Abstract
Debates between poets and artists in 1920s Mexico have recently received attention from literary critics, art historians and museum curators. However, these debates have yet to be theorized, mapped or understood comprehensively. In this chapter, forgoing traditional formalist approaches and drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theories, I consider the significance of debates between poets, who became art writers, and painters in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. Bourdieu’s critical tools, including his understanding of fields as sites of struggle, his insights into the perception and legitimation of art, and his ideas regarding symbolic violence and hysteresis are invaluable for comprehending the significant consequences of this rivalry among cultural producers in a country grappling with the reconstruction of its social and political institutions.
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Notes
- 1.
Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production. Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randall Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 262.
- 2.
James A.W. Hefferman , Museum of Words. The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 2.
- 3.
The Guatemalan poet Luis Cardoza y Aragón lived most of his life in Mexico City, where he wrote numerous books and essays regarding Mexican art history. In this chapter I will treat him as a Mexican art writer.
- 4.
Three recent histories of Mexican literature make no mention of art writing as a genre, nor of the role it played in twentieth-century Mexican literature, even though earlier histories, such as José Luis Martínez’s Literatura mexicana siglo xx 1910–1949 (Mexico: Porrúa, 1949), included it. See Manuel Fernández Perera, La literatura mexicana del siglo xx (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008); Rogelio Guedea, Historia crítica de la poesía Mexicana 2 vols (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015); and Ignacio Sánchez Prado, Anna M. Nogar, and José Ramón Ruisánchez, A History of Mexican Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). However, recent studies in art history have begun to recognize the significance of art writing by poets associated with the literary magazine Contemporáneos . Though their approach differs from mine, as they locate specific themes among a specific group of poets, mainly Jorge Cuesta and Xavier Villaurrutia , I offer a broader study of the theoretical implications of art writing in Mexico. See Robin Adèle Greely, “Nietzsche contra Marx in Mexico: The Contemporáneos , Muralism and Debates over ‘Revolutionary’ Art in 1930s Mexico,” in Mexican Muralism: A Critical History, ed. Alejandro Anreus, Robin Adèle Greely, and Leonard Folgarait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) and Mark A. Castro, “Tales of the City: The Contemporáneos and Modern Mexican Art,” in Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism 1910–1950, ed. Matthew Affron et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
- 5.
Though the term art writing is now widely used in visual studies and art history, it was first coined by the philosopher David Carrier to refer to the creative non-fictional and fictional work of poets and novelists regarding their encounters with art objects. According to Carrier, these “ephemeral” writings—along with the “masterpieces” of art history proper (i.e., Panofsky or Gombrich)—are equally significant for understanding the broader complexity of the art field. See David Carrier, Art Writing (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 22. More recently, art writing as a term has been used to designate interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to images that do not necessarily arise from the institution of art history or from art criticism but rather emerge from the literary, theoretical or philosophical fields. See Maria Fusco et al., “11 Statements Around Art Writing,” in Frieze Blog: Frieze Magazine, 2011. With both these definitions in mind, I use the term to refer to a range of essays, art journalism, art criticism, art history, chronicles, novels, biographies, autobiographies, poems and other miscellaneous forms of writing that poets employed to address the visual arts in post-Revolution Mexico.
- 6.
See Manuel Gamio , Forjando Patria (Mexico: Porrúa, 1916). Mexican Folkways was a bilingual arts magazine published between 1925 and 1937 by an American expat, Francis Toor , to promote Mexican art and culture to North American readers. For a study of this impressive magazine, see Margarito Sandoval Pérez, Arte y Folklore en Mexican Folkways (Mexico: UNAM, 1998).
- 7.
Manuel Toussaint founded the Instituto de investigaciones estéticas in 1935. Tasked by the Mexican government to protect the nation’s artistic “heritage,” the institute practiced an academic art history that proved too specialized (focusing on classification, provenance and restoration) for casual consumption by urbane readers. Its first director was the Mexican poet Rafael López. See Peter Krieger, “Las Primeras Dos Décadas De Los Anales Del Instituto De Investigaciones Estéticas: La Era De Manuel Toussaint,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas XXXI, 95 (2009): 173–80.
- 8.
Tablada writes: “No conocemos la crítica afirmativa y creadora, sobre todo en artes plásticas, la que ayuda al público a dares cuenta de los prósitos del Artista y a distinguir claramente las bellezas que el observador desentrañaría quizás al fin, pero penosamente” [“We don’t have a creative and affirmative criticism, especially in the visual arts, that can help the public become aware of the aims of the artist, and to teach them how to clearly distinguish the beauty works of art hold and that hopefully they will be able to uncover”]. See “La función social del arte,” published as a prologue to Adolfo Best Maugard’s Método de Dibujo (México: SEP, 1923) and reprinted in José Juan Tablada , Arte y Artistas Obras VI, ed. Adriana Sandoval (Mexico: UNAM, 2008), 325.
- 9.
Luis Cardoza y Aragón, La nube y el reloj (Mexico: UNAM, 2003), 61.
- 10.
See Anita Brenner , Idols Behind Altars: Modern Mexican Art and Its Cultural Roots (New York: Dover, 2002), 229–31.
- 11.
According to W.J.T. Mitchell, since the mid-1990s, “word and image” has become a shorthand term to refer to ongoing research regarding the relation of visual representation to written language. More specifically, “word and image” designates the relation of art history to literary history, textual studies, linguistics and other disciplines that deal with verbal expression. See W.J.T. Mitchell, “Word and Image,” in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 51.
- 12.
One famous disqualification of poets’ art writing was voiced by the Latin American art historian Juan Acha: “Todas sus percepciones, sentimiento y pensamientos son trasegados en metáforas poéticas o bien en adjetivos deslumbrantes. Las metáforas se suceden como el chisporroteo de unos juegos artificiales que impiden pensar.” See Juan Acha, Crítica del Arte: Teoría y Práctia (Mexico: Trillas, 2004), 117. Another recent example that describes poets’ art writing as a form of conservative reaction is Horacio Legrás, who writes: “When [the muralists] started to cover the walls with popular references, social satires, and political proclamations, a good deal of conservative Mexico turned against them. The lettered city reacted with anger. Poets were often the most vociferous critics.” See Culture and Revolution: Violence, Memory, and the Making of Modern Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 130.
- 13.
Ivan Shulman, for example, describes his research in the following way: “Painting Modernism demonstrates the influence of painting and sculpture on the work of major writers of Latin American modernism” (my italics). See Shulman, Painting Modernism (New York: SUNY Press, 2014), ix–xvi. For a similar approach regarding Mexican literature, see Susana González Aktories and Irene Artigas Albarelli, Entre Artes, Entre Actos: Ecfrasis e intermedialidad (México: UNAM, 2011) and Fernando Ibarra Chávez, “Escritores de imágenes y pintores de discursos: literature y critica de arte en México de inicios del siglo xx a Contemporáneos ” (Doctoral Dissertation, El Colegio de México, 2014).
- 14.
For a definition of ekphrasis, see J.A.W. Heffernan, “Ekphrasis: Theory,” in Handbook of Intermediality: Literature-Image-Sound-Music, ed. Gabriele Rippl (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), 127–75.
- 15.
See, for example, Catherine E. Wall, The Poetics of Word and Image in the Hispanic Avant-Garde (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2010).
- 16.
See Tatiana Flores, Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30-30! (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
- 17.
The painter David Alfaro Siqueiros , in a famous manifesto discussed in a later section, referred to poets’ art writing as “beautiful pieces of literature.” See David Alfaro Siqueiros , Palabras de Siqueiros, ed. Raquel Tibol (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), 23.
- 18.
For example, a retrospective and a catalogue of Carlos Pellicer’s art writing have been curated and published as an extension of the poet’s literary work, with only minor attention paid to the impact it may have had on the larger cultural field. See Clara Bargellini, ed., Carlos Pellicer: MDCCCXCVII-MCMXCVII. Exposición-Homenaje. Textos en prosa sobre arte y artistas (México: Museo de Arte Moderno, 1997) and Elisa García Barragán, Carlos Pellicer en el espacio de la plástica (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997).
- 19.
See Anthony Stanton and Renato González Melo, “El relato y el arte experimental,” in Vanguardia en México (1915–1940), ed. Anthony Stanton and Renato González Melo (Mexico: INBA, 2013), 15.
- 20.
“Aquí se postula que la narración era un territorio común para innovar, romper las reglas o probar nuevos recursos […] La exposición muestra obras que exploran distintos territorios de la narración en forma experimental.” Stanton and González Melo, Vanguardia en México, 15.
- 21.
“Hemos evitado ordenar el conjunto en torno a tendencias opuestas.” Stanton and González Melo, Vanguardia en México, 15.
- 22.
Two recent examples of art exhibits that grouped poets and painters according to generational, ideological and/or aesthetic alliances were Alfonso Reyes y los territorios del arte (2009), organized by the Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), and El Ateneo de la Juventud y la plástica mexicana (2010), organized by the Museo Mural Diego Rivera.
- 23.
See Stanton and González Melo, Vanguardia en México (1915–1940), 201 and 208.
- 24.
Peter Bürger , Theory of the Avant Garde (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 49.
- 25.
See Vicky Unruh , Latin American Vanguards: The Art of Contentious Encounters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Tatiana Flores, Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); and Mari Carmen Ramírez , “El clasicismo dinámico de David Alfaro Siqueiros: Paradojas de un modelo ex-céntrico de vanguardia,” in Otras Rutas Hacia Siqueiros, ed. Olivier Debroise (México: INBA, 1996), 125–46.
- 26.
Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 31.
- 27.
Describing the international avant-garde, Bohn writes: “Visual imagination demanded linguistic innovation, and vice versa … Language and vision were intertwined … So important were vision and expression to the vanguard enterprise that this double quest soon became obligatory—an avant-garde imperative.” See Willard Bohn , The Avant-Garde Imperative (Amherst: Cambria, 2013), 5–6.
- 28.
Bourdieu’s first use of the concept “field” was in an article entitled “Champ intellectual et projet créateur” (1966). This article was translated into English as “Intellectual Field and Creative Project” in 1971 and published in Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, ed. M.F.D. Young (London: Macmillan, 1971). For an in-depth discussion of Bourdieu’s understanding of field, see Patricia Thomson, “Field,” in Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, ed. Michael Grenfell (Durham: Acumen, 2008), 67–84.
- 29.
Here I follow Sánchez Prado’s reasons for applying Bourdieu to the Mexican context and elaborate my own. See Ignacio Sánchez Prado, Naciones Intelectuales Las fundaciones de la modernidad literaria mexicana (1917–1959) (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2009), 6–7.
- 30.
See Bourdieu, The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), 47–48 and The Field of Cultural Production, 29–73.
- 31.
Bourdieu writes: “The struggle itself creates the history of the field; through the struggle the field is given a temporal dimension.” Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 106.
- 32.
Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 41.
- 33.
See Pedro Ángel Palou , La casa del silencio: aproximación en tres tiempos a Contemporáneos (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1997) and Ignacio Sánchez Prado, Naciones intelectuales.
- 34.
For an example of an art historian that uses Bourdieu’s methods, see Alicia Azuela de la Cueva, Arte y poder. Renacimiento artístico y Revolución social México, 1910–1945 (México: El Colegio de Michoacán/Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005).
- 35.
See Pierre Bourdieu, “The Link Between Literary and Artistic Struggles,” in Artistic Relations: Literature and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. Collier and Lethbridge (New Haven: Yale, 1994), 30–39. Sections of this essay also appeared in The Rules of Art under the heading “The Exchanges Between Painters and Poets,” 131–40.
- 36.
See Pierre Bourdieu, “The Link Between Literary and Artistic Struggles” (1994), 30–39.
- 37.
Bourdieu, “The Link Between Literary and Artistic Struggles,” 30–31.
- 38.
Bourdieu writes: “The literary field is itself defined by its position in the hierarchy of the arts, which varies from one period and one country to another. Here one can only allude to the effect of the hierarchy of the arts and in particular to the dominance which poetry, an intellectual art, exerted until the sixteenth century over painting, a manual art, so that, for example, the hierarchy of pictorial genres tended to depend on their distance … from the most elaborate model of poetic discourse. … In the case of the field of painting, autonomy had to be won from the literary field … with the emergence of specific criticism and above all the will to break free from the writers and their discourse by producing an intrinsically polysemic work beyond all discourse, and a discourse about the work which declares the essential inadequacy.” The Field of Cultural Production, 47.
- 39.
Sánchez Prado offers a comprehensive study of the early years of the post-Revolution literary field. See Naciones intelectuales, 15–81.
- 40.
Regarding these debates, see Victor Díaz Arciniega, Querella por la cultura revolucionaria (1925) (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1989).
- 41.
Regarding La Vanguardia, see Elissa Rashkin, “Prensa y revolución en México: La Vanguardia, 1915,” Folios 26 (2011): 65–89 and Jaime Eduardo Figueroa Daza, “La Vanguardia. El diario que pretendió ‘Construir Revolución,’” Perspectivas de la comunicación 5.2 (2012): 37–53.
- 42.
For a contemporary account of the relationship between artists and politics, see José Clemente Orozco , José Clemente Orozco: An Autobiography, trans. Robert C. Stephenson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), 47–56. For an in-depth historical analysis and discussion of artists’ relationship to political institutions and labor organizations during this period, see John Lear, Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 47–68.
- 43.
“Afirmamos que se imponía la dirección por un grupo representativo, el más refinado, y el de mayor elevación espiritual, emanación evolucionada de todo medio social—los artistas—llamamos a nuestro movimiento ARTISTOCRACIA. Afirmamos que lo pintores eran los mejores dotados para gobernar a los pueblos y para crear una sociedad totalmente diferentes de las que han tenido que sufrir el dominio de la política.” Qted. in Cuauhtémoc Media “El Dr. Atl y la artistocracia: monto de una deuda vanguardista,” in Versiones del sur. Heterotopías. Medio Siglo sin-lugar: 1918–1968, ed. Mari Carmen Ramirez y Hector Olea (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2000), 77–83.
- 44.
For an excellent reconstruction of the period based on the newspaper and art criticism produced during this era, see Fausto Ramirez, Crónica de las artes plásticas en los años de López Velarde 1914–1921 (México: UNAM, 1990).
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
See “Mexicanos: Invitación a la exposición de pintura verdad” (Mexico: 1928). ICAA Documents of the 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art. Web. September 29, 2013. http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/THEARCHIVE/FullRecord/tabid/88/doc/779493/language/en-US/Default.aspx
- 47.
See Robin Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico, 1920–1970,” in Mexican Muralism: A Critical History, ed. Alejandro Anreaus, Leonard Folgarait, and Robin Adèle Greeley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 13–36.
- 48.
See Alicia Azuela de la Cueva, Arte y poder. Renacimiento artístico y Revolución social México, 1910–1945 (México: El Colegio de Michoacán/Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005), 23.
- 49.
See James Oles, Art and Architecture in Mexico (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013), 235–38.
- 50.
Greeley, “Muralism and the State,” 13.
- 51.
See Rick López, Crafting the Nation: Intellectuals, Artisans and the State After the Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
- 52.
I borrow the term loosely from the historian Enrique Krauze , who used it to describe Latin American political and cultural figures who mixed a “passion for ideas” with their respective art forms. In this case, I am referring to the major artists of the 1920s, including Diego Rivera , David Alfaro Siqueiros , José Clemente Orozco , Fermín Revueltas and others, for whom art was a part of their broader concerns with creating a modern Mexican nation. See Enrique Krauze , Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), xiii.
- 53.
López, Crafting the Nation, 14.
- 54.
For an account of these efforts, see Jean Charlot’s classic The Mexican Mural Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 55.
- 55.
See Francisco Reyes Palma, “Dispositivos míticos en las visiones del arte mexicano del siglo XX,” Curare 2.9 (1996): 3–18.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
David Alfaro Siqueiros , Palabras de Siqueiros, ed. Raquel Tibol (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), 23. “No sólo todo lo que es trabajo noble, todo lo que es virtud, es don de nuestro pueblo (de nuestros indios muy particularmente), sino la manifestación más pequeña de la existencia física y espiritual de nuestra raza como fuerza étnica brota de él, y lo que es más, su facultad admirable y extraordinariamente particular de hacer belleza: el arte del pueblo de México es la manifestación espiritual más grande y más sana del mundo y su tradición indígena es la mejor de todas.”
- 58.
See, for example, Carlos Gutiérrez Cruz, “Arte y lucha social,” reprinted in Carlos Gutiérrez Cruz: Poesía. Prosa, ed. Luis Mario Schneider (Mexico: Secretaría de Cultura de Jalisco, 2000), 329. See also Arqueles Vela, Historia Materialista del Arte (Mexico: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1935).
- 59.
See Helen Delpar , The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations Between the United States and Mexico, 1920–1935 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992), 15. See also Katherine Anne Porter , Outline of Mexican Popular Arts and Crafts (New York: Young and McCallister, 1922); Anita Brenner , Idols Behind Alters (1927); Alma Reed , José Clemente Orozco (New York: Delphic Studios, 1932); Marion Lucile Arendt , The Historical Significance of Mexican Art and Architecture (Mexico: Talleres Gráficos de La Nación, 1928); Carleton Beals , Mexican Maze (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippicott Company, 1931); Bertram Wolf, Diego Rivera: His Life and Times (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1938); and Frances Toor , A Treasury of Mexican Folkways (New York: Crown Publishers, 1947).
- 60.
See David Alfaro Siqueiros , Palabras de Siqueiros, 20.
- 61.
Ibid. “No escuchemos el dictado crítico de nuestros poetas; producen bellísimos artículos literarios distanciados por completo del valor real de nuestras obras.”
- 62.
See Anonymous, El Machete: Periódico semanario (August 1924). http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/THEARCHIVE/FullRecord/tabid/88/doc/764098/language/en-US/Default.aspx (accessed May 14, 2017).
- 63.
For a discussion of this movement, see Flores, Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes, 265–302.
- 64.
See David Alfaro Siqueiros , Palabras de Siqueiros, 20.
- 65.
“¿Por qué en México se invierte ahora este orden natural?” Daniel Cosío Villegas, “La Pintura en México,” Revista de Revistas March 29, 1925, 23, accessed May 24, 2017, https://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/THEARCHIVE/FullRecord/tabid/88/doc/755305/language/en-US/Default.aspx
- 66.
Contrary to historian Thomas Benjamin, who believed that the “master narrative” of Mexico was produced by “poets, teachers and writers,” John Mraz “doubts that [in twentieth-century] Mexico these media had such importance, where literacy rates have traditionally created a culture of images more than of words.” For a discussion of this shift, see Mraz, Looking for Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 2.
- 67.
See Mary K. Coffey , How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 43.
- 68.
For a study of the role the Revista Moderna played in the history of Mexican art, see Elisa García Barragán, “La plástica mexicana en la Revista Moderna de México,” in Revista Moderna de México 1903–1911, Vol. II. Contexto, ed. Belem Clark de Lara and Fernando Curiel (México: UNAM, 2002), 163–84. For a discussion of the relationship between the visual arts and the literary magazine, see Laura González Matute, “Savia Moderna: Antesala al Ateneo de la Juventud,” in El Ateneo de la Juventud y la plástica mexicana, ed. Carmén Gaitan Rojo, Ariadna Patiño Guadarrama and Julián Martínez González (Mexico: Conaculta, 2010), 93–119.
- 69.
Bourdieu writes about the way symbolic objects are socially instituted as works of art: “Given that works of art exist as symbolic objects only if they are known and recognized, that is, socially instituted as works of art and received by spectators capable of knowing and recognizing them as such, the sociology of art and literature has to take as its object not only the material production but also the symbolic production of the work, i.e. the production of the value of the work or, which amount to the same thing, of belief in the value of the work. It therefore has to consider as contributing to production not only the direct producers of the work in its materiality (artist, writer, etc.) but also the producers of the meaning and value of the work—critics, publishers, gallery directors and the whole set of agents whose combined efforts produce consumers capable of knowing and recognizing the work of art as such.” See Pierre Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed,” in The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 37.
- 70.
Ibid.
- 71.
“All critics declare not only their judgment of the work but also their claim to the right to talk about it and judge it … They take part in a struggle for the monopoly of legitimate discourse about the work of art and … in the production of the value of the work of art.” Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 36.
- 72.
Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 37.
- 73.
For example, the magazine Nuestra Ciudad published a profile of the poet and his new revolutionary art titled “Rosendo Salazar: Artista y poeta,” signaling the poet’s transformation into an artist.
- 74.
In 1929, a collective anthology of poetry was published by the Grupo Agorista titled Primera exposición de poemas (First Exhibition of Poems). The collection gathered poems that were “exhibited” in the “Carpa Amaro,” a tent space that was erected to allow painters to exhibit their work to a larger audience. Poets were invited to recite their poems in this space. For a discussion of this event, see Laura González Matute, ¡30 -30! Contra la Academia de la Pintura, 1928 (Mexico: INBA, 1993).
- 75.
Though he was initially distraught over the imprisonment of President Francisco Madero and his vice president, Pino Suárez, after their execution Tablada kept his position as a writer for the newspaper El imparcial and would later be promoted by Victoriano Huerta’s regime to Inspector of Fine Arts. For a study of Tablada’s political errors, see Rubén Lozano Herrera, Las veras y las burlas de José Juan Tablada (México: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1995).
- 76.
In 1918, through the intervention of José Vasconcelos , Tablada met with Venustiano Carranza, who pardoned the poet for siding with the Huerta regime as Madero’s revolutionary push was thwarted. For a complete chronology of his life, see Rodolfo Mata, José Juan Tablada: De Coyoacán a la Quinta Avenida (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007).
- 77.
In particular, see his articles “Diego Rivera: Un Pintor Mexicano” (1923), “Orozco, el Goya Mexicano” (1924) and “Un evangelio de oro puro” (1925). All of these can be found in Tablada’s Arte y artistas (México: UNAM, 2000).
- 78.
See, for example, “Mexicanos en Nueva York,” “Honrando a México” and “Un evangelio de oro puro.” In Arte y artistas (2000).
- 79.
Carlos Mérida (Madrid: La Gaceta Literaria, 1927); La nube y el reloj (Mexico: UNAM, 2003/1940).
- 80.
Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Carlos Mérida, 11.
- 81.
Ibid., 13.
- 82.
Cardoza y Aragón, La nube y el reloj, 75.
- 83.
Ibid., 5.
- 84.
According to the Mexican Constitution: “Article 33 … The Federal Executive shall have the exclusive power to compel any foreigner whose remaining presence in the country he may deem expedient to abandon the national territory immediately and without the necessity of previous legal action. Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country.”
- 85.
“No ser mexicano no me impidió refutar con claridad, excluir lo admitido, hacer conjeturas y alegar y gozar con otras razones, con otra sensibilidad y descubrir nuevas virtudes en las obras … Hice lo que pude sin desatender el artículo 33 de la constitución mexicana.” Luis Cardoza y Aragón, El Río (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1986), 465.
- 86.
For a discussion of masculinity and homophobia in post-Revolution Mexico, see Daniel Balderston, “Poetry, Revolution, Homophobia: Polemics from the Mexican Revolution,” in Hispanisms and Homosexualities, ed. Sylvia Molloy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 57–75.
- 87.
“En la hora actual de México en que todo es socialismo o parece serlo, hay muchos contrarrevolucionarios que aparentan servir a la revolución con el solo propósito de servirse de ella.” See Luis Cardoza y Aragón, La nube y el reloj, 64.
- 88.
See Luis Cardoza y Aragón, “LEAR y amigos en la sala de exposiciones del Palacio De Bellas Artes,” El Nacional (January 20, 1937), 5.
- 89.
Cardoza y Aragón, “Servir la Revolución; Servirse de la Revolución,” Universidad Obrera (Diciembre-Enero 1937): 92–111.
- 90.
Cardoza y Aragón, “Servir la Revolución,” 93.
- 91.
Cuesta’s art writing is published in Obras Reunidas, Vol. 2 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004).
- 92.
See Cuesta , “Conceptos de arte,” in Obras Reunidas, Vol. 2, 141.
- 93.
For a recent study of this episode, see Guillermo Sheridan, Malas palabras: Jorge Cuesta y la revista Examen (México: Siglo XXI, 2011). For a detailed study of Cuesta and Contemporáneos debates regarding the visual arts in 1930s Mexico, see Robin Adèle Greeley, “Nietzsche contra Marx in Mexico: The Contemporáneos, Muralism, and Debates over “Revolutionary” Art in 1930s Mexico,” in Mexican Muralism: A Critical History, ed. Alejandro Anreaus, Leonard Folgarait and Robin Adèle Greeley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 148–73.
- 94.
See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977/1990) (18).
- 95.
“Symbolic violence is thus a generally unperceived form of violence, and in contrast to systems in which force is needed to maintain social hierarchy, [symbolic violence] is an effective and efficient form of domination.” Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, trans. Richard Nice (London: Sage, 1977), 184.
- 96.
For a discussion of symbolic violence, see David L. Swartz , Symbolic Power Politics and Intellectuals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 6.
- 97.
Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 160.
- 98.
Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 277.
- 99.
Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 101.
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Gutiérrez Silva, M. (2018). Aesthetic Rivalries in Avant-Garde Mexico: Art Writing and the Field of Cultural Production. In: Sánchez Prado, I. (eds) Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71809-5_5
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