Craven considers how each revolution dealt with the pressing problem of creating a 'dialogical art' - one that reconfigures the existing artistic resource rather than one that just reproduces a populist art to keep things as they were. The book not only examines specific artworks originating from each revolution's attempt to deal with the challenge of 'socializing the arts,' but also the engagement of the working classes in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua with a tradition of the fine arts made newly accessible through social transformation.
In each case, he demonstrates how the consequences of the revolution reverberated in the arts and cultures far beyond national borders. Craven discusses the structural logic of each movement's artistic project - by whom, how, and for whom artworks were produced - and assesses their legacies. The three great upheavals - in Mexico (1910-40), in Cuba (1959-89), and in Nicaragua (1979-90) - were defining moments in twentieth-century life in the Americas. In this uniquely wide-ranging book, David Craven investigates the extraordinary impact of three Latin American revolutions on the visual arts and on cultural policy.
