Mister Franz Tamayo,
La Paz, Bolivia
. . .
I believe that the diversity of our opinions and points of view with regard to the future and current possibilities of the Indo-American culture may be explained by the diversity of positions and criteria concerning the problem of culture in general. You see culture and, in our concrete case, the Indo-American culture is a question of form, of a continent. Myself, somewhat far from the philosophical discipline—passionate about live things and the gestating process of everything— I believe that a culture is a vital manifestation integral to the existence of individuals and communities, at any stage of life and during its evolution. Namely, [culture is] an expression that exists and is produced independently of all formal value, and that, in any case, will achieve this value or category for improving and setting a hierarchy with its own elements and constitutive possibilities.
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Let me tell you about one of the greatest surprises, one of the most comforting revelations which this marvelous Mexican land has offered me. It was my visit to open-air schools of painting and the vision of the work that is being accomplished there. Why? Because in these schools, whose norm and pedagogical principle is the total and boundless freedom of the student, the indigenous boys who attend in large numbers produce live, stirring art, revealing eloquent and vigorous emotions and, above all, [they do so] with a spirit and expression which is totally indigenous. My friend Mr. Tamayo, I must point out that the work of these schools is subject to polemics, dissensions, and more than a few censures, even in Mexico itself, and among sensitive and intelligent Mexicans. I myself, who profoundly admire their work, find it easy to explain those censures, because the paintings by those young Indians do not have a measurable artistic value to be determined from a formalistic point of view, namely as a pure aesthetic value. They do have, however, unquestionable value as pure expression, directly translated with immediacy, without any other concern or objective than an honest expression, without speculating about their formal and artistic elements. But the expression is present, certainly, and what is most interesting is its live expression, breathing, full of meaning and emotion. That explains my great admiration for their work: if there is expression and it has been fully achieved, there is art [and] there is form, in my opinion. Going further along with this premise and criteria: if there is expression and possibilities of expression, there is the beginning of culture, if you will, but it nevertheless exists, as do its possibilities, which is what, in principle, we are interested in. . . .
I believe that a culture is not limited or framed by a question of form; I believe that any culture conveys a profoundly human attitude which is vital, no matter how formally and artistically complete the expression may be; I believe that any culture is the vision of the world and the establishment of certain bonds and relationships between Man and the environment, in accordance with the essential principles and laws that rule the life of a people, or an era. . . . Now you will understand, my dear Tamayo, why my great admiration and my concern in Mexico have been directed toward things that are alive and in gestation, toward what is vibrating and close to me, toward the present possibilities of the work in the process of being realized rather than toward remains and ruins. My faith in an American autochthonism, powerfully reaffirmed in Mexico, is therefore not based on ruins nor in the evocation of a glorious past: it is affirmed and based on live things, on the Indian that walks by my side, on the racial pride with which some of them have learned to magnificently arm themselves, (how edifying it is, in that respect, to visit the Casa del Estudiante Indígena! [House of the Native Student], and in those artistic expressions, the work of Mexican Indians, filled with a sense of race, of expression, of vigor, which the lazy Western [culture] can hardly aspire to achieve.
The West is, for you, order and harmony. You demand for our developing culture, an American basis and an American soul, coupled with Hellenic reason, harmony, and order. “Americans when we can, with our own free soul, but fatally Occidental in culture and will.” But, I dare ask, my dear Tamayo, a culture like the Indo-American culture, which is in its beginning. How can it incorporate and make it its own, this spirit of order, of harmony, this superior balance that can only be the product and expression of the culmination of a moment of completion which, rather than an initiation, necessarily impatient and unrestrained, corresponds to the superior stages and end results of the evolution of a culture?
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How, while believing in the anonymity of artistic creations in the collective soul, being deterministic, could we a priori choose and fix something that corresponds to the emergence and to the final moment of a long process and development of a culture? If you, like me, believe that in our countries there are latent human possibilities from which new modules and forms of culture and thought may surface, how could we predict beforehand what they will offer us? And what would we not do to encourage their manifestations, their development, hoping that if they have value and are interesting for us today—as exciting as a pure human expression, as a possibility, and revelation—then tomorrow, a somewhat distant but certain tomorrow maybe, they will surely have that artistic value and that sense of perfect humanity which you require from them!
I believe, my friend Tamayo, that all universalism and any form of universality are reduced to a simple centrifugal projection of some possibilities and some initial forms. I will try to explain myself. Initially, any culture is reduced and circumscribed to a limited circle of solutions, interests, and human values. Little by little, that circle widens concentrically, and these solutions, those interests, widen their radius, their possibilities of comprehension, their reach, and their limits, until they become universal. For any culture to become universalized, its spirit of “perfect humanity” responds and is produced by a centrifugal movement from the inside to the outside, but by no means and in no case, from the outside to the inside. Because in that case, no matter how strong its power of assimilation, it always detracts from it, and thus contradicts the law that rules its growth; that determinism, that collective soul you talk about. Because of that, I profoundly and passionately admire Mexico, and because of that, I have deep faith in the productiveness of the effort being made in this marvelous country. The ruins, my dear Tamayo, are not the source of my greatest admiration: archeology is not my great passion, but I do admire fervently the Indian who has within him concentrated after three centuries of Spanish barbarism all of his racial ancestry, all of the weight of his blood and heritage, someone who today has opened wide his avid curiosity. I admire the work of Mexican Native visual artists, full of expression and meaning; I admire the work that is being achieved at the “Casa del Estudiante Indígena”; I admire the resurgence of the Mexican countryside, the work of Indians. I am passionate about and admire fervently, any event produced along these lines that is live, palpitating, because I see in it the seeds, the possibilities, the future of Indo-American culture.
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This letter would be endless if I followed yours step by step; it being rich in suggestions and tempting enticements. Allow me, therefore, to close with where I began. I believe, between the two of us—though we are both eager and have the same purpose, the same impulse of faith in the future of Indo-Americanism, and the resurgence of Indo-American art—there is an essential difference. You marvel at the formal results of culture: the product, the solutions, things done, and consecrated. Myself, on the other hand, I marvel at the possibilities, the gestation, the effort, the [possible] accomplishment. I believe that your admiration for and cult of the Greco-Latin genius, and for the West, is evidence of a deep and fervent aesthetic admiration. You admire the result. But, do you believe that such perfection, such order, such supreme harmony, are inherent and initial virtues that constitute the Greco-Latin and Western genius, or rather, that they are the same for any culture, the result of the refinement of its own impulses and passions, of a painful process, of a gradual broadening of horizons and human potential? I believe that the seed, the incipient, potential energy, the possibility for improvement, for formal perfection, [and] for synthesis, exists in all cultures: chaotic, incipient, but live and alert. And you, having so much faith in America and in the American destiny, do you not believe that such possibilities exist in our continent? Why search outside of ourselves for what is already alive, impatient, deeply rooted in the nature of our peoples and our races?
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With my most friendly regards,
MARTÍ CASANOVAS