Painting with a Broad Brush: Representation in Post-Revolutionary Mexican Muralism

• In Event: Culture, Affect, and Political Representation

Abstract

(From the introduction of the paper) This paper will attempt to tackle the nature of representation within one of the most impactful and long lasting of these policies, the formation of a post-revolutionary culture. In order to determine whether or not art and culture could be representative in a meaningful way, I utilized two different theories of representation from Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation, descriptive and symbolic representation. I then reviewed the existing scholarship on the formation of identities amongst specific social groups in post-revolutionary Mexico, and how those identities were treated in the wider arena of national culture. Those groups were the Amerindians, the Mestizo, the Afro-Mexicans, women, and men. During this process, two competing theories regarding the nature of post-revolutionary culture began to emerge, which I have termed inclusionary theory and exclusionary theory. The former considers descriptive representation to be the most important value to measure when analyzing culture, and considers post-revolutionary Mexico to be culturally representative. Meanwhile, the latter prefers to judge the symbolic content within works of post-revolutionary culture, and sees post-revolutionary culture as discriminatory and unrepresentative for a variety of groups.

Author

• Eli DeBurger, Indiana University