Argentina
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"I remembered too that night which is at the middle of the Thousand and One Nights when Scheherazade (through a magical oversight of the copyist) begins to relate word for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing the risk of coming once again to the night when she must repeat it, and thus on to infinity…" --"The Garden of Forking Paths", Jorge Luis Borges "Relatos salvajes (2014) combines the best of cinema with the best of the short story tradition." --Sholem Stein |
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Argentina is a country in South America, called officially The Argentine Republic. Its capital is Buenos Aires.
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Literature
Argentine literature, i.e. the set of literary works produced by writers of Argentina, is one of the most prolific, relevant and influential in Latin America, with renowned writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.
Art
Argentine painters and sculptors have a rich history dating from both before and since the development of modern Argentina in the second half of the 19th century.
Though what today is Argentina was mostly frozen over during the last ice age and, thus, is less archaeologically rich than many of its neighbors, pre-historic pictographs can be found in caves throughout the Argentine territory, though Argentina's aboriginal art heritage is quite modest compared to Peru's, for instance.
Shortly after independence in 1816, landscape painters from Europe began exploring the spacious Argentine countryside, much as many did in the United States. In the 1830s, Carlos Morel became the first influential Argentine painter and Prilidiano Pueyrredón's naïve, slice-of-life portraits made him among the few successful Argentine artists of those early days. Artistic production in Argentina, however, did not truly come into its own until after the 1852 overthrow of the repressive regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Immigrants like Eduardo Schiaffino, Eduardo Sívori, Reynaldo Giudici and Ernesto de la Cárcova left behind a realist heritage influential to this day.
Impressionism did not make itself evident among Argentine artists until after 1900, however, and never acquired the kind of following it did in Europe, though it did inspire influential Argentine impressionists like Martín Malharro, Ramón Silva and Fernando Fader. Realism and estheticism continued to set the agenda in Argentine painting and sculpture, noteworthy during this era for the sudden fame of sculptor Lola Mora, a student of Auguste Rodin's.
As Lola Mora had been until she fell out of favor with local high society, monumental sculptors became in very high demand after 1900, particularly by municipal governments and wealthy families, who competed with each other in boasting the most evocative mausolea for their dearly departed. Though most preferred French and Italian sculptors, locals Erminio Blotta's and Rogelio Yrurtia's prolific soulful monuments and memorials made them immortal. Not as realist as the work of some of his belle-époque predecessors in sculpture, Yrurtia's subtle impressionism inspired Argentine students like Antonio Pujía, whose internationally prized female torsos always surprise admirers with their whimsical and surreal touches.
Becoming an intellectual, as well as artistic circle, painters like Antonio Berni, Lino Enea Spilimbergo and Juan Carlos Castagnino were friends as well as colleagues, going on to collaborate on masterpieces like the ceiling at the Galerias Pacifico arcade in Buenos Aires, towards 1933.
As in Mexico and elsewhere, muralism became increasingly popular among Argentine artists. Among the first to use his drab surroundings as a canvas was Benito Quinquela Martín, whose vaguely cubist pastel-colored walls painted in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca during the 1920s and 1930s have become historical monuments and Argentine cultural emblems, worldwide. Lithographs, likewise, found a following in Argentina some time after they had been made popular elsewhere. In Argentina, artists like Adolfo Bellocq used this medium to portray often harsh working conditions in Argentina's growing industrial sector, during the 1920s and 1930s. Bellocq's lithographs have become influential worldwide, since then.
The vanguard in culturally conservative Argentina, futurists and cubists like Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti earned a following as considerable as that of less abstract and more sentimental portrait and landscape painters, like Raul Soldi. Likewise, traditional abstract artists like Luis Barragán, Romulo Macció, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Luis Felipe Noé and Luis Seoane coexisted with equal appeal as the most conceptual mobile art creators like the unpredictable Pérez Celis, Gyula Kosice of the Argentine Madí Movement and Marta Minujín, one of Andy Warhol's most esteemed fellow conceptual artists. The emergence of avant-garde genres in Argentina also featured constructivists, including Anselmo Piccoli and Leon Ferrari, one of the world's foremost artists in his genre, today. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of these painters' abstract art found their way into popular advertising and even corporate logos.
Generally possessing of a strong sentimental streak, the Argentine public's taste for naïve art and simple pottery cannot be overlooked. Since Prilidiano Pueyrredón's day, artists in the naïve vein like Cándido López have captured the absurdity of war, Susana Aguirre and Aniko Szabó the idiosyncrasies of everyday neighborhoods and Gato Frías, childhood memories. Illustrator Florencio Molina Campos's tongue-in-cheek depictions of gaucho life have endured as collectors' items.
To help showcase Argentine and Latin American art and sculpture, local developer and art collector Eduardo Constantini set aside a significant portion of his personal collection and, in 1998, began construction on Buenos Aires' first major institution specializing in works by Latin American artists. His foundation opened the Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) in 2001.
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