On Art, Artists, Latin America, and Other Utopias

by Camnitzer, Luis

• ISBN13: 9780292719767
• ISBN10: 0292719760
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-15
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

Artist, educator, curator, and critic Luis Camnitzer has been writing about contemporary art ever since he left his native Uruguay in 1964 for a fellowship in New York City. As a transplant from the _periphery_ to The _center,_ Camnitzer has had to confront fundamental questions about making art in the Americas, asking himself and others: What is _Latin American art_? How does it relate (if it does) to art created in the centers of New York and Europe? What is the role of the artist in exile? Writing about issues of such personal, cultural, and indeed political import has long been an integral part of Camnitzer_s artistic project, a way of developing an idiosyncratic art history in which to work out his own place in the picture. This volume gathers Camnitzer_s most thought-provoking essays__texts written to make something happen,_ in the words of volume editor Rachel Weiss. They elaborate themes that appear persistently throughout Camnitzer_s work: art world systems versus an art of commitment; artistic genealogies and how they are consecrated; and, most insistently, The possibilities for artistic agency. The theme of _translation_ informs the texts in the first part of the book, with Camnitzer asking such questions as _What is Latin America, and who asks the question? Who is the artist, there and here?_ the texts in the second section are more historically than geographically oriented, exploring little-known moments, works, and events that compose the legacy that Camnitzer draws on and offers to his readers.

Author Biography

Rachel Weiss is Professor of Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of several books, including To Build the Sky: To and from Utopia in the New Cuban Art.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. Xi
On And Against Translation Introduction	p. 1
Contemporary Colonial Art (1969)	p. 8
The Sixties (1998)	p. 16
Exile (1983)	p. 22
Political Pop (1998)	p. 30
Access To The Mainstream (1987)	p. 37
Wonder Bread And Spanglish Art (1989)	p. 43
Cultural Identities Before And After The Exit Of Bureau-Communism (1991)	p. 54
Art And Politics: The Aesthetics Of Resistance (1994)	p. 63
The Artist's Role And Image In Latin America (2oo4)	p. 76
Out Of Geography And Into The Moire Pattern (1996)	p. 93
The Reconstruction Of Salami (2003)	p. 97
Printmaking: A Colony Of The Arts (1999)	p. 104
My Museums (1995)	p. 112
The Forgotten Individual (1996)	p. 117
Free-Trade Diaspora (20o3)	p. 120
Other Histories Introduction	p. 125
Pedro Figari (1991)	p. 131
Resoftenings And Softenings In Uruguayan Art (1991)	p. 150
An Ode To Aquatint (2003)	p. 155
Revisiting Tautology (2006)	p. 159
The Museo Latino Americano And Micla (1992)	p. 164
Flying In Weightlessness (2004)	p. 175
Brazil In New York (200l)	p. 184
The Keeper Of The Lens (2005)	p. 191
The Two Versions Of Santa Anna's Leg And The Ethics Of Public Art (1995)	p. 199
The Biennial Of Utopias (1999)	p. 208
Introduction To The Symposium "Art As Education/Education As Art"(2007)	p. 230
Index	p. 239
Credits	p. 253
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.