Contemporary Mexican Painting in a Time of Change


Book Description

United by their belief in the importance of the human image in art, they distanced themselves both from the social realism of their predecessors and from the pure abstraction of many of their contemporaries. Shifra Goldman begins with a brief examination of the era and issues of muralism and the art of Rufino Tamayo. She then focuses on the confrontation between socially conscious art and "pure painting" that began in the late 1950s and resulted in the formation of Nueva Presencia.




Dimensions of the Americas


Book Description

This volume presents an overview of the social history of modern and contemporary Latin American and Latino art. This collection of thirty-three essays focuses on Latin American artists throughout Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The author provides a chronology of modern Latin American art; a history of "social art history" in the United States; and synopses of recent theoretical and historical writings by major scholars from Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, and the United States. In her essays, she discusses a vast array of topics including: the influence of the Mexican muralists on the American continent; the political and artistic significance of poster art and printmaking in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and among Chicanos; the role of women artists such as Guatemalan painter Isabel Ruiz; and the increasingly important role of politics and multinational businesses in the art world of the 1970s and 1980s. She explores the reception of Latin American and Latino art in the United States, focusing on major historical exhibits as well as on exhibits by artists such as Chilean Alfredo Jaar and Argentinean Leandro Katz. Finally, she examines the significance of nationalist and ethnic themes in Latin American and Latino art.




Mexico


Book Description

This book is a skillful synthesis of Mexico's complex and colorful history from pre-Columbian times to the present. Utilizing his many years of research and teaching as well as his personal experience in Mexico, the author incorporates recent archaeological evidence, posits fresh interpretations, and analyzes such current problems as foreign debt, dependency on petroleum exports, and providing education and employment for an expanding population. Combining political events and social history in a smooth narrative, the book describes events, places, and individuals, the daily life of peasants and urban workers, and touches on cultural topics, including architecture, art, literature, and music. As a special feature, each chapter contains excerpts from contemporary letters, books, decrees, or poems, firsthand accounts that lend historical flavor to the discussion of each era. Mexico has an exciting history: several Indian civilizations; the Spanish conquest; three colonial centuries, during which there was a blending of Old World and New World cultures; a decade of wars for independence; the struggle of the young republic; wars with the United States and France; confrontation between the Indian president, Juárez, and the Austrian born emperor, Maximilian; a long dictatorship under Diaz; the Great Revolution that destroyed debt peonage, confiscated Church property, and reduced foreign economic power; and the recent drive to modernize through industrialization. Mexico: A History will be an excellent college-level textbook and good reading for the thousands of Americans who have visited Mexico and those who hope to visit.




Historical Dictionary of Mexico


Book Description

Tracing the historical development of Mexico from the pre-Hispanic period to the present, the Historical Dictionary of Mexico, Third Edition, is an excellent resource for students, teachers, researchers, and the general public. This reference work includes a detailed chronology, an introduction surveying the country’s history, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section includes cross-referenced entries on the historical actors who shaped Mexican history, as well as entries on politics, government, the economy, culture, and the arts.




Masks of the Spirit


Book Description

Drawing on secondary works in archaeology, art history, folklore, ethnohistory, ethnography, and literature, the authors maintain that the mask is the central metaphor for the Mesoamerican concept of spiritual reality. Covers the long history of the use of the ritual mask by the peoples who created and developed the mythological tradition of Mesoamerica. Chapters: (1) the metaphor of the mask in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica: the mask as the God, in ritual, and as metaphor; (II) metaphoric reflections of the cosmic order; and (III) the metaphor of the mask after the conquest: syncretism; the Pre-Columbian survivals; the syncretic compromise; and today's masks. Over 100 color and black-&-white photos.




Zones of Contention


Book Description

Addresses the questions: What might be the role of the artist in the 21st century? How essential is art to the psychic and political well-being of American society?




Mathias Goeritz


Book Description

The first major work in English on Mathias Goeritz (1915-1990), this book illuminates the artist's pivotal role within the landscape of twentieth-century modernism. Goeritz became recognized as an abstract sculptor after arriving in Mexico from Germany by way of Spain in 1949. His call to integrate abstract forms into civic and religious architecture, outlined in his "Emotional Architecture" manifesto, had a transformative impact on midcentury Mexican art and design. While best known for the experimental museum El Eco and his collaborations with the architect Luis Barrag n, including the brightly colored towers of Satellite City, Goeritz also shaped the Bauhaus-inspired curriculum at Guadalajara's School of Architecture and the iconic Cultural Program of Mexico City's 1968 Olympic Games. Josten addresses the Cold War implications of these and other initiatives that pitted Goeritz, an advocate of internationalist abstraction, against Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, ardent defenders of the realist style that prevailed in official Mexican art during the postrevolutionary period. Exploring Goeritz's dialogues with leading figures among the Parisian and New York avant-gardes, such as Yves Klein and Philip Johnson, Josten shows how Goeritz's approach to modernism, which was highly attuned to politics and place, formed part of a global enterprise.




Liliana Porter and the Art of Simulation


Book Description

Visually appealing, conceptually startling, and intellectually engaging-these phrases aptly describe the art of Liliana Porter. Florencia Bazzano-Nelson's study focuses on the principal theme in the Argentine-born artist's work since the 1970s: her playful but subversive dismantling of the limits that separate everyday reality from the world of illusion and simulacra. Over the years, Porter's own evolving interest in perception lead the author to explore a series of interconnected and timely issues in her artistic production, such as the representative function of art, the structural links between art and language, and the witty re-signification of the art-historical images and mass-produced kitsch figurines she has so often featured in her art. Strongly founded in critical theory, Bazzano-Nelson's approach considers Porter's art as the site of conceptually exciting dialogues with Jorge Luis Borges, Ren?agritte, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard. Her carefully crafted interdisciplinary analysis not only combines art-historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives but also addresses the artist's work in different media, such as printmaking, conceptual art, photography, and film.




Images of Power


Book Description

In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state. Jens Andermann is a Lecturer in Latin American Studies at Birkbeck College, London, and co-editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Among his publications are Mapas de poder: una arqueología literaria del espacio argentino (Rosario, 2000) and articles for major journals in Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the US. William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics at Birkbeck College, London. His book Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London, 1991) has been translated into several languages. His most recent works, apart from translations of a wide range of Latin American poetry, are Poets of Contemporary Latin America: History and the Inner Life (Oxford, 2000) and Ensayos vallejianos (Berkeley and Lima, 2006).




Voices in Aerosol


Book Description

How a city government in central Mexico evolved from waging war on graffiti in the early 2000s to sanctioning its creation a decade later, and how youth navigated these changing conditions for producing art. The local government, residents, and media outlets in León, Mexico, treated graffiti as a disease until the state began sponsoring artistic graffiti through a program of its own. In Voices in Aerosol, the first book-length study of state-sponsored graffiti, Caitlin Frances Bruce considers the changing perceptions and recognition of graffiti artists, their right to the city, and the use of public space over the span of eighteen years (2000–2018). Focusing on the midsized city of León, Bruce offers readers a look at the way negotiations with the neoliberal state unfolded at different levels and across decades. Issues brought to light in this case study, such as graffiti as a threat and graffiti as a sign of gentrification, resonate powerfully with those germane to other urban landscapes throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond. Combining archival work, interviews, considerations of urban planning, local politics in Mexico, and insights gained by observing graffiti events and other informal artistic encounters, Bruce offers a new lens through which to understand the interplay between sanctioned and unsanctioned forms of cultural expression. Ultimately, Voices in Aerosol builds a strong case for graffiti as a contested tool for "voicing" public demands.