Arte Chicano

"This is the first book solely dedicated to the history, development, and present-day flowering of Chicana and Chicano visual arts. It offers readers an opportunity to understand and appreciate Chicana/o art from its beginnings in the 1960s, its relationship to the Chicana/o Movement, and its leading artists, themes, current directions, and cultural impact." "The visual arts have both reflected and created Chicano culture in the United States. For college students - and for all readers who want to learn more about this subject - this book is an ideal introduction to an art movement with a social conscience." --Book Jacket.

In the early 1990s, a major exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 toured major museums around the United States. As a first attempt to define and represent Chicano/a art for a national audience, the exhibit attracted both praise and controversy, while raising fundamental questions about the nature of multiculturalism in the U.S. This book presents the first interdisciplinary cultural study of the CARA exhibit. Alicia Gaspar de Alba looks at the exhibit as a cultural text in which the Chicano/a community affirmed itself not as a "subculture" within the U.S. but as an "alter-Native" culture in opposition to the exclusionary and homogenizing practices of mainstream institutions. She also shows how the exhibit reflected the cultural and sexual politics of the Chicano Movement and how it serves as a model of Chicano/a popular culture more generally. Drawing insights from cultural studies, feminist theory, anthropology, and semiotics, this book constitutes a wide-ranging analysis of Chicano/a art, popular culture, and mainstream cultural politics. It will appeal to a diverse audience in all of these fields.

This anthology provides an overview of the history and theory of Chicano/a art from the 1960s to the present, emphasizing the debates and vocabularies that have played key roles in its conceptualization. In Chicano and Chicana Art—which includes many of Chicano/a art's landmark and foundational texts and manifestos—artists, curators, and cultural critics trace the development of Chicano/a art from its early role in the Chicano civil rights movement to its mainstream acceptance in American art institutions. Throughout this teaching-oriented volume they address a number of themes, including the politics of border life, public art practices such as posters and murals, and feminist and queer artists' figurations of Chicano/a bodies. They also chart the multiple cultural and artistic influences—from American graffiti and Mexican pre-Columbian spirituality to pop art and modernism—that have informed Chicano/a art's practice. Contributors. Carlos Almaraz, David Avalos, Judith F. Baca, Raye Bemis, Jo-Anne Berelowitz, Elizabeth Blair, Chaz Bojóroquez, Philip Brookman, Mel Casas, C. Ondine Chavoya, Karen Mary Davalos, Rupert García, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Shifra Goldman, Jennifer A. González, Rita Gonzalez, Robb Hernández, Juan Felipe Herrera, Louis Hock, Nancy L. Kelker, Philip Kennicott, Josh Kun, Asta Kuusinen, Gilberto “Magu” Luján, Amelia Malagamba-Ansotegui, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Dylan Miner, Malaquias Montoya, Judithe Hernández de Neikrug, Chon Noriega, Joseph Palis, Laura Elisa Pérez, Peter Plagens, Catherine Ramírez, Matthew Reilly, James Rojas, Terezita Romo, Ralph Rugoff, Lezlie Salkowitz-Montoya, Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino, Cylena Simonds, Elizabeth Sisco, John Tagg, Roberto Tejada, Rubén Trejo, Gabriela Valdivia, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Victor Zamudio-Taylor

Since the 1980s Chicana writers including Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Alma Luz Villanueva have reworked iconic Mexican cultural symbols such as mother earth goddesses and La Llorona (the Wailing Woman of Mexican folklore), re-imagining them as powerful female figures. After reading the works of Chicana writers who created bold, powerful, and openly sexual female characters, Debra J. Blake wondered how everyday Mexican American women would characterize their own lives in relation to the writers’ radical reconfigurations of female sexuality and gender roles. To find out, Blake gathered oral histories from working-class and semiprofessional U.S. Mexicanas. In Chicana Sexuality and Gender, she compares the self-representations of these women with fictional and artistic representations by academic-affiliated, professional intellectual Chicana writers and visual artists, including Alma M. López and Yolanda López. Blake looks at how the Chicana professional intellectuals and the U.S. Mexicana women refigure confining and demeaning constructions of female gender roles and racial, ethnic, and sexual identities. She organizes her analysis around re-imaginings of La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Llorona, indigenous Mexica goddesses, and La Malinche, the indigenous interpreter for Hernán Cortés during the Spanish conquest. In doing so, Blake reveals how the professional intellectuals and the working-class and semiprofessional women rework or invoke the female icons to confront the repression of female sexuality, limiting gender roles, inequality in male and female relationships, and violence against women. While the representational strategies of the two groups of women are significantly different and the U.S. Mexicanas would not necessarily call themselves feminists, Blake nonetheless illuminates a continuum of Chicana feminist thinking, showing how both groups of women expand lifestyle choices and promote the health and well-being of women of Mexican origin or descent.

The first book-length study of the Royal Chicano Air Force maps the history of this vanguard Chicano/a arts collective, which used art and cultural production as sociopolitical activism.

In-depth scholarship on the central artists, movements, and themes of Latin American art, from the Mexican revolution to the present A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art consists of over 30 never-before-published essays on the crucial historical and theoretical issues that have framed our understanding of art in Latin America. This book has a uniquely inclusive focus that includes both Spanish-speaking Caribbean and contemporary Latinx art in the United States. Influential critics of the 20th century are also covered, with an emphasis on their effect on the development of artistic movements. By providing in-depth explorations of central artists and issues, alongside cross-references to illustrations in major textbooks, this volume provides an excellent complement to wider surveys of Latin American and Latinx art. Readers will engage with the latest scholarship on each of five distinct historical periods, plus broader theoretical and historical trends that continue to influence how we understand Latinx, Indigenous, and Latin American art today. The book’s areas of focus include: The development of avant-garde art in the urban centers of Latin America from 1910-1945 The rise of abstraction during the Cold War and the internationalization of Latin American art from 1945-1959 The influence of the political upheavals of the 1960s on art and art theory in Latin America The rise of conceptual art as a response to dictatorship and social violence in the 1970s and 1980s The contemporary era of neoliberalism and globalization in Latin American and Latino Art, 1990-2010 With its comprehensive approach and informative structure, A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art is an excellent resource for advanced students in Latin American culture and art. It is also a valuable reference for aspiring scholars in the field.

Rewrites our understanding of the last 50 years of Chicana/o cultural production. Chicana/o Remix casts new light not only on artists—such as Sandra de la Loza, Judy Baca, and David Botello, among others—but on the exhibitions that feature their work, and the collectors, curators, critics, and advocates who engage it. Combining feminist theory, critical ethnic studies, art historical analysis, and extensive archival and field research, Karen Mary Davalos argues that narrow notions of identity, politics, and aesthetics limit our ability to understand the full capacities of Chicana/o art. She employs fresh vernacular concepts such as the “errata exhibit,” or the staging of exhibits that critically question mainstream art museums, and the “remix,” or the act of bringing new narratives and forgotten histories from the background and into the foreground. These concepts, which emerge out of art practice itself, drive her analysis and reinforce the rejection of familiar narratives that evaluate Chicana/o art in simplistic, traditional terms, such as political versus commercial, or realist versus conceptual. Throughout Chicana/o Remix, Davalos explores undocumented or previously ignored information about artists, their cultural production, and the exhibitions and collections that feature their work. Each chapter exposes and challenges conventions in art history and Chicana/o studies, documenting how Chicana artists were the first to critically challenge exhibitions of Chicana/o art, tracing the origins of the first Chicano arts organizations, and highlighting the influence of Europe and Asia on Chicana/o artists who traveled abroad. As a leading scholar in the study of Chicana/o artists, art spaces, and exhibition practices, Davalos presents her most ambitious project to date in this re-examination of fifty years of Chicana/o art production.