O eterno legado modernista de Cataguases-MG no passadismo do círculo privilegiado da cultura

Abstract

This these aims at understanding the development of a cultural favored circle which begins with the introduction of modernist architecture, later elevated to founding condition of an avant-garde town, and continues through cultural policies established by foundations funded by capital. It is assumed that cultural domination is an extension of the power of capital over labor, reducing the possibility of transformation stemming from artistic elaborations. A Marxist view of aesthetics underpins the theoretical orientations of this thesis, so that art might allow, in the superstructure, for the possibility of effective changes in the materialrelations at the base. From the base/superstructure dialectic, art as a reflection of reality may become a transformative force in society, inasmuch as the work of art effectively represents ways to juxtapose and overcome the contradictions in capital when it regains its objective attributes in human life. Other relevant theoretical orientations were employed in this thesis, deserving mention the role of modernist production, especially literature and architecture. The research adopted the historical-dialectical materialist method, in order to establish a historical relationship between capital and culture in society. For this purpose, documental research was conducted in national and municipal archives, in addition to unstructured interviews with people involved with cultural foundations, the government, representatives of independentcultural manifestations of these groups, and unions. The data were treated through a marxist discourse analysis, in which discourse may be viewed as an idealistic element of a superstructure that holds a dialectical relationship with the base, that is, with the issues of social life. The results indicate that the modernist tradition imposed on the city is a result of a dispute over political control, in which one of the groups of participants consisted of industrialists. Thus capital sees in modernist architecture not only the possibility of taking over political control, but also of defining the foundation of a new town, distinct from the one inherited from a coffee-based economy run by old oligarchies. A consequence of this confluence of capital and culture is the control of artistic manifestations by the elites, a process that intensifies with the emergence of cultural foundations. The foundations become determinants of artistic activities by advancing their own projects. However, this evolution does not progress linearly. Several changes in the foundations policies were identified, directly influenced by their closeness to or remoteness from capital. Even with the changes, the restrictive nature of the cultural favored circle is maintained, so that a recovery of the past is always used to justify the actions taken by the foundations. The latest result is the industrialization of art by the establishment of audiovisual cluster bringing together all the foundations. Artistic manifestations become inputs to be used by the audiovisual industry, so that the possibility of change stemming from art is negated by the manufacturing component applied to specific cultural manifestations.