Espírito de Missão

Abstract

Aesthetic Missions, (Missões Estéticas de Férias) was a program of summer artistic residencies intended for outstanding undergraduate art students. Created in 1937 with the explicit aim of “integrating Art in an active and unitary program of national education” and “endowing artists and art students with a knowledge of the nation’s aesthetic heritage”, it involved a collaboration between major political, cultural and academic institutions of Estado Novo. Until 1963, yearly editions were held throughout Portugal’s different regions, exploiting relations between periphery and center as a means of indoctrinating a cultural elite in Nationalistic values. This essay will deliver an overview of the program, focusing specifically on two significant dimensions. Firstly, it will discuss how this program effectively strove to transfer the concept of nationalism from the political to the aesthetic sphere, based on a complex interplay between notions of local identity and historical heritage. Secondly, it will argue that such a transference was made operative through what we may call an “expanded” conception of the studio, describing some of the features implied in setting up young artists in temporary working spaces in locals, conceived as “centers of irradiation”.