IV.4.8 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 777145
The First Latin American Biennial of São Paulo has finally been launched. However, everything negative that was forecast to happen effectively happened. After having been rejected for more than two decades inside the International Biennial, Latin American countries were frustrated [again] during what could have been a new stage in the dialogue among our nations. The accumulation of errors became so large that the criticisms that will follow—both inside and outside the country—could jeopardize the very continuation of the project, which would be a lamentable step backwards. The [Biennial’s] failures with respect to representing current production in the various countries are so alarming that, in fact, it cannot be said that we had, in São Paulo (in November of 1978), a Latin American Biennial.
If before the opening some Brazilian criticism noted manifestations of “xenophobic nationalism,” “artistic Aryanism,” and “ethnocentrism” in the execution of the Biennial, at the end of its accompanying symposium Marta Traba [went so far as to] accuse the directorate of the Biennial of racism. In her view, the Biennial impolitely discriminated, consciously or unconsciously, against several countries that were “very rich in myths and magic.” Moreover, in her view, [the administration of the Biennial] was impolite regarding several countries that were not able to garner the necessary [public and critical] attention with regard to the mounting, display, and signage of their works. That is, the Biennial, by privileging countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, reproduced, within Latin America itself, the same association of domination that is involved in our cultural relationship with other countries outside the continent. Certainly other critics have not expressed the fear of a Latin American ethnocentrism as formulated by [the journalists] Jacob Klintowitz, Sheila Leirner, Radah Abramo and [by the critic] Mário Schemberg, and there are those like Aracy Amaral, Mário Pedrosa, and Roberto Pontual who not only set out to debate our continental art but also to emphatically defend the realization of the Biennial. As a matter of fact, in one of the symposium presentations, the Mexican [art critic] Rita Eder said that “belief in the universality of certain theses was what delayed, in a way, the study of the visual arts in Latin America. It seems urgent to ask if the European theories which we have absorbed to this point were really universal or if they worked as a convex mirror where reality appeared distorted.”
The ridiculous inclusion of some countries, the absence of countries with great cultural weight such as Venezuela, and, above all, [the omission] of the most representative names of the continent’s art whose works perfectly fit into the show’s theme, including artists such as [Joaquín] Torres-García, Xul Solar, Armando Reverón, Roberto Matta, Fernando [de] Szyszlo, Fernando Botero, Rodolfo Abularach, the Mexican muralists, Francisco Toledo, among many others, cancel out a large part of the true relevance of this Biennial. Of what there was, very little can be highlighted: Gastón Ugalde, from Bolivia (poetically exploring the theme of coca); Liliana Porter and Marta Minujín from Argentina; Juan Camilo Uribe de Roda from Colombia, which besides Mexico was the only country that, in a more concentrated way, sought to present an evolution that was organic and at the same time didactic on the subject (notwithstanding the debatable quality of many works, and especially those that deal with conflictive issues of color). Through popular art (altars for the dead and calaveras [skulls]), [the Biennial] dealt with the myth of death: through paintings by anonymous authors, it showed the social structures (castes) and the process of miscegenation. Finally, we have the political myth in the figure of the national hero [Emiliano] Zapata, who arises, first, in photographs of the [1910–17 revolutionary] period, followed by the plastic interpretation of artists of different periods and styles: Antonio Ruiz, Arnold Belkin, Enrique Estrada and Felipe Ehremberg, the latter showing “Zapata hoy,” that is, already appropriated and turned into a cliché by the official system of fine arts.
The Biennial’s theme, rich at a theoretical level, as can be verified in several of the papers presented during the symposium, is extensive (“the presence of myth in Latin American art is something persistent; it is its very situation”—Jorge Alberto Manrique) and is also poorly represented in terms of artistic production. Frequently, the Brazilian representation slides primarily into the folklore field, into kitsch, into reportage or the simple accumulation of material, replacing reflection and critical analysis. Most of the time, the artists limited themselves to recreating environments, such as in the “miracle” rooms, with ex-votos of wax and photographs, cordel literature,1 voodoo worshipping, or even posting native signs, presentations of photographic sequences of sorcerers, and images galore. A few, when they deal with popular and religious themes, succeed in escaping from the obvious and establishing new relationships with real meaning. And in some cases it is difficult to connect the exhibited work to the general theme of the Biennial. What we have, above all in the special halls, is what is already seen and catalogued by the market and by criticism: the already known and accepted. The Latin Americans who visited us for this First Biennial may have even taken away a good impression of our art—that is, of the conventional and of the stable in our art—but [they found] nothing of our disquiet and our creativity. By and large, at no time did they have the opportunity to participate in a broad discussion about our art or Latin American art.
And here we have another serious failure of the First Biennial: there was no link whatsoever between the exhibition and the symposium. At the theoretical level, the symposium clearly showed that we have already advanced a lot, despite the fact that we may have not yet found our own methodology and that we may still manipulate theoretical grounds that are not ours. But we have advanced a lot. After the [previous] contribution of Mário Pedrosa, [Jorge] Romero Brest, Juan Acha, and Marta Traba, a new generation of art critic-theorists is emerging (I would mention, among others, Néstor Garcia Canclini, Mirko Lauer, Jorge Alberto Manrique, and Rita Eder) who are transforming the methods of appreciation of artwork with brilliance and audacity. However, while the theoretical discussion in the several symposia on Latin American art tends toward autonomy, Latin America’s production in the visual arts is still experiencing a lack of interpretation and both fields [art criticism and the visual arts] are waning. Rarely, in the São Paulo Symposium, was the discussion centered on the work of some artist, and [in the few instances] when that happened we didn’t have the work or a reproduction (slide) of it in front of us.
Fortunately, a good portion of the Latin American and Brazilian critics attending the Biennial took advantage of their stay in São Paulo to see Macunaíma, by Mário de Andrade,2 brought to the stage by Antunes Filho. They left enraptured by the visual beauty of the show. In four years that last about four hours, they were able to go on a voyage through the myths and magic of Brazil. They went through the diversified Brazilian geography, from the Amazon jungle to the city-machine (São Paulo), from Paraíba to Rio de Janeiro. They saw Macunaíma—our underdeveloped [anti-]hero without character—face life with malice and survive wholly due to his trickery. They saw Macunaíma invent soccer and the [jogo de] bicho [“animal game” or lottery], frequent brothels, literary academies and Macumba rites, confront the capitalist [Wenseslau Pietro] Pietra and defeat him. And they also saw Macunaíma’s melancholic return to his [Amazonian] origins, that is, to the jungle. Macunaíma, the mise-en-scène, with its creative explosion, is all that the Latin American Biennial is not… but that it could be. As a presentation of the theme “Myths and Magic,” the play is perfect. It would have cost the Biennial less to finance and stage it as an exposition of the theme. But, as Macunaíma himself would say: “Ai, que preguiça…! [Ah! What laziness…!]
1
In northeastern Brazil, “literatura de cordel” refers to popular editions of poorly printed short stories with subjects such as heroes of the backlands, political struggles, and love affairs. Their name stems from the fact that these leaflets are left hanging “on cords” in markets or squares of the region.—Ed.
2
For a transcreated version of Mario de Andrade’s 1928 experimental rhapsody, see Héctor Olea’s translation in Macunaíma (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1977).—Ed.