to mean the desire to create a different society, beyond the barriers imposed by common sense and politics as usual. But this conceptualization, rather vague and general, misses a key aspect of utopian thinking, namely the opposition between reality and reason – between chaos and perfection – that marks it off from other approaches to social change. All utopian projects aim to revolutionize the social order, but not all revolutions are committed to the ideal of the perfect society.4 4 It is worth noting that this condemnation of “educational solutions” was not motivated by a rejection of the cultural assimilation of the Indians (i.e. the fear that they would lose their cultural identity), but by a hostility to liberal reformism. It would therefore be a mistake to turn Mariátegui into something of a precursor of US‐style identity politics.
5 5 Mariátegui wrote about only two other Latin American visual artists: Emilio Pettoruti (1959c, pp. 86–90; 1994, Vol. I, pp. 581–583) and Julia Codesido (1959c, pp. 97–98; 1994, Vol. I, pp. 586–587). In both cases he provided personal impressions rather than critical analyses.
6 6 The version originally written by Breton, as he would admit with some embarrassment (1995, p. 45), contained a clause that Trotsky unhesitatingly crossed out: “Complete freedom for art, except against the proletarian revolution.”
References
1 Aragon, L. (1952). Parenthèse sur les prix Stalin. Les Lettres Françaises 409 (10 April): 10.
2 Brecht, B. (1962). To posterity. In: Modern German Poetry. 1910–1960 (ed. M. Hamburger and C. Middleton), 231. New York: Grove Press.
3 Breton, A. (1995). Free Rein [La Clé des champs] (trans. M. Parmentier and J. d'Amboise). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
4 Flores Galindo, A. (1980). La agonía de Mariátegui. La polémica con la Komintern. Lima: Desco.
5 Löwy, M. (1998). Marxism and romanticism in the work of José Carlos Mariátegui. Latin American Perspectives 25 (4): 76–88.
6 Mariátegui, J.C. (1959a [1926]). 7 ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta.
7 Mariátegui, J.C. (1959b [1950]). El alma matinal y otras estaciones del hombre de hoy. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta.
8 Mariátegui, J.C. (1959c). El artista y la época. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta.
9 Mariátegui, J.C. (1959d). Signos y obras. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta.
10 Mariátegui, J.C. (1959e). Peruanicemos al Perú. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta.
11 Mariátegui, J.C. (1959f). Temas de nuestra América. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta.
12 Mariátegui, J.C. (1969). Ideología y política. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta.
13 Mariátegui, J.C. (1971). Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (trans. M. Urquidi). Austin: University of Texas Press.
14 Mariátegui, J.C. (1994). Mariátegui total. 2 volumes. Lima: Empresa Editora Amauta.
15 Mariátegui, J.C. (1996). The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism: Selected Essays (ed. and trans. Michael Pearlman). Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
16 Mariátegui, J.C. (2011). José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology (ed. and trans. H. E. Vanden and M. Becker). New York: Monthly Review Press.
17 Mariátegui, J.C. and Sánchez, L.A. (1976). La polémica del indigenismo. Lima: Mosca Azul Editores.
18 Marzal, M.M. (1993). Historia de la antropología indigenista: México y Perú. Barcelona: Anthropos.
19 Nietzsche, F. (1986 [1880]). Human, All Too Human (trans. R.J. Hollingdale). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20 Nugent, J.G. (1991). El conflicto de las sensibilidades. Propuesta para una interpretación y crítica del siglo veinte peruano. Lima: Instituto Bartolomé de las Casas‐Rímac.
21 Rochabrún, G. (2007). Batallas por la teoría. En torno a Marx y el Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
22 Schutte, O. (1988). Nietzsche, Mariátegui, and socialism: A case of “Nietzschean Marxism” in Peru? Social Theory and Practice 14 (1): 71–85.
23 Sorel, G. (1999 [1908]). Reflections on Violence (ed. J. Jennings). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
24 Spengler, O. (1932 [1918, 1922]). The Decline of the West (trans. C. F. Atkinson). 2 volumes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
25 Trotsky, L., Breton, A., and Rivera, D. (1992). Manifesto: Towards a free revolutionary art. In: Art and Revolution: Writings on Literature, Politics, and Culture (ed. P.N. Siegel), 122–129. New York: Pathfinder.
4 National Values: The Havana Vanguard in the Revista de Avance and the Lyceum Gallery
Ingrid W. Elliott
*
* *
In 1933, Víctor M (1897–1969), the leading painter of the Cuban vanguard, had a solo exhibition at the Lyceum Gallery, Havana. In a review of the show, student activist and occasional art critic Gilberto Pérez Castillo (1933) suggested that the artist attained his highest form of expression in his depiction of female figures, which he painted from his imagination and were “completely subjective like their author.” Contemporary critics concurred that Víctor Manuel conveyed his subjectivity via free brushstrokes, an expressionistic use of color, and simplified subjects, as in his portrait of a young girl that accompanied Pérez Castillo's review (Figure 4.1). The title of the portrait, Vida interior (Interior Life) (c.1933), and the critic's emphasis on the role of the artist's imagination underscores the origin of the painter's artistic practice in his emotional interior. Furthermore, the title of this essay – “pintor abstraído” – could be translated as either abstract painter or painter lost in thought, suggesting self‐absorption was crucial to Víctor Manuel's artistic practice. Pérez Castillo went on to compare Víctor Manuel's work to a sheltered little girl, brought up in an old‐fashioned way, considered to be “good” because she was removed from society. He also tied Víctor Manuel's female figures to his vanguard process and to the Cuban nation when he wrote that his women possessed not only the “eternal melancholy of the artist” but also the “melancholy of the suffering people of the tropics.” (At this time, Cuba was often referred to in “tropical” terms.) Pérez Castillo seems to have had Víctor Manuel's iconic 1929 La gitana tropical (Tropical Gypsy) in mind, a key early work that symbolizes the nascent vanguard for many, to this day. His review suggests the vanguard's interior‐oriented artistic practices may have been perceived to be connected to women's traditional roles in Cuba and that both may have links to Cuban nationalism.
Figure 4.1 Víctor Manuel, Vida interior (Interior Life), 1933. Revista Social
