1928; Ichaso 1930; Lugo‐Viña 1930; Elliott 2010, note 58). In the first issue from March 15, 1927, artists Rafael Blanco (1885–1955), Víctor Manuel, and Domingo Ravenet (1905–1969) were all singled out for praise on these terms (Casanovas 1927; Elliott 2010, note 60).
Whereas vanguard critics encouraged artists to search inside themselves to find authentic expression, Avance's editorial board pondered the question of national identity by investigating Cuban character in general. Many essays on national character were couched in terms of self‐knowledge, and many writers asked why Cubans continually tolerated a tyrannical government, as in Francisco Ichaso's 1929 analysis of the Cuban trait embullo (revelry). Ichaso (1901–1962) was a Minorista, journalist, and editor of Avance. His notion of embullo referred in part to Cubans' impulsiveness, moving the normally apathetic Cuban to act, as in the case of the Independence Wars; but it also denoted a lack of initiative and confidence supposedly marking Cubans as a submissive population. Mañach undertook a similar study of Cuban character in 1928, in his Avance essay “Inquiry into ‘el choteo’” (joking humor). He imputed to el choteo the sense of humor and irreverence for authority that both impelled Cubans toward independence and crippled those efforts in an ultimate failure to take things seriously. In late 1929, Mañach argued that the United States' intrusions in Cuban domestic politics demoralized and therefore stymied the will for political change among Cubans, resulting in a primarily psychological colonialism. Juan Marinello (1929) argued that Cuba's “patriotic crisis is in ourselves,” blaming Cubans' permissive attitude toward domestic and foreign abuses for the country's larger political and economic woes (Directrices: Colonos contra la colonia 1930b).
The approach of Avance to the genesis of national art was mostly concerned with national self‐discovery, enacted by individual artists involved in discovering themselves and by intellectuals who investigated broader trends in national character. Character had political implications for critics who sought explanation for the failure of the Republic to live up to the dreams of the Independence Wars. To date, art historians have assumed that the Cuban vanguard expressed its politics only via its subject matter. Landscape paintings and representations of guajiros (criollo peasants) who worked the land have been understood as a means of expressing nationalist resistance to US landowners and agricultural policies that usurped Cuban sovereignty (Martínez 1994). But what about the vanguard's aesthetic insistence on a personal art grounded in the artist's inner emotional subjectivity?
In May 1927, the Avance editors critiqued the first twenty‐five years of the Republican government with an indictment of Cuban politics that coincided with the terms of their art criticism. Colonial political traditions such as nepotism, graft, censorship, and repression continued to plague Cuba even after it gained independence from Spain. In contrast, the editors argued that the highest ideals of the Republic should be the freedom to think, to be, and to affirm personality (Directrices 1927). Personality was thus associated with freedom of expression – “the dissemination [and] careful consideration of national values,” as Suárez y Solís put it in regard to the Lyceum's mission. The varying uses of the term “personality” in Avance suggest that personal expression can refer to both innovative art and political protest. The personal orientation of vanguard art was constructed in opposition to the failures of Cuba's leaders, and viewed as essential to keeping artists engaged in the nation's sociopolitical life.
This rhetoric of personality and the journal's focus on national character may be traced to the origins of the Minorista Group in 1923, which was, in turn, a legacy of the Veterans' and Patriots' Movement (1923–1924). The movement rallied in opposition to the corruption of the Zayas administration (1921–1925) and its misguided allegiance to United States' interests over those of Cuba. In response, the movement came to symbolize the unadulterated, unrealized nineteenth‐century dreams for an independent Cuba. In protest, members of the Veterans' and Patriots' Movement and their associates demanded the “rectification,” “regeneration,” and “moralization” of Cuba (Whitney 2001, p. 32); this was true of the many opposition groups that emerged at this time (Stoner 1991, pp. 59, 69). A representative of Cuban workers said that more than any other specific demand they might have, the workers desired “the realization of the Cuban national personality” (Whitney 2001, p. 33). For the Veterans, the realization of national personality equated with self‐determination in the areas of politics and economics. They complained that “Cuban nationality” was compromised by US influence in Cuba (Whitney 2001, pp. 32–33). Ultimately, the Veterans' and Patriots' resented the favorable treatment – and resultant profits – received by North American investors in the Cuban sugar industry. The Platt Amendment, a 1903 treaty that granted the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs in order to protect the newly independent nation, symbolized and sustained the disproportionate role the United States played in Cuban politics and economics. The Veterans' and Patriots' uprising in April 1924 was easily quashed, but their moralizing, regenerative national rhetoric shaped the Minoristas' approach to national culture, particularly in the pages of Avance. The discourse emerging from the Veterans' and Patriots' Movement revealed the political nature of the vanguard's interest in national values and personality.
Multiple editorials that appeared in Avance in 1927 and 1928 argued that the key to socially and politically engaged art was the emotional awareness of the artist (Carpentier 1927; Marinello 1927; Casanovas 1928). The articles claimed that an artist integrated in contemporary life would have an emotional response to political realities and thus make art that reflected that political engagement. There was a paradox, then, at the intersection of art and politics in the vanguard's thinking. The journal's editors advocated a vanguard notion of art that was centered in the artist's inner, emotional life, while also being socially aware. Their idea seems to be that if an artist focused on his or her interiority, some response to what was going on in the world would necessarily follow.
“Sincerity” and “truth” were key terms used in both the praise for artists and the criticism of politicians published in Avance. Marinello suggested new art and literature with such traits would result from a revolutionary break with the corruption of the Machado regime (Marinello 1927). The political failings that motivated the editorials centered on character issues and focused on the lack of will for political change as one of the most urgent challenges to the nation. The editors also attacked the character of those who ran the nation and those who administered the art and literary academies, complaining that both sets of leadership lacked honesty, intellectual responsibility and a sense of democracy (Directrices: Frente a la academia 1930a, Directrices: La traición de los hombres ilustres 1930c). For the sake of both the Cuban government and cultural progress, the journal urged Cuba's youth to make a radical break with the crooked Republican generations. Character was clearly a national issue, in terms of identity and sovereignty, affecting both cultural and political realms.
The editors hinted at the nexus between art and politics when they suggested that their “devotion” to new art paralleled their desire for a free and just life on an individual and collective level (Directrices: La izquierda y la siniestra 1929b). This suggests that sincere, emotionally honest expression in art, poetry, or the essays of Avance paralleled their interest in free expression in the public sphere. One of the central tenets of the journal was to publish divergent opinions, from Cuba and abroad (Medina 1980, p. 26). The “American art” survey was one example of such debate. In 1928–1929 Avance published the varied responses of Cuban and Latin American artists and writers regarding the themes and aesthetics that should guide American art (Olea and Kervandjian 2012). The visual corollary to this heterogeneity of opinion was the diversity of styles employed by Cuban modernists. Critics were consistently proud of the fact that the Cuban artists did not display the stylistic consistency of a “school” but rather pursued widely divergent styles. This was a manifestation of their individual, personal expression, and this heterogeneity of expression was taken as a sign of national strength (Maseillo 1993).
The Avance editors might argue that at a time in which individual expression was regulated by political or academic officials, any departure from the officially acceptable standards of expression could be understood to be political. What they valued
