Article
Klaxon (São Paulo, 1922–1923) By Wells, Sarah Ann
Article
Klaxon (São Paulo, 1922–1923) was the first and most important of Brazil’s avant-garde artistic journals. It comprised a total of nine issues, published on a monthly basis, which included an eclectic mix of poems, short stories, essays, visual art, fragments of novels, reviews and commentaries on music and theater. In its third issue, Klaxon incorporated film criticism in Brazil (No. 3, p. 11). The journal’s collective nature was emphasized both through the content of its pages and its masthead. Key contributors included the writers Sérgio Milliet, Menotti Del Picchia, Guilherme de Almeida, and Oswald de Andrade, but it was the impact of the “pope” of Brazilian modernism, Mário de Andrade, that cemented Klaxon’s influence in Brazil. Anchored in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest and most industrialized city, Klaxon was read selectively throughout the country and in small foreign circles of Europe and Latin America; within five years of its publication, similar modernist journals had emerged in even the most peripheral regions of Brazil. Furthering this cosmopolitan orientation, Klaxon incorporated articles and images from Brazil’s burgeoning avant-garde scene as well as from France, Japan, Belgium, and Spain, and published selected works in French. Henri Bergson, Jean Epstein, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Charlie Chaplin, Guillermo de Torre, and Guillaume Apollinaire were among the figures of international modernism to appear in its pages.