Art_Latin_America: Against the Survey ed. by James Oles (review)

Art_Latin_America: Against the Survey is a catalog that accompanied an exhibit by the same name at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in the spring of 2019. It is a beautifully designed and printed volume of more than 250 pages. The catalog and exhibit defined their scope broadly using gaps, indicated with underscores, between Art, Latin, and America to open up multiple possibilities for the relationships between each of the words. "'Art_Latin'—expands the range of art we were willing to include: art from Latin America, art of Latin America, and art [made] in Latin America" (9). The editor of the catalog and curator of the exhibit, James Oles, then also offers possibilities for the gap in Latin_America. So the exhibit and catalog parallel the broad mixtures and blends, the mestizaje, that Tomás Ybarra-Frausto describes as fundamental to Latino art.¹ Latino/a art is also included in the Art_Latin_America exhibit.

The catalog is broken into eight thematic units: Identity and Territory, War and Loss, Protest and Propaganda, Farmers and Workers, Rural and Urban, Saints and Rituals, Models and Mothers, Gesture and Geometry. Some of the pairs overlap and some are antithetical. All of them generate relationships between artworks that give new possibilities for interpretation and understanding. Each unit starts with an introduction by Oles that clarifies connections between the artists included in the thematic pair. Sometimes that connection is easy to see and sometimes it is unexpected. For the artists chosen, there are images from the museum's collection, many from the exhibit itself, and a page-long essay. Many of these essays are by Oles, but forty other leading scholars, curators, and artists also wrote entries for the catalog. Given the authors' rich understanding of their subject, these are sophisticated and detailed explications of the work and the perspectives of the artist or group of artists. The entries often reveal content relating the artist to the theme, but their focus is not to highlight that connection. The focus is rather to build an understanding of the artist. One of the greatest strengths of the volume is the depth of insight offered in these relatively short essays with their illustrations. The quality of the photographs and the printing makes this library of images an important component of the ideas communicated in the text.

As the title indicates, this catalog is not a survey. A student would not come away with a traditional understanding of the evolution of work coming out of different regions in Latin America. But a reader who already has some exposure will find new relationships between artists that they already know and connections to new artists they have not yet encountered. All readers will find informed, articulate writing and wonderful illustrations showcasing artists from the Davis Museum's extensive collection of Latin American art. Reflecting the values of Wellesley College, the representation of women as artists and as authors for the catalog makes the publication an important resource. The role women have played and are playing in the cultures represented is visible here in a way that it too often is not.