IV.3.1 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1061801
In this early essay, Marta Traba ponders how Latin American artists can produce art that is “continental” in character at a moment when art world centers are eschewing realism. She observes that European artists enjoy a free exploration of aesthetic issues without the distractions of context, and she also considers how the formal investigations of artists such as Wifredo Lam, Rufino Tamayo, or Joaquín Torres-García have created models for new vocabularies of Latin American-inflected form. As in her previous texts from the mid-1950s—which are also sampled in this chapter [SEE DOCUMENTS IV.2.1 AND IV.2.2]—Traba is torn between advocating international modernism for the Americas and showing disdain for its homogeneity. “El problema de la ‘existencia’ del artista latinoamericano” was originally published in Bogota’s Revista Plástica [no. 66 (1956): 25], and it also appeared in the anthology Marta Traba [Emma Araújo de Vallejo, ed., (Bogota: Planeta Colombiana Editorial S.A., 1984), 203–204], the source for the present translation.
CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN ARTISTS are resolving the problem of a new aesthetic and entering into combat on schedule on the full field of knowledge. Meanwhile, the Latin American battle is deployed on ground that is much less pure, full of snares and irregularities, as complicated as the geography of the continent itself. The Latin American artist is a man who does not work with the spiritual tranquility of the European, since fairly or not, he finds himself committed on many fronts. To begin with, there is that elusive yet urgent idea of “Latin Americanism”; while no one has yet to give a convincing definition of it, the concept is no less categorical or fearsome for being so vague. This idea turns the tutelary shadows of the young Europeans into true specters. If anyone discovers in one of our artists a supposed obedience to any Europeanizing style, this calls into question his americanista fervor, and he starts to be seen as a traitor. It is true that when young artists return from their European studies, they are given a margin of tolerance on the part of the critics. Their [European] infection is accepted temporarily because the artists have just stepped off the boat, but they are immediately given the inevitable warning: it is expected that once they are in contact with the Native environment, peoples and nature, they will be delivering the “Latin American message”—with proper enthusiasm, to boot. This is a message to which they are bound by their birthplace. Painting and sculpture have been taken prisoner, that is, they are bogged down, with no way out. In some respects, they would seem to be destined for a mission filled with high analytical intent. But we also know that any preconceived purpose is an attack on the freedom of art and dries up the very roots of any aesthetic. In two countries, first in Argentina and now in Colombia, I have been a meticulous witness to the despair of the artists who see, understand, assimilate, and digest everything vernacular and who are trying to emerge from this dangerous process clean, with the universal dignity of art intact.
. . . But given the self-confidence with which a new modern aesthetic is being formulated in Europe, we must not fall into this trap. In a period of creation of forms and invention of an original expressive language, those renderings of folklore and history can only be regarded as archaeological vestiges. These relics hail from an age that disappeared in the nineteenth century, an age abolished by the revolutionary work of modern art. So then, if “Latin Americanism” does not reside in the realistic transcription or interpretation of Latin American scenes, where—within the range of contemporary aesthetics—can we place it? The first hurdle is to figure out whether the Latin American artist must resolve his visual art problems with an unchangeable commitment, or perhaps even an obligation to, his country. Or, on the contrary, must he seek his expression and style (that is, the repetition of his own expressive premises) with the disregard for anything other than the painting or sculpture itself that characterizes European art? The a priori of the first position involves a tremendous unfairness: it seems impossible for the artist—dubbed the “anti-servile genius” by [André] Malraux—to develop his language if he is subjected, in advance, to a geographic obligation and civic duty apart from his free artistic nature. In fact, we acknowledge the artist’s unbowed, inviolable condition when he establishes the relationships between forms and undertakes the creation of his own artistic rules without any regard for the outside world; we continue to acknowledge it when, in the natural process of this work, our artist avails himself of the Latin American motifs that surround him and incorporates them into his aesthetic.
Thus, the new language that every modern artist must create cannot be artificially submitted as a “Latin American” duty; on the contrary, it must arise freely. Later, if the artist feels the necessity, the local vocabulary can be adopted. In case this seems like a mere game of words, it is not: there is a clear difference between being bent by forms or being the one to bend them. And this is the option recognized by the authentic artist. Hence the European recognition of Wifredo Lam, the Cuban artist who was a protégé of Picasso. Without any anecdotal intention, he gave the French an image of the tropics: feathered, burning, disproportionate and fantastic. A French writer says about [Rufino] Tamayo: “Latin America is its own universe whose countless realities confront one another and are superimposed one on the other and are sometimes even in opposition.” To a European, the discovery of Latin America does not take place unless the artist goes beyond normal vision and includes the quirky and the magical among his expressive forms. This excessively measured handling of things, which sometimes approaches surrealism (although it is impossible to categorize it that way), was rendered by Lam in an extraordinary way. The soul of the “superbe Afrique” [impressive Africa] invoked by André Breton, paraphrasing [Charles] Baudelaire, to point out the resurrection of the primitive spirit in the work of Lam, is the equivalent of the Latin American spirit inasmuch as both restore the innocence of the primitive vision. Nevertheless, Breton was wrong when he talked about innocence.
Lam found his own place in relationship to Picasso, to surrealism, to the formidable creative adventure of modern art. Those feathered palms that rise mythically from memory include all the refinements of this process. Tamayo confesses that in spite of all his protests of universality, he is intimately tied to the visual arts tradition of his country. So he is committed both to this “half freedom” and to reaching the “essence of things.” Lam, who has no tradition to respect, can throw himself vehemently into that volcanic invention of Latin America, which is why his work stands out so powerfully. The Mexican muralists, [Diego] Rivera, [David Alfaro] Siqueiros and [José Clemente] Orozco, bringing back the political element to costumbrismo, complicated the insecure idea of the existence of Latin American art even more. Rivera left a broad legacy spread around all Latin America, which—once it had lost its colossal inspiration and its capacity to move enormous masses—showed the mortal threat posed by linking art to social demands. And it is not yet known whether, when the events referred to have lost their burning reality, those Mexican frescos will be valued like those of a Masaccio. In other words, as art that lives beyond the episodes from the life of Saint Peter. Or, alternately, will they be judged as stories of the revolution that made use of the art to express themselves?
The example of U.S. art sheds no more light on our problem than that of Mexico. From 1900 to 1940, Europe considered itself done with reality and was putting into practice the slogan of [Paul] Gauguin, “the right to dare everything.” Meanwhile, in the United States, a veritable legion of artists was conscientiously reproducing—with a model right in front of their eyes—railroads, ships, streets, workers resting and workers hard at work, rural and urban landscapes, circuses, skyscrapers, nowadays inherited and “frozen” by the ultimate U.S. realist, Ben Shahn. Right now, a no less conscientious legion of abstract painters seems destined to replace that descriptive apologia of a new country with visible signs. If “Latin Americanism” were an a priori category that the artist had to install in his head before undertaking the intelligent specification of a style, what road would he choose? Would it be costumbrismo, socialism, the overt narratives, [the assertion of] the demands of the wretched populations, history? And how would we reconcile with these orientations the presence of a [Joaquín] Torres-García in Uruguay, with his hieroglyphic paintings, recognized in December in Paris as one of the “great” Latin Americans? And how about Pettoruti in Argentina, who has made the pampa sun fill the cold triangles of a true, tyrannical cubism? [Oswaldo] Guayasamín in Ecuador, a protégé of Gauguin at times and Picasso always, has been capable of giving his Camino del Llanto [Trail of Tears] a country that is indisputable, human, and geographic, designed to move and convince the viewer at the same time.
But we already know that polemic art is a mirage of art, and if Guayasamín often escapes from this risk unscathed, it is because of his visual art resources and not his explanatory and combative intent. Until now, Latin America wanted to show its identity clearly, like a guest who arrives late to the party and must present all kinds of excuses in order to be admitted and recognized. However, there is no raison d’être for this complex anymore, because we have been participating in the general conversation for some time now, and no one is particularly bothered by our presence. In fact, because we come from a continent where the marvelous reigns, we are expected to express original ideas; but it is not a new form that is sought, rather a distinct content shown through the universal language of modern art. In this labyrinth of difficulties, prejudices, false impositions, and mistaken understandings, Lam seems to have the surest thread that leads to the best solution. But if Latin American art could at some point reach a unity within the diversity, such as we see in oriental art, that future could not be achieved without effort, desperation, and errors. And if its destiny is rather to become a magical branch of European art, that road is rocky as well. In both cases, forcing on our artists a continental consciousness that can do nothing but overwhelm and disorient them will certainly lead to a bad outcome. This will only turn them away from their will to create: the only active consciousness they must have. “Man lives and moves in the midst of what he sees”—writes [Paul] Valéry—“but he only sees what he dreams.” It is indisputable that in our artistic times, reality has fallen into marked disrepute, but what our era does highlight is the importance of man. And Latin American artists cannot escape this truth that encompasses all the art of their time.