Full Description
This book chronicles the history of the visual languages developed in Argentina during Peronism, exploring how art and propaganda interacted with and responded to their historical context. At the heart of this study is the term "intentional citations", a framework that advocates for the socio-cultural specificity of Latin American modernist art, in contrast to models that overly rely on European concepts of modernism and the avant-garde. Readers will discover how Argentinian artists cited European artworks to express particular ideas and goals, how Peronist propaganda employed various artistic traditions—including abstraction—for political purposes, and how ideologues rebranded Perón and Eva as a formidable ruling couple. This book also examines how the Peronist regime and artists competed for control of the cultural field. Despite their stark political differences, however, both factions pursued similar goals.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Introduction
1 Awkward Pastiches or Intentional Citations?
2 Resignification, Hybridization, and Anthropophagy
3 Inverted Exoticism
4 Internal Colonialism
5 Summary of the Chapters
1 Progress, Immigration, Nationality. Cultural Debates in Argentina from 1837 to 1939
1 The Generation of '37: We Are Children of France
2 The Myth of a White Argentina
3 The Generation of 1880: Order and Progress
4 The Positivist Sociologists: Nationality Is Patriotism and Hard Work
5 The Centennial Generation: We Are Essentially Spaniards
6 The Payador, Melodrama, Popular Culture, and Mass Media
7 Martinfierristas and Boedistas in the 1920s: Redefining Cultural Nationalism
8 The Generation of the 1930s: Hispanism and National-Catholicism
9 Cosmopolitanism and New Hispanism in Sur
10 Affordable Literature for the Working Class
11 Perón's Hispanism
2 Abstraction Arrives in Buenos Aires
1 Arturo and the Beginning of a New Era
2 Legibility of Argentinian and Latin American Art in Today's Art Circuits
3 An Alternative Model of Interpretation
4 International Constructivism in the 1930s and the Parisian Art Scene
3 Intentional Citations. Abstract-Concretists and Peronism
1 The Cutout Frame
2 The Stained-Glass Grid
3 The Coplanar
4 The Return to Painting-as-Object
5 Choosing Between Cold and Hot Abstraction
6 Old Debates Resurface
7 Perón Institutionalizes Culture and Promotes High and Popular Culture
8 A Turning Point in the Perón and Abstract-Concretists Relationship
4 Indoctrinating the Masses
1 The Undersecretariat for Information and Press
2 Justicialismo: a Third Way
3 Folklore
4 The Gaucho and Tellurism
5 The First Five-Year Plan
6 The Second Five-Year Plan
7 Religious and Moral Values
8 Transforming the Common Individual into a Bourgeois
9 Rewriting National History
10 A Straightforward Style for a Political Religion
5 Photographing the Ruling Couple
1 The Tango Star and the Descamisado: Quintessentially Argentinian
2 The Regal Perón
3 The Politician, the Actress, and the Queen
4 The Humanitarian and the Spectacle of Welfare
5 The Spiritual Leader of the Nation
6 Clarity and Emotion in Photographs
7 The Sword and the Cross
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index