Latin American modern: an ambitious exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts examined major themes in Latin America's midcentury avant-garde

Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Edward Leffingwell

Generous in its scope, innovative in its nonlinear structure, "Inverted Utopias" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), claimed to be the first comprehensive exhibition in the U.S. to rigorously study the relatively unexplored phenomenon of the 20th-century Latin American avant-garde. The exhibition title derives from a utopian design and manifesto of 1936 by famed Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres-Garcia that depicts an inverted map of South America. Under the Southern Cross constellation, the southernmost tip of the continent is at the top of the map--on top of the world--and North America and Mexico, as well as the rest of the world, are not represented at all. Reversing the polarities of global order, this iconic image was intended to herald the development of a Latin American art to rival the European avant-garde, to embrace the art of the indigenous and to unite South America in the development of an integral and native culture.

Proposed as a dialogue of ideas and images rather than as a historical survey, "Inverted Utopias" brought together more than 200 works by 67 artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela, countries associated with the formation of avant-garde ideas and objects. The curators chose not to include many of the most famous Latin American artists--among them Wilfredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo--in an attempt to clarify the waters of a pool muddied by celebrity and the marketplace. (1) A generous quantity of printed materials provides access to the thought processes of key figures, wire are identified and examined in a book of nearly 600 pages. (2) The show was organized by Mari Carmen Ramirez, curator of Latin American art at the MFAH, and the Houston-based architect, writer, translator and independent curator Hector Olea. (3) In a prologue to the exhibition catalogue, they press for an altogether new approach to the understanding of this art, to see afresh the complex nature of its forms and mediums and the diversity of its practitioners. The book and exhibition are milestone events.

Ramirez and Olea divide their topic into two periods of development. The first, 1920-40, includes the work of a number of artists who returned from studies in Europe, bringing with them firsthand news of such movements as Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism. The perceptions of those artists would ultimately be adapted to a distinctly Latin American cultural milieu at the intersection of colonialism and modernization. The curators propose that the artists of a second period, 1950-70, are remarkable for their role in the growth of an avant-garde independent of contemporaneous developments in Europe and the U.S. Altogether, the exhibition presents some of the most radical work of the time, including publications by the many artists who expressed their thoughts in manifestos and critical writing, and in the mediums of video and artist's books. Through their challenging, at times combative examination, Ramirez and Olea intend to eradicate stereotypical views of the exotic and the primitive that they contend have pervaded previous considerations of Latin American art. (4)

Citing three key figures from as many countries, Ramirez writes: "Artist-theoreticians like Joaquin Torres-Garcia, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Oswald de Andrade figured out early on that the essence of the new art and literature was its capability to stand the Old World artistic status quo on its head by introducing an autonomous set of cultural and artistic values." The purpose: "the legitimation of Latin American art and culture on its own terms." The value of the artists' discourse, vested in a kind of participatory entertainment for the viewing masses, intends a social good, itself a kind of utopia. (5) These interests are brought into focus through the structure of six "constellations" representing artists linked by ideas, materials or the formal nature of their work. These groupings pair opposing concepts or forces: "Universal and Vernacular," "Play and Grief," "Progression and Rupture," "Vibrational and Stationary.," "Touch and Gaze" and "Cryptic and Committed."

Universal and Vernacular

The works included in this constellation combine the imagery and structure of the European avant-garde with the colonial and indigenous or pre-Columbian imagery of Latin America. The Mexican Siqueiros (1896-1974) is represented by two large oils on burlap and a smaller oil on canvas (all 1931) that reflect ins social concerns. With dark, agitated paintings, Siqueiros addresses the trials of the poor and disenfranchised. Accidente en la mina (Mining Accident) and Madre proletaria (Proletarian Mother) share a somber palette on a rough and homely burlap support, the figures crowded within the claustrophobic picture plane. In the poignant and unflinching Retrata de nina viva y de nina muerta (Portrait of a Living Girl and a Dead Girl), a child is seated on a chair and supported by a little girl, as though sitting for a formal commemorative photograph. Siqueiros renders the crisp feel of linen and lace with a bravura handling of white that suggests a lineage to Velazquez. The ideas he shared with his compatriots Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) were represented by a display of journals of protest, manifestos, a drawing by Orozco and a text by Rivera. (6)