In this review Mirko Lauer discusses the Peruvian visual arts during the two decades spanning the 1960s to the 1980s, challenging the traditional classist view that the different aesthetic fields within the country’s cultural universe should be judged according to different criteria. He therefore seeks to “use an identical methodological approach to study Peru’s cultured art and its overshadowed [traditional] arts.” Lauer explores the various ways in which cultured art has approached traditional art, and discusses the differences between the two categories based on the logistics involved in their production, circulation, and consumption. He also comments on the transformation of a form of traditional art that is “in mutation” and the reconfigurations this process demands from those producing cultured art. Lauer believes that the overlaps between the two categories and the controversy sparked by the decision to award the 1975 National Culture Prize to Joaquín López Antay, the altarpiece artist from the Andean region of Peru, could contribute to “defeating the Andean versus ‘modern’ axis,” which could in turn lead to the “development of a different form of art” that could preserve traditional popular values “within a context that was neither feudal (which would pit them against the people) nor capitalist (that would simple sell them), but socialist.”   

In this review the Czech-born Peruvian writer and critic Mirko Lauer (b. 1947) discusses the debate sparked by the jury’s decision when awarding the 1975 National Culture Prize. Lauer supported some of the more radical policies of the General Juan Velasco Alvarado regime, including the decision to award the prize to López Antay. Lauer had also worked in the Agrarian Reform press office, where he wrote the copy for several important agrarian reform propaganda posters that were designed by the artist and designer Jesús Ruiz Durand (b. 1940). Lauer would return to the subject of the López Antay controversy in articles such as “Lo andino en el arte peruano” (Sociedad y política N° 8, Lima, February 1980) and Crítica de la artesanía. Plástica y sociedad en los Andes peruanos (Lima: DESCO, 1982), both of which were reprinted for this project.

An announcement on December 26, 1975 confirmed that the National Culture Prizes (for the 1973–74 biennium) had been awarded by the Peruvian government through the Instituto Nacional de Cultura to honor the greatest contributions to the development of Peruvian culture. The jury’s decision in the art category (which had traditionally included painting, sculpture, music, and architecture) ignited one of the most heated debates in the history of Peruvian art. The ensuing controversy underscored simmering tensions and suspicions regarding the cultural policies of the revolutionary government of the armed forces led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75). This administration claimed to be committed to a progressive agenda, a claim supported mainly by the Agrarian Reform of 1969 which was accompanied by the government’s enthusiastic attempt to glorify the image of the peasant population and lifestyle at the expense of other forms of cultural expression that were considered more “Western.” On this occasion the prize was awarded to Joaquín López Antay (1897–1981), who was chosen over well-known visual artists such as Carlos Quízpez Asín (1900–83) and Teodoro Núñez Ureta (1912–88) and the German-born academic musician Rodolfo Holzmann (1910–92).    

[For more on the subject of this event, see the following articles in the ICAA digital archive: by Alfonso Castrillón, Leslie Lee, and Carlos Bernasconi “Fundamentación para el dictamen por mayoría simple a favor del artista popular Joaquín López Antay” (doc. no. 1135896); by Alfonso Bermúdez “Premio a López Antay suscita controversias. Unos: consagración del arte popular. Otros: una cosa es arte y otra artesanía” (doc. no. 1135879); by Francisco Abril de Vivero, Luis Cossio Marino, and Alberto Dávila “Artistas plásticos cuestionan premio” (doc. no. 1135960); and (anonymous) “‘No todos nos quieren ni en Lima ni en Ayacucho’: así comentó sobre cuestionamiento a premio” (doc. no. 1135930)].