Latin American Art, Visual and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Introduction

The temporal frame of this Special Issue of Arts—the long eighteenth century—comprises a complex period of development in the Spanish colonies of Latin America that reverberates throughout the region’s visual culture [...]

“AQUI ESTÁ A OPÇÃO DO TERCEIRO MUNDO: UM FUTURO ABERTO OU A MISÉRIA ETERNA”. REFLEXÕES SOBRE A OBRA TARDIA DE MÁRIO PEDROSA / “Here is the Third World option: an open future or eternal misery”: reflections on Mário Pedrosa's late work

A filósofa Otília Arantes nomeou O ponto de vista latino-americano o corpus crítico de Mário Pedrosa produzido após o desterro chileno, durante o governo de Salvador Allende (1970-1973). Nesse conjunto de textos, observa-se a recuperação de tradições que não haviam sido capturadas pela historiografia oficial, como as práticas e os saberes oriundos da cultura popular e indígena. Essa interpretação pode ser identificada em obras como Discurso aos Tupiniquins ou Nambás e Teses para o Terceiro Mundo, nas quais o crítico se amparou em um repertório terceiro-mundista partilhado no exílio. O autor exaltou uma leitura ancorada na inversão geopolítica, a qual localizou nos países situados ao sul uma fagulha revolucionária capaz de deflagrar a almejada transformação social e econômica. Essas obras-manifesto sintetizaram praticamente todo o discurso crítico, político e museológico que Pedrosa sustentou ao voltar para o Brasil, em 1977.Palavras-chave: Exílio; Terceiro Mundo; Arte latino-americana; Mário Pedrosa; Arte popular. AbstractThe philosopher Otília Arantes named The critical corpus of Mário Pedrosa produced after the Chilean exile during the Salvador Allende government (1970-1973) from The Latin American Spot. In this set of texts, there is a recovery of traditions that had not been captured by official historiography, such as the practices and knowledge derived from popular and indigenous culture. This interpretation can be identified in works such as Speech to the Tupiniquins or Nambás and Theses for the Third World, in which the critic relied on a shared Third World repertoire in exile. The critic praised a reading anchored in the geopolitical inversion, which located in the countries located to the south a revolutionary spark capable of triggering the desired social and economic transformation. These manifesto works synthesized practically all the critical, political and museological discourse that the author sustained when he returned to Brazil in 1977.Keywords: Exile; Third world; Latin American art; Mário Pedrosa; Popular art.

Navigating Internationalism from Buenos Aires: The Centro de Arte y Comunicación

This article maps the complex socio-political terrain negotiated by the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC) during the early 1970s from Buenos Aires. It shows how the CAYC attempted to continue the internationalising aims which the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella had pursued in the 1960s, while also providing a space for the exhibition and development of Conceptualism that engaged with political conditions in Argentina and in other countries including Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Columbia, developing the framework of “systems art” in order to do so. The compromises necessitated by CAYC's balancing act opened the organisation, and in particular its director Jorge Glusberg, to accusations of cultural imperialism and complicity: from almost the very beginning, the CAYC project was characterised by dissensus and disagreement. The controversy generated by CAYC – documented in archives, publications and exhibition catalogues – now offers a rich historiographical resource for Latin American art, revealing how competing models of internationalism and Conceptualism were closely intertwined rather than diametrically opposed.

Picturing the River’s Racial Ecologies in Colonial Panamá

This article explores the local histories and ecological knowledge embedded within a Spanish print of enslaved, Afro-descendant boatmen charting a wooden vessel up the Chagres River across the Isthmus of Panamá. Produced for a 1748 travelogue by the Spanish scientists Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan, the image reflects a preoccupation with tropical ecologies, where enslaved persons are incidental. Drawing from recent scholarship by Marixa Lasso, Tiffany Lethabo King, Katherine McKittrick, and Kevin Dawson, I argue that the image makes visible how enslaved and free Afro-descendants developed a distinct cosmopolitan culture connected to intimate ecological knowledge of the river. By focusing critical attention away from the print’s Spanish manufacture to the racial ecologies of the Chagres, I aim to restore art historical visibility to eighteenth-century Panamá and Central America, a region routinely excised from studies of colonial Latin American art.

The Manual Industries of Peru: indigenismo, trabajo manual y tutelaje artístico entre Lima y el Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York (1942-1948)

En la década de los cuarenta y con el auspicio del Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York (MoMA), el artista estadounidense Truman Bailey dirigió una escuela-taller en Lima, en la que empleó y entrenó a cerca de 80 trabajadores, para producir artículos de lujo inspirados en artes populares andinas. En este ensayo sostengo que el taller constituyó no solo un proyecto indigenista de preservación de tradiciones indígenas, como afirmaron sus organizadores, Bailey y el influyente curador René d’Harnoncourt. Considero que el taller fue, además, y sobre todo, un espacio para la formación de trabajadores a partir del entrenamiento en diseño modernista y en modos de producción y comercialización del capitalismo industrial estadounidense.Palabras clave: arte latinoamericano, indigenismo, modernismo, René d’Harnoncourt, Truman Bailey, arte popular, artes aplicadas AbstractIn the forties and with the sponsorship of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA), the U.S artist Truman Bailey directed a school-workshop in Lima where he employed and trained nearly 80 workers to produce luxury items inspired by Andean popular arts. In this essay, the author argues that the workshop was not only an indigenous project to preserve indigenista traditions as its organizers, Bailey and influential curator René d’Harnoncourt, claimed. The author considers that the workshop was also and above all, a space for workers’ formation through training in modernist design and modes of production and commercialization of U.S industrial capitalism.Keywords: Latin American art, indigenismo, modernism, René d’Harnoncourt, Truman Bailey, arte popular, applied arts

Colombia inmanente: conversación con Jorge Mario Múnera sobre su encuentro con Carlos Rincón

Jorge Mario Múnera (Medellín, 1953- ) es, junto con Nereo López y Jesús Abad Colorado, quien más lúcidamente ha retratado, en una suerte de “prosa apátrida” según sus palabras, el semblante de ese cuerpo social colombiano poblado de retazos y márgenes. Además es uno de los exponentes latinoamericanos más destacados de lo que él mismo llamó la gran innovación editorial del siglo XX: el libro fotográfico. Múnera, en tanto testigo visible de lo invisible, captura aquello que, a fuerza de ser olvidado y reprimido, no cesa de retornar por doquier en imágenes. Sus fotografías son como una madeja de hilo que flota sobre “el mar de amnesia” -sus palabras- en el que chapalea a diario Colombia. Al obturar, Múnera nos expone a instantáneas obstinadas, inmersas en una duración que no es la de la conmemoración, sino la del afuera. Para usar la palabra de Rincón, son parte del centón inmemorial de los olvidados. Antes que conformar un archivo monumental, sus retratos son legajos disímiles que operan como una contra-memoria del futuro. En esta entrevista relata su encuentro con Carlos Rincón, quien incluyó varios de sus retratos en sus dos últimos libros. Retratos que, precisamente, re-traen aquello que ha sido despreciado: el Bolívar des-hecho, fragmentado como esa Colombia republicana imposible, “silencioso, maltrecho, agredido, derrotado, mirando la ciudad enemiga”, como cuenta en esta entrevista. Jorge Mario Múnera ganó el Premio Nacional de Fotografía (1999) y el Latino and Latin American Art Forum Prize de Harvard University (2003). Gracias a este último reconocimiento, publicó Portraits of an Invisible Country (Harvard University, 2010), editado por José Luis Falconi. En su contribución a esta obra, titulada “The Marco Polo Connection”, Carlos Rincón entrevera el título del libro de Múnera con el de Las Ciudades Invisibles de Calvino y se pregunta: “¿Para quién son posibles los retratos sin rostro?”. Ese país invisible, anónimo, que retrata Múnera, es virtual –pero no por ello menos real. Es la Colombia inmanente que transcurre en el encuentro entre Múnera y Rincón.