Culture of Argentina
The culture of Argentina is as varied as the country's geography and mix of ethnic
groups. Modern Argentine culture has been largely influenced by European
immigration although there are also some Amerindian and African influences,
particularly in the fields of music and art. Buenos Aires and other cities show a
mixture of architectural styles imported from Europe but in the case of older
settlements, and of older preserved neighborhoods within cities, modern styles appear
mixed with colonial features, relics from the Spanish-ruled past. Museums, cinemas
and galleries are abundant in all the large urban centers, as well as traditional
establishments such as literary bars, or bars offering live music of a variety of genres.
Cinema and theatre
Night shot of the Colón Theatre in Buenos Aires.
See also: Cinema of Argentina
Argentine cinema has been active since 1896 and has produced over 2,500 fulllength titles, having in recent decades achieved international recognition with films
such as The Official Story and 9 Queens, though it is often overshadowed in
Argentine box offices by popular Hollywood titles. Local film-makers still premiere
at least one title weekly, however, and even low-budget productions have obtained
prizes in cinema festivals (such as Cannes). The city of Mar del Plata organizes its
own festival dedicated to this art.[1]
The Odeón Theatre, a prominent professional stage theatre during the late nineteenth
century.
The "Open Theatre": a defense of freedom of expression during the last dictatorship.
Argentine theatre traces its origins to Viceroy Juan José de Vértiz y Salcedo's
creation of the colony's first comedy theatre (La Ranchería) in 1783. This
development was complemented by the 1804 opening of the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos
Aires, the nation's longest-continuously operating stage. The musical creator of the
Argentine National Anthem, Blas Parera, earned fame as a theatre score writer during
the early 19th century. The genre suffered during the regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas,
though it flourished alongside the economy later in the century. The national
government gave Argentine theatre its initial impulse with the establishment of the
Colón Theatre in 1857, which hosted classical and operatic as well as stage
performances. Antonio Petalardo's successful 1871 gambit on the opening of the
Teatro Opera inspired others to fund the growing art in Argentina.
The 1874 murder of Juan Moreira, a persecuted troubadour, provided dramatists with
a new hero. Possessing all the elements of tragedy, the anecdote inspired Eduardo
Gutiérrez's 1884 play Juan Moreira and the work made the gaucho the inspiration for
the Argentine stage in subsequent years. Spanish literature began to overtake the
gaucho following the 1897 relocation to Argentina of Spanish theatre producer María
Guerrero and her company, who popularized professional stage theatre in the country.
Making the Teatro Odeón a nerve center for the medium, her evolved stagecraft led to
the creation of the national stage, the Cervantes Theatre, in 1921.
The wave of European Immigration in Argentina created a need for a cultural shift in
theatre addressed by Florencio Sánchez, a pioneer in professional theater locally and
in Uruguay. Local color became the primary inspiration for Roberto Arlt, Gregorio de
Laferrère, Armando Discépolo, Antonio Cunill Cabanellas and Roberto Payró during
the 1920s and 1930s, while also helping amateur theatre revive locally. The Teatro
Independiente movement created a counterwight to professional theatre and inspired a
new generation of young dramatists in this vein such as Copi, Agustín Cuzzani,
Osvaldo Dragún and Carlos Gorostiza.
Concert hall in the Libertador Theatre (Córdoba).
Gorostiza and other self-trained dramatists also popularized Realism in the Argentine
theatre after 1950, a genre advanced by Ricardo Halac, Roberto Cossa and among
others. Griselda Gambaro and Eduardo Pavlovsky popularized the theatre of the
absurd in Argentina after 1960, a genre that found local variant in the grotesque works
of Julio Mauricio and Roberto Cossa, whose La Nona became an iconic character in
the Argentine theatre in 1977.
Argentina's last dictatorship posed the greatest challenge to the development of local
theatre since the Rosas era of the mid-19th century. Numerous actors, playwrights and
technicians emigrated after 1976, though the dictators' own sense of the theatrical
persuaded them to loosen pressures on artists around 1980. Seizing the opportunity,
playwright Osvaldo Dragún marshalled colleagues to restore an abandoned sparkplug
factory to organize the improvisational Argentine Open Theatre in 1981, a triumph
dampened by their Picadero Theatre's fire-bombing a week later.
The theatre thrived before and after the 1983 return to democracy. Established
playwrights and directors such as Norman Briski, Roberto Cossa, Lito Cruz, Carlos
Gorostiza, Pacho O'Donnell and Pepe Soriano and younger dramatists such as Luis
Agostoni, Carlos María Alsina, Eduardo Rovner and Rafael Spregelburd. Works by
these and other local authors, as well as local productions of international works, are
among the over 80 theater works presented every weekend in Buenos Aires, alone.
The stage also plays host to well-known comedy acts, such as those of satirist Enrique
Pinti, female impersonator Antonio Gasalla, storyteller Luis Landriscina and the
musical comedy troupe, Les Luthiers.
Music
A Tango show in Buenos Aires.
Main article: Music of Argentina
The best-known element of Argentine culture is the tango dance. In modern Argentina,
tango music is enjoyed in its own right, especially since the radical Ástor Piazzolla
redefined the music of Carlos Gardel. It should be noted that foreigners usually think
of tango as the dance music, whilst for Argentines the word refers to both the music
and the lyrics (often containing words and phrases in lunfardo, a local slang), which
are a form of poetry.
Folk music and dance are popular in provincial Argentina and are blends of various
native and European styles. Examples include the chamamé of Mesopotamia and the
chacarera of Santiago del Estero.
Since the 1970s Rock music has been widely appreciated in Argentina. First during
the 1970s and then again in the mid 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, national
rock music and pop music experienced bursts of popularity, with many new bands
(such as Soda Stereo and Sumo) and composers (like Charly García and Fito Páez)
becoming important exponents of national culture. National Rock and Pop then gave
way to other genres, like Ska, Techno, Eurodance, Electronica and Argentine Cumbia.
The wide variety of music to be heard in Argentina today is impossible to summarize
in a short article; the opening up of the Argentine economy to international trade and
the ready access to music downloaded from the Internet (most often illegally, through
peer-to-peer networks) provide listeners with a diversity of choices. Rock music is
currently the most popular form of music among younger Argentines.
A number of Argentine rock and jazz musicians have become well-known film score
composers. Big band leader Lalo Schiffrin became internationally known after
composing the Mission:Impossible theme in 1966. Emilio Kauderer has been
composing for Argentine cinema since the 1970s and has created the film scores for
Friends & Lovers and the Dead Like Me series, among others. The most successful
Argentine film score writer is probably Gustavo Santaolalla who, well-established in
the local rock scene since 1970, has earned two Academy Awards for his
compositions since 2004.
European classical music is also popular in Argentina. The Teatro Colón in Buenos
Aires is considered to be one of the world's major opera houses. Musicians such as
pianist Martha Argerich and classical composers like Alberto Ginastera have become
internationally renowned. Most of the nation's larger cities and a number of smaller
ones maintain concert halls, philharmonic orchestras and chamber music ensembles;
among the best-known of these is Camerata Bariloche, founded in 1967 by Alberto
Lysy.
Painting and Sculpture
Ochre-ink stencil prints left by the vanished Toldense people in Santa Cruz Province,
7,300 B.C.
Ceiling frescoes created in 1933 by numerous Argentine muralists at the Galerías
Pacífico arcade.
Font of the Nereids (Lola Mora, 1903).
Goat Corral (Fernando Fader, 1926).
Anxiety of Light (Erminio Blotta, 1929).
Memorial to Liliana Crociati (1970), by Wilfredo Viladrich.
Cavalry Combat (Carlos Morel, 1830).
The soup of the poor (Reynaldo Giudici, 1884).
Benito Quinquela Martín's pastel walls and thematic reliefs along the Caminito.
Ode to Labour (Rogelio Yrurtia, 1927).
Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA).
Argentine painters and sculptors have a rich history dating from both before and since
the development of modern Argentina in the second half of the 19th century.
Though what today is Argentina was mostly frozen over during the last ice age and,
thus, is less archaeologically rich than many of its neighbors, pre-historic pictographs
can be found in caves throughout the Argentine territory, though Argentina's
aboriginal art heritage is quite modest compared to Peru's, for instance.
Shortly after independence in 1816, landscape painters from Europe began exploring
the spacious Argentine countryside, much as many did in the United States. In the
1830s, Carlos Morel became the first influential Argentine painter and Prilidiano
Pueyrredón's naïve, slice-of-life portraits made him among the few successful
Argentine artists of those early days. Artistic production in Argentina, however, did
not truly come into its own until after the 1852 overthrow of the repressive regime of
Juan Manuel de Rosas. Immigrants like Eduardo Schiaffino, Eduardo Sívori,
Reynaldo Giudici, Emilio Caraffa and Ernesto de la Cárcova left behind a realist
heritage influential to this day.
Impressionism did not make itself evident among Argentine artists until after 1900,
however, and never acquired the kind of following it did in Europe, though it did
inspire influential Argentine post-impressionists such as Martín Malharro, Ramón
Silva, Fernando Fader, Pío Collivadino, Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós, Realism and
aestheticism continued to set the agenda in Argentine painting and sculpture,
noteworthy during this era for the sudden fame of sculptor Lola Mora, a student of
Auguste Rodin's.
As Lola Mora had been until she fell out of favor with local high society, monumental
sculptors became in very high demand after 1900, particularly by municipal
governments and wealthy families, who competed with each other in boasting the
most evocative mausolea for their dearly departed. Though most preferred French and
Italian sculptors, work by locals Erminio Blotta, Ángel María de Rosa and Rogelio
Yrurtia resulted in a proliferation of soulful monuments and memorials made them
immortal. Not as realist as the work of some of his belle-époque predecessors in
sculpture, Yrurtia's subtle impressionism inspired Argentine students like Antonio
Pujía, whose internationally prized female torsos always surprise admirers with their
whimsical and surreal touches.
Becoming an intellectual, as well as artistic circle, painters like Antonio Berni, Lino
Enea Spilimbergo and Juan Carlos Castagnino were friends as well as colleagues,
going on to collaborate on masterpieces like the ceiling at the Galerias Pacifico
arcade in Buenos Aires, towards 1933.
As in Mexico and elsewhere, muralism became increasingly popular among
Argentine artists. Among the first to use his drab surroundings as a canvas was Benito
Quinquela Martín, whose vaguely cubist pastel-colored walls painted in his Buenos
Aires neighborhood of La Boca during the 1920s and 1930s have become historical
monuments and Argentine cultural emblems, worldwide. Lithographs, likewise, found
a following in Argentina some time after they had been made popular elsewhere. In
Argentina, artists like Adolfo Bellocq used this medium to portray often harsh
working conditions in Argentina's growing industrial sector, during the 1920s and
1930s. Bellocq's lithographs have become influential worldwide, since then.
The vanguard in culturally conservative Argentina, futurists and cubists like Xul Solar
and Emilio Pettoruti earned a following as considerable as that of less abstract and
more sentimental portrait and landscape painters, like Raul Soldi. Likewise,
traditional abstract artists such as Romulo Macció, Anselmo Piccoli, Eduardo Mac
Entyre, Luis Felipe Noé and Luis Seoane coexisted with equal appeal as the most
conceptual mobile art creators like the unpredictable Pérez Celis, Gyula Kosice of the
Argentine Madí Movement and Marta Minujín, one of Andy Warhol's most esteemed
fellow Conceptual artists. The emergence of avant-garde genres in Argentine
sculpture also featured Pablo Curatella Manes and Roberto Aizenberg, and
constructivists such as Nicolás García Uriburu and Leon Ferrari, one of the world's
foremost artists in his genre, today. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of these figures'
abstract art found their way into popular advertising and even corporate logos.
Generally possessing of a strong sentimental streak, the Argentine public's taste for
naïve art and simple pottery cannot be overlooked. Since Prilidiano Pueyrredón's day,
artists in the naïve vein like Cándido López have captured the absurdity of war,
Susana Aguirre and Aniko Szabó the idiosyncrasies of everyday neighborhoods and
Gato Frías, childhood memories. Illustrator Florencio Molina Campos's tongue-incheek depictions of gaucho life have endured as collectors' items.
To help showcase Argentine and Latin American art and sculpture, local developer
and art collector Eduardo Constantini set aside a significant portion of his personal
collection and, in 1998, began construction on Buenos Aires' first major institution
specializing in works by Latin American artists. His foundation opened the Buenos
Aires Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) in 2001.
Sports
Main article: Sport in Argentina
Football (soccer) game in Santa Fe, Argentina.
Many Argentines are involved in sports. Fútbol (soccer) is more of a national
obsession than a game. Argentina won the World Cup in 1978 and 1986 and the gold
medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics and 2008 Summer Olympics for men's soccer,
and the exploits of Diego Maradona have kept fans, paparazzi and columnists busy
for the past 20 years. Recently, Lionel Messi has drawn comparisons to Maradona,
and indeed Maradona himself named Messi his "successor".[2] Tennis, rugby union
and field hockey are also important and Argentina won a gold medal at the 2004
Summer Olympics in Athens for men's basketball. The legendary Formula One driver,
Juan Manuel Fangio, was Argentine. The rich, heavily influenced by English customs,
have traditionally enjoyed polo and Argentina dominates this sport on the world scene.
In recent times, the international polo player Adolfo Cambiasso has tried to broaden
the appeal of polo by introducing several football traditions to polo, like celebrating
goals and the like. Cambiasso's strategy has had some success when different football
fans went to see the final of the Argentine Open, but has been criticized by the
traditional supporters of Polo.
The official national sport of Argentina, though rarely played, is the polo-like pato.
Pato literally translates to duck.
More than half of the population practices some sport or at least performs some
physical exercise, such as walking or jogging. Regular practice of football, going to
the gym and cycling are the three most common activities of this kind.
Language
Neorealist Argentine authors Jorge Luis Borges, Beatriz Guido and Marta Lynch
enliven a Buenos Aires café in the 1960s.
Argentina's official language is Spanish (here usually named castellano' *Although
Castellano is the form of Spanish spoken in Spain*'). There are many variations of
Spanish in Argentina and every province has its own accent.
Rio de la Plata Spanish is the variation used in all cities near the Rio de la Plata river,
the most well-known characteristic being the use of "vos" instead of "tú" ("Voseo").
Some immigrant communities retain their own language as a badge of identity and
languages such as Italian, German, English and French are spoken. The Welsh
community of Patagonia have held an Eisteddfod, as well as the Basques, Arabs and
Ukrainians. Recent immigrants from China and South Korea, who have established
themselves in large cities like Buenos Aires and Rosario, also speak their own
language among themselves, and some communities publish small-circulation
newspapers in them.
Most Argentines can understand simple spoken Italian and Portuguese, due to their
similarity to Spanish.
There are about 23 native languages spoken in different parts of the country,
including Quechua, Mapuche, Guaraní, Toba and Wichí.
Food
Home-made asado (barbecue).
Main article: Cuisine of Argentina
Argentine cuisine is typically European. Due to the heavy influence of Italian,
Spanish, French and other European cuisines the typical Argentine diet is a variation
the Mediterranean diet. Argentina is known for its asado or grilled beef where meat,
including entrails, is placed on a grill and barbecued over charcoal or wood embers.
There are restaurants that serve only asado and many local restaurants always have
asado on the menu.
Argentines consume large amounts of beef. While the recent economic crisis has
made meat expensive for many, its price is still relatively low given its outstanding
quality. Meat exports are usually regulated and the European Community has set up a
quota of frozen meat imports that cannot be exceeded.
Yerba mate in its customary gourd. High in beneficial antioxidants and xanthines, its
digestive benefits help round out Argentines' sometimes heavy diet.
Traditional foods of the provinces such as locro hark back to the pre-Columbian
period, with a reliance on maize, beans and squashes (in many places, locro is
traditionally consumed only on national patriotic holidays). Another traditional food
is the empanada, a circular piece of pastry folded in two around a filling (including
chopped meat, olives, hard-boiled egg, potato cubes, ham and cheese, and many other
variants), which can be baked or fried.
Italian staple dishes like pizza and pasta are common and many Argentines choose a
simple pizza with tomato, cheese and ham, although many combinations are available.
Pasta is extremely common, either simple unadorned pasta with butter or oil, or
accompanied by tomato or bechamel-based sauce.
Sweets, especially dulce de leche, are popular. Dulce de leche (a dark brown fluid
paste, made from milk and sugar stirred at high temperature) is an essential ingredient
of cakes, and shares the place of jelly and jam at breakfast. It is used to top desserts
and to fill alfajores and facturas (an alfajor consists of two round biscuits, often
flavored, optionally coated with chocolate, joined by a layer of jelly; factura is the
generic name for sweet baked pastry of different kinds, including but not limited to
croissants and donuts.
Argentina is famous for its wine, most notably the red wine from the province of
Mendoza, where weather conditions (dry, warm summers) are optimal.
Literature
Novelist Ernesto Sábato, a singular narrator.
Main article: Argentine literature
In terms of literature, Argentina's most famous authors are Jorge Luis Borges,
considered to be one of the world's greatest 20th century writers, (he wrote poems,
short stories and non-fiction essays and some people say that he was the best short
story writer ever), Adolfo Bioy Casares and Julio Cortázar. Bioy Casares wrote some
books in collaboration with Borges. Cortázar was voluntarily exiled in Europe during
the rule of Juan Domingo Perón; Borges had problems with Peronism too, and
celebrated its fall in 1955 with joy, though he later became disillusioned with the
military dictators. Both Borges and Cortázar died abroad: Borges in Geneva in 1986,
and Cortázar in Paris in 1984.
Argentine comics are best represented by Mafalda, a cartoon by Quino (Joaquín
Lavado), which became a world-recognized Argentine icon soon after its first
publication. The series of comic strips shows the world's troubles through the eyes of
a small girl, Mafalda, and her relatives and friends.
Spare time
A cultural survey found that the most important spare time activity for almost 80% of
Argentines is visiting friends and relatives. Playing team sports and attending sports
venues is also quite common. For younger people clubbing is prevalent, while older
ones prefer dining out.
An example of sociability can be found during the annual celebration of Friend's Day
on 20 July. This informal holiday originated in Argentina and in recent years has
gained such popularity, especially among the young, that the entertainment centers of
the cities (bars, discos, cinemas, etc.) become crowded until dawn of the following
day, as on Christmas and New Year's Eve.