LITMIR.BIZ

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known of these new groups, Tepito Arte Acá, of the barrio Tepito in Mexico City, evolved in the late 1970s‐early 1980s as a leaderless collective of activists devoted to protecting their unique neighborhood from intrusions by the city government. One of their group, Daniel Manrique, painted large figures on walls facing the street and courtyards, picturing daily lives and concerns of the local Tepiteños. Rough, black outlines of figures were applied to unprepared surfaces and filled in with unmodulated colors. The scaffolding was a tall ladder moved back and forth. This group touched a raw nerve among young artists disillusioned with social ambition and empowered them to develop their own versions of engaged and unofficial wall art.

Mural art has also lately come into museums and galleries, in a substantially modified form but without losing its critical edge. For instance, the wall‐sized installation/kinetic sculpture, Machinarius, 2008,⁷ by Marcela Armas (b. 1976) first appears to be an abstract shape formed by a bicycle chain connected to gear wheels, mounted on a white wall. The chain is mechanized, turning on these gears and dripping black, crude petroleum along its trail on the wall. The abstract shape quickly and suddenly resolves into the shape of Mexico, upside down, and of course the meaning now is the very opposite of self‐referential abstraction. The petroleum riches of Mexico work only on its borders as export, the interior remains oil poor, and the entire symbol of the country is stained. But the machinery of capitalist corruption is unstoppable. Mural art continues to find new ways to remain relevant on the vital issues facing Mexico.

1.3 Prints

      Printmaking is, by definition, an explicitly social art medium, meaning that its potential for producing multiple “originals” vastly increases its viewing population and reduces the price of individual pieces. Prints made in Mexico during the modern period fully exploit this potential, in their manufacture, distribution, and in their imagery (see Prignitz‐Poda 1992, and Ittmann 2006). José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) is the dominant single artist in this category, as his life spanned the Díaz regime and its demise and overlapped the first years of the revolution. Mostly known as a political cartoonist and illustrator, Posada chronicled the politics of his time with deeply sarcastic images of abuses by all sorts of authority upon the poor and miserable masses. Natural disasters and sensationalistic crimes also captured his attention. His use of the calavera, or skeleton, as the persona for all sorts of human folly and corruption gained him wide and popular attention. These bony personifications of politicians, drunken peasants, and dancers at parties are dry commentary on the emptiness of the Mexican character but also celebrate the ironic victory over death observed by Mexican folklore as during the Day of the Dead. Posada's deep immersion in the issues of his time and his direct yet expressive style gained a faithful following from the mural painters, especially Rivera.

The best example of how this medium encouraged collective, socialized manufacture was the formation in 1937 of the printmakers' collective Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People's Graphics Workshop), the TGP (Wright‐Rios 1988).⁸ The best known members included Luis Arenal, Leopoldo Méndez, José Chávez Morado, the American Pablo O'Higgins, Alfredo Zalce, and Francisco Dosamantes. Many of these had participated to some degree in the mural program as well. In its name, manifesto, and general choice of imagery, the TGP pushed hard on the notion of a committed, highly polemical form of visual propaganda in the service of the revolution. A special topic in its early years was the Spanish Civil War and the dangers of fascism. The working class and its enemies became the stock protagonists of melodramas told in strident tones, many times captioned in posters and broadsides featuring fighting slogans of the day, reporting mass demonstrations or violations of workers' rights. In a self‐promoting flyer of 1938, illustrated instructions are given on how such flyers can be slipped under doors; fixed onto walls, trees and railroad cars; and handed out at meetings (by Alfredo Zalce, illustrated in Ittmann 2006, p. 221, fig. 273).

      Consider this excerpt from the 1945 TGP manifesto: “The TGP undergoes a constant effort, in order to benefit by its works the progressive and democratic interests of the Mexican people, especially in the fight against fascist reaction” (Wright‐Rios 1988, p. 19).

Out of the vast number of prints produced by the TGP over the period from 1937–1960 (the peak period being 1937–1940, more than 30 000 posters just from 1937–1938) (Meyer 1949), I have chosen for special attention a lithograph by Isidoro Ocampo (1910–1983), At the Follies (Figure 1.1), from 1940.

      The setting is a Mexico City theater of that name. Ocampo, who joined LEAR in 1936 and the TGP in 1937, has taken a highly unorthodox view of the interior of the theater, in that we do not see the stage, or the seats, or even the spectators in any explicit manner. Rather, he concentrates on a sweeping angle of the overhanging balcony, suspended by a single post, emphasizing the sleek modernism of the architecture. This sort of understated, studied, and formalist attention to its subject separates this print from so much of the overheated drama of typical TGP production and recalls the geometric forms of European modernist movements.

Of the maybe six people, four of whom seem to be men, we get no specific information about facial appearance or expression, as the hats pulled low and the dim lighting obscure their features. We go elsewhere to identify them, meaning to the implications carried by the balcony itself, relegated to seating the lower classes. And also to the generalized mass they form, which also must apply to workers, as the middle and upper classes would probably merit some individualization. The hand hooking over the balcony, in its massive dimension and flexed attitude, also speaks of manual (read exploitable for labor) rather than social value. That hand acts and looks like a massive anchor pulling this group down on that sliding diagonal of the railing. But it is diagonal only to us, on the flat of this print, rather than experienced by the workers, as a level plane. The force of our vision, as occupants of the expensive seats, compels the workers into this heap, and the vertical line rising from the second man from the bottom defines a corner that further compresses this mass into a tighter space. Which means that they are subjected to the logic of the composition of the print itself, and to our privileged vision, which wants to see them out of reach and precariously perched, perhaps in some danger. The pressures of such socialized observation are indicated in the architecture. See how the visual weight of the downwardly sliding group impresses itself on the rightmost wall and causes it to whiten, as do knuckles compressed into a fist. These whitened stress points are also seen along the bottom of the vertical, smooth curve of the balcony, just under the weight of the massed spectators, and also where the supporting post hits the bottom plane of the floating balcony.

Figure 1.1 ^{_{Isidoro Ocampo, At the Follies, 1940. Lithograph; image 20 9/16 × 14 ¼ inches (52.2 × 36.2 cm).}}

      Source: Collection of the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio. Gift of the Gallery of the McNay, 1990.96. Reproduced with permission.

      But why are we, the bourgeoisie, looking away from the melodrama on the stage at all; why is this scene now more important, maybe even more dramatic? Because the mob is about to spill over, on top of us, to transgress their spatial and social limits, to lead this plunge with that menacing hand, and who knows how many will follow these four or six. The architecture itself is suffering under this strain and will surely give way, soon. And, somehow, if you look with a certain fear of the symbols of class warfare, the post and the balcony somehow look like the shaft and head of a hammer, and the parabolic curve somehow like the sweep of a sickle, these two implements oddly combined into one form, supporting the workers but also about to deliver them into areas not allowed to them, for now. The classes that are at present separated by form and custom are about to engage in a sudden and new way.

1.4

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