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Import/Export: Raw materials, hemispheric expertise, and the making of Latin American art, 1933-1945 by Niko Vicario ARCHMES MASSCHUETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY M.A. Curatorial Studies Bard College, 2008 OCT 202015 B.A. Art History Vassar College, 2004 LIBRARIES Submitted to the Department of Architecture in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture: History and Theory of Art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology September 2015 Copyright 2015 Niko Vicario. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of author: _ Signature redacted Department of Architecture /7 August 7. 2015 Certified by: Signature redacted Caroline A. Jones Profess4or of the History of Art Accepted by: Signature redacted Takehiko Nagakura Chair Department Committee on Graduate Studies Dissertation Committee Caroline A. Jones, Professor of the History of Art Massachusetts Institute of Technology Arindam Dutta, Associate Professor of the History of Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Technology Robin Adele Greeley, Associate Professor of Art History University of Connecticut Timothy Hyde, Associate Professor of the History of Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Technology Import/Export: Raw materials, hemispheric expertise, and the making of Latin American art, 1933-1945 by Niko Vicario Submitted to the Department of Architecture on August 7, 2015 In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture: History and Theory of Art Abstract Historians have tended to characterize Latin American art either as a self-evident term or as a category designated by U.S. institutions. This dissertation argues instead that artists from the region were agents in shaping this emerging field through their selective cooperation with, and resistance to, the United States' Good Neighbor Policy networks. Artists, haunted by criticisms that art in Latin America was a "cultural import" from Europe, engaged with a U.S. market that treated their art as a source of "exportable prestige." This dissertation analyzes the entanglement of this cultural discourse of import/export with the mechanisms of commerce as a new paradigm for thinking about Latin American art. The period that is the focus of this dissertation-l 933 to 1945-represented a transitional era between Latin America's "export age" (1870-1930) and postwar modernization, import substitution industrialization, and the birth of what would come to be known as developmentalism (desarrollismo). Framed by the Great Depression and by World War II, this "long decade" was coeval with the Good Neighbor Policy, in which the nations of the Americas pledged non-intervention in the hemisphere and more intimate commercial and cultural ties. Through case-studies of Candido Portinari, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, and Nelson Rockefeller, the dissertation places special emphasis upon the relationship between materiality, raw materials, and import substitution industrialization in analyzing works of art and the networks in which they were mobile. Thesis supervisor: Caroline A. Jones Supervisor Title: Professor of the History of Art Table of contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................. 8 Introduction .......................................................................................... 9 Chapter 1: Portinari's export painting .......................................................... 22 Chapter 2: Duco muralism across the hemisphere ............................................ 76 Chapter 3: Constructivist morphologies and the unification of America ................ 134 Chapter 4: OIAA/MoMA: The Rockefeller Matrix of Latin American art .............. 184 C onclusion ....................................................................................... 232 Illustrations ....................................................................................... 242 Archives Consulted .............................................................................. 289 B ibliography ..................................................................................... 290 7 Acknowledgments This dissertation was written thanks to support from a variety of sources. Research was made possible by the Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. The project was also advanced by a Mellon Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, also from the SSRC. I am grateful to the museums and archives that opened their vaults for me, especially to M6nica Montes at Sala de Arte Pnblico Siqueiros, Alejandro Diaz and Mariana Casares at Museo Torres Garcia, Fernanda Martins and Nodlia Coutinho at Projeto Portinari, Monica Blank at the Rockefeller Archive Center, and Cecilia Torres. At MIT, I would like to thank Rende Caso, Kate Brearley, and Anne Deveau for their support. Colleagues and friends offered camaraderie and inspiration. In Cambridge, Stephanie Tuerk, Mariana Mogilevich, Ana Maria Le6n, Kelly Presutti, Rebecca Uchill, Nicola Pezolet, Lindsey Lodhie, Zeynep Oguz, Olga Touloumi, Simon Reader, Ateya Khorakiwala, Michael Kubo, Lori Cole, Jennifer Chuong, Jeanne Haffner, Jesse Feiman, Leah Aronowsky, Megan Sullivan, Albert Lopez, Irina Chernyakova, and Deepa Ramaswamy, among many others, provided a vibrant intellectual community. In Mexico City, Crist6bal Andres Jacome, Natalia de la Rosa, and Miguel Legaria Fregoso were tremendous. Gabriel Peluffo Linari in Montevideo and Mauricio Lissovsky in Rio made a big impact with their knowledge and encouragement. Finally, I am deeply grateful to old and dear friends as well as to my family for their support, patience, and enthusiasm, especially Betsy Klein. My dissertation committee improved the manuscript immeasurably. I am indebted to Robin Greeley for her thinking about the relationship between aesthetics and politics and for her generosity and rigor throughout the process. Arindam Dutta pushed me to cast a wider net and to dig deeper, and the dissertation benefitted from his incisive interventions. Timothy Hyde also contributed a valuable perspective in its final stages. Most of all, I thank Caroline Jones for her incredible support. generosity. humor, and insight. 8 Introduction Nitrocellulose lacquer, animal hide, coffee plantations, and oil wells on fire. This dissertation focuses upon works of art produced between 1933 and 1945 and their relationship to materials-both raw and manufactured. This era was marked by the institutionalization of Latin American art as a geo-cultural idea bound up in geopolitical and geo-economic transformation. Historians have tended to characterize Latin American art either as a self-evident term or as a category designated by U.S. institutions. This dissertation argues instead that artists from the region were agents in shaping this emerging field through their selective cooperation with, and resistance to, the United States' Good Neighbor Policy networks. Artists, haunted by criticisms that art in Latin America was a "cultural import" from Europe, engaged with a U.S. market that treated their art as a source of "exportable prestige." This dissertation analyzes the entanglement of this cultural discourse of import/export with the mechanisms of commerce as a new paradigm for thinking about Latin American art. The period that is the focus of this dissertation-1933 to 1945-represented a transitional era between Latin America's "export age" (1870-1930) and postwar modernization, import substitution industrialization, and the birth of what would come to be known as developmentalism (desarrollismo).1 Framed by the Great Depression and by World War I, this "long decade" was coeval with the Good Neighbor Policy, in which 1 Although Brazil features prominently in this dissertation, I use the Spanish term throughout. For the term "export age," see amongst others Enrique Cdrdenas, Jose A. Ocampo, and Rosemary Thorp, An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Latin America, Volume 1: The Export Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). 9 the nations of the Americas pledged non-intervention in the hemisphere and more intimate commercial and cultural ties. The dissertation analyzes an entanglement of artistic agency with political and commercial interests, arguing that the relationship between the region and global capitalism was central to the question of who possessed, named, and made Latin American art. The dissertation begins with Brazilian painter Candido Portinari, whose depictions of coffee plantations and their workers became a source of "exportable prestige" for both the artist and the Gethlio Vargas regime.2 The chapter analyzes how the rise and fall of Portinari in both Brazil and the United States reflected Brazil's transition to import substitution industrialization. In the second chapter, we turn to Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros who sought to modernize muralism using U.S.- produced nitrocellulose lacquer (principally Duco) and sprayguns. Spreading this industrialized muralism across the continent, Siqueiros moved from a rhetoric of anti- imperialism to one of "democracy," in the process altering the political project he ascribed to technology. In the third chapter, we focus upon Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres-Garcia, whose "Constructive Universalism"