dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
verfasserin/verfasser: James Douglas Oles
titel: Art and Architecture in Mexico
isbn: 978-0-500-20406-1
+: London 2013
«Estridentistas pursued a leftist social agenda, moving to the provincial city of Jalapa, Veracruz, in 1925, to join the administration of the progressive governor Heriberto Jara. Two years later their hopes of creating a utopian society were dashed when Jara was removed from office, and Estridentismo as a coherent movement faded.» (pp. 257–258)
«Given the urgency of strengthening the nation in the wake of the revolution, it is not surprising that an agressive virility dominated most aspects of Mexican politics and culture. Politics, bureaucrats, and artists alike justified artistic practice with a simple overarching message that emphasized art‘s utilitarian function as a weapon for social change. But not everyone was a warrior. In the 1920s an important group of artists slowly coalesced around a contrarian position, long held dear by European modernists, that advocated what they called ’pure art,‘ or art for art‘s sake. […]
Named for a chiefly literary magazine they founded in 1928, the poets known as Contemporáneos, or ’contemporary ones,‘ are often said to be a ’group without a group,‘ since they signed no manifesto and shared no platform. In opposition to the nationalist agenda, they emphasized personal rather than collective expression, and forged international contacts with similar literary movements in Lima and Buenos Aires. The Contemporáneos emerged as an oppositional force not so much because of their political views but rather for their resistance to the populist and hyper-masculine discourse of their time. Their ’art for art‘s sake‘ position would be attacked by Rivera and other leftists as ’effeminate‘ and counterrevolutionary, an argument facilitated because most of the Contemporáneos were gay, though not – except for the poet Salvador Novo (1904–1974) – openly so. (p. 258)