Ancient Mexican Sources of Art Deco

In the essay I explore the relationship of concepts of civilization and barbarism to constructions of ideas of Ancient Mexican art in the early modernist period.

Oriana Baddeley

Research Interests

Transnational Art, Mexican Art, Cultural Identity, Latin American Art, Cultural Hybridity

Profile
Oriana Baddeley is Professor of Art History and Director of Research at Camberwell College of Arts, and also Deputy Director of UAL Research Centre TrAIN - Transnational Arts, Identity & Nation. She studied History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex. Her doctoral subject formed the basis for work on the 1992 Hayward exhibition 'The Art of Ancient Mexico'.
She has written and published extensively on contemporary Latin American art, including 'Drawing the Line: Art & Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America' (Verso 1989, co-author Valerie Fraser). In 1996 she collaborated with Gerardo Mosquera and inIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) to produce 'Beyond the Fantastic: Art Criticism from Contemporary Latin America' (InIVA/MIT 1996).
Recent publications include essays on ancient Mexican sources within early modern architecture in the Victoria & Albert Museum's 'Art Deco' catalogue (2003), and an investigation of contemporary responses to Frida Kahlo, commissioned for the Tate Modern retrospective exhibition in London (June 2005). In conjunction with the exhibition, she also organised an international conference exploring themes raised in this essay, The Many Faces of Frida.

Between 2001 - 2005, she has been working on a joint AHRB funded project on nation and identity, focusing on art and design of India, Mexico and Japan (University of Sussex, Chelsea College of Art & Design and Camberwell College of Arts). This lead to a major book project in collaboration with Toshio Watanabe and Partha Mitter entitled 'Nation, Identity and Modernity: Visual Culture of India, Japan and Mexico, 1860s -1940', forthcoming by Duke University Press (2007/08).