This authoritative and beautiful book presents the first continuous narrative history of Latin American art from the years of the Independence movements in the 1820s up to the present day. Exploring both the indigenous roots and the colonial and post-colonial experiences of the various countries, the book investigates fascinating though little-known aspects of nineteenth and twentieth-century art and also provides a context for the contemporary art of the continent.
By the end of the 16th century, Europe, Africa, and Asia were connected to North and South America via a vast network of complex trade routes. This led, in turn, to dynamic cultural exchanges between these continents and a proliferation of diverse art forms in Latin America. This monumental book transcends geographic boundaries and explores the history of the confluence of styles, materials, and techniques among Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas through the end of the colonial era--a period marked by the independence movements, the formation of national states, and the rise of academic art. Written by distinguished international scholars, essays cover a full range of topics, including city planning, iconography in painting and sculpture, East-West connections, the power of images, and the role of the artist. Beautifully illustrated with some three hundred works--many published for the first time--this book presents a spectacular selection of decorative arts, textiles, silver, sculpture, painting, and furniture. Scholarly entries on each of the works highlight the various cultural influences and differences throughout this vast region. This groundbreaking book also includes an illustrated chronology, informative maps, and an exhaustive bibliography and is sure to set a new standard in the field of Latin American studies. --Publisher description.
Projects that bring the ‘hard’ sciences into art are increasingly being exhibited in galleries and museums across the world. In a surge of publications on the subject, few focus on regions beyond Europe and the Anglophone world. Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art assembles a new corpus of art-science projects by Latin American artists, ranging from big-budget collaborations with NASA and MIT to homegrown experiments in artists’ kitchens. While they draw on recent scientific research, these art projects also ‘decolonize’ science. If increasing knowledge of the natural world has often gone hand-in-hand with our objectification and exploitation of it, the artists studied here emphasize the subjectivity and intelligence of other species, staging new forms of collaboration and co-creativity beyond the human. They design technologies that work with organic processes to promote the health of ecosystems, and seek alternatives to the logics of extractivism and monoculture farming that have caused extensive ecological damage in Latin America. They develop do-it-yourself, open-source, commons-based practices for sharing creative and intellectual property. They establish critical dialogues between Western science and indigenous thought, reconnecting a disembedded, abstracted form of knowledge with the cultural, social, spiritual, and ethical spheres of experience from which it has often been excluded. Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art interrogates how artistic practices may communicate, extend, supplement, and challenge scientific ideas. At the same time, it explores broader questions in the field of art, including the relationship between knowledge, care, and curation; nonhuman agency; art and utility; and changing approaches to participation. It also highlights important contributions by Latin American thinkers to themes of global significance, including the Anthropocene, climate change and environmental justice.
In this uniquely wide-ranging book, David Craven investigates the extraordinary impact of three Latin American revolutions on the visual arts and on cultural policy. The three great upheavals - in Mexico (1910-40), in Cuba (1959-89), and in Nicaragua (1979-90) - were defining moments in twentieth-century life in the Americas. Craven discusses the structural logic of each movement's artistic project - by whom, how, and for whom artworks were produced -- and assesses their legacies. In each case, he demonstrates how the consequences of the revolution reverberated in the arts and cultures far beyond national borders. The book not only examines specific artworks originating from each revolution's attempt to deal with the challenge of 'socializing the arts,' but also the engagement of the working classes in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua with a tradition of the fine arts made newly accessible through social transformation. Craven considers how each revolution dealt with the pressing problem of creating a 'dialogical art' -- one that reconfigures the existing artistic resource rather than one that just reproduces a populist art to keep things as they were. In addition, the author charts the impact on the revolutionary processes of theories of art and education, articulated by such thinkers as John Dewey and Paulo Freire. The book provides a fascinating new view of the Latin American revolutionaries -- from artists to political leaders -- who defined art as a fundamental force for the transformation of society and who bequeathed new ways of thinking about the relations among art, ideology, and class, within a revolutionary process.
This edited volume’s chief aim is to bring together, in an English-language source, the principal histories and narratives of some of the most significant academies and national schools of art in South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean, from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. The book highlights not only issues shared by Latin American academies of art but also those that differentiate them from their European counterparts. Authors examine issues including statutes, the influence of workshops and guilds, the importance of patronage, discourses of race and ethnicity in visual pedagogy, and European models versus the quest for national schools. It also offers first-time English translations of many foundational documents from several significant academies and schools. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, Latin American and Hispanic studies, and modern visual cultures.
In the twentieth century, avant-garde artists from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean created extraordinary and highly innovative paintings, sculptures, assemblages, mixed-media works, and installations. This innovative book presents more than 250 works by some seventy of these artists (including Gego, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Xul Solar, and Jose Clemente Orozco) and artists' groups, along with interpretive essays by leading authorities and newly translated manifestoes and other theoretical documents written by the artists. Together the images and texts showcase the astonishing artistic achievements of the Latin American avant-garde. The book focuses on two decisive periods: the return from Europe in the 1920s of Latin American avant-garde pioneers; and the expansion of avant-garde activities throughout Latin America after World War II as artists expressed their independence from developments in Europe and the United States. As the authors explain, during these periods Latin American art was fueled by the belief that artistic creations could present a form of utopia - an inversion of the original premise that drove the European avant-garde - and serve as a model for
Despite the growing importance of contemporary art from Latin America in the last two decades, no book exists that thoroughly explores this phenomenon. Art in Latin America aims to fill that gap and to offer the reader an interpretative frame with which to understand the importance of contemporary art in this complex and diverse region. The book covers the vibrant Latin American art scene since 1990 through a detailed study of new and unconventional art practices. It offers an original and in-depth interpretation of more than a hundred works in the fields of sculpture, installation, performance, video and public art. The author focuses particularly on disruptive and politically committed art works that challenge the traditional forms of 20th-century art and recognise the need to strengthen freedom of expression and processes of democratisation in Latin America.
An extraordinary synthesis of more than a century’s worth of art across Central and South America, Latin American Art Since 1900 covers everyone from popular figures such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, to a wide range of other artists who are less well-known outside Latin America. In this classic survey, now updated with full-color images throughout, Edward Lucie-Smith introduces the art of Latin America from 1900 to the present day. Lucie-Smith examines major artists such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, as well as dozens of less familiar Latin American artists and exiled artists from Europe and the United States who spent their lives in South America, such as Leonora Carrington. The author explains the political context for artistic development and sets the works in national, cultural, and international frameworks. Featured in this book are the artists who have searched for indigenous roots and local tradition; explored abstraction, expressionism, and new media; entered into dialogue with European and North American movements, while insisting on reaching a wide, popular audience for their work; and created an energetic, innovative, and varied art scene across the South American continent. With a new chapter that extends the discussion into the twenty-first century, a constant theme of Latin American Art Since 1960 is the embrace of the experimental and the new by artists across Latin America.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of Black Dog Publishing limited. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the necessary arrangements will be made at the first opportunity. Black Dog Publishing Limited, London, UK, is an environmentally responsible company. Contemporary Art in Latin America: Artworld is printed on 170 gsm Garda Matt and 120 gsm Dito woodfree offset, both papers are FSC certified. Cover image: Helio Oiticica, Grande NUcleo (Grand Nucleus), 1960-1966, oil and resin on wood fibreboard (detail). Courtesy Cesar and Claudio Oiticica Collection, Rio de Janeiro.
