Produced in conjunction with the Ransom Centerâ??s exhibition â?oMiguel Covarrubias: A Certain Clairvoyance,â? this volume contains color plates of virtually all the items in Nickolas Murayâ??s collection of twentieth-century Mexican art.
As a whole, this publication of the Nickolas Muray Collection vividly illustrates the transgression of generic boundaries and the cross-fertilization among artists working in different media, from painting and photography to dance and ethnography, that gave modernism its freshness and energy. It also demonstrates that American modernism was thoroughly infused with a fervor for all things Mexican, of which Covarrubias was a principal proponent, and that Mexican modernists, no less than their American and European counterparts, answered Pound's call to "make it new."
