The tradition of extreme geometric abstraction as practiced in Latin America has always presented something of a conundrum for global art history. Opinions oscillate between those who identify in its history some of the most innovative developments of the 20th century and those who accuse it of being an outdated, Eurocentric and elite development project, silencing other, more ‘authentic’ voices.
The position of abstraction as an apolitical formalism versus a politically engaged figuration is an old dialectic that has played out globally since the first decades of the last century. For this reason Radical Form: Modernist Abstraction in South America is especially timely, as Megan Sullivan, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Chicago, does a remarkable job of breaking away from this zero-sum debate, bringing the complexities and contradictions of artistic practice and cultural context into a richer and more nuanced. dialogue.
Sullivan focuses exclusively on the work of four artists from the South American continent spanning the first six decades of the 20th century: Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay), Tomás Maldonado (Argentina), Alejandro Otero (Venezuela), and Lygia Clark ( Brazil). At least two of these artists are better known today—Torres-García and Clark were each the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2015-16 and 2014, respectively—but even then, Sullivan introduces new perspectives and readings of their work.
Sullivan defines her approach as “microscopic rather than telescopic,” making a case for close examination of artists’ works, intentions, and contexts. Her in-depth analysis allows us to better understand the complexity of artists who “openly aligned themselves with the principles of the historical European avant-garde” without apology. What we learn from this approach is that all aims – even those that are overtly cosmopolitan – are inescapably conditioned by time and place.
Rejection of rationality
Torres-García (1874-1949) is often considered the father of abstraction in Latin America. A first-generation modernist, he worked alongside noucentistas (a form of Art Nouveau/Catalan Symbolism) in Barcelona, and then with Mondrian and Michel Seuphor in Paris, but rejected European abstraction as too rational and reductive. In its place, he developed an elaborate theory of ‘constructive universalism’ as an amalgamation of the art of all cultures, with a special interest in ancient America.
Sullivan harbors what she calls his “very aesthetic telluric fantasy,” made without any real knowledge of pre-contact cultures beyond what he saw in Paris museums. In this sense, his “call for rootedness … largely rootless” points to the dangers of simply identifying any Latin American as an ambassador of ‘authentic’ culture because of their nationality. Sullivan’s analysis of the roots of this thought is insightful, while also acknowledging that the persistent fantasy of otherness was an essential and motivating part of the modernist project.
Alejandro Otero’s Orthogonal (collage) 2 (1951) shows his deeply personal use of color Courtesy of the Otero Pardo Foundation. © Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY
Maldonado, a much younger artist born in Buenos Aires in 1922 (he died in 2018), made similar criticisms of Torres-García, but in this case from a more conventionally modernist perspective. For Maldonado and the artists who rallied around him in the mid-1940s, Torres-García was a traitor to the harsh, rationalist language they, perhaps naively, associated with Mondrian and the Bauhaus. For Maldonado, universalism was also the goal, but could only be achieved by the ‘scientific’ means of extreme abstraction.
Sullivan notes that Maldonado’s “relative indifference to the pathologies of modern reason,” along with his embrace of Soviet Marxism (the group’s early journals included texts by Stalin and Lenin), led to his quixotic attempt to persuade the Argentine Communist Party that abstraction was indeed the language of the revolution and that they must return to the Russian constructivist spirit of 1917. Sullivan digs deep into Maldonado’s communism and brilliantly identifies Engels, not Marx, as the movement’s leading philosopher.
Abstraction and aspiration
While Torres-García and Maldonado were both marginal figures in their context, the case of Otero (1921-90) in Venezuela is quite different, thanks to the rapid expansion of the oil industry in the 1950s and the adoption of abstraction. as the unofficial visual language of an aspiring modern state. Sullivan accuses Otero—and by extension the Kinetic artists who worked alongside him on major state-sponsored projects—of practicing “a modernity that lacked a modern foundation.” In her analysis, Otero’s work presented an escapist, deeply personal experience of color and form that privileged “individual experience and agency.”
The same can be said of Clark (1920-1988), the last artist discussed in this book, and it is true that, like Otero, she emphasized the individual over the social. It is also no coincidence that Brazil and Venezuela were countries that grew rapidly after World War II and embraced the languages of abstraction and modernism in architecture, design, public works and art. In this context of state-supported art, internal and subjective space takes on its radical potential in contrast to the dominant logic of developmental capitalism.
Sullivan describes her book as “a chronicle of failure,” which, while true in one sense, seems perhaps a little harsh. It is true that none of the artists she discusses came close to realizing their visions of utopia, but this is an accusation that can ultimately be leveled at any modernist artist, regardless of their context. Still, Sullivan’s close reading, contextual sensitivity, and avoidance of simplistic grand narratives make this book an extremely valuable addition to the growing literature on art from regions outside the classical mainstream.
• Megan A. Sullivan, Radical Form: Modernist Abstraction in South AmericaYale, 232 pp, £50/$65 (hb)
• Gabriel Perez-Barreiro is an art historian and curator, and senior advisor to the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (Caracas and New York City)
