Myself Is Another: Mario De Sa Carneiro, Decadence, “Extremist” art, and the Marvelous / John Allen Thomas

Mario De Sa Carneiro (1890-1916) lived his difficult life in a straight aesthetic line, never deviating from his poetic ideals: transcendence of society through destruction, transcendence through a personal rejection of convention, and above all, transcendence through Art with a capital A.

Determined to prove himself as an Artist in the anti bourgeois mold, he left his hometown of Portugal, Lisbon as soon as he turned 20 and got involved with Fernando Pessoa’s group Orpheu, as extreme in its way as Le Grand Jeu or the Surrealists.

Funding the group’s publications more often than not, Pessoa, Negreiros, Pintor, Lima and Carneiro removed their basic sense of identity through the exchange of heteronyms and role playing which often went against each member’s bookish natures. Carneiro’s other identity “Alva De Campos” was lacking in…