Mexican Painting

ionism emanating primarily from United States, particularly in form of abstract expressionism, which threatened to overwhelm native traditions all over Latin America. Goldman's analysis of how this new abstractionism was promoted by U.S. corporations and their Latin American allies or subsidiaries and of how it served ideological needs of U.S.ionism was promoted by U.S. corporations and their Latin American allies or subsidiaries and of how it served ideological needs of U.S. capitalism in its coca-colanization of Latin American economies and cultures-masking its true nature under banner of individualistic expression and spiritual freedom-is among most important and illuminating parts of book. So-called vanguard art presented internal psychic as supposedly authentic response to existential despair and anguish in age overshadowed by nuclear annihilation and Cold War. This kind of inner aesthetic liberation superseded idea of external from oppressor class which muralists of prewar era had incorporated in their work and on which Siqueiros, imprisoned in 1960-1964 for dissoluteness, continued to act. Goldman's forthright anti-imperialist stance softens occasionally in cautious phraseology which seems to reflect uncertainties (whether hers or publisher's) over expected level of political understanding in her audience. Insofar as it is art audience, it may be confidently predicted to include a high proportion of politically naive people. This may explain why in introduction she puts words in quotes, as if term itself and reality of vast and pernicious phenomenon it connotes were in question. At same time, Goldman refers to (mere) that abstract expressionism was publicized and popularized in Mexico and Latin America by various U.S. public and private agencies as part of cultural and ideological penetration that characterized Cold War (1981: xxv, my stress). book actually establishes this not as a mere possibility but as a certainty, along lines first laid down by Eva Cockcroft (1974). Since publication of Cockcroft's article, which Goldman cites approvingly, there can be no doubt of confluence of concerns, tactics, and even personnel between CIA and U.S. art establishment (particularly Museum of Modern Art) which promoted heroically aggressive and nihilistic art styles as assertions of American love of freedom. Goldman touches upon, without analyzing, postwar strategy of Rockefellers and Guggenheims (and their like) to exploit Latin American art and cultures, better to exploit economies of region. success of Cuban Revolution, and military defeat inflicted upon United States at Bay of Pigs, was interpreted by them, correctly, -as ideological defeat: So Imperialism revised its strategy and launched a global counter-offensive in cultural field. Universities in practically all of Latin America were remade and reoriented, support was given to study of humanities, cultural foundations were created, artists, philosophers were promoted: exhibitions were held, and museums created (Hijar, 1981: 62). Indigenous culture of past was put in museums, and popular culture of present overlaid with U.S. consumerism. Local power elites recognized U.S. culture, as well as U.S. arms, as a means of repressing popular traditions and popular social movements based on them. The generals placed in charge of these systems of institutionalized violence are encouraged by their foreign sponsors to look down on their own peoples and cultures, and they Latin A-ericrn Perspeti-, Is 35, Fall 1982, Vol. IX, No. 4 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.102 on Thu, 23 Jun 2016 06:42:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 138 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES come to think of their emulation of foreign ways as a mark of their own sophistication and superiority (Chomsky and Herman, 1979: 103). Mexico, of course, is not run by fascistoid generals of type referred to by Chomsky and Herman, and has a much stronger native cultural tradition than most Latin American countries, but it remains vulnerable to cultural imperialism which menaces it with ever-increasing technological sophistication. one-way flow of U.S. culture into Latin America by way of international news agencies, transnational corporations and their advertising, and university-area study and exchange programs thickens every day, with little or no regard for native traditions and popular aspirations. Today we can only hope that progressive academics and enlightened cultural workers can show more awareness of these processes, as more or less witting accomplices of U.S. imperialism, than did their counterparts in Latin American studies twenty years ago. It is not coincidental that same period which saw U.S. vanguard art styles sweep continent also saw meteoric increase within U.S. universities of doctoral dissertations, and centers and programs devoted to Latin American studies and pre-Columbian art (cf. Klein forthcoming). Such intellectual activities provide training ground and ideological justification at elite level for cultural and hence economic penetration into foreign markets. appropriation of a dependent country's archeology and history accompanies looting of its economic resources, and imposition of capitalist cultural modes upon art, media, and consumption patterns of its people acts as a useful anesthetic for capitalist economic surgery. Organization of American States, originally set up by United States to further its economic and military hegemony in region, spawned Pan American Union whose Division of Plastic Arts, in conjunction with great multinationals, sponsored Latin America art exhibitions and exchanges both in United States and Latin America itself. From 1950 to 1970, which Goldman terms the vulnerable decades, and especially 1955 to 1965, there was a rush of Inter-American art competitions and exhibitions in which Colombia played a key role. International Petroleum Company of Colombia, affiliate of Standard Oil of New Jersey, in conjunction with other multinationals (Braniff, Shell, etc.) helped set up Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogota, under directorship of Marta Traba, who became a vociferous opponent of Mexican muralism (which she had not even seen first hand but which she called an enormous abscess that has infected all our countries). Instead, she promoted U.S. modernist styles and became a primary agent of cultural imperialist penetration of continent along with Jose G6mez-Sicre of Pan American Union and Jorge Brest, virtual art-dictator of Argentina. In Mexico, a comparable role was played by Miguel Salas Anzures, who was opposing Mexican realism as early as 1952, and who in 1953 launched lush Artes de Mexico to further U.S. vanguardist styles. triumph of abstractionism (which was never, as Goldman shows, as complete in Mexico as, for instance, in Brazil or Argentina) was engineered by a coalition of political, industrial, and cultural forces. Artists were offered heavy financial and moral inducements to change styles. At 1960 show of modern Latin American art organized by Boston Institute of ContempoThis content downloaded from 157.55.39.102 on Thu, 23 Jun 2016 06:42:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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