Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Flores, Tatiana

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Description: Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

BOOKMexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Tatiana Flores

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15112

In December 1921, the poet Manuel Maples Arce (1898–1981) papered the walls of Mexico City with his manifesto Actual No. 1, sparking the movement Estridentismo (Stridentism). Inspired by Mexico's rapid modernization following the Mexican Revolution, the Estridentistas attempted to overturn the status quo in Mexican culture, taking inspiration from contemporary European movements and methods of expression.

Mexico's Revolutionary Avant-Gardes provides a nuanced account of the early-20th-century moment that came to be known as the Mexican Renaissance, featuring an impressive range of artists and writers. Relying on extensive documentary research and previously unpublished archival materials, author Tatiana Flores expands the conventional history of Estridentismo by including its offshoot movement ¡30–30! and underscoring Mexico's role in the broader development of modernism worldwide. Focusing on the interrelationship between art and literature, she illuminates the complexities of post-revolutionary Mexican art at a time when it was torn between formal innovation and social relevance.

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date June 2013 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300184488

EISBN 9780300232196

Illustrations 170

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

Vectorial Elevation, Relational Architecture 4
Voz Alta, Relational Architecture 15
Magnavoz
Actual No. 1 (recto)
Actual No. 1 (verso)
Zócalo
Manifesto Ultraísta Vertical (recto and verso)
Vida-Americana: Revista Norte, Centro y Sud-Americana de Vanguardia, no. 1
Portrait of W. Kennedy
In My Bed
Painters at the open-air school in Coyoacán, painting Luz Jiménex
Indian with Red Serape
Indian of the Tunas
Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce (verso of Indian of the Tunas)
Zapatistas at Rest
Fernando Leal Painting
Luz with Parrot
Man with Cigarette (Trinidad)
Creation
The Feast of the Lord of Chalma
The Feast of the Lord of Chalma, study
The Feast of the Lord of Chalma, preparatory drawing (artist's self-portrait)
Our Gods, study for a frieze (group of four figures, left panel of the triptych)
Our Gods, study for a frieze (Coatlicue with crucifix, central panel of the triptych)
The Feast of the Lord of Chalma, study
Massacre at the Templo Mayor
Scaled Composition (study for Massacre at the Templo Mayor)
Massacre at the Templo Mayor, study
Actual No. 3
Andamios interiores
Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce
Sculptures by Guillermo Ruiz, shown in Luis Garrido, "Le escultura cubista en Mexico," Revista de Revistas (September 17, 1922), 44 (left to right: Portrait of Garrido, Dancer, Portrait of Francisco Orozco Muñoz, Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce)
After the Rain
The Tree (possibly, El Pedregal)
Subestación (La Indianilla)
Port
Allegory of the Virgin of Guadalupe
Andamios exteriores
Líneas de alta tensión
Peasant
The Planting of the Cross in the New World
Crane
The Planting of the Cross in the New World, study
Unfinished mural for the Escuela de Ferrocarrileros, Mexico City
Tejedores
Trapiche
Cargadores
Lavanderas
Irradiator, no. 1, magazine front cover
Advertisement for El Buen Tono
Advertisement for El Buen Tono
Kyn Taniya [Luis Quintanilla], Radio (Mexico City: Editorial Cultura, 1924)
Café de 5 centavos
Irradiador estridencial
Nación
Irradior, no. 2, magazine front cover
Las calamidades de México
Ms. Flo 826 Chut, estridentista beauty
Diorama estridentista, with illustrations by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Norah Borges
Diorama estridentista, with illustrations by Walt Kuhn and María M. de Orozco
Letterhead of Ediciones del Movimiento Estridentista
Illustration for "El verdadero origen del jazz" by J. M. Durán y Casahonda
Illustration for "Quinta Avenida" by José Juan Tablada
Illustration for "La ciudad múltiple" by Humberto Rivas
Illustration for "T. S. H." by Manuel Maples Arce
El Universal Ilustrado: Siluetas y coasas que pasan
Portrait of Germán List Arzubide
Portrait of Germán List Arzubide
Portrait of Germán List Arzubide
Portrait of Esperanza Crespo
Calaveras de artesanos
Chemin de Croix: Illème station, première chute
The Factory
New York
El Universal Ilustrado: El grabado de madera en México
Old Woman, Santa Anita
Head of Indian
Dance of the Crescent Moon
Dancers
Dance of the Little Deer
Two Mothers (Indian Mother and Child, Bourgeois Mother and Child)
Psychological Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce
Untitled cover image for "Esquina" by Germán List Arzubide
Chicken Vendor
Mother and Child
Market Woman
El cargador
Cargador
Book cover for "Urbe" by Manuel Maples Acre
Untitled woodcut for first canto of Urbe
Untitled woodcut for second canto of Urbe
Untitled woodcut for third canto of Urbe
Untitled woodcut for fourth canto of Urbe
Untitled woodcut for fifth canto of Urbe
Metropolis
Portrait of Germán List Arzubide
Portrait of Kyn Taniya
Portrait of Leopoldo Méndez
Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce
Untitled
Three Fish - Gourds, Mexico, 1925
El café de nadie
El café de nadie (second version)
Installation photographs of Café de Nadie exhibition
Self-Portrait with Pancho Villa and La Adelita
Portrait of Migeul N. Lira
Self-Portrait with Pancho Villa and La Adelita, preparatory sketch
Los cantos de la Revolución: La Adelita
Manuel Maples Arce in Xalapa
Manifesto estridentista No. 3
Factory
Telegraph Wires
El Pípila
Tres Ollas de Oaxaca
The Adoration at Chalma
Shop Window
Zapatistas
Workers' March
School boys performing military exercises, dressed as revolutionaries
Rural school for girls in Naranjal, Veracruz
Rooftops of Xalapa
Xalapa Street
Telegraph Wires
The Station
Peasant and Worker against Capitalism
Germán List Arzubide at the Tribune
Portrait of Manuel Maples Arce
Voladores
Strike
Photograph of march in Xalapa in support of President Calles's policies against the Cristeros
Workers
Workers, Mexico City
Untitled ["Indians carrying blocks of stone on their back for the …"]
Tank No. 1
Labor 2
El crucificado
El sembrador
Untitled ["Loading bananas in Veracruz for the U.S."]
Conquistas de la Revolución
Dactilográfica, with a poem by J. J. P.
Edificio Estridentista
Rooster
Frontispiece for El movimiento estridentista
Radio Station for Estridentópolis
Fruit Vendor
Drawing for "Muestrario de mujeres"
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
La rumba
Untitled [Panchito shooting at the moon]
Hé bonsoir la Lune!
Untitled [U.S. intervention in the Mexican Revolution]
Untitled [Mexican president addressing the world]
Veracruz Port
Estridentópolis
Indian Women on Market Day
The Collective Model
Escultura y talla directa
Door of the School of Sculpture and Direct Carving
First 30–30 Manifesto
Conservadores conservados
Untitled [study for a ¡30–30! vignette]
Magazine cover, ¡30–30! Órgano de los pintores de México
Portrait of Salvador Novo
Third 30–30 Manifesto
Photographs from ¡30–30! exhibition of prints
Sandino
Workers' Wake
Fifth 30–30 Manifesto

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Contents

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Contents

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15113

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Acknowledgments

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

This book has been gestating for a long time and could not have been possible without the help of many people. I am particularly grateful to my Columbia University adviser, Keith Moxey, whose creativity, intelligence, and kindness from my days as an undergraduate inspired me to become an art historian. Christina Kiaer, my coadviser, lent her support when I most needed it and showed me how to be a better writer. Alfred MacAdam, an unwavering ally since my undergraduate years, provided keen …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15114

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Introduction

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Mexico’s first self-acknowledged avant-garde movement, Estridentismo (stridentism), erupted in 1921 with the distribution of the explosive manifesto Actual No. 1 by the poet Manuel Maples Arce (1898–1981) in Mexico City. Riddled with insults for the literary establishment and the bourgeoisie, the manifesto set forth an aesthetic plan to renovate jaded artistic conventions and overturn the status quo, replacing the lyrical aesthetic that had dominated the Mexican arts with a dissonant artistic …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-15

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15115

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaBolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003Lozano-Hemmer, Rafael

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1. The Manifesto

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

In the final days of December 1921, Manuel Maples Arce, a twenty-one-year-old law-student-cum-poet, rebelled. His radical and subversive act consisted of plastering the walls of Mexico City in the dead of night with an avant-garde manifesto. Actual No. 1 (figs. 4 and 5) resembled newspapers with blaring headlines and competed in the crowded urban arena with sundry advertisements for bullfights, cigarettes, and concerts. Its bold typography was intended to capture the attention of pedestrians, …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.17-47

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15116

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaMaples Arce, Manuel, 1900-1981Art manifestosMexico--History--Revolution, 1923-1924

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2. The Murals

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

The previous chapter concerned the audacious act of an individual who espoused a vision of modernity as a global phenomenon. Technological advances that could bridge vast distances—the radio, telegraph, airplane—made it possible for Manuel Maples Arce to argue that Mexico did not need to think of itself as peripheral or lagging in relation to Europe. He positioned his aesthetic as internationally cutting-edge and addressed an audience beyond national borders. His bold gesture did not take into …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.48-88

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15117

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaMural painting and decorationLeal, Fernando, 1896-1964

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3. Dialogues with Artists

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

During the explosion of creative activity related to the launch of the mural movement, Manuel Maples Arce continued to explore the avant-garde aesthetic that he had proposed in Actual No. 1 and established an ever-widening network of alliances among artists and writers, which shaped his movement and led it in new directions. Arqueles Vela and Germán List Arzubide became his two closest allies in literature, but he met them as a result of the dissemination of his texts. Prior to this, his kindred …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.89-131

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15118

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaMaples Arce, Manuel, 1900-1981Revueltas, Fermín, 1902-1935

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4. A Literary Interlude

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

So far this narrative, in analyzing Estridentismo through its dialogue with the visual arts, does not resemble traditional histories of the movement, which have tended to take literature as a point of departure. By reading the movement against the grain, I reinterpret Estridentismo’s significance to art and post-revolutionary culture in general. But there is no denying that Estridentismo played itself out in the literary sphere in important ways and that these interventions marked other forms of …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.132-159

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15119

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaMaples Arce, Manuel, 1900-1981Poetry

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5. The Paradox of the Primitive and the Modern

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

During the early 1920s, as Manuel Maples Arce promoted his aesthetic program and extended his sphere of influence, he fostered an over-arching definition of Estridentismo, embracing artists who rejected bourgeois values or academic culture. Works of art unrelated to the cult of modernity and the urban aesthetic espoused in Actual No. 1 therefore became widely recognized as estridentista, especially those in media long associated with preindustrial cultures, such as woodcuts and masks. These were …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.160-205

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.008

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15120

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaPrints--Technique

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6. A Provincial Avant-Garde?

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Estridentismo underwent a fundamental shift when Manuel Maples Arce accepted a position as a judge in Xalapa, the capital of his home state of Veracruz, after obtaining his law degree in 1925. Why he chose to abandon Mexico City remains a subject for speculation, but it is likely that employment opportunities were limited for someone who had insulted so many individuals and institutions. Certainly, positions in the cultural sphere were out of the question, since so many of them were in the hands …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.206-264

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.009

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15121

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaMaples Arce, Manuel, 1900-1981Indians in art

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7. The Lessons of ¡30–30!

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Despite Estridentismo’s departure from Mexico City, an anti-academic attitude remained entrenched in the arts during the second half of the 1920s. It was manifested through publications such as El Machete, the organ of the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors and later of the Communist Party, which wed art and social action; Forma, the cultural magazine edited by Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, which promoted a side-by-side comparison of traditional Mexican arts and visual culture …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.265-302

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.010

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15122

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaGrupo de Pintores 30-30!

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Epilogue

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Looking back to Actual No. 1, it is easy to find fault or disregard Manuel Maples Arce’s call to arms, as many have done. Estridentismo nonetheless offers a lens through which to read vanguardism in Mexico as it developed in the decade following the revolution. A great many visual artists considered Maples Arce’s avant-garde model as they explored artistic languages and subjects that would be most appropriate to their contemporary condition. The relationship was by no means one-sided. …

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.303-305

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.011

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15123

Chapter subject tags:Art, Mexican--20th centuryAvant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin AmericaMaples Arce, Manuel, 1900-1981

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Index

Tatiana Flores

Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30!

Index

Author

Tatiana Flores

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00083.012

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15124

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