Date: August 4, 2022
Lecture title: The History of the Skyscraper and Post-Revolutionary Aesthetics in Mexico
(Mexican skyscraper history and post-revolutionary aesthetics)
Speaker: Caballero Miguel
Lecture time: August 9, 2022 (Tuesday) 21:00-23:00
Zoom meeting: 257-399-8249 Password: D# #U55
Organizer: School of Foreign Studies
Introduction of Speaker: Caballero Miguel is an assistant professor of Iberian studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, specializing in literature and art, and is currently completing the manuscript of his first book, tentatively titled Monument to Tomorrow: Conservatives and Avant-gardes in the Spanish Civil War. Previously, Caballero Miguel was an assistant professor in the Department of Romance Language and Literature and the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago.
Introduction: This lecture discusses the theoretical and historical work of Mexican architect Francisco Mojica (1899-1979) in the 1920s. During this period, Mojica's intellectual achievements were particularly important for two reasons. First, he published one of the world's earliest skyscraper histories when skyscrapers were still in adolescence. His History of the Skyscraper was edited in Paris and published in English in 1929, and soon became a manual in American architecture schools. Second, Mojica's idea of skyscrapers was indelibly influenced by the post-revolutionary Mexico where he grew up. Skyscrapers, which he regarded as the "natural" monument of American architectural value, an aesthetic symbol of a continent, should be promoted from north to south. In addition, he linked modern skyscrapers to the ancient indigenous Teokali, arguing that the new architecture was a return of monuments under Spanish colonial oppression of America. This lecture will discuss this theory in the context of utopianism in post-Mexican revolutionary, legacy debate, and psychoanalysis.
