Art and Our Surrounds: Emergent and Residual Languages

ARTMargins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-79
Author(s):  
Adriana Michéle Campos Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Global Circuit ◽  
Activist Art

This essay undertakes a review of recent books by T.J. Demos ( Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (2016) and Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (2017)) and Jens Andermann ( Tierras en trance: Arte y naturaleza después del paisaje (Lands Entranced: Art and Nature after Landscape, 2018)). Demos and Andermann participate in the paradigm shift taking place under the name of eco-criticism, forging connections between the debates around environmental crisis and the fields in which they have written and published previously - art criticism and visual culture and Latin American literary and cultural studies, respectively. Both authors take on the challenge of thinking through the perceptual and conceptual habits that have dominated a relationship to our environment under capitalist modernity (such as the concept of landscape) and how artistic practices might be said to rework those habits. While Demos maps recent efforts to engage ecological concerns and “decolonize nature” across the globe, Andermann looks back to the twentieth century Latin American archive, constructing a local genealogy that harbors an ecological and political thinking that anticipates what is now lived as global crisis; their projects intersect in contemporary Latin American activist art that has gained enough attention to figure as part of a global circuit. The review considers the overlapping points as well as the striking disjuncture in both projects in relation to the different knowledge formations, archives and languages from which each author speaks.

scholarly journals Mapping the Presence of Latin American Art in Canadian Museums and Universities

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-57
Author(s):  
Alena Robin
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
El Paso ◽  
American Art ◽  
Latin American Art ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
America Latina

This essay overviews how Canadian museums and universities have historically accessioned Latin American visual culture and identifies potential ways of sustaining interest, streamlining initiatives, and promoting access. The larger project aims at contributing to a hemispheric and transnational understanding of the history and growth in Canada of the field of Latin American art and its subfields of Pre-Columbian, colonial, modern, and contemporary art. While the study of art history among Canadian museums and universities has kept up with the decades-long interest in Latin American art and visual culture, there remain considerable challenges in bringing Latin American art to the forefront of public consciousness. Despite the pioneering efforts of Canadian museums and universities, Latin American visual art remains largely unknown and underutilized. This essay advocates for better collaboration among institutions involved in Latin American visual art initiatives across Canada, and dialogue among these disparate stakeholders to establish underlying narratives. RESUMEN Este ensayo busca ofrecer una visión general de cómo los museos y universidades canadienses han accedido históricamente a la cultura visual latinoamericana para identificar formas potenciales de mantener el interés, racionalizar iniciativas y promover el acceso. El objetivo del proyecto es contribuir a una comprensión hemisférica y transnacional de la historia y el crecimiento en Canadá del campo del arte latinoamericano y su subcampo del arte precolombino, colonial, moderno y contemporáneo. Si bien el estudio de la historia del arte entre los museos y las universidades canadienses ha seguido el paso del interés que ha habido en el arte y la cultura visual latinoamericanos durante décadas, sigue habiendo desafíos considerables para hacer que el arte latinoamericano ocupe un lugar de primera línea en la conciencia pública. A pesar de los esfuerzos pioneros de museos y universidades canadienses, el arte visual latinoamericano ha permanecido en gran parte desconocido e infrautilizado. Específicamente, este ensayo aboga por una mejor colaboración entre las instituciones canadienses que participan en iniciativas relacionadas con el arte visual de América Latina, y pretende alentar el diálogo entre estas diferentes partes interesadas para establecer narrativas comunes. RESUMO Este ensaio procura fornecer uma visão geral de como os museus e universidades canadenses historicamente acessaram a cultura visual latino-americana a fim de identificar formas potenciais de manter o interesse, simplificar iniciativas e promover o acesso a ela. O projeto visa contribuir para uma compreensão hemisférica e transnacional da história e do crescimento no Canadá do campo da arte latino-americana e seus subcampos – arte pré-colombiana, colonial, moderna e contemporânea. Embora o estudo da história da arte entre os museus e universidades canadenses tenha acompanhado o interesse de décadas na arte e na cultura visual da América Latina, ainda existem desafios consideráveis ​​para levar a arte latino-americana à vanguarda da consciência pública. Apesar dos esforços pioneiros dos museus e universidades canadenses, a arte visual latino-americana permaneceu em grande parte desconhecida e subutilizada. Especificamente, este ensaio defende uma melhor colaboração entre instituições envolvidas em iniciativas de arte visual latino-americanas em todo o Canadá, e o incentivo ao diálogo entre esses diferentes atores para estabelecer narrativas subjacentes.

scholarly journals Yellow Fever’s Historical Lessons for COVID-19: International Interventions and Disease Control in Early Twentieth-century Ecuador and Guatemala

2021 ◽  
pp. 0169796X2199848
Author(s):  
David Carey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Scientific Medicine ◽  
Disease Etiology ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

Throughout tropical urban Latin America, yellow fever wreaked havoc. Located at sea level, Guayaquil (Ecuador) and Puerto Barrios (Guatemala) were particularly susceptible to yellow fever; yet, Ecuadorians and Guatemalans enjoyed significant success in early twentieth-century campaigns against yellow fever. Reflecting international efforts that informed, collaborated with, and at times underwrote Latin American public health campaigns, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) sent representatives to Guatemala and Ecuador in the mid-1910s to eradicate yellow fever. While those interventions enjoyed immediate success, the long-term effects were more ambiguous. By collaborating with RF, Ecuador had all but eradicated yellow fever by 1919. In Guatemala, however, a few months after RF declared Guatemala free of yellow fever, influenza struck, likely originating from US military camps in Guatemala that RF sought to shield from yellow fever.  Analysis of early twentieth-century yellow fever epidemics and campaigns to arrest them sheds light on COVID-19 pandemic challenges. Even as knowledge of disease etiology was evolving in Ecuador and Guatemala, most leaders accepted or at least did not publicly reject scientific medicine. In contrast, beginning with the most powerful politicians and filtering down throughout federal, state, and municipal authorities, many US leaders rejected science crucial to the campaigns against COVID-19. Similarly, in a pattern that resonates with US residents rejecting precautionary measures against COVID-19 such as wearing masks and maintaining social distance, compliance with anti-yellow fever campaigns was not always forthcoming.

The Argentine Allusion: On the Significance of the Southern Cone in Early Twentieth-Century São Paulo

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-87
Author(s):  
James P. Woodard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Southern Cone ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Home State ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
The Difference

AbstractThis article examines a much cited but little understood aspect of the Latin American intellectual and cultural ferment of the 1910s and 1920s: the frequency with which intellectuals from the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo referred to developments in post Sáenz Peña Argentina, and to a lesser extent in Uruguay and Chile. In books, pamphlets, speeches, and the pages of a vibrant periodical press—all key sources for this article—São Paulo intellectuals extolled developments in the Southern Cone, holding them out for imitation, especially in their home state. News of such developments reached São Paulo through varied sources, including the writings of foreign travelers, which reached intellectuals and their publics through different means. Turning from circuits and sources to motives and meanings, the Argentine allusion conveyed aspects of how these intellectuals were thinking about their own society. The sense that São Paulo, in particular, might be “ready” for reform tending toward democratization, as had taken place in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, was accompanied by a belief in the difference of their southeastern state from other Brazilian states and its affinities with climactically temperate and racially “white” Spanish America. While these imagined affinities were soon forgotten, that sense of difference—among other legacies of this crucial period—would remain.

Elites, Elite Settlements, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, 1950–1980: Introduction

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Movements

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).

"Us" vs. "Them". Communist Dialectical Images from Interwar Europe and Soviet Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adri Kácsor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Interwar Europe

Brawny male workers vs. bulging bourgeois men. Working-class mothers burdened by the hardship of poverty and childcare vs. elegant upper-class women enjoying a lifestyle of privilege. Such juxtaposed images of workers and the rich were prevalent in the visual culture of communism throughout the twentieth century, appearing on posters, illustrations, and other genres of political propaganda across countries and continents. Although these didactic propaganda images have rarely been considered in histories of modernism and the avant-garde, this article argues that they were among the key visual inventions of twentieth-century communist visual culture given their highly innovative aesthetics and juxtaposed structure that provided them a potential to become dialectical. Drawing on examples from interwar Europe and Soviet Russia, this article examines how didactic juxtapositions could become dialectical images, triggering political transformations while also making revolutionary class consciousness visible for the viewer.

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