Art History: Latinx Art & Visual Culture: Home

by Prof. Zavala

• Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women, Gender and Representation in Mexican Art
• Montage and Assemblage: “Unmaking” and Decolonizatio (Forthcoming)
• Frida Kahlo’s Garden
• Frida Kahlo, an annotated bibliography
• Essays in Lola Álvarez Bravo and the Photography of an Era/Lola Álvarez Bravo y la fotografía de una época.
• Mexico beyond its revolution
• Latin@Art at the Intersection

• Latinx art: artists, markets, politics
• Chicana/o remix  art and errata since the sixties
• Chicano and Chicana art : a critical anthology
• Tradition and transformation: Chicana/o art from the 1970s through the 1990s
• The incurable-image: curating post-Mexican film and media arts
• Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo in Detroit
• Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection & 20th century Mexican art ...
• Portrait of a young painter: Pepe Zúñiga and Mexico City's rebel generation
• María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo: challenging visions in modern Mexican art
• Born of resistance: cara a cara encounters with Chicana/o visual culture

• Encyclopedia of Mexico  History, Society & Culture 
• Mexico: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Culture and History
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States.
• Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art (a Print exhibition catalogue at Tisch)
• Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture
• Latino Stats: American Hispanics by the Numbers
• Latino/a Popular Culture

• Google Arts and Culture launched Latino Cultures in the U.S.
• Google Arts and Culture: Faces of Frida
• Museo Frida Kahlo
• The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo (PBS)
• Museo Dolores Olmedo
• Museo Estudio Diego Rivera
• Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
• Latin American Travelogues
• Relics & Selves: Iconographies of the National in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1880-1890
• Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Interwar Paris
• Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820

Note: terms used in books and articles published in the past as well as language used in library catalogues are becoming outdated. We acknowledge that cataloging approaches were designed in a racist and white-centered system. Before we can change that completely, we need to include all possible keywords for the most comprehensive search results possible. For examples: Latin/Latino/Latina/latinx, Hispanic Americans, Spanish Americans, Chicano/a, Cuban American, and so on.

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I. Bibliographies

• Oxford Art online (Essays, biographies and bibliographies, ...)

• Latin American Studies (Annotated Bibliographies)
• Latino Studies (Annotated Bibliographies)
• Art History (Annotated Bibliographies)

• Dissertations and Theses (Check out the bibliographies of recent dissertations on a topic.)
• Dissertation Reviews (yet to be published, which "offer a glimpse of each discipline's immediate present")

 

• CAA Reviews (College Art Association)
• H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences (1994 - )
• New York Review of Books (1963 - )

Note: check out the following Subject Databases of journal articles for review of books as well.

Tip: Questions to ask about review of books

• 1.

  You might consider such questions as: Does the reviewer agree or disagree with the book's theses and approaches? Does the reviewer provide new evidence not included in the book? What does the reviewer see as the relevance of the book? What questions not included in the book does the reviewer identify? Based on this book review, what do you think are a few of the major questions or methodologies being used in your chosen field?

  2.

  What's the next larger context? Aren't any (or many) books published on your topic? Try place your idea in the knowledge hierarchy. e.g., connect Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling with 16th-century Italian art, focusing on patronage in Rome during the Renaissance and Baroque periods; or, dealing with influential Italian artists through history, etc.?

 

II. (JumboSearch for) Books 

Browsing and Search patterns for your reference:

Artists

• Kahlo, Frida   Rivera, Diego Orozco, José Clemente Tamayo Rufino Weston, Edward More examples, Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Nacho López, Hector García, Graciela Iturbide. Cuban American art Mexican American artists art Caribbean Photographers -- Mexico women artists Mexico Mexican American art

 

Medium

• Mexican painting Mexican prints Mexican Murals Photography mexico

   

Exhibition/Museum Catalogues

•  
• • Art, Mexican -- Catalogs.
  • Art, Mexican -- 20th Century -- Catalogs.
  
  
  • Art, Mexican -- Exhibitions..
  • Art, Mexican -- 20th Century -- Exhibitions.

  These exhibition and museum catalogues are uniquely valuable sources, which may include:

  • *Fundamental data on each work of art;
  • *Official images of the artworks;
  • *Curatorial statements/essays;
  • *essays by art critics/historians;
  • *list of scholarly publications on the art,
  • *sometimes, artists interviews,
  • *and more.

  Following are examples from Tisch library:

  TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art
  essay by Stephanie Hanor; catalogue entries by Spring deBoer ... [et al.]; preface by Hugh M. Davies.

  La Era de la Discrepancia: Arte y Cultura Visual en México, 1968-1997 / Con Textos de Olivier Debroise ... [et al.]; editado por Olivier Debroise; [traduccin, Jolle Rorive y Ricardo Vins, James Oles] = The Age of Discrepancies: Art and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1968-1997 / with essays by Olivier Debroise ... [et al.]; edited by Olivier Debroise; [translations, Jolle Rorive y Ricardo Vins, James Oles].

  Juan O'Gorman 100 Aos: Temples, Dibujos y Estudios Preparatorios.

  Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries.
  introduction by Octavio Paz; [translations by Edith Grossman ... et al.]

 

Note: Worldwide Libraries (also known as WorldCat) is still a better place to get a fuller picture of  books on a topic.)

Getty Research Portal Digitized art history texts in the public domain.

**Check the Boston Public Library's catalog for eBooks (and  sign up for a BPL eCard , Tufts students and faculty eligible)

**"Digital books" on Internet Archive

III. Journal Articles (subject databases)

A. All Subjects

• JSTOR
• Project Muse

B.  Art History and Related Subjects Databases

• In EBSCOhost databases, you can select to search across the following databases, among others:
• Academic Search Premier
• America: History & Life
• Art & Architecture Source
• Communication & Mass Media Complete
• Film & Television Literature Index
• Historical Abstracts (World history and culture)
• LGBTQ+ Source
• Race Relations Abstracts
• Women's Studies International

ARTbibliographies Modern (not in the EBSCO group)

 

C. Latin American Studies

• Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI)

 

• Latin American Ephemera Collections at Princeton
• Latin American Pamphlets (19th to the early 20th centuries)

 

Tip: Popular Press vs Scholarly Journals

• A Few Notes:

  Popular Press vs Scholarly Journals

  For some current artists, there may not be much scholarship on their works yet. You are more likely to find exhibition reviews in popular press and trade publications. However, there are surely scholarship on the same types of works from the past.

  Exhibition reviews in popular press are likely opinion pieces. Ask yourself if these reviews are seeking to promote the artist, to criticize him/her, to judge his/her work, or simply to inform. Have the reviews changed over time? Why? How would you use these "public receptions" with other scholarly criticism?

  Two sample reviews:

  Tuchman, Phyllis. "Review: Rothko Rising." Art Journal 58, no. 1 (Spring, 1999): pp. 110-112.

  Johnson, Ken. "ART IN REVIEW; Mark Rothko -- 'A Painter's Progress : The Year 1949'." The New York Times, February 6, 2004, sec. E; Part 2; Leisure/Weekend Desk.

  Source of the two samples: Barnet, Sylvan, A Short Guide to Writing About Art (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2011), p169.

  Popular Press as Primary Sources

  If you are examining the public/popular reception (vs critical responses) of an artist throughout time, popular press are your primary sources.

  One past research paper was looking at contemporaneous reviews of Tissot's 1885 exhibition entitled Femme à Paris, held at the Galerie Sedelmeyer.

  Another project was researching both the critical and popular receptions of particular iconic fashion designers and architects. The historical popular press would be especially relevant.

 

Tip: Search for Review of Books on A Topic

• 1. limit your search to Reviews or Book Reviews

  2. Use keywords such as "review", "current research".

 

Tip: "Literature Review"

• 1. Start with State of the Research / Literature Review articles.

  Reviews of recent books and other types of review articles in major journals in a discipline are likely to summarize the current state of research in an area. Two examples here: Gallo, Ruben. "Mexican Photography: From the Daguerreotype to Digital Images." Hispanic Review 79: 1 (2011): 135-141. Feghali, Zalfa. "Rethinking Chicana/o and Latina/o Popular Culture (review)." MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 36: 3 (Fall 2011), 219-221.

 

D. Newspapers and Magazines

Current:

• Access World News (More U.S. regional news)
• Factiva (more international coverage)
• Alt-PressWatch
• Ethnic NewsWatch 1960 -

Historical:

• Latin American Newspapers Series 1, 1805-1922 (45 titles)
• Latin American Newspapers Series 2, 1822-1922 (250 additional titles)
• Hispanic American Newspapers  (1808  1980)
• Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982
• Times Digital Archive (1785 - 1985)
• New York Times Online Archive (1851 - 3 years before current date)
• More