Introduction Highways of the South

Artl@s BulletinVolume 3Issue 2 Highways of the South: Latin American ArtNetworks

Article 8

2014

Introduction: Highways of the SouthDaniel R. QuilesSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago, [email protected]

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Recommended CitationQuiles, Daniel R.. "Introduction: Highways of the South." Artl@s Bulletin 3, no. 2 (2015): Article 8.

Highways of the South Latin American Art Networks

Daniel R. Quiles, Guest Editor

ARTL@SBULLETIN

Volume3,Issue2Fall2014

Editor-in-Chief Catherine Dossin PurdueUniversityBatrice Joyeux-Prunel colenormalesuprieure Guest Editor Daniel R. Quiles SchooloftheArtInstituteofChicago Cover: Vida-Americana. Revista Norte, Centro y Sud Americana de Vanguardia (Barcelona, 1921),Coleccin Instituto Nacional deBellasArtesSaladeArtePblicoSiqueiros. Reproduced with theauthorization of the InstitutoNacional de Bellas Artes yLiteratura,2014.

Editorial Statement The ARTL@S BULLETIN is a peerreviewed, transdisciplinaryjournal devoted to spatial and transnational questions in thehistoryoftheartsandliterature.The journal promises to never separate methodology andhistory, and to support innovative research and newmethodologies. Its ambition is twofold: 1. a focus on thetransnational as constituted by exchange between the localand the global or between the national and the international,and 2. an openness to innovation in research methods,particularly the quantitative possibilities offered by digitalmappinganddatavisualization.Byencouragingscholarstocontinuouslyshiftthescopeoftheiranalysisfromthenationaltothetransnational,ARTL@S BULLETINintendstocontributetothecollectiveprojectofaglobalhistoryofthearts. Copyright Statement ARTL@S BULLETIN(ISSN 22642668) is published by the colenormale suprieure, 45, rue dUlm, 75005 Paris, France andtheCentrenationalpourlarecherchescientifique16,ruePierreet Marie Curie, 75005 Paris, France. The online version ofthe ARTL@S Bulletin is hosted by Purdue ScholarlyPublishingServices.Compilation copyright 2014 ENSCNRS. Contents copyright 2014 by the respective authors, artists, and other rightsholders. All rights in the ARTL@S BULLETIN and its contentsreservedby thecolenormalesuprieure, theCentrenationalpour la recherche scientifique and their respective owners.Except as permitted by the Copyright Act, including section107 (the fairusedoctrine),orotherapplicable law,nopartofthe contents of the ARTL@S BULLETIN may be reproducedwithout thewritten permission of the author(s) and/or otherrightsholders.Theopinionsexpressed in theARTL@S BULLETINare those of the authors and not necessarily of the editors orpublishers.

Table of Contents

4 IntroductionDaniel R. Quiles

10

CrossingtheAtlantic:EmilioPettorutisItalianImmersionLauren A. Kaplan

22

VidaAmericana,19191921.RedesconceptualesentornoaunproyectotranscontinentaldevanguardiaNatalia de la Rosa

36

Rseauxculturels,rseauxpolitiques.LesarchivesdufilmenAmriqueLatinedesannes1950auxannes1970Germn Silveira

48

BetweenParisandtheThirdWorld:LeaLublinsLong1960sIsabel Plante

68

Contrabienal:LatinAmericanArt,PoliticsandIdentityinNewYork,19691971Aim Iglesias Lukin

83

VectorsorConstellations?CuratorialNarrativesofLatinAmericanArtCamila Maroja and Abigail Winograd

97

AllCreativeBeing:InterviewwithAnnaBellaGeigerSarah Poppel

4ARTL@S BULLETIN,Vol.3,Issue2(Fall2014) HighwaysoftheSouth

Daniel R. Quiles School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Introduction

ollowing his appointment as GuggenheimUBSMAP Curator, Latin America in 2013,PabloLendelaBarraproducedaseriesofdispatches for the institutions website:

reportsonthecities,museums,projectspaces,andartists studios that he has visited in his travelsaround Latin America.1 These posts offer a rareview into the work of the itinerant curator, whocomes across valuable information that mightotherwise be territorially guarded. In this case,however, de la Barra seems to share everything,exposing his curatorial practice and sometimesneglected artists to a potentially limitlessaudience. This social mediaera openness alsoinformed his exhibition Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, organized for theGuggenheims New York venue. As suggested bythe title, Under the Same Sun had to do withconnecting artists and works from differentcountries in the region, across both space andtime,intoadynamicnetwork:2

Under the Same Sun isazoneofactivation,oftension, where different ideas are put inconfrontationwith eachother.Thebasic ideafor the title comes from thinking about thiscommongroundthatcouldbesharedbetweenall these countries which are very different.

1 To date, the dispatches have focused on Guatemala City (the only cityspecificdispatch), Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Colombia Puerto Rico, and Panama, athttp://blogs.guggenheim.org/map/dispatches/asofDecember9,2014.ThisprojectcomesoutofdelaBarraslongstandingpracticeoftravelphotography,whichhehasperiodicallyexhibitedasadigitalslideshowworkinitsownright.SeeAntonioSergioBessa, ed., Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America After Modernism,exh.cat.BronxMuseum(NewYork:FordhamUniversityPress,2014).2 To the extent that a network is devised creatively by the curator, rather thanthroughpreexistingorhistoricalconnections,delaBarrasapproachechoesthatofthe constellation model employed by Hctor Olea and Mari Carmen Ramrez intheirlandmarkexhibitionHeterotopas: medio siglo sin-lugar, 1918-1968.SeeDanielR. Quiles, Exhibition asNetwork,Network as Curator: CanonizingArt from LatinAmerica,ARTL@S BULLETIN,Vol.3,No.1(Summer2014):6278.

We cannot talk about one Latin Americaonly. What we can do is talk about a sharedcommongroundandsharedintersectionsthatexist between the artists, the works, to acommonhistorythatcomesfrom300yearsofcolonial occupation by either Spain orPortugal but also a shared history ofmodernity, an idea of progress thatwas verypresentinthewholeofthecontinent,butalsofollowed by periods of repressivegovernmentsmilitary occupation as well aseconomiccrisis.3

Undergirding this affinitive unity, however, isanother network, the product of de la Barrasnetworking: the curator as circulatory agent,linking the region together through hisgeographical movement, intellectual work, andexchanges of creative and financial capital. Thislattermostaspect isparticularly important,as theexhibitionshowcasedworksalreadypurchasedbythemuseumunderde laBarrasadvisementhisPanAmerican optimism is superimposed uponmarketflows.4Artistic networks bring into tandem surprisinglydivergent perspectives or objectives, in theprocess unveiling relationshipsandhierarchiesbetweendifferentcitiesandnations.This issue of ARTL@S BULLETIN examinesinternationalcirculationsofpeople,artworks,and 3 Video interview with Pablo Len de la Barra transcribed by the author, athttp://www.guggenheim.org/newyork/exhibitions/past/exhibit/5740 as ofDecember9,2014.4Thecriticalreceptionoftheshowvaried,withsomecommentatorsnotingthattheGuggenheimwaslatetothepartyinfocusingonLatinAmericanartcomparedwithother New York institutions. See Holland Cotter, Arriving Late to the Party, butDancing on All the Clichs Under the Same Sun, Art From Latin America, atGuggenheim,The New York Times,June12,2014,athttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/arts/design/underthesamesunartfromlatinamericaatguggenheim.html?_r=0asofJanuary19,2015.

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texts that have produced influential networks ofmodern and contemporary Latin American art.With a transhistorical perspective andcontributions fromscholarsbased in sixdifferentcountries, the aim is to contribute to a presentlyexpanding field of knowledge related to whatKobena Mercer has termed cosmopolitanmodernisms, while also taking into account theparallelmachinationsofarthistoryitself.5TheexampleofUnder the Same Sunconflatestwotypes of networks. On the one hand, the showcelebrated the curators ability to drawconnectionsto turn works, artists, movements,orcitiesintonodesinlargerconceptualcategoriesthat might define the region. On the other, de laBarras own, highly successful migrations echo amuch longer lineage of real, physical movementsbetween cities and countries that has informeddevelopments inLatinAmericanart fromat leastthebeginningsofmodernism,ifnotwellbefore.Some of the first publications and shows of artexplicitly identified as Latin American wereorganized outside of the region.6 It was theregional liberator Simn Bolvar who firstproposed political networks across the Americasatthe1826CongressofPanama.Hisrhetoriclaterinformed the First International Conference ofAmericanStatesbetween18891890,whichledtothe foundation of the Pan American Union inWashington, D.C. in 1910.7 The PAU hosted thefirst PanAmerican Artistic Conference inSeptember 1917, which initiated a system ofgalleries, theaters, andconservatories topromotePanAmerican exchange and understanding.8 IfLatin American avantgardes at this momentsometimes concentrated on identifying nationally 5 See Kobena Mercer, ed., Cosmopolitan Modernisms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,2005).6 One of the earliest examples on record is Amrica Latina: revista de arte e pensamento,editedbyTassodaSilveiraandJosCndidodeAndradeMuricyinRiode Janeirobetween1919and1920.SeealsoGuidoValerianoCallegari,Arte antica dell'America Latina, exh. cat. (Rome: Instituto poligrafico dello stato, 1933), Latin American Art, exh. cat. (Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1935),Concha Romero James and Robert C Smith, Publications on Latin American Art in 1937(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress,1938),andStudy Book: Exhibitions of Contemporary Latin American Art (SanFrancisco: SanFranciscoMuseumofArt,1942). 7 See Claire F. Fox, Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War (Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,2013),xv40. 8 See Michele Greet,Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania StateUniversityPress,2009),26.

specific modernisms, they also sometimesaddressed the question of American art morebroadly.9Yetmuchof this initial formationof thefieldwas instantiatedby institutions, representedbytravelingcuratorsandexhibitions,whichwerethemselvesextensionsofexistinggeopolitics,suchastheneocolonialistandGoodNeighborphasesof theUnitedStates relationshipwith the region.Here art has at times served as a branch of softdiplomacy,asClaireFoxobservesinherbookonthePanAmericanUnioninWashington,D.C.:

The . . . ethereal strategy for cultivating theInternational Mind . . . was the sharedconsumptionofhighculture.Cognacandpianoconcertos were not mere perquisites of thediplomatic service; rather, they were likewatertofish,invisibleyetessential,forculturewas the very medium through whichdiplomacy was supposed to occur culturaldiplomacy should necessarily bedisinterested, meaning free from theinterferenceofpoliticallinesorexigencies.10

Then there is the matter of the more organiccirculations that played essential roles in theformation of Latin American modernisms in thesame period. Among recent frameworks for suchdynamics, translocality, an umbrella term todescribe mobilities and multiple forms of spatialconnectedness,hasrecentlybeenusedtoanalyzeinternational movement and migration in LatinAmericanarthistory.11As isbynowwell known,the regions national avantgardes in the 1920sand 1930s resulted in part from TransAtlantictravelandtheappropriationandvernacularizationof modernist strategies in Europe.12 Such 9ThisisthecaseinthetextthatNataliadelaRosaconsiderssocloselyinthisissue,whichwas addressed to the newAmerican generation but endedup beingmostrelevant for Mexican modernist aesthetics. See David Alfaro Siqueiros, Tresllamamientos de orientacin actual a los pintores y escultores de la nuevageneracin americana, inVida-Americana: revista norte centro y sudamericana de vanguardia(Barcelona),No.1(May1921):23.10Fox,Making Art Panamerican,23.11 See Clemens Greiner and Patrick Sakdapolrak, Translocality: Concepts,ApplicationsandEmergingResearchPerspectives,Geography Compass,Vol.7,No.5(2013):373384andZannaGilbert,SomethingUnnameableinCommon:TranslocalCollaborationat theBeauGestePress,ARTMargins,Vol1,Nos.23 (2012):4572.ThelatterisoneofthefirstattemptstousethetranslocaltoaddresscirculationinLatin American artalthough it is noteworthy that Gilbert is primarily discussingmailart,inwhichitisnotpeople,butcorrespondence,thatservestomobilizeideasbetweendifferentlocalities.12 For a range of approaches to such material spanning the last 30 years, seeStephanieD'Alessandro,Still More Distant Journeys: The Artistic Emigrations of Lasar Segall,exh.cat.(Chicago:DavidandAlfredSmartMuseumofArt,1997),RachelPrice,The Object of the Atlantic: Concrete Aesthetics in Cuba, Brazil, and Spain, 1868-1968(Evanston, IL:NorthwesternUniversityPress, 2014), Lowery Stokes Sims,Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002),

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circulation was not limited to correspondencebetween individual LatinAmerican countries andmetropoles like Paris, howeverapproaches infiguration,forexample,suchasthoseofmuralismand indigenism, were shared between differentcountries in theAmericas,as theworkofMicheleGreetandothershasmadeclear.13Of themanystudiesthathavetraced institutionalnetworks in the postwar era, among the mostinfluential to date has been Andrea GiuntasexhaustivestudyofthepromotionofArgentineartabroadinthe1960s.14Giuntaconcludesthatsuchefforts failed in their quest to increase theinternational legitimacy of Argentine art, but onewonders today if shemightreconsider thisclaim,given the everincreasing popularity of thecountrys abstraction and conceptualism ininternationalmuseumsandthemarkettoday(andthis argument could be extended to Brazil,Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, andVenezuela, if all the countries of the region). Thestakes of international promotion and circulationarenotmerelyspatial;theyaresubjecttothesamedelays in reception as texts and other forms ofartisticexpression.It is no secret that academic writing on LatinAmerican art has frequently followed the lead ofcuratorsandexhibitions,butthemannerinwhichcirculation or networks might be traced in ascholarlystudyisnecessarilydifferentfromthatofanexhibitionor catalogue.PredecessorsofUnder the Same Sun, such asThe Geometry of Hope and EdwardSullivan,FromMexicotoMontparnasseandback,Art in America,Vol.87,No.11(November1999):1029andParis/SanJuan,Arts Magazine58(May1984):1204,andVickyUnruh,Latin American Vanguards: The Art of Continuous Encounter(Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,1994). 13 SeeMichele Greet,Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 2009). Greet is currently finishing a book manuscript titledTransatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, 1918-1939,forwhichsheandGeorgeMasonUniversitystudentsproducedawebsitewithinteractive maps of interwar transnational exchange in Paris by Latin Americanartists. See http://chnm.gmu.edu/transatlanticencounters/. See also Laurance P.Hurlburt,The Mexican Muralists in the United States(Albuquerque:UniversityofNewMexico Press, 1989), Anna IndychLpez,Muralism Without Walls: Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros in the United States, 1927-1940 (Pittsburgh: University of PittsburghPress,2009),andMariCarmenRamrez,ed.,El Taller Torres-Garca: The School of the South and its Legacy,exh.cat.ArcherM.HuntingtonArtGallery(Austin:UniversityofTexasPress,1992). 14SeeAndreaGiunta,Vanguardia, internacionalismo y poltica: Arte argentino en los aos sesenta (Buenos Aires: Paids, 2001), later translated as Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties,trans.PeterKahn(Durham:DukeUniversityPress, 2007). See alsoLuisCastaeda,Spectacular Mexico: Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,2014), which explores the international promotion of Mexican culture throughdesign,urbanism,andtheOlympicGamesinamomentofpoliticalturmoil.

Nexus New York, concentrated on historicalcirculationsofartists,exhibitionsandinstitutionalinitiatives, redefining the region as they went.Both placed great emphasis on cities rather thanentirecountries;theformerincludedParisamongthekeycities forLatinAmericanart in the1950sand1960s,whilethelatterlookedatNewYorkasa refuge for Latin American expatriates in theinterwar period.15 Smaller exhibitions, such asOiticica in London, have argued for this mode ofinvestigation one artist at a time, isolating andunpacking cosmopolitan networks in specificmetropoles (such as Oiticicas connections toexiled Tropiclia musicians, his friendship withGuy Brett, and his access to the circle aroundSignalsnewspaperandgallery).16 The opportunity that networks provide forreimagining geographical axes of artisticproduction has perhaps been best exemplified oflatebytheacademicjournalARTMargins,whichisdevoted to worldwide studies of encounter andexchange. ARTMargins recently published anedited volume on experimental art networksbetween Latin America and Central and EasternEuropeinthe1970s,editedbyKlaraKempWelchand Cristina Freire.17 They argue thatwhile bothregionsexperienced

similar degrees of marginalization from theNorth American and Western European arthistorical narratives . . . constructed inrelation to the frameworks dictated by theCold War, exchanges between the tworegions had to embrace a spectrum ofpolitical persuasions . . . from more or lessferventrevolutionarycommunism,toreformcommunism,toanticommunism.18

Initiatives like ARTMargins (much like thecuratorialcollectiveRedConceptualismosdelSur) 15 See Deborah Cullen, ed.,Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis,exh.cat.MuseodelBarrio(NewHaven:YaleUniversityPress,2009),andGabriel PrezBarreiro, ed., The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection,exh.cat.BlantonMuseum,Austin(NewYork:DAP,2007).16GuyBrettandLucianoFigueiredo,eds.,Oiticica in London,exh.cat.(London:TatePublishing,2007).17Aninfluentialpriorexperimentinthisregardwasalsoanexhibition.SeeHansD.Christ and IrisDressler, eds.,Subversive Practices: Art under Conditions of Political Repression: 60s 80s / South America / Europe, exh. cat. Kunstverein Stuttgart(Ostfildern:HatjeCantz,2010).18 Klara KempWelch and Cristina Freire, Artists Networks in Latin America andEasternEurope,ARTMargins,Vol.1,Nos.23(JuneOctober2012):45.

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underscore the political stakes of attending tonetworks and circulations in Latin American art,both historically and in the present.19 They areevidence of an increasing reluctance to isolate oressentialize given countries or the region as awholenotintheserviceofoutmodedargumentsaboutderivationorbelatedness,buttoaccuratelyattend to the way that artistic strategies aredeveloped,revised,andsharedacrossborders.Highways of the South: Latin American ArtNetworks features case studies throughouttwentiethandtwentyfirstcenturyLatinAmericanart. It is positioned against the present surfeit ofglib invocations of the global, particularly byNortherninstitutionsthatuntilrecentlydisplayedopencontemptforsuchanexpandedpurviewyetnow aim to capitalize on a hot trend. Certainly,networks, circulation, or historical instances ofexchange are not methods in and of themselves.Our hope, however, is that by focusing oncirculations as content, the traditional arthistorical method of the case study might bealtered from within. The struggle to elevate theperiphery,oreveneliminateitcompletelythroughthe logic of the network, has succeededa new,hyperconnected world art history is in vogue.Thetaskofalteringourmodesofinquiryintothisnewlylimitlesspurview,however,hasonlybegun.The subregions examined by this issuescontributors echo the privileging of wealthiernations such as Mexico, Argentina, Brazil overwhat Gustavo Buntinx has called the extremeperiphery: the less examined countries of theCaribbean and Central America as well asParaguay, Bolivia, and others in South America.20Theseexclusionsare innoway intentionalonmypart,butreflectthefactthereisstillplentyofworktobedoneassumingthatthenextgenerationofscholarswillindeedturntothesenations.21

19 For an overview of Red Conceptualismos del Surs activities, see SouthernConceptualisms Network, Micropolitics of the Archive, Field Notes 02, athttp://www.aaa.org.hk/FieldNotes/Details/1208asofJanuary19,2015.20 See Gustavo Buntinx, Communities of Sense/Communities of Sentiment:GlobalizationandtheMuseumVoidinanExtremePeriphery, inMuseum Frictions,eds. IvanKarp,CorinneA.Kratz,LynnSzwaja,andTomsYbarraFrausto(DurhamandLondon:DukeUniversityPress,2006),219246. 21EncouragingsignsthatthiswillhappenincludeMaraAmaliaGarca,HegemoniesandModelsofCulturalModernizationinSouthAmerica:TheParaguayBrazilCase,ARTMargins,Vol.3,No.1(February2014),2854.

Focusingonquestionsofmigration,LaurenKaplandetails Argentine artist Emilio Pettorutisformative period in Italy and close associationswithCubist,Futurist,andReturntoOrderavantgardes in Europe. Kaplan argues that Pettoruti isan international artist rather than exclusivelyArgentineorItalian,whichsheseesasaparalleltohis sampling from but never joining the variousmovements he encountered. Kaplans methodrecuperates a muchmaligned biographicalapproachtoarthistorythatvaluestheartists lifestory. In tracing networks, this is to some extentunavoidable,giventhatgeographicalmovementis,by nature, part of the artists biography.22 Whilenormally associated with more traditionalmethodssuchasconnoisseurship, thequestionofnational identity has new stakes for LatinAmerican art at present. Kaplans biographicalstorytelling conceals a more radical contention:thatthenetworkundoes,tosomeextent,theverycategoryof the LatinAmericanartist.Severalofthearticlesinthisissuepointtothistensionattheheartofthefieldanditspresuppositions.Natalia de la Rosas contribution examines arelated case of prewar modernism: how thecosmopolitan intellectual milieu of postWorldWar I in Barcelona inflected David AlfaroSiqueiross oneoff little magazine Vida-Americana, 1921. She argues that Siqueiros wasradicalized by the conceptual network andinternational circuits towhichhewas exposed inBarcelona,where, in parallel to Pettoruti in Italy,he came into contact with futurist and ultraistwriters as well as artists in the thrall of theReturn to Order that had gained popularity inFrance. These many influences helped shapeSiqueiross enormously influential manifestoThreeAppealsforaModernDirectiontotheNewGeneration of American Painters and Sculptors,whichwasfeaturedinVida-Americana.DelaRosapointsuptheironyofanexcentricperiphery 22 For studies that use biographical details to theorize migration or exile, seeStephanie Barron, ed.,Exiles + Emigrs: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler,exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1997), T.J.Demos, Duchamp's Bote-en-valise: Between Institutional Acculturation andGeopoliticalDisplacement,Grey Room,No.8(Summer,2002):637,TerryEagleton,Exiles and migrs: Studies in Modern Literature(NewYork:SchockenBooks,1970).SeealsoEdwardSaid,ReflectionsonExile,inReflections on Exile and Other Essays(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,2002),137149.

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8 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Vol. II, Issue 1 (Spring 2013)HighwaysoftheSouthARTL@S BULLETIN,Vol.2,Issue2(Fall2014)

the Mexican avantgardehaving one of its keystartingpointsfirstconstitutedinaEuropeancitybyacosmopolitannetworkofLatinAmericanandIberianintellectuals.German Silveira looks at postwar initiatives toarchive Latin American films, and the differentconceptionsoftheregionthateachsetinplace.Henarrates the transition from the SeccinLatinoamericanoof Fdration InternationaledesArchives du Film (FIAF), which was modeled ontheEuropeanorganizationtowhichitwaslinked,to lUnion des Cinmathques dAmrique Latine(UCAL), an attempt at a strictly regional,autonomous organization positioned againstdependence on foreign support or institutions.UCAL anticipates what Red Conceptualismos delSurhave called the micropoliticsof thearchive,which might be rephrased as the geopolitics ofthe archive: how a Latin American patrimonymight be identified and protected, what roleNorthern institutionsmighthave toplay(ornot),andhowdifferentLatinAmericancountriesmightwork together in a SouthSouth network built oncommoninterestandasharedpoliticalcinema.Drawn from her book on Argentine artists wholivedandworkedinParisduringthe1960s,IsabelPlantesarticleconsidersLeaLublinsmovementsbetween France, Argentina and Chile between1966 and 1974.23 The dramatic differencesbetween Lublins era and that of Pettoruti, whoshocked audiences when he first exhibitedmodernist painting in Buenos Aires in 1924, areevident in Lublins dexterous negotiation ofmultiple locales. She altered her work andsometimesmadesignificantcompromisesinordertobeshownindictatorialBuenosAiresandSantaFe, socialist Santiago, and Paris circa 1968. Oneonly need consider how Lublins signatureenvironment,Fluvio subtunal,1969,dialogueswithMarta Minujn and Rubn Santantonns La menesunda, 1965, for a sense of the complexdynamics of 1960s cosmopolitanism. Minujnsencounters with Nouveau Ralisme, happeningsand environments in Paris deeply informed her 23SeealsoIsabelPlante,Argentinos de Pars: Arte y viajes culturales durante los aos sesenta(BuenosAires:Edhasa,2013).

1965 environment in Buenos Aires, which wasusedbytheInstitutoTorcuatodiTellatopromoteArgentineartontheglobalstage.Lublinenhancedher similarly playful, interactive environment, inthiscaseinSantaFe,withcybernetics,whichwasat that time equally in vogue in Argentina andParis. Lublin certainly anticipates contemporaryartists who adapt their work to heterogeneousplatforms within a global panorama of biennialsandartfairs.AimIglesiasLukinexaminestheradicalizationoftheLatinAmericanartistcommunityinNewYorkatthestartof the1970sthroughContrabienal,anartistbookcumcataloguecumprotestagainstthe1971 Bienal de So Paulo. Her article sharescommon ground with Plantes in looking at thenascent conceptualism among expatriate LatinAmericanartistsatthistime.Thisisanexampleofa SouthSouth network that was nonethelessreliantonaNortherncentersuchasNewYorktocatalyze its associations and activismone thatwasinspiredinpartbythecityswoefultreatmentofLatinAmericanartists.24Herarticlefeaturesanincipient critique of Luis Camnitzers distinctionbetween a conceptualism produced on theperiphery and what he terms mainstreamconceptual artthe allegedly formalist andapoliticalconceptualpracticesofglobalcenters.Ifinarguably mainstream artists such as GordonMattaClark (in a rare indication of his Chileanbackground as the son of the artist Matta) couldhaveplayedsuchanimportantroleintheboycottoftheBienaldeSoPaulo,andContrabienalcouldhavebeenproduced in thenewcenterofglobalartproduction,wemightbegintoproduceamorecomplicated picture of the politicizedconceptualist impulse inthisperiod,onesharedbetween contexts and practitioners of divergentsensibilities.ContrabienalisalsopartandparcelofNew Yorks ability to gather together, andcollectivize, both Latin Americans and Latinos/as 24 There is, of course, no hard and fast rule that SouthSouth networks mustnecessarilyforminNortherncenters.GuatemalaCityandMexicoCity, forexample,served as gathering points for the regions leftists and intellectuals at differentmomentsinthepostwarperiodGuatemalapriortothemilitarycouporchestratedbytheUnitedFruitCompanyin1954,andD.F.inthe1960sand1970swhen,despiteits democratically elected governments tragic instances of repression againststudent protesters, the country sheltered many exiles from dictatorships in theSouthernCone.

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(born in the United States of Latin Americandecent), in itsproximity to initiatives suchas theMuseodelBarrio. Inacoauthoredstudy,CamilaMarojaandAbigailWinograd examine an instance of circulation andrevision of curatorialmodels for surveys of LatinAmericanmodernandcontemporaryart.Tosomeextent, this story is something of an inheritancebetween the era of the 1960s and 1970s and thepresentday expansion of the field. FredericoMorais, the Brazilian curator behind the firstMercosur Biennial, first began working in the1970s,and fromtheoutsethisgoalwas togrouptogether the art of different Latin Americancountries. His 1980 proposal,with AracyAmaral,to replace the Bienal de So Paulo with a LatinAmericanBiennial (that planned, interestingly, toinclude artists from other parts of the world aswell) was a direct predecessor of Mercosur. Yetonly two years earlier, at the AmaralcuratedBienal LatinoAmericana de So Paulo (whichreplaced a Brazilonly biennial, not theinternational Bienal de So Paulo itself), HlioOiticica, one of themost prominent artists in theinstitution, expressed his disdain for this sort ofgrouping, arguing in a statement that Brazil hasnothing to do with Peru.25 The proximity ofMoraissvectorialorganizationofthearthistoryof the region and Hctor Olea and Mari CarmenRamrezs consellations for theirHeterotopas / Inverted Utopias exhibitions exemplifies not onlyhowideasaresharedinthefield,buthowtheyaredebated and revised as they migrate betweencountries,venuesandtitles.MarojaandWinogradcall welcome attention to the curatorial networkshared by Morais and Ramrezone that hasredefinedboththecanonandthemarketforLatinAmericanmodernandpostwarart. Finally, in a contribution to ARTL@S BULLETINspracticeoriented Projects section, SarahPoppels interview of the Brazilian artist AnnaBella Geiger addresses the dramatic changes inpostwar Latin American art from the perspectiveof an individual. Detailing her own formation 25SeeIsobelWhitelegg,Brazil,LatinAmerica:TheWorldTheBienaldeSoPauloasaLatinAmericanQuestion,Third Text,Vol.26,No.1(January2012):131140.

withintheBrazilianacademy,Geigerpointstothecentral role that World War IIera migrationplayed for art that would emerge as late as the1960s and 1970s. In particular, Geiger identifiespedagogybothintermsofhereducatorsandherownambitionsasateacherinherownrightasadiscursivesitearoundwhichkeyideasinitiatedintheWesternEuropeancontextweredisseminatedinBrasliaandRiode Janeiro in the1950s.Thesepersonal reflections on the challenges of beingsimultaneously scholar, artist and mother enrichour reading of her 1970s mapbased works,providing a path beyond homogenizingassociationswithglobalconceptualisms.Geiger, to whom we extend our gratitude forparticipating in this issue, is one of many artistswho emerged in the 1950s and 1960s thatanticipate the contemporary, itinerant LatinAmerican artist, who may live between MexicoCityandBerlinorsomesuchcombinationofneocenters.InlookingtonetworksandcirculationsinLatinAmericanart,weexcavate theprehistoryofour biennialized present, in which Latin Americais,paradoxically, characterizedmore thaneverasa delimited, specific region and at the same timeinfiltrated more than ever by globalizedinstitutions and markets. To pinpoint thehierarchies of power, and therefore the politics,within this translocality is the task of this issueswriters, aswell as that of future art historians oftheregion.

Artl@s Bulletin2014

Introduction: Highways of the SouthDaniel R. QuilesRecommended Citation

Introduction Highways of the South

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