Editors’ Picks: Art in Context
Beyond formal and material qualities, what remains unique about art and architecture as disciplines are the locations, contexts, and cultures in which they are formed. This month, editors of the Review’s Editorial Board reflect upon various artistic practices as well as their capacity to unearth disparate and, at times, conflicting perspectives.
Le Corbusier — Villa Savoye (1928)
Villa Savoye (/vila savwa/) is one of the first and, to this day, most prominent works of Modernist architecture. Designed by Le Corbusier in 1928 and constructed the year after, the architect took inspiration from other objects of modernity, such as steamships, trains, and factories. The building is the physical manifestation of Le Corbusier’s “Five Points of Modern Architecture,” which radically reimagined how houses should be adapted to the industrialized century. Taking a tour through the Villa Savoye, we can see all of the Five Points materialized in its architectural composition: the flat roof creates an extra terrace space for a garden and a sports area; the open floor plan below enables better lighting conditions and freer circulation; the steel beams, instead of load-bearing walls, provide structural support while maintaining the open floor plan; the ribbon-style windows let in equal light in each room regardless of time; and the free façade hides the structural elements behind the cleaner-looking walls and windows.
— Ark Lu, Arts Editor
Contrast of Two 20th Century Latin American Art Pieces
In Twenty Centuries, Miguel Covarrubias reveals a caricaturistic representation of that after which his painting is entitled: through a tongue-in-cheek tone, Covarrubias depicts the flippant visitors of the exhibition of Mexican art at the New York City Museum of Modern Art in 1940. Although the ancient, sacred goddess Coatlicue occupies the center of the piece and is likely intended to be its focal point, the careless spectator pays her no mind. What is to be understood in this painting is that the true purpose of the exhibition is not to genuinely appreciate and carefully consider Mexican art, but to use it as a negotiating tool to access Mexico’s bountiful petroleum reserves.
On the other hand, Cândido Portinari’s Café (1935) depicts a more serious scene: Portinari offers us a glimpse into the arduous process that Brazilian coffee plantation laborers engaged in to produce the country’s most valuable raw materials. The painting includes dozens of these laborers, each performing a different task. Some pick the beans, some carry full and cumbersome bags and buckets, and all are working diligently and cohesively to accomplish a collective goal. This is a major difference between Café and Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art at the Museum of Modern Art: whereas the wealthy and senseless visitors of the exhibit at hand in the latter tend to appear inattentive to their surroundings, the Brazilian plantation laborers in Café are depicted as hardworking and selfless while accomplishing their jobs. They can’t afford to live frivolously as the caricatured art-viewers in Covarrubias’s painting clearly do, but instead directly contribute to Brazil’s thriving export economy, one that prided itself on its position as the biggest provider of raw materials to the United States. The United States economy depended heavily upon raw materials from Brazil, including rubber, quartz, and quinine. This trading partnership would be encouraged by “cultural diplomacy” between the two nations, which manifested itself during the 1939 New York World’s Fair (where Café debuted on a large scale). However, “cultural diplomacy” should be understood less as a genuine appreciation of Latin American culture on behalf of United States capitalists, and more of an economic strategy to benefit those self-involved, upper-class individuals presented in Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art at the Museum of Modern Art.
— Olivia Marotte, Contributing Editor