Public aesthetics and collaborative “post-studio” practices in South America 1960s-1970s

Pinilla Gomez, Luis Gonzalo

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125775 Copy

Description

Title

Public aesthetics and collaborative “post-studio” practices in South America 1960s-1970s

Author(s)

Pinilla Gomez, Luis Gonzalo

Issue Date

2024-07-08

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Vázquez, Oscar E.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Vázquez, Oscar E.

Committee Member(s)

• Weissman, Terri
• Romberg, Kristin
• Karam, John

Department of Study

Art & Design

Discipline

Art History

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Modern and Contemporary Art, Latin America, Visual Arts, Social History, Art and Politics, Artistic Networks, Site of Artistic Production

Abstract

“Public aesthetics and collaborative ‘post-studio’ practices in South America 1960s-1970s” examines the transformation of the print studios and print media practices in Brazil, Colombia, and Chile during the Cold War, a time coinciding with the proliferation of political regimes in South America. I consider how changing conceptions of the site of artistic production contributed to the emergence of new studio paradigms. This study explores how far the interests of the Atelier at the Museum of Modern Art [MAM-Rio’s Atelier] in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Taller 4 Rojo [T4R] in Bogotá, Colombia, and the Taller de Artes Visuales [TAV] in Santiago de Chile, Chile were from being au currant or international. Rather, they focused their concerns on addressing local issues and audiences. These collaborative studio spaces had an ambivalent relationship to institutions, taking advantage of transnational networks, which was part of a strategy for cultural activism and solidarity. Their “post-studio” practices engaged in innovative forms of image constructs and action based cultural production that went far beyond a passive reception of North to South artistic flows often determined by unequal power relations. Their attention shifted from modernist utopian or leftist radicalism as well as inherited notions of the studio as a place of retreat, to focus on specific, timely, and local matters dealing with cultural and economic dependency, as well as political and social organization. Through these means, they sought to upset the prevailing conditions outside as well as inside the realm of art. The 1960s and 1970s Latin America witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of artists who left the traditional studio to negotiate spaces for cultural production that partook the spirit of participation in innovative artistic training that engaged new art forms. Artists associated with the MAM-Rio’s Atelier, T4R, and TAVs engaged in what I call “post-studio” practices to varying degrees. I use the analytic of the “post-studio” to conceptualize how these artists’ ways of doing and acting guided them to forge relationships to disparate spaces of local and transnational geographies, and most important, how those relationships helped to produce specific process-based artistic practices. By broadening the definition of the site of artistic production and art to an act through which agents sought change in their specific societies, we see how the concept of the “post-studio” indeed characterized well the events and individuals that catalyzed numerous studio innovations that unfolded in those decades. For instance, the studio was variously transformed into a space to develop a different understanding of artistic training, of production of knowledge, and of social transformation. As collaborative and interdisciplinary “post-studio” practices emerged in the 1960s and 1970s Latin America, the studio was reimagined to meet the needs of a new generation of artists. “Public aesthetics and collaborative ‘post-studio’ practices in South America 1960s-1970s” foregrounds the significance of the “post-studio” as both a contributor to as well as an index of changing artistic standards in the context of Cold War Latin America.

Graduation Semester

2024-08

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125775

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Gonzalo Pinilla

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