Tres problemas para la neo-vanguardia argentina: herencia, genealogía, legitimidad

Abstract

Tradition has been a key problem for artistic practices and theory since the beginning of Modernity. That means, by the same token, that it has been a vastly productive one. In the 1960s, the iconoclastic avant-gardes of the interwar period were reframed as the culmination of a great modern tradition; at the same time, a diversity of apparently “post-modern” practices were now posited, once again, to be a break in historical continuity. The three Argentine episodes discussed here belong to a constellation of problems mobilized by the imaginary of rupture. First, the problem of heritage in critic and curator Jorge Romero Brest’s reflexions on art. Second, that of genealogy in Borges and Bioy Casares’ satirical  Cronicas de Bustos Domecq . Third, that of legitimacy in several texts and a “happening” by young critic Oscar Masotta. My goal, together with bringing together a series of apparently disparate episodes and problems, is to highlight the geopolitical and classist undertones that have marked this key issue of modern art in a cultural scene marked by its peripheral position and rapid social change.