The Doctrines of Good Taste
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The doctrines of Good Taste BÁRTOLO, Carlos / MA / IHA/FCSH Universidade Nova de Lisboa + Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa / Portugal Portugal / Propaganda / Nationalism / Education / Identity Regarded in the broadest sense as fascist, Estado Novo differenti- ated itself from other contemporary systems as an original hybrid This paper try to analyse the Good Taste Campaign (Portugal, regime that, trying to modernize a still underdeveloped country, 1940’s) and understand how it was generated and produced: the simultaneously kept it lost in a glorified, bucolic and pious past. intentions, sources and influences supporting it; how it derived Salazar, a somewhat non-charismatic and reluctant crowd pleaser, from these usually irreconcilable concepts (modern and tradition); sought to incarnate a stoic persona that carried out the divine duty and, despite the authoritarian background, its decisive conse- of fathering the country, giving up his personal freedom and happi- quences on the present Portuguese identity and in the formation ness in the name of the Nation (Rivero, 2010). of the discipline, as probably the most successfully implemented Portuguese national Design policy. To maintain this unquestionable power Estado Novo promoted na- tionalistic ideals based on the celebration of its history, ethnical uniqueness and global mission as standard in authoritarian re- 1. An original regime gimes regardless of their politic faction. This example of a dynamic It’s expected of an authoritarian regime, as Portugal was after May revolution tried to recreate a modern national identity moulded on 28th 1926, the formulation of a set of values that should rule the the traditional world of the bonhomous peasant, allegory of sanc- country and maintain its strength and perpetuity. tioned values, and on the culmination of decades of nationalistic exaltation and of an artistic and ethnographic identity quest (in This essay, part of my PhD research on the dictatorship idealization everything similar to other European movements developed since of a Portuguese Home concept, try to survey how the formulation the end of 19th century). The most effective method for this iden- and promotion of these political, moral and social values intercon- tity implementation was the previous indoctrination of established nected with the Design emergence in 1930’s and 1940’s Portugal. truths that should irrefutably prevail and suppress opposing truths. The military coup d’état of 1926 was the outcome of an extended political crisis led by the failure on the implementation and stabi- 2. A cultural policy lization of a liberal and democratic system experienced since the The SPN/SNI1 creation in 1933 filled this need of indoctrination; a monarchy exactly one hundred years before. This coup was part propaganda service had become an important tool for govern- of a European predisposition, between the wars, for political ex- ments and a crucial one at an authoritarian regime. While refus- tremism from which derived the birth of authoritarian regimes all ing the idea of modernity, ironically it would be through these throughout the continent. modern instruments that the regime would publicize its ideology. ‘Propaganda emerged as a fundamental strategy of the society ac- In Portugal, after a brief and equally unstable beginning, the regime ceptance of itself, and presented as revelation of its own «core»’2 found its pace under the authority of António Salazar (1889-1970), (Melo, 2001: 54). a conservative catholic economy professor, invited in 1928 to straighten out the acute national debt as an all-powerful Finance Until 1949 SPN/SNI was run by António Ferro (1895-1956), a cos- Minister; he gradually secured a more prominent role in the govern- mopolitan writer associated with the Portuguese and European ment until he arose to the position of Prime Minister in 1932. modernist and futurist milieu since his youth3. With the ratification of the1933 Constitution (establishing the 1 SPN-Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional [National Propaganda Bureau]. In power on a corporative regime entitled Estado Novo [New State]), 1945, on the aftermath of World War II, and probably due to the negative connota- Salazar held his position as a de facto dictator, balancing out the tion of the term propaganda, it would be renamed SNI-Secretariado Nacional de Informação, Cultura Popular e Turismo [National Bureau of Information, Popular different factions of the Portuguese far right. For the equilibrium of Culture and Tourism]. these forces (from the poles of the ancien régime Monarchists to 2 This quotation, as the others, is a free translation by the author. the pro-fascists National-Syndicalists) Salazar, himself a Conserva- 3 In 1915, with just 19 years old he was editor of Orpheu, the avant-garde tive Catholic close to the Integralist-Lusitan movement, created a magazine that laid the foundations of the Portuguese modernist movement with Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Almada Negreiros, among others. single-party regime. He brought together the reactionaries with António Ferro wrote novels, poems and plays (some of which created some public the authoritarian moderns while also answering to the yearnings outrage) while working as journalists for various newspapers and magazines. As an international reporter he interviewed personalities like d’Annunzio, Maurras, of different society sectors (the high-rank military, the old rural Pétain, Rivera, Mussolini and even Hitler but also Cocteau, Mistinguett or Poiret. landowners, the arising industry monopolists and the crescent Politically he began as a Republican Party sympathizer, evolving to the Sidonists administrative middle-class) against a unique enemy: the social- (authoritarian modern) and the Conservative Republicans, while gradually admir- ing the contemporary authoritarian regimes, especially Mussolini’s. In 1932 when liberal-democratic system (Rosas, 1989). interviewing Salazar they discussed the political role of the culture; months later his political career began when invited to SPN. BÁRTOLO, Carlos 2012. The doctrines of Good Taste. In Farias, Priscila Lena; Calvera, Anna; Braga, Marcos da Costa & Schincariol, Zuleica (Eds.). Design frontiers: territories, concepts, technologies [=ICDHS 2012 - 8th Conference of the International Committee for Design History & Design Studies]. São Paulo: Blucher, 2012. ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7. DOI 10.5151/design-icdhs-050 The doctrines of Good Taste At the end of 1932 he presented his cultural ideas in a newspa- titled art and tourism Portuguese magazine, it was published per article where he defended that: by the SPN/SNI from 1941 on as Estado Novo culture organ: its purpose was to report and publicize the regime’s initiatives and The Art and Literature conscious and deliberated development is, after all, as needed to a nation progress as its sciences, values. A series of 16 articles labeled Campanha do Bom Gôsto public infrastructures, industry, commerce and agriculture [Good Taste Campaign] presented advices on good practices 4 development. […] The Política do Espírito [Policy of the Spirit ] […] on living and on doing in what was then called decorative and it’s not just necessary, although of the utmost importance in such point of view, to the Nation’s outer prestige. It’s also necessary to graphic arts. Other articles reported exhibitions and state initia- its inner prestige, its reason to subsist. A country that don’t see, tives, presented examples and models, defended guidance val- read, listen, feel, don’t walk out of its material life, become an ues, since all the editorial line of the magazine was understood useless and bad-tempered country. (Ferro, 1932). as a massive aesthetic doctrine campaign. These thoughts, discussed also in personal interviews he did with Salazar, led to the invitation to implement SPN/SNI one year later. The main goal of Campanha was promptly summarized in its There, he finally launchedPolítica do Espírito program, establishing first article (fig.1): culture as one of the Nation founding stones. These pages of Panorama are reserved, every month, to the instinctive and impartial promotion of examples of ornamental During these interviews he told Salazar ‘there are a bunch of good taste found all through the country within reach of our lads, full of talent and vigour, that wait, anxiously, to be useful cameras, because what only tempt us can as easily disappoint us. What grabs our attention is what enchants us. That’s why People’s to their Country!’ (Ferro, 2007 [1932]: 59). Working with these good taste is, in tourism, the best partner of the landscape lads, Ferro would merge regime principles with this new genera- picturesque. (Panorama, 1941a) tion influence (to which he belonged). This dubious attitude that strived for the new denouncing the decadent orthodoxy was at Good taste was understood as: the same time cherishing the essence of the vernacular, the au- a certain style, a certain grace, a certain touch of originality thentic, the primordial. This search for genuine, this return to the that makes a façade or a simple house window, a shop window, roots, had been fundamental for much of the artistic research a poster, a corner of a waiting room, a restaurant table, etc, produced since mid 19th century, and by the recent [re]discov- discreetly attract our senses and, affectionately, fondle them. The fair note of comfort and sympathy is given by the harmonious ery of primitive and local folklore valued by modernists artists convergence of the visual elements (colours and shapes) with as an escape to academic discipline. logic and strict compliance to the designed purposes [and that] will not been done because it’s modern art since good taste isn’t modern or ancient. Influenced by the power of analysis and synthesis brought by Modernity (although far from the radical interpretations close to Although immediately it was mentioned that: Functional and Abstract rationalism) this assorted group of art- 5 proof is that we would always prefer, for instance, an interior ists would work with SPN/SNI transposing the regime ideals in decorated with old objects and furniture, to another with modern several different media.