This essay is about the proposal of the author Gilberto Freyre about the need for teaching the sociology of art within a planned fine art curriculum, highlighting the importance of this and anthropology. In his opinion, one must try to understand a medium that will have the involvement of artists, acknowledging that these disciplines are instruments of knowledge resulting from cultural, social, and geographical interaction. In Freyre’s opinion, it is the medium that influences what is called “beauty” in the work of art. He foresees that “as the world is converting into a world that is having cultural exchanges among the races,” there is a tendency toward a reduction of that kind of influence and instead an “increasing universalization of the sense or concept of beauty.”

Freyre proposes an axiology of tropical values, defending the “Dionysian” character of such values and pointing out the innovations of Flávio de Carvalho, an experimental artist who does not fear ridicule or public whistles. He behaves defiantly, like some other artists of the caliber of Candido Portinari, Cícero Dias, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. However, what de Carvalho lacked was a protective agent at the ministry level such as Gustavo Capanema, who was sponsoring the projects of the architects Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer. The author recalled his travels to Africa and Asia where he was able to see the nexus between art and life, especially in religious representations, a link that had to be established among Brazilian artists.

This article by the sociologist Gilberto Freyre advised Brazilian artists about the key function that the sociology of art played in a tropical country. He felt that such a function should be a stimulus in promoting the understanding of the particular traits of each region and felt the objective was to form aesthetic patterns that escaped the known European models.

The Brazilian sociologist and congressman Gilberto Freyre (1900−87) was one of the intellectuals who exerted the greatest influence in his country during the first half of the twentieth century, especially regarding racial issues. Around 1933, Freyre received international recognition for his major work Casa-Grande e Senzala, published in English as The Masters and the Slaves, the first of a series of three works that included Sobrados e mucambos (The Mansions and the Shanties), 1936, and finally, Ordem e Progresso, 1957 [see in the ICAA digital archive the following texts on the subject, respectively: “Interamericanismo” (doc. no. 807911) and “A propósito da política cultural do Brasil na América” (doc. no. 807856)].

It was Freyre who led a group of writers who aligned themselves with his “Manifesto Regionalista” [see in the archive “Manifesto Regionalista de 1926” (doc. no. 1074787), his twenty-five year retrospective in “Manifesto Regionalista de 1926: vinte e cinco anos depois” (doc. no. 1110808), and fifty years later in “Regionalismo brasileiro” (doc. no. 1110810)].