Alberro's impressive approach to post-Concrete Latin American art sets the stage for a new understanding of modernity as it demonstrates how artists, by reconceiving the spectatorial functioning of abstraction, critically dismantled the modern myth of art autonomy.
Luis P rez-Oramas, Latin American Art Curator, The Museum of Modern Art In this stimulating book Alexander Alberro mines fields well known to scholars of modern Latin American artists in a way that sheds new light. . .Alberro's book is an invigorating refresher course for those deeply immersed in this material and of immense use to the neophyte in matters of mid-twentieth-century art in the Americas.
The Burlington Magazine This book nuances the history of modernist abstraction...the art reproduced is wonderful to see. Recommended.
Choice Abstraction in Reverse deftly traces South American cultural processes and their ties to European traditions without neglecting the specifics of their individual trajectories. This is a compelling read.
Mar a Amalia Garc a, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cient ficas y T cnicas Abstraction in Reverse is a must-read for anyone interested in abstract art, its histories, and the different narratives we tell when faced with an increasingly global world.
Kaira M. Caba as, author of Off-Screen Cinema: Isidore Isou and the Lettrist Avant-Garde Engaging and accessible, Abstraction in Reverse astutely explores the question of art's place in society and the surprising extent to which seemingly speculative debates about the framing of modern art can impact the political agenda of the revolutionary Left.
Bruno Bosteels, author of Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror Abstraction in Reverse offers an urgently needed postcolonial perspective for the study of Latin American art and provides new concepts for exploring visual culture at the crossroads of modernity and globalization.
Andrea Giunta, author of Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties