Artwriting in the first stage of the Revista Moderna

Abstract

One of the least understood practices to appear in the Mexico’s Revista Moderna is artwriting. Through this hybrid genre, that appeared in all of the issues of the magazine and took on and endless array of forms (prose poems, notes, reviews, short stories, essays, etc.), the modernistas addressed their encounter with modern art and with the new visual culture that was arriving in the country at the turn of the century. Borrowing the term artwriting from the north American philosopher David Carrier —who coined the phrase to refer to creative non-fictional and fictional work written by poets and novelists about their encounter with art—in this paper I will review the historical, cultural and intellectual context that spawned the use of this genre. My aim is to show the important role artwriting played in the Revista Moderna’s efforts to transform academic discourse about the visual arts.