In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, ''postmodern'' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state.

In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state.

List of Illustrations

Introduction: The Power of Images
Jens Andermann and William Rowe

PART I: MEMORY AND THE PUBLIC ARENA

Chapter 1. From Royal Subject to Citizen: the Territory of the Body in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexican Visual Practices
Magali M. Carrera

Chapter 2. The Mexican Codices and the Visual Language of Revolution
Gordon Brotherston

Chapter 3. Subversive Needlework: Gender, Class and History at Venezuela´s National Exhibition, 1883
Beatriz González Stephan (transl. Heike Vogt)

Chapter 4. Material Memories: Tradition and Amnesia in two Argentine Museums
Alvaro Fernández Bravo

PART II: SELF AND OTHER IN THE AVANT-GARDE

Chapter 5. Exoticism, Alterity and the Ecuadorean Elite: The Work of Camilo Egas
Trinidad Pérez (transl. Philip Derbyshire)

Chapter 6. Primitivist Iconographies: Tango and Samba, Images of the Nation
Florencia Garramuño

Chapter 7. ‘Argentina in the World’: Internationalist Nationalism in the Art of the 1960s
Andrea Giunta (transl. Emma Thomas)

PART III: MASSES AND MONUMENTALITY

Chapter 8. ‘Cold as the Stone of which it Must be Made’: Caboclos, Monuments and the Memory of Independence in Bahia, Brazil, 1870–1900
Hendrik Kraay

Chapter 9. Photography, Memory, Disavowal: the Casasola Archive
Andrea Noble

Chapter 10. Mass and Multitude: Bastardised Iconographies of the Modern Order
Graciela Montaldo

PART IV: SPACES OF FLIGHT AND CAPTURE

Chapter 11. Marconi and other Artifices: Long-range Technology and the Conquest of the Desert 
Claudio Canaparo (transl. Peter Cooke)

Chapter 12. Desert Dreams: Nomadic Tourists and Cultural Discontent
Gabriela Nouzeilles (transl. Jens Andermann)

Chapter 13. Why the Virgin of Zapopan went to Los Angeles: Reflections on Mobility and Globality
Mary Louise Pratt

Notes on Contributors
Index