The number 13 is considered a bad omen by many people, provoking the naïve jump from the 12th to the 14th floor in some hotels; however, there are others who associate it to good luck. This is consistent with the ambivalence that is so costly for Cuban men when they call a hot woman a “beast” or “wild”, in a primitive yet authentic form of unity and struggle of conflicts.
In this case, the 13th issue of Arte por Excelencias comes with the editorial oath to open a new cycle for the still young art magazine. The commitment recognizes the vital need of renewing not just the old –or the old ones–, but also the young and the young ones, which applies to both content and image. Consequently, the cover shows an unsettling work by renowned plastic artist Esterio Seguratitled Good bye my Love.
The magazine, boasting an excellent editorial staff, delves into the field of art collection, market and events in the Americas, and also seeks to promote emerging talents. Its mission has to be fulfilled in a scenario where the world’s visibility is still overshadowed by the inertia of patterns fashioned from within the center and spread out to a periphery that is raring to stop being so. But while globalization strengthens such domination and tends to homogenize the planet, it can also open two-way roads.
These topics, including the so widely-mentioned national identity –always inevitably entailing backwardness, localism and isolation– provide food for the many of the good texts in the magazine, though sometimes you get the feeling that the author fears the reader, and especially his colleagues, could mistake simplicity for lack of ideas. In the end, tortuous writing, sometimes unnecessary, could be useful, as both exercising the mind and drinking coffee moderately apparently delay the beginning of doctor Alzheimer’s sinister disease.
This issue of the magazine offers an overview of an interesting visual art movement sprouting in the Caribbean and Central America, although not widely promoted. It also brings to light disciplines that stopped being considered art in Cuba since the mid 1900s, such as architecture; or that were never recognized as such, like design and caricature.
In Febrilidad en tiempos de Santa Barbara (Restlessness in times of Saint Barbara) Elvia Rosa Castro ponders on the uncertain balance of fairs, and reviews the remarkable event Art Basel Miami Beach that took place December last year, with sub-venues in Wynwood, the Design District and Midtown. ABMB included lectures, screenings; it brought in several galleries and developed long-existing topics like the relationship between art and the public.
Another major event in the United States, PINTA NY, was reviewed by Piter Ortega, who resolutely announces the end of identities, questions the existence of Latin American art, refuses to accept that the notion that art could change the world is an utopia, and finds the intervention of hegemonic centers in the artistic world of the Southern countries positive.
Ortegarejoices to find out that the event he wrote about is dominated by estheticism, hedonism and banality; and prefers what he calls visual massage over political pamphlets. Such an extreme defiant position crashes as he discovers new things that we apparently overlooked in movements that are already history, namely Op Art and Pop, kinetic art, abstraction (both geometric and expressionist), minimalism, arte povera and neo expressionism.
In his article, Ortega is provocative, expanding the target audience for the phrase “épater le bourgeois” -as they said in the turn-of-the-century Paris-, to shake up not only the authorities but also the blurred social stratum of contemporary Cuba referred to by Hector Zumbado as small-proletarian and having broader sense in what I have called poor-new-rich. As a way to encourage debate, this short text has a healthy mission.
En la Gran Piscina Azul… is an interesting interview by Nelson Herrera to Cuban curator, art critic and essay writer Jose Manuel Noceda. It goes through the history of visual arts in the Caribbean and Central America to the current situation, referring to them as emerging fields that started to win recognition in the 1990s. He points out the emerging of a new sensibility beyond the generational movement, and highlights the predominant role of women. Nevertheless, the presence of the region in the art markets is still poor, except for Cuba.
In La memoria como pretexto artistico (Memory as an artistic excuse), Patricia Martinez analyzes the work of Pepon Osorio, born in Puerto Rico and currently living in the United States. She tackles particularly the artist’s approach to social topics, focusing in the culture of the underprivileged and the way he portraits conflicts like violence and discrimination. In his videos, installations and performances, Osorio turns to exaggeration, and provides kitsch elements with a special dimension to channel the nostalgia over his homeland.
MariviVelizrefers to another age-old topic in her article Politica del arte y Arte en la política (The Politics of Art and Art in Politics) focusing on the specific case of Guatemala and national liberation movements. The author talks about Luis Camnitzer and the defiant role of conceptualisms, making a distinction between political art and art as a political action strategy. In her opinion, it doesn’t matter if political art is in favor or against the Government, because it always ends up being cheap and restrictive at the symbolic level. Artists, institutions and cultural events end up trapped; and what is proposed as a political action strategy boils down to an artistic action.
One of the big names of art critic in Cuba, art professor and historian Adelaida de Juan, takes a closer look into the work of Manuel Mendive, forerunner of performance and body art in Cuba during the Second Havana Biennial in 1986, in her article En el monte suena. De Juan analyzes the importance of the Yoruba mythology and imagery to Mendive, and the presence, sometimes masked, of water in his work; she refers as well to the contradiction between the attachments to earth expressed by the big feet of his figures and the lack of gravity in his most recent productions, where outlines are not well defined. She mentions the artist’s experimentation with techniques, materials and formats, including his soft sculptures.
CarlosGarridoraises the endless topic of the link between art and public in the piece Sobre la posibilidad de una estructura completa (On the possibility of a complete structure). The author points out how there is greater search for interlocutors and dialogue with the public through performances, workshops and group works; but that search also applies to the international context.
In López Oliva: la poética del desplazamiento (Lopez Oliva: the poetics in movement), Kirenia Rodriguez takes a look into the world of a creator also known as a critic, an uncommon mixture that adds rigor to imagination and which led Carina Pino Santos to define Lopez as the “most cultured artist of his generation.” Rodriguez’s analysis goes deeper into the presence of theater and masks (real faces?) as expressions of mutations, multiple meanings and ambiguities of the Caribbean people. It also deals with Lopez’s experiments with genres and formats: street arte, performance, easel painting…
A “heavyweight” in the history of architecture, Italian-Argentinean-Cuban-Brazilian Roberto Segre, goes through the most recent production in Centroamérica y el Caribe: Fragmentos arquitectónicos (Central America and the Caribbean: architectural pieces). Segre analyzes the combination of local traditional elements with universal features that defines the typical Caribbean syncretism, in a region that didn’t appear in the specialized literature of Europe and the United States; and explains the causes of that emptiness. He defines the elements of tradition used by modern architects to create a new architectural language that could be both local and universal.
Segrementions outstanding figures of the region that have succeeded in adapting their architecture to the tropical weather, while maintaining their expressiveness. He naturally touches on the case of Cuba and the importance given to the preservation of the valuable built heritage, and to the work of some very few architects who have made their way up through material limitations and bureaucratic obstacles, such as the case of the Jose Antonio Choy / Julia Leon team.
Likewise, Segre talks about world star architectslike Spanish Rafael Moneo, whose project for the Packard Hotel at the Paseo del Prado avenue is still to be executed; US Frank Gehry, with works in Panama, or Mexican Ricardo Legorreta, who recently passed away, in Managua. In this sense, we should mention ProyectoHabana from 1995, in which a constellation of renowned deconstruction artists, among them Wolf Prix, Eric Owen Moss, Thom Mayne and Carmen Pinos proposed ideas and models that beautifully traced iconoclastic concepts rather than shapes to be built.
It may be important to bring up the controversy of whether Havana is a Caribbean city or not, like Santiago de Cuba which certainly is. I think Havana was a city that first wanted to be white, then European and later American; where the Soviet architecture didn’t get to seriously alter the traditional city that is now progressively turning more Caribbean like.
A las puertas de la Bienal de La Habana (In the threshold of the Havana Biennial) deals with the top event of visual arts in Cuba, scheduled to begin May 11. The unsigned text reveals the author’s interest in having readers think of art as a catalyst of subjects, and of the many ways to achieve so –interactive projects, intervention in public places, working with the community and in interdisciplinary teams.
One more “heavyweight”, Uruguayan theorist, essayist and critic Gabriel Peluffo contributes a sound text destined to last in time: Enclave regional, escenas locales y practicas artisticas contemporaneas (Regional enclave, local scenes and contemporary artistic practices). Peluffo makes an assessment of the Latin American art in the 1990s, which was marked by a calling for self-knowledge and an obsession for identity; and evaluates the current situation based on the cultural, political and territorial discontinuation. Such situation strengthens art as a symbolic production that circulates over museums, galleries, universities, private collections, biennials, fairs, workshops and clinics. This leads him to rethink creation as an essential part in the public scene and the construction of citizenship, so as to prevent artistic production from being conveyed through conventional means or used to gain prestige.
The essayist highlights the contrast between the dynamism of flexible and changeable networks and institutions’ inertia, which makes him wonder about what the role of art would be within a territorial order ruled by market, cultural diversification and political disruption. Going back to the 1950s, characterized by the detachment of aesthetics from political spaces, he now finds the borderline between the two is fading away, with diverting forces such as regulating actions by local agents added to the centrifugal and deregulating forces of global order interfering simultaneously.
Peluffo studies the evolution of biennials and regional meetings like the Southern Cone, as momentary milestones that do not guarantee the accumulative continuity of exchange. Focusing his interest on Mercosur as a “cultural basin” yet to be fulfilled, he arrives to the conclusion –perhaps as an answer to the question he had previously raised– that the goal is to achieve an artistic production that could contribute, in its inherent symbolic dimension, to build a regional public sphere.
In Matta en el vórtice (Matta in the vortix), Nahela Hechavarria takes advantage of the recent inauguration of the exhibition Matta: del arte al libro (Matta: from the art to the book), with which Casa de las Americas commemorated the centenary of the world-famous Chilean. Hechavarria sets out the relationship between text and image promoted by Matta, combining humor and games with creative exploration; and she comments on some of the works on display that best suit the art book-object notion.
In her text Museumof Fine Cuban Arts en Viena, whose title is curiously written in Spanglish, Hortensia Montero speaks about the content of this singular museum opened in 2009 with the private collection from an Austrian Cuban artconnoisseur. The exhibition included paintings, sculptures and installations in a smaller number going back to the first avant-garde creators of the 20th century to the most recent works by young artists. The catalog includes painters Victor Manuel, Ponce, Escobedo, Arche, Mariano, Carmelo and Lam, with two works on paper; Adigio, Mijares, Raul Martinez, Acosta Leon, Antonia, Servando, Peña, Ever Fonseca, Mendive, Zaida, Garciandia and Kcho. Among sculptors are Sicre, Ramos Blanco, Estopiñan, Eugenio Rodriguez, Lozano, Boada, Armando Fernandez, Gelabert, Rita Longa, Agustin Cardenas, Marta Arjona, Tomas Oliva, Jose Villa, Lara, Quintanilla, Consuegra, Eliseo Valdes, and again Kcho. The building has some rooms for temporary exhibitions and others that serve as lodging and studio for guest artists.
Initially attacking the means of support of critics that he calls semi-agraphia –catalogers who have never published a book– Ivan de la Nuez gives rise to debate with his short, slightly ironic and openly provocative writing Los demasiados catálogos (The too many catalogues). Running the risk of overweight and oversized dimensions, catalogues are also facing the challenge of their ephemeral character that have led to a growing trend of making them thicker and thicker until they “look” like books. Based on the emergence of virtual museums and exhibitions, de la Nuez gives catalogers prone to unemployment some hope, as catalogues that enable viewers to watch the projects and process on real time, have access to interactive images and even to save some money with the new pay- per-printmodality.
This issue of Arte por Excelencias ends with a page curated by ARES dedicated to Colombian caricaturist Elena Ospina. It would have been interesting to have included some comments on the work. Including a picture and a small review of the caricaturist is something that should be considered in all the texts, although such a beautiful smile will be hard to guarantee…
Rereading the magazine, I was surprised by the talent shown as it packs a remarkable amount of important texts into 96 pages, without affecting the quality or boring the readers, though in some cases the lavish but impenetrable verbal repertoire shows up, a professional deformation suffering paradoxically from both diarrhea and constipation. Some texts teach a lesson, others ignite debate, and there are others that entail both things.
There is an adequate balance of approaches, sizes and contents which allow combining works of greater impact and that are more likely to last in time with others equally necessary, that provide information and excel because of their relevance to current interests. It boasts high quality graphics, in terms of both general design and the reproductions of the works of art, which is an essential requirement when dealing with visual arts.
The editorial orientation toward Latin America and the Caribbean positions the magazine in an off-the-beaten-track niche, precisely when the creative movement is gaining momentum in the region, and that includes small countries with lack of representation in specialized publications. It’s all a good example of sharpness that confirms what people say about being in the right place at the right time”.
This issue of Arte por Excelencias ends with a page curated by ARES dedicated to Colombian caricaturist Elena Ospina. It would have been interesting to have included some comments on the work presented. Including a picture and a short review of the caricaturist is something that should be considered for all the texts, although such a beautiful smile will be hard to guarantee…
Rereading the magazine, I was surprised by the talent shown as it packs a remarkable amount of important texts into 96 pages, without affecting the quality or boring the readers, though in some cases the lavish but impenetrable verbal repertoire shows up, a professional deformation suffering paradoxically from both diarrhea and constipation. Some texts teach a lesson, others ignite debate, and there are others that entail both things.
There is an adequate balance of approaches, sizes and contents which allow combining works of greater impact and more likely to last in time with others that are equally necessary, that provide information and excel because of their relevance to current interests. It boasts high quality graphics, in terms of both general design and the reproductions of the works of art, which is an essential requirement when dealing with visual arts.
The editorial orientation toward Latin America and the Caribbean positions the magazine in an off-the-beaten-track niche, precisely when the creative movement is gaining momentum in the region, and that includes small countries with lack of representation in specialized publications. It’s all a good example of sharpness that confirms what people say about being in the right place at the right time.
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