| Abstract
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This dissertation proposes a new interdisciplinary conceptualization of Mexican modernity during the two decades following the Revolution. Through an analysis of the visual and literary production of various, coexisting avant-garde movements, I achieve a clearer vision of the social function and dynamic experience of art within Mexican society during this prolific era. I combine two approaches in the course of this investigation: the creation of a Mexican visual culture collage that highlights competing artistic, cultural, and political agendas and an in-depth comparison of the Estridentistas and the Contemporáneos that questions their historical polarization by revealing verbal-visual correspondences between these two dominant literary-artistic groups. In chapters one, two, and three, I construct visual semiotic dialogues based on the works of Estridentistas and Contemporáneos , of muralists, of government-sponsored drawing, painting and engraving instructors, and of local producers of folk art. The materials assembled are representative of both academic and popular art forms: paintings, murals, photographs, book and magazine cover designs, illustrations and vignettes, and folk art. I thematically organize these visual products into three interconnected chapters that focus on the Mexican metropolis, regional identity, and art education respectively. In the two subsequent chapters, I counter the universalist perspective of the avant-garde, i.e., Peter Bürger's Theorie der Avantgarde (1974). I demonstrate that Bürger's notion of the opposition between the political avant-garde and the artistic avant-garde contrasts with the close association of politics and art in post-revolutionary Mexico. Chapter four explores these groups' parallel ambiguous response to modern technology, and chapter five, which deals with montage as an experimental technique and worldview, illustrates an underlying characteristic of their repertoires: the interrelatedness among art, mass media, and popular culture. These chapters compare literary works with visual components by the Estridentistas Manuel Maples Arce, Arqueles Vela, List Arzubide, and Xavier Icaza and by the Contemporáneos members Xavier Villaurrutia, Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Salvador Novo, Jaime Torres Bodet, and Carlos Pellicer.
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