Mexican Muralism (c. 1920–1940)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Stigberg
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Mural Painting ◽  
National Discourse ◽  
Diego Rivera ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Jose Clemente Orozco

The Mexican Muralist movement was a nationalistic movement that aimed at producing an official modern art form distinct from European traditions, thus embracing and clearly expressing a unique Mexican cultural and social identity. Shortly after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), expatriate Mexican artists were summoned to return to the country. They were charged with creating public murals on government buildings, which would visually communicate unifying ideals to a largely illiterate population. Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, known collectively as Los Tres Grandes or The Great Three, were key figures in the movement. The architectural aspect of the large murals created during this period underscores the government’s and artists’ belief in art as a social and ideological tool, and reflects a desire to establish permanent expressions of a national identity. The works embraced and elevated mural painting in Mexico from a popular form to a form of high art. Further, the movement embodied social ideals manifested in the muralists’ work alongside carpenters, plasterers, and other laborers. The 1930s saw the solidification of a leftist national discourse, but by the 1940s, the major political developments in Mexico and Europe resulted in significant redefinition of this ideology, and Mexican Muralism became out-dated.

The Mexican Muralists and Frida Kahlo

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Folgarait
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mural Painting ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Diego Rivera ◽  
Frida Kahlo ◽  
Mural Paintings ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Jose Clemente Orozco

The major art form produced in Mexico during the years following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, especially during 1920–1940, was mural painting, mostly in the technique of fresco. Three artists dominated this period: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, known collectively as the Big Three. Rufino Tamayo, younger and less ideologically aligned to those three, followed his own path of a more modernist style. An important easel painter of this period was Frida Kahlo, who traveled in the cultural and political circles of the muralists but who produced strongly personal images, especially of herself. In addition, examples of mural paintings by the Big Three in the United States receive their due attention, as does the more independent mural production in Mexico of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The paintings are analyzed in terms of context, meaning brief references to biographical details, more expansive on the general sociohistorical setting, with accounts of the patronage where highly relevant, and relations between the artists themselves. Discussions of the style of the images, in the most comprehensive and general sense, are dedicated to revealing the ideological content of the style as it serves the more straightforward subjects of the paintings.

Yllanes, Alejandro Mario (1913–1960)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imma Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Political Art ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Diego Rivera ◽  
National Pride ◽  
Jose Clemente Orozco

Alejandro Mario Yllanes was a Bolivian Aymara painter, engraver, and muralist. His art career began with an exhibition in his hometown of Oruro in 1930, when he was nineteen years old. Shortly afterwards he moved to La Paz, where he worked as an illustrator for the periodical Semana Grafica, during which time he became acquainted with the artists Arturo Borda and Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas. All three Bolivian artists were influenced by the so-called indigenism or indigenismo movement, which gained momentum in Latin America from the 1920s onwards. The movement was characterized by the promotion of national pride and a nostalgic celebration of the Inca and pre-Columbian past, as reflected in literature and the visual arts. Yllanes was driven by a desire to encourage a spirit of community amongst the native Bolivians, and his works often portray locals in traditional Andean dress, carrying out pre-conquest rituals and customs. His incorporation of styles and techniques influenced by Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Mexican Muralism show his engagement with modernist trends. The latter movement was headed by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Their socio-political art—inspired by the Mexican Revolution—fueled Yllanes’s own work, which he combined with a rootedness to local narrative and materials.

Cinesonidos

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Avila
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Mexican Film ◽  
Commercial Medium ◽  
Film Genres

Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity During Mexico’s Época de Oro is the first book-length study concerning the function of music in the prominent genres structured by the Mexican film industry. Integrating primary source material with film music studies, sound studies, and Mexican film and cultural history, this project closely examines examples from five significant film genres that developed during the 1930s through 1950s. These genres include the prostitute melodrama, the fictional indigenista film (films on indigenous themes or topics), the cine de añoranza porfiriana (films of Porfirian nostalgia), the revolutionary melodrama, and the comedia ranchera (ranch comedy). The musics in these films helped create and accentuate the tropes and archetypes considered central to Mexican cultural nationalism. Distinct in narrative and structure, each genre exploits specific, at times contradictory, aspects of Mexicanidad—the cultural identity of the Mexican people—and, as such, employs different musics to concretize those constructions. Throughout this turbulent period, these tropes and archetypes mirrored changing perceptions of Mexicanidad manufactured by the state and popular and transnational culture. Several social and political agencies were heavily invested in creating a unified national identity to merge the previously fragmented populace owing to the Mexican Revolution (1910–ca.1920). The commercial medium of film became an important tool in acquainting a diverse urban audience with the nuances of national identity, and music played an essential and persuasive role in the process. In this heterogeneous environment, cinema and its music continuously reshaped the contested, fluctuating space of Mexican identity.

How Art Works

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Winner
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Truth Value

This book is an examination of what psychologists have discovered about how art works—what it does to us, how we experience art, how we react to it emotionally, how we judge it, and what we learn from it. The questions investigate include the following: What makes us call something art? Do we experience “real” emotions from the arts? Do aesthetic judgments have any objective truth value? Does learning to play music raise a child’s IQ? Is modern art something my kid could do? Is achieving greatness in an art form just a matter of hard work? Philosophers have grappled with these questions for centuries, and laypeople have often puzzled about them too and offered their own views. But now psychologists have begun to explore these questions empirically, and have made many fascinating discoveries using the methods of social science (interviews, experimentation, data collection, statistical analysis).

scholarly journals When Is Group Membership Zero-Sum? Effects of Ethnicity, Threat, and Social Identity on Dual National Identity

PLoS ONE ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. e0130539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Smithson ◽  
Arthur Sopeña ◽  
Michael J. Platow
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Zero Sum

Commentary: A Stroll in the Piazza and a Night at the Opera

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-628
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Smart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Discourse ◽  
Music Journalism ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Leopardi was convinced that the willingness of Italians to wallow passively in operatic spectacle was an important reason for Italy's lack of a civil society based on debate and the exchange of opinions. Despite recent proposals that opera and opera going constituted signiªcant means of social engagement and contributed to regional and/or national identity, the preoccupations of early nineteenth-century music journalism suggest that opera existed outside the mainstream of both political and aesthetic debate, and was not yet the subject of a truly vibrant national discourse.

Ethnic identity of representatives of the Ukrainian minority university students in Poland

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (21) ◽  
pp. 58-69
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Zegar ◽  
Maria Łoskot ◽  
Julia Pierzyńska ◽  
Małgorzata Siemiątkowska
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
National Identity ◽  
International Students ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Polish Groups ◽  
Self Confidence

Introduction: Referring to the knowledge about the number of Ukrainian students in Poland, James Marcia’s theory of identity development and Henri Tajfel’s theory of social identity, the authors examined how the Ukrainian minority studying in Poland describes its ethnic identity. Method: For this purpose, nine semistructural interviews were conducted, which were then subjected to a semantic narrative analysis. Results: It turned out that the respondents identify most strongly with the group of international students and students, and with their national identity in the second place. Polish nationality was cited as a group of belonging, spending time, while the Ukrainian nationality was individual, related to origin. Polish groups were positively evaluated by the respondents. The analysis also distinguished categories of differences between Poland and Ukraine, indicated by the respondents. They were: culture and religion, customs and tradition, decision-making and self-confidence, social issues, as well as mentality and science. The categories of stereotypes that were mentioned in the interviews were also identified: cheating and stealing, complaining and the similarity of nations. Conclusions: The results showed that the identity of Ukrainians is in a state of moratorium. The respondents define Ukraine as “their” country, while the strongest ones describe themselves as international students.

Nationalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
Nils Holtug
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Causal Mechanism

Chapter 7, on nationalism, addresses the so-called ‘national identity argument’, according to which a shared national identity fosters social cohesion and is required for, or at least facilitates, egalitarian redistribution. First, it is argued that the prospect for nation-building policies, built on the idea of a shared national culture, is severely restricted by the liberal egalitarian requirements of justice defended in Chapter 4. Then the causal mechanism through which a national culture is supposed to promote trust and solidarity is scrutinized, and it is argued that it is not really supported by, for example, social identity theory and evidence from social psychology. Finally, empirical studies of the effect of national identity on trust and solidarity are considered, and it is argued that these do not support the national identity argument either.

Owais, Hamed (1919–2011)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Radwan
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Teaching Career ◽  
Diego Rivera ◽  
San Fernando ◽  
Gamal Abdel Nasser ◽  
Egyptian Group

Born in Beni Soueif, Egypt, Hamed Owais is one of the leading painters of Egyptian social realism. He was a partisan of the ideals of the Gamal Abdel Nasser era and was inspired by Mexican muralists, such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. His work portrays the daily life of the Egyptian working class through a clear and direct style, reflecting the strength of his social convictions. Having graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1944, he pursued his studies at the Institute of Art Education in Cairo where he received his diploma in 1946. A year later, he founded, together with other artists of his generation, the Egyptian "Group of Modern Art". Following a teaching career at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria, he received a scholarship in 1967 to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. On his return to Egypt, he served as the head of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria (1977–1979).

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