Aesthetics in Transit: Post-Revolutionary Mexican Art Writing and the Cross Border Circulation of Visual Culture

• In Event: Capitales en tránsito: producción, circulación e intercambio cultural en México

Abstract

In the past five years, scholars of Mexican visual culture have shed light on the cross border circulation and cultural exchange that shaped and informed both modern Mexican and U.S. art history (Ugalde 2009, Rick A. López 2010, Anna Indych-López 2012, Kroiz 2012, Ellen G. Landau 2013, Claire Fox 2014). Eschewing traditional statist accounts of Revolutionary Nationalism, by placing Mexican artistic production in dialogue with U.S. intellectual history these studies reveal the interconnectedness of these cultural traditions. Yet, one practice that has been largely absent from this reconsideration is the vast array of Mexican art writing (histories, criticism, reviews, pamphlets, and other texts) that contributed to and registered the flow of visual culture crisscrossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Seeking to insert national art (painting, sculpture, film, and photography) into an international order, early twentieth century Mexican art writers—such as José Juan Tablada, Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Octavio Paz and Juan Garcia Ponce—at different moments negotiated a set of political and commercial exigencies issuing from within the country and from beyond its borders. Caught between an idealistic drive to expound on the transcendental and poetic value of Mexican art and the practical demands of a new international art market driven by popularity, circulation, capital and consumption, this paper will demonstrate how Post-Revolutionary art writing evinces the mixed histories and composite discourses that informed and shaped the production and reception of Mexican visual culture at home and across the U.S. border.

Author

• Manuel Gutiérrez, Rice University