Vida Americana Mexican muralists remake American art, 1925-1945

Book - 2020

"The first half of the 20th century saw prolific cultural exchange between the United States and Mexico, as artists and intellectuals traversed the countries' shared border in both directions. For U.S. artists, Mexico's monumental public murals portraying social and political subject matter offered an alternative aesthetic at a time when artists were seeking to connect with a public deeply affected by the Great Depression. The Mexican influence grew as the artists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros traveled to the United States to exhibit, sell their work, and make large-scale murals, working side-by-side with local artists, who often served as their assistants, and teaching them the fresco techni...que. Vida Americana examines the impact of their work on over 70 artists including Aaron Douglas, Marion Greenwood, Philip Guston, Isamu Noguchi, and Jackson Pollock. It provides a new understanding of art history, one that acknowledges the wide-ranging and profound influence the Mexican muralists had on the style, subject matter, and ideology of art in the United States between 1925 and 1945"--Provided by publisher.

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Subjects
Genres
Exhibition catalogs
Illustrated works
Published
New York, NY : New Haven, CT : Whitney Museum of American Art [2020]
Language
English
Item Description
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945...Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, February 17-May 17, 2020; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, June 25-October 4, 2020
Physical Description
255 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 31 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780300246698
  • Foreword / Adam D. Weinberg
  • América : Mexican muralism and art in the United States, 1925-1945 / Barbara Haskell
  • Plates: Romantic nationalism and the myth of revolution
  • Orozco on the coasts
  • American historical epics
  • Rivera and the new deal
  • Art as political activism
  • Siqueiros in Los Angeles and New York
  • Prometheus unbound : Orozco in Pomona / Renato González Mello
  • "Only a Rivera" : the mural painter in the United States / Mark A. Castro
  • Celluloid América : Siqueiros, Hollywood and plástica fílmica / Anna Indych-López
  • Transcultural modernists as bicultural bridges : Anita Brenner, Alma Reed and Frances Toor / Michael K. Schuessler
  • Mexican/modern : early promotion of Mexican art in the United States / Dafne Cruz Porchini
  • Friends, foes, or strangers : Mexican Americans and the Mexican muralists in the 1930s / Marcela Guerrero
  • Picturing transracial alliances : Mexican muralists and Asian American artists / Shipu Wang
  • Migration and muralism : new Negro artists and Socialist art / Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw
  • Introducing the "big three" : Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros in the 1920s American press / James Wechsler
  • The Mexican revolution as an aesthetic event : early myths and perceptions / Andrew Hemingway
  • Artists in the exhibition
  • Acknowledgments
  • Lenders to the exhibition
  • Index
  • Photographic credits.
Review by Choice Review

This volume, and the exhibition it catalogues, comes at a time of beleaguerment--a time beset by pandemic and by social and economic turmoil on an unprecedented scale. Published to accompany the stunningly reviewed and expeditiously curtailed exhibition of the same name at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Vida Americana strikes home--resonating with historical and contemporary meaning. Themes of national identity and governance, social injustice, the masses and the working classes, and the perils and promises of technology permeate the imagery of the outsize murals created during the 1920s and 1930s in Mexico, especially murals by "the big three"--José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. These muralists rendered humanity and histories--aesthetic, cultural, and political--in bold gestures. Vida Americana delves into the seismic influence of these artists on mid-century art north of the border: artists followed their work on the walls of public spaces in Mexico with stints and commissions in the US, engaging through their work the likes of Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Ben Shahn, Charles White, and Jacob Lawrence. Noted too are the indispensable supporting roles of José Vasconcelos, Dr. Atl (i.e., Gerardo Murillo Cornado), Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Jean Charlot, Anita Brenner, and George Biddle, among others--all of whom deserve more attention. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Eric Baden, Warren Wilson College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.