The Recorder in Portinari: a complex view

Abstract

Taking a look on musical themes represented in the visual arts can contribute to new approaches into thinking about music and its cultural practices. This article reinforces the problematic of the recorder in the 20th century as a historical, symbolic and cultural object, by analysing its representation in Portrait of João Candido, a 1943 painting by Candido Portinari (1903-1962) in which he depicts his four-year-old son blowing a recorder, in harlequin costumes. What meanings are constructed with the presence of this musical instrument in the work? How to understand the recorder represented in the child’s hands in the context of the absence of its practice in Brazil in the first half of the 20th century? The discussion about issues brings together musicological studies on the revival of recorder practice in the 20th century, and an investigation into the intrinsic characteristics of the work in the light of the artist's professional and personal contexts. The hypotheses are elaborated and confronted considering two possibilities: the real existence of the musical instrument in Portinari’s family life, or not. As main references, the research is based on Josep Català (2005) and Roland Barthes (1984) for image analysis; Patrícia Aguilar (2017) and Robert Ehrlich (2021) for the context of the recorder; Annateresa Fabris (1990) for Portinari’s work. The documentary sources were obtained through the Portinari Project collection (2018).