Debating the revolution: the evolving role of the visual arts in Cuba
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 17 - 1118082
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
-
-
- Title of journal
- Journal of Languages, Texts, and Society
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 4
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 2018
- ISSN
- 2517-648X
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/languagestextssociety/documents/lts-journal/issue-2/issue-2compressed.pdf
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
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A - Artistic Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This article brings together research from cultural studies, art history, and social sciences to explore the visual arts in Cuba as an important means by which Cuban identity, civil society and the Cuban Revolution gained sovereignty.
The article outlines the magnitude of the change effected, under Communism, to participation in and access to the arts before the discussing visual culture under the Castro administration. In doing so, it highlights the elements of continuity in the cultural arena during the transition from nineteenth-century liberal idealism (particularly with regard to expanding participation in cultural practice throughout the population at large) to the implementation of policies making this possible under Communism. The identification of the ‘overlap’ of certain elements and approaches in the visual arts before and after 1959 help to combat the often binary views of a country before 1959 and during the ongoing revolutionary process. In doing so it serves to highlight that the 1953-1958 rebellion that enthroned the (still-ongoing) revolution was the culmination of a long-term independence project that has its roots in the Spanish American Wars of Independence.
The political and historical contextualisation that this article offers is of particular relevance and use as the Cuban Cultural field is attracting new international attention after the introduction of the controversial law ‘Decreto 349’ which places new, more stringent, requirements on processes that artists must go through before their work can be shown in public.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -