"Laboriosa mocidade, emblema da Virtude, da Honestidade e do Progresso": o caso do Liceu de Artes e Ofícios do Rio de Janeiro (1856 – 1861)

Abstract

This research addresses the issue of technical training in the field of "arts and crafts" in the second half of the 19th century, at the Imperial Court. A first approach to this issue was made through the study of the printed material entitled - O Brazil Artístico - Revista da Sociedade Propagadora das Bellas-Artes do Rio de Janeiro (Nova-Phase), re-launched in the City of Rio de Janeiro - then Capital of the Republic, in March 1911. On that occasion, the journal reedited the first six issues of this periodical, published in 1857, and was initially found in the hemeroteca of the Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita and José Mindlin (USP) and, soon after, in the rare works section of the Biblioteca Nacional (BN). In the re-editions appeared the first manifestations about the need to implement professionalizing education and the creation of a Liceu de Artes e Ofícios in the Court, inaugurated in 1858. From the privileged guidelines of the content of the magazine O Brazil Artístico, the most central point consists of the speeches that preach the urgency of professional education in the country to attend the "laborious youth" deprived of material and cultural capital, which refers to the theoretical and methodological framework proposed by Bourdieu and Passeron (1992). In this way, in dealing with this printed material, we tried to analyze the production process, materiality, circulation, and the editorial project, highlighting the regular enunciations that privilege the defense of the creation of a professionalizing institution, of private character, in the historical context of the 19th century. The analysis of the printed material allows us to think about its role in the creation, organization and strengthening of the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios do Rio de Janeiro, both in the period in which the printed material was created, and in the initial phase of the institution and in the understanding of the architectural arrangements, these conjectured in the research based on Michel Foucault's studies (2003). I also considered the educational context and the internal and external political tensions of the institutions involved, through which it was possible to observe agents, procedures, knowledge, and the institutional network mobilized around the teaching of trades and artistic design presented in the statutes of the two institutions. From these nuances, it was possible to investigate the institutions exclusively focused on the training of skilled labor in the capital of Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century, the creation and organization of a network of high schools of arts and crafts, as well as the relations with similar experiences and initiatives in Brazil and abroad. Finally, the research allowed us to reflect on the organization and distribution of an institutional network mobilized around the agenda of teaching and technical training or the "fight for the fine arts, its development in a land that has real artistic talents and overflowing aptitudes for beauty", as stated in the presentation of the editors of the magazine O Brazil Artístico, in 1911.