II.1.1 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 831988
Better known for his essays and poems, Cuban-born José Martí engaged in art criticism throughout his career, including during his Mexican exile of 1875–76. As with his political writings, this particular text urgently pleads with Mexican artists to break free from an obsolete academicism in order to develop an art that poignantly depicts the country’s new social order and helps overcome its inglorious past. This text was first published on December 29, 1875, in Mexico’s Revista Universal [vol. X, no. 297, p. 1]; the present excerpt is taken from Ida Rodríguez Prampolini’s La crítica de arte en México en el siglo XIX: estudios y documentos II (1810–1858) [(Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1997), 336–39].
. . . A VIRGIN REQUIRES CLARITY, HAZINESS, TENDERNESS: the drawing must possess an exquisite purity; transparency in clothes, angelic expression in the features: the reality of the figure should make us aware of the vagueness of the ideal conception. [Juan Nepomuceno] Cordero’s Virgin1 is the child of a burst of inspiration that owes more to audacity than to tenderness; her face is not delicate enough; her extremities are not perfect enough; the folds of her cloak are too sharp. The beautiful angel, who draws the attention of every viewer, is also more flesh than spirit: we love and respect the inspirational aspect of this figure, and this noble quality is visible in both of Cordero’s paintings. The reddish tones here are an expression of his unique perception of color. But his execution of that strong angel dressed in green is not as delicate as [the subject of] creation deserves: its light comes from hell rather than heaven.
. . . The main shortcoming of this painting is not to be found in the stiffness of the clothing, the imperfection of the extremities, the inappropriate light, or the thickness of the lines: the problem lies in the very essence of the work. The problem is that the execution does not reflect creation; the fault may actually lie with the production of the painting itself. This heavenly woman has not been portrayed as a celestial being. This vision of mysticism was not created by a mystical artist; an all-too-human painter would be incapable of conceiving or executing a satisfactory image of a figure that is probably not in his heart and is surely not in the air he breathes, in the company he keeps, or in the very different needs of his ordinary daily life. Why such a forceful rejection of artistic talent? Why abandon the very medium where true inspiration finds its expression? In times of great oppression on the Earth, the spirit was more inclined to take refuge in celestial images; now, as we become freer, Catholic Virgins are deserting us. If there is no religion in the soul, how can there be any religious unction in the painter’s brush? . . .
Everything is in motion, everything changes and paintings of Virgins are now a thing of the past. A new society [needs] a new kind of painting to be imagined and created. Every age has its fantasies, but the imagination does not remain rooted in days of old, nor should the painter dip his brush in the colors used in the eleventh or the sixteenth centuries. These days we populate our soul with ghosts; let us express them and produce them. When is the gentleness of love—or the frown of anger or the contortion of fear—ever absent from the human face? There is no end to the light in the soul, no interruption of the supply of new expressions in the eyes. Painters should not strive to look back at schools that were once great just because they represented an original period; once the period has passed, the greatness of those schools becomes more relative and historical than current and prevalent. Painters should copy the light on the [volcano] Cinantécatl and the pain in [sixteenth-century Aztec ruler] Cuautemotzin’s face; they should imagine the twisted limbs of those who died on the sacrificial stone. They should see in their mind’s eye the compassionate expression and bitter tears that revealed Marina’s unshakable love for Cortés and her pity for her wretched brothers. Our history is full of greatness and originality; our school of painting is endowed with an original, powerful tradition. Since Cordero is so enamored of reddish shades of light he should paint scenes of an Indian lying among ears of corn that have been shattered by the conquistador’s horse, weeping over the blood-soaked clothes of a brother-in-arms killed in battle while armed with nothing but a rock and a lance against the armored rider who is accompanied by the thunder of God and aided by the razor-sharp teeth of a mastiff.
Let us end our visit here for today, pausing for a moment in the lovely patio where the light itself is artistic, and take our leave of the Academy of San Carlos, which has no reason to be envious of the exhibition of paintings held in Madrid in 1871. Among the works collected for that occasion were some recent paintings by [Eduardo] Rosales, whose talent we will surely see echoed in the works of a Mexican painter before too long.
1
Juan Nepomuceno Cordero (1822–1884) was a religious painter of the Classic School in Mexico. He obtained broad recognition in Rome and Florence for a seminal work titled El regreso de Colón en América (Columbus Returns to America), which was reproduced and widely disseminated in Italy.—Ed.