Rugendas and the representation of black people in Brazil.
From 1822-1825, as part of the Langsdorff expedition, Johann Moritz Rugendas depicted black people living in Brazil. According to Freitas, one type of representation Rugendas used was the bust of black people of varied nations. This type of illustration details the physical characteristics of black men and women focusing on hairstyles, ornaments, marks and scars, and types of nose, lips, and eyes, demonstrating the ethnographic purpose of these drowings. In the same image, the artist depicts four or five busts of men and women to compare differences and similarities among nation, but also to identify different stages of civilization. He identified more savage people depicting them with skin marks and deformities and normally without clothes.[1] On the other hand, criollos were represented wearing clothes and jewelry which meant a step forward toward civilization if compared with black Africans. In fact, Rugendas celebrated black people born in Brazil, who were more polished and benevolent than Africans.[2] The racial mixing, celebrated by Rugendas, is part of a tropical romanticism which contributed to the idea of racial harmony. [3]
The second type of representation Rugendas depicted black people was the painting of scenes. These images presented activities of urban work such as street commerce, water transportation, and laundry. The main focus was in the activity and the landscape rather than in detailing variation between blacks of different nations. A generic type of black was represented in these scenes. The work performed by black people was represented by Rugendas as a civilizing element that allowed black people to develop themselves and to have social mobility. [4]
Rugendas, by influence of Alexander von Humboldt, considered environmental conditions as determinant factors to human development and thus the lack of education and civilizing elements in Africa contributed to the inferiority of the African race. Also by influence of Humboldt, who was an abolitionist, Rugendas disapproved Brazilian slavery system and defended a gradual and progressive emancipation.[5] Robert Slenes defended that Rugendas had a political agenda that worked together with his ethnographic work. To Slenes, the artist had a compromise with a conservative Christian reformism, characteristic of French abolitionist movement. Although Rugendas defended the gradual emancipation, the artist understood Brazilian slavery as a new life for Africans, who got the chance to the Christian experience and conversion.[6] In some images, for example the "Burial of a Black Man in [Salvador] Bahia," Rugendas identified the dead body of a "black man with another corpse: the suffering Christ the ‘Savior’ honored by the city’s name." [7] There are other images where elements of Catholicism are present such as "Mercado de Negros" and "Familia de Fazendeiros", the latter one of the few images Rugendas represents black people in private environments.
Domingues defends that the artistic work of foreigner painters and ethnographers in the nineteenth-century Brazil had a deep impact in the built of racial imaginary. The romantic point of view on how slavery worked in Brazil contributed to creation of the myth of racial democracy.[8] Outside Brazil, the images Rugendas produced had relative success, for he published a book with his travel log and a collection of one hundred pictures. Moreover, the nineteenth century experienced the spreading of travel books and the development of lithographs.[9] Rugendas’ images helped to spread the idea of racial harmony inside and outside Brazil.
Wiki Project
1) Rugendas in Brazil
Johann Moritz Rugendas spent three years in Brazil during the Langsdorff expedition. From 1821-1825, Rugendas produced more than one hundred illustrations which portrayed Brazilian landscape, population and economy. The artist is famous for his images of the daily lives of slaves on public and private spaces of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. My proposal is to create a section in his Wikipedia entrance about the time he spent in Brazil, and his ideas about race and slavery. This is important to a discussion on the transnational influences on racial ideology in Brazil.
2) Wet Nurses
Enslaved women were commonly employed as wet nurses in many countries in the Americas. However, the Wikipedia entrance on this topic does not have any reference to any Latin American cases. For this proposal, I would like to create a section where I would explore this theme in some Latin-American countries, particularly in Brazil. This is important because breastfeeding was doing the role of race all over the Americas
3) Maxixe
Even though Maxixe is not a very popular genre of music in Brazil nowadays, its descendant, Choro, is. Although Maxixe is one of the pillars of the Brazilian music, it was influenced for many other genres. My proposal is to enlarge the Wikipedia which already exists to explore some academic debate on the influence this king of music received and spread in Brazil. This is important to analyze transnational connections in
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- ^ Freitas, Iohana Brito de. "Cores e olhares no Brasil oitocentista: os tipos de negros de Rugendas e Debret." Masters thesis. Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2009. p.65.
- ^ Diener, Pablo, Maria De Fátima G Costa, and Johann Moritz Rugendas. Rugendas E O Brasil. São Paulo, SP: Capivara, 2002. p.144.
- ^ Araujo, Ana Lucia. Brazil through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics. University of New Mexico Press, 2015. p.36
- ^ Freitas, Iohana Brito de. "Cores e olhares no Brasil oitocentista: os tipos de negros de Rugendas e Debret." Masters thesis. Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2009. p.68.
- ^ Diener, Pablo, Maria De Fátima G Costa, and Johann Moritz Rugendas. Rugendas E O Brasil. São Paulo, SP: Capivara, 2002. p.144.
- ^ Slenes, Robert W. "African Abrahams, Lucretias and Men of Sorrows: Allegory and Allusion in the Brazilian Anti-slavery Lithographs (1827-1835) of Johann Moritz Rugendas," Slavery & Abolition 23, no.2, (2002): 149.
- ^ Slenes, Robert W. "African Abrahams, Lucretias and Men of Sorrows: Allegory and Allusion in the Brazilian Anti-slavery Lithographs (1827-1835) of Johann Moritz Rugendas," Slavery & Abolition 23, no.2, (2002): 147.
- ^ Domingues, Petrônio. O Mito da Democracia Racial e a Mestiçagem no Brazil (1889-1930). Diálogos Latinoamericanos. no. 10 (2005), 119.
- ^ Sarah Thomas (2011) “On the spot: Traveling artists and abolitionism,1770–1830," Atlantic Studies 8, no.2, (2011): 218.