BOOK / VANGUARD MACHINES. Rubén Gallo

ESSAY

Art and literature maintain complex relationships—diverse, never linear, of reciprocal circulation and influence—with technology: poems, stories, paintings, and sculptures convey the deepest desires, anxieties, and fantasies of each historical era. In Vanguard Machines, Rubén Gallo masterfully explores the relationship between the technological revolution and the cultural productions of 20th-century Mexico. In five chapters, the author dissects the artistic impact that the invention of artifacts as diverse as the camera, the typewriter, the radio, cement, and the stadium had on the artistic avant-garde of the era. Beyond inspiring technophilic texts, these new media produced a radical transformation of our ideas about art, culture, and society. Names such as Diego Rivera, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Mariano Azuela, Martín Luis Guzmán, Manuel Maples Arce, Kyn Taniya, and José Vasconcelos parade through the pages of this book. Gallo meticulously analyzes the different positions and reactions of these figures to the emergence of new media. With great essayistic rigor, precise and fluid prose, and a playful spirit that leads him to discover extravagances such as the decisive role played by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen in the history of Mexican radio, Rubén Gallo has perfectly captured the atmosphere of a time of change and transition, which would prove decisive for the full advent of modernity in Mexico, but which had a premodern background that remains present to this day and without which any attempt to understand machine culture would be futile.

Title: Maquinas de vanguardia
Author: Rubén Gallo
Pages: 291
Size: 17 x 24 cm
Weight: 950 grams
Genre: Essay
Language: Spanish
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Sexto Piso
Year: 2014