Description
TitleThis must be the place (Latin American artists in New York, 1965-1975)
Date Created2021
Other Date2021-10 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (ix, 418 pages) : illustrations
DescriptionIn the effervescent and politically charged New York of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a group of migrant artists from Latin America produced neo avant-garde artworks that challenged the reigning formalism and purported autonomy of the art object while contributing discussions on identity. Departing with a survey on how they conformed a community through political and artistic associations, this dissertation then focuses on works by Luis Camnitzer, Jaime Davidovich, Juan Downey, Leandro Katz, Alberto Greco, Marta Minujín, Liliana Porter, and Hélio Oiticica; to highlight how topics of migration, exchange, internationalism, violence, exile, and nostalgia appear in their happenings, environments and conceptual art. Responding to their cross-cultural condition and Cold War geopolitics, they addressed national mythologies, uneven power relations, and hemispheric affairs. Their contributions revealed a more diverse and cosmopolitan scene than typically portrayed in the historiography of postwar American art. Actively participating in experimental artistic movements, including minimalism, conceptualism, and Fluxus, they challenged folklorist understandings of the region’s artistic production promoted by most US cultural institutions and the art market, proposing an alternative understanding of Latin American art. For these artists, “Latin American” was not a label they necessarily identified with before arriving in New York, but, rather, one made relevant by shared experiences and a newfound sense of kinship. In search of new moorings, they recurred to performative dimensions of identity construction to imagine a community for themselves. Inhabiting the de facto capital of the West, they remained conscious of their status as immigrants from the South. Diversifying the city’s artistic life, they helped shape New York into the global art center it is today.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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