SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Marking the Territory: Performance, video, and conceptual graphics in Chilean art, 1975-1985 A Dissertation Presented by Carla Macchiavello to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Criticism Stony Brook University May 2010 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Carla Macchiavello We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Donald B. Kuspit, Distinguished Professor, Art History and Criticism Joseph Monteyne, Associate Professor, Art History and Criticism John Lutterbie, Associate Professor, Art History and Criticism María José Montalva, Art Historian, Doctor of Philosophy University of Essex This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Marking the Territory: Performance, video, and conceptual graphics in Chilean art, 1975-1985 by Carla Macchiavello Doctor in Philosophy in Art History and Criticism Stony Brook University 2010 In this dissertation I examine the links between the body and the territory in Chilean Performance Art, video practices, and conceptual graphics between 1975 and 1985. During ten years in the midst of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship, the body and national space were two notions intimately tied to a range of new art forms in which different concepts of identity were negotiated. In the works of Carlos Leppe, Eugenio Dittborn, Carlos Altamirano, Lotty Rosenfeld, and Gonzalo Mezza the corporeal was understood as a space where the repressive political regime could be contested and the self’s contradictory relation to the territory and nation be exposed. By analyzing these artists’ works and revising the major theoretical and critical writings of the time, particularly those of Nelly Richard, Ronald Kay, and Justo Pastor Mellado, as well as their appropriation and reinterpretation of Poststructuralist and Psychoanalytic theories, this dissertation proposes that carnality and cardinality were joined in the experimental Chilean art of the seventies and early eighties as a form of contesting borders and identities. This work traces varied maps linking artistic and political vanguards while revising the relationships between nationalism and territory in Chilean art of the time by applying a methodology derived from the social history of art, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology. Different theories of space, nationalism, geography, and embodiment are explored to better understand the context and significance of conceptual art in Chile. As the dictatorship was demarcating its own borders regarding Chilean identity, artists were using conceptual languages to define the boundaries of a new national art and create models of social intervention that countered the images of prosperity, progress, and equality advocated by the regime. Using concepts derived from graphic arts and expanding them into everyday life in order to generate different social inscriptions, these artists attempted to demonstrate the instability of borders in the processes of identity construction. iii Table of Contents List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………………vi Introduction………………………………………………..……………………………..1 I. Chapter One: The Rise and Fall of the Chilean Experiment: Artistic Front Lines and Socialism Between 1950 and 1973……………………………….27 The Abstract Dispute in Chile: Between Mind and Matter………………….28 Art and Commitment: Figuration and the of “Pop(ular)” Art in Chile………34 Art Politics, and Latin America: the Social Role of Art Under Salvador Allende……………………………………………………………………….42 II. Chapter Two: Absurd Objects: Carlos Leppe and Art for Chickens………...55 Carlos Leppe’s Kitsch Objects…………………………………….…………55 Art of the Chickens…………………………………………………………..61 The Threat of the Body, the Threatened Body………………………………70 Visible and Invisible Cages……………………………………………….....79 III. Chapter Three: Topo-graphical Bodies: Mapping the Body in Eugenio Dittborn and Catalina Parra……………………………………...…………..86 A Genealogy of the Graphic Matrix: Eugenio Dittborn’s Drawings and the Body under Pressure…………………………………………………...…….89 Blowing-up the Limits of National Art: “ofchileanpainting,history” and Topography....................................................................................................103 Ronald Kay, Miguel Rojas Mix, and the Reproduction of the Social Landscape……………………………………………………………….….118 Catalina Parra and Wolf Vostell: Tearing Up the Body Politic……………127 Eugenio Dittborn’s “Track’s End” and the Ethnographic Turn: From the Territory to the Marginal Archive…………………………………………..151 IV. Chapter Four: The Urban Landscape and the Body………..………………179 Internal Borders: San Diego and Francisco Smythe’s Arcades….…………180 City-escapes: Carlos Altamirano’s Urban Landscapes and the Shadow’s Reflection………………………………………………………………...…205 The Scene of the Crime: Carlos Leppe and the Theatricality of Violence………………………………………………………………...…..223 Graphic Violence and its Everyday Extensions: From Ernesto Muñoz to the First Graphic Salon………………………...……………………………….241 V. Chapter Five: The Expansion of Limits………………………….…………256 The Seminar and the Conceptual Limits of the Chilean Avant-Garde….….257 The Limits of the Body Politic: Carlos Leppe’s Star and Elías Adasme’s Maps………………………………………………………………………...266 The Limits of the Chilean Landscape: Illuminating Raúl Zurita’s Purgatory…………………………………………………………………....280 iv Expanding the Limits of Art and the City: C.A.D.A.’s Margins and Lotty Rosenfeld’s Via Crucis…………………………………………..…………286 The Limits of the Popular Landscape: Carlos Altamirano’s Vernacular Editions……………………………………………………………………..306 A Geography Lesson: The Intersection of the Landscape and the Body…...318 VI. Chapter Six: Video as an Extended Marker and Hybrid Recorder of Memory……………………………………………………………………..328 Homeland, Motherland, and the Video Matrix: Carlos Leppe’s “Sala de espera” and Marcela Serrano’s Bodies……………………………………..331 Landscape as Other: The Trespass of the Landscape’s Borders in the Videos of Lotty Rosenfeld, Diamela Eltit, and Eugenio Dittborn…………………355 Corporeal Landscapes: The Margins and Limits of Juan Castillo and Ximena Prieto………………………………………………………………………..380 Cross-overs: Gonzalo Mezza’s Southern Cross, Lotty Rosenfeld, and the Limits of Video……………………………………………………………..394 The Limits of the Medium………………………………………………….410 VII. Conclusion………………………………………………………….………420 Bibliography………………………………………………….………………………...439 v List of Illustrations Fig. 1.1 José Balmes, Santo Domingo Mayo 65, 1965. p. 34 Fig. 1.2 Francisco Brugnoli, Siempre gana público, 1965. p. 34 Fig. 1.3 Juan Pablo Langlois, Cuerpos Blandos, 1969. p. 36 Fig. 1.4 Gordon Matta-Clark, Untitled, 1971. p. 37 Fig. 1.5 Cecilia Vicuña, Salón de otoño, 1971. p. 38 Fig. 1.6 Installation view of “La imagen del hombre,” 1971. p. 47 Fig. 2.1 Carlos Leppe, Collage, 1973. p. 59 Fig. 2.2 Francisco Copello, Pieza para locos, 1973. p. 62 Fig. 2.3 Carlos Leppe, Happening de las gallinas, 1974. p. 65 Fig. 2.4 Carlos Leppe, El perchero, 1975. p. 71 Fig. 2.5 Photograph for El perchero, in Cuerpo Correcional (1980). p. 77. Fig. 2.6 Carlos Leppe, Monumento en reposo, 1975. p. 80 Fig. 2.7 Carlos Leppe, Paisaje a la nostalgia, 1975. p. 80 Fig. 2.8 Carlos Leppe, Sentencia colectiva, 1975. p. 80 Fig. 2.9 Catalogue cover of exhibition “Leppe,” detail of El rapto, 1975. p. 80 Fig. 2.10 Carlos Leppe, Retrato con hilos, 1975. p. 83 Fig. 3.1 Eugenio Dittborn, Rojo y negro, ca. 1965. p. 90 Fig. 3.2 Article in Revista Eva with photograph of Dittborn in exhibition “22 acontecimientos para Goya,” 1974. p. 92 Fig. 3.3 Article in Revista Ercilla with photograph of Dittborn in exhibition “22 acontecimientos para Goya,” 1974. p. 92 vi Fig. 3.4 Eugenio Dittborn, No vengan esta noche, 1974. p. 93 Fig. 3.5 Eugenio Dittborn. Fragment from “Goya contra Brueghel,” published in Revista Paula, September 5, 1974. p. 98 Fig. 3.6 Eugenio Dittborn, Autorretrato y Sol en Diciembre o Correrrías de Lauch Wallace, 1974. p. 100 Fig. 3.7 Eugenio Dittborn, Don Capacho Condorcueca, Cachivaches, 1976. p. 103 Fig. 3.8 Eugenio Dittborn, De los 832 Kgs., Fábula, 1976. p. 104 Fig. 3.9 Eugenio Dittborn, Pioneros de la Acuarela, Encomienda, 1976 p. 104 Fig. 3.10 Eugenio Dittborn, Monet en Limache, Topografía, 1976. p. 105 Fig. 3.11 Eugenio Dittborn, Marinero Somerscales, Estampa, 1976. p. 107 Fig. 3.12 Eugenio Dittborn, Así Quedaron, Sinopsis, 1976. p. 112 Fig. 3.13 Eugenio Dittborn, El Ñauca, Epopeya, 1976. p. 114 Fig. 3.14 Tentativa Artaud. Performance at Departamento de Estudios Humanísticos. 1974. p. 126 Fig. 3.15 View of exhibition “Imbunches,” October-November, 1977. p. 129 Fig. 3.16 Catalina Parra, D.i.a.r.i.a.m.e.n.t.e, 1977. p. 130 Fig. 3.17 Catalina Parra, Diario de Vida, 1977. p. 130 Fig. 3.18 Catalina Parra, Imbunche gigante, 1977. p. 133 Fig. 3.19 Catalina Parra, A Walter Benjamin, 1977. p. 133 Fig. 3.20 Catalina Parra. Pages from Imbunches exhibition catalogue. p. 137 Fig. 3.21 Catalina Parra, Cordero de dios, 1977-1979. p. 150 Fig. 3.22 Eugenio Dittborn, A Fondo Perdido, 1977. p. 153 Fig. 3.23 Eugenio Dittborn, A Contragolpe, 1977. p. 153 Fig. 3.24 Eugenio Dittborn, La Pietá, 1977.