Kategoria BISAC: Art >> Caribbean & Latin American

Helio Oiticica (1937--1980) occupies a central position in the Latin American avant-garde of the postwar era. Associated with the Rio de Janeiro-based neo-concretist movement at the beginning of his career, Oiticica moved from object production to the creation of chromatically opulent and sensually engulfing large-scale installations or wearable garments. Building on the idea for a film by Brazilian underground filmmaker Neville D'Almeida, Oiticica developed the concept for Block-Experiments in Cosmococa -- Program in Progress (1973--1974) as an -open program- a series of nine proposals...

Known for their beautiful textile art, the Kuna of Panama have been scrutinized by anthropologists for decades. Perhaps surprisingly, this scrutiny has overlooked the magnificent Kuna craft of nuchukana--wooden anthropomorphic carvings--which play vital roles in curing and other Kuna rituals. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, Paolo Fortis at last brings to light this crucial cultural facet, illuminating not only Kuna aesthetics and art production but also their relation to wider social and cosmological concerns.

Exploring an art form that informs birth and death, personhood,...

Popular art is a masculine and working-class genre, associated with Panama's black population. Its practitioners are self-taught, commercial painters, whose high-toned designs, vibrant portraits, and landscapes appear in cantinas, barbershops, and restaurants. The red devil buses are popular art's most visible manifestation. The old school buses are imported from the United States and provide public transportation in Colon and Panama City. Their owners hire the artists to attract customers with eye-catching depictions of singers and actors, brassy phrases, and vivid representations of both...

Miguel Covarrubias enjoyed transcultural encounters and exchanges in the cosmopolitan centers of Mexico City, New York, and Europe, where he met and exchanged ideas in a global network of modernists such as Georgia O'Keeffe. Famous for his caricature studies, he was also an accomplished painter, set designer, and book illustrator. Less well known are his consummate skills as an art historian, curator, cartographer, ethnographer, and documentary filmmaker, as well as his direction of programs in museum studies, dance, and the excavation of cultural sites in Mexico.

Miguel...

Art can be a powerful avenue of resistance to oppressive governments. During the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, some of the country's least powerful citizens--impoverished women living in Santiago's shantytowns--spotlighted the government's failings and use of violence by creating and selling arpilleras, appliqued pictures in cloth that portrayed the unemployment, poverty, and repression that they endured, their work to make ends meet, and their varied forms of protest. Smuggled out of Chile by human rights organizations, the arpilleras raised international...

The Logic of Disorder presents for the first time to the English-speaking world the writings of seminal Mexican contemporary artist Abraham Cruzvillegas. Renowned for his sculptures and drawings, Cruzvillegas's artistic practice ranges from pedagogy to performance. It is through his writings, however, that we can best recognize the impressive depth of knowledge and theoretic clarity of an artist whose work never ceases to impress audiences across the globe.

Each of the texts included in this volume is fully annotated and is accompanied by a number of critical studies by...

Massive yet elegantly executed masonry architecture and andenes (agricultural terraces) set against majestic and seemingly boundless Andean landscapes, roads built in defiance of rugged terrains, and fine textiles with orderly geometric designs--all were created within the largest political system in the ancient New World, a system headed, paradoxically, by a single, small minority group without wheeled vehicles, markets, or a writing system, the Inka. For some 130 years (ca. A.D. 1400 to 1533), the Inka ruled over at least eighty-six ethnic groups in an empire that encompassed...

The states of Northern Mexico--Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California Norte and Sur--have architecture, urbanism, and landscape design that offer numerous lessons in how to build well, but this constructed environment is largely undervalued or unknown. To make this architecture better known to a wide professional, academic, and public audience, this book presents the first comprehensive overview in either English or Spanish of the architecture, urban landscapes, and cities of Northern Mexico from the country's emergence as a modern nation...

By examining the stunning stone buildings and dynamic spaces of the royal estate of Chinchero, Nair brings to light the rich complexity of Inca architecture. This investigation ranges from the paradigms of Inca scholarship and a summary of Inca cultural practices to the key events of Topa Inca's reign and the many individual elements of Chinchero's extraordinary built environment.

What emerges are the subtle, often sophisticated ways in which the Inca manipulated space and architecture in order to impose their authority, identity, and agenda. The remains of grand buildings, as well...

The artistic eminence of Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) is such that he has been called "the greatest painter the Americas have produced." In his Autobiography he also attains literary distinction. He is a writer who recounts the history of his period from a personal point of view and yet scarcely mentions himself. He is an observer who writes about the history of his country and of his country's art, yet makes his own character implicit in the narrative.

The character that emerges is charming. It is that of a man strong but retiring, sharply critical of what he disapproves...

The valley of Malinalco, Mexico, long renowned for its monolithic Aztec temples, is a microcosm of the historical changes that occurred in the centuries preceding and following the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. In particular, the garden frescoes uncovered in 1974 at the Augustinian monastery of Malinalco document the collision of the European search for Utopia with the reality of colonial life.

In this study, Jeanette F. Peterson examines the murals within the dual heritage of pre-Hispanic and European muralism to reveal how the wall paintings promoted the political and...

"Words alone do not do Cuba justice. They depict only fragments of her mystery and beauty, her strength and fragility, her spirit and song. And so I turn to my cameras . . ."--from the introduction, Embracing Cuba

"Motley's images of Cuba's people, arts, design, and public life are remarkable."--Ellen M. Harrington, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

"One can immediately look at Motley's photographs and feel the spirit of the Cuban people."--Gil...

The first full-length study of the impact of the discovery of the Americas on Italian Renaissance art and culture, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence demonstrates that the Medici grand dukes of Florence were not only great patrons of artists but also early conservators of American culture.

In collecting New World objects such as featherwork, codices, turquoise, and live plants and animals, the Medici grand dukes undertook a "vicarious conquest" of the Americas. As a result of their efforts, Renaissance Florence boasted one of the largest collections of objects from...