From humour to fine arts and vice versa: Atlántida in the twenties

Abstract

From its foundation in 1918 by the Uruguayan writer Constancio C. Vigil, Atlántida magazine kept a well-defined interest in images. The covers, a clear example in that sense, displayed colourful works on full pages while the content itself reflected that through cartoons, graphic sections, vignettes, illustrations and photographs. Conceived as a mass-market project, Atlántida worked with images and texts resorting to the popular and the cultured within the magazine’s layout. Thus, they implemented innovative strategies in the promotion of art, combining a humorous register with texts and images within institutional circuits. This essay is aimed at analysing that peculiar device articulating professional art reviews and reproductions of academic paintings linked also to the art market, with humorous illustrations and textual interventions which spoofed the artistic system. In this vein, the role played by cartoons will be studied, together with the criteria for choosing cover images and the introduction of professional criticism, to eventually focus on an emblematic case in Argentinean art history: Emilio Pettoruti’s exhibition of 1924 and its counterpart, the Salón Ultrafuturista [Ultrafuturistic Salon], a satire of avant-garde proposals and, in short, a questioning of the progress of modern art through humorous means. Our intention is then to reflect upon the artistic promotion strategies which had an impact on the development of consumption, and among which humour turned out to be a critical component. The magazine will be thus conceived as a device for the circulation of imaginaries moulding the sensitivity of the time and the readers’ artistic understanding.