Art and/as Revolutionary Politics in 1960s Latin America

Dr Anna Corrigan 

This session attends to the entanglement of artistic production and political action in the revolutionary 1960s of Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay. As the twentieth century progressed, art moved beyond the walls of cultural institutions to include graphic interventions, information campaigns, and participatory art. Meanwhile, political action became increasingly influenced by public performance, collaborative production, and informal publication techniques.  In this session, we will consider both how art intervenes in political processes, specifically human rights campaigns and protest movements, and how political forces, in turn, inflect creative forms and expressions. The seminar will focus on three case studies (The graphic art surrounding the Mexican student movement [1968]; the Tupamaros [1967-1971]; Tucumán arde [1968]). Through these distinct but related examples, we will anchor our inquiry into the wider implications of the intersections of art and politics in the region and consider the following questions: Where are the boundaries between creative and political action? Where does revolutionary art take place? What ideals surrounding collectivity, visibility, and solidarity do these projects envision? What (political) work can art do, and what does it fail to do?. 

Required reading/viewing:

  • Longoni, Ana. Vanguardia y revolución (Cap. 3: "El mito de Tucumán arde")
  • Camnitzer, Luis. Conceptualism in Latin America ("The Tupamaros" and "Tucumán Arde", pp. 60-92).
  • "La gráfica del '68: Imágenes rotundas" (MUAC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiocGdnj4CE&t=619s

Further Readings: 

  • Amigo, Roberto, et. al. Perder la forma humana. Reina Sofia, 2012. 
  • Bell, Vikki. The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina. Routledge, 2015. 
  • Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Verso, 2012. 
  • Calirma, Claudia, et. al. Arte No es Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960-2000. El Museo del Barrio, 2008. 
  • Camnitzer, Luis. On Art, Artists, Latin America, and Other Utopias. University of Texas Press, 1994. 
  • Feld, Claudia, ed. El pasado que miramos: Memoria e imagen ante la historia reciente. Paidós, 2009. 
  • García-Canclini, Néstor. "La participación social del art: El porvenir de una ilusión". Hueso Húmero, 5, 1980.  
  • Giunta, Andrea. Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties. Duke University Press, 2007.
  • Longoni, Ana. "Photographs and Silhouettes." Afterall, no. 25, 2010, pp. 5-17
  • Masiello, Francine. The Art of Transition: Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis. Duke University Press, 2001. 
  • Ranciére, Jacques. "The Paradoxes of Political Art" in Dissensus. Continuum, 2010, pp. 134-151.
  • Rojo, Juan, Revisiting the Mexican Student Movement of 1968. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 
  • Vázquez Mantecón, Álvaro. "The '68 Impact on the Visual Arts" in 68+50. Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, 2018

Reading Lists Online (LEGANTO)