V.2.5 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 776644
Aracy A. Amaral originally presented this essay at a symposium held in conjunction with Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1987 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art [SEE DOCUMENT V.1.9]. The Brazilian art historian examines the significance of the term “fantastic,” its association with fantasy and the subconscious, and its connotation of inferiority. Amaral criticizes what she considers to be the premise of the exhibition: a distorted, partial, and one-dimensional perspective on Latin American art offered to an uninformed international audience for whom Art of the Fantastic may have represented its first and only exposure to this specific field. Moreover, “‘Fantástico’ são outros” denounces the concept’s dangerous potential to be used as a reductive catchall for the region’s otherwise heterogeneous artistic production. The manuscript version of this text remained unpublished until 2006 when it was included in her anthology that brought together writings produced over twenty-five years [“‘Fantástico’ são outros,” 1987, Textos do trópico de Capricórnio: artigos e ensaios (1980–2005), Circuitos de arte na América Latina e no Brasil, vol. 2, (São Paulo: Editora 34 letras, 2006), 43–48].
WE BEGIN OUR REFLECTION on the theme of this exposition by consulting a primary source, the dictionary, and we find that “fantastic” (derived from the Greek phantastikós and from the Latin phantasticu) refers to that which exists only in fantasy or in the imagination: imaginary, illusory, unreal, fanciful, extravagant, phantasmagoric, unbelievable, extraordinary, prodigious, simulated, invented, that which exists solely in the imagination.1
Plato instructs that apparitions are shadows and reflections produced by real things [The Republic] and, as such, he defines fantasy as the representation that emerges from “appearing.” In this sense, it opposes knowledge or reality. Rather than produce forms or ideas, fantasy begets “images.” Along that same line of thought and for that reason, a figure like Saint Augustine believed that “fantasy was a psychic power of inferior character, more closely associated with the emotional than the rational.”2
That dichotomy—which devalues, on one hand, the expression or the imagery associated with fantasy and the unconscious and privileges, on the other, the erudite expression based on intellect—leads Ida Rodriguez Prampolini to highlight the undue use of the term “surrealist” (frequently used as a wildcard in artistic terminology) whenever an artwork features “predominately exorbitant shapes and elements of fantasy or of the imagination.” Thus, according to her, the art of people of a “mythic or pre-logical mentality,” was described as surrealist on more than one occasion. It is even more curious to observe, according to the scholar from Mexico, that when the first Surrealism in Mexico exhibition took place in 1940, the works featured under the label “savage art” included pre-Columbian pieces as well as masks from New Guinea and of other origins.3
By depicting Latin America’s plastic production, the present exhibition focuses on the “unconscious” expression, that is the expression of magic, witchcraft, spirituality, or of the inner life depicted in paintings. Could this be a “trendy” moment for the art of our days, or is it the hegemonic countries’ cliché way of viewing Latin America? Perhaps it is both. At a time when the Kassel Documenta appears to privilege the spiritual aspects of artistic expression, Indianapolis focuses on Latin American art as “fantastic”; the Bienal de São Paulo prepares a wing for the so-called “fantastic art” of Brazil; while La Villette, in Paris, prepares an international exposition of ecumenical character entitled Les Magiciens de la Terre [The Magicians of the Earth] which will open in December 1988.
When the major centers of cultural hegemony turn to a culturally rich continent such as Latin America, what do they really expect? Certainly, they expect some magic, which brings with it a stereotyped character, despite the global village in which the great artistic media of the Western world lives. But what do Europeans or North Americans know about the Latin American reality? In fact, nothing or next to nothing. They view us as a harmonious whole against the backdrop of dictatorships and, by extension, corruption, or (in an exoticist view) as living in a tropical paradise which, in reality, is only true for part of Latin America. Latin America’s urban culture paradoxically coexists with various levels of poverty and with a rural reality in the violent world in which we were created, a world which is also the source of our versatility [and our] ability to coexist with different realities—[this is] something the inhabitant of the First World could never even fathom.
For that reason, we are struck by the lack of sensitivity and understanding demonstrated by Michael Gibson, a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, who, while visiting the last Bienal de São Paulo for three or four days, symptomatically pauses to reflect on the environmental works of two Brazilian artists—Alex Vallauri and Fernando Lucchesi—who come to the Bienal with their own perspectives on artistic production in a country like Brazil. (He does not even acknowledge Guto Lacaz, who is more closely associated—in terms of creativity— with technology.) The first environmental work depicts a spicy kitschiness in all its tropicalist glory; and the second is assembled with precarious materials, debris from an industrialized society, [and] utilized in a way intended to depict, according to the author, “the enthusiastic exuberance of Brazil’s historical baroque into a favela idiom.”4
Does the Indianapolis exhibition permit the unveiling or revealing of Latin America’s magical creativity, an aspect of our production which shows the “quintessential” side of our art, one that is different from that of the great centers? Would this Latin American art that they want to be hot, tropical, (samba, cha-cha-chá, and tango) not first be an evasion of the reality before a hostile world or an affirmation before a mythic world of overwhelming force, imposing its presence as a unique power over cultures in which pragmatism does not reign, but whose cultural richness derived from its diversity offers a fertile “non-white art”? Could it be that when Gibson refers to Brazil as a country “full of potential talent, but which is handicapped by a cultural inferiority complex (derived from a colonial past) and an excessive concern with the aesthetic idiom spoken in the wealthier parts of the globe” that he is forgetting that the observation also rings true for the United States before World War II? And perhaps the way the organizers of this exhibition on “the fantastic” in Latin America want to represent our continent is how he wants to see Brazilian art.
But, in reality, the contemporary expression of Latin American art can be characterized as constructivist; having concrete (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil) and kinetic (Venezuela) tendencies; especially depicting, through its urban elite, the ordering of chaos, as art critic Federico Morais said; or aspiring to integrate itself into the orderly and industrialized universe of the First World.
It is nothing new for Latin Americans to rebel against the focus of our colleagues in the developed world who—in their inability to read or pinpoint our reality, our behavior, and our artistic expression—choose to understand our expression as that of the alien, “the fantastic.” That is, according to the great hegemonic centers (Paris, London, Berlin, New York), “the others” are “fantastic.” The “real” (what is real?) dimension belongs to the First World. Magic and exoticism are the polar opposite of that erudite reality. It is a cliché: the civilized person cannot easily fathom a universe different from his own, but it is a cliché that equally exposes his limited ability to comprehend a different environment. What is thus identified is an expression at the periphery of the great centers, like differentiating between “civilized” art and the art of marginalized people or the art of the people from the most remote corners of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, or from those groups belonging to theocratic societies in which rituals are mixed with life, branding their visual arts with their symbolism.
As [the Mexican writer] Carlos Fuentes observed, fantastic realism “is nothing more than a tropical label placed on surrealist literature from Latin America,” and that label, according to him, enables literature produced on our continent to “penetrate the European and North American markets.” Rejecting labels for his works, which employ urban themes, Fuentes notes that the wave is stronger: “Abroad, all Latinos bear that label. It is more or less like saying that all Sicilians are mafiosos.” In any case, he confirms that this label represented a form of affirmation, and “today, there is a homogenous culture, a new literary cosmopolitanism, without metropolitanism where culture is said to be headquartered” in the literary realm, which overcame the “Latino trauma.”5
Could the same occur in the field of the visual arts? We have a number of questions regarding the art selected for display. It seems to us that this exhibition is extremely heterogeneous, despite the difficulty that arose since, in addition to wanting to conceive “fantastic art” as a global, artistic phenomenon, the exhibition aspired to focus Latin American art as an expression of themes like the search for or the affirmation of identity: particularly visible in the contributions of Wifredo Lam, Tarsila [do Amaral] and [Joaquín] Torres-García (who discovered their native “reality” vis-à-vis their contact with Europe), or Rufino Tamayo, [Fernando] Botero and Francisco Toledo. As a result and because of the extremely singular personalities, there emerges on our continent not-so-easily classifiable art such as the dolorous work of Frida Kahlo that can be placed alongside the surrealist contribution given the way in which the artist exposes herself in her work; [the paintings] of Ismael Nery, on the same generational track in Brazil; not to mention Xul Solar’s fascination; the ever-so-peculiar universe of Armando Reverón; and the surrealism of Roberto Matta. Though, why not the dream-like and time-defying environments of Pedro Figari? Why not the fantastic social realism of Antonio Berni? Artists who, because of their gestural-expressive charge were classified as “fantastic,” opposed to this peculiar group linked to Surrealism. Such is the case of Jacobo Borges, Antonio Henrique Amaral, and [Jorge] de La Vega. Evidence of the metaphysical side emerges in Roberto Aizenberg and in the sensuality of Armando Morales; popular taste as adapted by the artists is evident in the work of Beatriz Gonzalez and Vallauri, even though Carlos Zerpa, from Venezuela, and Juan Camilo Uribe as well as Antonio Caro, both from Colombia, are noticeably omitted.
One cannot fail to notice the presence of eroticism—or wantonness, in the words of Eduardo Serrano from Bogotá—in the works of Colombian Jim Amaral or Leonel Góngora, which the very same critic termed “perverse ferocity.” Perhaps this erotic and sexual tendency inescapable in Latin American art is also emphasized by the multidimensional shapes in the ceramic pieces of [Francisco] Brennand of Pernambuco, Brazil.
The climate of interiorization in artists like [Tilsa] Tsuchiya, Siron Franco, and the young [Guillermo] Kuitca stands in opposition to the magical landscapes with political overtones of Francisco González Gamarra and the sophisticated magical realism full of suggestive quotations by Alberto Gironella, next to which we can see the montages of Famese de Andrade or the altars displaying an uninhibited religiosity of the aforementioned Fernando Lucchesi. Obviously, we are familiar with the limitations and obstacles faced by an international exposition, the organizers of which did not put forth its best effort to ensure its successful execution. While we cannot comment on the works of the other artists because we are not familiar with all of them and although we have seen the first installation of the 1 Bienal de la Habana by José Bedia of Cuba, we know that they are paying attention, to some degree, to international fads. In this regard, it becomes more difficult to find continental singularity in the great urban centers.
Perhaps what disturbs us is the preoccupation with assigning labels to these artists, the assembly of whose work in Indianapolis enables the slight raising of the curtain that has heretofore obscured certain elements of Latin American art, revealing its rich creativity in the visual arts.
1
Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário, 2nd ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1986).
2
José Ferrater Mora, Diccionario de filosofía abreviado (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1975).
3
Ida Rodriguez Prampolini, El surrealismo y el arte fantástico de México (Mexico: UNAM–Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1969).
4
Michael Gibson, “São Paulo Showcases International Art,” International Herald Tribune, 19–20 October 1985.
5
Cristina Grillo, “O escritor Carlos Fuentes dispensa etiquetas literárias,” Folha de S. Paulo, May 1987.