Toward a Reappraisal of Comparative Studies: The Case of South American Modernism

Abstract

The text begins with a series of historiographic reflections on key debates about art history in South America; these suggest possible points of departure for the development of a comparative method suitable to our present needs. My aim is twofold: to re-establish comparative history as a method of analysis (something well suited, in my view, for grappling with modern art and its development in metropolitan South America), and at the same time to reflect on the assumptions of comparative methodologies and reconsider their critical value for the present. To this end, I introduce the notion of ?connective categories? [términos relacionales] and test its applicability through two case studies. Connective categories, in brief, are a diverse set of aesthetic or institutional configurations that (on the one hand) point to specific artistic or cultural problems within a concrete historical setting, and (on the other) allow us to consider how local, national, and regional processes may be joined without necessarily being conflated with each other. I shall, for example, suggest that the cultural-political device of the "diplomatic exchange exhibition," and the morphological notion of the "monochrome," are productive examples of connective categories within the postwar history of South American art.