2016/12/13 by Patrick Frank · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Photographic and Visual Arts #Art, Politics, and Modernism
paper · doi:10.5744/florida/9780813062228.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2016/12/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
The four artists who made up the New Figuration movement—Luis Felipe Noé, Jorge de la Vega, Rómulo Macció, and Ernesto Deira—have figured in every relevant textbook and international group show on Latin American modern art, but until now there has been no thorough study of them in English or Spanish. In <italic>Painting in a State of Exception</italic> , Patrick Frank’s detailed cultural and scholarly analysis of the group's creations unfolds against the backdrop of Argentina at that time, as the artists responded directly and memorably to a chaotic period characterized by civil strife, government instability, and economic shocks, including currency fluctuations. Central to Frank’s study is how the artists’ works relate to political events, literature, popular culture, and films of the early to mid-sixties. With the goal of broadening our view of what modern art comprised in the early 1960s, Frank includes formal analyses of many works, along with discussion of the stylistic and cultural forces that shaped them.