El Techo de la Ballena (eBook)

Retro-Modernity in Venezuela

María C. Gaztambide (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2018
256 Seiten
University of Florida Press (Verlag)
978-1-68340-076-9 (ISBN)

Infos

The work of the 1960s Caracas-based art collective El Techo de la Ballena (The Roof of the Whale) was called “subversive” and “art terrorism” and seen as a threat to Venezuela’s national image as an emerging industrial power. This volume details the historical and social contexts that shaped the collective, exploring how its anti-art aesthetic highlighted the shortcomings of the country’s newfound oil wealth and transition to democracy.















Every element used by these radicalized artists in their avant-garde exhibitions—from Informalist canvases to torn book pages and kitsch objects to cattle carcasses and scatological content—issued a critique of Venezuela’s petroleum-driven capitalism and the profound inequality left in its wake. Embracing chaos, the artists contradicted the country’s politically sanctioned view of modernity, which championed constant progress in the visual arts and favored geometric abstraction and kinetic art. El Techo’s was a backward—a retrograde—modernity, argues María Gaztambide, discussing how its artists turned against the norm by incorporating anachronistic postures, primeval symbols, colonial Latin American print culture, and “guerilla” art tactics.















Artists in this group tested limits to provoke what they saw as a numbed local public through shocking displays of criticism and frustration. Today, as Venezuela undergoes another dramatic series of sociopolitical changes, El Techo de la Ballena serves as a reminder of the power of art in resisting the status quo and effecting change in society.

Autor

María C. Gaztambide is associate director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.12.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Malerei / Plastik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: 20th century • Abstract • Aesthetics • Anti Art • art collective • Art Terrorism • Caracas • Caribbean art • changing lives and transforming society • Chaos • Contemporary • Culture • dystopian • El Techo de la Ballena: Retro Modernity in Venezuela • Exhibitions • Global Informalism • Latin American • Latin American History • Literary group • MoMA • Political Art • political growth • politically engaged publications and provocative exhibitions • Politics and Art • socioeconomic • Symbolism • The Roof of the Whale • twentieth • Venezuela • Venezuelan Avant-Garde, 1961–1969 • whale symbolism
• ISBN-10: 1-68340-076-3 / 1683400763
• ISBN-13: 978-1-68340-076-9 / 9781683400769