Mexico and American Modernism

In this captivating account, art historian Landau traces the oft-disregarded influence of Mexican culture and aesthetic sensibilities on American Modernism. She focuses on the catalysts that inform the work of four American artists: Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, and Jackson Pollock. This emerges in divergent manners, such as in Motherwell's appropriation of the color palate of Mexico and his depiction of its perceived violence, or Pollock's admiration for the Mexican Muralists, which can be read in his epic works. These artists also participated in the Mexican art scene. Consider the towering Guston/Kadish collaborative mural in Morelia, Mexico, or Noguchi's imposing carved relief in Mexico City. Landau's nuanced approach teases out complex motivations such as love affairs, political sympathies, neuroses, friendships, grant money, and of course travels. What perhaps is most striking in this meticulously interwoven study are the chance meetings and happenstances that play such a profound role on their canvases and in their lives. This resistance to reductive proclamations is regrettably rare in art history. Landau's scholarship reanimates the complex intricacies of influence illuminating lives rather than resumes, to show the geopolitical and enigmatic impact Mexico as a place and culture held in the imagination of these American Modernists. (June)