[This article is] a debate between the German Marxist intellectual Iring Fetscher and the writer Mirko Lauer for the Peruvian magazine U-tópicos Entornoalovisual, moderated by Gustavo Buntinx, the editor of the magazine. This issue of the magazine was devoted to Marxist culture and aesthetics, modes of production, and societal transformation. The discussion covered the origins of the Marxist aesthetic. The initial needs of the Soviet State, which lacked a body of doctrine to be used as a mechanism for control in the field of art, led to the creation of a “Marxist aesthetic.” They discussed the possibility of applying Marxism (outside of the European environment in which it was created), accepting the possibility of independentevolutions in other circumstances. Latin America, for example, is successfully developing its own version of Marxist thinking. Lauer suggests that the disappearance of pre-capitalist societies could lead to new forms of production, not necessarily capitalist [but rather] determined by another kind of awareness. Returning to the subject of a Marxist aesthetic, Lauer clarifies Marx’s thinking regarding art; Marx posited that, in a communist society, art would be just another daily activity, so that the category of “artistic” as such would gradually disappear. Marx, therefore, anticipated many contemporary artists, such as Joseph Beuys, who eventually came to the same conclusion. Marx did not lay out an “aesthetic” point of view; he proposed theories about the nature of the division of labor. The debaters discussed art’s subordination to religious and political powers (from which it was freed during the Renaissance and the bourgeois revolution) and noted its inextricable dependency on the market in the modern era. Lauer reflected on the possibility of a Marxist practice in the field of art, suggesting that the main task “is to create a framework of categories that are relevant to the realities we work with today.” The most important thing is not to invent a Marxist “aesthetic that he didn’t care about” but to recognize the validity of his method as a guide for the creation of an “aesthetic of the real,” a fundamental element with which to imagine an “alternative-based” scientific knowledge.   

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, like the one that introduces the publication and the one about the Chilean art group CADA (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) [Art Actions Collective], 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. 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 that had taken place in Peru since 1980).      

The moderator of the debate between the German intellectual Iring Fetscher and Mirko Lauer for U-tópicos Entornoalovisual magazine was the historian, curator, and critic Gustavo Buntinx, who published articles in various cultural magazines in Lima in the 1980s under the pseudonym Sebastián Gris. He was one of the founders of SUR, Casa de Estudios del Socialismo (Lima) in 1986.

Iring Fetscher came to Lima in 1983 at the invitation of the Goethe Institut and the Universidad de Lima, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx. At that time, he was a professor of political science and social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt and taught at well-known international institutions such as the New School for Social Research in New York (1968–1969), the University of Tel Aviv (1972), the Wassenaar Dutch Institute for Advanced Studies (1972–1973), and Harvard University’s Institute of European Studies (1977). His scientific activities were focused on the study of Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx, with a particular interest in the various directions taken by European Marxism.

Mirko Lauer, for his part, is a distinguished researcher in the field of twentieth-century Peruvian art and literature. He is also a writer and the editor of a number of publications, including the cultural magazine Hueso Húmero, where he and the literary critic Abelardo Oquendo are the directors.

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.

[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); “Desbordar los límites” (anonymous) (doc. no. 1292558); “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)].