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  • Delirious Consumption: Aesthetics and Consumer Capitalism in Mexico and Brazil by Sergio Delgado Moya
  • Debora Zamorano
Delgado Moya, Sergio. Delirious Consumption: Aesthetics and Consumer Capitalism in Mexico and Brazil. U of Texas P, 2017. Pp. 285. ISBN 978-1-47731-434-0.

Delirious Consumption is an innovative narrative on the intense creation and expansion of domestic markets in the two largest Latin American economies after the Second World War, Brazil and Mexico. The relative stability of these economies during the 50s, 60s, and 70s allowed for the rise of consumerism in both countries, and, as a consequence, helped maintain consumer societies until the present time. After the Second World War, many prominent artists, such as Octavio Paz and David Alfaro Siquieros, questioned the relation between aesthetics and consumerism. Delgado Moya's excellent study relates these two concepts and explains how consumerism affected and impacted the manner in which people understood the world then and even now. Delgado Moya did an excellent job of detailing the relation of these two concepts through the artists' perspectives.

The book is divided into four categories: distraction, fascination, replication, and homemaking. These four categories show the essential characteristics of the social structure at the time and help the readers to understand the nuances of how art is produced in the era of consumer culture and the way it challenges capitalism. In the category of distraction, the author describes the murals of Siqueiros to show a form of vision made and meant for distracted publics. The fascination category flickers the neon movement to bring dynamism into art. In other words, fascination can also be translated into Enlightenment in the age of neon light. The replication category explains that the replicas of mass culture and advertising reflected on language in the age of consumer culture. The homemaking category proposes a reading of objects not only on the art institution but also within the space of the house.

In order to exemplify his theory, the author chose prominent Mexican and Brazilian artists whose work resisted the so-called "consumer moment" in the history of late capitalism. In this outstanding work, Delgado Moya reveals how artists such as Lygia Clark used the techniques of advertising and even consumerism to confront capitalism through consumption. Such a contradiction is present in various modes of art described in the book, including poetry, murals, and advertising. One good example of using such techniques to confront capitalism is Pignatari's most well-known poem, "Beba Coca Cola," which translates into "drink Coca Cola." It exposes in its layout as well as in its semantics the unattractive side of the product that comes with consumption and disposal of soft drinks like Coca-Cola (106).

One of the book's interesting features is the title, Delirious Consumption. The word "delirious" was used to depict something that went against capitalism and its features from the 50s to the 70s. In other words, as the author points out, "Delirium is here understood as a form of daydreaming, as an open-eyed distraction from the waking order of market capitalism" (3).

When describing the four categories of the book, Delgado Moya makes an appealing connection between the selected artistic works and consumerism. In the "fascination" category for example, Delgado Moya connects the works of Augusto de Campos and Decio Pignatari to [End Page 279] consumer culture through the advertising intertwined with semantics and politics. The examples detailed in the narrative are clear and easy for the readers to understand.

In addition, Delgado Moya successfully creates a spirit of doubt and curiosity in his readers. There is doubt in relation to intellectual divisions present in society and curiosity in relation to issues that surround us in a consumer world. This spirit was detailed through the artists' creative works and described in a precise and transparent manner. In other words, Delgado Moya shows us how the works of the artists included in his book exemplify forms of aesthetic production balanced between modernism and consumerism

Although in his conclusion the author briefly provides the readers with an account of the history and economy of Brazil and Mexico after the Second World War, he could have detailed this history at the...

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