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¿Entre lo popular y lo moderno? Alternativas pretendidas o reales en la joven plástica peruana
1983In this essay, Gustavo Buntinx analyzes emerging Peruvian art, seeing it as part of a process that began twenty or twenty-five years earlier. He speculates on “what were or claimed to be alternatives in Peruvian high art during Fernando Belaúnde [...]ICAA Record ID: 1143012 -
[Águila, tigre, Che Guevara, Rosa de los Vientos...]
1984On the back cover of number 4/5 of the magazine U-tópicos: Entornoalovisual (Lima, 1984), a brief anonymous article discusses the iconographic scenes painted on truck mudguards. The writer points out that, despite being ignored “by everything that [...]ICAA Record ID: 1292492 -
[Amaioria das peças de escultura popular...]
1944This text by architect Luis Saia discusses the collection of popular sculptures he put together during his trip to northern and northeastern Brazil in 1938. The architect presents a thesis on the African origin of the “miracle,” the name used for [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110430 -
[Digno es de notarse que mientras mas pura es la Raza...]
1926This text underscores the originality, expression and strength of the works created at the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting], arguing that these qualities are the product of racial purity and that as mestizaje [racial [...]ICAA Record ID: 825947 -
[En presencia del fenómeno observado en las escuelas libres de pintura...]
1926This text presents the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting] and its creative production as evidence that Mexican children have a natural artistic disposition. It also associates this disposition with their indigenous blood [...]ICAA Record ID: 825942 -
[excertos de] Para nunca esquecer: negras memórias: memórias de negros
2002This text consists of excerpts from the catalogue for the exhibition Para nunca esquecer. Negras memórias/ Memórias de Negros, held at the Museu Histórico Nacional (in Rio de Janeiro in 2001). It includes scores of texts and poems by writers who [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110530 -
[Letter] 1937 June 9, São Paulo, Brasil [to] Luiz da Câmara Cascudo
1937In this letter, the writer Mário de Andrade critiques the researcher Luiz da Câmara Cascudo’s articles about folklore. He notes, however, the latter’s rigorous, scientific approach to the subject. The letter mentions (though not explicitly) [...]ICAA Record ID: 1084833 -
[Nome : Abelardo da Hora - Escultor, além de desenhista...]
1982In his testimony, the artist Abelardo da Hora (1924–2014) mixes autobiography with episodes that refer to the organization of the Sociedade de Arte Moderna (SAM) in Recife and the workshop known as the Atelier Coletivo as well as the Movimento de [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110514 -
15 artistas brasileiros: colocando dobradiças na arte contemporânea
1996According to Tadeu Chiarelli, contemporary international art has moved away from personal expression and embraced an industrial aesthetic. This is the result of a serial, modular logic that rejects any attempt to stress the physical and chemical [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110500 -
A contemporaneidade e o consumo
1966This essay by Oswaldo Louzada Filho speculates on the experience of a pedestrian who is converted into an observer by visiting a contemporary art gallery, describing the movement of that individual through the exhibition space, as well as the [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111177 -
A querela do Brasil
1976The introduction to this essay rejects the possibility of defining Brazilian art by clearly describing the parameters of such a process which, usually, refers to cultural policies based on folkloric and anecdotal visions of national reality. [...]ICAA Record ID: 1074928 -
Acontece que êle é baiano
1968This article by Décio Bar is an interview with singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso; it includes a biography, as well as reflections on the turn that Brazilian culture took in the 1950s and 1960s. This was the peak of “the extremely optimistic [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110418 -
Afrikanische Religiosität in Brasilien; Kunst und Afro-Brasilidade = African religiosity in Brazil; Afro-Brazilian art = Religiosidade africana no Brasil; Arte afro-brasilidade
1994The catalogue for Arte e religiosidade afro-brasileira, the exhibition held at the Kunstverein Museum, in Frankfurt in 1994, introduces the work of contemporary artists of African descent or whose work is inspired by African culture. The exhibition [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110519 -
Ainda o Abstracionismo
1949The critic and visual artist Waldemar Cordeiro defends the true language of the arts—the one that, in his opinion, is “real”—in which the visual elements present themselves (to themselves) as lines and colors, making not the slightest [...]ICAA Record ID: 1085351 -
Amazônia reinventada
1998This text by writer Benedito Nunes is a comparison of two works, both of them urban scenes from his collection: a painting by Emmanuel Nassar and a photograph by Gratuliano Bibas. Drawing on the author’s background in philosophy, the text is a [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111165 -
Anteprojeto do Manifesto do Centro Popular de Cultura, redigido em março de 1962
1962The first draft of a seven-part manifesto, this document declares that the aesthetic principles of the intellectuals and artists tied to the Centro Popular de Cultura (CPC) are based on the social problems facing Brazil, issues connected to material [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110413 -
Antonio Berni et les aventures de Ramona Montiel
1963French art critic Miguel Ragon writes about Antonio Berni’s engraving technique, as well as the question of narrative in his work with regard to the development of his chief characters: Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel [...]ICAA Record ID: 780155 -
Art in Latin America : permanencia de lo pintoresco
1994Aracy Amaral discusses the different approaches taken by curators of exhibitions of Latin American art in Europe and North America. She analyzes the various reviews published in the British press on the occasion of the Art in Latin America exhibition [...]ICAA Record ID: 807837 -
Arte : Antonio Berni (1922-1965)
1965Horacio Safons reports on Antonio Berni’s exhibition at the Centro de Artes Visuales (Buenos Aires, 1965) at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, principally analyzing his Ramona Montiel series from a formal perspective and with regard to the nature of [...]ICAA Record ID: 779853 -
Arte e videotexto
1983In this groundbreaking essay, Julio Plaza provides the reader with an overview of what was at the time, the very recent “video text” technology featured in a special section of the seventeenth São Paulo Biennial, a section that Plaza curated. He [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111090 -
Caranguejos com cérebro
1994This manifesto is divided into three sections that reflect the swamp zones [“mangues”] encircling Recife (the capital of the state of Pernambuco): (1) Mangue, the concept; (2) Manguetown, the city; (3) Mangue, the scene. (1) The text maintains [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111342 -
Carne seca
1979Set designer Flávio Império explains that his search for balance ensues between chance and unpredictability. In his view, the “dried meat” banners form part of that process. He recounts how he found those stained pieces of fabric (manufacturing [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110446 -
Cesar Trasobares
1991Cesar Trasobares opens his artist statement by noting that while he was a student at different universities in Florida, he painted Cuban subjects and called the works examples of “Cubanistic Pop Art.” He then discusses the reasons involved for [...]ICAA Record ID: 800304 -
Coleção Arthur Ramos
1987The catalogue for the “Coleção Arthur Ramos” was organized by the anthropologist and museologist Raul Lody, who was with the Universidade Federal do Ceará. The pieces in the collection are made of the following materials: wood, Flanders sheet [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110525 -
Coleção culto afro-Brasileiro: um documento do candomblé na cidade do Salvador
1985This is the catalogue that describes the collection of Afro-Brazilian religious art that is housed at the Fundação Cultural do Estado da Bahia. The text, written from an anthropological perspective, is by the museologist Raul Lody, who was also the [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110527 -
Corollario brasileiro
1930In this text, French-Swiss architect and urbanist Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, recounts the experiences he had during his first trip to Brazil (1929). He describes the aerial view of Rio de Janeiro and the “favelas”—the [...]ICAA Record ID: 780696 -
Cultura e política, 1964-1969 : algums esquemas
1978In this essay, Roberto Schwarz discusses the growing prevalence of leftist politics in Brazilian cultural circles after the military coup of 1964 (which kept its grip on power for two decades). He confirms that, the right wing military dictatorship [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110509 -
Cultura posta em questão
1965This article suggests a definition of “popular culture” that acknowledges the existence of two separate groups: one that is removed from the general population (because it is focused on questions to be addressed through art), and another that is [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110364 -
Del niño y su estado de gracia
1931In early 1929, García Moroto left Spain for New York, and later embarked for Cuba. Once in Cuba, he gave a lecture at the Spanish Embassy in Havana on November 6, 1929, on the occasion of the fifth exhibition of Cuba’s Escuelas de Acción Artí [...]ICAA Record ID: 780220 -
Dieux d´Afrique
1954In this book, the French photographer and ethnologist Pierre (Fatumbi) Verger documents, in words and pictures, a number of cults and divinities that are worshiped in African countries (Nigeria and Benin) and in the city of Salvador, in the Brazilian [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110539 -
Editorial : Hacia una cultura popular
1973This article acknowledges the accomplishments of the policy of producing public events—such as the Contacta 72 and Inkari festivals—instituted by the self-styled Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas en el Perú (1968–75). It explains [...]ICAA Record ID: 1139308 -
El arte al servicio del proletariado
1931Given the circumstances of the time, David Alfaro Siqueiros advocated that art should be transparent and dedicated to the struggle; it should be a tool for propaganda that was also open to technical innovation. In his opinion, pure art should wait [...]ICAA Record ID: 822471 -
El avance de la historieta popular (I)
1979In this text, Juan Acevedo explains the cartoon methodology as a means of popular communication. He summarizes the system he developed in a number of workshops he gave on the topic, workshops that culminated in November 1979 with the Primer Taller [...]ICAA Record ID: 1141902 -
El Spanglish National Anthem
2002Written to replace the words of En Mi Viejo San Juan—Puerto Rico’s national anthem and a song that expresses a longing to return to the island—Pedro Pietri’s Spanglish National Anthem alludes to economic factors that keep Puerto Ricans [...]ICAA Record ID: 797430 -
El taller de historieta popular
1979In this essay, Juan Acevedo outlines the guidelines he has developed and used at his workshops focused on the creation of comic strips as a popular medium of communication, in particular at the Taller de Historieta del Taller de Publicaciones [Comic [...]ICAA Record ID: 1141933 -
Estéticas espontâneas num centro urbano da Paraíba: o exemplo da casa
1980This text by critic Paulo Sérgio Duarte is a research proposal for the Núcleo de Arte Contemporânea (NAC). The research itself consists of three essays with photographic illustrations that address the following issues: the need to adjust the [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111206 -
Historia y valoración de las Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre
1926This text by writer and chronicler, Salvador Novo, provides a brief history of the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting], beginning with their origins in 1913 and continuing through to the time of the writing of this text. [...]ICAA Record ID: 825952 -
Iconografia de massa
1968The exhibition Iconografia de Massa, held at the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI) in Rio de Janeiro (1968), was introduced by art critic Mário Barata. Using the theories of Edgar Morin as his starting point, Barata defends the idea that [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111087 -
Ideologia da cultura brasileira : pontos de partida para uma visão histórica
1976This essay sets out to analyze the evolution of Brazilian intellectual thought from the 1930s to the mid-1970s in order to identify the distinguishing traits of the transition from an aristocratic view of culture (the target of Mário de Andrade’s [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110414 -
Introducción: la cultura
1978The author wonders how indigenous American people compare to other civilizations. Darcy Ribeiro seeks to articulate a general theory to explain the formative and transformative processes that could provide an alternative to European ethnocentric [...]ICAA Record ID: 807756 -
Inventário do nosso feudalismo cultural
1968This manifesto voices a radical position on Brazil and its reality, and openly opposes the picturesque vision of Brazilian culture that, perhaps unwittingly, furthers underdevelopment. The signers of the document advocate the elimination of cultural [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111421 -
La emergencia de lo popular
1976In this newspaper article Félix Álvarez, the Spanish historian who lived in Peru, discusses the divide between popular and elite culture from the perspective of Marxist social theory. He explains that this dichotomy is not a capitalist invention, [...]ICAA Record ID: 1136207 -
La función social del arte
1923In his introduction to Método de Dibujo [Drafting Method], José Juan Tablada identifies it as a weapon in the struggle to establish harmony and democracy amid the chaos and authoritarianism in the artistic milieu. He states that the process at work [...]ICAA Record ID: 825932 -
Leonilson: a implosão da imagem
1983To what extent did artists involved in the transavantgarde deviate from that modern tradition that tirelessly sought to create something new? This is the basic question that Jorge Guinle asks in this article. He sees that the new “school” [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110504 -
Manifesto ainda que tardio
1976The artist Rubem Valentim discusses the connection between his work and northeastern Brazil’s popular culture that, in his opinion, is a product of the syncretism of the region’s European, American Indian, and African populations. His goal is to [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110438 -
Mundialização e cultura
1994This book investigates the sociohistorical context of contemporary cultural production, emphasizing the role exercised by globalization and by “mundialização” (globalism) in this process. The author establishes a distinction between the two [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111331 -
Museus hoje para o amanhã?
1997This is the transcript of a lecture given by Maurício Segall on the subject “Museus hoje para o amanhã” [Museums today for the future]. In his lecture, the museum organizer reviews current trends in the field of museology, characterized by [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111343 -
Nas artes plásticas
1953Through this commentary, critic José Geraldo Vieira introduces the folk figure of the cangaceiro [“farmhand guerilla” in northeastern Brazil, a bandit and a fugitive from the law who is heavily armed] as a theme in the works of writers and [...]ICAA Record ID: 1110853 -
Nordeste
1967In this text, filmmaker Glauber Rocha describes the conditions surrounding life and culture in northeastern Brazil in the sixties, specifically in the desert-like region known as sertão. Lina Bo Bardi chose the text for the catalogue for an [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111194 -
O movimento cultural ganha espaço
1981Based on the events of 1981, this newspaper article comments on the cultural environment in the city of Belém (Estado de Pará), which is located in the Amazonian equatorial region of Brazil. While on the one hand the visual arts and music were not [...]ICAA Record ID: 1111173
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