22 por 42: o paradigma da celebração

Usually the ten-year anniversaries of the Week of Modern Art are occasions to celebrate the so-called Brazilian modernist movement. The purpose of this article is to highlight what is at stake at such celebrations by examining The Modernist Movement, by Mário de Andrade, originally a speech presented on the 20th anniversary of the Week of Modern Art, in 1942. Mário de Andrades text not only offers the paradigmatic set of arguments used to promote the relevance of the Modernist Movement (a set of arguments in vogue on these occasions) but also articulates Brazilian modernism as a persuasive historiographic construct