Traditional theories on Modern Art promoted a series of categories whose purpose was to consolidate the artistic field as a territory specifically oriented to aesthetic experience, emphasising connections with cultural elites and taking distance from practices linked to the popular. For Andreas Huyssen (2006: 5-6), “modernism’s insistence on the autonomy of the work of art, its hostility towards mass culture, its radical separation between culture and everyday life and its programmatic distance from political, economic and social issues were questioned from its beginnings», however, these old dichotomies maintained their normative force.

From this perspective, cultural metropolises were thought of as the only possible scenarios of production and validation of art, to the detriment of other areas distant from the large European capitals crossed by diverse urbanisation and industrialization processes. As for the artworks, the supremacy of the spiritual and the rational was erected over the material and the sensible, along with a marked disdain for artisanal variants and the possibilities of granting some type of utility to what was produced. Within this framework of concepts, the figure of the artist was linked to the idea of creative genius and was embodied almost exclusively by white, heterosexual men (Pollock, 2015).

Among the numerous antecedents studying specific cases and guiding this call for submissions are the reformulation of national narratives about modernism and avant-garde based on the study of local examples and their links with broader scenes (Fantoni, 2014), the rereading of an artistic program that goes beyond easel painting to include supports and formats as diverse as illustrations and graphic art for cultural magazines, decorative objects, film and theatre set designs, painted murals and stained glass windows (Armando, 2014), the connections between abstract languages and artistic productions with different aspects of vernacular cultures (García, 2021), the trajectories of nativist currents in northwest Argentina (Fasce, 2021), the links between fashion and modernism in Brazil (Casarin, 2023), or phenomena such as the international circulation of textile and craft artworks articulating the popular and the modern in their execution (Plante, 2019).

For this dossier we call for the submission of articles dealing with new objects of study and considering some areas relegated from the canonical accounts of modern art, incorporating overlooked figures or groups of artists, or reanalysing recognized trajectories using diverse theoretical frameworks. At the same time, we propose to rethink the scales of analysis to promote specific ways of addressing certain subjects and themes and give visibility to other realities that can dialogue with national histories. In this sense, regional and local perspectives in the historiography of recent decades have emerged as flexible categories that allow us to address some diversities and particularities in relation to broader contexts. In addition to the geographical subject, this dossier calls for articles that reflect on the artistic practices by questioning, nuancing or fragmenting the traditional chronologies and periodization of modern Latin American art in its relations with the international scene (Giunta, 2013). Focusing on certain cases in detail, completing the biographical and productive paths of significant artists, reconstructing collective projects and their connections to the outside, are possible strategies to avoid generalisations and promote the emergence of narratives that contribute to plural art histories made up of singularities and divergences.

We invite you to submit articles that address any of the following topics:

1- Artistic works or practices that in their own configuration, entangle specific spatial and chronological reconsiderations, and cases of study that nuance, challenge or enrich some generalised visions of the past from a regional and local scale.

2- Artistic productions that circulate in spaces outside of art institutions such as the media, the world of entertainment or urban areas: illustrations, advertisements, set designs, shop windows, performance.

3- Images that use humour or satire as mechanisms of persuasion, from magazine covers, comics and cartoons, caricatures or vignettes included in periodical publications, to postcards or drawings in letters, personal papers and artists’ notebooks.

4- Material, sensitive, artisanal aspects and their connections with design skills brought into play in the planning and execution of artistic objects: clothing, textiles, jewellery, graphic design, advertisements.

5- Individual artists or groups relegated from canonical stories because of gender issues, the interdisciplinary or disruptive nature of their practices, or the location of their artistic practices in spaces distant from metropolitan centres.

References

Armando, Adriana (2014) “Alfredo Guido y el americanismo en los años veinte”. En Roberto Amigo (coord.), La hora americana 1910-1950. Buenos Aires: Asociación Amigos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, pp. 189-203.

Casarin, Carolina (2023) El guardarropa modernista. La pareja Tarsila do Amaral-Oswald de Andrade y la moda. Rosario: HyA Ediciones.

Fantoni, Guillermo (2014) Berni entre el surrealismo y Siqueiros: figuras, itinerarios y experiencias de un artista entre dos décadas. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo / UNR.

Fasce, Pablo (2021) Del taller al altiplano. Museos y academias artísticas en el noroeste argentino. Buenos Aires: UNSAM Edita.

García, María Amalia (2021) “Rhod Rothfuss and the Marco Recortado: A Synthesis of Cultural Traditions in the Río de La Plata Region”. En Purity Is a Myth: The Materiality of Concrete Art from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Los Ángeles: Getty Conservation Institute, pp. 27-45.

Giunta, Andrea (2013) “Adiós a la periferia: vanguardias y neovanguardias en el arte de América Latina” en Blanco sobre Blanco, 5.8, pp. 9-20.

Huyssen, Andreas (2006) Después de la gran división: modernismo, cultura de masas, posmodernismo. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo. 

Plante, Isabel (2019) “Las “tapisseries chiliennes” de Violeta Parra entre lo vernáculo y lo internacional”, Artelogie [En ligne], 13 |URL : http://journals.openedition.org/artelogie/2923

Pollock, Griselda (2015) Visión y diferencia: feminismo, feminidad e historias del arte. Buenos Aires: Fiordo. 

Richard, Nelly (2021) “Diálogos latinoamericanos en las fronteras del arte” en Zona de tumultos. Memoria, arte y feminismo. Textos reunidos de Nelly Richard: 1986-2020. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, pp. 183-202.