Abstraction in Reverse


Book Description

During the mid-twentieth century, Latin American artists working in several different cities radically altered the nature of modern art. Reimagining the relationship of art to its public, these artists granted the spectator an unprecedented role in the realization of the artwork. The first book to explore this phenomenon on an international scale, Abstraction in Reverse traces the movement as it evolved across South America and parts of Europe. Alexander Alberro demonstrates that artists such as Tomás Maldonado, Jesús Soto, Julio Le Parc, and Lygia Clark, in breaking with the core tenets of the form of abstract art known as Concrete art, redefined the role of both the artist and the spectator. Instead of manufacturing autonomous art, these artists produced artworks that required the presence of the spectator to be complete. Alberro also shows the various ways these artists strategically demoted regionalism in favor of a new modernist voice that transcended the traditions of the nation-state and contributed to a nascent globalization of the art world.




Art Museums of Latin America


Book Description

Since the late nineteenth century, art museums have played crucial social, political, and economic roles throughout Latin America because of the ways that they structure representation. By means of their architecture, collections, exhibitions, and curatorial practices, Latin American art museums have crafted representations of communities, including nation states, and promoted particular group ideologies. This collection of essays, arranged in thematic sections, will examine the varying and complex functions of art museums in Latin America: as nation-building institutions and instruments of state cultural politics; as foci for the promotion of Latin American modernities and modernisms; as sites of mediation between local and international, private and public interests; as organizations that negotiate cultural construction within the Latin American diaspora and shape constructs of Latin America and its nations; and as venues for the contestation of elitist and Eurocentric notions of culture and the realization of cultural diversity rooted in multiethnic environments.




Our America


Book Description

Explores how one group of Latin American artists express their relationship to American art, history and culture.




Conceptualism in Latin American Art


Book Description

Conceptualism played a different role in Latin American art during the 1960s and 1970s than in Europe and the United States, where conceptualist artists predominantly sought to challenge the primacy of the art object and art institutions, as well as the commercialization of art. Latin American artists turned to conceptualism as a vehicle for radically questioning the very nature of art itself, as well as art's role in responding to societal needs and crises in conjunction with politics, poetry, and pedagogy. Because of this distinctive agenda, Latin American conceptualism must be viewed and understood in its own right, not as a derivative of Euroamerican models. In this book, one of Latin America's foremost conceptualist artists, Luis Camnitzer, offers a firsthand account of conceptualism in Latin American art. Placing the evolution of conceptualism within the history Latin America, he explores conceptualism as a strategy, rather than a style, in Latin American culture. He shows how the roots of conceptualism reach back to the early nineteenth century in the work of Símon Rodríguez, Símon Bolívar's tutor. Camnitzer then follows conceptualism to the point where art crossed into politics, as with the Argentinian group Tucumán arde in 1968, and where politics crossed into art, as with the Tupamaro movement in Uruguay during the 1960s and early 1970s. Camnitzer concludes by investigating how, after 1970, conceptualist manifestations returned to the fold of more conventional art and describes some of the consequences that followed when art evolved from being a political tool to become what is known as "political art."




Emilio Sanchez in New York and Latin America


Book Description

This book focuses on the life and artistic activities of Emilio Sanchez (1921–1999) in New York, and Latin America in the 1940s and 1950s. More specifically, the book will consider Sanchez in the wider context of mid-century Cuban artists, and cross-cultural exchange between New York, Cuba, and the Caribbean. The book reflects on why Sanchez chose to be a mobile observer of the American and Caribbean vernacular at a time when such an approach seemed at odds with the mainstream avant-garde. The book includes a foreword by Dr. Ann Koll, former Executive Director/Curator of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation, and an introduction by Dr. Nathan J. Timpano, University of Miami Department of Art and Art History. This book will be of interest to scholars in modern art, Caribbean studies, architectural history, and Latin American and Hispanic studies.




Latin American Art


Book Description

Traces the development of Latin American art from 20,000 BCE to modern times, from the southern tip of Argentina to the Rio Grande.




Latinx Art


Book Description

In Latinx Art Arlene Dávila draws on numerous interviews with artists, dealers, and curators to explore the problem of visualizing Latinx art and artists. Providing an inside and critical look of the global contemporary art market, Dávila's book is at once an introduction to contemporary Latinx art and a call to decolonize the art worlds and practices that erase and whitewash Latinx artists. Dávila shows the importance of race, class, and nationalism in shaping contemporary art markets while providing a path for scrutinizing art and culture institutions and for diversifying the art world.




Relational Undercurrents


Book Description

Relational Undercurrents accompanies an exhibition by the same name that opens at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California in September, 2017. The exhibition and edited volume call attention to the artistic production of the Caribbean islands and their diasporas, challenging the conventional geographic and conceptual boundaries of Latin America.




A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latina/o Art


Book Description

In-depth scholarship on the central artists, movements, and themes of Latin American art, from the Mexican revolution to the present A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art consists of over 30 never-before-published essays on the crucial historical and theoretical issues that have framed our understanding of art in Latin America. This book has a uniquely inclusive focus that includes both Spanish-speaking Caribbean and contemporary Latinx art in the United States. Influential critics of the 20th century are also covered, with an emphasis on their effect on the development of artistic movements. By providing in-depth explorations of central artists and issues, alongside cross-references to illustrations in major textbooks, this volume provides an excellent complement to wider surveys of Latin American and Latinx art. Readers will engage with the latest scholarship on each of five distinct historical periods, plus broader theoretical and historical trends that continue to influence how we understand Latinx, Indigenous, and Latin American art today. The book’s areas of focus include: The development of avant-garde art in the urban centers of Latin America from 1910-1945 The rise of abstraction during the Cold War and the internationalization of Latin American art from 1945-1959 The influence of the political upheavals of the 1960s on art and art theory in Latin America The rise of conceptual art as a response to dictatorship and social violence in the 1970s and 1980s The contemporary era of neoliberalism and globalization in Latin American and Latino Art, 1990-2010 With its comprehensive approach and informative structure, A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art is an excellent resource for advanced students in Latin American culture and art. It is also a valuable reference for aspiring scholars in the field.




Judy Chicago


Book Description

"Groundbreaking and provocative, Judy Chicago's iconic sculptures, paintings, and installations helped bridge the gap between feminism and art during the 1960s, 70s, and beyond. Using imagery inspired by the female body and references to historical female figures, Chicago forged a new, women-focused visual language that continues to influence the aesthetics of feminist art today. This book traces Chicago's career from her emergence on the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s through her mature work in the 1990s. Featuring illustrations of six distinct bodies of works, this book includes Chicago's masterpiece The Dinner Party as well as other lesser-known works. With informative essays that situate Chicago's oeuvre in the context of contemporary Southern Californian art and scholarship that reflects Chicago's current work, this comprehensive book provides a breathtaking look at one of the quintessential figures of American feminist art" --