This editorial was published in number 4/5 (1984) of U-tópicos. Entornoalovisual, the Peruvian magazine. In the text, Gustavo Buntinx states that, while the Marxist proposal has yet to be carried out, Marxism itself tends to be distorted and reduced to a method, slogan, merchandise, and even an “ideology” to be “used by a new type of state.” The critic and curator refers to the invention of a pseudo-Marxist aesthetic that caters to “the political needs of bureaucracies.” The author believes that a radical rupture with the idealism of a certain kind of Marxism is taking place in Latin America and other non-Western regions. In his opinion, people apply their own terms to Marx’s legacy in an attempt to create a theory of reality as though it were a tool they can plug into a transformed version. In the case of art, the overflowing of the limits means transcending “the falsely specific aspects of the aesthetic in order to return its alienated experience to the social whole of which it is a part.” Any artistic practice carried out on a material support (even one with critical content) inevitably becomes “committed to the system’s goals of representation and profit.” Buntinx mentions proposals whose aim is to “create situations rather than works,” transitioning from “culture as a spectacle to culture as action.” To effectively reject its physical support, art must be subversively integrated into the social support from which it arises.         

U-tópicos: Entornoalovisual was a magazine that enjoyed a brief lifespan in Peru (only three issues were published, between 1982 and 1984). It was directed by the art historian Alfonso Castrillón (b. 1935), edited (beginning with the second issue) by the art critic Gustavo Buntinx (b. 1957), and designed by Jesús Ruiz Durand (b. 1940), a visual artist who was known for the graphic designs he produced for the General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75) government as part of its reappraisal of the country’s rural population and agricultural sector. The magazine took a social-Marxist approach to art and was part of the broader movement that emerged in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of the work of theorists such as the Peruvian Juan Acha (1916–1995) and the Argentinean Néstor García Canclini (b. 1939) (both of whom lived in Mexico), the Brazilian Mario Pedrosa (1900–1981), Mirko Lauer (b. 1947), and the abovementioned Castrillón.

Each issue of the magazine was devoted to a particular subject; the third issue (number 4/5), whose back cover is the subject of this document, focused on the practice of art as seen from the perspective of Marxist theory. This text, which was published as an editorial on the back cover of the magazine, discusses the essential concerns regarding the Marxist aesthetic, its reappraisal in Latin America, and the development of non-objective art as a potentially truly revolutionary art. This issue also includes other documents, such as a transcript of the debate about Marxist culture and aesthetics between the German intellectual Iring Fetscher (b. 1922) and Mirko Lauer, the Czech critic who lived in Peru. This issue also includes the ideas expressed by the Chilean collective CADA (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) [Art Actions Collective] in a text taken from Ruptura: Documento de arte (Santiago: Ed. Universitaria, 1982). Ruiz Durand includes a series of drawings and vignettes in the magazine, entitled A la fecha, casi 5,000 muertes y desapariciones documentadas (which refer to the armed struggle taking place in Peru since 1980).    

[See the ICAA digital archive for other articles published in the magazine U-tópicos: Entornoalovisual: “Águila, tigre, Che Guevara, Rosa de los Vientos,” by Gustavo Buntinx (doc. no. 1292492); “Afiches de la Reforma Agraria: otra experiencia trunca,” by Jesús Ruiz Durand (doc. no. 1139386); “Hacia una crítica marxista del marxismo. Entre Marx y la Estética,” by Gustavo Buntinx et al. (doc. no. 1292607); “La necesidad del arte,” by Juan Wilfredo et al. (doc. no. 130282); “López Antay: significación actual,” by Alfonso Castríllo Vizcarra (doc. no. 1136495); and “Por una cultura real,” by Hugo Salazar del Alcazar (doc. no. 1292528)].