Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation

Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

by Luis Camnitzer

Conceptualism played a different role in Latin American art during the 1960s and 1970s than in Europe and the United States, where conceptualist artists predominantly sought to challenge the primacy of the art object and art institutions, as well as the commercialization of art. Latin American artists turned to conceptualism as a vehicle for radically questioning the very nature of art itself, as well as art's role in responding to societal needs and crises in conjunction with politics, poetry, and pedagogy. Because of this distinctive agenda, Latin American conceptualism must be viewed and understood in its own right, not as a derivative of Euroamerican models. In this book, one of Latin America's foremost conceptualist artists, Luis Camnitzer, offers a firsthand account of conceptualism in Latin American art. Placing the evolution of conceptualism within the history Latin America, he explores conceptualism as a strategy, rather than a style, in Latin American culture. He shows how the roots of conceptualism reach back to the early nineteenth century in the work of Símon Rodríguez, Símon Bolívar's tutor. Camnitzer then follows conceptualism to the point where art crossed into politics, as with the Argentinian group Tucumán arde in 1968, and where politics crossed into art, as with the Tupamaro movement in Uruguay during the 1960s and early 1970s. Camnitzer concludes by investigating how, after 1970, conceptualist manifestations returned to the fold of more conventional art and describes some of the consequences that followed when art evolved from being a political tool to become what is known as "political art."

Genres: Art

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Luis Camnitzer is counted among the most important conceptual artists to emerge from South American in the 1960s. Born in Germany and raised in Uruguay, he moved to New York in 1964 and was at the vanguard of Conceptualism.

Reviews

[Adolfo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bueno este libro lo leí en español y ahora que arregle mi compu va la reseña más larga que he hecho :)
El libro, aparte de ser una referencia cronológica sobre el tema del conceptualismo en el arte, también es un alegato para demostrar que en los años 60 en América Latina se llego antes e independientemente, del centro New York, a desarrollar obras artísticas que tenían la idea como tema principal.
En América latina el acento estaba puesto en la comunicación de ideas y más que nada de ideas políticas y esto dejo de lado la parte estilísticas y puso ya el énfasis en la comunicación.

Habla de La reevaluación (crítica) y según él este sería un método, (de investigación histórica) basado en el descubrimiento de material nuevo, previamente ignorado en el ámbito artístico, también se busco muchas formas nuevas de interpretación de las obras. Entre ellas hubo una reducción y desmaterialización de la obra de arte.

Una frase que me encantó es: La historia es incompleta, debería se borrada y reescrita, ya que pienso igualito.
Habla también como en América Latina se rompió barreras entra las artes y poesía, pedagogía, y política.
Y toma como ejemplo a Simón Rodríguez (un venezolano que vivió en 1769-1854) que relaciono el arte con la pedagogía; recurrió a aforismos ideológicos en la eliminación del desgaste de la información.
A los guerrilleros Tupamaros que con sus operaciones militares estatizadas reflejan la síntesis del arte con la política.
Ve las acciones de los Tupa como contribución estética latino americana a la historia del arte al demostrar que era posible utilizar la creatividad artística para afectar la estructuras sociales. El mensaje iba directamente del objeto a la situación, desde la legalidad a la subversión.
Quebraron las fronteras que aislaba el arte de la vida cotidiana. Su “trabajo” subrayó la artificialidad de lo que define y delimita el objeto de consumo artístico.

Otro ejemplo importante es el del grupo Tucumán Arde que fue un proyecto artístico convertido en proyecto político. Arte y compromiso activo con la realidad que aspira a transformar la sociedad de clases. La integración del arte con la vida cotidiana y la política.

Estas ideas van en contra con la que se tenía en el mainstream, ej. Sol LeWitt, los artistas viven aislados de la sociedad.

Arte y política se mesclaban en el arte Latino Americano

En el Arte y Conceptualismo en L.A. hay 4 áreas importantes; la función de la desmaterialización, el papel de la pedagogía, el uso del texto y la analogía literaria utilizada como un medio para el arte.

Y en conclusión el conceptualismo latino americano que emergió como una estética más preocupada por la realidad que la abstracción. También el libro crítica la visión del mainstream que ve la periferia como un lugar condenado al consumo pasivo de dispositivos importados.
Y para terminar un nueva tuttava, Andrea Fraser, que define al arte político el que conscientemente se propone intervenir ( y no solo reflexionar) las relaciones de poder.

[Dont · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book. Don't let the size, glossy pages, and coffee-table tome tendencies discourage you. While the discourse around conceptual art is rapidly in danger of resolving into boring ass narratives where Kosuth is king and London and New York the reinscribed center, along comes this book to make it all messy and complicated. Camnitzer's argument is deceptively simple. Yes, conceptual art is marked by a set of shared aesthetic operations. But these operations (deskilling, text, dematerialization) do not explain the more fundamental propositions at stake. Here he argues that while the center (NY and London) saw itself as primarily intervening upon the discourse of art, in peripheral localities like Latin America, the intervention was as much if not more into the political (the politics of dictatorship, colonialism, and imperialism). While it may be tempting to accept at face-value debates that raged at the time between political rupture versus political utopianism (like that other dead-end opposition between social realism and formal abstraction), for Camnitzer the more important contribution of conceptualism was the triad of politics, poetics and pedagogy. But here one could argue that the same triad exists in the conceptualism of the center. Which leads Camnitzer to make the very simple but profound observation that, for many artists in Latin America, conceptualism was a way -- if not the ONLY way -- of doing politics, poetics and pedagogy. In other words, the necessity of art practice was a cultural and thus political necessity and not merely an attempt to rupture some autonomous field of art. And whereas artists of the center would use politics to make art, for Latin American artists, often working under incredibly repressive regimes where intellectuals counted as the majority of the disappeared, art became the only way of conducting a politics. To make his point, Camnitzer offers remarkable stories of guerrilla movements and artists who, even when not self-consciously acting as artists, engage all the tactical tropes of conceptual art because it was the most effect way to intervene under specific political conditions. It is a reading that, for myself, validates my own sense that we have far more to learn about art practice from within movements of political struggle than we do in the sterile and anemic halls of bourgeois art history. An incredible book. I can't recommend it enough. My only complaint is that the actual form of the book is somewhat alienating. This book should be the sort of object that you can carry around in your back pocket, fill the margins with notes and really turn it into a stage for dialog, argument and discussion. In other words, it shouldn't be a precious art book that sits pretty on your shelf. There are way too many of those books already.

[KatzeKet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Art History, at least in my experience, tend to be quite Eurocentric; with art in other areas of the globe being either diminished or ends up being compared to similar expressions of the West. Latin America is no exception to this problem, especially with regards to grappling modernity within the region.

From here, this is where Conceptualism in Latin American Art -- written by artist and art historian, Luis Camnitzer -- comes into play grappling with this very problem. Conceptualism within Latin American Art must not be seen as a derivative of how Conceptualism came into being in North America and Europe, it instead needs to be seen as a movement dealing with it's own local context.

From this Camnitzer showcases the roots of Latin American Conceptualism though a variety of local contexts and events. The writings of Simon Bolivar, the Tupamaros, poetry and liberation theology are but a few connections that Camnitzer explores; broadening the view not just to artists and art movements, but to non-art as well. Camnitzer also writes how Conceptualism in Latin America also played a very different role then how it was utilized in the US and Europe.

As a person whose family is from the region, it is quite wonderful to see this type of art being put into the spotlight. It's pretty academic, and quite a large book physically (I wouldn't put it in my backpack), but I would still highly recommend this. Challenge yourself to broaden your conception of art not just in the center but towards the periphery.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good as a beginning reference to trends

There are probably some stronger art pieces that could have been discussed but this should give a general reader a solid place to start.