical world, however, it was common knowledge not only to the people linked to the métier, but also to scholars of the area. But it was kept an 'open secret' in the official bibliography on Cacilda, including in the book that, to my mind, comprises the best work published to date on her, edited by the researchers Maria Tereza Vargas and Nanci Fernandes, Uma atriz: Cacilda Becker (1ª ed. 1995). Before Luis André do Prado's biography was published in 2002, I only discovered what 'everyone' involved with the theatre at the time already knew when I read the long testimony given by Tônia Carrero to the journalist Simon Khoury, reproduced in the book Bastidores I (1994). This 'silence' of the bibliography on Celi's romance with Cacilda reveals, on one hand, the attempt to 'protect' the image of the 'first actress' of the São Paulo theatre, even after her death. On the other hand, it shows the difficulties faced by any researcher from outside the field when trying to study topics taken to be 'transgressive,' but which, once out in the open, can become common 'gossip.' This gives rise to one of the problems revealed by the Brazilian intellectual tradition in dealing with the question of the sexual partners and options of intellectuals, artists or scientists. A situation completely distinct to that found in the British and American production on the topic. In Brazil the 'shame' of the intellectuals and researchers in relation to themes of this type is the symmetrical opposite of the attitude of the media, or a section of it, which feeds with a startling greed on the production and circulation of rumours concerning 'celebrities.'

Filling this gap, the interviews in various formats, as well as being a valuable source of information to reconstitute the lives of the performers, offer a living image of the profession. A kind of antidote to the fluctuations and bad patches of the person's career, they register with a maximum intensity the revealing moments of the experience of these performers on stage and behind the scenes. And by providing 'inside' access, mediated through the memory of the transience of theatre activity, they also reveal just how tenuous the line is separating the life of the performers from the interpretation they themselves give to their lives. Truths and half-truths, attacks and inferences, false modesty and showing off, exaggeration and restraint, daydreams and frustrations, self-promotion and self-denial, alliances and rivalries, red herrings, pretences and insinuations – all these registers merge together in the interviews and in the calculated reconstruction of careers and trajectories. These ingredients nourish a systematic euphemization of theatrical activity, whose mystique involves the transition between what happens on stage and the other practices – professional, affective, political – off stage. Having learnt to use on stage the tricks provided by theatrical convention, it would be odd were they to not make use of them in other interactive spaces. Hence the ambivalence of actresses and actors retains a certain similarity with what Auerbach, in interweaving his analysis of Baudelaire's works and lifestyle, showed in relation to the air of posing and excess attributable to the poet. In his words,

"It is futile to ask to what point he faked and exaggerated; posing and exaggerating have always been an inherent part of the man and his destiny. All modern artists (since Petrarch at least) felt inclined to dramatize themselves. The artistic process requires an elaboration of themes, a selection process, that emphasizes certain aspects of the artist's inner life and leaves aside others." (Auerbach 2007:310)

In the case of the actresses whom I researched, the dramatization of self involved a specific form of managing their bodies, as the photographic records show. Though the body was a central tool utilized to play the characters lived on stage – and themselves off it – this use is not dissociated from the cultural and intellectual aura that imbued them and other performers who left the review theatre and popular comedy to adapt to the work routines and concepts of modern theatre. The photo below of Cacilda Becker summarizes with visual eloquence the dramatization of the actress during the period when "women ruled the theatre."⁹

Glamour, self-confidence, serenity and self-control shine through in the actress's body posture and the way in which she wears the concentrated insignias of the elegant woman: the fur stole over the immaculately tailored suit – both signed by Christian Dior, one of the biggest names in French fashion during the era – the lustrous and abundant hair, styled in a bun, the eyebrows finely delineated, the discrete lip gloss in an enigmatic smile, lightly sketched, the gaze highlighted with the use of eyeliner adding a hint of melancholy. The photo¹⁰ could have come from one of the magazines from the period, like Cruzeiro and Manchete, which every so often featured theatre and cinema actresses on their front covers, or it could have equally been taken on stage in a moment of Cacilda performing a scene with Walmor Chagas, her second husband, with whom she founded her own company in 1958 in which he worked as actor, entrepreneur and sometimes director. In the background – a position that he, despite being a great actor, occupied for real during the period in which they ran the company that took the name of Cacilda Becker – Walmor appears in a pale suit, buttoned jacket, white shirt and dark tie, slightly frowning, closed-lipped, the apprehensive look accentuated by the furrowed eyebrows. His tense and heavy countenance contrasts with the controlled suaveness of Cacilda.

What makes the chance of this photo being taken while performing on stage highly unlikely is the overly realist setting of the figures: cars, street scene and passers-by. Though evidently not a theatre photo, it could well be a scene from the cinema or television, media in which Cacilda was present, although without the same intensity and frequency as other actresses from the period. Irrespective of the medium in which it was generated, the photo is a depiction of the image constructed by the actress and a snapshot of an era. Mixed, the two registers conceal and reveal various dimensions at the same time, beginning with the skill with which Cacilda manipulates the visual ingredients associated with social confidence: from her attire to her bodily hexis. A skill which in her case resulted from the apprenticeship gained from the arduous work routine and the tricks required and enabled by theatre convention. This performance reflects the actress's attunement with the transformations taking place in Brazilian society at the time: the rapid pace of urbanization and industrialization, the rise of the middle classes, the occupation of professional work spaces opened up by the recently created cultural institutions. In the case of São Paulo, these spaces were filled through a form of social recruitment different to that which marked the formation of its ruling elites, as shown by some of the intellectual leaders who emerged at the University of São Paulo's Faculty of Philosophy, and the leading figures in the theatre world, concentrated at first in the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia and later in the diverse companies that emerged from the TBC and the other groups that transformed the Paulista theatre scene at the end of the 1950s, the Arena and Oficina companies in particular.

Social mobility was intensely experienced by the period's most renowned actresses: on one hand, because of the career opportunities, chances for social networking and forms of public visibility previously unimaginable to people from such modest social backgrounds as themselves. On the other hand, because of the roles they played. Covering a diverse range of characters, they played almost every part possible in the theatre: from queens to prostitutes, poor women to the middle class, aristocrats and members of high-society. Transiting from radio to theatre and television, almost at precisely the same time as Brazil's culture industry took off, they lived through the shuffling of the 'high,' 'middle' and 'low' forms of cultural production. As Davi Mattos shows, far from being opposed, radio and television at first had close relations with the cultural manifestations of the elite, "which historically included the São Paulo professional theatre, inaugurated by the TBC [Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia]" (Matos 2002:20).

The prestige and renown won by these actresses resulted, then, from the cultural and social authority associated with the captive audience of the company through which all of them passed, the TBC. Concretized "thanks to the financial support provided by a group of figures from São Paulo's economic elite," composed of "entrepreneurs, bankers, men linked to industry, commerce and finance, all of them brought together by the engineer and business administrator Franco Zampari and his friend and best man at his wedding, the industrialist Francisco (Ciccillo) Matarazzo Sobrinho," the TBC emerged as "an artistic-cultural enterprise planned and sponsored by private individuals, people with money who were prepared to create a theatre house in the European mould to shelter and promote amateur theatre groups in São Paulo" (ibid:48). These singular social processes of transferring charisma led the actresses and actors who formed the company's permanent cast becoming 'magnetized' by the audience's prestige. Cacilda was not the only one, therefore, to derive status from this theatrical experience, although she was the performer who most explored this alchemy as the 'first actress' of São Paulo theatre in the 1950s and the 'elegant woman' of the 1960s – in huge contrast to the privations that had marked her childhood and adolescence.

Her lofty demeanour, the elegance of her clothing and the bodily control displayed by Cacilda in the photo shown a few pages back leave no doubt just how far she was from the 'little artist' at the start of her career, to cite the expression used by Alfredo Mesquita to refer to the first impression she had caused when they were presented to each other at a reception in 1941: "in one corner, alone, huddled up, a cup of Coca-Cola shaking in her trembling hands, wide-eyed and startled as she observed the carousel spinning around her" (Mesquita 1995:82).

The last point to highlight relates to the difficulty, or rather impossibility, of separating the actress's person from her persona. Or put in another way: who is Cacilda and who is the actress Cacilda Becker in this photo? Impossible to know unless we have references and information external to her. Since although some 'noise' from the image suggests that this is not a photo taken in the theatre, such as the realist environment and the passers-by on the street, the doubt remains as to whether the gaze is fixed merely on the figure of Cacilda, who seems to be moving, due to the soft focus effect produced by the fur stole. However the photo is not a film still, though the setting and the presence of Walmor are reminiscent of a film from the period, São Paulo S.A., by the director Luiz Sergio Person. Neither is it a stage photo. Capturing an instant from Cacilda's 'real' life, the photo records a highly sensitive situation, at the height of the military dictatorship, at the moment when she was heading to the DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order) in May 1964, accompanied by her husband Walmor Chagas, to give a statement to an inquiry into accusations of communist infiltration in the São Paulo theatre.

To confront the situation Cacilda dressed up and incorporated several of her personas: the elegant woman, the great dame of Brazilian theatre, the member of high-society for whom a simple raised eyebrow is enough to repel subordinates with the implied riposte: "do you know who you're talking to"? (Matta 1983). While all the characters mobilized for the occasion lend social verisimilitude to the photo, it is above all as Cacilda Becker that she allows herself to be registered at the moment of heading to the DOPS. Hence along with the attire of everyday social display, she was wearing what she most knew how to perform on stage: the capacity to shift between very different characters, something she exploited to a maximum through her talent as an actress, in a very particular context of renewal of Brazilian theatre.

Sources and objects: front and back of the same social and symbolic logic

Photographs, interviews, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, combined with the books and repertoire of plays, form the research sources sustaining my work on the intellectuals, cultural critics, actresses and performers of the Brazilian theatre in the decades from the 1940s to the 1960s. The analysis of the institutionalization of modern culture in Brazil, seen from the viewpoint of the agents involved, requires a correlation between expressive (intellectual or artistic) production and individual trajectories. Without this correlation it is impossible to determine either the importance of the conditioning factors (social and institutional) that shape intellectual and artistic production, or their degree of autonomy in relation to those in power. In the case of my own research, translating this argument into a methodological approach involved making biographic record cards divided under four rubrics: social origin, school and cultural education, social trajectory and professional career. The same card model used to systemize the information compiled on intellectuals in Destinos mistos and on cultural critics in the first part of Intérpretes da metrópole was applied, with the necessary adaptations, to the actresses.¹¹

In sum, the cards comprise a methodological tool enabling the construction of a kind of collective biography in which each person is thought in relation to and in the relation with others from both the theatre and the intellectual field. A comparative device obviously sustained not by ethnography based on participant-observation, but on the work of objectifying the experience of the agents contained in the consulted documents. This objectification presumes a reflection on the social and institutional conditions informing the production of written sources and the reminiscences that nourish most of the interviews and testimonies (either published or obtained directly) that we social scientists employ in our work. As Sergio Miceli shows, "the current definitions of any objects are part of the object that one intends to make known, or rather, no rigid separation or discontinuity exists between the object and the materials that speak of it, that express it or that in some way give it a form of existence" (1998:154).

What the sociologist identifies as the modus operandi of the elites inscribed in the sources that they produce, contract or subsidize – that is, their "modes of operation, values, political culture, existing perceptions of hierarchy, relationship patterns, material and mental characteristics" (ibid.) – is applied, with the necessary adaptations, to the sources available on other social groups. If, in the case of the elites, these sources rather than just speak about them, also indicate the ways in which they like to be spoken about and the control they exert towards this, the same happens in relation to the sources on groups and individuals with privileged access to cultural and symbolic production, as in the case of the intellectuals and performers of the theatre world.

While anthropologists have for a long time been attentive to the analytic and epistemological implications arising from the subject-object relation as configured in the fieldwork experience, they, however, seem to have abstained from reflecting on these implications when the research is undertaken with written sources. In these cases, the latter tend to be treated as mere repositories of information. This is due in part, as Olívia da Cunha shows, to the "functionalist legacy which postulates the centrality of [field research] as the locus of anthropological practice. But it isn't" (2004:293). Another part of the explanation resides in a certain positivist conception of the written documentation available in archives, which until recently prevented the treatment of these spaces as an ethnographic field just as legitimate, complex and intricate as that based on participant observation and on the authority conferred by the presence of the anthropologist. If ethnography is a privileged tool for apprehending social interactions, so too is the archive, just like the library, as long as we approach them as objects of reflection. In the words of Robert Darnton, "mental undergrowth can be as impenetrable in the bush as in the library" (1986: XIX) – especially for those historians like himself who do not lose sight of the social dimension of thought.

As anthropologists increasingly explore themes and objects situated in other disciplinary boundaries – in history, literature and the sociology of culture, for example – it becomes ever more necessary for them to reflect on the written sources (legal trials, interviews, testimonies, literary texts, journalism, biographies, etc.) that we use in our research and on the social and institutional places that house them.

Paulo Guérios in Heitor Villa-Lobos: o caminho sinuoso da predestinação (2003), and especially in his doctoral thesis Memória, identidade e religião entre imigrantes rutenos e seus descendentes no Paraná (2007), makes an important contribution in this direction. The author's painstaking research among various archives into the arrival of Ukrainians in Brazil and on the conditions in which they settled in the Paraná colonies, sifting through letters and reports, offers a solid empirical grounding for developing our reflection on the social conditions involved in the production of memories. In the migratory experience, the elements recollected by each person vary according to the moment in life, the family position and set up, the markers of gender and generation, the position in the social structure. Another manner of saying that the past is never hermetically sealed or self-identical, and that it always changes a little each time it is remembered and depending on who is being remembered and by whom. In the case of cultural production, this cautiousness is particularly relevant since the memories recorded in written sources or collected in interviews and testimonies are not separable or independent from the varying positions occupied by the agents in these fields over the course of their trajectories.

To this we can add the observation that the metaphor involved in the idea that the sources 'speak' about the social world of the researched subjects reinforces, as Olívia Gomes writes, "the idea that histories should 'listen' and above all 'dialogue' with the documents used in their research." But as the anthropologist astutely observes, this interlocution is only "possible if the conditions of production of these 'voices' are taken as an object of analysis – that is, the fact that the archives have been constituted, fed and maintained by people, social groups and institutions" (2004:293).

Gustavo Sorá's work on the Brazilian publishing house José Olympio, analyzed from the viewpoint of the social history of the book and the anthropology of publishing, provides an important example in the direction proposed by Cunha (2004). When he began his research, the publishing house no longer existed. But in the 1930s and 40s it was "the dream of every writer. Avant-garde novelists and academics, critics and commercially successful authors, historians and politicians; all of them wanted to be published by the Livraria José Olympio" (Sorá 2010:11). Its place in the formation of the national literary pantheon is indisputable. But until Sorá's research, no scholar had ventured with such ethnographic astuteness into the records of its history, since none had been bold enough to reflect on the sources in a way enabling this kind of reconstruction. These sources include the publisher's own two archives, located in Rio de Janeiro, which store a considerable part of its history.

One of them is situated in the district of Penha, one of the city's suburbs. The other, the José Olympio Archive, belongs to the Museum Archive of the History of Brazilian Literature at the Casa Rui Barbosa, an institution located in Rio de Janeiro's south zone, linked at the time to the federal Ministry of Education. Faced with the evidence that these archives materialize not only different vestiges of the publisher's history, but also manifest distinct social and symbolic logics, Sorá asks: "what differences did each of the archives hold?" (2010:26). In the archive held by the Casa Rui Barbosa are objects, documents and part of the personal archive of the editor José Olympio: a large volume of letters, "dominated by those between editors and renowned writers" (ibid). In the Penha archive, for its part, "an ignoble archive," were found the correspondence with other agents from the book world (editors from abroad or suppliers of raw materials) and folders with material used in the production of the books (covers, back covers, first pages, newspaper cuttings on how the authors were received). As Sorá shows,

"The difference between the two José Olympio archives endorses the assertions concerning the symbolic subordination of publishing in relation to literature (...) The José Olympio Archive [at the Casa Rui Barbosa] is literary and the company's archive is administrative. The José Olympio Archive of the Casa Rui Barbosa is an archive for literary history. The Penha archive is administrative, for the day-to-day functions of editorial work. From a historical and anthropological perspective, they represent fragments of a totality to be reconstructed. Seen from an archaeological viewpoint, the sites of the archives, the materiality of their objects (writings, furniture, buildings), were the first traces in producing a survey of the evolution of the José Olympio publishers as a cultural business enterprise. The vestiges transmitted temporal grandeur and power, but also decline and disintegration" (Sorá 2010:26-27).

* * *

The reflection on ethnography as an intellectual enterprise focused on the construction of "a wide-ranging experience that becomes, in principle, accessible to men [and women] from another country and another time" (Merleau-Ponty 1980:119) is only realized in full in writing. It therefore suppose a reflection on the correlation between language and social processes, as well as on the social and symbolic marks inscribed in the sources that we research. Whether directly through fieldwork and the ethnography of a contemporary social situation, or indirectly through the recovery of social practices and symbolic representations that, kept in the form of historical records, sediment diverse temporalities and social interactions in the archives where they are stored. For this reason, and to conclude, I recall here an astute observation by Braudel, which applies well to anthropology: "history is a hundred correlations, all at the same time, of which even at best we perceive only a few. Hence we cannot explain too much or on the basis of schemas that are too simple" (2007:177).

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About the author

Heloisa Pontes is professor in the Department of Anthropology of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). She is also a member of Pagu, Gender Study Group of the Unicamp, and researcher of the National Research Council (CNPq). She is author of Intérpetres da metrópole (Edusp/FAPESP, 2010) and Destinos mistos (Companhia das Letras, 1998).

• Aliverti, Maria Inęs. 1998. La naissance de l'acteur moderne: l'acteur et son portrait au VIII sičcle. Paris: Gallimard.
• Andrade, Jorge. 1986. "A moratória" [1955]. In: Marta, a árvore, o relógio. 2a ed. revised and expanded, Săo Paulo: Perspectiva.
• Arruda, Maria Arminda do Nascimento. 2001.  Metrópole e cultura: Săo Paulo no meio século XX.  Bauru: Edusc.
• Auerbach, Erich. 2007.  Ensaios de literatura ocidental. Filologia e crítica. Săo Paulo: Duas Cidades /Ed.34.
• Baxandalll, Michael. 1991. O olhar renascente: pintura e experięncia social na Renascença.  Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.
• Baxandalll, Michael. 2006. Padrőes de intençăo: a explicaçăo histórica dos quadros. Săo Paulo, Companhia das Letras.
• Becker, Howard. 1982. Art World. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Bourdieu, Pierre.1992.  Les rčgles de l'art. Genčse et structure du champ littéraire. Paris: Seuil.
• Braudel, Fernand. 2007.  O modelo italiano. Săo Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
• Caldeira, Teresa. 1988.  "A presença do autor e a pós-modernidade em antropologia", Novos Estudos Cebrap, n. 21, pp.133-157.
• Carone, Modesto. 2003. "A atividade de ficcionista", In: Jornal de Resenhas (Suplemento da Folha de S. Paulo), 9^th August, p.3.
• Chadwick, Whitney & courtivron, Isabelle (ed.). 1993. Significant others: creativity & intimate partnership. New York: Thames and Hudson.
• Clifford, James & MARCUS, George Marcus (ed.). 1986. Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
• Cunha, Olívia Maria Gomes. 2004. "Tempo imperfeito: uma etnografia do arquivo". Mana, vol. 10, n.2, pp.287-322.
• Darnton, Robert. 1986. O grande massacre de gatos e outros episódios da história cultural francesa 2a ed., Rio de Janeiro: Graal.
• Elias, Norbert. 1995. Mozart: sociologia de um gęnio. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
• Faria, Joăo Roberto; ARĘAS, Vilma Aręas e AGUIAR, Flávio Aguiar. 1997. Décio de Almeida Prado: um homem de teatro.  Săo Paulo: Edusp.
• Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and agency: an anthropological theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
• Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
• Goody, Jack.  2006. La peur des représentantions. L'ambivalence ŕ l'égard des images, du theater, de la fiction, des reliques et de la sexualité. Paris: La Découverte.
• Guérios, Paulo. 2003. Heitor Villa-Lobos: o caminho sinuoso da predestinaçăo Rio de Janeiro: Ed. da FGV.
• Guérios, Paulo. 2007. Memória, identidade e religiăo entre imigrantes rutenos e seus descendentes no Paraná. Doctoral thesis presented at the Museu Nacional, UFRJ.
• Khoury, Simon. Bastidores I (depoimentos de Tônia Carrero, Henriqueta Briebo, Cláudio Correa e Castro e Paulo Gracindo). Rio de Janeiro: Leviată, 1994.
• Magaldi, Sábato. 2002. "Conscięncia privilegiada do teatro". In: PRADO, Décio de Almeida. Apresentaçăo do teatro moderno brasileiro: crítica teatral de 1947-1955 Săo Paulo: Perspectiva,  pp.ix-xv.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge.
• Matta, Roberto da. "Vocę sabe com que está falando? Um ensaio sobre a distinçăo entre indivíduo e pessoa no Brasil". In: Carnavais, malandros e heróis 4a ed., Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1983, pp.139-193.
• Matos, David José Lessa.  O espetáculo da cultura paulista, teatro e TV em Săo Paulo, 1940-1950. Săo Paulo, Códex, 2002.
• Mello e souza, Gilda. 1980. "Teatro ao sul" [1956]. In: Exercícios de leitura. Săo Paulo: Duas Cidades, pp.109-116.
• Merleau-ponty, Maurice. 1980. "De  Mauss a Claude Lévi-Strauss". In: Merleau-Ponty Seleçăo de textos e traduçăo de Marilena Chauí. Săo Paulo: Abril Cultural, coll. "Os pensadores", pp.193-206.
• Mesquita, Alfredo. "De como vim a conhecer Cacilda Becker e o que se seguiu". In; vargas, Maria Thereza e fernandes, Nanci (eds.), Uma atriz: Cacilda Becker Săo Paulo, Perspectiva, 1995, pp.81-87.
• Miceli, Sérgio. 1998. A elite eclesiástica brasileira Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
• Miceli, Sérgio. 2001. Intelectuais ŕ brasileira. Săo Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
• Miceli, Sergio. 2003. Nacional estrangeiro: história social e cultural do modernismo artístico em Săo Paulo. Săo Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
• Montenegro, Fernanda Montenegro. 1998.  "Aula inaugural". in: Fernanda Montenegro, Viagem ao outro: sobre a arte do ator. Rio de Janeiro: Fundacen.
• Pina-cabral, Joăo e viegas, Susana de Matos. 2007. "Nomes e ética: uma introduçăo ao debate". In: Joăo de Pina Cabral and Susana de Matos Viegas (eds.), Nomes: gęnero, etnicidade e família Coimbra: Almedina.
• Pontes, Heloisa.  1998. Destinos mistos: os críticos do Grupo Clima em Săo Paulo, 1940-1968. Săo Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
• Pontes, Heloisa. 2004a. "Ciudades e intelectuales: los 'neoyorquinos' de Partisan Review y los 'paulistas' de Clima entre 1930 y 1950". Prismas. Revista de história intelectual, Buenos Aires, ano 8, n.8, pp.183-204.
• Pontes, Heloisa. 2004 b. "A burla do gęnero: Cacilda Becker, a Mary Stuart de Pirassununga", Tempo Social, vol.16, n.1, pp.231-262.
• Pontes, Heloisa. 2008 (a). "Critique of culture in the feminine". In: Mana, Estudos de Antropologia Social, n.4, Special Editions, Portal Scielo Social Sciences English Edition.
• Pontes, Heloisa. 2008 (b). "Louis Jouvet e Henriette Morineau: o impacto de suas presenças na cena teatral brasileira". In: Eugenia Scarzanella e Mônica Raisa Schupun (orgs.)  Sin fronteras: encuentros de mujeres y hombres entre America Latina y Europa (siglos XIX-XX), Madrid, Frankfurt: Vervuet/ Iberoamericana, Bibliotheca Ibero-Americana, vo.123,  pp.139-163.
• Pontes, Heloisa. 2008 (c). "Inventando nomes, ganhado fama: as atrizes do teatro brasileiro, 1940-68",  Etnográfica, Lisboa, vol.12, n.1, pp.173-194.
• Pontes, Heloisa. 2009. "Teatro, género y sociedad en el Brasil, 1940-1968". In: Prismas, Revista de historia Intelectual, Buenos Aires, n.13,  pp.197-210.
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1

* PhD in Sociology from the University of São Paulo (Brazil). Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology of Unicamp (Campinas State University), researcher with Pagu, Unicamp Centre of Gender Studies, research productivity award-holder with CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). Cf. Auerbach (2007), Baxandall (2006), Becker (1982), Bourdieu (1992), Elias (1995), Gell (1998), Geertz (1983), Goody (2006), Miceli (2001, 2003), Sarlo (2003), Schorske (1993, 1988), Williams (1982).

2

The bibliography on the subject is vast. But on the point central to this article, see two of the authors who have consolidated the debate on the relations between ethnography, writing and power: Clifford & Marcus (1986) and Clifford (1988). For a proficient and comprehensive discussion of the topic, see Caldeira (1988). For a summary of its repercussions in the history of French anthropology, see Sobral (2008).

3

In the theatre, directors from various nationalities were found, such as the Polish Ziembinski, the French Jouvet and Henriette Morineau, the Italian Adolfo Celi, Ruggero Jacobbi, Gianni Ratto, Luciano Salce, Flamínio Bollini Cerri and Alberto D'Aversa, and the Belgian Maurice Vaneau. At the university, the members of the French Mission included the likes of Jean Magüé, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Monbeig and Roger Bastide, among others.

4

The formation of Brazilian literature, in the case of Antonio Candido; theatre, in the case of Décio de Almeida Prado; cinema, in the case of Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes; Brazilian art, in the case of Lourival Gomes Machado, who paid special attention to the analysis of Mineiro baroque art. And also the formation of fashion taste and consumption, in the case of Gilda de Mello e Souza.

5

The book

Intérpretes da metrópole (Pontes 2010) was conceived as a thesis presented to obtain an associate professorship, successfully defended at Unicamp in June 2008.

6

This approach is indebted to a reading of the book

Significant Others (1993), edited by Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron with the aim of approaching, on the basis of various empirical cases the issues of gender and creativity through an analysis of the complexity involved in various types of partnerships – including amorous relationships – between artists and renowned writers.

7

On the trajectory, production and importance of Décio de Almeida Prado, see the volume edited by Faria, Arêas and Aguiar (1997).

8

It should be emphasized, however, that neither the films of stage performances, or the photos or show or the portraits painted of actresses and actors escape the analytic and methodological questions posed by art historians when faced with the problem of the intermediations needed to 'read' a visual document. On this question, see Baxandall (2006). For an analysis of portraits of actors and actresses, see Aliverti (1998).

9

To cite the words of the actress Maria Della Costa in an interview given to the newspaper

A Tribuna de Santos on 26/02/1984.

10

The photo shown above is found in the Última Hora/Folha Imagem Archive and was taken from the book by Luis André do Prado,

Cacilda Becker: fúria santa, 2002.

11

Totalling more than 50 items, these record cards organized the information compiled on intellectuals, cultural critics and actresses in terms of

social origin (position in the family, data on siblings, parents and close relatives, social networks, jobs and income, residential area, genealogies, and so on); information on

family and formal education (literacy, symbolic activities, trips abroad, foreign languages, intellectual, cultural and artistic pantheon, educational establishments, other courses, academic and artistic qualifications, colleagues, subjective hopes, career alternatives, models of intellectual, artistic and social excellence, objective indices of performance, aesthetic and artistic activities and stances, etc.);

social trajectory (marriage, data on the spouse and his/her family, other marriages were applicable, material assets, income, inheritances, properties, children, the couple's intellectual, cultural and artistic pantheon) and

intellectual or artistic trajectory (first job, entry into the intellectual or theatrical field, debut roles or texts, most important roles or books, books with less impact or unsuccessful plays, critical evaluations or reviews, objective indices of reception, consecration, awards, self-evaluation of career and, on the card of the actresses, representations concerning the body and gender in their artistic and cultural work).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  22 May 2012
• Date of issue
  June 2011