CORE
Lecture Outline
Invisible Apparitions:
Mexico 1950-90
Bruce-Novoa
Reading: Cuevas’ “The Cactus Curtain,” “Characteristics of Scultural Space,”
June 1-2
1. A new generation of artist, well schooled in Octavio Paz's concepts, revolutionized the Mexican scene: known as La Ruptura (Rupture).
2. Anti-Mexican School Manifest: José Luis Cuevas’ “The Cactus Curtain”
3. By 1968 they will have assumed a leadership role on the national stage.
5. Juan García Ponce was their major theorist.
6. The writers associated with these artists came to control all the major literary journals in the Mexico City.
II. The Aesthetic change can be traced to Paz and Rufino Tamayo.
1. Can be seen as rejecting the Mexican School of Art.
a. Archetype vs. the particular
b. Poetic vs. prosaic
c. Evocation vs. reference
III. Different aesthetic attitudes establish differences within key areas
1. Murals becomes abstracted
2.
Mexicanness gives way to universals.
3.
Figurative emphasis gives way to free-form and
geometric abstraction.
IV. 1965
Scandal: National Award for Art shared
by two abstract Painters.
1.
Protests
by followers of Mexican School of Art
2.
New
Generation defends itself
3.
New
Generation assumes hegemony over Mexican Arts
4.
Marks
vs. Signs: Intuiting Postmodernity
5.
Threatening
the Establishment.
V. Vicente Rojo's
works as case study
1.
Geometric
form
2.
Layered,
textured surface
3.
Signs
set afloat: multiple signifieds.
4.
Parodic
play with established cultural signifiers
VI. Arnaldo Coen's
work as case study
"Mutations": Abstraction of the I Ching
2.
Collaboration
with Mario Lavista, Mexico's leading avant-garde composer.
3.
Dialogue
with John Cage
VII. Juan García
Ponce on The Tradition of Rupture
1.
Neither
culture nor tradition can offer the contemporary artist a foundation for work.
2.
True
artists can only break with tradition, thus finding a tradition of breaks to
renew art.
3.
These
artists do not insist on their way nor on any set program.
4.
Their
work is open to the world, not limited to national programs.
5.
While
nationality is an accident, artistic expression is a choice.
VIII. Matias Goeritz´ Eco can be seen as source of
change.
1. The geometrics of freedom
2. Restructuring the cityscape around monumental
abstract landmarks.
IX. The Road to the 1968 Olympics: Mexico´s Local/Global performance of
Modernity.
1.
Cultural
Olympics: Goeritz' "Route of
Friendship"
a.
Abstract
b.
Monumental—to
be seen from passing cars
c.
Made of
concrete
d.
Integration
of mural projects into modernist buildings
2.
New
Housing: Nonoalco-Tlatelolco as National
Allegory
a.
Building
named after states and key historical dates.
b.
The new
Foreign Relations building.
c.
The
Plaza of Three Cultures at its center.
X. Modernizing Chapultepec Park
1. New Museum of Modern Art
2. New Museum of Anthropology
3. New Hotel Camino Real—fusion of art and
geometry
XI. Olympic
Surprise: Student Movement
1. Affinities with Ruptura art
2. Affinities with international movements
3. Government response: repression and massacre
4. Tlatelolco as National Allegory
XII. 1970s:
Attempts to Recuperate National Cohesion
1.
Proliferation
of programs
2.
Decentralization
of institutions
3.
Expansion
of National University
XIII. Espacio Escultórico (Sculptural Space)
1978-80
1.
Dialogue with original University buildings
2.
Difference in achieving goal of communion with
origins