Modernity in Black and White

Rafael Cardoso is a member of the postgraduate faculty in art history at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Instituto de Artes) and a research fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (Lateinamerika-Institut). One of the leading historians of modern art and design in Brazil, he has authored numerous books and essays and curated major museum exhibitions.

• Introduction. Ambiguous modernities and alternate modernisms; 1. Heart of darkness in the bosom of the modern metropolis: favelas, race and barbarity; 2. A pagan festival for the up to date: art, bohemianism and carnival; 3. The printing of modern life: a new art for a new century; 4. The cosmopolitan savage: modernism, primitivism and the anthropophagic descent; 5. The face of the land: depicting 'real' Brazilians under Vargas; Epilogue. Images of a culture at war with itself.

'Modernity in Black and White takes aim at the origin story of Brazilian modernism, which until now centered on a cadre of elite intellectuals from São Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, Cardoso uncovers a competing modernism, rooted in the city's mass culture, that engendered alternate visions of Brazil's multi-racial identity beyond primitivism. Moving seamlessly among texts and images, academic and commercial art, and various forms of elite and popular culture, this is art history at its liveliest and most engaging.' Paulina Alberto, University of Michigan