Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics

Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics

Argentine Art in the Sixties

  • Author: Giunta, Andrea; Kahn, Peter; Mignolo, Walter D.; Silverblatt, Irene; Saldívar-Hull, Sonia
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Serie: Latin america otherwise
  • ISBN: 9780822338772
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822389699
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2007
  • Month: July
  • Pages: 444
  • DDC: 709/.820904
  • Language: English
The 1960s were heady years in Argentina. Visual artists, curators, and critics sought to fuse art and politics; to broaden the definition of art to encompass happenings and assemblages; and, above all, to achieve international recognition for new, cutting-edge Argentine art. A bestseller in Argentina, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics is an examination of the 1960s as a brief historical moment when artists, institutions, and critics joined to promote an international identity for Argentina’s visual arts.

The renowned Argentine art historian and critic Andrea Giunta analyzes projects specifically designed to internationalize Argentina’s art and avant-garde during the 1960s: the importation of exhibitions of contemporary international art, the sending of Argentine artists abroad to study, the organization of prize competitions involving prestigious international art critics, and the export of exhibitions of Argentine art to Europe and the United States. She looks at the conditions that made these projects possible—not least the Alliance for Progress, a U.S. program of “exchange” and “cooperation” meant to prevent the spread of communism through Latin America in the wake of the Cuban Revolution—as well as the strategies formulated to promote them. She describes the influence of Romero Brest, prominent art critic, supporter of abstract art, and director of the Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Tocuato Di Tella (an experimental art center in Buenos Aires); various group programs such as Nueva Figuración and Arte Destructivo; and individual artists including Antonio Berni, Alberto Greco, León Ferrari, Marta Minujin, and Luis Felipe Noé. Giunta’s rich narrative illuminates the contentious postwar relationships between art and politics, Latin America and the United States, and local identity and global recognition.

  • CONTENTS
  • List of Illustrations
  • About the Series
  • Preface and Acknowledgments
  • Translator’s Note
  • Abbreviations
  • Introduction
  • CHAPTER 1. MODERN ART ON THE MARGINS OF PERONISM
    • Postwar Chronicle
    • The North American Invasion
    • Abstract ArtistsBetween Communists and Liberals
    • The Platforms for the Displaced
    • The Official Policy Toward Art
    • The French Invasion
    • Controversies on Abstract Art
    • Between Peronism and Abstract Art: Coming to Terms
    • Ver y Estimar on the Ramparts of Modern Art
  • CHAPTER 2. Proclamations and ProgramsDuring the Revolución Libertadora
    • The Embassies of Art
    • A Revitalized Museum
    • A New Museum for the New Art
    • Boa, Phases, and the International Front of the Avant-Garde
    • Conflicting Internationalisms
    • The Exploration of Materials
  • CHAPTER 3. THE “NEW” ART SCENE
    • Journal of a Collector
    • Coming Out in Society
    • The First International Exhibition
    • The 150th Anniversary Celebrations
    • A Plan for Success
  • CHAPTER 4. THE AVANT-GARDE AS PROBLEM
    • The Material Limits
    • The Art of “Things”
    • An Aesthetic of Violence
    • Argentines in Paris
    • Avant-Garde and Narration
    • The Total Art Object
  • CHAPTER 5. THE DECENTERING OF THE MODERNIST PARADIGM
    • Suspending Judgment and Embracing Novelty
    • Other Genealogies for Modern Art
    • An All-Consuming Aesthetic
  • CHAPTER 6. STRATEGIES OF INTERNATIONALIZATION
    • The American Family
    • International Awards for National Recognition
    • The Circulating MoMA Exhibitions
    • 1964: The Year of Recognition
    • Biennial and Anti-Biennial
    • The Culmination of Internationalism
    • The Aporias of Internationalism
  • CHAPTER 7. THE AVANT-GARDE BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS
    • The Artist as Intellectual
    • A “Plastic” Crime
    • The Politics of Assemblage
    • The Avant-Garde Between the Two Boundaries
    • Art as a Collective and Violent Action
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

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