IV.3.7 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1061890
Argentinean artist Luis Felipe Noé presented this paper at the Primer Encuentro de Artes Visuales e Identidad en América Latina, a 1981 colloquium organized in Mexico City by the Foro de Arte Contemporáneo de México. In his paper, Noé proposes painting as the historical response to a Latin American need to record history—to invent it even, echoing the well-known argument by Edmundo O’Gorman [SEE DOCUMENT I.1.7]. Noé states that such a longing for history relies on abstract referents and, in fact, on a pre-Columbian past, colonial baroque tradition, and the period that followed independence. In opposition to Europe—where art has become the hollow antithesis of the self-referential work—Noé suggests that Latin American art must continue to engage collectivism in order to craft a distinctive cultural identity. The essay is translated from its original publication in the annals of the colloquium [Luis Felipe Noé, “La nostalgia de la historia en el proceso de la imaginación plástica en América Latina,” Artes visuales e identidad en América Latina, (Mexico City: Foro de Arte Contemporáneo, 1982), 46–51].
ARTIST, THAT CATEGORY CREATED BY THE BOURGEOIS WORLD, that profession of uncertainty, is nothing other than a man in dialogue with his surroundings through a language, [a man] with the objective of grasping that which is not evident, of perceiving that which is not obvious. . . .
The past, present, and future are just a part of the surrounding uncertainty. A past with a strong tradition offers the artists concrete references for his dialogue [with uncertainty]. In contrast, the lack of a cultural past leads to confusion about the present and future. In this case, imagining—both in the sense of invention and the creation of imagery—becomes an urgent need. Perhaps this explains the importance that painting has in the young nations of Latin America. Painting thus becomes a historical discipline: it is concerned with creating history, with inventing it. Naturally, some will say that this occurs just as it does in any other human activity and in every other circumstance and place. Nevertheless, in this special case, the creation of an image miraculously acts like a mirror wherein that which has no form and has not yet come to be, looks for its own image through magical transference. The arts are a way of being; that is, of becoming, of becoming an image of itself for the Latin American man.
The same is not true for the European man. For him, the arts are part of a historical process that, from Romanticism until today, has been removing the trappings of a classicist academy in the same manner as a “striptease”: emphasizing the garments it takes off and then throws to the floor. For example, at one time it seemed that Expressionism’s importance lay in its exaltation of the “I,” but afterward it became quite clear that it had become fed up with the prison of the “I.” It was out of Expressionism’s core, in search of purity, that Piet Mondrian and neo-plasticism were born. A short time later, Action Painting placed emphasis on the action of painting itself. Soon after and as a consequence of this trend, the “happening” emerged: [it mirrored] the exaltation of some painters take in pure action, putting painting itself aside. In this way, art has been evolving into what Roy McMullen calls “post-history painting.” For the same reason that the U.S. praises the capitalist historical process begun in Europe, the Western man has turned his back on the need for a global symbolic image, especially given that the examples of Action Painting, “happenings,” and later Pop, Minimalism, and conceptual art are in essence North American. Today is the era of the stimulus-image, the indication-image. . . . Western art finds itself starting from scratch with regard to everything that concerns a world image; and painting, that “striptease” artist, has been left with no clothes. The language of art has become, above all, a graphic language.
The Latin American man has in reality always been a passive recipient of information: he has been told that he pertains to this civilization—he has been made to believe that he is part of the West based on a longitudinal philosophy of the world and that he is a consequence of history. And he really lives immersed in this belief, in the same way that he believes that he belongs to a consumer society. . . . But this Latin American man is naturally the bourgeois Latin American; the only one who can take on the problems of art, if in fact he does so at all. Likewise, Latin American art tries to live a process that is chiefly a process of information: it lives what it believes it means to live today and, in reality, it is living the day to come. This is an example of what Edmundo O’Gorman calls “the way of being Latin American: to be like others in order to be oneself” [SEE DOCUMENT I.1.7]. This, however, is also a process of transforming information.
[Let us view the Latin American man] from another point of view. Do not all the crises of the West touch him? Of course they do. Can this man, historically young, dispense with the necessity of searching for and defining his own image of the world as a way of stating that he is part of it? Of course he cannot. In so far as he is of the West, he finds himself on the return path, and insofar as he is Latin American, he finds himself at the starting point. And this is absolutely clear in relation to the arts of our continent. The Latin American man has a historic need of history, of existence, and in this sense, of an image of the same. He needs to be able to express his manner of seeing the world in order to be seen in it, even if he does not yet know it. In this way, this strange Westerner on the one hand shares post-historic experiences with the European American (of the North) and, on the other hand, has his own prehistoric knowledge. Additionally, if he is an artist, he finds himself in the strange situation of a primitive man [living] in a world that exceeds him; but in this case, the “object of excess” is not one of nature, but of culture. Just as if he were an idol-maker in the middle of a culture that is collapsing and another that is yet to be; the latter is theoretically his own: the one he is creating. This artist feels like a mirror, and before him stand both the ghost of a dead man as well as the latent future of one yet to be born. Without a doubt, he is thirsty for history; he is anxious for himself: he is nostalgic. And this nostalgia, in what other way can it be defined but as a distance from his very self? Distance, given that one is apparently here but is in reality far away, confined to what he lacks, longs for, or dreams.
This nostalgia for history is twofold [and manifests itself as]: the lack of a past of one’s own (by not being the child of a particular tradition) and the lack of belonging to a foreign past, of a particular history: as is the case with art. . . .
In general it can be said that two types of Latin American artists exist: those who believe the history of art is universal and those who believe that art will only reach maturity by basing itself on a Latin American foundation.
At first glance, the history of Latin American art . . . appears as eternal nostalgia, because it is not European, as well as a race to cease being a “poseur” in order to join the historical process of Western invention. From the era when young painters would go to Europe to study (without having the means to exhibit their works there), to the era when they exchanged the classicist academy for [André] Lothe’s post-Cubism, to the one today where Paris is overrun by Latin Americans—and the one in between to which this author belongs—, the only thing that can be said to have changed is that the attitude of referentiality (always present) is today criticized. Today we try to move ahead of this history. There have been notable examples of this in the past, which are evident now thirty years later: the Madi art of Argentina.
Both aforementioned types of Latin American artists today have the awareness to strive for a cultural creation. Now comes the “how” of proclaiming ourselves to be new. Some say it should be the conscience of the past exercised in the present; others prefer to make advances in the process of inventing history; a third group hopes to combine both positions in a way that transcends them through a revolutionary perspective. This latter group maintains that the only way to anticipate history is to change the present. Art will reflect this change and, because of this, the problem of art should be addressed later. At present only the process matters. This last notion encompasses the will of self-affirmation: the ability “to become,” not just to express oneself, but also to stop depending on the mechanisms of power in order to be recognized. The Latin American artist is well-acquainted with this phenomenon. [From the Western perspective], we are seen as: folkloric, at times, or as following the fashions imposed by others.
At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the ideas of anticipating history in both avant-garde art and politics crossed paths at a point. The initial effort began its questioning at the moment when the West was skeptical of itself (except for its power), [asking] if art had reached the hour of an “aesthetic of silence” as well as the “loss of the world image.” This was the moment when art began “to be thought of as something which had to be overcome and even called for its own abolition” (Susan Sontag); an art where “its history had met its own end” (Harold Rosenberg); that which “dissolves in the life of society” (Octavio Paz) or that “tends to be no more than a system of symbols” (Lévi-Strauss). [It was a time] when, in order to believe in itself, art proposed “to be a creation of daily life” (Raymond Williams) or “an instrument to modify the conscience and organize new modes of feeling” (Susan Sontag); and all this to the point of creating “the possibility of arranging the human environment as if it were a work of art” (Marshall McLuhan). In short, at a moment such as this, with which history will the Latin American man move forward? Is it the technology that fascinates McLuhan? Impossible. Will he become more skeptical, or, on the other hand, will he be full of hope so that he may bring about revolutionary change in society. . . ?
Such was the moment that led to the development of the “self-made poetics” that would resolve the dilemma of the colonial artist articulated by the Uruguayan printmaker Luis Camnitzer (who in a very Latin American paradox resides in the United States). He stated: “Here is where the dilemma of the colonial artist arises: In participating in the metropolitan game of art, is he not in reality postponing the liberation of the colony to which he belongs?
. . . Being colonized fosters an interest for folklorism; the affirmation of a national culture that refers to the past with a nostalgic attitude is the same as the one held by the Latin American artist who works with Europe or the United States in mind, and it is perhaps more false because the colonial reality becomes more real to him than the other. . . . Behind this affirmation of mine beats the truth of [José] Martí: “There are no letters for expressions until there is no essence [of meaning] to express through them. There will be no Hispanic-American literature until there is no Hispanic-America. We live in ebullient times, not of condensation, of the mixture of elements, not of works of unified components.” Behind this affirmation these two concepts [of mine] paradoxically beat in a way that creates one sole affirmation: “The art of a society cannot be created until that society proclaims itself to be such; art is made of this social proclamation.” The first maintains that art is the face of the people; the countenance that serves as a historical testament once these peoples have ceased to exist. The second, in turn, refers to an aesthetic of popular origin, and that supposes that the revolution itself is art. In other words, the manifestation of a social reality brought about by the effects of the phenomenon known as “art”; according to [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge it is “rendering the interior as exterior, exterior as interior, nature into thought, thought into nature”…
Such was the era of Black Power in the United States, which was based on the supposition that to declare that one did not possess something was a way to secure it. Ten years have passed: nothing that was desired has been achieved; many hopes have evaporated; the mechanism of withdrawal is general; dictatorships have been established; the hour of the diaspora has arrived for many [individuals of] many nations in our continent. Today there is no confidence in mechanisms that before were viewed with potential.
On the other hand, this Latin American existence—and why not call it cultural—begins to paradoxically formulate itself and surprise the West through its literature. People speak of the rich imagination of Latin Americans, to which many respond that that is the daily reality of our continent. Then comes the question: Why don’t the visual arts flourish in a similar manner? There are various possible responses. One potential answer is that the interests of Western galleries do not coincide with those of the Western publishing houses; another implies that literature establishes the process and the visual arts create the image of a culture once the affirmation process has begun.
Today, in my judgment, it is becoming evident that, even if there is no Latin American image or an independent language of art (speaking in general terms naturally), there is a Latin American perception. Among other things, it is denoted by the manner in which it manifests itself in the visual arts: a jam-packed space, vibrant color, linear definition, and a preoccupation with the image. I believe that when Latin American art ceases to be preoccupied with itself and with others, it will discover its richness in the exercise of its perception. . . .
A recent work of mine on the crisis of painting that occurred at the end of the 1970s concludes with a quote from the book I left unpublished [1972–73], wherein I attempt to reply to Susan Sontag’s “aesthetic of silence” with an “aesthetic of hope.” The quote reads: “If the history of painting in the West has consisted in dressing and then undressing itself, ending today in a ‘striptease,’ can that same emptiness of image be blamed on the societies that have not helped to determine the evolution of Western culture? . . . Slowly but surely the aesthetic of nostalgia will transform itself into an aesthetic of hope. And we will ignore the aesthetic of silence forever.”