Melancholy in the seaside metropolis: a sketch about queer modernisms in Brazil

Abstract

The article proposes an initial reflection on queer modernisms in Brazil, more specifically, in the cultural, intellectual and artistic scenarios of the city of Rio de Janeiro (RJ) that took shape from the 1920s onwards. In its first part, the text presents a critical review of a set of North American and European studies on modernisms and queer modernisms that were produced from the 1990s onwards. In a second moment, the article focuses on connecting in a preambular way the life and work of artists such as Lúcio Cardoso, Mário Peixoto, Alberto Cavalcanti and Farnese de Andrade, four artists of dissident gender and/or sexualities who lived and/or passed by the capital of Rio de Janeiro and that could, more than being studied in isolation, be constellated as a group of queer modernists who were on the margins of the canon of Brazilian modernism. In this way, the article presents itself as a first attempt to fill a lack of studies regarding the ties between queer studies and modernisms in Brazil, above all to expand the narrow bibliography regarding the possible articulating sensibilities of ethical and aesthetic problems of queer modernisms.