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Inspired by dialogue with Sergei Eisenstein, David Alfaro Siqueiros applied the principles of material dialectics to art's production, aesthetics, and reception. Central to his experiments was the use of linear perspective and its ancillary, anamorphosis. Siqueiros, like Erwin Panofsky, understood perspective to have both psychological and symbolic potentials and developed an aesthetics of conflict, designed both to psychologically engage the viewer with a montage of conflicting perspectives and to embody the conflicts of the 1930s (epitomized in the Portrait of the Bourgeoisie mural). At issue is the question, under what conditions can artworks affect their spectators? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about how Frida Kahlo's artistic production revealed the intense emotional and physical pain that she endured throughout her life. Subjects such as the tragic bus accident that she survived as a teenager, or her troubled relationship with famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, have informed numerous biographical readings of her work. And though her indebtedness to the colonial traditions of ex-voto and retablo paintings has been noted, little has been said of her relationship to other aspects of Mexican visual culture. This article contextualizes Kahlo's oeuvre within the genres of eighteenth-century casta painting and nineteenth-century costumbrismo, genres that were preoccupied with depicting socio-racial and socio-familial relationships and with representing Mexico's miscegenation, or racial mixing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social, economic and political reforms following the Revolution of 1910 in Mexico made the first part of the twentieth century a period when Europeans, North Americans and other people paid particular attention to Mexican Art. Coverage of Mexico in The School Arts Magazine from the 1930s and 1940s centred on folk craft and rural and Indigenous populations. This stemmed in part from the postrevolutionary concept of Mexicanidad, the movement to develop a national identity based on the Indigenous roots of the country rather than its colonial past, but is also argued to have derived from the idea of Mexico in the US imagination in which the country is associated with quaintness, backwardness and the exotic and romantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the work of the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. Particular focus is given to his work co-organizing exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Additional topics discussed include his work creating cartoons and caricatures for periodicals including "Vogue," his work on the exhibition "Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art" and his book "The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans."

The paper aims to reflect on the human being on his/her condition of suffering. More precisely, it looks to think on the way how it presents itself in art, which is an area that traditionally has resisted making such a conditionclear, in the name of beauty. Firstly, to accomplish this task, the life of the artist Frida Kahlois taken as a methodological starting point, who was born in Coyoacan, Mexico, on July 6, 1907. For her, a victim of suffering, like everyone else, had the particularity of making this the origin of her art. For better or worse, suffering and art became one for this artist. Secondly, the metaphysics of suffering in the work of Arthur Schopenhaueris taken into account, in order to indicate that considering the quote: all life is essentially suffering. For human beings, along with ethics and mysticism, the only alternative is art, otherwise, people would devote themselves only tothe pure desireto live, the will and, therefore, suffering. Finally, in closing, this paper indicates that the work of Kahlo, in particular that subsequent to 1930, is deeply rooted in the spirit of theSchopenhauer's philosophy that shamelessly demonstrates the foundation of the world: suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the shifting meanings of Frida Kahlo's figure an the Tehuana ethnic dress known as her trademark look. It analyzes Appearances Can Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo, the first exhibit of the artist's recently recovered wardrobe on view at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City from 2012-14. Engaging the exhibit's suggestion that the artist casts a "spectral" image over contemporary fashion, this article inquires about the ways history inscribes itself on fashion despite its pretensions of constant innovation. The exhibit is examined in dialogue with Frida Kahlo's My Dress Hangs There (1933), an image that reflects on modernity and national identity through the tension between competing visions of femininity and fashion represented by Mae West and a disembodied Tehuana dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to a special issue of the journal devoted to art and the Mexican revolution.

This article examines the development of Mexican art after the Mexican Revolution. This text identifies and investigates historical figures, vanguard art movements and artists who have contributed to the development of Mexican art in general and Mexican Muralism in particular. By considering how the Mexican civil war enabled the convergence of interests of both the state and artists and examining developments in vanguard Mexican art of the twentieth century, the author invites rethinking about whether mural painting was or was not official or state art. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the constructions of Mexican graphic art history. In particular, a select group of recent exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues will be examined in relation to the narrative development of Mexican graphic art. How El Taller de Gráfica Popular (The Workshop for Popular Graphic Art) or TGP, a graphic art collective founded in Mexico City in 1937, is situated with Mexican art history is a primary concern of this article; it also addresses the significance of the Mexican Revolution to the TGP. In particular, this article analyses two prints by TGP member artists from the 1947 portfolio Las Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana (Prints of the Mexican Revolution) with a focus on the graphic collective's approach to narratives of the war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mexican culture from the 1920s to the 1940s was strongly influenced by the work of artists with a common aesthetic proposal embracing socialism, public art and social content in parallel with the creation of innovative languages of which nationalism formed an essential part. These artists include certain painters, members of the muralist movement and, in the area of photography, artists such as Tina Modotti. This article focuses on some of the points of contact between the common language of muralists' artistic expression and the images created by Modotti. Similarly, attention is given to concrete examples from the Tina Modotti photographic collection held by the Institute of Aesthetic Studies (IIE) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), that reproduce the mural works of Diego Rivera at the Ministry of Public Education and Chapingo, together with those of José Clemente Orozco at the National Preparatory School in San Ildefonso. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines commonalities and differences between the literary and artistic avant-gardes in Mexico and Peru during the 1920s, as well as instances of direct exchange between Mexican writers and artists and Peruvian exiles in Mexico. It traces the ways in which works of literature and art conceptualized the avant-garde in relation to modernity and/or social justice. Debates around contemporary aesthetics, especially the perspectives of José Carlos Mariátegui and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, are addressed, as are the Mexican avant-garde movements Estridentismo and ꜟ30-30!. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article articulates the significance and multiplicity of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and its legacies and sets the stage for this special issue on Art and Revolution in Mexico. In particular, a line is drawn between scholars who examine and contribute to the comprehension of the diverse nature of the war and its legacies and revisionists and neo-revisionists who have a more singular approach to the rebellion and its narrative. An interrogation of problematic frameworks that have been applied to Mexican history and art history includes: the Caudillo (or great man) based conception of history, the Corporativist model of state patronage, and a structuralist/post-modernist model. As part of his critique the author discerns major structural and institutional changes that occurred between 1910 and 1940 that were unique to Mexico, including the Constitution of 1917, separation of Church and State, a national literacy campaign, and agrarian land reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several images of untitled watercolor and graphite sketchbook drawings produced by the Mexican artist Diego River during a trip he took to the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1928 are presented.

In this article, the author identifies the critic Sadakichi Hartmann as the subject of an early 20th-century caricature by the Mexican-born artist Marius de Zayas. The work, which forms part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, was previously thought to portray the actor John Drew Jr. De Zayas' portrait of Hartmann is compared to his similar portrait of the painter Max Weber, a work that is also housed at the Metropolitan.

The article discusses the aesthetics, techniques, and political aspects of landscape paintings by Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. It details innovations in landscape painting technique and materials used by the artist, including the use of industrial paints such as pyroxilin (pyroxylin), three-dimensional reliefs, and airbrushing. The author posits that Alfaro Siqueiros' Communist and anti-fascist beliefs and Leftist political activism are reflected in his works and writings from the 1930s and 1940s, especially his political activism while residing in New York City in 1936-1937.

Se presenta una historia del arte feminista en México durante el fin del siglo XX y los principios del siglo XXI. Se incluye información sobre la exposición del arte de la pintora mexicana Frida Kahlo en 1956, sobre el archivo de Pinto mi Raya y sobre el tema de la violencia en contra de las mujeres en la obra de artista mexicana Lorena Wolffer.

The article discusses the work of Mexican artist Carlos Aguirre, focusing on exhibitions of his work. Exhibitions discussed in the article include "Newton in Mexico City" held at the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil in Mexico City, Mexico, from December 1990-February 1991, and "Images of Neoliberalism" held at the Galería Nina Menocal.

The article discusses the avant-garde architecture and art of post-Revolutionary Mexico. Focusing on the first half of the 20th-century, the author explores the political context of the artistic and architectural revolution that took place in Mexico at this time. Particular focus is paid to the architecture of the Central Library at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, a modernist building designed by the architect Juan O'Gorman which the author argues served as a propaganda tool for the government.