Political Influences in Cuban Art
“A question of major importance in Cuban culture is the link between radical political and artistic positions…where culture carries a marked social edge attuned to the circumstances in which it is produced and where it is forced to construct a national identity in the face of colonial and neo colonial powers.”
In the 1980s when the New Cuban Art Movement was consolidated many still hoped to establish the Third World utopia of social justice promised by the Cuban revolution. While Cuba shares many characteristics with other Latin American countries three factors guarantee it a unique placement amongst the formerly colonized countries of the Americas: 1. Spain continued emigration to Cuba in large numbers until the middle of the twentieth century. 2. The native population was eliminated in the 17th century. 3. Cuba possesses the most varied cultural traditions of all the African diaspora in America.
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Famous quotes containing the words political, influences, cuban and/or art:
“Martin, a woman hasn’t got any political opinions. I run this farm to suit myself. I’ll shoot the daylights out of anybody—British, Indian or American—that thinks he can come around here monkeyin’ in my business. That satisfy ya?”
—Lamar Trotti (1898–1952)
“Do not seek anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Because a person is born the subject of a given state, you deny the sovereignty of the people? How about the child of Cuban slaves who is born a slave, is that an argument for slavery? The one is a fact as well as the other. Why then, if you use legal arguments in the one case, you don’t in the other?”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)