Art and Politics

This Thesis is one of the few studies that focuses exclusively on the student experience at the Bauhaus school of art, architecture, and design in Germany.  Themes include the Bauhaus students' involvement with mysticism, communism, and Nazism.

Historically, “queer” was the slur used against those who were perceived to be or made to feel abnormal. Beginning in the 1980s, “queer” was reappropriated and embraced as a badge of honor. While queer draws its politics and affective force from the history of non-normative, gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities, it is not equivalent to these categories, nor is it an identity. Rather, it offers a strategic undercutting of the stability of identity and of the dispensation of power that shadows the assignment of categories and taxonomies. Artists who identify their practices as queer today call forth utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships, relationships, loves, and communities.

Rather than a book of queer theory for artists, this is a book of artists’ queer tactics and infectious concepts. By definition, there can be no singular “queer art.” Here, in the first Documents of Contemporary Art anthology to be centered on artists’ writings, numerous conversations about queer practice are brought together from diverse individual, social and cultural contexts. Together these texts describe and examine the ways in which artists have used the concept of queer as a site of political and institutional critique, as a framework to develop new families and histories, as a spur to action, and as a basis from which to declare inassimilable difference.

Is it trivial, or perhaps even irresponsible, to explore aesthetic themes at a time when the world is engulfed by war, genocide, terrorism, poverty, climate change and financial turmoil? Why indulge in painting, poetry or music when lives and livelihoods are at stake? Can we really afford to entertain questions of taste while concrete political action is urgently required?

This book offers a passionate but systematically sustained defence of an aesthetic engagement with world politics. It argues that aesthetic sources can offer alternative insight: a type of reflective understanding that emerges not from applying the analytical skills that are central the social sciences, but from cultivating a more open-ended level of creativity and sensibility about the political. We then might be able to appreciate what we otherwise cannot even see: perspectives or people excluded from prevailing purviews, for instance, or the emotional nature and consequences of political events. Drawing on detailed case studies that range from Stalinist Russia to Cold War Germany and contemporary Korea, the author compellingly demonstrates how the poetic imagination can help us understand – and perhaps even shape - some of the most difficult political challenges.

Catálogo de la controversial exposición retrospectiva de León Ferrari, calificada como blasfemia por el arzobispo de Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, actual Papa Francisco. Buenos Aires, Centro Cultural Recoleta (CCR), 2004

Con textos de Noé Jitrik, Néstor García Canclini, Luis Camnitzer y Aracy Amaral

Catalog of the controversial León Ferrari's retrospective exhibition, described as blasphemy by the archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, current Pope Francis. Buenos Aires, Centro Cultural Recoleta (CCR), 2004

This study examines artists’ approaches to social change in New York City from 1966 to 1976. During this period, overlapping communities of artists and art professionals sought means of providing a social meaning and purpose for their practice – one that addressed the political ruptures of the 1960s and 1970s, and challenged what was perceived as a classed, elitist, and socially disengaged art establishment. In doing so, they produced politically motivated art and performance, while participating in active protest, initiating museum reform, and engaging in community arts and education projects. While these developments reflect the national context, the thesis argues that they need to be understood within their local setting. As artists responded to political and social concerns, they did so with reference to their own local conditions as both artists and residents of New York City. Tracing these impulses into the 1970s, the thesis also challenges scholarly periodizations that present 1969 as an endpoint for social movements initiated in the 1960s. Within this framework, the art and actions of New York art-protesters reflect unique and innovative approaches to activism and social change that both appropriated aspects of the avant-garde tradition, and anticipated future modes of political radicalism.

While the art of wood engraving existed in China as early as the 9th century, Lu Xun (1881-1936) was the first to examine foreign woodcut prints and recognize the effective potential of using the medium to serve needs in China, as propaganda and to promote social change.  He is considered the father of the Modern Woodcut Movement of the 1930s and 1940s and a leading figure in modern Chinese literature and education. Through his lectures and writings, Lu Xun called for a new form of art that gave voice and passion to the people: the woodcut print. This paper not only discusses his direct role in the WC movement but also the art societies and artists Lu Xun supported. Additionally, it delves into the adversary Lu Xun faced as he took on the mission of promoting and publicizing foreign-inspired woodcut prints, which sought to improve, awaken, and unite Chinese society.

Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (eds.) Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique (London: Mayfly, 2009)
‘Institutional critique’ is best known through the critical practice that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by artists who presented radical challenges to the museum and gallery system. Since then it has been pushed in new directions by new generations of artists registering and responding to the global transformations of contemporary life. The essays collected in this volume explore this legacy and develop the models of institutional critique in ways that go well beyond the field of art. Interrogating the shifting relations between ‘institutions’ and ‘critique’, the contributors to this volume analyze the past and present of institutional critique and propose lines of future development. Engaging with the work of philosophers and political theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno and others, these essays reflect on the mutual enrichments between critical art practices and social movements and elaborate the conditions for politicized critical practice in the twenty-first century.

En 1939 tuvo lugar el conocido desenlace de la guerra civil española y el inicio entre los derrotados de un éxodo masivo, que afectó en enorme grado a la intelectualidad y la creatividad que venían creciendo con brillantez en la España de las dos últimas décadas. México, que también estaba forjando una fuerte personalidad cultural, fue uno de los más destacados y nutridos refugios para estos derrotados, que fueron encontrando en el país posibilidades de acomodo y desarrollo profesional. Al cumplirse setenta y cinco años de ese río de sangre española que hacía su aparición en el entorno mexicano, volvemos sobre los artistas que incluyó este peregrinaje y su inscripción en una nueva escena artístico-cultural.
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/116458

3 Der Netzwerker brilliert dadurch, dass er scheinbar mühelos neue Verbindungen knüpft -ja, dass er die ganze Welt als potentielle Erweiterung seines Netzwerkes sieht. Für ihn ist jeder kontaktierbar, 2 er kennt keine Grenzen. Sein Erfolg zeigt sich gerade darin, ehemals als getrennt oder gar als unvereinbar geltende Bereiche zusammenzubringen. Die Verknüpfung ist sein Existenzmodus: Durch ihn strömen Informationen und Kontakte, die er ständig zu vermehren sucht. Dazu muss der Netzwerker selbst zum Medium der Verknüpfung werden. Offenheit ist sein Gebot. Ein Netzwerker soll für alles empfänglich sein, möglichst vorurteilslos handeln und flexibel denken. Dieser Anspruch schlägt sich auch auf seine emotionale Konstitution nieder: Weder schüchtern noch zu sehr von sich eingenommen soll er sein. Er darf keine Angst haben, zurückgewiesen zu werden, und darf nicht zu stolz sein, einen Kontakt zu initiieren. Denn innere Vorbehalte könnten den beständigen Fluss von immer neuen Verknüpfungen ins Stocken bringen. Der Netzwerker -und mehr noch, die netzwerkförmige Organisation -entwickelt eine monokulturelle Kompetenz der unendlichen Vernetzung. Er folgt einem unumstößlichen Diktat, Netze nicht nur zu pflegen, sondern sie beständig zu vergrößern, um selbst zum gut positionierten »obligatory passage point« zu werden.

A lecture given at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway, on 23 November 2015. The analysis of the "legendary" French 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre and its reenactment in 2014; the globalization defined as a world-wide spreading of neo-liberal economy and ideology.

Ces dernières années, dans le domaine de la participation citoyenne aux politiques de la ville, bon nombre de chercheurs en philosophie politique et en sciences sociales ont plaidé pour un décentrement du discours et de l’argumentation, pour une communication démocratique plus « inclusive », plus « sensible », davantage en prise sur les environnements, sur les dimensions expérientielle et matérielle des problèmes urbains. Le message semble avoir été reçu. Visites de groupes dans les quartiers, reportages vidéo ou photo, expositions de dessins, jeux de construction, fonds de cartes à recouvrir d’icônes et de gommettes autocollantes, ateliers visant à imaginer « la ville de ses rêves », activités de théâtre-action, jeux de rôle et jeux de plateau, etc., sont en effet devenus des incontournables de la « boîte à outils » des professionnels de la participation. Dans cet article, plutôt que de nous intéresser aux différents « outils » dans leurs spécificités, nous voudrions interroger plus généralement la prolifération des méthodes cadrant les contributions citoyennes dans le domaine de l’image ou de l’imagination, et repliant la parole ordinaire dans ses fonctions d’ostension et de figuration, c’est-à-dire dans ses fonctions « indexiques » et « iconiques » (Charles Sanders Peirce). L’hypothèse qui nous guide est celle-ci : en lieu et place d’un enrichissement des processus de communication, on assisterait plutôt à un véritable « tournant sémiotique » dans les pratiques de démocratie participative ; un tournant à travers lequel l’image profane en viendrait peu à peu à se substituer au discours citoyen et à éluder, avec lui, les prétentions d’articulation, de problématisation, de synthèse et de généralisation chez les « participants ordinaires ».

This article deals w ith a topicÐ poetryÐ that is often considered to be of marginal interest to politics. To prove otherwise is the article' s principle taskÐ a task that is pursed through an engagement w ith Pablo Neruda' s work. Nobel laureate, international diplomat and political activist in one, Neruda reveals how poetry can enter the political process and, perhaps more importantly, turn into a critical historical memory. To engage political struggles a poet must be as accessible as possible. Neruda w as well aware of this necessity, w hich is w hy he w rote in the language of everyday life. But he was also aw are of the need to break through existing linguistic habits, for it is through these very conventions, inaudible and seemingly harmless as they are, that practices of domination become objecti® ed. The article discusses both the theoretical issues that are at stake in this paradox ical tension and the more speci® c attempts Neruda undertook to engage political issues related to fascism, imperialism and class domination.

per l'inaugurazione della statua di Leone X in Campidoglio 319 ANGELA QUATTROCCHI L'innalzamento della statua onorifica di Leone X in Campidoglio: committenti, esecutori e collocazioni 333 TOMO II LE ARTI, LA CORTE, LA CITTÀ FLAVIA CANTATORE Il cardinale Ferdinando Ponzetti committente di architettura nella Roma di Leone X 363 RENATA SAMPERI-PAOLA ZAMPA Leone X a Castel Sant'Angelo: le nuove scale d'accesso alla residenza superiore 387 MICAELA ANTONUCCI Leone X e Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane nella Roma medicea 415 GIOVANNA SAPORI La decorazione dei palazzi a Roma al tempo di Leone X. Da Raffaello a Perino del Vaga 435 LORENZO FINOCCHI GHERSI La bottega di Raffaello nella Sala delle Prospettive alla Farnesina 459 ANNA CAVALLARO Il luogo delle Muse di Leone X: la villa della Magliana e le sue decorazioni 477 COSTANZA BARBIERI Lucrezia e Leone X, fra paragoni visivi e letterari 501 STEFANIA PASTI Leone X e Raffaello: diplomazia e politica nella committenza artistica 519 STEFANIA PASTI

Chapter in Post-Dance, Edited by Danjel Andersson, Mette Edvarsdsen and Mårten Spångberg. MDT, 2017. ISBN 978-91-983891-0-4. Based on materials from the workshop ‘Nor Culture Nor Art’, with Mårten Spångberg and Vanessa Ohlraum, at Learning Plays. A School of School, Impulse Theatre Festival in collaboration with Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Mülheim/Ruhr, 18–25 June, 2016. A previous version of the article first appeared in F. Malzacher, L. Mestre and E. Van Campenhout (Eds.), Turn Turtle, Turn! Performing Urgency #2, House on Fire Publications, 2016.

This document critically reviews the theories of the avant-garde of both the Left and the Right put forward between the 1920s – the time of the vigorous assertion of the avant-garde – and the late 1970s – the beginning of the conservative turn led by Regan and Thatcher and reflected in cultural, change. The focus is on modern autonomous art and the historical avant-garde art movements. Art is first of all put in its place by locating it in the context of the institutional framework of modern society. This includes historical references to the emergence of the modern concept of art and of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics. The review of the theories opens with analyses of Ortega y Gassett and Poggioli’s proposals dating from 1925 and 1968 respectively. Important among the theories of the Left are those of the representatives of Critical Theory such as Lukács, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse and Bürger. Among the Right, both the German and American Neo-conservatives are considered, Gehlen, Ritter and Marquard representing the former and Bell that latter. The analysis closes with final reflections on the concepts of the autonomy of art and of the avant-garde which become comprehensible only within the context of rationalised and disenchanted (i.e. disillusioned and enlightened) modern society.

The Italian Futurist movement has come back into vogue with its centenary in 2009 and the landmark exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that ran through 2014. The cultural influence of this movement on the modern era is undisputed, whether we look at paintings, literature, poetry, sculpture, architecture, music, or advertising. It is also undisputed that this avant-garde movement was deeply involved in the politics of both liberal and Fascist Italy. Futurist politics were characterized by a pronounced nationalism and imperialism, and were known for the mantra that war was the 'world's only hygiene' .

Pour qui entreprend une histoire transnationale des avant-gardes picturales au XXe siècle, la période que couvre ce deuxième tome, de 1918 à 1945, est la plus périlleuse. Car l'auteur doit se colleter avec le grand récit dicté par les avant-gardes elles-mêmes. Tout commence-t-il avec Dada? Dès 1910 s'observait la remise en cause symbolique de Paris par les nouvelles générations dans de nouveaux centres : Berlin, Munich, Londres, Bruxelles, Cologne, Moscou, New York. Dada, certes né dans les charniers de la guerre, fut plus encore issu de l'histoire de la modernité artistique et littéraire depuis les années 1850. Les avant-gardes furent-elles idéologiquement progressistes? Les acteurs ne cessèrent de négocier entre les logiques révolutionnaires, leurs ambitions nationales et celle de continuer tant bien que mal à se faire connaître sur la scène internationale. Loin que Paris fût la capitale unique, d'une ville à l'autre, et en particulier à Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Vienne, Moscou, mais aussi à Amsterdam, Bucarest, Zagreb, Barcelone et jusqu'à São Paulo, Mexico et au Japon, apparurent régulièrement de nouveaux groupes décidés à se faire une place dans le courant du modernisme. En revanche, l'entre-deux-guerres fut une période de marchandisation aboutie de l'innovation artistique. Dans les pratiques et les débats des avant-gardes, une problématique était récurrente : quelle place faire au marché, surtout en cas de succès?

The often scandalous and outrageous actions, paintings, and literary oeuvres the surrealists produced and presented to the public were mostly directed against the society of their fathers—more precisely, the social values and morals of the bourgeoisie, which, in the eyes of the surrealists, had provoked the terrors of World War I. In their opinion, society had to change, to undergo a radical transformation, in order to prevent such an event from happening ever again. Only through absolute freedom could society metamorphose into something transcending the past terrors. During the 1920s the surrealists lived their dream, experimenting with literature, art, politics, and philosophy. Everything seemed possible. Then, during the 1930s, the theories defended by the group seemed to fail. Unrest and political tension defined Europe. The surrealists had to watch in horror the development of something a little too familiar: the terrors of another World War that lurked on the horizon. In that respect, the last surrealist show in Paris, the Exposition internationale du surréalisme that took place in January 1938, reflected the anxiety of a group of artists caught between the terror of the past war and of the one that had yet to come.

In recent years " bioart " has been lauded in the social sciences for its creative engagements with the ontological stakes of new forms of biotechnical life in-the-making. In this paper I push further to explore the ontogenetic potentials of bioart-encounters to generate new capacities for thinking and perceiving the nonhuman agencies imbricated in the becoming of subjects. To explore this potential I stage an encounter with Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of individuation, highlighting three implications for theorisations of the constitution and transformation of subjects. First, Simondon forces us to rethink the subject in terms of its transductive emergence from preindividual processes, and its metastable susceptibility to ongoing transformations. Second, he substitutes voluntarist conceptions of thought with an involuntarist primacy of material encounters as the conditions for novel individuations. Finally, I argue that Simondon enables a thinking of the politics of the (bio)art-encounter in terms of its ontogenetic capacity to materially produce, rather than merely represent, new subjects and worlds.

urban space, art, and social movements 2 2 Rebel streets : urban space, art, and social movements Art's presence in the urban space is dynamic and interactive that communicates the complex forms of globalization, cultural hybridity, and plurality in contemporary daily life-where we experience politics. The new forms of agencies and strategies of urban creativity in the form of graffiti, wall paintings, yarn bombing, stickers, urban gardening, street performances, tactical art, creative campaigns and theatrical actions-among others-demand an active spectatorship and have a growing power to renegotiate space for new forms of political participation in the urban space.

Our basic premise is that the art and its discourses should be self-validating by virtue of what they are and what they do, not by a reliance on the justifications of the artists’ personal wishes, which first of all are unavailable to anyone who does not know the artist, and secondly reduces the work to a private rather than a public concern. We presume that art is a public matter. But changes in contemporary art and its operating conditions may require us to rethink what theory is doing, and how; and whether its role in relation to developing art
practices may need to be revised. This will of course affect not just what is taught as theory in art schools, but also how it is taught.

on collaborative art practices in the interview with Piotr Juskowiak and Agata Skórzyńska Polskie tłumaczenie wywiadu ukazało się w: "Kultura Współczesna" 2013, nr 2 / The Polish translation of the interview was published in: "Kultura Współczesna" 2013 vol.2 Piotr Juskowiak, Agata Skórzyńska: We would like to begin our conversation with a question about the situatedness of your book. Would the current changes that we're observing in the field of art have been possible without parallel transformations taking place in the field of capitalist mode of production? We are thinking here of processes such as the dematerialization of economy, growing importance of cultural factors, knowledge and communication, deregulation, flexibilization and precarization of work etc. Grant H. Kester*: I'm not sure I would agree that the factors you mention (the "dematerialization" of the economy, flexible forms of labor, etc.) are necessarily a recent phenomenon. Post-Fordist forms of production emerged over fifty years ago, and the conservative sociologist Daniel Bell famously identified many of these same issues in 1973

The last and least discussed crisis we recognize today – after the crisis of democracy, the financial crisis, the environmental crisis, the crisis in education etc. … is the crisis of the social imaginary. Perhaps the social imaginary doesn't appear in public debates to be at all in decline, because we haven't been aware of having (or losing) it….

Little attention has been given in political science analyses of communist-era Romania to the relationships between visual artists and the secret police. In this article, I attempt to address this lacuna in our understanding of the interactions between the state and artists by presenting two forms of collaboration of visual artists during the last two decades of Romanian communism: the artists’ involvement in the ideological project of the communist party and their “collaboration” with the secret police. In addition, I also examine the ways in which artists have contributed a posteriori to our understandings of the communist experience with their artworks. I offer detailed examinations of the cases of three visual artists. The approach I have adopted includes analyses of interviews with two artists who represent two opposing cases and examinations of the files that were kept on them by state surveillance organs, so as to provide a new, multifaceted perspective on the relationships between artists and the communist regime. I contend that the study of artistic artifacts can supplement traditional sources for political science analyses of the communist past and provide a more nuanced perspective on the period. The article shows that imposing artistic dogmas is not simply a top-down process, but one resulting from complex interactions between different institutional and individual actors.

Democracy and tragedy were intrinsically linked during the time of the Athenian city-state. But though vital at the time, this symbiosis is largely forgotten today. We address this puzzling silence. What was it about democracy that encouraged, even needed, the ascendancy of tragedy? Why did the mass performances of tragedy play so central a role in the democratic polis of Athens? We address these questions not as historians or philologists, but as scholars of contemporary international relations. Our hope, in particular, is to uncover whether the Greek experiment, radical and short-lived as it was, can provide us with clues about how to extend democracy to the global realm, which increasingly shapes people's lives but so far lacks mechanisms for democratic participation and accountability. We explore how the paradoxical plots that lie at the heart of tragedies remind us -as they did the Greeks -that no order is ever complete or void of contradictions; that democracy is not about complete control but about recognising the limits of politics and dealing with the forces of chaos and change. We illustrate the issues at stake -along with their relevance for contemporary international relations -through tragedy's so-called multivocal form, which brought into the public realm a multitude of voices and issues that could not otherwise be heard in democratic deliberations.

En 1966, le Black Power Movement, qui influence de nombreux mouvements sociaux de libération, signale un changement de paradigme dans l’activisme aux États-Unis désigné par la terminologie de « politiques de l’identité ». Si, en affirmant la nécessité d’une analyse politique des discriminations, celles-ci en appellent à de profonds changements dans la société, elles imprègnent aussi les arts visuels et génèrent des mutations importantes quant à la définition de l’art et au rôle de l’artiste aux États-Unis. En s’emparant des politiques de l’identité, les artistes incorporent leurs engagements dans leurs pratiques, créent des formes d’expression originales et remettent en cause la validité du canon. Par une étude de cas sur la Californie entre 1966 et 1990, combinée à une approche chronologique et comparative, ce travail de recherche explore les rencontres entre les arts visuels et les politiques de l’identité, et plus largement la relation entre art et politique dans un contexte culturel moins exploré que la scène artistique de New York, afin d’analyser en quoi elles s’avèrent essentielles pour saisir les pratiques artistiques postérieures et les discours sur les identités. Cette thèse en histoire de l’art, pour laquelle les études culturelles et les théories féministes ont constitué des apports fondamentaux, propose ainsi d’établir des convergences artistiques autour de thématiques liées à des problématiques centrales des politiques de l’identité et, dans le même temps, à souligner de nouvelles approches dans le domaine de l’art, de la politique et de la théorie. //

In 1966, the Black Power Movement, which influenced numerous other social liberation movements, signaled a paradigm shift in American activism designated by the term “identity politics.” By affirming the necessity for a political analysis of discrimination, identity politics called for profound changes in society, which also influenced the visual arts, resulting in important changes regarding the definition of art and the role of the artist in American society. By drawing on this new politics of identity, these artists incorporated activism into practice, creating original forms of expression and challenging the validity of the canon. This research project explores the encounters between visual arts and identity politics, as well as the broader relationship between art and politics, through a chronological and comparative case study of California from 1966 to 1990—a cultural context much less studied than the New York scene—in order to determine its importance for later artistic practices and discourses on identity. This thesis in Art History, to which cultural studies and feminism have made fundamental contributions, therefore proposes to establish artistic convergences around themes linked to the central premises of identity politics while at the same time highlighting new approaches in the fields of art, politics and theory.

Josep Renau (Valencia 1907-Berlín 1982) es, sin duda, uno de los grandes creadores del arte español contemporáneo, pero también uno de sus artistas más singulares, polifacéticos y comprometidos. En ámbitos artístico-culturales muy diferentes, compaginó con clara conciencia y dedicación la pintura, el muralismo, la ilustración, el diseño gráfico y el fotomontaje, conformando una brillante y atractiva trayectoria vital y creativa, que es también la de una progresión. Progresión, por un lado, respecto al compromiso y el activismo socio-político del artista –esencialmente ligados a la línea comunista– y, por otro, respecto al vínculo de su plástica con la renovación y la vanguardia; pero, igualmente, condicionada por las diferentes situaciones de los tres países que enlazó su vida, su creatividad y su peregrinaje: España, México y la otrora República Democrática Alemana. Lugares éstos que también enmarcan las principales etapas del recorrido aquí ofrecido: la etapa formativa en su Valencia natal (1907-1931), la concienciada etapa republicana y bélica (1931-1939), la productiva etapa del exilio mexicano (1939-1958) y, finalmente, la comprometida y esperanzada etapa berlinesa (1958-1982), plena -tras retomar el contacto con España en 1976- de reencuentros, proyectos y actuaciones en el entorno cultural de la transición.
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/76554

Kentridge’s fêted process of animated drawing was developed in 1989, the same year that ushered in the seismic political changes that finally ended apartheid. This essay locates the artist’s studio processes within South Africa’s political processes of change; it also relates Kentridge’s ambulatory and sequentialized process to his streams of processions, and to local imagery that deployed the visual syntax of striding figures as allegories of political change. Kentridge’s timely embrace of the dynamism of animation – a medium that speaks metaphorically of change – suggests how his unorthodox animation process is embedded in political processes of revolutionary change.

El presente artículo propone una lectura respecto de la construcción de la tradición del grabado en la Argentina, sobre sus convenciones, los posicionamientos de algunos de sus artistas paradigmáticos y sobre los espacios de visibilidad que operaron en la conformación de un canon durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Se considera que en el proceso de reconocimiento de esta disciplina fueron destacadas determinadas modalidades, funciones y usos de la imagen gráfica, y también resultaron relevantes algunos nombres en particular ; a partir de estas referencias se fue construyendo una tradición selectiva. El trabajo considera la cuestión de los recursos técnicos e iconográficos, y su inscripción en determinados circuitos de circulación como factores que, en forma conjunta y mutuamente implicados, convergieron para sustanciar esta tradición en la que fue privilegiado su carácter de arte de crítica social.

This article proposes an interpretation on the construction of tradition in argentine print, about its conventions, the positioning of some paradigmatic artists and the spaces of visibility which operated in the configuration of its canon during the first decades of the XXth Century. In the process of defining the discipline, the functions and uses of the graphic image, some procedures were highlighted and some particular names stood out. In terms of selective tradition, these initial references shaped that canon. Thus, this work considers the problem of technique and iconographic resources and their insertion in circulation networks as factors that, jointly and mutually involved, converged to support this tradition where print as social critique acquired a privileged role.

This essay aims to conduct a close, cross-disciplinary examination of the concept of “performativity” in interwar Italy, that is, the uses made of the body and the ways in which it was represented both in civil and political life, which the regime highly aestheticized, as well as in the production of visual culture, which was driven by a desire to draw on real-life for the sake of a total art. The phenomena and the works examined reveal certain recurring models to which the body is likened at different points: the machine, the monument, and the mannequin. Rather than an embodiment of the new man, these “bodies” served as surrogates, containers assigned with a projection of society which at times was in line with Fascist propaganda, at other times against it.