Latin American Art of the 20th Century

by Edward Lucie-Smith

"Richly illustrated...brings to life the work of many lesser-known artists throughout the continent." Choice This comprehensive survey introduces an exceptionally rich, fascinating, and complex art that has gained great popularity in recent years. Edward Lucie-Smith discusses all the major subjects and magic realism, expressionism, and other concepts shared with Latin American literature; the great muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco; the interaction of politics, society, and art; the continuing interest in folk art; and the dialogue between avant-garde European and North American movements and "indigenist" thinking in the work of artists such as Wifredo Lam, Matta, Rufino Tamayo, and Frida Kahlo. Many other artists from the 1900s to the present day are included in this compelling look at a great body of brilliantly original and imaginative art. For the second edition, the text has been updated and a new final section introduces some of Latin America's leading contemporary Jose Bedia (Cuba/USA), Doris Salcedo (Colombia), Ruben Ortiz Torres (Mexico), Miguel Calderan (Mexico), Ernesto Neto (Brazil), Diana Domingues (Brazil), and Beatriz Milhazes (Brazil). Several of these artists make use of the latest in modern technology, including interactive installations, photographs, and video art. 178 illustrations, 45 in color.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History, History

226 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith, known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is an English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster.

Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946. He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and, after a little time in Paris, he read History at Merton College, Oxford from 1951 to 1954.

After serving in the Royal Air Force as an Education Officer and working as a copywriter, he became a full-time writer (as well as anthologist and photographer). He succeeded Philip Hobsbaum in organising The Group, a London-centred poets' group.

At the beginning of the 1980s he conducted several series of interviews, Conversations with Artists, for BBC Radio 3. He is also a regular contributor to The London Magazine, in which he writes art reviews. A prolific writer, he has written more than one hundred books in total on a variety of subjects, chiefly art history as well as biographies and poetry.

In addition he has curated a number of art exhibitions, including three Peter Moores projects at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; the New British Painting (1988–90) and two retrospectives at the New Orleans Museum of Art. He is a curator of the Bermondsey Project Space.

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important exhibition of. A Latin American art was organized by the South Bank Centre in collaboration with the National Swedish Art Museums and the Spanish Ministry of Culture and took place between 1989 and 1990 in London, Stockholm and Madrid. A richly illustrated exhibition catalog and important book in its own right, Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980) was authored by Dawn Ades, Guy Brett, Stanton Loomis Catlin and Rosemary O'Neill. The exhibition and its catalog probably sparked Lucie-Smith's book which references the catalog in its select bibliography section.

Lucie-Smith's book is limited to 20th century art, up to roughly 1989, the exhibition catalogue adds 80 years of XIXth century art (with a handful of colonial era paintings); the book includes 171 illustration, 38 of which are in color, compared to the catalogue's 524 illustrations of which 144 are in black and white (mainly line drawings, etchings, engravings and photographs). So, color-wise, the catalog has a clear advantage. Both books'structure is broadly chronological, but the catalog is also stuctured into topics such as The Taller de Gráfica Popular, Indigenism and Social Realism and Private World and Public Myths. This means that Diego Rivera's work is more dispersed across chapters in the catalog as compared to the the book. The catalog surprisingly skimps on abstract art, devoting two short chapters on the subject (Arte Madí/Arte Concreto-Invención and A Radical Leap while Lucie-Smith devotes at least a third of his book (four out of twelve chapters) to this topic. While both books emphasize Mexican, Argentine, Uruguayan and Brazilian art -and to a lesser degree Venezuelan, Colombian and Chilean art-, Lucie-Smith tends to provide a more complete idea of developments in other latin american countries, with the exception of haitian art which he skips over, and presents some hypotheses as to why Peru or the Central American countries are less well represented. Very few sculptors and no architects are included by Lucie-Smith.

Lucie-Smith weaves in more information about the artists in his chapters (the catalog provides an appendix of short biographical sketches). Sometimes he overplays the “influence”game, confusing influences with “reminds me of” and thus comes across as rather pedantic or belittling of latin american originality, as when he states that the chilean artist, Nemesio Antúnez typical work

...are representations of vast landscapes, simplified and geometricized, populated by swarming crowds of tiny figures. The remote ancestors of these compositions are Jan Brueghel the Elder's representation of the Tower of Babel.

Lucie-Smith occasionally jars the attentive latin american reader with prejudiced observations. For example in chapter six (Four women and one man) he claims:

Women have played a more prominent role in the history of twentieth century Latin American art than they have in that of other European or North American Modernism

So far so good. However when he goes on to say:

The prominence of women may spring, paradoxically, from the machismo long inherent in Latin American culture. This tends, at its most extreme, to categorize all the art as belonging essentially to the feminist sphere, while the male arena is that of political and military action

he is, quite frankly, talking through his hat. Art in Latin American art, as say British art, was never considered essentially feminist. Nineteenth century latin american art is not a feminist sphere, neither were nineteenth and twentist century art, photography, literature or music. Latin American was never comparable to, say eleventh century Japan, when japanese men writers assumed women's pseudonyms to write in Japanese, rather than Chinese. Frida Kahlo did not arise because the art world in Mexico encouraged women, she fought tooth and nail to be recognized as something more than Rivera's lover and an artist in her own right. One could, just as incorrectly, claim that the fact that women's suffrage was granted in Ecuador (1929), Uruguay (1932), Brazil and Cuba (1934), El Salvador (1939) and Panama (1941) before it was granted in France (1944) encouraged latin american women to express themselves through art or that this expression was due to the role played by women in the Mexican revolutionary armies (1910-1920) as compared to the role that played by European and US women during the first and second world wars in Europe.

Another of Lucie-Smith's faux pas is when he affirms that the Venezuelan painter Jacobo Borges

...hated the complacent capitalism of the Betancourt regime which had succeeded the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship.

Jacobo Borges may have hated Betancourt's presidency, but to call that presidency a regime is at the very least misleading. Betancourt was the key figure of the (originally) left wing political party Acción Democrática (AD). AD had first seized power in 1945 at the head of an alliance between AD and military officers. In 1947 Rómulo Gallegos, at the head of AD, won the first free and fair popular elections in 20th century Venezuela, only to be toppled by a right-wing military coup in 1958 which eventually led to Pérez Jiménez' dictatorship. AD was banned and most of its leaders went into hiding or were exiled, jailed or killed. AD led the coalition of opposition parties which toppled Pérez Jiménez in 1958, and Rómulo Betancourt was democratically elected President for 1959-1964), moving his party somewhat to left of center, facing attempted coups both from the right and the left wing and standing up against Cuba. He refused to run for a second period and left Venezuela for Switzerland. Betancourt thus started a 40 year democratic period in Venezuelan history that lasted until Chávez.

Lucie-Smith's book s has been more carefully proof-read than the catalog and there are very few mistakes. One that slipped through is in illustration 167's label in chapter 12, which incorrected translates “Plásticos de todas las sectas, uníos!”, the photographed slogan in a 1989 installation by Lázaro Saavedra as “Sculptors of all kinds unite!”. “Plásticos”is shorthand for “Artistas plásticos” and corresponds more closely to visual artists, and thus includes painters, sculptors and ceramists amongst others.

In spite of my previous caveats, Lucie-Smith's book is well written, interesting and still a useful introduction to latin american art of the twentieth centry up to 1980 something. It is nicely complemented by Dawn Ades' Art in Latin America: The Modern Era 1820-1980

[Sebastian Ore Blas]

186-

Surrealists were against realists.
They were technically academic, using it as a safe way to aproachc modernism without risking

173

Overwhelming sense of the way the past overlaps with present.

165

legio make my work refectch run exis, which feel and love. awa
anecdotal, folkloric and political the in he warld of do not have expresire or potic strength, and i think that, in

110

I try to make my work reflect the true Mexico, which I feel and love. I avoid anecdotal, folkloric and political themes because they do not have expressive or poetic strength, and I think that, in the world of art, a painting is an open window to human imagination.

[Numberbox]

My copy cover has painting by Diego Rivera crossing the Barranca detail (people in a tree)

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice brief intro to 20th century Latin American art.

[Esraa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edward Lucie-Smith discusses all the major subjects and issues: magic realism, expressionism, and other concepts shared with Latin American literature; the great muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco; the interaction of politics, society, and art; the continuing interest in folk art; and the dialogue between avant-garde European and North American movements and "indigenist" thinking in the work of artists such as Wifredo Lam, Matta, Rufino Tamayo, and Frida Kahlo. Many other artists from the 1900s to the present day are included in this compelling look at a great body of brilliantly original and imaginative art.