Mexican Muralist Research Articles

Arte ConTexto

The article examines Chilean muralism, looking at its role in articulating political struggles in urban public space through a visual political culture perspective that emphasizes its sociological and ideological context. The analysis characterizes the main themes and functions of left-wing brigade muralism and outlines four subpolitical phases: (i) Chilean mural painting’s beginnings in 1940–1950, especially following the influence of Mexican muralism, (ii) the development of brigade muralism for political persuasion under the context of revolutionary sociopolitical upheaval during the 1960s and in the socialist government of Allende from 1970 to 1973, (iii) the characteristics of muralism during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s as a form of popular protest, and (iv) muralism to express broader social discontent during the return to democracy in the 1990s. How did the progressive popular culture movement represent, through murals, the political hopes during Allende’s government and then the political violence suffered under the military dictatorship? Several online repositories of photographs of left-wing brigade murals provide data for the analysis, which suggests that brigade muralism used murals mostly for political expression and for popular education. Visual art’s inherent political dimension is enmeshed in a field of power constituted by hegemony and confrontation. The muralist brigades executed murals to express their political views and offer them to all spectators because the street wall was within everyone's reach. These murals also suggested ideas that went beyond pictorial representation; thus, muralism was a process of education that invited the audience to decipher its polysemic elements.

Arte latinoamericano: consideraciones desde una vertiente periférica

Este texto propone una mirada panorámica sobre el arte latinoamericano contemporáneo y los principales temas de debate de los que ha sido protagonista. Se analizan los orígenes de la modernidad en el subcontinente americano y sus complicadas relaciones con los grandes centros dinamizadores del arte internacional, valiéndose para ello de lecturas de Richard McGee Morse y George Kubler. También se valora la importancia de movimientos como el indigenismo y el muralismo mexicano, tratando de despejar los prejuicios establecidos en torno a ellos. Apartado especial es el que se refiere a las relaciones con la cultura italiana, en especial la recepción que el arte latinoamericano ha tenido en este territorio europeo.

Introduction to “A Conversation between Chinese Artists and Mexican Painter David Alfaro Siqueiros”

Abstract In October 1956, the Mexican muralist David Siqueiros traveled Beijing and engaged in two dialogues with artists from the Chinese Artists’ Association. His visit came at an inflection point in China’s foreign and cultural policy. As Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, China used cultural diplomacy to cultivate relationships with unaligned countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. China’s cultural policy mirrored this shift by relaxing its adherence to Soviet-style Socialist Realism and promoting new stylistic practices, including a revival of ink painting techniques. This policy shift re-animated a debate among Chinese artists over the best mode of representation for socialist art, with one side arguing that Soviet-style Socialist Realism was the only acceptable style, and the other advocating for the reform of Chinese ink painting techniques. Within this context, Siqueiros’s criticism of Soviet artists and his advice to follow Chinese stylistic traditions set off a rich discussion on new approaches to Socialist Realism within China.

A Conversation between Chinese Artists and Mexican Painter David Alfaro Siqueiros

Abstract In October 1956, the Mexican muralist David Siqueiros traveled Beijing and engaged in two dialogues with artists from the Chinese Artists’ Association. His visit came at an inflection point in China’s foreign and cultural policy. As Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, China used cultural diplomacy to cultivate relationships with unaligned countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. China’s cultural policy mirrored this shift by relaxing its adherence to Soviet-style Socialist Realism and promoting new stylistic practices, including a revival of ink painting techniques. This policy shift re-animated a debate among Chinese artists over the best mode of representation for socialist art, with one side arguing that Soviet-style Socialist Realism was the only acceptable style, and the other advocating for the reform of Chinese ink painting techniques. Within this context, Siqueiros’s criticism of Soviet artists and his advice to follow Chinese stylistic traditions set off a rich discussion on new approaches to Socialist Realism within China.

Book Review: Mexican Costumbrismo: Race, Society, and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Art, by Mey-Yen Moriuchi

Mexican Costumbrismo: Race, Society, and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Art , by Mey-Yen Moriuchi. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. 180 pages, 31 color and 29 b/w illus. Hardcover $99.95. Reviewed by Natalia Majluf. The past two decades have seen an extraordinary

Octavio Paz: (re)readings of the Mexican Muralism.

Este articulo propone que la critica de arte que lleva a cabo Octavio Paz guarda una estrecha relacion con su vision poetica, particularmente la que se expone en El arco y la lira. Asimismo, aunque teoricamente hablando esta critica se distancia de las posturas ideologicas (partidistas), pues considera la produccion artistico-literaria como fuente de libertad en si, aqui vemos que al final la critica de Paz tambien llega a ser ideologica y es a traves de la ideologia como generara su critica en contra de los murales de Siqueiros y Rivera; sin embargo, Paz sera mas condescendiente con la vision estetica de Orozco, precisamente porque Orozco encaja dentro de su vision poetica, y dentro de -en principio- su agenda no ideologica.

América Latina no século XX: revoluções, muralismos, imperialismo e dependência

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar os elementos basilares para entender a arte mural mexicana, passada e presente, como parte integrante do pensamento crítico latino-americano e caribenho do século XX e os impactos de seus ensinamentos para os sujeitos políticos de diversas áreas ao longo da luta de classes do século XXI. O faz a partir de uma revisão histórico-crítica bibliográfica tanto do muralismo como da Teoria Marxista da Dependência (TMD). Coloca em diálogo dois conhecimentos: a arte política engajada do muralismo mexicano e a práxis militante revolucionária da TMD. Entende o debate da arte política muralista oriundo da escola mexicana como uma fecunda referência de marxismo latino-americano, a partir da centralidade que deu à história das resistências e revoluções como contrapontos à história hegemônica tanto na invasão colonial como em todo período seguinte. Toma como pergunta norteadora: o que o muralismo mexicano tem a nos ensinar no século XXI?

How a Few Individuals Brought about a Cultural Cusp: From a Mexican Mural Program to a Movement.

Significant cultural change often results from the interlocking behavior of a few individuals. The phenomenon is nonreplicable because a considerable portion of the major players' interactions are nonrecurring and driven by unique circumstances. Yet, these interactions can be analyzed from a behavioral science perspective. As an example, I describe how five individuals made possible the cultural cusp that created an unprecedented social revolution through public murals in Mexico. I analyze how their repertoires complemented each other, the circumstances that brought them together, and the values that united them. Their unique interactions coalesced with recurring interlocking behavioral contingencies that created the movement. The example could shed light on the understanding of other cultural phenomenon with similar properties.

El pintor que escribe en un muro de papel: David Alfaro Siqueiros en la Revista Multicolor de los Sábados (1933)

El artículo se centra en la participación de David Alfaro Siqueiros en la Revista Multicolor de los Sábados(Argentina). Por un lado, se estudiará la apropiación y resignificación que hace esta publicación periódica de la idea predominante en la propuesta de Siqueiros de “sacar el arte a la calle”; y por otro, se analiza el modo en que en la producción literaria del muralista mexicano, su propuesta política queda opacada por los condicionamientos de la prensa masiva.

Modern Mexican Culture: Critical Foundations ed. by Stuart A. Day

Reviewed by: Modern Mexican Culture: Critical Foundations ed. by Stuart A. Day Rebecca Janzen Day, Stuart A., editor. Modern Mexican Culture: Critical Foundations. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2017. 330 pp. ISBN: 978-08-1653-426-5. Day's edited collection surveys aspects of Mexican culture. Its definition of Mexican culture is vast, including print culture, such as novels, as well as visual culture, which encompasses art and film, and new media. Each chapter in Modern Mexican Culture centers around a single topic. Analisa Taylor's, for instance, focuses on "Milpa," Jacqueline E. Bixler's on "1968," and Dana A. Meredith and Luis Alberto Rodríguez Cortés on "Feminicide." The chapters also have subtitles that point to their dialogue with existing scholarship. In the case of "Milpa," Taylor has given the subtitle, "Mesoamerican Resistance to Agricultural Imperialism." This is followed by a list of primary materials, such as films, artwork or literary texts. The chapter then explains how these primary materials relate to Mexico's social, political and historical context. Modern Mexican Culture includes contributions by well-known scholars, such as Jacqueline E. Bixler, Robert McKee Irwin, Ryan Long, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, and Emily Hind alongside of works by emerging scholars, like David S. Dalton. This variety of scholarship is one of its strengths. At the same time, even though several scholars received their early academic training in Mexico, all of these scholars are currently based in the US academy. This is likely because the approach to the collection is one primarily adopted by the US academy. Day introduces the structure of the book and surveys Mexican history. He skillfully describes how he has already used these strategies in his classroom, and the ways that he has already made these topics come alive for his students by relating them to current social issues in the US. At the same time, Day tries to do justice to Mexican history in a few pages, and makes some remarks more appropriate to a specialized audience, such as jumping from the issue of impunity after the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968 to impunity in Mexico in the first decades of the twenty-first century. The work continues with Marta Caminero-Santangelo's chapter, titled, "DREAM-ers," subtitled, "Youth and Migration: American DREAMers and Mexico," and begins with a list of relevant novels, films, cartoons, and testimonies. She then offers a historical [End Page 141] context of the failed DREAM act and elaborates on the problems with the narrative of the good immigrant. She discusses some of the primary materials, such as Julia Álvarez's novel, Return to Sender and Gabriela Adera et al.'s collection of testimonies of undocumented students at UCLA. She concludes by considering those DREAMers who have returned to Mexico, the increasing presence of unaccompanied minors in the US, and questions of how cultural production around immigration might develop following the election of the current president of the US. The book then moves to Analisa Taylor's work on "Milpa. Mesoamerican Resistance to Agricultural Imperialism," which analyzes posters from resistance movements to agri-business. Christopher Conway's chapter on charros follows this intervention. He successfully demonstrates the ways that the charro has become a complex symbol of Mexican nationalism that relates to Mexican gender ideals. His notes at the end of the chapter are especially helpful to introduce the topic to scholars beginning to approach Mexico. The collection then focuses explicitly on earlier decades of the twentieth century. Ryan Long's chapter, "Print," for instance, discusses the Taller de Gráfica Popular and the circulation of images from this workshop from the 1930s to the 1950s. This chapter sheds light on an understudied art movement and includes several images. Long ties their linocuts and posters to famous Mexican muralists, and convincingly demonstrates that their work —although promoting Mexican state ideology—confronted global fascism. Following Long's contribution, Dalton discusses the role of education in the Revolution, and, in a welcome departure from typical discussions on the topic, relates rural teachers and Juan Rulfo's short stories. Then, Fernando Fabio Sánchez analyzes murder and democracy in Mexico, expertly using key works to analyze specific periods in the twentieth century...

De arte público y muralismos. Una lectura desde el presente

Desde el primer movimiento muralista mexicano a la fecha, los trabajadores del arte y la cultura asumen el arte público como campo fértil para la crítica histórica. Construir al «artista ciudadano» exige la recuperación y la actualización de las consignas de Siqueiros, enriquecidas con los derroteros actuales, para el impulso y desarrollo de un arte público acorde con los tiempos que corren en donde la significación también está en disputa.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Reviewed by: The Eagle's Throne Jeff Stayton The Eagle's Throne by Carlos Fuentes translated by Kristina CorderoRandom House, 2006, 336 pp., $26.95 Carlos Fuentes's latest novel, The Eagle's Throne, was published in Mexico nearly four years ago, just after Vicente Fox was elected president, thus breaking the Institutional Revolutionary Party's uninterrupted rule on "the Eagle's Throne" for the previous seven decades. But the novel seems timely, if not indeed prescient, given Mexico's recent political intrigues and disputes over its 2006 presidential election results. While most of the storied "Boom Generation" still living have by now become elder statesmen in their twilight years (some writing their memoirs, others running for political office themselves), Fuentes continues to portray his country's tragic past, corrupt present and uncertain future with the panoramic eye of a Mexican muralist. [End Page 176] Set in the year 2020, The Eagle's Throne begins shortly after Mexico's ailing president has stood fast during a meeting of the UN Security Council against Condoleezza Rice, now Commander-in-Chief, primarily over the U.S. occupation of Colombia. In response, under the guise of finding a "glitch" in its Florida satellite, the White House has used its technological superiority to block all of Mexico's electronic communications: phones, faxes, e-mails, computers, Internet, satellites, etc. This allows Fuentes the pretext he needs to launch his epistolary novel, an anachronistic form in the age of cell phones and e-mail. If somewhat far-fetched, the "glitch" nevertheless makes for an intriguing device. As the author's Mexican politicians jockey for power and angle to place their next president on the "throne," they are reduced to letter-writing, which puts their defamations, scandals and plots on record. Fuentes's blending of sex and intrigue in epistolary form should instantly call to mind Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liasions Dangereuses; however, The Eagle's Throne also shares much with other voice-driven novels with multiple narrators, such as Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Fuentes's aging but still alluring central correspondent, María del Rosario Galván, is a Mexican Lady Macbeth who considers "politics to be the public expression of private passions." María is grooming her handsome and much younger protégé, Nicolás Valdivia, a recent graduate of Paris's Ecole Nationale d'Administration, to fulfill an ambition she cannot realize for herself: to become the next president of Mexico. For them, the "Eagle's Throne" is synonymous with her lover's bed, which María promises Nicolás upon his election. "Beyond the last threshold is my bedroom," she writes him, "The last key unlocks my body. Nicolás Valdivia: I will be yours when you are the President of Mexico." If still an apt metaphor for presidential politics, it is not a terribly original one. But in one of the novel's many plot twists, we learn that María actually conspires with veteran politician Bernal Herrera, her former lover, for more socialistic aims. The two want Mexico to finally become a nation of laws, not of customs and corruption. Those who have read Fuentes's cycle of stories from The Crystal Frontier will recognize María and Bernal as the descendants of this idealistic struggle, now writ large on the national stage. The Eagle's Throne is a tragicomedy that presents alongside these two former lovers a rogues' gallery of Mexican Machiavellis, aspirant [End Page 177] Pinochets and prolix Senecas—all of whom seek to ascend to the 2024 presidency by any means necessary, including murder. But the novel's most intriguing character by far is ex-President César Leon, known as the "Old Man Under the Arches." From his Veracruz central plaza café, he ostensibly mentors Nicolás Valdivia with political aphorisms and maxims, while putting current events within the grander narrative of Mexican history. But soon it becomes clear that the elder statesman seeks to undermine this member of the rising generation by making another bid for power himself. For all of this, though, Fuentes offers very little insight into Mexico City's political heart beyond what his readers already know themselves. "Politics," may...

The Nave Italia and the Politics of Latinità: Art, Commerce, and Cultural Colonization in the Early Days Of Fascism

During 1924 the Nave Italia visited every Latin American city with a significant Italian community. This ship carried industrial and artisanal products, and numerous artworks by commercially successful but aesthetically conservative Italian artists. The Italia aimed to establish commercial partnerships with the emerging markets of Latin America, and to extend the political influence of Italy across the Atlantic. To do so, the organizers emphasized the concept of latinità, suggesting a common heritage shared by Italy and Latin America. This paper analyzes the artistic content of the Italia and how it manifested the ambiguities of Fascism’s project of cultural colonization of Latin America. While most visitors of the Italia did not notice any anticipations of Fascism in the artworks on view, the Mexican Muralists did. I argue that their violent reaction towards the art on the Italia indicates the presence of embedded traces of Fascism in the apparently inoffensive aesthetic of the decorative objects and artworks sent to Latin America.

Analysis on the Semiotics for the Canvas of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera -Focus on the Icon·Index·Symbol of 3 classification Charles S. Peirce’s Semiotic

Background and Objectives: This study is a semiotic analysis of paintings sublimated to art and love by Frida Kahlo, female genius artist rising from despair, and Diego Rivera, master of Mexican muralist movement. Methods and Statistical Analysis: For the subject and scope of analysis, we selected total 10 pieces of art. We interpreted the pieces based on Charles S. Peirce’s triadic model of semiotics such as icon, index and symbol. Their paintings and the hyperreality image of simulacra will present the standards for cultural meaning, social judgment and economic value as pop culture through practices of looking and way of seeing of visual language in signifying practices. Findings: The limitation of this study is that it added the emotions of researchers toward their paintings, as well as arbitrariness and polysemy felt in signification in the cultural sense. Improvements and Applications: This shows that there are limitations in subjective interpretant of a third party (researchers) to accurately capture the binomial relations of the difference in the extended sense of semiotics and infinite imagery and inspirations of artists with referents like connotative riddles in pictures (signs).

James M. Córdova. Review of "The Casa del Deán: New World Imagery in a Sixteenth-Century Mexican Mural Cycle" by Penny Morrill.

James M. Córdova. Review of "The Casa del Deán: New World Imagery in a Sixteenth-Century Mexican Mural Cycle" by Penny Morrill.

The Pan American Imagination: Contested Visions of the Hemisphere in Twentieth-Century LiteratureThe Geopoetics of ModernismThe Black Pacific Narrative: Geographic Imaginings of Race and Empire between the World Wars

The Pan American Imagination: Contested Visions of the Hemisphere in Twentieth-Century LiteratureThe Geopoetics of ModernismThe Black Pacific Narrative: Geographic Imaginings of Race and Empire between the World Wars

Introduction

Introduction Jim Hicks IN THE FIRST introduction I penned for this magazine, I felt it incumbent to cite Ralph Waldo Emerson. One line in particular, for the fall of 2016, seems even more appropriate now than it did in 2010, or in 1848, for that matter. In his introduction to the first issue of the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, Emerson wrote, “This country needs to be extricated from its delirium at once.” This issue’s featured artist, Nina Chanel Abney, also brings Hamlet to mind, holding, as she does, a mirror up to that madness — “in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of passion.” Abney’s work is all the more essential given what we find on the national stage today — dominated by “players that [we] have seen play” as they strut, bellow, and “imitat[e] humanity so abominably.” Back at the onset of the millennium’s second decade, I argued that another key step toward extrication, and away from delirium, would be a dramatic increase in the amount that the Massachusetts Review publishes in translation. Since then, we’ve done well on that score, averaging perhaps twenty percent, though we could certainly do better. In this issue, for example, only two of our twenty authors first wrote their work in a language other than English: poems from Fahrad Showghi, translated from German by Harry Roddy, and letters from Joan Sales, translated by Contributing Editor Peter Bush. So this round we’ve batted just half our average. That said, it should be added that the goal for MR was never quotas, even if we remain resolutely pro-immigration. To much of the world, much of what this country produces appears, it must be said, provincial. And MR will never stand for that. So let’s take a closer look at what’s included in this issue. We begin with three “Amherst Stories” from MR’s founding editor, Jules Chametzky. The red thread that guides these accounts, however, ties them each to flakey international movements: first the Moonies, then Scientology, and, in perhaps the grimmest tale of all, Reichian orgonomy. Elsewhere a hat trick of other local heroes — Marilyn Chin, Stephen Clingman, and Sabina Murray — also adds to our understanding of the world and its history. The nightmarish diet in Chin’s “Immigrant Dreams,” the three episodes from Clingman’s memoir about growing up in apartheid-era South Africa, or Murray’s vision of the visionary Roger Casement: each a case study in [End Page 378] how all true politics is global, even when it acts only locally. In Amherst historian Laure Katsaros’s lovely tale of the Goncourt brothers, and French culture itself, surrendering to a Japanese invasion, we have a fascinating story of cross-cultural pollination, one that arrived at our office from just across town. Joann Kobin’s tale of late-life language learning has a French twist as well, though in this case the author does live all the way across the river in Northampton. Muira McCammon’s research on the Guantánamo Bay library is another fruit of local scholarship, and one with evidently historic ramifications. Elsewhere in this issue, Nil Santiáñez delivers the second half of his lesson in reading the literature of the Great War comparatively. And as their work here makes manifest, neither the poetry of Michael Waters nor that of Terese Svoboda fits neatly into any national box. Let a last line from the latter stand as slogan for both, and for us: “Not you, where once was all-you.” Our autumnal offerings also include a pair of atypical family stories: Christine Sneed invents an advice column capable of giving life lessons to its author, and Alex Poppe hatches a CRISPR tale of genetic manipulation than any we’ve ever read. Both narratives for our time, about our world, not ourselves. Finally, let me also mention the closing poem from Lisa Beech Hartz. Its subject, a photograph by Doris Ulmann of the great Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, seems a particularly good fit for these pages. Ulmann was an alumna of the storied Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City, an institution that counts among its early...

The Casa del Deán: New World Imagery in a Sixteenth-Century Mexican Mural Cycle. Penny C. Morrill. Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. xiii + 298 pp. $75.

The Casa del Deán: New World Imagery in a Sixteenth-Century Mexican Mural Cycle. Penny C. Morrill. Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. xiii + 298 pp. $75. - Volume 69 Issue 4

Fractal analysis of Jackson Pollock's painting evolution

By mid-1940s, Jackson Pollock, one of the most influential artists in the twentieth century plastic art, developed a unique painting technique (pouring and dripping) to generate complex non-figurative patterns. It has been argued that methods from fractality theory are suitable for characterizing these complex patterns. In fact, recent studies have shown that, indeed, Pollock's drip paintings are fractal, multifractal, multiscaling and evolved to higher complexity from 1945 to 1950. However, the development of this drip and pouring technique was neither instantaneous nor spontaneous, but influenced by diverse cultural and personal factors along of Pollock's life. The aim of this work is to study the evolution of some fractality indices of Pollock's paintings for the period from 1930 to 1955 and, in this form, detect changes in this painting technique and relate them to major cultural influences. To this end, about 30 paintings are analyzed by applying a two-dimensional detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Results indicate two large shifts in the fractality indices. One transition involves a change in the correlations dimension by 1937, while a second transition implicates a shift in the short-scale Hurst exponent by 1945-1946. Based on descriptions from Pollock's biographers, it is postulated that the first change may be strongly influenced by Mexican muralist Siqueiros and the second one by the moving of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner for living in the natural landscapes at Springs, Long Island. Our findings in this work support these claims.

Reading the Walls

Abstract The contemporary form of the community mural is street art and is a continuation of the urban art movement that has grown substantially in the city of Los Angeles. The characteristics of street art involve a mix of graffiti subculture and the scale of Mexican muralism. Yet, ephemeral street art may have found an apposite home in Las Vegas, the land of blow up and tear down, a destination for a transient population. In Los Angeles, street art is part of a long history of murals on walls, a mix of styles trying to coexist as separate communities of thought. In Las Vegas, street art is a visiting voice in a town filled with temporary residents. This visual essay highlights the importance of visual inquiry for engaging these complicated landscapes.