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University of California Press

About the Book

A curated selection of key texts and artists’ voices exploring US Latinx art and art history from the 1960s to the present.
 
A Handbook of Latinx Art is the first anthology to explore the rich, deep, and often overlooked contributions that Latinx artists have made to art in the United States. Drawn from wide-ranging sources, this volume includes texts by artists, critics, and scholars from the 1960s to the present that reflect the diversity of the Latinx experience across the nation, from the West Coast and the Mexican border to New York, Miami, and the Midwest.
 
The anthology features essential writings by Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, Dominican American, and Central American artists to highlight how visionaries of diverse immigrant groups negotiate issues of participation and belonging, material, style, and community in their own voices. These intersectional essays cut across region, gender, race, and class to lay out a complex emerging field that reckons with different histories, geographies, and political engagements and, ultimately, underscores the importance of Latinx artists to the history of American art.

About the Author

Rocío Aranda-Alvarado is an art historian and curator focused on contemporary US Latinx and modern and contemporary Latin American, Caribbean, and African American art. She is Senior Program Officer for arts and culture at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice.
 
Deborah Cullen-Morales is an art historian and curator focused on modern and contemporary Latinx, Caribbean, and African American art. She is Program Officer for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in the arts, culture, and humanities.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction 

FRAMING LATINX ART

The Latino Presence in American Art
E. Carmen Ramos, 2012

Synopsis of the Symposium on the Hispanic American Aesthetic: Origins, Manifestations, 
and Significance
Jacinto Quirarte, 1983

Wonder Bread and Spanglish Art
Luis Camnitzer, 1990

Zero Identity: Third Fragments
Papo Colo, 1991

Border Culture: The Multicultural Paradigm
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, 1990

Between Two Waters: Image and Identity in Latino-American Art
Mari Carmen Ramírez, 1991

The Other History of Intercultural Performance
Coco Fusco, 1995

MEXICAN AMERICAN AND CHICANO/A/X PERSPECTIVES

“Portraying Ourselves”: Contemporary Chicana Artists
Shifra M. Goldman, 1988

Indigenismo: The Call to Unity
Amalia Mesa-Bains, 1989

Twentieth-Century Latin American and Latinx Art in the Midwestern United States: 
Chronological Overview
Olga U. Herrera, 2008

The Con Safo Art Group (1968–76), San Antonio, Texas
Ruben C. Cordova, 2022

From Populist to Pop: The Graphic Arts of the Chicano and Puerto Rican Movements
Henry C. Estrada, 1999

Birth of a Movement: Thirty Years in the Making of a Site of Public Memory
Judith F. Baca, 2001

La Raza Cósmica: An Investigation into the Space of Chicana/o Muralism
Sandra de la Loza, 2011

¡Tenemos Asco! An Oral History of the Chicano Art Group
Sean Carrillo, Harry Gamboa Jr., Willie Herrón, Glugio “Gronk” Nicandro,
Humberto Sandoval, Joey Terrill, and Patssi Valdez, 2022

Axis Mundo: Constellations and Connections
C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz, 2017

The Orphans of Modernism
Chon A. Noriega, 2008

PUERTO RICAN AND NUYORICAN HISTORIES

Puerto Rican Artists in the USA: Solidarity, Resistance, Identity
Susana Torruella Leval, 1998

Cayman and MoCHA: When the Formula Worked
Taína Caragol, 2022

Culture and the People
Ralph Ortiz (Raphael Montañez Ortiz), 1971

The Activist Legacy of Puerto Rican Artists in New York and The Art Heritage of Puerto Rico
Yasmin Ramirez, 2007

The Puerto Rican Equation: Art as Plebiscite for Survival, Struggle, and Sovereignty 
Juan Sánchez, 1998

The Possible Role for the Caribbean Artist in an Urban Setting
Jorge Soto, 1980

CUBAN AMERICAN VOICES

Dialectics of Isolation
Ana Mendieta, 1980

Milk of Amnesia/Leche de Amnesia
Carmelita Tropicana, 1995

Double Invisibility: Cuban Performance and the US Context 
Elvis Fuentes, 2008

Liminal Places
Teresita Fernández, 2023

DOMINICAN YORK VIEWPOINTS

The Island within the Island: Remapping Dominican York
Tatiana Reinoza, 2018

A Complicated Affair: Performing Life on the Margin between Art and Politics
Nicolás Dumit Estévez, 2011

NEW DIRECTIONS

“Does That Come with a Hyphen? A Space?” The Question of Central American–Americans in 
Latino Art and Pedagogy
Kency Cornejo, 2015

Afro-Latinx at NYU: How Multiple Facets of Black Latinidad Are Claiming Space. 
Yelaine Rodriguez, 2021

Index 

 

Reviews

"This much-anticipated volume is exactly what we need to incorporate Latinx art as a key, required component in the curriculum. Authored by two of the most recognized intellectual leaders in the field, this project is an essential resource for scholars working across the fields of art history and visual culture studies and could not come at a better time."—Arlene Dávila, author of Latinx Art

"In their Handbook of Latinx Art, Rocío Aranda-Alvarado and Debroah Cullen-Morales highlight for us the voices of artists and critics, along with the possibilities within exhibition making encompassed under the rubric of Latinx creativity. In these expansive discussions of art of the last century we uncover ever more of the Americanness in American art. Handbook of Latinx Art is a stellar compilation that comes at the right time. It is a much-needed volume that helps us continue writing and imagining the ongoing story of American art through a generous Latinx lens."—Kellie Jones, author of South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s

"This collection is an invaluable resource that positions 'Latinx art' as a complex and diverse practice at the intersections of American, Caribbean, and Latin American art. Drawing on key works, it introduces readers to an eye-opening critical dialogue taking place in the United States since the 1970s among artists, curators, and scholars."—Chon Noriega, coauthor of Home—So Different, So Appealing