Franklin Joaquim Cascaes

from the desire to know to the representation of being

Abstract

Franklin Cascaes, who was born in 1908, resented each new destructive impact of the old natural and cultural environment, brought about by the modernization of Santa Catarina Island. As a folklorist, he ran through to the communities of farmers and anglers, recording what was left of tradition, in surviving practices or in the memories. As a self-taught artist, he poured his investigations into art forms, mixed with his own imagination, his fantasies and the experiences of a local man. The article deals with two scopes of images created by the folklorist artist: sculptures to represent daily activities; drawings by which he invented iconographies for fantastic beings. In this selection of images, taken in his dynamics performances, it is shown that Cascaes, affected by a modern historical consciousness, created representations for his lost world, moved by the dream that they could replace the things of past. Finally, based on the reflections of the Dutch historian and philosopher Frank Ankersmit, there are similarities between the practice of this folklorist artist and history. The images produced by the art of Franklin Cascaes, with the pretension of being “presence”, of “presenting”, instead of what is represented, creates a relationship with a current historiographical discussion. To desire a writing of history that produces a feeling of closeness to the past, which produces effects of presence, of synesthetical encounter of the historian and his reader with the things of yore.