Xavier Villaurrutia is a 20th Century intellectual Mexican writer best known for his poetry, fiction, and playwriting. My dissertation aims to study his prolific art criticism from 1926 to 1950 as a narrative literary genre that creates a third space for discussing Mexican culture. Traditionally, relations between art and Mexican modernity have been viewed in a deeply polarized way. On the one hand, we find an orthodox nationalist project committed to the Mexican society and working class, as exemplified by Diego Rivera's murals or the work of avant-garde writers such as Manuel Maples Arce. Countering this conservative and nationalistic viewpoint we also find the cosmopolitanism of the Contemporáneos avant-garde group, to which Villaurrutia belonged. In order to dismantle this dualistic narrative I propose a third possibility that departs from Walter Benjamin's media theory as well as Roland Barthes and John Berger's photography theoretic and textual analysis to frame an understanding of visual representation, criticism and national culture in the Mexican modernity of the 20th century and its implications for the 21st century.
نام شخص به منزله سر شناسه - (مسئولیت معنوی درجه اول )