(1) THE ARTISTIC TYPE—AND THE BOURGEOIS—both metabolize the harvest from their regional orchard. Apparently the psycho-metabolism of environmental dynamism exists. In this context, the concern for what is American may be revealed in the visual arts. Or not. Neutrality is possible.
The artist who is a victim of the moral–political concern expressed in his work will indirectly—maybe pathologically—reveal the yearning of his milieu. As a reaction to the “railway track” logic, the neutral type acts as the opposite of the prejudiced. That artist will pose the following questions: Is there room in pure art— taken in the abstract—for regional and racial limitations? Is there room for popular impressions in the creation from the inside out? The fact is that pure art exists as a hypothesis, and to subject it to formulas is to castrate or execute it, objectifying it as tourist-abdominal-recreation.
(2) It is a matter of optics. The power of the American feeling (south of the Rio Grande), with all its ethnographic variables, would be superficial if it were taken as content or vehicle of the work of art. It would be electrolyzed in the sentimentality of familiar visual art forms. The artist’s sensitive side—adapted to his innermost panorama and externalized subconsciously without assigning much importance to the means and to the technique—will reduce the work to an Americanness arising from artistic optics.
The shape (delivery) should not derive from nature, but be in relation to it. There would be, at once, an immediate conflict with the active prejudice of the viewer if Americanness were a question of content or of means.
(3) The key aspect of American art resides not in the possibility but in the existence of common features of the visual arts in our America. There exists— and why not?—elemental psychology in local similarities that diverge from continental art.
I exclude the traditional-anecdotal paintings since they only converge superficially on common traits. By affirming the existence of common characteristics, I rely on observations of details in artists who, under different circumstances and availing themselves of diverse techniques, produce forms that are similar to one another. This implies a new aesthetic element which has crystallized in the subconscious of today’s creators.
(4) The artist who is not ready-made, but born without prejudice is a universal entity, and art—from European primitivism to surrealism—is a familiar Esperanto to the true artist. The only intelligent attitude, without fake nationalism [jingoism], involves the understanding and the exchange of ideas. I exclude the foto-grafiadores [photo engravers] who, lacking fundamental convictions, by their own accord, settle in the realm of copiers.
There are certain traits in the creation of visual art that the artist can— in his creative unconscious—conceive and realize. These traits—inherent in a third aesthetics—may converge with the simple aesthetics of nature and of the individual. They universalize the work, making it sentient to Oriental and to African traits.