Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Antropofagia: One swollen figure dominating the field, the borrowed reference still legible underneath it.
- Type
- Set in Antropofagia's manner (A European display face redrawn until its proportions no longer belong to it.), and let Tropicália's lettering (Mix handwriting, sign painting and printed faces, breaking unity on purpose) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Antropofagia's material (Saturated primaries and tropical greens laid flat, mixed without hiding where each came from.); bring in exactly one thing from Tropicália (Sand, raw wood, cloth, temporary boards and primary paint left rough).
- Colour
- Build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #f0d33c, #d64b37, #2d756c.
Where they fight
- Both belong to Brazilian Avant-garde, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Antropofagia Treating it as a licence to sample freely: the point is digestion, and a collage that leaves its sources intact is quotation rather than appetite.
- Tropicália Reducing it to colorful tropical taste reproduces the tourist paradise it set out to criticize, so the Brazilian military regime, the favelas and the political mixing of music and art have to be read.
Image prompt
An original image that takes its structure from Antropofagia (Aesthetic, 1928–1930s) and its accent from Tropicália (Style, mid-1960s–). Structural cues: The deliberate digestion of imported styles; Mixture with indigenous imagery; Motifs of the enlarged body; Primary colours and a tropical range. Accent cues, used sparingly: Blazing hybridity; Participatory space; Music and costume; The tropical image inverted. Composition: One swollen figure dominating the field, the borrowed reference still legible underneath it.. Type and lettering: A European display face redrawn until its proportions no longer belong to it.. Let one material quality come from the second style: Sand, raw wood, cloth, temporary boards and primary paint left rough. Mood: Rebellion, Play, Exhilaration. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #f0d33c, #d64b37, #2d756c. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Antropofagia 1928–1930s / Aesthetic / Brazilian Avant-garde
A Brazilian programme that took cannibalism as its metaphor: do not refuse European culture, eat it and turn it into your own blood. Its affirmation of mixture as a method rather than a weakness has run underneath Brazilian design, music and architecture ever since.
- Tropicália mid-1960s– / Style / Brazilian Avant-garde
Mixes vivid color, music, sand, plants, temporary structures and audience participation to criticize both the repression of military rule and the outsider's image of a 'tropical paradise.'
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