Modern Tradition

 

Until recently, the concept of a "modern tradition" seemed a paradox, especially due to the vulgarized notion that modernity meant a rupture with all traditions. Today this concept has become a recurring issue in studies that adopt the ideas of postmodernism or contemporaneity. To avoid adhering to any of these tendencies – anti-modernist or modernist – we intend, in this project, to rigorously examine the sources and premises of modernity, especially regarding its worldwide distribution.

Marked by a process of late, irregular, asymmetric and dependent modernization, Latin America can offer a particularly relevant point of view to unfold the concepts of modern, modernism, modernity, including a discussion of their temporal and conceptual frameworks. Since colonial times, linked to what has been recently called the first modernity, a tension between the local and the metropolis was at the center of multiple processes of creating visual identities in Latin America.

Unfolding the modern tradition in Latin America involves, therefore, the discussion of its reception in our continent: how were the different artistic movements received and interpreted? How did the modern quality (the commitment to the present time) find different forms of artistic expression? How did modern Western culture spread in Latin America, especially after colonization and during the processes of independence and modernization? How did the nationalistic rhetoric interpret, in each context, the idea of modernity? How does this debate appear in cultural and institutional fields? How did the establishment of art systems in different countries happen? How was visual modernity constituted? With which different traditions did Latin American modernisms relate?