IV.3.8 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1061874
In the preface to the anthology Arte Moderno en América Latina (1984)—which includes texts by nineteen of the most outstanding critics of Latin American art—editor Damián Bayón dispels some of the long-standing myths and stereotypes associated with the Americas. Beginning with the generic denomination itself, Bayón reminds us that, through at least the early twentieth century, the countries in “Latin America” operated in extreme isolation from one another. Regarding the arts, each country’s differing social and geographic environments resulted in unique creative manifestations, ranging from nationalism–populism–indigenismo catchalls to the cutting-edge proposals of conceptual artists. Moreover, art critics provided divergent responses vis-à-vis the region’s multilayered artistic fabric. From apolitical critics to political engagés—with their varying degrees of acceptance of emerging trends—Bayón warns of the pitfalls of making unsustainable generalizations or, worse, illustrating lopsided critical theories with mediocre second- or third-tier art. This translation is based on Bayón’s Arte Moderno en América Latina [“Prefacio,” (Madrid: Taurus Ediciones, 1984), 15–23].
To begin with, the name “Latin America” is a somewhat conventional term, coined in Europe about a century ago as an umbrella designation that was intended to include all the countries that were colonized by the Spanish and the Portuguese, as well as a few islands and smaller areas that were subsequently colonized by the French, the British, and the Dutch. Some international organizations refer to this latter region as the Caribbean. To simplify matters, I have taken the liberty of using the term “Latin America” to refer to the entire continent—with the exception of the Anglo-American areas—as one entity.
The North American historian Charles Wagley, in his introduction to The Latin American Tradition (New York, 1968), wrote an eighty-page essay of extraordinary psychological perception on the customs and nature of the Latin American people. He initially rejected the simplistic tendency to use one single name to designate this vast expanse of land and the different countries whose only common denominator was the Catholic religion and the two main languages that were imposed upon them. By the end of his essay, however, Wagley admitted that the idea of a “Latin American” culture was not as mistaken as it had originally seemed, since there were actually more similarities than differences among the communities living between the southern banks of the Rio Grande and the southernmost tip of Patagonia.
We might even ask ourselves now if that generic name of Latin America—with all its defects—has had a certain “continentalizing” effect on us, in the sense that it includes us yet sets us apart from that other abstract entity, that Anglo-America with different origins and a Protestant perspective, a region distinguished by a different economy and a different world view.
The nickname that someone gave us—the Dis-United States of America—though cruel is not entirely incorrect: until at least half a century ago, each of our countries behaved like an “island” with regard to the rest of the continent. Without attempting to justify this isolation, the reader should nonetheless be reminded that we are talking about a gigantic stretch of land measuring nearly twenty million square kilometers [nearly eight million square miles]—about forty times the size of the Iberian Peninsula—which also covers a wide range of distinctly different geographical, climatic, and racial zones. The towering mountains, mighty rivers, jungles, and deserts have literally “boxed” each country and every group of people into their narrow local areas for three and a half centuries, thus encouraging the fierce individualism that we inherited as one of our distinctive traits from the Indians and the conquistadors.
Those little mountains, those streams of water, all those accidents of nature, occur relentlessly from the steamy tropics all the way down to the inclement weather of the southern regions. A serious misconception among those who have never traveled in Latin America is that it is all “tropical” from north to south and from sea to sea. But that is far from the truth: those who look at the map but do not consider the elevation—that is, the height above sea level—are bound to draw mistaken conclusions since, with the exception of the Caribbean, Brazil, half of the coastal areas and a large temperate zone, most of the large cultural centers have always been in the mountains or the high plateaus. In other words, to consider that Latin America consists entirely of a “hot weather culture” is not just a flagrant exaggeration; it is almost an outright lie. The reader should also be wary of another stereotype, in this case involving a most insidious attempt to apply a single psychological label to an immense area populated by people of all races and all types. There is, in fact, a commonplace in circulation that claims that the inhabitants of our continent are, by definition, violent, passionate, and sensual people, whose art should always be classified as “baroque” or—even worse—“surrealist.” It should be noted that the latter two categories, so exclusive and exaggerated, are not just the creation of tourist guides who seek to promote the “local color”; they are a figment of the imagination of certain foreign writers and even a few famous Latin Americans who have transferred their own traits and world views to the whole culture indiscriminately throughout space and over the course of the centuries.
The greatest cultural gathering in history had already taken place over three centuries ago in the early days of the process we are discussing here. By that time several races had already become permanently intertwined: the Indians, the Iberians, and the blacks had intermingled in every possible combination during the colonial period. To complicate matters, after the War of Independence, when each country was struggling to control its own internal affairs, the great waves of international immigration began coming ashore everywhere on the continent, around 1860 or 1870, and would continue to do so for a century. That widespread racial fusion—though theoretically similar to the melting pot experience in North America—would, however, produce a very different type of population, if only because at that time the first version of a mixed [mestizo] race did not yet exist in the United States or Canada.
Within that social turmoil, art began to play a role that was no longer solely religious, nor was it limited to satisfying the privileged classes to the exclusion of all others.
Even before Independence was achieved, architecture had adopted a neoclassical style in major urban areas such as Mexico City, Lima, and Rio de Janeiro. This same influence spread to smaller cities some twenty or thirty years later, where it was in vogue for almost a century, especially among European contractors and master builders and their Latin American students who were building private homes. Painting, on the other hand, evolved smoothly, with almost no transition, from late baroque or rococo to international romanticism. Our most inspired artists from 1830 to 1880 were Romantics, especially the portrait painters who provided us with a gallery of “types” such as we had never had before. Certain native painters were also Romantics—actually, even more so, if that were possible—as were the foreigners whom we now call Costumbrists, who were the first who dared to look at our Latin American landscape and try to paint it just as they saw it, with no hint of European influence. That is, not in a “Naturalist” style (that would come much later), but by accepting the information before their eyes and using it to recreate the landscape through a sort of “wakeful fantasy” that, to this day, we find exciting and moving.
The new governments adapted to the needs of the times. The countries in the region were, in theory, all republics (although Brazil and Mexico had also had their imperial periods), but the truth is that control once again passed into the hands of the oligarchies who were descended from the landowners: the original colonists and their descendants, the Criollo families who had spawned most of the “liberators” who fought for independence.
It was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, that the thirty troubled years of revolutions, dictatorships, and general chaos began to wind down, at least to some extent. This period of relative prosperity—that was, as always, based on great social injustice—coincided with a boom in immigration, the drive to exploit natural resources, an interest in agriculture and cattle ranching, and the development of a network of roads and railroads that were so desperately needed. This was the time of intrepid pioneers, some of whom were Latin Americans, though most were Europeans or North Americans. Those technicians, engineers, and architects often immigrated with their families and contributed even further to the mixture of races and evolving languages in Latin America just as it had in the North.
These “evolving” nations were unable to maintain the cultural traditions of the old countries but, bit by bit, they began to develop their own way of life. Foreign “cultural agents,” for their part, realized that going to Cuba was not the same as going to Chile; going to Mexico was not the same as going to Brazil. Geographical conditions and human environments were different from one place to another; some were ready to welcome the latest trends, others were not. Conversely when, toward the end of the century, Latin Americans on scholarships went to study painting and sculpture (architecture came later) in the Old World, they returned with all the latest ideas: the academic styles of the Beaux-Arts, Art Nouveau and, later on and always a few years behind the times, Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism, and the typical figuration of the thirties that was generically referred to as “the School of Paris.”
The grand architectural programs of the turn of the century relied a great deal on foreigners—especially the French and the Italians—who trained certain formal Latin American professionals. These architects then went on to design the legislative and judicial buildings, government ministries, universities, and theaters that were built by the budding Latin American culture. They also helped to build the city and country homes of the rich. Argentine estancias [ranches], for example, were built in the “Andalucía” or “Tudor” style, or were imitations of French castles or palaces in the purest “Beaux-Arts” manner. In other words, Latin American art has been expressed in many and varied ways, adapting to the needs of the Porfirio Díaz period in Mexico and the whims of the nouveau riche in Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela. All this notwithstanding, there has also been, in almost every country, a parallel expression of non-academic forms of art that have been rehabilitated in recent years, as in the case of the printmakers Picheta and [José Guadalupe] Posada in Mexico, the naïve painters in Haiti and Brazil, and popular illustrators and cartoonists in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and Colombia.
Everything was improvised in Latin America for three and a half centuries: at least from 1550 to 1900. As in every other region, there were mediocre artists during that period, as well as some quite bad ones and a few whose work was excellent. It was not easy to assess the true worth of each of these artists when they were judged from the inevitably relative contemporary perspective of the time. It is only now that we are in a position to see and evaluate these works more clearly, as long as we do not allow ourselves to be blinded by an obtuse nationalism.
After this brief historical review—that was not intended as a “triumphalist” commentary, far from it—I believe the time has come to address certain theoretical issues concerning Latin American art and the moderate, lucid critique that should always be part of the process. When I say “critique” I am almost always referring to a general, philosophical reflection, and not to the run-of-the-mill newspaper article. Those who have done the best job of approaching our cultural situations from this perspective are some of the leaders that we call “pensadores” [thinkers]—quite a number of them Latin Americans and a few foreigners who, between them, tried to clear up some of our mysteries.
Our nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century thinkers are very well presented by the North American Martin S. Stabb (In Quest of Identity, 1967, which includes a Spanish translation) and the Englishwoman Jean Franco (The Modern Culture of Latin America, 1967). Most of the authors studied by Stabb and Franco, incidentally, interpret Latin American cultural facts in social and political terms; the most common theme among them seems to have been the question of national “identity.” This idea was originally promoted mainly by the Argentine Ricardo Rojas, who coined the term “argentinidad” [Argentine-ness]. The concept became immensely popular throughout the continent, where each country and even each province tirelessly set about searching for its own identity.
More recently, however, not every intellectual agrees with this basic concept that can now be seen as the root of nationalism, indigenism, populism, and even xenophobia. For example, the essayist César Graña (who was born in Peru and is a citizen of the United States), in his book Fact and Symbol (1971) and in his essays, “La identidad cultural como invento intelectual” [Cultural Identity as an Intellectual Invention] (in El intelectual latinoamericano [the Latin American Intellectual], 1970) and “La metafísica de la frustración cultural” [Metaphysics of Cultural Frustration] (in Los intelectuales políticos [Political Intellectuals], 1971) attacks, among other things, that concept of identity that, in his opinion, is merely an “intellectual’s idea.” An idea that, according to him, has no relevance to the profound, essential reality of Latin Americans who fulfill their destiny—as have others throughout history—without becoming unhealthily obsessed with defining themselves.
Generally speaking, the question of identity assumes, above all, a nationalist answer. That nationalism can, in turn, be either “right-wing” or “left-wing” (to put it in the elementary terms of the dichotomy imposed upon us by contemporary circumstances.) This nationalist attitude then leads inevitably to the “indigenism” that represents—as its name clearly implies—a desire to privilege the Indian culture, advocating a “return to the land.”
It would appear that there was another, simultaneous movement that seemed to negate the earlier one but that, in reality, complemented it in a nostalgic sense: it was what we might call “neo-colonialism.” It was that sense of returning to the past that was apparent in architecture, especially after the thirties when—wishing to avoid the Beaux-Arts and subsequently the “international modern” styles—many of the more educated Latin American architects (who were sometimes also historians) attempted, in the mid-twentieth century, to revive the art of the colonial period. Both indigenism and artistic neo-colonialism had the distinctly xenophobic traits that always constitute the negative side of the nationalist coin. In those days, everything foreign was criticized as the catalyst for separating us from our own roots.
The indigenism issue in Peru is not the same as it is in Mexico, as a result of the difference between those who espoused it in the visual arts. In Peru we have José Sabogal (1888–1956), a mediocre artist who studied art at an advanced level in Spain and Mexico. On his return to Peru—which coincided with the arrival of [Raúl] Haya de la Torre and [José Carlos] Mariátegui, two important left-wing political thinkers—Sabogal attempted to promote his “recipe,” which enjoyed only marginal success. His approach was to paint nothing but local Peruvian themes; not just the geographical landscape but, more importantly, the “human landscape”—in other words, the Indians and Mestizos. The idea itself was not a bad one and could be justified as a national affirmation vis-à-vis foreign culture. It was also supported by circumstances in Peru at the time: on the one hand, the founding of Haya de la Torre’s APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana [American Popular Revolutionary Alliance]), and on the other, Mariátegui’s (Marxist leaning) Partido Socialista [Socialist Party]. In his fundamental book Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana [Seven Essays Interpreting Peruvian Reality] (1928), and in his magazine, Amauta, Mariátegui had adopted a conservative approach on artistic matters and indiscriminately attacked Cubism, Futurism, and Dadaism. Unfortunately, although the idea advocated by Sabogal and his pupil Julia Codesido was a noble one, a few rather uninspired prints and easel paintings could not do much, in the long run, about that distinctly demagogic indigenism.
In contrast, indigenism in Mexico—though that is not what it was called—was at least fortunate enough to enjoy the support of several notable artists, in particular the most famous mural painters of the time, Diego Rivera (1886–1957) and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974). The great murals painted by these two artists included expressions of left-wing nationalism, indigenism, populism, and, in Rivera’s case, a flagrant anti-Spanish message, all of which was always expressed in a rather elementary, didactic manner. No matter; just as the ideas advocated by Sabogal and his followers had not managed to “pass,” efforts by Rivera and Siqueiros resonated in their milieu ([José Clemente] Orozco never wanted to have anything to do with these dubious enterprises). It must be understood, however, that these two were major artists, and their works, many of which were very worthy, were constantly visible on the walls of certain important public buildings.
This nationalist-indigenist-populist spirit has, to date, not been completely lost. It is still apparent, in a certain way—though very transposed—in works by [Rufino] Tamayo and [Francisco] Toledo that evoke ancestral myths, though combined with modern themes, ancient earthy subjects, and copper colors that are reminiscent of a historic and sensitive past. Furthermore, and in spite of changes in artistic vocabularies, some theoreticians believe that they can still detect hints of an extreme intellectualized indigenism in the abstract works of the Peruvian [Fernando de] Szyszlo (1925) and the Colombian [Alejandro] Obregón (1920).
In any case, certain avant-garde critics still see a sort of indigenism “translated” into the terminology of land art or body art. Protest statements of this kind are apparent in Brazil, for example, where in recent years people have experienced a powerful sense of collective guilt and tormented conscience as a result of the extermination of the indigenous race and the resulting disappearance of their cultural forms of expression.
In conclusion: the obsession with not being sufficiently deep or original; the tireless search for each of those identities; and the strange combination of nationalism, indigenism, populism, and politico-social utopianism risk stagnating our current Latin American art to the point that the debate has become ideological. The state of these issues up until quite recently has been outlined in several books that I had the good fortune to edit, which include the voices and opinions of a number of artists and historians. I am referring specifically to América latina en sus artes [Latin America in its Art] (1975); El artista latinoamericano y su identidad [The Latin American Artist and His Identity] (Actas del Simposio de Austin [Minutes from the Symposium in Austin], 1977) [SEE DOCUMENTS IV.4.1–IV.4.3], and Panorámica de la arquitectura latinoamericana [An Overview of Latin American Architecture] (Diez entrevistas [Ten Interviews], 1977). I would refer the interested reader to this material.