Revolutionizing Modernities: Visualizing Utopia in 1960s Havana, Cuba

In 1967 a massive graphic print based on Cuban photographer Alberto Korda’s world famous image of Che Guevara was draped over the five-story Ministry of Interior Building in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución. The print became the iconic image of the Cuban Revolution, reaching beyond its architectural surface into an international market of consumer-based goods. My dissertation is concerned with the ways in which Cuba’s architectural past was put to very different use by the Cuban Revolution, and how Cuban modernity was re-imagined in new architectural projects, in the governmentally supported visual arts, and in curatorial work which brought the fine and popular arts into Cuba’s new and re-inhabited spaces. Drawing from critical theory, formal analysis, and methodologies of art and architectural history along with visual studies, I explicate the ways in which art, design and architecture play a significant role in mediating a revolutionary mythology. I argue that national identity, or cubanidad, becomes reliant on such a mythology of revolution, defined by a Third World solidarity and Cuba’s position within a broader socialist world as much as it is by local elements.

My dissertation explores the history of the Cuban Revolution’s visual culture in six thematic chapters, looking at themes such as modernities, revolution, appropriation, utopia, propaganda, and postmodernity. Each chapter explores developments in the relationship between art and architecture, and situates 1960s Havana within Cuba’s broader history as a republic and a colony. Concerned with the role the visual and spatial played within a socialist setting, Cuba became a productive platform to engage in international debates regarding modernity at the height of the Cold War era. My dissertation examines how Cuba deliberately projected its modernity to the world via architecture and the arts, and how these visual and spatial manifestations speak to the utopic character of modernity within Latin America and the Caribbean.