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Reviewed by:
  • Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America eds. by Jacqueline Barnitz & Patrick Frank
  • Ana Pozzi-Harris
Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, Revised and Expanded Edition. By Jacqueline Barnitz & Patrick Frank. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015, p. 435, $55.00

Jacqueline Barnitz's seminal 2001 textbook Twentieth Century Art of Latin America has been revised and expanded into a new edition by Patrick Frank. The new edition keeps the original textbook's approach and structure, while updating factual information as needed, adding several previously not discussed artists, substituting a few examples, and most importantly, bringing this survey of Latin American art into the twenty-first century with a brand new chapter.

The revised and expanded edition continues the same groundbreaking perspective of the earlier book. That is to say: artists, works of art, and artistic movements from twelve Central and South American countries are discussed synchronically and across nations, rather than being categorized by nationality, as the previous bibliography tended to do. From Barnitz's approach emerges the possibility of a construct such as "Latin American art." That is, art is interpreted as part of cultural, political, artistic, and personal circumstances that are comparable through various Hispano-American countries and regions (including Brazil)—as opposed to a discussion in which art and artists are seen the product of their national origin only. While the national and sub-regional historical circumstances are considered in great detail, a holistic comparative perspective emerges in every chapter—for example "Chapter 2: The Avant-Garde of the 1920s: Cosmopolitan or National Identity," in which artists as distinct as Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral, and Emilio Pettoruti are seen as part of an international movement of artistic transformation that took place around the same time in each country. The individual artists from different nations were usually unaware of each other and often did not influence one another. Yet Barnitz's approach allows us to perceive "trends" where shared preoccupations and imagery emerge when these artists and their works are juxtaposed within the same decade or time frame. The book is thus an incredibly ambitious tour de force in which the theory of a "Latin American Art" emerges coherently and yet without simplifications: networks of artists, techniques, themes, ideas, and ideologies are woven in dense yet legible complexity.

The 2001 edition was painstakingly researched and thoroughly informative. The 2015 edition remains so, with updated facts (e.g., artists' life dates and added items in the bibliography) and expanded areas that merited development because they have received recent scholarly attention. Some of the newly expanded topics are Abstract art from the Río de la Plata region and the Cuban avant-garde, as well as individual artists and architects such as Francisco Goitía, Gego, and Amancio Williams. A few artworks by already covered artists have been replaced—in some cases with more fitting examples, but in others, the replacements seem arbitrary, such as in Fernando Fader's La Mazamorra, now replaced by Al Solcito. (At [End Page 294] any rate, changes and replacements of this nature are expected in the new edition of any textbook and are not detrimental to Frank's worthy and generous enterprise). Additionally, the design of the new edition is far superior to the first one. The print is larger and more legible, the size of the book is more manageable, there are more color reproductions and all are of higher quality, and the previously confusing placement of the page numbers is now more logical. Overall, the reading experience of the new edition is more enjoyable.

Frank's most notable contribution is the tail end of Chapter 12 and the newly written "Chapter 13: Towards a New Century," where he discusses contemporary Latin American artists that Barnitz's project did not permit. Yet more than that, Frank challenges the widespread assumption that in the present-day global culture, characterized by equalizing experiences of internet-based mass communication, deeming art produced by artists who are born in Central and South America as "Latin American" may no longer be current or relevant. Frank ultimately rejects this notion, stating that "many artists find their place of origin to be...

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