IV.4.11 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 774036/815575
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WE KNOW THAT THE ART WORLD EXISTS, that it creates product, that it circulates, that it can be commercial, that people make their living from it, that it has its social significance. Because of this, it is necessary to try to analyze it. For these reasons, I offer some points for reflection at this time. [I do this] knowing that nothing can be solved as if by magic and that collective reflection can be an important foundation in the struggle against what is arbitrary in our medium.
The current situation of the Ibero-American artist is not the same in different countries, and the social contingencies produced by different regimes of power have a bearing on it. [The situation] spans a spectrum beginning with the artist who has had to exile himself or the artist who must not only confront ideological censorship but also material censorship. He struggles to survive without, in many cases, even the materials with which to work (paper, paint, etc.). The other extreme of the spectrum would be the situation of the artist [living] in societies that are flourishing economically, dazzled by the possibility of financial success. Having pointed out these conditions, here are some questions which may appear naïve if removed from the “true aesthetic problems” of avant-garde art. They are meant to situate some of the problems that concern us at the core of daily life within a capitalist society.
Can we continue today with the myth of art as a type of religion that is practiced by an elite group of followers; with the myth of freedom of expression, without seeing the narrow parameters within which an artist works; with the myth of the artist as a highly gifted man; with the myth of artwork as a unique product—highly valued—that defies the times; the myth of an ignorant public, incapable of appreciating the art of their time?
Can we still believe in the creative act as the product of sudden illumination, of an abrupt inspiration that places the artist in a trance that allows him to transmit imponderable messages through [the use of] his tools? Is not the creative attitude an internal and daily exploration of self and also the daily confrontation of reality and society in [the process of] transformation?
What conceals the swift succession of artistic styles that rule each other out?
From which international centers, by what means of diffusion, and with what interests do the new artistic styles reach all areas? And why are they reproduced locally?
Are the new forms of expression, the new techniques, a guarantee of a new art?
Is it possible for all artists to be like a shapeless mass, able to be manipulated and from which the cultural powers that be can extract what is useful for their survival, ignoring the rest?
Can they continue believing that artists are such individualistic and obtuse beings that it is dangerous to incorporate them collectively into the cultural process?
Can one defend the art history that takes place every day as something objective, impartial, informative, [and] lacking interpretations or abusive assessments?
Why is an artist who sells [his work] held in higher regard than one who does not?
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Should artists today aspire to have their works valued highly by the art market so that they should be worth millions and that the buyers should keep them in their rooms if not in safes?
Can it be that a great number of artists, who are influenced by the situation, conceive their works with this obsession: to sell them?
Can a cultural policy that does not look to the models of the international centers be imagined; [can there be a cultural policy] that does not compete for international supremacy; that does not allow itself to be influenced by governmental pressures; that does not consider the interests of the art market; that does not base itself solely on the aesthetic judgment of its executors, and so forth; that is, not elitist but rather based on impartial information, the most objective possible with regard to contemporary creation?
Would such a cultural policy not permit a culture to flourish, considering the cultural richness that is the feverish heterogeneity of concepts and artistic trends in continual confrontation with and in direct relation to the public?
Is it possible to affirm that:
Ibero-American art is one and indivisible?
In other words,
The historic art of the pre-Columbian civilizations?
That art that today uses symbols drawn from those civilizations?
That art created every year by some peoples?
That art which represents the natives?
That art that competes on the international scene?
That art that recounts the struggles of the people?
That joins the fight?
That reproduces locally the patterns of the international fashion?
That tries to reflect the industrial and technological world?
That triumphs abroad?
That belongs to the painters who are sincere?
That respects the rules of the academy?
That creates its own avant-garde?
That is practiced by some of the indigenous tribes discovered in Mato Grosso [in southwestern Brazil]?
That upholds established values?
That seeks a different [type] of communication? And so on.
To capture Ibero-American art as it is today is not easy, and the result will always be as partial as it is imprecise.
Is it possible to consider Ibero-American art as something fixed—like a cadaver that will be dissected in order to analyze it in a laboratory—keeping it at a distance and maintaining a neutral position? Although imprecise, in motion, [and] full of contradictions, Latin American is what it is: the reflection of the convulsive reality of a continent where oppression, repression, and torture rule as a system of government.
Is the reality of today’s Ibero-American art abstract, remote even to us? Is it not the product of our social reality and what we ourselves have made? We, artists, critics, and scholars of art, curators, independent or otherwise, together we make up this conference: Can we avoid this responsibility?
Each one of us who is present for this encounter has taken and must take responsibility for today’s Ibero-American art. And above all, [we have] a much greater responsibility than will exist in the future. A great number of those present hold key positions within the social function of art. And assessments take place from these key positions, selections are made, some trends are praised, others are ignored or condemned.
Is it possible to assert that it is not through the outsourcing of artistic activity in our cities that the same preconceptions of the international imperialist centers are reproduced?
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Can the succession of the critics’ artificial classifications contribute something positive? Do they not leave individualism vulnerable and able to be manipulated? Is this not the way that artists, one after another, come to be an unsure mass from which experts will then extract the most “valuable”? By what criteria or on what grounds? And is not the act of selection, classification, valuation, purchase, an act of power?
The dominant classes are conservative. They reproduce the capitalist patterns of power locally; they imitate the lifestyle of the imperialist centers; they impose the criteria and values that they think proper; simply put: they block creative development. In almost all Latin American countries, creativity is attacked by the current regimes because it is synonymous with reflection, criticism, change, and action. Such regimes, in order to perpetuate themselves, dehumanize their peoples, keeping them in a passive and dependent situation.
When it comes to art, in the best of cases, they only accept that which reflects their situation and helps them maintain their power; in other words, art which increases passivity and dependency, art that transmits harmless aesthetic models, art which should be part of the supply and demand system. In this way they strip the artist of his creativity and render him at their service, dehumanizing him as they do the rest of the people.
It could perhaps be declared that the true Latin American spirit in art is authentic creation, accompanied by an attitude in accordance with [imagination]. That creative attitude in art would correspond to the creativity of the people that, although alienated, continually invent new forms of struggle against repression, to destroy the oppressors and generate new forms of experience. Art thus could be that creative attitude that helps the individual, in one way or another, to survive or live, to break mental chains, to eliminate ideological conditioning, passivity, submission, fear, [and] that lets one feel the potential for a different future.