Painting Modernism

Notes

9 5 NOTES IntroductIon 1. We use the term Latin American throughout the chapters of this book even though we do not include Brazilian modernism, whose genesis and development , while not entirely distinct from that of Spanish America’s, has enough inherent differences as well as a chronological development that would require a separate exploration. 2. A notion that was fundamental to José Martí’s aesthetics, as we shall seeing in the narrative of the chapters that follow. 3. the two quoted concepts come from John Berger’s book, Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting corporation, 1972), 7. 4. See, for example, tinajero’s affirmation in 2004 that “el modernismo hispanoamericano se sitúa aproximadamente entre 1888 y 1916” (1). For a revisionist , contemporary examination of the chronological limits of modernism and its aesthetic and social significance, see Schulman (2002). 5. For example, Schulman (2002, 1981, and 1987). 6. See Schulman (1986). 7. Another way of defining modernism is offered by Zavala: “Modernism is both a form of social organization (modernity) and a term of epochal diagnosis of the localized crises of the fundamental problems of technology and industrialization , of aesthetic experience and commodification” (109). 8. Martí (cuba, 1853–1895) and Manuel Gutiérrez nájera (Mexico, 1859–1895) are considered today the initiators of Latin American modernism in the Spanish language. 9. “El poema del niágara,” a prologue Martí wrote in 1882 for a lengthy poem by the Venezuelan Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde. the translations of this and other Latin American texts, given the absence of published translations, 9 6 N O T E S T O C H A P T E R 1 are mine. the Martí citations are from his complete works (Obras completas, 1963–1978). 10. the darío citations are from the five-volume edition of his complete works (Obras completas), “Lo fatal” (5: 941) and “¡Ay, triste . . .” (5: 921). In support of the interconnection of writers and painters belonging to the initial period of modernization, and responding to social practice, it is significant to note that Paul Gauguin has a very large canvas that has to be read from right to left—birth to death—entitled Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? (1897–1898). 11. See Modernity and Modernism; French Painting in the Nineteenth Century, 1. 12. A volume of poetry inspired by the musical antecedent of the roman catholic hymns of irregular meter sung before the Gospel and an example of modernism’s search for self-definition by retextualizing past practices, literary and musical. 13. It should be noted that in darío’s vast writings there is an alternate discourse, one tied more closely to the realities of his period and one that at times reflects the search for Latin American cultural authenticity, liberation, and even anti-imperialism. 14. “nuestra América.” We have modified Esther Allen’s otherwise excellent translation of Martí’s Selected Writings (293). 15. See Paul Johnson, who dates the onset of modernity between 1815 and 1830 and includes among the signs of modernity the loss of Spain’s colonies in the new World and the ensuing inception of chaos in Latin American social and economic history. 16. Ashcroft, Griffins, and tiffen state there is a need to revise traditional lineal concepts of literary historiography, and they affirm in reexamining American literature that there exists a pattern that we consider applicable to Latin American literary history, that is, “a metonymic of a continual process of subversion and appropriation which predates the concerns of modernism and postmodernism and which may well be centered in their post-coloniality” (163). 17. See such major examples as darío’s “El rey burgués,” casal’s “La sociedad de La Habana,” or Martí’s essays on life in the united States or his novel Lucía Jerez. cHAPtEr 1. croSSInG BoundArIES: tHE SEArcH For A nEW dIScourSE 1. the oriental influences will be treated in a later chapter in which we examine the nature of Latin American modernist orientalisms and the attraction of some of the modernists to the paintings of Hiroshige and Hokusai. N O T E S T O C H A P T E R 1 9 7 2. the gaze “may be characterized at once as a means of knowing and as a weapon of embodiment . . .” (Jacobs 1). 3. curator notes to the Picasso exhibit at the...