A hundred years ago, the history of the Western world was going through a whirlwind of a truly dizzying decade. On one side, the old European continent, devastated by the first global conflict, had witnessed the nightmarish reality of mass destruction, as never seen before. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the United States of America remained largely untouched, brimming with the vibrant energy of a young nation, yet shackled by Prohibition that almost served as an invitation to transgress it.
Europe was trying to rise again, leaning on Paris legacy — now revealing ankles, smoking, embracing shorter hairstyles, and perfumed with the new Nº5 by Chanel, scenting the air with fresh hope. Paris was truly becoming a party, as Hemingway would write. Meanwhile, at the far end of the Western world, it was jasmine’s scent from hidden pubs that brought pulsating new sounds to life — music that not only gave voice to a once-silenced community but also set a thousand feet dancing to the rhythm of Charleston and Foxtrot, paving the way for an ever more accepted swing.
And indeed, it was with this outlook on life that the Western world danced through a decade, that would go down in history, as the Roaring Twenties, Les Années Folles, or, as we fondly call them in Portugal, Os Loucos Anos 20.
A century later, the echoes of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto have faded, blending into the art of Picasso, Dalí, and Man Ray, to the dissonant sounds of Armstrong, Bechet, Oliver, Goodman, Henderson, and Jelly Roll Morton — propelled faster by the engines of those new two and four-wheeled machines populating the streets. Women’s faces are sheltered beneath their “cloche” hats, while men’s sharp-angled caps peek from beneath their brims.
These are the Roaring Twenties we now evoke at the Museu do Caramulo, through this brief, yet intense, journey into the shapes and colours that immerse us in that magical and effervescent era — a time worthy of the finest scripts from Hollywood’s golden age of Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, brought to life here, in the present day.