Description

Book Synopsis
Venezuela's turbulent twentieth century saw boom and bust as the former Spanish colony transformed into a major postwar cultural player. In this sweeping study of visual and material production, Sean Nesselrode Moncada explores the integral relationship between the global oil industry and the celebrated rise of geometric abstraction, kinetic art, and modern architecture in midcentury Venezuela. Oil provided the crucible for national reinvention, ushering in a period of dizzying optimism and bitter disillusion as artists, architects, graphic designers, activists, and critics sought to define the terms of modernity. An innovative, transdisciplinary reevaluation of Venezuelan modernism,Refined Materialreveals how the logic of refinement conditioned the terms of development and redefined our relationship to nature, matter, and one another.

Table of Contents
Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction: The Alchemy of Refinement

1 Designing Oil
2 Refi ning Amuay
3 Building the Vista
4 Vibrating Nature
5 Killing the Well

Epilogue: The Ooze of History

NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
INDEX

Refined Material

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    A Hardback by Sean Nesselrode Moncada

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      Book details

      Publisher University of California Press
      Published 29 August 2023
      ISBN-13 9780520392465
      978-0520392465
      ISBN-10 0520392469
      Also in:
      History of art History of design

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Venezuela's turbulent twentieth century saw boom and bust as the former Spanish colony transformed into a major postwar cultural player. In this sweeping study of visual and material production, Sean Nesselrode Moncada explores the integral relationship between the global oil industry and the celebrated rise of geometric abstraction, kinetic art, and modern architecture in midcentury Venezuela. Oil provided the crucible for national reinvention, ushering in a period of dizzying optimism and bitter disillusion as artists, architects, graphic designers, activists, and critics sought to define the terms of modernity. An innovative, transdisciplinary reevaluation of Venezuelan modernism,Refined Materialreveals how the logic of refinement conditioned the terms of development and redefined our relationship to nature, matter, and one another.

      Table of Contents
      Contents

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Introduction: The Alchemy of Refinement

      1 Designing Oil
      2 Refi ning Amuay
      3 Building the Vista
      4 Vibrating Nature
      5 Killing the Well

      Epilogue: The Ooze of History

      NOTES
      SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
      INDEX

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