IV.4.2 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 776786
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IF WE TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION that Latin America is a culturally occupied continent, nothing is more natural for an “islander” [like] the Latin American artist than to take information from the outside with relative ease. The question is about the influences upon the Latin American artist [and, specifically, what operational models does the Latin American artist have at his/her disposal in terms of international currents, indigenous movements, or other resources?] That is, what are the models and patterns that today form and inform him? (And we are talking about international and local influences.) I would say that all of them combined are the informing sources for our continent.
Regarding “other resources,” I would say that the main contingent is perhaps the artist’s innermost reality, no matter his country of origin—whether it is Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile, or Colombia [to name just a few]. Of course, in societies of larger industrial and technological development, there is less of a need for a surrealistic expression than in other areas with stronger social and economic contrasts. Even between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo we can see a difference; we can see how significant the influence of the environment is upon the artist.
The artist of Latin America, in spite of his cultural occupation, cannot be compared with the hybrid Australian or Canadian artist; a Latin American artist has different characteristics than these, not only because of his cultural contradictions but also because of his popular roots. That is, a Latin American artist can be—and most are—from the middle class, but this does not prevent him from being morally and fondly connected to the common man. He resents the social injustice, the political and economic instability, and the historical crisis of his country. He is influenced by the racial mixture (be that Indian, African, or Oriental) and also the consequences of this blended heritage upon his cultural formation. For these very reasons, we feel that Argentina and Uruguay, because of their strong economic conditions and stronger European cultural density, have a different position within Latin America. Argentinean artists are much more connected to Europe and European rationality (and in the present days also more connected to the United States) than any other Latin American country.
It would be rather simplistic to mention four or five informational sources, without taking into consideration the complex process of any artistic creation. Concerning Latin America—and not the reality of some internationally influenced areas (such as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, the south of Brazil, São Paulo included)—I believe much more in a “collective unconscious,” an idea that parallels those of Juan Acha and Marta Traba [SEE DOCUMENTS IV.4.1 AND IV.4.3, RESPECTIVELY], who take similar positions when talking about a “culture of resistance.” At the same time, I would like to quote Damián Bayón, who speaks of the “inherent popular sense” or about “something as obvious as the air we inhale.” He says: “…let us say, as a heritage: we are born native, just as we are born stateless.” Bayón’s words may be applicable to certain now-fashionable attitudes of some artists in my country, Brazil.
[To what extent do Latin American artists respond to their immediate circumstances: community, plastic resources and others?] If I take Brazil as an example, it is because this searching for an identity—or this desire to emphasize an identity—has lately been reflected in my country in some works by young artists. Works deprived of any artistic quality. (It is possible that these are only preliminary steps in a real search for identity, because, in Brazil, we are much too far away from having a unique reality due to the multiplicity of Brazilian realities.) Coming back to what I have said before about the lack of artistic qualities in these works of art—which are more concerned with an identity search—we can realize, of course, that this [lack] may be irrelevant because this is just a path, a step, a stage of an artistic development, worthy enough to be mentioned. In these works, we see a constant concern with a popular theme, a folkloric or regional theme.
This concern with the popular is something new in Brazil—because only in the 1930s did the popular interest emerge under President [Getúlio] Vargas’s government—and it would sound rather reactionary in Mexico today because of the muralists’ experience. In Brazil, these attempts are dismissed as inconsequential, since the theme of the Brazilian Indian is expressed by urban artists who do not achieve the expression of the Indian’s dignified culture, now in extinction; instead [they] portray the same romantic image of the Indian projected by the mass media.
This may be just a choice to return to a local model, and, in Brazil, it cannot be disconnected from what would necessarily be involved in a model based on everyday life. Beginning in 1969, the presence of [official military] censorship in Brazil surely diverted the arts into different directions. Because of that censorship, we had a great number of draftsmen going into erotic lucubration with gradual disregard for daily life; or using subtle metaphors through images; or, if treating this theme, working from an isolated, individualistic point of view, where the social group is totally erased as an inspirational source. At the same time, “nostalgia” seems to take hold of the younger generation, and we see young artists exercising post-cubism and abstractionist tendencies, full of precocity, but lacking inventiveness. This has also happened on account of an emergent art market beginning in 1971.
But there is also the tendency to vigorously repel—as in other parts of the continent—anything that can refer to the “ecological,” because it is felt that this type of expression limits one’s artistic creativity to the regional, to the detriment of the internationalism of information, which would propel a renovation of artistic language. It is as if these artists do not realize that an artistic renewal could arise out of the very models that today they disdain as “regional” because of their popular roots.
And, meanwhile, in another part of the world, unencumbered by our colonial inferiority complexes against whatever is “popular,” research based on popular roots preceded revolutionary achievements by artists such as [Kazmir] Malevitch, [Wassily] Kandinsky, Sonia Terk-Delauney, [Nathalie] Gontcharova, etc. From popular art came the purest color, the abstract elements of decoration, [and] autonomy of expression that would never have originated in a rigid academy.
[A third question implies the universal complaint about the lack of truly professional art criticism in Latin America. Does it compel the artist to seek feedback elsewhere?] I do not believe that it is the absence of specialized art critics that pushes Latin American artists abroad. Instead, this seems to happen due to a desire for access to primary sources of information, [and] for the inspiration and energy offered by a developed artistic environment. The lack of these elements in his/her domestic surroundings, plus the possibility of a market abroad (compelling the artist to produce in a competitive and demanding atmosphere) are the main reasons for leaving one’s own country. Thus, I would consider that, first, what calls the Latin American overseas is: a vibrant artistic environment, followed by a market as a condition of survival, stimulation, and, later criticism, as a luxury one could say, because even in one’s own country what use is widespread or stimulating criticism if artists can’t support themselves professionally?
I am talking here about two different things—a stimulating environment and also the existence of the art market. In Latin American, these two things may be easily disassociated. This is very clear in the case of the environment of Rio de Janeiro, where boldness seems to bloom with less difficulty than in São Paulo. In that industrial city, contrary to Rio de Janeiro, a larger art market can offer economic stability to an artist. Nevertheless, in both cities, artists exhibited different characteristics [unique to their specific milieu]: in São Paulo there is more of an elaboration; there is mannerism; a concern with new materials; there are the typical architects-painters; with obvious difficulties in realizing their ideas, [they] give up precarious, substandard forms to compensate for impossibilities. But this is nothing new. In the 1950s (the period of Concrete art) São Paulo concretistas were opposed by the poetics of the geometrical abstractionism of Rio; just as in Rio today, ritualism and magic is often a peculiar behavioral expression, especially among younger artists.
Besides that, we can see from examples of a recent past, from the 1920s, that it was not the criticism that pushed several Latin American artists. I am referring specifically to both São Paulo and Rio modernistas, who updated themselves in Paris during that period, producing vigorously amid that city’s stimulating atmosphere. What we saw in following years, when they returned to their country, was a drop in the quality of their art production. This happened for several reasons, but we can point to the provincialism of the environment in which they were immersed and not, I believe, to the absence of the Parisian critics (which in the end did not end up being so fundamental). And now we can say the same regarding Latin American artists living in New York where the situation repeats itself.
In addition, it is this very pulsating artistic atmosphere that makes way for the critic who facilitates the rise of criticism. Again, I’ll give a domestic example. In São Paulo a veteran group of art critics with a literary background persists, not yet replaced by the young generation; in contrast, in Rio de Janeiro we have seen the rise of personalities such as Mário Pedrosa, not to mention Ferreira Gullar, Frederico Morais, and more recently the young Ronaldo Brito. The feverish atmosphere of Buenos Aires, mainly from the 1950s onward, was quite fertile; it also served as an irradiant center of art critics (even now, here, in this meeting we have Marta Traba, Damián Bayón, and Kasuya Sakai, the latter taking on a dual role as artist and art writer, [all representing Buenos Aires]), and [these critic] split their activities among several capitals of the continent and beyond, reaffirming the cosmopolitan character of Buenos Aires, where intellectual agitation began with [Jorge] Romero Brest during the 1940s.
Due to the lack of active and directed criticism in most of our countries, I believe that the Latin American artist works more using information he receives, and a self-analysis of his work replaces the [external] critic to function as a self-correcting strategy directing new paths. Therefore, it is not new that in this continent, which is already nourished by outside cultures, the consecration of relevant artistic exponents takes place abroad, which then allows artists to achieve domestic success in their native countries. . . .