Art and Social Movements

The 1968 Mexican student movement continues to inspire analysis in history and in the social sciences, whether scholars examine it in terms of gender, the rise of the Right, the middle class and its politics, music, or the political implications of the uprising. The Mexican Olympic Committee hoped to introduce the world to its country’s art and culture; it never planned on hosting its global fiesta in the midst of a social protest that ultimately challenged the establishment, whether it was political, cultural, economic, literary, or artistic. The student movement, of course, was not planned: young people across the Federal District of Mexico City did not come together years or even months prior to the games to plan a strike concurrent with the Olympics. The strike was a short- lived contingency of a revolutionary narrative that the ruling elites constructed in the wake of the Mexican Revolution in which all Mexicans equally shared the nation’s bounties. That phenomenon, however, is now part of Mexico’s historical continuities of resistance to that illusionary narrative of the revolutionary family.The student movement, like other Mexican historical events, also produced vibrant visual media. During 1968, some artists produced posters, films, and other media, while secondary school students depicted police brutality in other aesthetic forms. In Art and Social Movements, visual artists “stand and claim” their rightful space within this movement and its growing historiography (p. 83). Edward J. McCaughan’s insightful analysis builds on 13 years of interviews with artists, activists, scholars, and museum and gallery directors to consider theoretically and to document how artists who participated in or were influenced by certain social movements constructed new visual languages to explore and interrogate collective identities and new forms of citizenship (p. 1). McCaughan’s task was not an easy one. Because of the array of artists he interviewed and analyzed, McCaughan offers a great study of contemporary Mexican and Chicano art. When artists claim their spaces they frequently clash with one another’s concepts of identity, art, influences, and creative schools of thought. McCaughan handles this in an insightful and mature manner. Many of the men and women he discusses are people he greatly admires, and yet he sees them and their art in all their complexities.Setting out to explore the artistic movements that emerged in Mexico City, Oaxaca, and California, McCaughan establishes how these three art movements were part of the 1968 revolutions. Using Immanuel Wallerstein’s analysis of 1968 as one of the greatest formative events of contemporary history, McCaughan argues that the three art movements born from the political uprisings of the 1960s sought to create other forms of social power by engaging in new forms of political expression. The events in Mexico in 1968 played a key role in the formation of such new identities because of the questioning and discoveries that the uprising yielded. McCaughan’s is the first work to explore in detail the artists and artistic movements of 1968 in Mexico and the United States. Moreover, the grand heroics of the masculine narrative of 1968 served as a launching pad for greater contextualization and introspection in regard to feminism, gay rights, and artistic expression outside the cosmopolitan center of Mexico City. McCaughan’s approach is significant because he highlights the importance of renewed introspection. Mexico 1968 was never completely bound by the borders of the federal district. The leaders of the student strike included representatives from the provinces, though not many. The movement was part of a global uprising, and young artists astutely recognized and represented these global shifts in their art. Using the resources available to them at occupied campuses or in their art schools, activists created posters, banners, and films, some of which gained national and global significance. The shared flow of ideas regarding the movement became even more apparent for young Chicanos who were enrolled in US universities at that time. In fact, one American professor brought his students to meet with 1968 activists in the early 1970s, creating a connection for young Chicano activists with their Mexican peers.McCaughan captures collaborations that existed both formally and informally among visual artists. In clear and vibrant descriptions and analysis that are accessible to all readers, McCaughan describes how artists in Mexico City went to the people by creating grupos, magazines, and publications, and how they pursued different forms of expression and broke from the traditional Mexican school of art. For young Chicano artists, the 1960s and 1970s served as a time of discovery of the Mexican school of art, as exemplified by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros, and many others, and its new forms, techniques, and models that had been ignored in much of the United States. Many went to Mexico to learn about the country’s muralists and, in turn, found Central American struggles.As more works on 1968 Mexico and its role in the Cold War continue to be published, this text will remain a standard for understanding how Mexican and Chicano activists interpreted their historical moment. More importantly, McCaughan explores how artists reinterpreted, challenged, and reflected on that moment for decades afterward

Art · Contingency · Historiography · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Revolutionary movement · Social movement · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law