Talk: Art and the Reconquest of Public Space in Global Mexico

Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera, Jos? Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros simultaneously reinvented modern art and Mexican history in the decades following the armed phase of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). With the sponsorship of the Revolutionary government and other progressive patrons, they applied their talents to the reconquest of public space for ordinary Mexicans, creating a new and inclusive version of the national history, and one placed in prominent and accessible in public spaces. They viewed their work as part of a broader cultural revolution in which the Revolutionary elite bore a special responsibility to educate, uplift, and protect the masses. Along the way, they pioneered new techniques of representation, and an entirely new modernist aesthetic, which placed Mexico at the vanguard of modern art for more than a generation. Despite the rhetoric of popular renaissance and the undeniable artistic achievement, the praxis of "cultural revolution" at the heart of muralism was deeply hierarchical and even coercive. The muraliusts were at best a little too close to their patrons to be properly critical of their own political leadership, and there was very little space for dialogue or the accepting of popular resistance to the cultural revolution as anything less than ignorant or reactionary.

Enjoy an exciting lecture and discussion of muralism, its social and cultural legacies, the power relations behind it, and their implications for an arts & humanities approach to peacebuilding.

Admission/Cost: FREE

Location:
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice
Peace & Justice Theater
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA 92110

Monday, September 19 - 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM