IV.4.9 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 776533
WITH THE UPCOMING LATIN AMERICAN-THEMED, São Paulo Biennial in mind, this essay analyzes some of the issues pertaining to artistic production in Latin America, responding to the opinions of those art critics who believe that the current interest in this continent is somehow related to the declining interest in the vanguard. If progress is imperative, then so are risks. And I believe that the current trend of “rethinking oneself” in Latin America, not in terms of “universal art,” [but] in the fine arts realm, runs a risk, as [Jacob] Klintowitz1 has pointed out, but the experience of rethinking oneself is valid and cannot be delayed. For many years, we lived first under colonial rule and subsequently under the economic imperialisms that shaped the behavior of all who live here, the natives, the imported, the immigrated, and the mestizos. And yet, according to political, social, and economic models, we are not free from the metropolises, whatever the trends may be. As such, the aspiration for autonomy from an artistic perspective is almost utopian. But that aspiration is valid. With a sound conscience, in the context of the current Latin American art juncture, I analyze the desire to see oneself, to think of oneself. It is important, almost like a motivating force, a link in the chain that is the process of consciousness building from which we cannot escape. We are not simply an extension of Europe or a photocopy of North American experiences that have little if anything to do with our mestizo culture. The United States is a society of racial and cultural groups ruled by a pragmatist mentality, with its origins in its Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Latin America is a society of mestizos and those in the process of miscegenation, or of Indians, generally governed by white elite who exercise economic power in an unstable, precarious, and even distant manner. There is an easily identifiable behavioral fluidity, especially in the non-Andean areas like Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, and Venezuela.
And Latin America is not “in style” as Frederico [de] Morais incorrectly wants to view it, only because the “Group of Thirteen,” from Buenos Aires, won the Award at the last Biennial (or perhaps this view refers to the reaction that he has experienced in Rio de Janeiro, but it has nothing to do with the interest in Latin America, especially in certain parts of the continent, that has emerged in the last five years). Moreover, that critic’s2 text recently posited the thesis that the “declining interest in the vanguard’s activities in the international field” would coincide with the burgeoning interest in Latin America, which is the same point made by Juan Acha, the Peruvian critic who hosted a panel discussion about that very same topic in São Paulo to commemorate the grand opening of the Biennial of 1975 in FAAP,3 at which, if my memory serves me, the critic from Rio was also present. And the point about “the alternative to this ‘dead-end alley’ of the international vanguard would be here in Latin America” seems to me to be purely Morais’s imagination. In the end, those interested in Latin America, in recent years, are Latin Americans themselves and neither Europeans (because they are too interested in themselves) nor Americans, in whose country there continues to be the biggest proverbial indifference toward anything that is neither American nor French. There are only a few scholars or Latin American research centers, thus the rarities . . . [could hardly represent a significant] interest in Latin America. [This is the case] even when important museums or universities prepare expositions of Latin American art. Yes, it is true that this corresponds not to an interest in the continent “from below” as [the Cuban poet] Alejo Carpentier would say, but it signifies, first, a way of filling a void in the inactive museological activities of our time. It would be arrogant to consider it anything else. In fact, for years now we have been watching the major retrospectives of international art in the United States and in Europe. As I said in a conversation a few days ago in São Paulo with Professor [James Marston] Fitch—of Columbia University who came to teach at USP [Universidade de São Paulo]—it is not an increased interest (as we previously thought) in architecture or landscape projects that leads to the various expositions of this genre in New York’s well-known galleries, but first it is simply the fact that there is no other artist or movement that is more interesting that causes these spaces to become open to this type of exposition.
On the other hand, the dichotomy that pits Latin America against “what is universal,” in my opinion, does not exist. It seems clear that the erudite inhabitant of a great Western metropolis—whichever his country may be—is just like any other, possessing the same identical origins and cultural aptitude. But that is what makes his artistic expression universally similar and uninteresting, only worthy of consideration if it is of the highest, fine-aesthetic or inventive quality (in the case of the visual arts), being that the common denominator is the major international centers. But the exciting Latin American “climate” offers, with all of its incoherencies, the possibility of the simultaneous existence of diverse “artworks” unlike Europe (where the erudite, pseudo-intellectual, and the end exist). On this culturally engaged continent, the popular expression (be it in the form of music, craftworks, similar manifestations in consumer society, in popular manifestations which may be religious; secular; athletic; of clear, fine arts substance; not to mention indigenous art which exists in many parts of Latin America) of the erudite art of the elites of the major urban centers linked to the cultural metropolises . . . . [In so doing, they are creating parallel vanguards in our land]. . . .
What is impossible or artificial is the desire to express everything, that is, to achieve what is universal without any identification with one’s “here and now.” Latin America, throughout its historical dependence has aspired (meaning the dominant class has aspired) to identify itself with Europe and with the United States since the last century, and it has not seen itself nor has it desired to see itself even today. That is what leads the very frequently-discussed Carlos Rangel, author of Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario [From Good Savage to Good Revolutionary] (1976), to begin his prologue by referencing the “discrepancy between what a society actually is and the image that society has of itself,” which, according to him, reflects the ambiguity of the Latin American mentality.
Thus, in my opinion, the Latin American’s interest in his own continent will help to undo that distortion. We will be able, throughout this process, to see ourselves with realism; we will assume, consequentially, and make our own tomorrow based on our real situation. Without false ideals—Latin America in general took a while, even in its paintings, to register “its” physical landscape—which epitomizes my point. And that is an attitude of maturity to which one can only arrive via what Klintowitz fearfully refers to as Latin American “nationalism.” It may be a dangerous road, but it is crucial to the affirmation of our third-world, developing nation condition, of a developing culture.
1
Jacob Klintowitz, “Na Bienal latino-americana, os riscos do nacionalismo xenófobo,” Jornal da Tarde São Paulo, (September 9, 1978).
2
Frederico Morais, “América Latina e a crise da vanguarda,” O Globo, Rio de Janeiro (September 1, 1978).
3
Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, São Paulo.—Ed.