Curator Luis Pérez-Oramas considers the roots of the classicizing and modernist impulses in the work of Joaquín Torres-García. The essay examines a driving paradox of the artist’s work–the will to be modern while working against the grain of modernity–following episodes in his life, writings, and works. This is the second part of three. Torres’s first…
Cuban artist Tania Bruguera uses performance as a means to interrogate relations of power and control, particularly in regards to the history of Cuba. Untitled (Havana 2000), a pivotal work in Bruguera’s career, has been recently acquired by MoMA. In this text, Elvis Fuentes discusses the importance of the piece and comments on the peculiarities of the…
Curator Luis Pérez-Oramas considers the roots of the classicizing and modernist impulses in the work of Joaquín Torres-García. The essay examines a driving paradox of the artist’s work–the will to be modern while working against the grain of modernity–following episodes in his life, writings, and works. This is the first of three parts. In the…
Artist and architect Simón Hosie presents some of his very unique projects in Colombia ranging from community based architecture to innovations in design and policy making. “If you want to be somebody in this life, you have to know how to get ahead.” — Marina Rodríguez, Ciudad Bolívar Marina Rodríguez lives in Ciudad Bolívar, in the…
Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães discusses the disillusionment that led Modernist painter Joaquín Torres-García to leave New York as well as the city’s lasting influence on his artmaking and his continued ties to North America in this biographical essay. Second part of two. Despite these exhibitions, his circle of prosperous friends, and his significant connections to artists and…
Professor Edward Sullivan reminds us that the Caribbean is a cultural space that exceeds its geographic borders and that has been global well before our current understanding of globality.
Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães recounts Modernist painter Joaquín Torres-García’s years in New York, the strong influence of the metropolis on the development of his style, and his connections and successes in the American art scene in this biographical essay. First part of two. Each era has its own art. All of the classics have been contemporary in…
In this essay, Jennifer Tobias, Reader Services Librarian, MoMA Library looks at the history of MoMA through the direct engagement of the artist. This research was presented in her exhibition Messing With MoMA: Critical Interventions at the Museum of Modern Art, 1939–Now (July 1–November 29, 2015), which documented seven decades of interventions by artists, the general public,…
Curator Emiliano Valdés shares some thoughts on Central American art and ideas about how to better understand it.
This 1966 essay is renowned for its early use of the term “postmodern.” Unlike later theorizations, the Brazilian critic Mário Pedrosa deploys the concept to discuss how immersive environments replace distanced visual perception in the artworks of Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark. New attention to the essay—where the text is interpreted as an alternate theoretical…
Chilean artists from the past three decades discuss their work, influences, and concerns working as Chileans in a post-Pinochet context. MoMA Program Manager Jason Dubs interviews Natalia Babarovic, Francisca Benítez, Felipe Mujica, and Johanna Unzueta about the context of their practices today.
Jorge Schwartz discusses the prominence of the urban in Joaquín Torres-García’s visual and literary works. A major retrospective at MoMA, The Arcadian Modern, reveals a totalizing and structural vision of Joaquín Torres-García’s thinking, mainly through his painting, sculpture, objects, and, of particular interest to me, bibliographic production: his theoretical texts about Constructivism, autobiographical texts, manifestos,…
