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It is true that Latin America is responsible for no original "ism" in the twentieth century. Mexican Muralism, despite its energy and novelty, did not transform the language of plastic expression in a fashion comparable to U.S. Abstract Expressionism, Spanish Informalism, English Pop Art, Italian "poorman's art," or German Conceptual art. However, thanks to its firmly held aim of maintaining communication with the public via visual messages charged with meaning, it has gradually produced an "image bank," a reserve of real importance to the region and of considerable potential value for the rest of the world. Paralleling this bank, whose images consist in reconstructions or renovations of imported models, is another bank, whose stock is composed of folk art, the work of the least-favored sectors of society. It represents an area of life in which the symbols derive primarily from religion and superstition; it is particularly rich in countries with large numbers of mestizos and mulattoes. It is responsible for the preservation of media and processes proper to handicrafts; it favors an expansion of the art market toward what the Peruvian critic Mirko Lauer calls "a turn toward the masses by the bourgeoisie possessing a medium level of information, refinement, and culture." This two-pronged activity—professional art on the one hand and folk art on the other—is characterized by the social orientation which is a constant in modern Latin American art. Knowledge of art therefore helps in understanding and analyzing Latin American societies. Artists give direction to our hopes, tear away the veil of our illusions, and communicate our defects. The essence of artistic creation lies in the unveiling of mystery. This has been the task to which succeeding generations have dedicated themselves. In the case of the Spanish-speaking countries there is a common bond of language, tradition, and history, their bond to Brazil being one of geography and social and economic development. Like Africa, Latin America is a divided block, but a block just the same. Consequently, despite controversy about the matter, it is permissible to speak of Latin American art, or of art produced in Latin America, as an element for defining a culture that cannot and will not be confused with others.
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increase Latin America's traditional anomie. Nonetheless, though they have found themselves as the result of unfavorable circumstances relegated to the rank of merely regional heroes, artists as individual creators have kept up a constantly rising rate of production.