It is difficult to review the period objectively because there is almost no difference between the criticisms made by one side and those made by the other. Critics who defended tradition that evidenced a capacity for renewal were by no means unanimous in their views. Their best-known spokesmen were the Argentine Damian Bayon and the Colombian Marta Traba. The books they published in the '70s differ in tone and objective, though they agree as to the tedium and weakness of the works systematically turned out by the avant-garde and its failure to communicate with the public. The avant-garde line was represented primarily by the Argentine Jorge Glusberg and the Peruvian Juan Acha, who likewise failed to agree with one another. In the '70s Glusberg adopted the strategy of the defenders of traditional art. "The new art," he wrote, "seeks to break the ideological bonds imposed by countries in which wealth and power are concentrated, employing at times the very methodology and language current in those countries, at times utilizing devices entirely its own. There is an undeniable convergence of attitudes with respect to what we might term the strategies of liberation. Though political and social in origin, they are clearly manifested in the cultural and artistic areas." For Marta Traba the artist's capacity for effecting a revolution lies in the substance and effectiveness of his message; for Glusberg, in his capacity for breaking with rules. Both critics concur as to the end result: the revolutionary artist will aid in the liberation process. However, the divergence between them with respect to artistic action was complete. Avant-garde art was produced for the elite; traditional art, circulated through galleries and museums, continued its task of educating the middle classes and sought to broaden further its range of action. Criticism suffered as a result of this confrontation. In light of the highly bellicose attitude of the avant-garde, the great majority of new critics to come along preferred to devote themselves to research and the history of art in their respective countries. The Venezuelan Maria Elena Ramos wrote in 1981: "If the artist is to reflect the real nature of our countries and of their inhabitants ('the public,' 'one's fellow men,' 'human beings,' 'active members of society') he cannot indulge in a solitary love affair with his own thoughts, like a person constantly staring at his reflection in a mirror. He must make others the object of his love, and do so effectively." The first Latin American colloquium on nonobjective art was held under the auspices of the Museum of Modern Art in Medellin in reaction to the Coltejer Biennial of 1981. It brought the confrontation between the two critical and aesthetic tendencies into focus, clarifying their points of difference. To get a clear idea of the situation, one must recall, first of all, the appearance of the nonobjective avant-garde in the U.S. and Europe in the early 1960s. In the U.S. the happenings or performances put on by Allan Kaprow (the first book on the topic, Happenings, Assemblages and Actions, was published in 1966) came at about the same time as Tinguely's self-destroying machine Tribute to New York (1960) and the destructive happenings that Wolf Vostell staged in Ulm, Germany (1964). The self-destruction process culminated in the bodily sacrifices of the Vienna group and the suicide of Piero Manzoni, the principal European advo-
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