Meanings

By a circular reading of its components and circumstances, it was possible to form a coherent idea of the initiative as a whole and to offer answers to the intriguing questions that inspired this book. The interpretation of the corpus in its context allows this book to explain why the MRE, headed by Oswaldo Aranha, devoted uncommon efforts to promote the Exhibition. Thanks to a time horizons fusion that involved the cross-examination of past and present viewpoints, it was possible to build the understanding that the Exhibition was conceived as a Public Diplomacy initiative avant la lettre, aimed at transforming Brazil's international reputation and advancing broader diplomatic objectives. More specifically, it constituted an action of Cultural Diplomacy intended to create a better environment for operating inter-state relations. Thought by its governmental planners as an action of Propaganda – the current term at that time, but today not appropriate for analysing the initiative – the superlative efforts devoted to produce the Exhibition were motivated by the foreign policy goal of renewing Brazil's cultural image among the British and the Allies. The pursued enhancement of Brazilian prestige was perceived by President Vargas and Minister Aranha as a means of positioning the nation as a major player in the global order that would emerge from the War. Analogously, the British government, which had organised shows in Brazil in the preceding years, saw the Exhibition as a foreign policy endeavour, opportune in a period when the South American country was growingly under the United States’ sphere of influence. Magno's detailed 1936 diplomatic report about the intellectual environment in the United Kingdom and the hosting of British art shows in Brazil prior to the Exhibition show that it was, differently from what characterises the unidirectional Propaganda, a reciprocal action, which involved listening and understanding the host nation, so as to efficiently frame the Public Diplomacy enterprise. The message of solidarity in wartime was appealing for the British audience and succeeded in attracting its attention to a nation that was not especially memorable at that time.

In the midst of the Second World War (WW2), the Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings left Rio de Janeiro, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in London. This Exhibition, as it will be called throughout this book, consisted of 168 artworks donated by seventy of the most recognised Brazilian Modernist painters, including Candido Portinari, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Lasar Segall and Tarsila do Amaral. The largest collection sent abroad until that time, and still today the most remarkable show of Brazilian art ever displayed in the United Kingdom, it toured the country between October 1944 and September 1945. It was displayed firstly at the Royal Academy of Arts (RAA) in London and subsequently at the Castle Museum (Norwich), National Gallery (Edinburgh), Kelvingrove Gallery (Glasgow), Victoria Gallery (Bath), Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery (London) and Reading Museum and Art Gallery, as detailed in Table 1. As a contribution to the Allied War effort, the funds from its sales were given to the Royal Air Force (RAF) Benevolent Fund, at that time an organisation greatly admired by Brazilians.

Despite its relevance, the Exhibition has long been erased from Brazil's diplomatic and art history. This book reconstructs this little-known wartime initiative and raises two main questions. Initially, it seeks to understand why this unprecedented – and unique to this day – endeavour was enthusiastically championed by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE), precisely during a most complicated period of War. Secondly, it evaluates whether the Exhibition attained its goals, by studying its outcomes and shortcomings. By questioning what led the MRE to support the unlikely action, this book demonstrates that the Exhibition was a Public Diplomacy component of a wider foreign policy designed during wartime. It was shown that the Exhibition pertained to a broad diplomatic drive launched by Brazil during WW2, aimed at enhancing its prestige and international status in the wake of the global conflict. It may thus contribute not only to showcasing an unheard-of example of a successful and sophisticated Public Diplomacy initiative, but also to recover hints of a national legacy in a field scarcely studied in Brazilian historiography.

At a critical time of war, massive efforts were required to organise a largescale show of Brazilian Modern Art in the United Kingdom, and the virtual absence of historical records is stunning.

Emergence of Modernism in Brazil

Whilst a large part of Brazilian historiography, since its ‘patron’, Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen (1816–1878), ignores precolonial times and considers the arrival of Europeans in 1500 as the beginning of national history, the chronology of its arts is even more limited. It commonly starts in 1816, when the French Artistic Mission led by Joachim Lebreton (1760–1819), a former director of the Louvre, arrived in Rio de Janeiro to establish the capital's artistic institutions and canons. According to historian Fernando Azevedo, it is with the installation of the Portuguese court in Brazil that, ‘broadly speaking, the history of our culture begins, for, until this time, one cannot find anything, but sporadic manifestations of exceptional figures educated in Portugal and under foreign influence’ (as cited in Williams, 2001, p. 622). Eight years before the arrival of the French Artistic Mission, the Portuguese royal family had moved to Brazil, escorted by the English fleet, fleeing from Napoleonic expansion. Subsequently the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (1815–1822), Rio de Janeiro required a cultural apparatus compatible with its new status as the centre of a European monarchy. Portugal's King John VI (1767–1826) revoked the colonial prohibition of printing, and the royal library was brought from Lisbon. Lebreton and his cohort devised a Royal Academy dedicated to visual arts, crafts and architecture. The Academy, which was later transformed into the Imperial School of Fine Arts and finally the National School of Fine Arts (Escola Nacional de Belas Artes – ENBA), would drive the development of Brazilian visual arts, through its salons and prizes. Championed by officialdom for over a hundred years, Brazil's visual arts were still attempting to emulate standards imported from Europe throughout the nineteenth century. Eventually, a nationalist quest to subvert the European influence emanated from the arts establishment, and this became an essential characteristic of Brazilian Modernism, as defining of the movement as the common attributes of universal Modernism listed by Peter Gay in his classic ‘Modernism’: subjectivism or self-scrutiny and the rupture with conventions (2010). The apparent anachronism between breaking with old aesthetics and continuously importing established patterns is explained by Daryle Williams, for whom ‘the Brazilian elite worked to invent a civilised Brazil for Brazilian and international eyes.

It has been an interesting challenge and a unique opportunity to research and to write about a virtually unheard-of yet relevant historical phenomenon. During the process of uncovering, reconstructing and interpreting the Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, a number of intriguing questions have arisen. Perhaps the most important was to explore into the motivations behind such an atypical and meaningful art display in the midst of a World War. It is noteworthy that the Olympic Games planned for summer 1944 in London were cancelled due to WW2, while a show of unknown paintings from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean reached the British capital and was hosted by its most traditional art institution.

This improbable event was started by non-governmental players – Brazilian Modernist painters – as widely publicised at the time. An uncritical reading of 1940s newspapers might indicate that this was indeed a mainly private endeavour, as labelled by artists and civil servants. The in-depth cross-examination of pieces of news, letters and official documents discarded this hypothesis and proved that the initiative was only made possible by the championing of Brazilian diplomacy and its commander, Oswaldo Aranha. At a second stage, once offloaded on British soil, its organisation relied on the decisive support of UK government interests. A thorough analysis of primary sources clearly showed that MRE acted as the main driving force that planned and undertook this ambitious endeavour, which, even though inspired by Modernist painters, came to fruition as an official and diplomacydriven enterprise. This book argues that the initiative was part of a broader diplomatic programme developed by Minister Oswaldo Aranha. Aiming at advancing bilateral ties with the United Kingdom, Aranha sought to foster closer relations between Brazilian and British societies. Furthermore, the Exhibition worked as a cultural component of the part in the War played by Brazil, the only Latin American nation to deploy an important contingent – of 25,000 troops – to fight on the European front. Both the military and artistic contributions must be understood as diplomatic attempts to amass international prestige and reposition Brazil in the post-War emerging order.

List of Artworks

The following lists present the 1944–1945 Exhibition of 168 artworks and the 2018 TAoD display of 24 paintings, in the order that they appear in their respective catalogues.

Background

Systematic efforts to increase and modernise cultural exchanges between Brazil and the United Kingdom has been under way since at least 1936, when Secretary Paschoal Carlos Magno wrote the previously discussed study about bilateral intellectual cooperation, aimed at changing the local perceptions of Brazil (Magno P. C., 1936). In 1942, the same Magno proposed to the BC the joint organisation of a comprehensive Brazilian art exhibition in London, focused on academic and traditional expressions, rather more conservative than the one that would eventually take shape two years later (Magno C. P., 1942). The initiative, supported by Brazilian academic painters such as Oswaldo Teixeira and Georgina de Albuquerque, did not prosper. In March 1943, Ambassador Moniz de Aragão returned to the idea, advocating to Minister Oswaldo Aranha the opportunity of holding an exhibition of Brazilian books and artworks in the United Kingdom, along the lines of a similar showing previously organised by the Mexican government (Moniz de Aragão J. J., 1943). In the same month, during its third meeting, the newly founded ABS decided to arrange an exhibition of Brazilian art at a convenient time (ABS, 1943). A couple of months later, Magno suggested that a series of photographs of modern industry and general development in Brazil should be shown at the ABS exhibition, so that a wrong impression should not be given to the British public of life in Brazil (ABS, 1943). Evidently, the Brazilian diplomat, aligned with Vargas’ foreign policy of projecting prestige, wanted to convey a message of a modernising Brazil, by benefiting from the plaudits earned by this showcase of the nation's culture in London.

In August 1943, those (up to that point parallel) initiatives by the Embassy and the ABS underwent important developments. The BC decided to sponsor a show regarding ‘art and things of Brazil’ (Moniz de Aragão, 1944), to be curated and arranged by Eric Church, from the Brazilian Society of English Culture. Church, also a member of the ABS, was appointed to be in charge of the thereinafter unified exhibitions.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

INTRODUCTION

China-Singapore relations have come a long way since diplomatic ties were established in 1990. At that time, China needed friends and foreign investments, and Singapore played a role in befriending Beijing and bringing in investments from abroad. The West had then ostracized Beijing due to the 1989 Tiananmen incident. Today, a much stronger China faces a somewhat similar hostile external environment. Most notable is the escalating tensions between China and the United States, which has created a unique geopolitical context that necessitates a careful examination of the future trajectory of China-Singapore ties. As both nations navigate this complex geopolitical environment, they must adapt and respond to evolving circumstances so that they can continue to reap mutual benefits.

The strong and dynamic economic relationship between China and Singapore is well-known. This article will delve into the political-security dimensions of their bilateral ties by examining three issues, i.e., the South China Sea issue, Singapore’s relationship with the US, and the Taiwan issue. The paper argues that Singapore’s position on these three issues will need to be adjusted as China grows more powerful, and given the intensifying China-US competition in Asia. Such an adjustment will help ensure that China-Singapore ties have ample room to grow and flourish. The article will first trace how Chinese narratives on Singapore have evolved over the years and how these will continue to be shaped by Singapore’s stand on the above three issues.

NARRATIVES ON SINGAPORE’s ROLE IN CHINA’s DEVELOPMENT

The resilience of China-Singapore ties has been consistently demonstrated over the past few years, even when the COVID-19 pandemic strained political and economic interactions. Zhai Kun, a distinguished scholar in international relations at Peking University, notes that amongst all Southeast Asian nations, Singapore has been deeply involved in China’s reform and opening-up journey, and the city-state shares very close alignment with Chinese interests. This viewpoint primarily underscores the strong foundation for cooperation between China and Singapore in the economic arena, such as in trade, finance and technological exchanges. Singapore’s standing as the world’s largest offshore trading centre for renminbi (RMB) and a Southeast Asian nexus for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reinforce this congruence of interests.

Viewed through the lens of economic and trade collaboration, China is Singapore’s prime trading partner, export market, and the most substantial source of imports.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• • Amid China-US geopolitical competition in the Asia-Pacific, it is imperative for both China and Singapore to adapt and respond to evolving circumstances for mutual benefit.

• • The enduring trust and solid foundation between China and Singapore in economic and trade cooperation are validated through their active involvement in each other’s initiatives. This proved true even when the recent COVID-19 pandemic strained political interactions.

• • The political-security dimensions of the relationship between China and Singapore are complex and constantly evolving, influenced as they are by factors such as Singapore’s military training in Taiwan, the contentious South China Sea disputes, and US foreign policy in the region.

• • However, Singapore’s longstanding hedging strategy between the two superpowers may face increasingly severe tests as China-US rivalry escalates.

• • If carefully managed, Singapore’s successful track record of facilitating dialogue between conflicting parties can continue to make it a valuable player in easing tensions between China and the US.