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ArtelogieRecherche sur les arts, le patrimoine et la littérature del'Amérique latine

15 | 2020Latin American networks: Synchronicities,Contacts and Divergences.Réseaux artistiques latino-américains : synchronicités, contacts et divergences.

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Understanding originality and innovation to be proposals that contribute to theinterpretation of change and to the formation of a transnational field of art and visualculture from Latin America, this dossier for Artelogie investigates tensions between thehistorical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, both in Latin America andEurope, and the neo avant-gardes that emerged globally between 1960 and 1990,approximately. The relationship between these vanguards has been fraught bytheoretical and methodological difficulties posed by scholarly literatures that haveassessed these phenomena, themselves by no means homogenous or coordinated,mostly in terms of derivation and creative exhaustion. This assessment has originatedfrom the so-called centers of the art world and early universalist theories of the avant-garde rather than from their local places of art making and its circulation. Theselargely Eurocentric claims have foreclosed analysis of the historical significance of keymoments in postwar art and their critical and innovative potential in comparativeterms. The reappearance of collage and assemblage, and of grid and monochromaticpainting, to name only a few avant-garde techniques, was a self-reflexive return,offering a critique of postwar societies. Neo avant-gardes consciously forged formal andinformal networks that linked colleagues and strategies beyond their local scenes ornationalist histories. With this dossier we seek to investigate temporal, spatial, formal,and thematic synchronicities that emerge from both contact and divergence amongartworks, artists, critics, curators, and other cultural agents. Through their criticalcomparison we expect to produce conceptualizations of postwar art history thatgenerate and invert rather than merely add to dominant narratives to date.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Entendiendo la originalidad y la innovación como propuestas que contribuyen a lainterpretación del cambio y la formación de un campo transnacional, este número deArtelogie explora las tensiones entre las vanguardias históricas de principios del sigloXX (tanto latinoamericanas como europeas) y las neo-vanguardias que surgieron entre1960 y 1990, aproximadamente, en el arte latino y latinoamericano. Hasta el presenteesta relación ha estado plagada de dificultades teóricas y metodológicas planteadas porliteraturas académicas que han evaluado estos fenómenos, que de ninguna manera sonhomogéneos o coordinados, sobre todo en términos de derivación y agotamientocreativo con respecto a los centros hegemónicos del mundo del arte. Esta perspectivaha excluido el análisis del significado histórico de los momentos clave en el arte de laposguerra y su potencial crítico e innovador en términos comparativos. La reaparicióndel collage y el assemblage, y de la pintura abstracta y monocromática, por mencionarsolo algunas técnicas vanguardistas, implicó un retorno autorreflexivo que ofreció unacrítica de las sociedades de la posguerra. Los artistas de vanguardia forjaronconscientemente redes formales e informales que vincularon artistas y estrategias másallá de sus escenarios locales o historias nacionales. Con el presente dossier buscamosinvestigar estas sincronicidades que surgen tanto del contacto como de la divergencia.A través de su comparación crítica, esperamos producir conceptualizaciones de lahistoria del arte de la posguerra que generen e inviertan las denominaciones queordenan la historia del arte, en lugar de simplemente agregar artistas a las narrativasglobales que dominan hasta el presente.

Artelogie, 15 | 2020

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Réseaux artistiques latino-américains : synchronicités, contacts et divergences.George F. Flaherty and Andrea Giunta

Geometry and movement, Latin Americans in the International Art Network Maria Cristina Rossi

Far from Good Design: Social Responsibility and Waldemar Cordeiro’s Early Theory of Form Adele Nelson

Mário Pedrosa, un parcours moderne 1900-1981Jacques Leenhardt

Conceptualism in Transit: Horacio Zabala's MapsLuiza Mader Paladino

A Conceptual Definition of the Artist’s Book and A New Look at Ulises Carrión’s ThinkingPaulo Silveira

José Gómez Sicre and his Impact on the OAS’ Visual Arts Unit: For an InternationalLatin American ArtIvonne Pini and María Clara Bernal

The Brazilian Cultural Mission and the Arte Nuevo Group: A Regional Dispute for CulturalHegemony and Paraguayan Modern Art Charles Quevedo.

Stitching the Social Fabric against Violence and Oblivion. The Embroidering for Peace andMemory Initiative Revisited through the Lens of Caring Democracy.Katia Olalde Rico.

Entretien(s)

Traducir la impenetrable. Una conversación con Julieta HanonoAndrea Giunta

Translate the impenetrable. Conversation with Julieta HanonoAndrea Giunta

Traduire l'impénétrable. Entretien avec Julieta HanonoAndrea Giunta

Comptes rendus / Partenariat Critique d'art

The Art of Solidarity: Visual and Performative Politics in Cold War Latin America,edited by Jessica Stites Mor and María del Carmen Suescun Pozas (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 2018).George F. Flaherty

Emiliano Zapata después de Zapata, VARGAS Santiago, Luis (editor), 2019, México,Secretaría de Cultura, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, Museo del Palacio deBellas Artes, Fundación Jenkins.Uriel Vides Bautista


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Art Museums of Latin America. Structuring Representation. Edited by Michele Greetand Gina McDaniel Tarver. (London, Routledge, 2018).Paula Bauer

Touched Bodies: the performative turn in Latin American Art, Mara PolgovskyEzcurra, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 2019.Agustin R. Díez Fischer

Intramuros: Palimpsestos sobre arte y paisaje, Nathalie Goffard, Editorial MetalesPesados, Santiago de Chile, 2019.Sebastian Vidal

Podría ser yo. Los sectores populares urbanos en imagen y palabra, Elizabeth Jelin yPablo Vila con fotografías de Alicia D’Amico, Buenos Aires, Asunción, 2019, 153 páginas.Edición doble con un nuevo volumen de ensayos de Sergio Caggiano, Ludmila Da SilvaCatela, Elizabeth Jelin, Francisco Medail, Juan Cruz Pedroni, Agustina Triquell y Pablo Villa,112 páginas.Georgina G. Gluzman

Varia

De Europa a América: la obra critica de Marta Traba y sus evoluciones Elsa Crousier

Diego Rivera et Élie Faure : Contributions du peintre à la critique française des arts duMexique ancien María Isabel Quintana Marín


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Réseaux artistiques latino-américains : synchronicités,contacts et divergences.Latin American Networks: Synchronicities, Contacts and Divergences

George F. Flaherty and Andrea Giunta

Revised by Jane Brodie

1 Understanding originality and innovation to be proposals that contribute to the

interpretation of change and to the formation of a transnational field of art and visualculture from Latin America, this dossier for Artelogie investigates tensions between thehistorical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, both in Latin America andEurope, and the neo avant-gardes that emerged globally between 1960 and 1990,approximately.1 The relationship between these vanguards has been fraught bytheoretical and methodological difficulties posed by scholarly literatures that haveassessed these phenomena, themselves by no means homogenous or coordinated,mostly in terms of derivation and creative exhaustion. This assessment has originatedfrom the so-called centers of the art world and early universalist theories of the avant-garde rather than from their local places of art making and its circulation. Theselargely Eurocentric claims have foreclosed analysis of the historical significance of keymoments in postwar art and their critical and innovative potential in comparativeterms.2 The reappearance of collage and assemblage, and of grid and monochromaticpainting, to name only a few avant-garde techniques, was a self-reflexive return,offering a critique of postwar societies. Neo avant-gardes consciously forged formal andinformal networks that linked colleagues and strategies beyond their local scenes ornationalist histories. With this dossier we seek to investigate temporal, spatial, formal,and thematic synchronicities that emerge from both contact and divergence amongartworks, artists, critics, curators, and other cultural agents. Through their criticalcomparison we expect to produce conceptualizations of postwar art history thatgenerate and invert rather than merely add to dominant narratives to date.


4

2 Instead of thinking about Latin American art in terms of periphery or decentralization,

concepts that are generally used to underscore the differences between modernizationprocesses, avant-gardes, and neo avant-gardes as they took shape in Latin America asopposed to in North America and Europe (think of peripheral modernity ordecentralized conceptualism), we will focus on simultaneous processes. Withoutignoring relations between international poetics, our concern are specific localformulations, which adopted specific names.3 Rather than focus on a Euro-NorthAmerican history of styles (cubism, surrealism, conceptualism, and all the -isms thatorder the narrative of what is called "modern art"), we intend, in this dossier, to givevisibility to the words used by the groups themselves (MADI, GRAV, Grupo de los Trece)and the networks that connected them, to exhibitions (Prospective 74 and exhibitions ofabstract art), to magazines (Arturo, Madí, Concrete Art Invention), and to institutions(such as the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende).

3 The use of specific terms by no means denies the vocabularies shared by art historians

and cultural theorists. Indeed, more specificity and less equivalence of terms andcategories goads an interrogation of received wisdom, and as a result we take morecare when we build bridges between art scenes and geographic locations. Thisapproach does, however, bring methodological challenges. A researcher may look foran artist or visual idea that traveled across the Americas. Or, if she fails to find asubstantial and historically verifiable link between people, concepts, and places, shemight look for a more general conceptual affinity. In this scenario, we are working withquestions of vision and imagination—whether those of the object of inquiry or those ofthe researcher. Synchronicity here is a hermeneutics—not a mere footnote or subtext.Despite the risks involved, these leaps of imagination and interpretation, thisinsistence on transnational and comparative thinking, is what begins to break upcapitalistic or colonial logics. It is with these gestures that the networks of art fromLatin America become richer, repetitive in the best possible way due to the manypossible connections and disjunctures between objects, actors, and cultural processes.4

4 This dossier is organized into four sections that propose a comparative analysis of

situated cases. The first section, which we title "Utopias between Abstraction andSolidarity," focuses on the utopic aesthetic ideas and institutions that were generatedat two junctures. First, the postwar period when, faced with devastation of the veryconcept of civilization, with the need to reconstruct a ravaged Europe and a worldravaged at the hands of Europe, it was pressing to imagine the world in new ways. Theabstract projects articulated in Latin America were central to the formation of animaginary of the future. The origin of the second context lies in Chile after the 1970elections, when a socialist government was voted into office. In 1973, a coup d'etatwould remove that government. One response to that turn of events was an originaland unique initiative: the Museo de la Solidaridad (Museum in Solidarity) with thePeople of Chile).

5 From specific perspectives, three articles develop the lines of theory that this first

section addresses. First, “Geometry and Movement, Latin Americans in theInternational Art Network” by Cristina Rossi interrogates the emergence, indifferent contexts, of the abstract and concrete avant-gardes in Latin America, as wellas their development from the sixties onward. She analyzes how a Latin Americanavant-garde network took shape and argues that it was by no means subaltern inrelation to European abstraction. These avant-gardes and neo avant-gardes generated


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their own specific exchanges and ideas. The article undertakes a historical review thatbegins with the launch of Arturo magazine in 1944 and spans into the kinetic neo avant-garde of the late fifties and early sixties. Rossi discusses as well the historical processfrom which networks and exchanges between artists were formed. Central to herhypothesis is the spread of ideas and relations through trips—the one taken by JoséMimó from Argentina to Venezuela in 1947, for example, to exhibit works by Argentineartists such as Méle, Enio Iommi, and Nélida Fedullo. Was that group show or the showof Otero’s Las cafeteras (Coffee Pots) that same year responsible for the turn towardsabstraction in Venezuela? The presence of Kosice in Paris; the correspondence betweenRaúl Lozza, on the one hand, and Hans Platschek and Sarandí Cabrera, both of them inUruguay, on the other; the participation of Argentine abstract artists in publicationssuch as the magazine Joaquim based in Curitiba, in the São Paulo Biennial, in theexhibitions at the Museu da Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro and at the SetedelijkMuseum in Amsterdam, and their contacts with the Universidad Católica of Valparaíso;the work of Julio Le Parc and the Center of Recherche d'Art Visuel in Paris; Signals andAilleurs magazines in Europe: these were some of the scenarios for exchange. Thegenealogies Rossi traces do not neglect transatlantic relations. Her article, rather, givesvisibility to shared expectations and to specific ideas materialized through variousforms of exchange.

6 Adele Nelson begins her article, “Far from Good Design: Social Responsibility and

Waldemar Cordeiro’s Early Theory of Form,” in the archive, studying the papers ofthat Italian-born Brazilian artist, critic, and curator. Cordeiro, a champion of GrupoRuptura, was one of the prime movers of Concrete Art in São Paulo. Nelson finds twodocuments from 1953 in the same file: a newspaper clipping of an article on Rupturathat Cordeiro wrote and his delegate card for the Congreso Continental de la Culturaorganized by Pablo Neruda in Santiago, Chile. This coincidence—or synchronicity—leads Nelson to complicate the formerly pat art historical narrative on Cordeiro’sthinking about form, especially in relation to his leftist politics and his understandingof the social purpose of abstraction. As Nelson shows, artistic theories rarely developalong geometric lines; their routes are more circuitous. In the late forties, Cordeiro hadbeen a pugnacious purist, calling for an art of formal relations to the exclusion of anyother form of art. With time and in conversation with (and contradistinction from)various direct (and indirect) interlocutors in Brazil and abroad, among them artistsAlmir Mavignier and Max Bill, critics Sérgio Milliet and Mário Pedrosa, and aesthetictheorist Konrad Fielder, Cordeiro’s thinking changed. Nelson argues that hisconceptualization of abstraction changed through his interest in placing artists at thecenter of emerging art institutions such as the São Paulo Biennial and the Museu deArte Moderna in that city; the urban nature of those institutions and the experiencesthey offered also influenced his abstraction. What Nelson calls the “interpretive paths”of Cordeiro and other artists close to him lead us to the grayer zones of history.

7 An intellectual can draw a network between geographies on the basis of their

experience, of their biography. Jacques Leenhard reviews important moments in thelife of Brazilian critic Mario Pedrosa, whom he meet during the critic’s exile in Paris in

the seventies. His article, “Mario Pedrosa, a parcours moderne 1900-1981,” followsthe critic in Brazil and Chile, where he helped build an international network thatlinked art and politics. In 1938, he was a member of the Executive Committee of theFourth International; in the forties, he formed part of a group of artists that conceiveda project for a public psychiatric hospital in Rio de Janeiro; in 1949, he wrote his thesis


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De la naturaleza afectiva de las formas (On the Affective Nature of Forms) that, on the basisof phenomenology, addressed the relationship between forms and affects. In 1959, heorganized the international congress of the Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte(International Association of Art Critics) in Brasilia titled Ciudad Nueva – Síntesis de las

Artes (New City - Synthesis of the Arts). For it, he brought together the most celebratedurbanists on the international scene. In 1971, he arrived in Chile as an exile to work atthe Institute of Latin American Art History housed at the Universidad de Chile. It wasthere that he advocated for the creation of a museum of modern art in solidarity withthe people of Chile. After the Chilean coup, by which time Pedrosa was in exile inFrance, he conceived of the Museo de la Resistencia (Resistance Museum). In 1977, hereturned to Brazil, where he proposed an innovative structure for the MAM in Rio deJaneiro that would consist of four interlinked sections: the museum of the Indian, themuseum of “virgin art” or the art of the unconscious, the museum of black art, and themuseum of folk art. At stake was a return to the popular roots of art present in hisproposals from the forties and an anthropological understanding of perception with apolitical agenda. With each initiative and each decision, Pedrosa formed a network ofartists and intellectuals

8 The second section of this dossier consists of two articles on the artistic formations

that developed around mail art and artists' books, and their relationship to the

international circuit. In "Conceptualism in Transit: Horacio Zabala's Maps," LuizaPaladino addresses the networks and contacts that took shape in the early seventiesaround, on the one hand, two institutions—the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de laUniversidad de São Pablo (MAC USP) and the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC) deBuenos Aires—and artist Jorge Zabala, on the other. This article not only contributes toa history of exhibitions in Latin America, but also advances in the comparative study ofinstitutional strategies. In their actions, Walter Zanini, director of the MAC USP, andJorge Glusberg, director of the CAyC, articulated new forms of production andexhibition, as well as artistic concepts. The MAC USP supported intenseexperimentation and mail art networks that went beyond the logic of the market. TheCAyC explored and furthered the relationship between art and technology from a"poor" perspective linked to the vision of Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski. In1972, at the Coltejer Biennial, Glusberg proposed the notion of "ideologicalconceptualism" for Latin America, a concept that Simón Marchan Fiz’s adapted andspread widely in his book Del arte del objeto al arte del concepto (From Object Art toConcept Art). This convergence of ideas is addressed through the specific case ofHoracio Zabala, particularly his work for Prospective 74, an exhibition organized by JulioPlaza and Walter Zanini. For that show, the artist made a series of world mapsintervened with rubber stamps, press clippings, collage, and fire. These interventionsquestioned established geographies—in the sense of maps of power, among otherthings—and reflected on censorship and the violation of human rights duringdictatorships in Latin America. The precariousness of the means of production andwork with found and low-cost materials were critical strategies that tested therelationship between art and politics.

9 Paulo Silveira’s “A Conceptual Definition of the Artist’s Book and A New Look at

Ulises Carrión’s Thinking” begins with an analysis of the actions of Ulises Carrión, anartist, editor, archivist, and bookseller. Born in Mexico, Carrión emigrated to theNetherlands in 1970. Much of his work revolved around the concept of the artist's book.Carrión was mostly active in Europe—more precisely, in Amsterdam—where he


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launched initiatives such as the In-Out Center exhibition space (1972) and Other Books and

So bookstore (1975-78), considered the first bookstore dedicated exclusively to artistbooks. From 1980 until the time of his death in 1989, he worked on Other Books and So

Archive. In addition to providing an overview of studies on Ulises Carrión and achronology of recent exhibitions featuring his work, Silveira analyzes and describes hisproduction. Carrión’s practices embody the concept of the network: he was a constantpoint of reference for the printing of small, unique, unconventional books. Carrión’s"The New Art of Making Books" was translated into many languages; it is central to theanalysis of what Carrión called workbooks. Along with the translations, Carrión’spresentations of his writings in various international settings contributed to placing hispractices and his concepts in wider exchanges and networks. Similarly, his archiverevolves around an imaginary of small and itinerant tangible forms of artistic creationoutside—until recently, at least—the desires of the art market.

10 The two articles in the third section focus on the networks drawn by cultural

diplomacy involving broader geopolitical cultural strategies. Working with thepapers of José Gómez Sicre, who served as head curator of the Washington-based

Organization of American States (OAS, OEA in Spanish) from 1946 to 1981, Ivonne Piniand María Clara Bernal draw in greater detail, and scrutinize, one of the better-

known figures in the construction of “Latin American Art.” Their article, “José GómezSicre and his Impact on the Department of Visual Arts, OAS” addresses theanxieties and biases of the Cuban-born cultural administrator, which informed hisapproach to the cultural diplomacy between the United States and the WesternHemisphere during the Cold War. Above all, Gómez Sicre favored art, especiallyabstraction, that could be framed in modernist, internationalist, and anti-communistterms. This project was articulated with and against many of his colleagues: Alfred H.Barr, Jr.; Marta Traba; Jorge Romero Brest; Juan Acha; and Fernando Syszlo. GómezSicre’s aim was to insert art from Latin American into “global” or “universal” artcircuits. But as Pini and Bernal make clear, these seemingly cosmopolitan circuitsfundamentally reproduced Euro-American political and economic dominance. As withNelson, the archival details are significant. Gómez Sicre wanted a modern art with a“Latin American accent,” as Pini and Bernal note. This turn of phrase betrays his desirefor the local, national, or indigenous to be a slight modifier, a minor exoticism forexport. In this case, art circuits and critical networks are not paths to truedemocratization but North American aspirations of hegemony.

11 Charles Quevedo, in his article “The Brazilian Cultural Mission and the Arte Nuevo

Group: Regional Dispute for Cultural Hegemony and Paraguayan ArtisticModernity,” offers a narrative about transnational cultural diplomacy that is notunilateral, even if it did emerge out of one nation’s strategy to displace the influence ofanother during the Cold War. Indeed, as Quevedeo argues, such diplomacy was acatalyst for a renewal of Paraguay’s artistic scene already underway at the impetus oflocal actors. Quevedo brings to our attention the Misión Cultural Brasileña, part of aprogram developed by the Brazilian government to exercise soft power in SouthAmerica, especially against Argentina, which was a magnet for Paraguayan elites. Themission sponsored travelling exhibitions of Brazilian art and educational and artisticexchanges between the two countries, among other activities. The program was verymuch a discursive one, including articles published in the Paraguayan press onBrazilian topics. Paraguayan artists and intellectuals were invited to visit theirneighbor to the east. Their response to Brazil’s strategic internationalism was hardly


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passive. When Brazil finally invited Paraguayan artists to the 1953 São Paulo Biennial,its second iteration, the selection process revealed intergenerational tensions.Members of the artist group Arte Nuevo (Olga Blinder, Lilí del Mónico, and José LaterzaParodi) struck out on its own regionalist course, exhibiting together. As AntonioGramsci reminds us, there is no hegemony without consent. The regional became aspace for emerging Paraguayan artists to inscribe themselves into modernity on theirown terms. Quevedo presents a case of simultaneous contact and divergence.

12 The fourth and final section of this dossier consists of a chapter on contemporary

visual practices that connects human rights, memory, and the act of embroidering.

Katia Olalde Rico’s article “Stitching the Social Fabric against Violence andOblivion: The Embroidering for Peace and Memory Initiative Revisited throughthe Lens of Caring Democracy” analyzes a collective and international initiative, in2011, to embroider handkerchiefs to commemorate the victims of the war on drugs inMexico. Centered on the notion of the ethics of care, the essay analyzes the technicalminutiae of hand embroidering and the bodily posture it entails. It explains how thecollective project involved citizens from around the world in Mexico’s humanitariancrisis. The potential of the practice of democratic “care with” is particularly poignantin the present context of the pandemic, when words such as “care,” “participation,”and “networking” take on new meaning as they find new forms of expression.

13 The articles in this dossier evidence networks that formed a geography different from

the one established by art histories based on the repetition of Euro-North Americangenealogies in other regions. Latin American abstraction toured various cities in LatinAmerica, and in each it found a different place for itself. In the sixties, it settled outsidethe region, in Paris, as kinetic, urban, and participatory art. It proposed a specificlanguage linked to the critical strategies of the neo avant-garde. Mexican UlisesCarrión’s notion of the workbooks spread from Amsterdam, where he lived, to theplaces he gave lectures and where his challenging texts made an impact. LatinAmerican institutions like MAC USP and CAyC traced intercontinental geographiesbetween clusters and practices that are generally studied separately. The culturalpolicies that were articulated between Brazil and Paraguay dismantle a classic schemethat assumes power relations to be organized outward from the United States, France,and England to the rest of the world, which is seen as peripheral or decentered. Thatsaid, cultural policies were also structured from the north: institutions such as the OAS,led by Gómez Sicre, were functional to a logic of hemispheric power that, from theUnited States, upheld abstraction—not an obviously political school—as the optimalstyle for Latin America. What these cases show is that there is not a single history ofmodern and contemporary art, but many stories. Some of the articles published herereveal that comparison—between different agendas for abstraction, say—showsparallels and simultaneities that question the centrifugal genealogies so often used toorder the history of art. The juxtaposition of these particular texts demonstrates towhat extent mail art or the artist's book as delicate and non-heroic formats andlanguages reveals specific ways of understanding the art object.

14 Finally, the cases discussed arose in the period that spans from the wake of World War

II—a period fraught with tensions as attempts were made to find terms with which tofurther the utopian and constructive projects suspended by the horror of the conflict—to the sixties and seventies with the emergence of the neo avant-gardes. Those lattermovements no longer occurred exclusively in relation to the European historical avant-


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gardes, but also to the dynamics of the Latin American avant-gardes. This dossier posesthe challenge of rethinking art history in terms of alternative networks andconceptualizations.

ENDNOTES

1. The origin of this dossier is "Grounds for Comparison: Neo-Vanguards and Latin American/U.S.

Latino Art, 1960-90,” a series of research seminars directed by the dossier’s editors between 2013

and 2015 and organized in collaboration with Carmela Jaramillo Jiménez of the Universidad de

Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Cristina Freire of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade

de São Paulo, and Inés Katzenstein of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. The contributions of

Cristina Rossi, Luiza Paladino, Paulo Silveira, Ivonne Pini, María Clara Bernal, Charles Quevedo

and Katia Olalde Rico were first presented in these seminars. The articles by Jacques Lenhaard,

and Adele Nelson, were selected pursuant to a call for papers circulated in Artelogie, March 2019.

We thank the Getty Foundation for its generous support.

2. On the methodological and historiographical problems of synchronous and comparative

analysis that must inform any revision of dominant narratives of modern and contemporary art,

see Andrea Giunta and George F. Flaherty, “Latin American Art History: An Historiographic

Turn,” Art in Translation 9, supplement 1 (2017), 121-142. On exhibitions as fields of comparison

par excellence, see Andrea Giunta and George F. Flaherty, “Las exhibiciones como campos de

comparación/Exhibitions as Fields of Comparison,” Caiana: Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura

Visual del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte 11 (2017), 94-109.

3. On the problematization of the notions of periphery and decentralization in relation to

theorizing the Latin American avant-gardes and the notion of simultaneous avant-gardes, see

Andrea Giunta, Contra el canon. El arte en un mundo sin centro, Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI, 2020.

4. George F. Flaherty, “Nuevas palabras clave: Vocabularios compartidos para redes críticas de

historia del arte,” unpublished lecture, Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Cerrillos,

Santiago, Chile, April 2019.

ABSTRACTS

Understanding originality and innovation to be proposals that contribute to the interpretation of

change and to the formation of a transnational field of art and visual culture from Latin America,

this dossier for Artelogie investigates tensions between the historical avant-gardes of the early

twentieth century, both in Latin America and Europe, and the neo avant-gardes that emerged

globally between 1960 and 1990, approximately. The relationship between these vanguards has

been fraught by theoretical and methodological difficulties posed by scholarly literatures that

have assessed these phenomena, themselves by no means homogenous or coordinated, mostly in

terms of derivation and creative exhaustion. This assessment has originated from the so-called

centers of the art world and early universalist theories of the avant-garde rather than from their

local places of art making and its circulation. These largely Eurocentric claims have foreclosed

analysis of the historical significance of key moments in postwar art and their critical and

innovative potential in comparative terms. The reappearance of collage and assemblage, and of


10

grid and monochromatic painting, to name only a few avant-garde techniques, was a self-

reflexive return, offering a critique of postwar societies. Neo avant-gardes consciously forged

formal and informal networks that linked colleagues and strategies beyond their local scenes or

nationalist histories. With this dossier we seek to investigate temporal, spatial, formal, and

thematic synchronicities that emerge from both contact and divergence among artworks, artists,

critics, curators, and other cultural agents. Through their critical comparison we expect to

produce conceptualizations of postwar art history that generate and invert rather than merely

add to dominant narratives to date.

Entendiendo la originalidad y la innovación como propuestas que contribuyen a la interpretación

del cambio y la formación de un campo transnacional, este número de Artelogie explora las

tensiones entre las vanguardias históricas de principios del siglo XX (tanto latinoamericanas

como europeas) y las neo-vanguardias que surgieron entre 1960 y 1990, aproximadamente, en el

arte latino y latinoamericano. Hasta el presente esta relación ha estado plagada de dificultades

teóricas y metodológicas planteadas por literaturas académicas que han evaluado estos

fenómenos, que de ninguna manera son homogéneos o coordinados, sobre todo en términos de

derivación y agotamiento creativo con respecto a los centros hegemónicos del mundo del arte.

Esta perspectiva ha excluido el análisis del significado histórico de los momentos clave en el arte

de la posguerra y su potencial crítico e innovador en términos comparativos. La reaparición del

collage y el assemblage, y de la pintura abstracta y monocromática, por mencionar solo algunas

técnicas vanguardistas, implicó un retorno autorreflexivo que ofreció una crítica de las

sociedades de la posguerra. Los artistas de vanguardia forjaron conscientemente redes formales e

informales que vincularon artistas y estrategias más allá de sus escenarios locales o historias

nacionales. Con el presente dossier buscamos investigar estas sincronicidades que surgen tanto

del contacto como de la divergencia. A través de su comparación crítica, esperamos producir

conceptualizaciones de la historia del arte de la posguerra que generen e inviertan las

denominaciones que ordenan la historia del arte, en lugar de simplemente agregar artistas a las

narrativas globales que dominan hasta el presente.

INDEX

Keywords: ARTE CONCRETO INVENCION, MADI, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (grav), Groupe

Position, 1ª Muestra Internacional “Forma y Espacio”, Kinetic Art, Exchange network

Palabras claves: ARTE CONCRETO INVENCION, MADI, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (grav),

Groupe Position - 1ª Muestra Internacional “Forma y Espacio”, Kinetic Art, Exchange network

AUTHORS

GEORGE F. FLAHERTY

The University of Texas at Austin

ANDREA GIUNTA

Universidad de Buenos Aires / Conicet / The University of Texas at Austin


11

Geometry and movement, LatinAmericans in the International ArtNetwork Maria Cristina Rossi

Translation : Jane Brodie

THE CONCRETE AVANT-GARDE’S MOMENT

Brief Introduction to the Heroic Period

1 The summer of 1944, remembered so often and well as the summer when Arturo. Revista

de Artes Abstractas was published, was a key moment in the disputes between dominantand emerging aesthetics in the Rio de la Plata. Pierre Bourdieu points out that:

[…] For bold strokes of innovation or revolutionary research to have some chance ofeven being conceived, it is necessary for them to exist in a potential state at theheart of the system of already realized possibles […] Moreover, they must havesome chance of being received, meaning accepted and recognized as 'reasonable', atleast by a small number of people, the same ones who would no doubt have beenable to conceive of them. (BOURDIEU, 1995: p. 349

2 Indeed, during the final years of World War II young people were intensely enthusiastic

about the advances of science and technology—largely driven by the war machine—butalso mobilized by the historical trauma left by a string of international conflicts (theharshening of fascism in various forms, the Spanish Civil War, and—of course—WorldWar II itself). That context also brought politicization; young people participated instudent organizations, political parties, and anti-fascist leagues.

3 The avant-garde vision of some of the artists who founded the magazine Arturo1 was

coupled with dissatisfaction with the art education system. In spring of 1942, TomásMaldonado, Claudio Girola, Alfredo Hlito, and Jorge Brito signed the “Manifiesto decuatro jóvenes,” in which they not only repudiated the system by which awards weregranted at the Salón Nacional, but also their teachers who had acted as jurors for that


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prize or won it themselves. The group tried to engage the student body as a whole intheir protest against the art education system, but that did not happen. Those fourartists grew more and more radical, and eventually dropped out of the academy (ROSSI,2010a). In that framework, the publication of Arturo. Revista de artes abstractas in April of1944 was key to shaking up the dominant aesthetic. While there had been an earlierdebate on abstraction in the Argentine art field around the Primera exposición de Dibujos

y Grabados Abstractos in 1936, abstraction was still little known, not well enough to giverise to opposition. Indeed, that earlier discussion was limited to an exchange ofopinions between critics Julio Rinaldini and Attilio Rossi.

4 In the mid-forties, things were different. The magazine Contrapunto was a crucial forum

of debate. It published “Defensa del Realismo” written by Communist intellectualHéctor Agosti, as well as an article critical of Agosti’s defense by Raúl Lozza. In April1945, the magazine published a survey entitled “¿Adónde va la pintura?” [Where is ArtHeaded?] that aggravated differences. In this fraught atmosphere, groups of concreteartists took a stance. They formulated their proposals in avant-garde terms andengaged in essential avant-garde practices: writing manifestos, handing out leaflets,and engaging in controversial actions to spread their ideas in, among other places, theArgentine Communist Party’s newspaper (many of these artists belonged to the Party).

5 Concrete artists from the Rio de la Plata opposed their art of “invention” to mimetic

art, holding “presentation” over representation. The Asociación Arte ConcretoInvención (AACI)2 and the MADI3 grew out of the Arturo group. Founded in 1946, both

groups embraced the idea of the cutout frame and, later, produced what they called“coplanar” works. The Madí artists not only explored the possibilities of irregularformats, but also made articulated and manipulatable paintings and sculptures whereviewers could change the work’s form.

6 The AACI was committed to surrounding people with “real things.” They held that if

people got used to relating to things directly, rather than to their “fictions,” theywould be moved to take “action”—a key mission of their communist ideology. Theseartists invented forms based on geometric shapes painted in flat colors. They made useof cutout formats and, later, began placing two-plane forms directly on the wall(though these works were articulated, they were not manipulable—each one was set ina final position once the right shape had been obtained).

7 In 1947, those groups formally splintered, though a process of expansion and

regrouping had begun earlier. The submissions to the Arte Nuevo salon that yearevidenced a growing number of artists interested in the language of abstraction. Somesalons—the Salón de Otoño organized by the Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos(SAAP) and the Salón de Nuevas Realidades of 1948, for instance—brought together novel

works by young artists. Furthermore, by 1948 the reconstruction of Europe was farenough along so that Argentine artists could once again think about visiting museumsand artists’ studios there. The first one to do so was Tomás Maldonado. He was followedby Carmelo Arden Quin, Juan Melé, and Gregorio Vardanega.4

8 This renewed international exchange got underway at the same time that the Soviet

Union was demanding realignment under the canon of realism. That certainly heatedup the debates on aesthetics within the Argentine Communist Party, and ultimately ledto the end of the tolerance that had been enjoyed by the concrete artists. While manydifferent factors contributed to the dispersion of the concrete artists and their variousgroups, this latest rupture—for those who considered it primordial to join political and


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aesthetic transformation—served not only to deepen the breaches in the already-fractured groups, but also to close the heroic period (1945-48).

Connections in the Period of Expansion

9 The first Salón de Arte Nuevo was held in late 1947. Issued on the occasion of the show

was a group declaration expressing the desire to join together the various groups ofyoung artists in a joint action geared to forging a broader movement.5 It is necessary tocapture this framework, and how the concrete vision expanded and diversified underit, to be able to understand the exchanges that ensued after the heroic period as tacticsand strategies that the artists devised to expand the modest space of circulation gainedthus far. At the same time, it is also important to recognize that that expansion alsobrought greater flexibility to the concrete avant-garde agenda.

10 Looking to Michel de Certeau, we might think of tactics as the actions of those who did

not have a base of their own (an organization, say) but who acted in the field of others;strategies, on the other hand, were developed by those with contacts capable oflegitimizing and spreading initiatives undertaken from their existing bases ofoperation (CERTEAU, 2001: pp. 391-425). This wider movement of the nineteen-fifties—a sort of “expanded field of abstract painting”6—was composed by all the previousexplorations, from concrete art and MADI to free, lyrical abstraction based on geometric

art or informalism. They all contributed to consolidating the abstract language whilealso, naturally, developing their specific strains within the abstract movement.

11 It was in the framework of that movement that José Mimó Mena—who had participated

in the 1948 Salón de Otoño, which also featured works by Melé, Villalba, Enio Iommi,Nélida Fedullo, Jorge Souza, and Vardanega—traveled to Venezuela. Interested inconcrete art, he took with him works by the artists mentioned, which would beexhibited alongside his own at the Taller Libre de Pintura (the show opened on October24, 1948). That Taller had been created at the initiative of students who, dissatisfiedwith the instruction at the Escuela de Arte Plástica y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas,attempted to break with the reigning figurative canon.7 On October 25, the day afterthe opening, Caracas-based newspaper Noticias Gráficas commented on the originality ofthe works and to what extent the artists had been able to attract public attention.8 Thecatalogue text affirmed:

[…] we have here what we have invented thus far: abstract works by José MimóMena, concrete works by Argentine artists—just a small sample of many. In themyou will not find masterful brushstrokes, perhaps only a modicum of skill. What youwill find are inventions for our times. In them, you will not find sorrow. We paintwith youth and joy. We don’t do anything dramatic—we are scared of monsters. Fora happy civilization, we make cheerful painting.9

12 Bélgica Rodríguez underscored the importance of this exhibition for young Venezuelan

artists “waiting their turn to go to Paris” (RODRÍGUEZ, 1979). Adolfo Wilson arguedthat, insofar as the first exhibition of abstract art in Venezuela, it was a crucial event(WILSON, 2007: pp. 153-57). In his memoir, Melé recounts that Mimó Mena took home awork of his authorship along with others by Hlito, Fedullo, Souza, and Del Prete. In aconversation many years later, Melé asked Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero if heknew Mimó Mena. Otero said that not only did he know him, he had worked with himon that show (MELÉ, 1999: pp. 126-30).


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13 In a recent interview with Carlos Cruz Diez, though, the historic importance of that

show is relativized. Ariel Jiménez points out that neither the testimony of the artistsinvolved nor the existing historiography places that exhibition before the one ofOtero’s Las cafeteras [Coffee Pots], and that that show was the one that really produced aradical shift in his generation. Jiménez holds that what drove the abstract turn inVenezuela was “work produced by a Venezuelan from Europe […] who, because of theprocess of historical legitimation in effect at the time, looked to Europe, just asArgentines did. Real legitimacy came from there and nowhere else” (JIMÉNEZ, 2010: pp.157-8).

14 Though it is not my intention here to propose a chain of influences, I believe that that

show in which Mena participated is a significant link. It broke into the transformationunderway in the Venezuelan art field not only through the works themselves but alsothrough the modes of action of the Rio de la Plata avant-garde, with the jubilantmessage expressed in many of the manifestos issued in the immediate wake of WorldWar II.

15 Rather than lay out a chronological sequence, I am interested in pointing out that these

networks of exchange brought together desires and expectations capable of producingnew proposals—that regardless of the reticence of centers of legitimation tocommunicate these new productions.

16 The proximity of the Mimó Mena and the Otero exhibitions suggests, following

Bourdieu, that the ruptures effected by concrete art could be received, accepted, andrecognized as “reasonable,” at least by those who conceived of those ruptures. Intaking another look at these networks, though, it appears that the advent of the“Argentine delegation” was largely the result of Mimó Mena’s personal initiative, asopposed to a joint strategy. Indeed, in Melé’s own testimony, he states that his artisticdevelopment was thrown off by the contact with Venezuela. In any case, that first tie toVenezuela was strengthened by contacts with artists in Paris, especially Madí artists.

17 The correspondence, in early 1948, between Gyula Kosice and Félix Del Marle, the

Secretary of Réalites Nouvelles, attests to how hard Gyula Kosice tried to penetrate theParisian circuit. Answering a letter from Kosice, Del Marle states:

votre groupe MADI est connu á présent à Paris car j’ai distribué, là où il fallait, vospapiers de propagande très intéressants. On s’intéresse ici beaucoup á vos efforts[…]10

18 He also says that though it was not possible to organize an exhibition of the Madí

group, it could have a gallery at annual salon held at the Palais de Beaux Arts. Thus, tenMadí artists were featured in the 3ème. Salon de Réalités Nouvelles. According to criticPierre Descargues, their works were “the foreign oddity” that made painting explode.11

19 The following year, the 1re Exposition des Artistes d’Amérique-Latine à Paris featured works

by Vardanega, Melé, and Arden Quin, as well as by Venezuelan abstract artist MateoManaure. During this period, Arden Quin established other ties in Paris and, ultimately,founded a group (its members were Peruvian artists Bresciani and Jorge Eielson, andFrench artists Desserprit, Chaloub, Guy Lerein (DE MAISTRE, 1996: pp. 43-58)). Inaddition to Manaure, Arden Quin met Luis Guevara Moreno who, in 1951, introducedhim to a larger group of Venezuelans, specifically Otero, Carlos González Bogen, RubénNuñez, Pascual Navarro, Peran Erminy, Aimée Nattistini, Dora Hersen, and NarcisoDebourg—all of them involved, to varying degrees, in the magazine Los disidentes. Out ofthose contacts, and the shared interests to which they gave rise, emerged what was


15

known as the international Madí movement, in which Núñez and Guevara alsoparticipated (WILSON, 2007: pp. 153-57).

20 Publications were privileged channels of dialogue between Latin American artists.

While there is not room here to discuss the full richness of those interchanges, I willdiscuss the specific ties that arose through those broader networks. Because he sat onthe editorial board of a number of magazines, Raúl Lozza came into contact withUruguayan and Brazilian artists. Starting in early 1946, he corresponded with HansPlatschek—a German artist who produced abstract work in Montevideo—and withSarandy Cabrera—an incisive member of the Taller Torres García. Starting in mid-1947,he and Brazilian writer Marques Rebelo exchanged letters (ROSSI, 2010b). Lozza’s“Open Letter to M. Lobato” circulated in the Curitiba-based magazine Joaquim (GARCÍA,2011: pp. 143-152).

21 The contacts between artists from Río de la Plata and Brazil were furthered by the

relationship between Juan Carlos Paz and Hans Joachim Koellreutter, a Rio de Janeiro-based avant-garde musician who composed, in 1940, the twelve-tone work Invención

(Invention). After visiting Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Koellreutter wrote to Kosice in1950. That letter evidences an earlier exchange of ideas on the possibility of composingmusic without counterpoint, harmony, theme, or imitation. Koellreutter writes thatatonal and twelve-tone music could pave the way for a musical interpretation of theMadí artists’ aesthetic principles, perhaps the first of such interpretations by a range ofother disciplines (ROSSI, 2007: pp. 11-24).12

22 The next year, Koellreutter organized an international course in Teresópolis, at which

he invited Tomás Maldonado to give a seminar in industrial design. Argentina did notmanage to send artists to the 1st São Paulo Biennial, held in 1951, but concrete workswere exhibited at the Biennial’s second edition and at the exhibition of the Grupo deArtistas Modernos de la Argentina (GAMA) held at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de

Janeiro in August 1953. That same show later traveled to the Stedelijk Museum inAmsterdam.

23 The introduction to the foreign exhibition of the group formed at the initiative of Aldo

Pellegrini and in response to his postulates on abstraction was written by RomeroBrest, who has gained prestige thanks to his participation on the jury at the 1st SãoPaulo Biennial in 1951. Significantly, this show provided the group with access to arevered international venue—indeed, Vordemberge-Gildewart gave a speech at theDutch opening—but in the context of GAMA the concrete artists had to compromise,

giving up their orthodox tenets as they shared the exhibition with artists who exploredfree abstraction.

24 Meanwhile, in 1952, concrete art made its way to Chile on the back of growing interest

in innovative architecture (CERTEAU, 2001: pp. 391-425). Both the Universidad Católicade Santiago—which had hired Josef Albers to chair its Art Program—and theUniversidad Católica de Valparaíso—where Alberto Cruz Covarrubias had startedteaching—attempted to change instruction in art and architecture. Cruz Covarrubias’scollaborators included Godofredo Iommi,13 who was also interested in tyingarchitecture and poetry. He was the nexus with the Argentine concrete artists.

25 The Primera Exposición de Arte Concreto was held in the galleries of the Hotel Miramar

(today the Sheraton) in Viña del Mar and in the Sala de Exposiciones of the Ministry of


16

Education in Santiago. The organization of consecutive exhibitions, as well as a closinglecture, attests to the determination to spread the avant-garde vision.

26 In mid-1953, thanks to the efforts of Girola, an exhibition of the Milan-based Movimento

d’Arte Concreta (MAC), which Girola had come into contact with while in Italy, was held.14

That same show also took place at the Hotel Miramar and the Ministry of Education inSantiago (for those shows, Gillo Dorfles wrote the introduction). The “study of themovement of a useless machine” chosen as the image for the cover of the catalogue tothe Chilean shows also attests to the ongoing nature of the connections with the Italian

group, since that image had been included in MAC’s 1952 bulletin, along with a textannouncing a show of paintings and useless machines by Munari.

27 These exchanges meant that Girola traveled to Valparaíso often, and he found a place

on the cultural scene there. In March 1956, he was hired by the Architecture Instituteof the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. From there, he developed new visions thatquickly led to other collective projects.

THE NEO-CONSTRUCTIVE AVANT-GARDE

Kinetic Artists at Center Stage

28 Before leaving for Paris, Julio Le Parc was active in the art students’ protests. On

October 3, 1955, the student movement occupied the offices of the three public artacademies15 to demand changes to the curriculum and that the academies be givenuniversity status. In addition to occupying the schools, the students looked for otherways to get their demands for the appointment of new administrative authorities andfaculty met—all the while trying to keep studying (Rossi: 2013, 38-46) .

29 At the beginning of the uprising, the students approached some younger professors

who were involved in modern art. Antonio Asís remembers that he and some of hisclassmates reached out to Hlito, Lidy Prati, and Vardanega to invite them to help outwith the protests. When he graduated, Asís traveled to France. In 1956, now settled inParis, he came into contact with Vasarely, Jean Tinguely, Yacoov Agam, Pol Bury,Nicolás Schöeffer, Jesús Rafael Soto, Narciso Debourg, and others.

30 Luis Tomasello arrived in Paris not long after Asís, and he began working with the

Galerie Denise René. The next to arrive, in 1958, were Vardanega and Martha Boto, andin November of that year Le Parc was awarded a fellowship that allowed him to gothere as well. Immediately after, Francisco Sobrino arrived, and then Hugo Demarco,Francisco García Miranda, Horacio García Rossi, and Sergio Moyano (ROSSI, 2012a: pp.47-67).16 In July 1960, Le Parc and those artists formed the Centre de Recherche d’Art

Visuel, which included as well European artists François Molnar, François Morellet,Nadine Servanes, Joël Stein, and Jean-Pierre Yvaral. In the group’s founding statement,its members explained that they set out to delve into their own personal researchthrough group work, thus constructing a space free of aesthetic, social, and economicpressure.

31 The Latin American artists who already formed part of the Parisian kinetic-Op Art

avant-garde struggled to get by. Soto made a living playing the guitar in cafés and, soonafter arriving in Paris, Asís joined the group of friends that met up after hisperformances. In the early nineteen-sixties, Asís began helping Soto—who was now


17

enjoying a measure of recognition—to prepare works and install exhibitions. He helpedhim with the show Bewogen Beweging held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, andwith events in Paris and New York. They would remain friends until the time of Soto’sdeath. Over the course of the sixties, the group gradually worked its way into the scene.The London-based magazine Signals, published from August 1964 and March 1966,covered this group of kinetic artists fairly closely, paying particular attention to theworks of the Venezuelans. Of the vibrating works, Signals took particular interest inAsís’s grids, though it also published reproductions of Sergio de Camargo’s reliefs, LygiaClark’s neo-concrete works, as well as the work of the visual poets and filmmakers(ROSSI, 2012b: pp. 16-28).

32 Thanks to his friendship with Arden Quin, Asís formed part of the network of artists

clustered around the journal Ailleurs. Jean Thiercelin, Volf Roïtman, Jacques Sénelier,and Arden Quin himself sat on the editorial board under the directions of HenriTronquoy.17 Visual poetry played a major role in the magazine in circulation betweensummer 1963 and winter 1966 starting with its second issue, when Julien Blaine joinedthe board.18 From the outset, Asís was in charge of the photographs and the layout ofsome of the magazine’s covers. On the one hand, then, Arden Quin and Asís workedtogether on the magazine’s covers and illustrations and, on the other, their kineticworks and photograms were featured on its pages. Rich in illustrations, the magazinealso published works by Morellet, Vardanega, Sobrino, Le Parc, and Stein.

33 Ailleurs also reproduced works conceived by Godofredo Iommi in Chile. Indeed, its first

issue—illustrated with photographs of Iommi’s phalènes—published Iommi’s “Lettre de

l’Errant” and Arden Quin’s poem “L’Aurore des Ages.” Godofredo defined his phalènes asthe actions through which the poet was able to seize the public space and engage theviewer in play. The name of these actions, in which participants would hear their ownwords illuminated by poetic language, was taken from the image of a moth that burnsin the very light that attracts it. Asís not only attended these performances, but also, onoccasion, filmed them.

34 Girola took part in this forum of exchange while he was in Paris. Back in the early

sixties, he had begun to critically rework the avant-garde agenda as his directional andflat works began to include fractured volumes. When he returned to Chile, he formedpart of the collective of Latin American and European intellectuals that took part in theTravesía de Amereida (1965), a poetic journey from Tierra del Fuego to Santa Cruz de laSierra in Bolivia. Envisioned as a means to rediscover the environment, those journeys,during which Girola produced “sculptural signs,” became a common practice at theUniversidad Católica de Valparaíso’s School of Architecture. The signs and worksproduced outdoors were ephemeral forms that questioned the relationship betweenman and his environment. Cecilia Brunson understood this proposal as a means toinnovate the avant-garde (BRUNSON, 2007: pp. 169/179).

35 The Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel ( GRAV) emphasized visual instability. Steadfastly

radical and anti-institutional, GRAV encouraged public participation. The work of itsmembers was covered by the art press—the magazine Robho featured their productionsas well as a number of controversies in which they were involved—and the group madeits way into the international circuit. Its development, though, was not devoid ofcontradiction and conflict, and GRAV split up after Le Parc won a prize at the 1966

Venice Biennale.19


18

36 After the disbandment of GRAV, Argentine artists García Rossi, Demarco, Asis, Leopoldo

Torres Agüero, and Armando Durante formed the Groupe Position in order to reactivatethe circulation of kinetic art. They stated:

In April 1971, we decided to form a group in light of both how hard the artist’sindividual struggle is in a society that marginalizes him and of how many newpossibilities arise through organic work as a team.20

37 In order to foster contacts with galleries, critics, collectors, and viewers, this new group

not only resumed a collective practice but also rekindled some of the aims upheld bythe original Centre de Recherche and GRAV. Their stated goals included organizing group

shows with the advantage of shared funding where the artists themselves woulddetermine how many works each contributed; engaging in joint research and periodiccritiques; incorporating the visual arts and architecture; creating a common fund from5% of the group members’ sales; and financing a shared studio in which there would bea permanent exhibition.

38 The origin of another attempt to enliven spaces of circulation lay in the 1ª Muestra

Internacional “Forma y Espacio,” held at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago in1962. Forma y Espacio was a group of artists from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chilegathered for the show to bolster constructive art. The group returned to avant-gardepractices when it issued the Manifiesto de los pintores Constructivos de Argentina, Chile y

Uruguay.

39 After the show, the artists in it decided to make their group permanent and planned a

next encounter in Argentina. A commission was formed to organize a “biennial.” Roleswere assigned and agreements made to hold the biennial at the Museo Nacional deBellas Artes in Buenos Aires. But, as negotiations were underway, Romero Brest wasreplaced by Samuel Oliver as the director of the museum. Oliver “was not willing tomake the Museum’s galleries available to an exhibition of painting whose organizingprinciple held not the slightest interest.”21 And so the preparations of the would-bebiennial were aborted.22

Some Closing Considerations

40 Upon reexamining the contacts in the network that joins the concrete avant-garde of

the nineteen-forties and the kinetic avant-garde of the nineteen-sixties, it is clear thatthe Río de la Plata had a special place on the map of World War II—a conflict that didnot extend to its territory. That place contributed to the early emergence of an avant-garde committed to rationality in times of ruin. This particular juncture, specifically1945 and 1946, witnessed the simultaneous emergence of concrete works in the Río dela Plata and the resurgence and circulation of European work that had been cut off bythe war.

41 The synchronicity of the Río de la Plata concrete avant-garde and the widely

recognized work of European artists cannot, in my view, be understood outside theframework of politicization in face of worldwide devastation. Traditional art histories,though, have focused more on the problems of artistic language than on the utopiansearch for hope even before reconstruction got underway. Those histories have beenmore concerned with tracing the sequences and chains of influence than withproblematizing the repetitions between the avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde, asHal Foster would put it (FOSTER, 2001: pp. 3-36).


19

42 On the one hand, the distance between Latin America and the battlefield provided the

region’s artists with a common platform23 that favored constructivism. On the other, inthe wake of the war, there was a clash between the need artists felt to interpret thenew problems of the modern world and stymied local art education. For that reason,dissatisfied young artists sought to bring down the status quo for the sake ofinnovation and exchange.

43 This map of contacts also lays bare the tension in relation to international centers of

legitimation and circulation of modern art. Argentine artists in the kinetic neo-avant-garde looked back to the constructive line, the problem of motion, and the idea ofparticipation central to the artists of the forties, and to that earlier avant-garde’s greatefforts to gain access to international art centers.

44 In that framework, Argentine artists not only radicalized their resistance to the art

education system, but also moved to Paris and dug in their heels, forming groups andassociations and joining international alliances like Nouvelle Tendance. Theyparticipated in juried shows and biennials (the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel,the São Paulo Biennial, the Bieniales Americanas de Arte, the Bienal de La Habana, theFestival de Medellín, and others.) without sacrificing their confrontational stance (theytook part in debates and discussion forums, the boycott of the São Paulo Biennial, etc.).

45 Those actions were, I argue, indebted to the Río de la Plata avant-garde and its

modalities. To that the words of Frank Popper are relevant, if only partly: “It shouldcome as no surprise that a quartet of Argentine artists brought together to opposeacademic instruction arrived in Paris in quick succession in 1958 and 1959 in search of acertain atmosphere” (Popper, 1967). While that statement recognizes the resistance toacademic instruction, it fails to see the positive aspects of the student movement. Theexperience of confrontation and group organization, but also of political engagement,gained during that period proved fundamental to Argentine artists’ contributions toGRAV in the tumultuous Parisian scene of the sixties (ROSSI, 2013; pp. 38-46).

46 The cases of Groupe Position and of Forma y Espacio evidence a return to avant-garde

practices in the framework of asymmetric policies that strained the art scene.24 Beforeproblems finding a place for themselves, those two groups looked back to avant-gardepractices to dislodge the domination of an institutionality that tended to exclude them.At stake in that approach might be, looking to Certeau, the “tricks” of the weakattempting to upset the order constructed by those who hold the power of symbolicand economic legitimation. At play as well, though, is a history of resistances thatseems condemned to eternal return.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOURDIEU, Pierre (1995), Las reglas del arte. Génesis y estructura del campo literario, Anagrama,

Barcelona. (English title: The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field)


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BRUNSON, Cecilia (2007), “Originalidad y vacío: dos preguntas escultóricas”, in Sylvia Arraigada,

Brunson C. and Browne, T, Claudio Girola. Tres momentos de arte, invención y travesía 1923/1994,

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The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century)

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(English title: Carlos Cruz-Diez in conversation with Ariel Jimenez)

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MELÉ, Juan (1999). La vanguardia del cuarenta en la Argentina. Memorias de un artista concreto, Cinco

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PLANTE, Isabel (2013). Argentinos de París. Arte y viajes culturales durante los años sesenta, Buenos

Aires, Edhasa.

POPPER, Frank (1967). “García Rossi” in Luz y movimiento (cat. exp.), Galería Rubbers, Buenos

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RODRÍGUEZ, Bélgica (1979). Arte Constructivo Venezolano 1945/65, Génesis y Desarrollo, GAN,

Caracas.

ROSSI, M. Cristina (2007). “Vanguardia concreta rioplatense. Acerca del arte concreto y la

música” in ICAA Document Project Working Papers, n.º 1, International Center for the Arts of the

Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

ROSSI, M. Cristina (2010a). “Escritos y testimonios. El caso del ‘Manifiesto de cuatro jóvenes’” in

VII Jornadas Nacionales de Investigaciones en Arte en Argentina. Los desafíos del arte en el año del

Bicentenario,” School of Fina Arts, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, 2010, CD Rom.

ROSSI, M. Cristina (2010b). Las utopías constructivas en la posguerra rioplatense, doctoral thesis,

Universidad de Buenos Aires.

ROSSI, M. Cristina (2012a). “Imágenes inestables. Tránsitos Buenos Aires-París-Buenos Aires” in

María José Herrera (ed.), Real/Virtual, Arte cinético argentino en los años sesenta, Museo Nacional de

Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires.

ROSSI, M. Cristina (2012b). “Antonio Asís en la trama parisina” in Wechsler, Diana (ed.) Antonio

Asís. Un universo vibrante, Sáenz Peña, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, pp. 16-28.

ROSSI, M. Cristina (2013). “Julio Le Parc y el Movimiento Estudiantil” in Estampa 11, nº 2,

Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, pp. 38-46,

http://revistas.uncu.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/estampa11/article/view/59

ROSSI, M. Cristina (2018) La revista Arturo en su tiempo inaugural, Fundación Espigas, Buenos Aires,

2018. Available at: http://revistasdeartelatinoamericano.org/items/show/57


21

http://revistas.uncu.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/estampa11/article/view/59

http://revistasdeartelatinoamericano.org/items/show/57

WILSON, Adolfo (2007). Consonancia. La abstracción geométrica en la Argentina y Venezuela. Años 40 y

50, Artesanogroup, Caracas.

ENDNOTES

1. NOTES

On Arturo. Revista de artes abstractas and how it emerged, see: ROSSI, 2018.

2. Bayley, Antonio Caraduje, Simón Contreras, Espinosa, Claudio Girola, Hlito, Iommi, Obdulio

Landi, Raúl Lozza, Rembrand Van Dyck Lozza, Maldonado, Alberto Molenberg, Mónaco, Oscar

Núñez, Lidy Prati, and Jorge Souza.

3. Arden Quin, Gyula Kósice, Rothfuss, Martín e Ignacio Blaszko Valdo Longo, Diyi Laañ, Steiner,

Dieudonné Costes, Raymundo Rasas Pet, Aldo Prior, Sylwan-Joffe Lemme, Esteban Eitler, Paulina

Ossona, and others.

4. The artists connected by their travels included Max Bill, Richard Lohse, CamillaGraeser, and Verena Loewensberg in Switzerland; Georges Vantongerloo in Paris; andMax Huber, Bruno Munari, Gianni Dova, Piero Dorazio, Diego Peverelli, Achille Perilli,and Gillo Dorfles in Italy.

5. The declaration held that European influences had not stymied the development of local

production but, on the contrary, constituted the “basis for entirely novel discoveries and works.”

See Arte Nuevo, Salón Kraft, October 30 to November 1, 1947.

6. We extend Rosalind Krauss’s conception to the domain of abstraction (KRAUSS, 1996: pp.

289-303).

7. Those students included Mateo Manaure, Alirio Oramas, Perán Erminy, Rubén Núñez, Juan

Liscano, Rafael, Pineda, Sergio Antillano, and Alfredo Armas Alfonzo.

8. See “Pintura Abstracta en el Taller Libre de Artes,” in Ultimas Noticias, Caracas,10-25-48.

9. Exhibition catalogue to “José Mimó Mena y el grupo de arte concreto invención deBuenos Aires en el Taller Libre de Pintura,” Caracas, 10-24-48.

10. Letter from Del Marle to G. Kosice, París, 1-3-48, photocopy of the manuscript in the

Fundación Espigas Archive.

11. In the catalogue, the following artists are named as representing Argentina, though Biedma

gave an address in Santiago, Chile; Bresler, Belmonte (sic), Laañ, Kosice, Rasas Pet, and Lorin-

Kaldor in Buenos Aires; Pereyra, Rothfuss and Uricchio in Uruguay. See P. Descargues, “Le groupe

d’avant-garde Madi” in Arts, París, 23-7-48.

12. “Open Letter to H.J. Koellreutter,” Madi Universal, nº 4, 1950, pp. 15-16.

13. Godofredo Iommi (Buenos Aires 1917–Viña del Mar 2001) was a poet and university professor,

and the uncle of Claudio Girola and Enio Iommi. He went to Chile out of his interest in Vicente

Huidobro’s creationist poetry.

14. This according to A. Cruz Cobarrubias and F. Kröpfl. In January 1953, a show of the MAC

group (formed by Allosia, Biglione, Di Salvatore. Dorfles, Mazzon, Mesciulan, Monnet, Munari,

Nigro, and Parisot) was held at the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, in April 1953 in Buenos

Aires under the title “Pintores italianos contemporáneos, grupo m.a.c. de milán,” and in August

in Chile as “Movimiento Arte Concreta.”

15. Translator’s note: The three schools were the Escuela de Bellas Artes “Manuel Belgrano,” the

Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Prilidiano Pueyrredón,” and the “Escuela Superior de Belllas

Artes “Ernesto de la Cárcova.”


22

16. Many others remained in Buenos Aires, where they also developed kinetic work—but that is

beyond the scope of this paper.

17. A French architect and designer, he was involved in the organization of the Asociación Arte

Nuevo in 1955. He participated in Travesía Amereida and, in the sixties, supervised the first

industrial design workshops at the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso’s School of Architecture.

18. Though interested in poetry, the concrete avant-garde in the Río de la Plata did not develop

concrete poetry to the extent that their counterparts in Brazil involved in Noigandres journal did.

19. On Robho, see PLANTE, 2013.

20. Grupo Posición, typewritten, Leopoldo Torres Agüero Archive.

21. See the untitled text[A raíz de la exposición internacional], typewritten, n.d. In 1964, Oliver

was an enthusiastic organizer of La inestabilidad, GRAV’s first exhibition in Argentina.

22. But the show “Abal, Beloso, Lozza -Exposição comemorativa del IV centenário” was held at

the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, from September 16 to October 17, 1965.

23. This is even the case in countries that were involved in the war, like Brazil.

24. Though not the only factor, the North American Alliance of Progress had greatimpact on the art system by fostering funding through private capital. Examplesinclude the General Electric Institute in Montevideo, the Bienales Americanas de Arte

in Córdoba, Argentina, and the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (ITDT) in Buenos Aires.

ABSTRACTS

The work of Latin American constructive and kinetic artists produced in the nineteen-sixties is

well recognized by art histories. It has been the topic of countless exhibitions and enjoyed

increasing value on the international art market. Notwithstanding, the valorization of those

contributions and their interactions still requires novel visions capable of dislodging crystalized

readings. We ask ourselves, then, in what scenes these emerging proposals took shape. How did

artists come into contact and engage in exchange? What were their guiding interests?

In this paper, I attempt to retrace some of the paths Argentine constructive artists drew in their

interest in communicating their proposals and forging artistic exchanges. In so doing, I seek to

shed light on zones neglected by art history’s traditional narratives. I attempt to observe the

convergences and divergences between the paths drawn by those artists without falling into the

notion of subalternity at play in those traditional narratives.

Les propositions des artistes latino-américains qui ont travaillé sur la ligne constructive et

cinétique dans les années 60 constituent un chapitre reconnu par les histoires de l’art. D’autant

plus que ce mouvement a été légitimé par d’innombrables expositions et par l’appréciation

croissante du marché international de l’art. Cependant, l’évaluation de ses contributions et leurs

places dans les espaces de négociation exigent, toujours, des vues qui tentent de démanteler les

lectures cristallisées. Dès lors, nous demandons: ¿quels ont été les scénarios d’émergence?,

¿comment se sont construits les contacts et les échanges entre artistes? ¿quels intérêts ont guidé

leurs travaux?

INDEX

Mots-clés: ARTE CONCRETO INVENCION – MADI - Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (grav) -

Groupe Position - 1ª Muestra Internacional “Forma y Espacio”, Art cinétique - Réseau d’échange

Keywords: ARTE CONCRETO INVENCION – MADI - Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (grav) -

Groupe Position - 1ª Muestra Internacional “Forma y Espacio”, Kinetic Art - Exchange network


23

AUTHORS

MARIA CRISTINA ROSSI

PhD in art history and theory from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), where she is

Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Latin American art. She is Professor at the

Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) at Graduate Curatorial Studies. Author of

numerous books and articles in academic journals. She is a freelance curator of exhibitions of

Latin American art.

ITHA-UBA/IIAC-UNTREF

Centro de Estudios Espigas-IIPC-UNSAM


24

Far from Good Design: SocialResponsibility and WaldemarCordeiro’s Early Theory of Form Adele Nelson

Figure 1. Waldemar Cordeiro. “Ruptura.” Correio paulistano (São Paulo), January 11, 1953. Visible inlower right: Waldemar Cordeiro’s delegate card for the Continental Congress for Culture, Santiago,1953. Cordeiro Family Archive.

1 Let’s begin with an incident of the archive: the juxtaposition of a clipping of an article

by Waldemar Cordeiro with his signed, stamped, and coffee stained delegate card forthe Continental Congress for Culture organized by Pablo Neruda in Santiago, Chile


25

(figure 1).1 Both date to first half of 1953: Cordeiro’s article “Ruptura” was published onJanuary 11, 1953 in the high-brow Sunday supplement Pensamento e Arte of the oldestdaily newspaper in São Paulo, Correio paulistano. From April 26–May 2, 1953, along witharchitect João Vilanova Artigas and poet Décio Pignatari and financed by the PartidoCommunista Brasileiro (Brazilian Communist Party, PCB), Cordeiro attended theCongress, which historian Patrick Iber has described as both one of the most importantLatin American gathering of the Soviet-backed Peace Movement and the “a last gasp ofcultural Stalinism.”2 The only combining of documents I am aware of in Cordeiro’spapers, the haphazard assemblage of evidence of political work with a product ofintellectual labor – adhered to a backing page with scotch tape, the clipping lopping offseveral paragraphs and overlaid on the red-now-pink card beneath – may beaccidental. The confluence nonetheless provokes a series of questions: what was therelationship between Cordeiro’s Communism and his artistic theory and practice – forhim and as perceived by his contemporaries? Via what interpretative paths didCordeiro connect his theory of abstraction with the social realm? Despite Cordeiro well-earned reputation as a polemical defender of abstract art, did he seek to articulate anunderstanding of abstraction that would be intelligible and perhaps even attractive tohis political allies and pro-realist aesthetic rivals?

2 Cordeiro, Italian-born, a national of both Brazil and Italy, attended a prestigious

secondary school in Rome and studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma as ateenager before emigrated to São Paulo in 1946. By the late 1940s, he was recognized asa leading young abstract artist and held a megaphone as a regular contributor to thedaily, wide-circulation newspaper Folha da manhã. Cordeiro’s political activities were adhoc and focused on the realm of culture.3 Specifically, he was at the forefront of puttingthe feet of the new private art institutions, the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo(MAM-SP) and the São Paulo Bienal principal among them, to the fire despite being abeneficiary of their attention to his work. At times, his art criticism overflowed withpolitical discourses, revealing a thinker trying to reconcile Marxism and formalist arttheory in order to assert that abstraction was connected to day-to-day, material reality.At others he foregrounded concerns about aesthetic theory and art history. By drillingdown on Cordeiro’s theory of form in little studied and well-known texts of the late1940s–early 1950s and examining his dialogues and disagreements with Brazilian criticsMário Pedrosa and Sérgio Milliet, my paper seeks to revise the overly black-and-whiteconflation of Cordeiro’s thinking with that of Max Bill and trace some of theinterpretative paths Cordeiro traversed to connect his theory of abstraction withreality.

I. Cordeiro’s Pre-Ruptura Conception of Form

3 The noun forma was on the tips of the tongues of abstraction-inclined artists and critics

postwar in Brazil’s cosmopolitan centers. Pedrosa and his 1949 thesis were key sourcesfor young artists’ concentrated attention to form and visual perception.4 Thetheorization of form in mid-century artistic circles in Rio and São Paulo neverthelesswas not limited to Pedrosa nor to interpretations of Gestalt theory. Cordeiro alsoemphasized the notion of form in his art writing, including in his first programmatictexts dedicated to abstraction from 1949: “Abstracionismo” (Abstraction) and “Ainda oabstracionismo” (Abstraction Continued or Still More Abstraction).5 There Cordeiro


26

called for an abstract art focused on formal relationships. He criticized figuration andthe notion of expressing emotions in art. He argued that “only by objectivizing anddepersonalizing form can one make it a matter of reflection, making the workcomprehensible.”6 Cordeiro’s subsequent writing, however, did not banish emotionfrom his conception of abstraction, and the vision of form he articulated hewed to amore wandering path between representation and abstraction, expression andobjectivity than his 1949 rhetoric might suggest.

4 Cordeiro’s early theory of abstraction writ large was not steeped in or explicitly framed

by Gestalt theory. While he acknowledged Bill’s interest in Gestalt, as well as topologyand relativity – and these are undoubtedly principal subjects among the new scientificknowledge that he argued oriented Ruptura practice in the 1952 manifesto – Gestaltwas not a sustained subject of inquiry in his early writing.7 His notebooks and copiousreviews of the late 1940s and early 1950s are instead historiographic in profile.Cordeiro sought to position the new art of young Brazilian artists in relationship toparticular trajectories within European modernism and to steep himself in modern arthistories, as exemplified by his transcription and translation of Michel Seuphor’s 1949Abstract Art: Its Origins, Its First Masters.8 Components of his early writing are alsocharacterized by a hit-you-over-the-head integration of Marxist terminology. In“Abstracionismo,” Cordeiro repeatedly called for a dialectical understanding of newart, arguing that abstraction represents a “resolute qualitative leap” within thestruggle of opposing artistic trends and, as scholar Vivaldo Medeiros identified, quotingan extended explanation of dialectics from Stalin’s 1938 text Dialectical and Historical

Materialism.9 In an unpublished text from c. 1948–49, he articulated how abstractionwas, to his mind, vitally “connected to the material life of our society, neverdisconnected from real life.”10

5 Following the late 1940s polemical salvos and until the Ruptura manifesto in 1952,

Cordeiro soft-pedaled the discussion of dialectics in favor of his advocacy for artist-runorganizations and for artists’ input into decision-making at the new modern artmuseums, all privately run institutions, on one hand, and detailed description andanalysis of abstract art and artists, on the other. Put differently, Cordeiro adopted atwofold strategy: he articulated an institutional argument, arguing for the crucial roleof artist-run organizations – the Salão paulista de arte moderna (established 1951)among them – in the ecosystem of a bevy of new private art entities and espousing theresponsibility of the state and art institutions to support artists.11 Concurrently,through reviews of exhibitions by emerging artists and profiles of artists, he modeled aserious analysis of abstraction, removed from the realm of “propaganda” and“returned to aesthetics,” and shined attention on the lives of artists, whom hedescribed as hard-working, self-made contributors to society.12 In the wake of his andothers’ sustained advocacy for artists to be incorporated into the decision making atthe São Paulo Bienal and Brazilian representations to the Venice Biennale and inanticipation of the IV Centenário celebration in 1954, Cordeiro viewed new modern artinstitutions, and the generous public financial support for the Bienal in particular, withskepticism. They were making possible a flourishing of the national art scene, of a scalecomparable to the Italian Renaissance he suggested at one point, but he also viewedthem as adversaries, describing the Bienal was “an authoritarian, patron organization,”uninterested in a sustained livelihood for artists and attempting to dictate the directionof Brazilian art.13 A through-line in his art writing of these years was an interest in the


27

lives of artists and the aspiration, in between the private and artist-run artorganizations, for “a return of the artist to a collective life.”14

6 Cordeiro’s definition of form, while distinct from Pedrosa’s affective form and radically

inclusive conception of modernism, did not cleave abstraction from lived experience,as can be seen in their shared admiration for Geraldo de Barros. Pedrosa describedBarros as “the most fertile researcher of his generation” and was in active dialoguewith Barros in the early 1950s.15 Cordeiro and Barros had been friends since the late1940s, and Cordeiro praised Barros’s seriousness and talent to others in bothcorrespondence and reviews.16 In his review of Barros’s 1951 exhibition at the Museu deArte de São Paulo (Museum of Art of São Paulo, MASP), Cordeiro declared that Barrosrepresented a definitive break in Brazilian art, closing one chapter and openinganother.17 Barros’s experimentation with media and “denaturalization” of mimesiscreated what Cordeiro described as “new and utterly inventive relations” and formalinterplays.18 While Cordeiro read the artist’s experimental photographs as a rejection ofstraight realism, he also evidenced a more inclusive criteria for vanguard abstractionthan his first texts suggested, lauding Barros’s othering of representation. Cordeirowrote, “Geraldo saw new horizons and turned his attention to those forms that spokemost revealingly of human potential.”19

7 Pedrosa and Cordeiro’s respective assessments of Almir Mavignier’s 1951 solo

exhibition held at MAM-SP reveal crucial differences in their theories of form. Cordeirowas baffled by such an erudite thinker as Pedrosa advocating for Mavignier, noting thathe did not think Mavignier’s production warranted a solo exhibition at MAM-SP.20 Inthe texts Pedrosa authored to accompany the exhibition, he describes the young artist’sworks as “pure formal research,” and argued that current thinking on visualperception, especially the relationships of color and form to psychology, provide animportant theoretical tool kit for experimental artists like Mavignier.21 Cordeiro, bycontrast, asserted that Mavignier’s paintings were poorly executed post-Cubistexercises polluted by self-expression and therefore to his mind unintelligible andmuddled. He did not engage Pedrosa’s view of the paintings as studies of perception.22

Cordeiro’s acerbic dismissal of Mavignier rested in part on a critique of his sources inEuropean modernism, namely the concentrated study of tonal variation of PierreBonnard and Giorgio Morandi and the biomorphism of Joan Miró, references Cordeiroconsidered passé. He also did not accept the distinction Pedrosa asserted betweenaffective and expressive and read the works as a continuation of Expressionism, anorientation Cordeiro and other abstract artists saw themselves as having shaken off bythe early 1950s. The title of Cordeiro’s review of the exhibition, “Forms That Are NotForms,” speaks not only to the function of the term “form” as a watchword in emergingabstractionist circles, but also to the divergent thinking underway among allied artistsand thinkers. Cordeiro accused Mavignier of disingenuously masking his retrogradeCubist and Expressionist practice with theoretical terminology, a condition he arguedwas widespread in the ascent of wishy-washy “abstractionism” in Brazil. His insistencethat the notion of form be tethered to intelligibility and legibility echoed Cordeiro’searlier critique of Expressionism as “forms that cannot be known.”23

8 In a subsequent text, later in 1951, Cordeiro most fully defined his pre-Ruptura

conception of form, employing the neologism forma-idéia to define the goal ofnonobjective art. Specifically, when writing about a painting by Luis Sacilotto, hewrote:


28

This is an abstract picture. The artist did not draw his impressions directly from theactual scene; rather, he drew the content from his own life experience. Hisimpressions developed within the “neo-plasticist” artistic conception, which isexpressed by the motion of colored planes that act jointly or in opposition. Heconducted a thoughtful research and, by developing the geometric theme, achievedthe ‘forma-idéia,’ which is the synthesis of scientific concepts and justifiedintuitions.24

9 The scientific concepts at stake for Cordeiro were the color and compositional theories

of artists like Mondrian synthesized with what he vaguely described as “justifiedintuitions.”25 The lived experience, and intuition, Cordeiro considered paramount – asdetailed in a series of rosy profiles on Sacilotto, Alfredo Volpi, and other artists – wasthat of the working-class and emerging middle-class skilled laborers and artisans of theexpanding metropolis.26 Cordeiro singles out Sacilotto’s training and employment as aletterer, hand-painting the minute and precise letters and numbers on the tabulatingcards for the Hollerith system, the progenitor of the IBM punch card. He argues thatSacilotto’s mastery of this system, and that of architectural drafting, allowed the artistto create “analogies and relations with things and peoples.”27 Rather thanExpressionism or realism, Sacilotto was crafting a nonobjective abstraction that drew,non-mimetically, on the urban modern experience and technical systems creating “aneasily read art” accessible to all audiences.28 Forma-idéia denotes the ideal achievedwhen an artist activates nonobjective abstraction, grounded in color and compositionaltheory of the European constructive avant-garde, with lived systems of urbanmodernity.

10 Cordeiro aligned his theory of forma-idéia with Bill’s anti-illusionism, mentioning

Concrete art and its suitability to the contemporary moment at the conclusion of thetext. But the theory of form put forward by Cordeiro differed from Bill’s in both itsterms and in the place assigned to the social realm. Bill wrote extensively about thenotion of form, and for Cordeiro, who was not in Pedrosa’s immediate circle, Bill alongwith the Italian artistic group Forma were among the sources and foils for his owntheorization of form.29 In 1951 Bill’s first text to be translated into Portuguese, “Beautyfrom Function and as Function,” originally written in 1948, appeared in Habitat: Revista

das artes no Brasil to accompany his exhibition at MASP.30 In the text, amid his call foreducational reforms oriented toward training industrial designers, Bill asserts areorientation of our understanding of the role of beauty in artistic and designprocesses. He acknowledges the responsibility of the designer to “make useful, ethicalproducts,” but argues that it is beauty, which he describes the “more universal need togive things form,” that motivates all artistic and design processes, not “socialresponsibility.”31 Bill’s 1952 publication Form: A Balance Sheet of Mid-Twentieth Century

Trends in Design is a compendium of examples of mid-century design and art modeledon the 1949 traveling exhibition Die Gute Form (Good Design). The book elucidates Bill’sinterests, which were formalist, evolutionary, and qualitative. Bill defined form “as anattempt to make inert matter embody perfect suitability for a given purpose in such away that the fusion achieves beauty.”32 Cordeiro grappled with Bill’s privileging ofbeauty – he at one point characterizes abstract and Concrete art as “beauty invented byman for man.”33 But his objection to idealism ultimately prevented him from investingin beauty as a category, and his notion of forma-idéia, in contrast, was interested in theenmeshment of creative processes in economic, social, and quotidian experience.


29

II. Ruptura Conception of Form

Figure 2: Manifesto Ruptura, 1952. Offset lithograph, 13 x 8 5/8 in. (33 x 22 cm).

11 At the opening of the Grupo Ruptura exhibition in December 1952, the artists

distributed a collectively signed manifesto (figure 2). The scholarly consensus is thatCordeiro was the document’s primary author; he was an established polemicist and thesole member of the group who also worked as an art critic and regularly publishedtexts. While I agree it is likely that Cordeiro had the largest role in the manifesto’sauthorship, recently uncovered notes in the archives of Barros as well as the annotateddraft of manifesto suggest that dialogue among at least some of the group’s membersinformed and surrounded the manifesto.34 The notes in the Barros archive sharecontent with the manifesto, most notably the enumeration of the same fundamentalvalues of visual art – space-time, movement, and matter – and attention to thedistinction from Renaissance naturalism. The notes, however, do not temper the

artists’ view of Concrete art as the leading edge of contemporary art (figure 3). Incontrast, the exhibition invitation describes Grupo Ruptura as an “abstractionistgroup,” and the manifesto calls for a future national exhibition of abstract andConcrete art. Based the notes, we can speculate that the collective discussion in thegroup was more historiographic and pedagogical in orientation than political and –through diagrams, lists, and what may be doodles or heuristics – sought to articulate amodel of historical change, the conceptual differences between Renaissancenaturalism, Cubism, and Concrete art, and the relationship between theory andpractice. The removal of a line riffing on the Communist Manifesto in the annotateddraft of manifesto – “from the ruins emerged a new conception of art” – suggests that

other members of Ruptura decided to omit an explicit allusion to Marxism (figure 4).35


30

Figure 3: Notes by Grupo Ruptura members, c. 1952. Geraldo de Barros Archive.

Figure 4: Draft of the Manifesto Ruptura, 1952. Pedro Corrêa do Lago Collection, São Paulo. Reproduced in João Bandeira’s Arte concreta paulista: Documentos (2002).

12 In the Ruptura manifesto and subsequent texts and talks, Cordeiro resurfaced his

dialectical understanding of the history of art and expanded his aesthetic theory,drawing on the thinking of German aesthetic theorist Konrad Fielder. The title the


31

group adopted, Rupture, and a series of statements in the manifesto – “there is no morecontinuity! / why? / it was a crisis / it was a renovation” singled out graphically bytheir justification and larger, bolded font – made no bones about the artists’ non-linear,non-progressive, disruptive understanding of the history.36 The disagreement aboutwhether the history of art represented a continuous linear progression or, as theRuptura manifesto stated, was defined by qualitative leaps and ruptures was a long-standing one between Cordeiro and Sérgio Milliet, an esteemed public intellectual andan art and literary critic for the most prestigious newspaper in São Paulo almost thirtyyears senior to Cordeiro. Beginning in 1950, Cordeiro had targeted Milliet, describinghis art criticism as idealist, metaphysical, and prone to defaulting to notions likeallegories that Cordeiro considered inappropriate to understanding contemporary art.37 In December 1952 in a review of the Grupo Ruptura exhibition while it remained onview, Milliet finally took Cordeiro’s bait and, in a departure from the typicallydeferential tone of his art writing, pilloried the manifesto for its claim that abstractionrepresented a break from Renaissance illusionism.38 Cordeiro’s response appeared amonth later, after the holidays, and was calculated for maximum effect to amplify thestatus of abstraction, the Ruptura group, and Cordeiro, and to most effectively counter-act Milliet and what Cordeiro perceived as the old guard: in the lengthy article Cordeirorepeatedly footnoted references to Fielder, a little discussed nineteenth centurythinker, and he placed the text not in his middle-market home newspaper, Folha da

manhã, but in the high-brow Correio paulistano Sunday supplement, where it appearedwith considerations of continental philosophy and European, U.S., and domestic art andculture.39

13 The January 1953 article expanded Cordeiro’s critique of Milliet’s “anti-historic,

metaphysical, substantially reactionary” understanding of modern history todifferentiate their respective theories of visual art.40 In so doing, Cordeiro reveals thatFiedler’s thinking underpinned several pillars of “the new” enumerated in the Rupturamanifesto, namely that art is derived from principles and art is a means of knowledgededuced from concepts and above mere opinion, as well as the larger ambition “tobestow on art a definite place within the scope of contemporary spiritual work.”41

Moreover, the statement on the verso of the manifesto, “The work of art does notcontain an idea, it is itself an idea,” is an unattributed quotation from Fielder.42 In his1953 article, Cordeiro quotes passages from a 1945 translation of the Aphorisms sectionof Fiedler’s posthumously published collected writings dismissing both beauty andtaste as appropriate criteria with which to understand art, including the passage:“Beauty is not deducible from concepts, but the value of the work of art is. The work ofart can displease and be equally valuable.”43 As in his earlier articulation of forma-idéia,Cordeiro insists that the contribution of abstract art resides not in its appeal toaesthetic pleasure, but in its derivation from rigorous and timely concepts. But if, inCordeiro’s pre-Ruptura theory of abstraction, the social entered via artists likeSacilotto’s or Barros’s non-mimetic engagement with the current technologies andmodern, urban experience, in the Ruptura manifesto and its defense by Cordeiro thesocial realm comes via claiming the seismic historical and spiritual import of artconceived as a form of knowledge.

14 In late 1953 and early 1954, Cordeiro gave several talks on Concrete art.44 The context

was a six-week course on modern and contemporary art for the Curso Internacional deFérias-Pró Arte (Pró Arte International Holiday Course) that he taught between


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Teresópolis and São Paulo from early January–late February 1954, including holdingsome of the class meetings in the galleries of the second Bienal.45 Fiedler remained amainstay in Cordeiro’s proposals in his remarks, but Cordeiro also directly respondedto the conception of modernism Pedrosa put forward in his writing of the 1940s and1950s and in his organization of the European special exhibitions at the second Bienal.Pedrosa’s Panorama of Modern Painting (1952) adopted Heinrich Wölfflin’s notion ofenduring stylistic binaries and proposed a teleological account of modern art in whichImpressionism and Cubism beget a succession of artistic movements that can bedistilled into two opposing trajectories, which Pedrosa describes as expressionist andconstructive.46 (Though, as I discuss elsewhere, Pedrosa’s interest was in the outliers tothese trajectories, commitments that informed his curatorial efforts to bring a PaulKlee special exhibition to the Bienal.47) Cordeiro articulates a broadly similar account ofmodern art history, although he tweaked Pedrosa’s terminology and emphasized thedialectical nature of art history. Rather than expressive and constructive tendencies, heproposes that the two “fundamental opposing tendencies” in modern art are the art ofexpression, on one hand, and the art of creation or art as a form of knowledge, on theother.48 He pointed to works and exhibitions at the second Bienal to illustrate thediffering approaches, including specific paintings by James Ensor, Edvard Munch, andothers and comparing Cubism and Futurism as proposals. His interpretation of theseopposing trajectories is struck through with Marxist thought. He asserted thatexpressive art limited itself to quantitative changes and remain in the “feudal phase.”“The art of creation,” on the other hand, understood art as a form of knowledge andtherefore allows “qualitative leaps.”49

15 Bill was entirely absent from these discussions, though Cordeiro’s continued dismissal

of beauty and his critique of the most prominent promoter of Concretism in theAmericas, Argentine critic Jorge Romero Brest, whom he described as an idealist criticemploying the outmoded tools of aesthetics, indicate that Cordeiro sought to supplantboth as the primary spokesperson for Concrete art. Instead Cordeiro privileged theEuropean historical avant-garde of the teens and twenties, citing Theo Van Doesburg asthe term’s originator, and integrating an analysis of Suprematism, Neo-plasticism, andConstructivism with a discussion of philosophy. Fiedler, employed previously as abludgeon against Milliet and a signifier of the greater sophistication of Cordeiro’stheory of art, was identified in these lectures as the founder of the concept of purevisibility and functioned as the model of a non-idealist, non-formalist, materialistconception of art. The German thinker insisted that art is not a secondary form ofcognition, but an independent and unique form of knowledge, grounded in its ownmethods, equal to science and philosophy, and with a singular purchase on reality. ForCordeiro, the privileging of visibility as an ultimate manifestation of reality wasrevolutionary. Only nonobjective abstract works that negated both naturalism andExpressionism, i.e. Concrete art, could forge a transformative, radical form ofcommunication with viewers. Rephrasing Fielder’s statement that art does not containan idea, but is an idea in and of itself, Cordeiro stated, “Art does not express a reality, itis a reality in itself.”50 As he mapped in a diagram among his scripts for his late 1953and early 1954 talks, Concrete geometry is understood not only as image, phenomenon,and perception – the lens we tend to apply to Brazilian Concretism – but also as a

relation which is dialectical and real, a direct construction (figure 5).51 He also placedforma, as a noun, not adjective, among the terms explicating the type of relation


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Concrete art achieves. As in his earlier formulation of forma-idéia, he viewed form astied to the social realm.

Figure 5: Waldemar Cordeiro. Diagram, c. 1953–54. Cordeiro Family Archive.

16 Returning in closing to the accident/incident of the archive with which I began: in the

scripts for one of Cordeiro 1953–54 talks, he mentions Milliet only to dismiss him as theprototypical idealist critic in the national context followed by a parenthetical note to“read the clipping.”52 So, if we imagine ourselves among the students in Cordeiro’scourse or perhaps the accrued public audience as the teacher and students movedthrough the Bienal galleries, on at least one occasion, Cordeiro pulled out his copy ofhis January 1953 “Ruptura” article and read from it. Did he slot his delegate card fromthe Continental Congress for Culture alongside the clipping before such an occasion,perhaps? While analysis of political theory and commentary on art institutions areabsent from his series of remarks in 1953–54, the red card reminds us of the politicalcommitments informing his refusal to rarefy the aesthetic tenets of Concretism and toinsist on the relations of art to history and society. Not the mystified product of adivine process, Cordeiro asserted that “the new art is only a powerful instrument ofknowledge that conquers reality as visibility, and objectively contributes to collectiveprogress.”53


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ENDNOTES

1. See Waldemar Cordeiro, “Ruptura,” Correio paulistano, January 11, 1953, Pensamento eArte supplement, 3, CD-ROM Waldemar Cordeiro (São Paulo: Analívia Cordeiro andGaleria Brito Cimino, 2010), fig. 1-43.

2. Patrick Iber, “Anti-Communist Entrepreneurs and the Origins of the Cultural ColdWar,” in De-Centering Cold War History: Local and Global Change, eds. Jadwiga Pieper-Mooney and Fabio Lanza (London: Routledge, 2012), 176.

3. According to Vivaldo Medeiros, Cordeiro had been a member of the ItalianCommunist Party and elected not to join PCB because he disagreed with the party’saesthetic program supporting social realism. Vivaldo Medeiros, “Dialética concretista:O percurso de Waldemar Cordeiro,” Revista do IEB, no. 45 (September 2007): 68. OnCordeiro’s engagement with the ideas of Antionio Gramsci, see Adrian Anagnost,“Internationalism, Brasilidade, and Politics: Waldemar Cordeiro and the Search for aUniversal Language,” Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas III (2010): 23–41.

4. Mário Pedrosa, “Da natureza afetiva da forma na obra de arte,” 1949, in MárioPedrosa, Textos escolhidos, vol. 2, Forma e percepção estética, ed. Otília Arantes (São Paulo:Edusp, 1996), 105–230. Also see Kaira Cabañas, Learning from Madness: Brazilian

Modernism and Global Contemporary Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 83–107.

5. Waldemar Cordeiro, “Abstracionismo,” Artes plásticas, no. 3 (January–February 1949):3; Waldemar Cordeiro, “Ainda o abstracionismo,” Revista dos novíssimos 1, no. 1(January–February 1949): 27–28.

6. Cordeiro, “Ainda o abstracionismo,” trans. in Mónica Amor, Theories of the Nonobject:

Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, 1944–1969 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), 80.

7. To the best of my knowledge Cordeiro’s earliest mention of Gestalt is: WaldemarCordeiro, “Ia Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna: Um consorcio das formas davisualidade estética moderna,” Folha da manhã, December 22, 1951, 6.

8. Waldemar Cordeiro, Notebook Resumo e notas “Michel Seuphor, L’art abstrait: Sesorigines, ses premiers meitres, maght [sic] Paris 1949,” n.d., Cordeiro Family Archive.

9. Cordeiro, “Abstracionismo;” Medeiros, “Dialética concretista: O percurso deWaldemar Cordeiro,” 63–86.

10. Waldemar Cordeiro, “Vaça na paisagem,” n.d., in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata,ed. Analívia Cordeiro, trans. John Norman, Marisa Shirasuna, and Izabel Burbridge (SãoPaulo: Itaú Cultural, 2014), 98–99, with modifications.

11. See, for example, Waldemar Cordeiro, “Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna,” Folha de

manhã, March 18, 1951, 9.

12. Waldemar Cordeiro, “A culpa é do abstracionismo: Bode expiatório de uma críticaque não quer criticar—devolvamos o abstracionismo à estética,” Folha da manhã,December 2, 1951, 10, in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 75–77.

13. Waldemar Cordeiro, “A volta do artista à vida coletiva,” Folha da manhã, March 9,1952, 11; Hideo Onaga, “Tumulto no Clube dos Artistas por causa do abstracionismo,”Folha da noite, November 27, 1951, 1, 3.


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14. Cordeiro, “A volta do artista à vida coletiva.”

15. Mário Pedrosa, “Exposição de artistas brasileiros,” Tribuna da imprensa, April 26–27,1952, 8.

16. The Geraldo de Barros Archive holds letters of introduction that WaldemarCordeiro wrote to Rome-based artists Enrico Prampolini, Pietro Consagra, and JosephJarema on January 13, 1951 that Barros took with him to Europe.

17. Waldemar Cordeiro, “Ponto paragrafo na pintura brasileira.” Folha da manhã,January 7, 1951, 5, in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 142–43. The title can betranslated as “Paragraph Break in Brazilian Painting.”

18. Ibid., 142.

19. Ibid.

20. Waldemar Cordeiro, “Formas que não são formas: A mostra de Almir Mavignier noMuseu de Arte Moderna,” Folha da manhã, September 26, 1951, 6.

21. Mário Pedrosa, “Almir Mavignier,” in Almir Mavignier (São Paulo: Museu de ArteModerna de São Paulo, 1951), n.p. Also see: Mário Pedrosa, “Almir Mavignier,” O estado

de São Paulo, September 7, 1951, 6.

22. Gabriela Suzana Wilder states that Cordeiro had an example of Pedrosa’s thesis, butto the best of my knowledge he did not comment on it in any texts. In contrast, anotherreviewer of Mavignier’s exhibition, possibly Sérgio Milliet, noted, critically, thatMavignier’s works attempted to illustrate concepts in Pedrosa’s study of Gestalt theory,and a copy of Pedrosa’s thesis dedicated to Milliet recently appeared at auction.Gabriela Suzana Wilder, Waldemar Cordeiro: pintor vanguardista. MA thesis, Universidadede São Paulo, 1982, 294; [Sérgio Milliet?], “Almir Mavignier,” O estado de São Paulo,September 16, 1951, 8. A 1949 copy of the thesis that Pedrosa inscribed to Sérgio Millietrecently appeared at auction, likely one of a number of examples circulating amongPedrosa’s circle. See http://www.budanoleiloeiro.com.br/peca.asp?ID=2751712

23. Cordeiro, “Ainda o abstracionismo.”

24. Waldemar Cordeiro “Arte moderna e naturalismo: Os preconceitos artísticos daimitação e do sentido – Fundamento e superacão da teoria da duplicidade do fatoartístico,” Folha da manhã, December 9, 1951, 7, in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 81,with modifications.

25. Ibid.

26. See, for example, Waldemar Cordeiro, “Os artistas na vida e na arte: Volpi, o pintorde parades que traduziu a visualidade popular,” Folha da manhã, April 20, 1952, 7, inWaldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 150–52; Waldemar Cordeiro, “Os pintores na vida e naarte: Sacilotto, poeta da economia moderna,” Folha da manhã, May 11, 1952, in Waldemar

Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 159–63.

27. Cordeiro, “Os pintores na vida e na arte: Sacilotto, poeta da economia moderna,” inWaldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 161.

28. Ibid.

29. Both Heliosa Espada and Adrian Anagnost have contributed insightful scholarshipon Cordeiro’s relation to the Italian postwar context. Anagnost, “Internationalism,Brasilidade, and Politics;” Heloisa Espada, “Waldemar Cordeiro, the Rome Art Club andits Consequences on the Ruptura Manifesto,” XIII Brazilian Studies AssociationConference, Brown University, April 2, 2015. For an important analysis of the


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circulation of Bill’s ideas in Argentina and Brazil, see María Amalia García, Abstract

Crossings: Cultural Exchange between Argentina and Brazil (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2019).

30. Max Bill, “Schönheit aus Funktion und als Funktion,” Werk 36, no. 8 (August 1949):272–74; Max Bill, “Beleza provinda da func ão e beleza como funcão,” Habitat: Revista das

Artes no Brasil, no. 2 (January–March 1951): 61–64. Bill was involved in the planning ofHochschule für Gestaltung (Institute of Design, HfG) in Ulm, Germany by 1950, and herevised his text “Beauty from Function and as Function” (originally delivered as alecture at the Swiss Werkbund in 1948) to include a mention of Ulm when it appearedin the São Paulo magazine Habitat in 1951.

31. Ibid., in Max Bill, Form, Function, Beauty = Gestalt, ed. Brett Steele, trans. PamelaJohnston (London: Architectural Association London, 2011), 32.

32. Max Bill, Form: Eine Bilanz über die Form Formentwicklung um die Mitte des XX.

Jahrhunderts, A Balance Sheet… (Basel: Verlag Karl Werner, 1952), 7.

33. Cordeiro “Arte moderna e naturalismo,” in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 79,with modification.

34. “Notas,” [1952], Geraldo de Barros Archive; “Rascunho do manifesto Ruptura,” 1952,illustrated in João Bandeira, Arte concreta paulista: Documentos (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify,2002), 47.

35. “Rascunho do manifesto Ruptura.”

36. “Manifesto Ruptura,” 1952, in Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America, eds.Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, trans. Laura Pérez (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress; Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2004), 494, with modification.

37. Waldemar Cordeiro, “Impõ-se uma revisão de valores na pintura e na esculturanacionais: A realidade presente e a critica dogmatica – do ‘modernismo entusiasta,’”Folha da manhã, February 17, 1950, 10; Waldemar Cordeiro, “A Nova alegoria:Considerações em torno da exposição de Flexor no Museu de Arte Moderna – a pintura‘crime da mala,’” Folha da manhã, April 27, 1950, 8.

38. Sérgio Milliet, “Duas exposições,” O estado de São Paulo, December 13, 1952, 6.

39. Cordeiro, “Ruptura.”

40. Ibid.

41. “Manifesto Ruptura,” 1952, in Inverted Utopias, 494.

42. “Manifesto Ruptura,” 1952. In his 1953 article “Ruptura,” Cordeiro cites the 1945Italian translation of a portion of a posthumous 1914 publication of Fielder’s writings,and the Italian publication is the likely source for the unattributed quotation in themanifesto. Konrad Fiedler, “Aphorismen,” in Schiften über Kunst, vol. 2 (Munich: R. Piper& Co., 1914); Konrad Fiedler, Aforismi sull’arte, ed. Antonio Bann, trans. RossanaRossanda (Milan: A. Minuziano, 1945), 128.

43. Cordeiro, “Ruptura;” Fiedler, Aforismi sull’arte, 78.

44. There are several undated typed manuscripts for “palastras” in Cordeiro’s papers,which I propose were delivered in late 1953 and early 1954. Two refer to works on viewat the second São Paulo Bienal, which was open from December 1953 to February 1954.Waldemar Cordeiro, “Arte concreta,” n.d., CD-ROM Waldemar Cordeiro, fig. 4-04;Waldemar Cordeiro, “Concretismo como arte de criação contraposta á arte deexpressão,” n.d., CD-ROM Waldemar Cordeiro, fig. 4-05, in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia


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exata, 206–12. There is also a script for remarks dedicated exclusively to Fiedler:Waldemar Cordeiro, “O suprematismo, o néo-plasticismo e o construtivismo, do ponto-de-vista da pura visualidade,” n.d., CD-ROM Waldemar Cordeiro, fig. 4-03, in Waldemar

Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 91–97.

45. Cordeiro’s course was held between January 10–February 1, 1953 in Teresópolis andFebruary 2–20, 1954 in São Paulo. The fifth iteration of the Curso Internacional deFérias-Pró Arte in 1953–1954 also counted Argentine artist Gyula Kosice and Brazilianpoet Décio Pignatari among its teachers. Ibiapaba, “Poesia e pintura juntas na Bienal:Waldemar Cordeiro está fazendo falta no Ibirapuera,” Correio paulistano, December 27,1953, 24; “Em Teresópolis,” Correio de manhã, January 6, 1954, 9; “Curso internacional deFérias em Teresópolis,” Correio da manhã, February 9, 1954, 11.

46. Mário Pedrosa, Panorama da pintura moderna (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educaçãoe Saúde, 1952).

47. Adele Nelson, “Radical and Inclusive: Mário Pedrosa’s Modernism,” in Mário Pedrosa:

Primary Documents, eds. Glória Ferreira and Paulo Herkenhoff (New York: The Museumof Modern Art; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 35–43.

48. Cordeiro, “Concretismo como arte de criação contraposta á arte de expressão,” inWaldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 2016. Also see Cordeiro, “Arte concreta.”

49. Cordeiro, “Arte concreta,” n.p.

50. Cordeiro, “Concretismo como arte de criação contraposta á arte de expressão,” inWaldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 208.

51. Waldemar Cordeiro, “O geométrico, o informal,” CD-ROM Waldemar Cordeiro, fig.4-04c, in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata, 100–101.

52. Cordeiro, “Concretismo como arte de criação contraposta á arte de expressão.” Thisparenthetical statement is omitted the translation in Waldemar Cordeiro: Fantasia exata,206–12.

53. Ibid., 212, with modification.

ABSTRACTS

By examining Waldemar Cordeiro’s theory of form in little studied and well-known texts,

including a newly uncovered series of talks, of the late 1940s–early 1950s, this article revises the

conflation of Cordeiro’s thinking, and the aims of Brazilian Concretism, with Max Bill’s proposals

and reveals that Cordeiro closely linked his visions of abstraction and Concrete art to social

responsibility. It also sheds new light on the motivations and context for Cordeiro’s deployment

of Konrad Fielder’s ideas and his dialogues and disagreements with Mário Pedrosa and Sérgio

Milliet.

INDEX

Keywords: Brazilian art, Waldemar Cordeiro, Max Bill, Mário Pedrosa, abstraction, Concrete art


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AUTHOR

ADELE NELSON

Assistant Professor of Art History and Associate Director of the Center for Latin American Visual

Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.


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Mário Pedrosa, un parcoursmoderne 1900-1981Jacques Leenhardt

Introduction

1 Né avec le siècle dans le Nordeste brésilien Mário Pedrosa appartient à une famille de

notables cultivés, son père ayant été député et sénateur de l’Etat de Paraiba. Ils’éloignera rapidement de ce milieu dont la culture ne cessera cependant del’accompagner au long d’une existence marquée par l’itinérance et l’engagementpolitique.

2 En 1914, il est envoyé étudier en Suisse mais la première guerre mondiale le contraint à

revenir au Brésil où, une fois terminées ses études secondaires, il achève ses études dedroit en 1923. Dès l’année suivante, il entreprend une activité de journalisme politiquedans O Diário da Noite de São Paulo, débordant parfois vers la critique littéraire. Militantcommuniste, Mário Pedrosa devient responsable du Secours Rouge. Le Parti l’envoie seformer en URSS mais la maladie le retient à Berlin où il reste finalement le temps d’uneformation philosophique, sociologique et esthétique. 1928 le retrouve à Paris où il se lieavec plusieurs figures du groupe surréaliste, en particulier Benjamin Péret quideviendra bientôt son beau-frère et Pierre Naville, qui facilitera son rapprochementavec l’opposition trotskyste. Exclu du PCB brésilien en 1929, Mário Pedrosa seramembre du Comité exécutif de la IVe Internationale, qu’il représentera à New-York en1938 sous le pseudonyme de Lebrun. Ce séjour new-yorkais lui donnera l’occasion detravailler au MOMA. Après être rentré au Brésil pendant la dictature Vargas et avoirégalement rompu avec le bolchévisme, il est fait prisonnier et exilé aux Etats-Unis où ilécrit son premier grand essai sur le peintre et fresquiste Cândido Portinari.

3 Ce bref résumé biographique permet de souligner l’importance que revêt le

déracinement constant, social, géographique et intellectuel, dans la construction d’uneconscience radicalement moderne chez Mário Pedrosa. L’exil signifie ici avant tout unedistance prise à l’égard des conforts intellectuels et matériels, une façon parfoisdouloureuse d’aiguiser sa vision critique fondée sur une lecture marxienne du monde.


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4 Après la guerre et la fin de l’Estado Novo, sans jamais s’éloigner cependant de l’arène

politique, Mário Pedrosa se consacre de plus en plus à ses recherches et interventionsdans le doáaine artistique. Il travaille comme critique dans plusieurs journaux (Correo

da Manha (1945-1951), Estado de São Paulo (1951-1956), Jornal do Brasil (1957-1961), entreautres, et publie un essai fondateur sur l’œuvre de Alexandre Calder (1948). C’estl’époque où il présente sa thèse de doctorat : Da Natureza Afetiva da Forma na Obra de Arte,

1949 (De la nature affective de la forme dans l’œuvre d’art) où s’exprime une manière dephénoménologie de la perception esthétique qu’il a élaborée à partir des théories de laGestalt de Wertheimer et Koffka auxquelles il s’était familiarisé durant ses annéesberlinoises. 1Mais en même temps qu’il développe une réflexion théorique sur lasensibilité aux foráes, Mário Pedrosa accompagne un groupe de jeunes artistes qui seréunit autour de l’Hospital Psiquiátrico do Engenho de Dentro 2localisé dans la banlieue deRio de Janeiro. C’est une institution dirigée à l’époque par Nise da Silveira, unepsychiatre jungienne qui a plus confiance dans les thérapies comportementales quedans la camisole chimique dans laquelle on enferme en général les schizophrènesaccueillis dans l’hôpital qu’elle dirige. Dans ce climat intellectuellement très ouvert, unjeune artiste, Almir Mavignier, responsable de la « thérapie occupationnelle », a monté,en accord avec la directrice, un atelier de peinture destiné aux patients qu’il aide à sefamiliariser avec les objets de la peinture : le tableau, les couleurs, les brosses. L’activitépicturale des malades se développe si bien que déjà Mavignier y voit des « artistes »fascinants par leur manière de composer leurs « tableaux » en dehors de toutes les loisdu genre. C’est cette activité « sauvage » qui va séduire et interroger d’autres jeunesartistes, comme Yvan Serpa et Abraham Palatnik, mais aussi Mário Pedrosa qui y trouveun écho à ses préoccupations pour la forme telles que la psychologie de la Gestalt lesavait aiguisées en lui.

5 Glaucia Villas Bôas a bien montré 3comment le travail intellectuel et le désir

d’intervention dans le champ artistique, qui caractérisent Mário Pedrosa, se conjuguentdans cette expérience où les cadres traditionnels de la sensibilité sont remis en cause.Si on demande, ajoute-t-elle, les causes du surgissement de l’art concret à Rio dans lesannées 40, le rôle essentiel que joua l’Ateliê do Engenho de Dentro, l’apprentissage dont ilfut le théâtre, les échanges intellectuels et sensibles qui s’y déroulèrent, apparaissent àl’évidence comme la condition d’émergence du programme concrétiste. Mário Pedrosase révèle donc comme l’un des animateurs du virage concrétiste des artistes brésilien,qu’il soutiendra tout au long de leur développement.

6 Nise da Silveira le nota à l’époque : « les critiques d’art furent plus attentifs aux

productions plastiques des schizophrènes que les psychiatres brésiliens ». 4Chez MárioPedrosa l’intérêt était vif pour ce qu’on appelait alors « l’art des fous », ou ce qu’onappellera plus tard « l’art brut », pour ces productions qui se développaient en dehorsdu cadre institutionnel de l’art. Hans Prinzhorn, un médecin suisse, avait été un despremiers collectionneurs et analystes de ces productions jugées marginales. Pour MárioPedrosa au contraire, ces œuvres ouvraient directement une fenêtre sur les fondementsanthropologiques, – et pas seulement culturels, – de l’expression plastique. Il avaitrencontré cette même curiosité pour l’exercice incontrôlé de la créativité chez AndréBreton, une expression antérieure à toute aliénation que le théoricien du surréalismeavait formulée de façon concise : « l’œil existe à l’état sauvage ». C’était la phraseemblématique de cette préoccupation sur laquelle s’ouvrait Le surréalisme et la peinture,(1928).


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7 L’effort de Mario Pedrosa pour donner un statut à l’art concret, puis néo-concret, fait

partie d’une vision plus large qui englobe une volonté militante internationalistes’opposant au repli nationaliste et folkloriste qui avait marqué certains moments dumodernisme brésilien des années 30. Après guerre, cette bataille va déboucher sur un« projet constructif brésilien » où se manifeste la volonté de donner une placesingulière au Brésil dans le concert des nations. Avec les années 50 et la présidence deJucelino Kubitchek, cette dynamique trouvera un élan proprement national.

8 Il faut noter que le parti pris de Pedrosa en faveur du courant concrétiste le mettait en

porte à faux avec la plus grande partie des forces de gauche de l’époque, notamment leparti communiste, qui plaidait pour un art « réaliste ». Le critique avait bien connucette dimension culturelle du mouvement révolutionnaire. Il avait lui-même, en 1932,développé une analyse des gravures de l’artiste socialiste allemande Käthe Kollwitz, quisous sa plume s’inscrivait dans le droit fil du matérialisme historique. Il montraitcomment le processus de rationalisation industrielle, abandonné à la logique aveugledu capital, avait conduit à une autonomie presque totale de la machine à l’égard desêtres humains, conduisant à une forme moderne d’aliénation. Les figures dessinées parKäthe Kollwitz lui apparaissent dès lors comme un antidote et une protestation.

9 L’inscription de ce texte dans le contexte militant de l’époque ne fait pas de doute. Il ne

faudrait toutefois pas oublier que, à l’instar de Trotski, Mário Pedrosa ne pense pas queseul le prolétariat et l’art prolétarien sont appelés à contribuer à la révolution en cours.D’autres forces sont également au travail dans cet avant-guerre bouleversé et le rôle ducritique d’art consiste à leur donner de la visibilité. Le critique combat alors surplusieurs fronts : contre certains modernistes brésiliens, tentés par un retour auxtraditions nationales, voire au folklore, mais aussi contre le diktat stalinien du réalismesocialiste, réducteur et rétrograde. Il mène un combat difficile dans ce contexte enfaveur des formes pures du concrétisme et de son esprit constructiviste. C’est sur elleségalement qu’il s’appuiera dans un autre combat qu’il sera amené à livrer contre lesubjectivisme de l’abstraction informelle et lyrique. Faisant une grande confiance à lasensibilité, Mário Pedrosa construit ses batailles sur les œuvres des artistes plutôt quesur des a priori théoriques. Ses argumentations sont des descriptions d’œuvres, toujoursriches de ce savoir empirique que lui a donné la fréquentation de la penséephénoménologique.

10 Au sortir de la guerre, Cândido Portinari est devenu le peintre emblématique de l’art

engagé, la figure de proue de la gauche révolutionnaire brésilienne. Passé maître dansl’art de la fresque, il s’inscrit dans la continuité symbolique et politique des muralistesmexicains. Toujours méfiant à l’égard de la figuration, plus encore lorsqu’elle se révèledidactique, Mário Pedrosa apprécie cependant les fresques que Portinari a produites en1942 à Washington. Il y voit l’expression d’une liberté d’allure et même d’un « anti-naturalisme » qui ne saurait lui déplaire. Il est cependant convaincu qu’il faut tournerla page de l’art figuratif et c’est ainsi qu’il va se trouver confronté à nouveau à l’œuvrede Portinari, au moment de devoir évaluer la fresque que l’artiste a dédiée aumouvement de l’Inconfidença (1949).

11 Développant une analyse serrée du panneau représentant le héros Tiradentes, Pedrosa

néglige l’anecdote figurative, toute chargée de nobles sentiments, pour se concentrerexclusivement sur les éléments plastiques de l’œuvre. Il met ainsi en évidence, et enprocès, l’inadaptation des moyens picturaux à la dimension monumentale du panneau(17,70 m. x 3,09 m.). Il s’en prend à la conception même de cette peinture murale,


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héroïque et historique qui dénote une vision du monde dépassée et sans pertinencepour l’époque actuelle. Il souligne que l’omniprésence des détails, si caractéristique dela figuration réaliste entre en contradiction avec le gigantisme de l’œuvre. De ce fait, lespectateur ne parvient pas à saisir l’ensemble de la scène d’un seul coup d’œil et doncen manque la signification. Au terme de son analyse, Mário Pedrosa peut conclure : lestransformations subies par le monde exigent un art nouveau, plus universel. Après leséisme du cubisme, l’abstraction constructive lui semble la seule voie permettant dedépasser une figuration compromise avec la réalité de l’exploitation dans le mondecapitaliste contemporain. Un tel argumentaire constitue évidemment une critiquedévastatrice du réalisme socialiste défendu alors par le Parti communiste brésilien.

12 L’art doit accompagner le processus social, mais cet accompagnement ne saurait se

limiter à une simple illustration qui serait inévitablement secondaire et inessentielle.S’il doit jouer un rôle fondamental, l’art devra contribuer de manière spécifique à laconstruction du processus social. Ce sera alors par ses caractéristiques cognitives, parsa manière nouvelle de faire percevoir la réalité, qu’il démontrera sa capacité àtransformer, et non à docilement reproduire, cette réalité. 5

13 La critique d’art de Mário Pedrosa est une discipline de la pensée qui s’attache aux

qualités techniques et objectives de la fabrication. L’artiste est à la fois, penseur etartisan, toujours aux prises avec la matérialité de ses instruments et de ses supports. Ladéfense de l’œuvre de Alberto Volpi par Pedrosa en donne un bon exemple. Beaucoupde critiques de l’époque jugeaient l’œuvre de Volpi bien inférieure aux maîtres dumoment qu’étaient Portinari, Guignard, Di Cavalcanti ou Segall. Sans doute paraissait-elle à leurs yeux trop simple. Or, pour Mário Pedrosa, c’est justement dans sa capacité àréaliser la synthèse des formes géométriques simples de la peinture moderne et dulyrisme des façades des maisons populaires, que la peinture de Volpi constitue unlangage pictural d’actualité qu’il ne craint pas d’appeler « un événement artistique depremier ordre ». On voit dans cette appréciation du critique, le souci de libérer lapeinture brésilienne de son écrasante dépendance par rapport à l’art européen, etfrançais en particulier. La simplicité de Volpi résonne pour lui comme un crid’indépendance en même temps que les formes simples qu’elle met en œuvre renvoientà la source pure de l’artisanat populaire. Pedrosa trouvait ainsi le moyen, à travers lapeinture de Volpi, de magnifier une source architecturale populaire et brésilienne sanstomber dans le folklore et les relents de nationalisme si fréquents à l’époque. C’étaitaussi une manière de rendre caduques les efforts post-cubistes de nombreux artistesqu’il avait en horreur.

Brasilia et le Congrès AICA 1959

14 Il faut bien voir que la liberté de pensée Mário Pedrosa repose sur le constat que la

culture brésilienne a été dévoyée par les importations constantes qu’elle a faites enpuisant dans le bagage de l’hégémonie européenne et étasunienne. Il combat cettedépendance qui empêche que la réalité nationale brésilienne trouve ses solutionsexpressives propres. Il en est convaincu : l’heure est à décolonisation non seulement dupays économique mais aussi de sa culture. À l’instar des avant-gardes européennes quivoulaient brûler les musées, le Brésil doit affirmer sa propre modernité en rejetant, oudu moins relativisant, les formes artistiques prises par la modernité des « autres » car


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ces influences, nées dans la logique de situations différentes de celle du Brésil, finissentpar créer une dépendance alors même qu’on croit se libérer en les accueillant.

15 Ainsi le rejet du réalisme, ou plutôt l’abandon du « préjugé réaliste », tient chez Mário

Pedrosa à la conviction qu’il s’agit d’une tradition européenne, dont par exemple l’artdes indiens autochtones est totalement indemne. S’affirmer comme artiste brésilienimplique donc de se libérer de ce « préjugé réaliste ». Ce n’est sans doute pas un hasardsi cette attitude se développe chez lui de manière résolue dans les années d’aprèsguerre, alors qu’il est revenu au Brésil après un exil de dix ans tout chargé d’uneconnaissance du monde d’une ampleur peu fréquente à l’époque.6 Celle-ci constitue lecadre intellectuel, idéologique et politique qui permet de comprendre l’organisationdans laquelle il se lance du Congrès International extraordinaire de l’AICA en 1959 àBrasilia.

16 Avec l’aide de Oscar Niemeyer, principal architecte de la nouvelle capitale Brasilia,

Mario Pedrosa convoque la crème de la critique internationale dans le domaine del’architecture, de l’urbanisme et des arts. Il s’agit de lui faire découvrir la réalisation encours de la nouvelle capitale du Brésil. L’affaire a une dimension si évidemmentpolitique que le Congrès est inauguré par le Président de la République, JucelinoKubitschek, devant un parterre qui rassemble, parmi une centaine d’invités, WillGrohman, Eero Saarinen, John Entenza, Jean Leymarie, Stamos Papadaki, André Bloch,Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, André Wogenscky, William Holford, Bruno Alfieri,Giulio Carlo Argan, Meyer Schapiro, Gillo Dorfles, Alberto Sartoris et Bruno Zevi. 7Lethème, Ville nouvelle-synthèse des arts, était clairement destiné à faire reconnaître parl’intelligentsia internationale, l’identité artistique nouvelle du Brésil. Les trois jourspassés à Brasilia dans la poussière du chantier furent suivis par trois jours à São Paulopour l’inauguration de la Biennale et autant à Rio de Janeiro, programme quipermettait de joindre à l’invention architecturale et urbanistique de la capitale à venirla production artistique des artistes brésiliens les plus modernes – notammentconcrétistes et néo-concrétistes – mais également la production d’art populaire duNordeste présentée par l’architecte Lina Bo Bardi dans son exposition Bahia no

Ibirapuera.

17 La problématique Ville nouvelle-synthèse des arts s’inscrit dans un dispositif général dont

l’origine pourrait bien être le texte séminal de Mário Pedrosa sur Calder (1944), rédigéalors qu’il résidait encore à New-York. L’œuvre de Calder y apparaît comme la pierre detouche permettant de comprendre l’abandon de la fascination réaliste et son originedans la modernité industrielle, celle que célébrait la Tour Eiffel (1914) de Delaunay. Endélaissant le corps humain et sa symétrie, auquel sont attachées les problématiquesacadémiques de la sculpture – le volume, la surface, le modelé – Calder ne conserve,note Mário Pedrosa, que les possibilités du matériau. C’est en privilégiant la dynamiquedu déséquilibre qu’il est vraiment moderne. Plutôt qu’à l’homme de Vitruve,l’esthétique de Calder renvoie à l’arbre, à son déséquilibre entre un tronc massif etstable et son feuillage sensible au vent et capteur d’incertitudes changeantes. Il fautnoter toutefois que cette modernité n’est pas celle de la technologie : Calder est peut-être celui qui fait l’usage le moins technique de la technique elle-même. Pour cetteraison Pedrosa peut le tirer vers un univers symbolique où l’homo faber bascule vers lespossibilités infinies – et infiniment surprenantes – de ce qu’offre la nature. Dans cettemétaphore de l’arbre, Pedrosa retrouve ce qu’il admirait déjà chez Cézanne, une forte


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construction contrebalancée par le pouvoir, fragile mais insistant, de la « petitesensation », selon l’expression du peintre.

18 Calder prolonge cette lignée qui s’ouvre sur la transformation, voir la révolution, de la

sensibilité. En construisant ses machines qui ne servent à rien, l’artiste dépassel’héritage fonctionnel du machinisme : il offre à la modernité de nouveaux paradigmesde pensée et de sensation. Or c’est à travers l’exploration de ces fonctions cognitives,dont la Gestalt étudie le champ, que l’art remplit pleinement sa fonction sociale detransformation de la perception et de la sensibilité. L’esthétique assume donc unefonction éthique d’innovation sociale dont Brasilia fournit un des exemples les plusimposants.

19 Mário Pedrosa n’est pas aveugle sur les contradictions qui se manifestent dans le projet

de cette capitale implantée artificiellement au centre géographique du pays. Il sait queles cultures organiques de l’Europe historique se sont faites dans des cités reliées entreelles par des routes et des voies de chemin de fer. Il n’ignore pas non plus que fairereposer sur la seule connexion aérienne le lien avec le reste du pays qu’elle est censéeorganiser est, pour une capitale, un pari très audacieux. Mais, et en cela il est cohérent,il rappelle que le Brésil n’est pas né naturellement, que la modernité lui a été enquelque sorte imposée dès sa naissance par la dépendance dans laquelle il a grandi.Aussi, de même que le Brésil a été jeté dans la modernité artificielle par la colonisation,de même Brasilia sera une civilisation oasis. Tel est son destin et dans cette situationdifficile, il faut faire le pari radical de la modernité.

20 En attendant, le projet de modernisation du Brésil se trouve politiquement transformé

par le coup d’Etat du 31 mars 1964. Le renversement de la IIe République était préparéde longue date par les militaires brésiliens, avec à leur tête le général Castelo Branco,proche de l’armée nord-américaine et bénéficiant de l’appui de la CIA. Le Président JoãoGoulart est renversé au terme d’une longue période d’instabilité sociale,d’hyperinflation et de montée d’un anticommunisme violent prenant prétexte del’alignement de Cuba sur l’Union soviétique.

Mario Pedrosa et le Musée de la Solidarité SalvadorAllende (MSSA)

21 Invité par Miguel Rojas-Mix à participer aux travaux de l’Institut d’Histoire de l’art

latino-américain de l’Université du Chili alors qu’il était exilé dans ce pays par ladictature brésilienne, Pedrosa met en œuvre, avec le soutien du Président SalvadorAllende, le montage d’un Musée de la solidarité. Il a alors 71 ans.

22 Il semble qu’il y ait eu au moins deux projets de Musée, celui conçu par Miguel Rojas-

Mix, dans une perspective continentale latino-américaine et anti-US et celui dePedrosa, plus international et plus expérimental. Fortement politiques l’un commel’autre, les deux concepts relèvent cependant d’ambitions différentes. Rojas-Mix,comme la plupart des intellectuels des pays hispanophones, prend l’identitécontinentale en train de s’affirmer comme horizon, dont Cuba est à l’époque lecatalyseur. Appartenant à un pays qui s’est toujours pensé lui-même comme uncontinent, et peu enclin à se fondre dans le continent latino-américain, Mário Pedrosaimagine le futur musée comme le résultat de la convergence de la modernité de l’art etde la modernité du projet politique de Salvador Allende.


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23 La réalisation du projet qui sera mis en œuvre reposait sur la réputation et le réseau

international de Mário Pedrosa, notamment aux Etats-Unis, ainsi que sur l’espoir quefaisait naître la victoire électorale de l’Unité populaire chilienne à l’automne 1970.Toutes les ambassades du Chili allaient d’ailleurs servir d’antichambre du futur musée.À Santiago, Pedrosa travaille avec Daisy Peccinini, une jeune historienne de l’artbrésilienne dont le témoignage montre comment Pedrosa entendait donner une leçonde démocratie à travers ce projet muséal d’un genre nouveau. Ce serait en effet unmusée sans argent, sans patrons, sans mécènes, sans chapelle esthétique, fait par lesseuls artistes : une utopie de musée.

24 Un Comité International de Solidarité Artistique avec le Chili (CISAC) voit le jour à

Santiago et engage la collecte des œuvres en vue de leur acheminement. En quelquesmois, quelque 600 œuvres sont « données », sinon physiquement réunies. Parmi lesdonateurs on note beaucoup d’artistes majeurs du réseau de Pedrosa : Miro, Matta,Calder, Torres Garcia, Ligia Clark, José Luiz Cuevas, Robert Motherwell, Arnulf Rainer ,Frank Stella, Frans Krajcberg, Ed Rusha ….. etc., etc.

25 On fit coïncider l’inauguration du Musée avec une réunion politique internationale de

telle sorte que des délégués de 40 pays y assistèrent, donnant un éclat et unerépercussion inouïe à ce projet hors norme. Ce jour-là (17 mai 1972), Mário Pedrosa lutune longue intervention, debout devant la grande toile de Miro, insistant sur unephrase qui est restée comme la marque personnelle de son engagement : « L’art estvraiment l’exercice expérimental de la liberté ». Ce leitmotiv résume à la fois sonenthousiasme devant la générosité sans arrières pensées des artistes donateurs commeaussi son désir de faire échapper le Musée de la Solidarité Salvador Allende aux limitationsesthétiques qu’impose le réalisme politiquement engagé. À cet égard, les contacts qu’ila eus durant l’été 1972 avec Harald Szeemann et avec la Dokumenta 5 témoignent de savolonté d’impliquer dans le MSSA les secteurs les plus prospectifs de l’art, sansexclusive aucune.

26 Mais l’Histoire en décida autrement. En septembre 1973, le coup d’état militaire du

général Augusto Pinochet assassine Salvador Allende et renverse l’Unité populaire aupouvoir. Mário Pedrosa se réfugie à l’Ambassade du Mexique d’où il charge DaisyPeccinini d’organiser l’exfiltration des documents du Musée. Il poursuivra ensuite lalutte depuis le Mexique, transformant le Musée de la Solidarité Salvador Allende en un« musée itinérant, symbole de résistance ». Prenant exemple sur l’exil emblématique duGuernica de Picasso, ce musée de la générosité à l’égard du peuple chilien ne devraretourner dans le pays auquel il est destiné qu’avec le retour de la démocratie. De fait,une nouvelle histoire, itinérante et internationale, commençait pour ce musée singulierdont Mario Pedrosa, détenteur désormais d’un passeport de réfugié politique français,poursuivra la constitution et l’enrichissement en favorisant son développement auMexique, en Espagne, en Suède, en Pologne, à Cuba et en France. C’est alors que je l’aiconnu.

27 De nombreux Chiliens avaient émigré en cet automne 1973. Artistes, critiques,

directeurs de musée, ils étaient nombreux à s’être retrouvés à Paris où se forme alorsun noyau de soutien aux chiliens exilés et une équipe de bénévoles dénonçant labrutalité de la nouvelle dictature dans un livre : Le livre noir de la répression au Chili quiparaîtra quelques mois plus tard.

28 C’est dans ce cadre que je commence à collaborer à l’automne 1973, d’abord avec le

groupe du Livre noir autour de Julio Cortázar, puis avec le Comité du Musée en exil qui


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se avec forme autour de Miria Contreras, qui avait été secrétaire de Allende, CarmenWaugh et des trois représentants des partis de l’Unité populaire, qui avait soutenuAllende : José Balmes pour le PC, Miguel Rojas-Mix pour la démocratie chrétienne etPedro Miras pour le parti socialiste.

29 Mário Pedrosa, continue à suivre le développement du Musée mais l’ampleur prise par

le projet du fait du coup d’état a en quelque manière dissout le projet originel qu’ilavait porté. Celui-ci était davantage lié à une politique de la transformation descatégories mentales grâce à la diffusion des œuvres d’art qu’à une politique de soutienaux mouvements politiques de la résistance contre la dictature.

30 La signification donnée au mot « résistance » s’avère déterminante, soit qu’on la

conçoive, comme Pedrosa lui-même, d’abord dans le domaine artistique et par rapportà ses implications dans la transformation socio-politique, soit qu’on y voie uninstrument de lutte devant servir immédiatement la cause politique. C’est ainsi que lesoptions des uns et des autres divergèrent à diverses reprises lorsque se posa parexemple la question de savoir si le Musée pouvait – ou éventuellement même devait –vendre certaines œuvres d’art . Les uns considéraient que le fait que les œuvres avaientété données pour la « résistance » justifiait et légitimait qu’on les vende pour soutenirles mouvements populaires de résistance à la dictature, d’autres pensaient que c’était lemusée qui était un acte de résistance. Ainsi passèrent les années jusqu’à la chute de ladictature et la recréation-création du Musée International de la Solidarité SalvadorAllende à Santiago.

Conclusion

31 L’ordre d’incarcération de Mário Pedrosa au Brésil ayant été annulé en 1977, le critique

d’art retourna dans son pays pour y réaliser divers projets comme l’expositionconsacrée à l’art indigène Alegria de viver, alegria de criar, qui devait être accueillie auMusée d’Art Moderne de Rio de Janeiro. Toutefois le MAM brûla accidentellement etl’exposition n’eut pas lieu. Cette occasion manquée permit à Mário Pedrosa de proposerune nouvelle conception, voire une nouvelle stratégie muséale ambitieuse, embrassantle MAM dans un dispositif plus large où il aurait été articulé à quatre autres structuresautonomes reliées par un projet unique : le Musée de l’Indien, le Musée de l’art vierge(derrière ce titre il faut voir le musée de l’inconscient auquel s’était attachée Nise daSilveira), le Musée du Noir et le Musée des arts populaires.

32 Ce projet n’eut bien évidemment pas de suite institutionnelle. Il est cependant

absolument emblématique de la réflexion que mène Mário Pedrosa depuis les années40 : retrouver les racines anthropologiques de l’art, sans confinement artificiel, donnertout son espace à cette spontanéité humaine qui s’exprime dans différentes formesd’art depuis quarante millénaires tout en renouvelant constamment ses formes. Oncomprend à quel point ce programme repose sur le rôle cardinal que joue la théorie dela Gestalt dans l’esprit de Mário Pedrosa en tant que fondement d’une psychologieglobale de la perception visuelle. L’articulation des cinq musées dans un projet uniqueconstitue, pour Mário Pedrosa, le compromis qu’il est prêt à passer avec la divisioninstitutionnelle des champs et des disciplines. Ce programme qui implique uneredéfinition de la notion même de musée repose sur le fait que toute perceptionvisuelle met en jeu des formes et des modes de vision – qu’on pourrait appelerartistiques – de telle sorte qu’il est nécessaire de conclure que toute pensée rationnelle


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est en même temps intuition, que toute perception est en même temps pensée et quetoute observation est en même temps invention.

33 En proposant d’articuler ces diverses institutions dans un programme global, Mário

Pedrosa visait à décloisonner les champs épistémiques, à élargir le concept et leterritoire de l’art, à connecter l’art dit primitif aux autres formes, sages ou folles,d’expression de la sensibilité, à mettre le spectateur dans une position active au sein dudispositif. Que cet universalisme fondé sur les structures anthropologiques de laperception constitue également un programme politique, c’est ce que Mário Pedrosa atenté de prouver dans les différentes institutions muséales dont il a eu laresponsabilité. C’est cela qui constitue son legs le plus innovant et fondateur.

NOTES

1. Une série d’essais critiques, une anthologie de textes de l’auteur, une chronologieainsi qu’une bibliographie de Mário Pedrosa figurent, en langue espagnole, dans lecatalogue de l’exposition qui lui a été consacrée par le Centro de Arte Reina Sofía sousle titre : Mário Pedrosa De la Naturaleza afectiva de la forma , Madrid, Museo NacionalCentro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2017. Traduits cette fois en anglais, on trouve une autreanthologie de textes ainsi que d’autres essais critiques sur son œuvre dans : Mário

Pedrosa, Primary Documents, Glória Ferreira and Paulo Herkenhoff (Eds.), New-York, theMuseum of Modern Art, 2015

2. Cet atelier réunit à Rio de Janeiro, de 1946 à 1951, artistes, critiques d’art, médecins et patients

du Centre psychiatrique national Pedro II.

3. Glaucia Villas Bôas, « A estética da conversão, O ateliê do Engenho de Dentro e a arteconcreta carioca

(1946-1951) » in Tempo Brasileiro, USP, São Paulo, vol. 20, N° 2, 2008

4. Nise da Silveira, Imagens do inconsciente, Rio de Janeiro, Alhambra, 1981 p. 14, cité par Glaucia

Villas Bôas, op cit. p. 206

5. Il serait intéressant de comparer la critique de la peinture de Portinari par Pedrosa et celle de

Fougeron par Aragon dans un article au titre programmatique : « Pour un réalisme véritable »

paru dans Les Lettres françaises, N° 490, du 12 novembre 1953.

6. Voir la préface de Otília Arantes à : Mário Pedrosa, Textos escolhidos Acadêmicos e modernos,

Otília Arantes org. São Paulo, Edusp, 1998

7. Eduardo Pierrotti Rosetti note que durant cette année 1959, de très nombreuxvisiteurs de qualité furent ainsi invités, dont les noms vont de la Duchesse de Kent àFidel Castro et d’André Malraux à Golda Meir et au Président d’Indonésie, « Brasília,1959: a cidade em obras e o Congresso Internacional Extraordinário dos Críticos deArte” in Arquitextos N° 111.03, São Paulo, Vitruvius, 10e année, août 2009


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RÉSUMÉS

En proposant d’articuler diverses institutions dans un programme global, Mário Pedrosa visait à

décloisonner les champs épistémiques, à élargir le concept et le territoire de l’art, à connecter

l’art dit primitif aux autres formes, sages ou folles, d’expression de la sensibilité, à mettre le

spectateur dans une position active au sein du dispositif. Que cet universalisme fondé sur les

structures anthropologiques de la perception constitue également un programme politique, c’est

ce que tentera de montrer cet article analysant les différentes institutions muséales dont il a eu

la responsabilité.

Proponiendo articular varias instituciones en un programa global, Mário Pedrosa tuvo como

objetivo descompartimentalizar los dominios epistémicos, ampliar el concepto y el territorio del

arte, conectar el arte primitivo con otras formas, sabias o dementes, de expresión de la

sensibilidad, para poner al espectador en una posición activa dentro del dispositivo. Este artículo

intentará mostrar que el universalismo defendido por el critico latino-americano basado en las

estructuras antropológicas de la percepción, también constituye un programa político, en

particular en el análisis de las diferentes instituciones y museos de las cuales Pedrosa tuvo la

responsabilidad.

INDEX

Mots-clés : Mário Pedrosa, musées, structures anthropologiques de la perception, art et

politique.

Palabras claves : Mário Pedrosa, museos, estructuras antropológicas de la percepción, arte y

política.

AUTEUR

JACQUES LEENHARDT

EHESS


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Conceptualism in Transit: HoracioZabala's MapsLuiza Mader Paladino

Introduction

1 In line with the theme of this dossier—Latin American networks, synchronicities,

contacts, and differences—this article focuses on the cartographic works by artistHoracio Zabala and their relationship to the institutional network created between SãoPaulo and Buenos Aires during the seventies. I will reflect on this transnationalconnection through two specific lines of research: first the study of exhibitions, andsecond the trajectories of certain museums and cultural institutions. Regarding thefirst, the history of exhibitions is a fertile field because it sheds light not only on thedynamics of the art system but also on singular works and artists and how they havebeen evaluated. Regarding the second, I will examine the institutional strategiesadopted by the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo and by theCentro de Arte y Comunicación to promote an unprecedented regional network ofexperimental art. This exchange forged an important channel of dialogue betweenLatin American artists, among them Zabala. Investigating and comparing the twoinstitutions’ management models helps us understand their points of convergence. Itsheds light on theoretical affinities and, above all, on the expansion of artisticexchanges in a period marked by political turbulence.

Conceptualisms in transit

2 In “Dezessete questões sobre a arte” (“Seventeen questions about art”), Horacio Zabala

asked the question: Does [art] offer maximum possibilities with minimal resources?(ZABALA, 2015, p.214). This question was key to the aesthetic and conceptual programthe artist and architect developed throughout the seventies. The question suggestedthe reduction of formal and material resources in keeping with the political andeconomic reality of Latin American countries. The result of that reduction, however,


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could—at least potentially—be far-reaching, and include expanding the channels ofcirculation and exhibition beyond traditional artistic institutions. During that period,Zabala’s production was closely associated with the Centro de Arte y Comunicación(CAYC) in Buenos Aires. At the same time, through the mail art circuit he establishedties with the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São (MAC USP).

3 MAC USP, a public institution run by the Universidade de São Paulo, was directed by

Walter Zanini from the year of its launch, in 1963, until 1978. The Museum had a broadprogram and little financial support. Its mission was dialectical in that it intended tobuild a collection of modern art while also holding a series of retrospective exhibitionsand supporting contemporary production (FREIRE, 2013: p.28). In the seventies, MACUSP became part of a broad international communication network driven by mail art.Art increasingly sought to go beyond the work conceived as a unique object. Instead, itattempted to connect groups of artists, cooperatives, and other alternative forms ofinterchange that operated well outside the logic of the market.

4 Meanwhile, CAYC, a private entity created by art critic and entrepreneur Jorge

Glusberg in 1968 and directed by him subsequently, ushered in a new culturalpanorama in Buenos Aires. In its formational phase, the Center stimulated the linkbetween art and technology. In the following years, it set out to associate its foundingtheoretical and artistic precepts with conceptual poetics grounded in the LatinAmerican context while also pursuing the internationalization of local art. To that end,Glusberg created the Grupo de los Trece, 1of which Zabala formed part. The Grupo delos Trece was a collective of thirteen artists created on the methodological foundationsof Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski’s “poor theater.”2 Grotowski's postulateswent beyond the barriers of traditional theatre. They became a conceptual andaesthetic point of reference for the artistic avant-garde of the sixties and seventies thatenvisioned art as a means of knowledge and participation bound to the social sphere(GLUSBERG, 1985: p. 129). Zabala's “maximum possibilities with minimal resources”—acrucial premise of his work—was linked to Grotowski’s idea of an interdisciplinarylaboratory. A creative act that, like “poor theater,” made use of a bare minimum ofresources was akin to Zabala’s critical and artistic thinking and to the cornerstones ofCAYC's practices starting in 1972, with the exhibition CAYC al Aire Libre. Arte eIdeología (Outdoor CAYC. Art and Ideology) in plaza Roberto Arlt in Buenos Aires.3

5 MAC USP and CAYC were two major institutional hubs that advocated experimental

practices in South America (PALADINO, 2015: p.159). Their similar programs stimulatedthe production and exhibition of proposals of a conceptual nature often consideredsubversive in a context marked by censorship and violent dictatorship. The networkconnecting the São Paulo museum and CAYC in Buenos Aires contributed to expanding“a transnational dialogical territory” that led to, among other things, exchangesbetween artists, exhibitions, invitations to colloquia and, especially, a “dialoguesensitive to the Latin American cultural problem.” 4

6 The first project that brought the Argentine conceptual artists in the Grupo de los

Trece and other conceptual artists close to that group to MAC USP was the Prospectiva

74 exhibition in 1974. The exhibition organized by Spanish artist Julio Plaza and WalterZanini was part of an extensive international communication network inspired by mailart. The mail art poetics, "arising from the urgent need to replace existing structures atthe international level"—as Zanini had written—was, starting in the seventies,fundamental to connecting artists from around the world.5


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7 Hundreds of works, many of them based on conceptual practices and new media, were

sent to the Museum via post: postcards, alternative publications, artists' books, maps,diagrams, visual poetry, photographs, installation projects, documentation ofperformances, among others. Words and texts were a privileged means of expansionand a communication strategy, as well as—indeed mostly—a potential link betweendifferent territories (FREIRE, 2015: p.47). On the international mail art circuit, Zabalacommented:

The network of connections between artists and intellectuals was very important incountries with horrendous and violent dictatorships [...], in other words, incountries where censorship was an unbearable everyday reality. Besides directaction against power, that is, political struggle, the only way to connect and engagein a free interchange over distance was through the post. The post was a means notonly to avoid censorship, but also to investigate new artistic languages (ZABALA,2015: p.221).

8 At the invitation of Walter Zanini, Zabala sent to the Prospectiva 74 exhibition the work

Integração de linguagens poéticas experimentais com investigações sociais e econômicas

(Integration of Experimental Poetic Languages with Social and Economic Investigation), a seriesof cartographic interventions.

Image 1 – Zabala’s registration form for the exhibition Prospectiva 74, 1974

Work: Integração de linguagens poéticas experimentais com investigações sociais e económicas

Documentation sectro MAC USP

9 As, arguably, its title could suggests, the work proposes the use of minimal visual

resource—the map—to yield vast social and economic effect. The artist appropriatedcheap world maps of the sort used in schools and turned them into a disfigured


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geography. An architect’s method with its rigor and mathematical precision wasconsistent with Zabala's imagery: maps, floor plans of prisons and other architectureworks as reduced models of reality. Zabala treated the maps like a kind of ready-made.6

As an object appropriated from material reality, the ready-made, here the maps, isambiguous. These ready-mades ceased to be functional and informative. Furthermore,Zabala did not choose these maps and floor plans because of their formal qualities.They were, rather, selected for their very inexpressiveness (ZABALA, 2015: p.224). Theready-made—which, of course, transforms an everyday object into a work of art—endsup triggering a series of questions in traditional exhibition environments and, in sodoing, redefines the value of artistic and institutional systems, opening up newpossibilities for creation in exhibition venues.

Image 2 - Horacio Zabala,

Integração de linguagens poéticas experimentais com investigações sociais e económica, 1974

Stamp, typewriting and typography on envelope, adhesive tape, carbon paper and stamp on printedmap. (Detail), 152,5 x 75cm. MAC USP Collection

10 In the series of ten maps sent to MAC USP, the artist operated directly on the image of

the Latin American region, using rubber stamps, cutouts, and collages. In one of theworks, he shuffled borders by gluing a piece of the map of the United States and Canadaon top of South America. In another, the continent was again covered by a collage ofvarious fragments of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, changing the spatial logic withnew frontiers in a mosaic of glued cutouts. Three blank purchase receipts were pastedon Latin America, suggesting that the continent itself was for sale. A rubber stamp ofthe word “revisado”7 was plastered over Latin America. Here the stamp, an item foundin public offices, took on a new connotation, opening the way for different poetic


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possibilities. That word appeared a number of times in the same image, reinforcing itsreverberation through graphic and semantic accumulation.

11 Zabala used the stamp as an aesthetic and political device in other cartographic works

as well, creating his own typology. The maps with the revisado and censurado (censored)stamps across Latin America warned of the repression and violation of human rightsrife in the region. Zabala, like many artists, made wide use of the relationship betweenimage and word during this period. They created their own lexicons, using a singleword to encompass many ideas. The word itself would, then, become a sort of collectivecall to action. Revisar-Censurar became a kind of signature for the artist, a reference to atactical use of anonymity as a means to enable circulation through controlledterritories.

Image 3 - Horacio Zabala

Review – Censor, 1974

Postage stamp and stamp on map

25 x 80cm

12 Zabala’s method consisted of appropriating a technical and rational standard of

supposedly neutral spatial representation to dismantle the places selected, distortingthe reduced reality on a sheet of paper. The artist’s social and economic researchshowed the power maps have exercised throughout history in order to, among otherthings, legitimize and further colonialism. The divvying up of occupied countries hasbeen a constant in the exercise of power in the history of war and invasion.

13 These socio-aesthetic operations also indicated the mechanisms of power behind the

political disputes evident in maps. The choice of the Latin American territory as aprivileged place for poetic interference was wholly deliberate. For the artist'sgeneration, Latin America was a symbol of cultural integration and political identity asopposed to the space of a North American imperialist offensive. This ideal ofcontinental union would be renewed after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 as a realalternative to the capitalist model.

14 In response to the Cuba-inspired revolutionary movements, the United States changed

its policy towards its neighbors. Programs geared to strengthening dialogue as part ofthe “Good Neighborhood Policy” changed in the face of the perceived Communistthreat in the region. The strategy to neutralize revolutionary movements looked tonew allies. It turned away from “vulnerable politicians [and] representatives of the newindustrial bourgeoisies linked to the modernizing project [favoring instead] the


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military actors and dictatorships that dominated the Latin American political systemduring the sixties” (GIUNTA, 2008: p.301).

15 The maps were an alternative means to reveal the political reality of a continent that,

country by country, was being undermined by the military, with the blatant support ofthe United States government. The artist’s operation of placing the map of NorthAmerica directly over the map of Latin America, and his use of carbon paper to coverup entire countries or parts of them, warned of the history of censorship, interferenceon the part of the northern section of the continent and dependence on the part of itsLatin side. After all, the United States called itself "America" and its citizens"Americans," and the other part of America was relegated to the term "Latinos."8

16 Other members of the Grupo de los Trece participated in the São Paulo exhibition,

among them Juan Carlos Romero and Luis Pazos. The Prospectiva 74’s call forsubmissions made use of a system of invitations and nominations, and Jorge Glusbergproposed Pazos. In a letter he sent to the director of MAC USP, Pazos commented onthe work he sent to the exhibition:

My work revolves around “action art,” that is, works where I am both the materialand its representation, here a medieval ritual performed by myself (the centralfigure) and dolls on a stage set. [...] I wish you the greatest success with the show.Best Regards.9

17 The “action art”—also known as attitude art—that the artist mentions was geared to

more active viewer participation and to joining art and life through multiple, asopposed to unique, works. This time, the artist sent six photographs of La Ciudad poseída

por los Demonios (The City Possessed by Devils) a performance held at CAYC that sameyear. In his work of action art, Pazos used the body as poetic and political territory,bringing to the fore the brutal reality of the military regime.

18 Juan Carlos Romero sent in a series of nine offset prints and a woodcut entitled,

together, Violência10 that he had worked on in Buenos Aires over the previous years. Thework consisted of multimedia research on the many meanings of the word violence.One year earlier, Romero had exhibited an installation of the same name at CAYC thatlay bare the conflicts between the space of art and the political urgencies of the day byaddressing violence from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, literature, journalism,and philosophy. He printed posters with the definition of violence according to theBible, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong. For the work, the artist also appropriatedsensationalist newspaper articles that reported scandals and violent stories.

19 Another Argentine featured in the Prospectiva 74 exhibition was Edgardo Antonio

Vigo. Although not part of the Grupo de los Trece, he participated in several exhibitionsat CAYC. An artist, poet, and editor, Vigo was a precursor to conceptual art andexperimental poetry in Argentina, as well as a point of reference for a number ofartists, among them Luis Pazos and Horacio Zabala. He was the editor of Diagonal Cero

and Hexágono 71, publications dedicated to visual poetry and experimental art. As theeditor, Vigo proposed changes to those magazines’ format to turn them into a kind ofmagazine-object where the reader could choose the way to handle and interact withthe graphic piece. Vigo was an active participant in the mail art network. He was closeto Walter Zanini, as some of the letters they exchanged evidence. In one of them, Vigowrites:

Dear friend, Thank you very much for your letter of 1-75 confirming receipt of mywork. I am so glad you enjoyed it. [...] I have chosen, and grown accustomed to,correspondence not only as a means of communication but also—in my recent


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works—as an artistic medium: I have been swept away by ART BYCORRESPONDENCE.11

20 As an artist-editor, Vigo organized those two publications (Diagonal Cero and Hexagono)

and circulated them not only as magazines but also as artists' books in logic quitedifferent from the art market’s. Mail art or postal art, as the artist defined it,represented artistic decentralization; messages could be sent to any corner of theplanet. How a work of mail art circulated was generally determined by the network ofartists who, after receiving a letter of invitation, would send their works in a previouslyestablished format and number (FREIRE, 2015: p. 27). MAC USP joined this internationalnetwork as a possible place to house and support this alternative form of production.Prospectiva 74 represented the culmination of this broad dialogue between artists fromdifferent parts of the world. As Zanini put it in the introduction to the exhibitioncatalog:

The international repercussion of PROSPECTIVA 74, as evidenced by theparticipation of artists from so many countries, opens up, in my view, a path thathad seemed blocked in Brazil. Brazilian artists and artists from other countries cannow engage in a deep dialogue. MAC has tirelessly sought to facilitate this contactwith the world in its own exhibitions, as well as through activities undertakenabroad (ZANINI, exhib. cat. 1974).

21

Prospectiva 74, as Zanini made clear, forged a fundamental channel of dialoguebetween Latin American artists. It also strengthened relations between the Museumand CAYC. The next year, Horacio Zabala helped expand exchange between the twocountries by proposing an exhibition entitled Confrontación to be held at MAC USP. Asits title suggests, the Argentine artist’s main idea was to produce an environment ofdebate and of intellectual and artistic exchange between four Brazilian artists and fourArgentine artists, among them Juan Bercetche, Romero, Vigo, and Zabala himself.Along with the exhibition, a “catalog/book” would be published featuring photographs,documentation, and theoretical texts. Intended to be educational, this material would,Zabala held, be an “exchange of ideas on the Latin American avant-garde housed atMAC.” Although the plan did not materialize, the exchange of letters on it reveals theMuseum as a space open to new languages, above all to conceptual practices met withaskance in traditional exhibition venues. It also demonstrates the importance of theMAC USP as a point of resistance to the establishment and of support for alternativeideas and emerging artists.

22 This exchange was based on the expansion of a political strain of conceptual art in

Latin America. Much conceptual art and action art of the period pursued twofundamental aims: to redefine art and the artistic object; and to strategically discussthe social and economic reality facing the region.

23 In a stance that understands the limits of the art object in an ethical and political field

of action, Horacio Zabala wrote, art is defined by the function it performs in society.Neither making art nor the results of that making is autonomous: art depends on whatis not art” (ZABALA, cat. exp., 1972). Art was no longer autonomous, and this emergingproduction showed that the meaning of a work no longer resided in the work itself. Assuch, art and life were brought together as mutually defining. Art of this sortunderstood the work of art as an agent or catalyst of social and political change. Artwas now a tool capable of revealing power relations in a novel aesthetic agenda.


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24 International conceptual art arose as an avant-garde criticism of the legacy of

modernism, specifically of the imperative of visuality and artistic autonomy. If themodernist discourse neutralized the art object—above all painting—by inserting it in alinear fiction that culminated with the discovery of its own support—the two-dimensional surface—a critical reexamination of that autonomous notion of art soughtto contaminate it with other political, social, and aesthetic discourses. In this sense,Latin American artists’ growing engagement with a devastating panorama of de factogovernments was an attempt to place a limit on, and to oppose, the logic of theoppressor. That friction gave rise to new artistic insurgencies that engendered morecombative modes of action in the field of art.

25 The friction between aesthetics and politics was at play in “border art,” a term used by

Luis Pazos and Juan Carlos Romero at the conference El arte como conciencia en la

Argentina (Art as Consciousness in Argentina) to refer to the importation of conceptualart in Argentina. Of the many ways to think about conceptualism, Pazos and Romerochose a geopolitical category—the border—to address a broad and complex set ofpractices still under development in Latin America. Border art proposed artisticfreedom by envisioning art as idea. It also relieved artists from the economic pressureof making works of art. At stake in the materials used—themselves precarious, in linewith Latin American reality—was a set of critical actions. Conceptualism was tactical asan effective, accessible, and low-cost means of political expression.

26 Jorge Glusberg also articulated the production close to CAYC in terms of precarious art

and the lived production conditions of Latin American artists. In 1972, CAYC sent theexhibition Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (Towards a profile of LatinAmerican Art) to the III Coltejer Biennial in Medellín. In his presentation, Glusbergsought to define his vision of Latin American art:

Latin American countries do not have an art of their own, but rather a problemborn of their revolutionary movements. [...] Our artists have become aware of theneeds imposed by the contexts of their nations and sought regional responsesconsistent with the changes proposed by the underprivileged of today, who maywell be the privileged of tomorrow. (our translation). (GLUSBERG, exhib. cat. 1972.)

27 The Argentine critic considered the practices of the artists in the Grupo de los Trece

part of what he called “ideological conceptualism,” a version of conceptual art in tunewith what was happening in the world’s south and, more specifically, with the region’ssocial dynamics. The Argentine geopolitical translation of international conceptual arthad intense appeal in the region. It legitimized experimental practices as forms ofpolitical action in the face of a tumultuous reality marked by the rise of militaryregimes.12

28 Akin to ideological conceptualism and border art, the different map series Horacio

Zabala made during this period alluded to the region’s political upheaval. In severalworks, the artist used fire as an expressive element and as a metaphor for somethingabout to explode. The maps of Latin America are burned with combustion in Seis

imágenes del fragment 30 (Six Images of Fragment 30, 1973). In this work, the burned mapalong with a passage from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus indicated fire as an“eternally alive” element. The fire was at once the artist's creative fuel and an always-revolutionary weapon of combat. Fire would reappear in later works, producing anatmosphere of tension in which the artist effected a double operation of art andactivism. The arms of combat were poetic.


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Six Images of Fragment 30, 1974

Graphite on burnt paper and printed map

1973

29 Violence as revolutionary posture was also insinuated in works like Mira como tiemblo

(Look How I Shake, 2002) and Forma y función (Form and Function, 1972-2011). Thelatter is a set of three empty bottles: a bottle with a flower; a bottle with gasoline; and abottle with wine. Zabala signaled their respective functions. Gasoline to make aMolotov cocktail that can actually alter reality. Ana Longoni writes, “the same objectcan assume different functions according to the historical context and the will of thecarrier” (LONGONI, 2013: p.35). As in his cartographic operations, here Zabala changesbottles’ original function, expanding their utilitarian and poetic possibilities.


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Form and Function

Glass bottles, liquid, flower, text on paper

1972-2011

30 With the maps, this inversion of use was even more evident. Maps’ graphic codes have,

historically, been tied to a disciplinary order that systematizes and regulatesgeographical coordinates while also associating subjects with an exclusive territory andunique identity. Zabala twisted that logic by intervening directly on the surface of themaps, reflecting on the violence hidden in geographical conventions and theirterritorial delimitations.

31 Argentine researcher Fernando Davis has discussed Horacio Zabala's maps in terms of

the poles of the opaque and the transparent. The opaque image produces leakage, aturbulence of meaning that upsets the rationality of cartographic syntax. Thetransparency tied to a system that neutralizes the ambiguity of signs, meanwhile, wassubverted by Zabala in an open field of new geographies. “Zabala's works draw acartography of opacity” (DAVIS, 2007: p.76).

32 Traditional geography fails to consider how maps are understood, revealing its own

limitations as means of presenting information. Because maps are, by definition,abstractions and reductions of a reality, the Argentine artist’s works raise somequestions: How to represent a simultaneity of events and constant spatial disputes,showing the layers of complex historical facts in a single graphic image? The now-turbulent maps revealed how little graphic conventions managed to represent a spatial


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and social multiplicity. These other maps came close to what philosopher FredricJameson called “cognitive mapping”: "The situational representation by the individualsubject in relation to that more unrepresentable totality, which is the set of structuresof society as a whole" (JAMESON, 2004).

33 Zabala's works affirmed a new spatial and political experience by heeding other

symbolic constructions in the lived space. This new way of experiencing space wastransformed by the human presence. Zabala’s artistic exercise and his mobilization ofthe imagination to create other possible territories was in line with Milton Santos’sidea of “citizenship geography” (SANTOS, 1998: p.150). The Brazilian geographer pointsout that in order to move from abstract citizenship to full citizenship, territorial rightsand cultural rights must be taken into account.

34 Santos’s studies often point to the imbalance arising from irregular and unjust

occupation of space, mostly at the hand of capital. As part of a theoretical andgeopolitical program, Santos advocated a less disparate spatial reconfiguration basedon the concepts of the technosphere and the psychosphere (SANTOS, 2014: p.255). The firstrefers to the space of science and technology, which reproduces vertical andhierarchical relationships in an obedient and disciplined daily life. The second to the“realm of ideas, beliefs, passions and the place of producing a sense of thisenvironment, this environment of life, providing rules for rationality or stimulating theimaginary” (SANTOS, 2014: p.256).

35 Zabala’s conceptual maps could be associated with the psychosphere insofar as they

enable new spaces for creation and meanings. Together, they constitute a counterpointto the disciplinary experience of space by positing a territory of subjectivity and aregion of border art. In Zabala’s psychosphere, the desire to subvert the rational order isintensified through poetic interventions that occupy and distort territories revisados

(reviwed) and censurados (censored), constructing new stories and ways of experiencingspace.

36 Translated by Andrea Giunta

37 Copyedited by Jane Brodie

38 Bibliographie

39 CANCLINI, Néstor García. Culturas híbridas. São Paulo: Edusp, 2011

40 DAVIS, Fernando; HERRERA, Maria José; PERRET, Danielle. Horacio Zabala. Anteproyectos

(1972-1978). Buenos Aires: Editorial Fundación Alón, 2007

41 ---------------------. El conceptualismo como categoría táctica. Revista Ramona, nº 82. In:

http://www.ramona.org.ar/node/21556.

42 FREIRE, Cristina. [Org.]. Walter Zanini: Escrituras Críticas. São Paulo: Annablume: MAC

USP, 2013.

43 -----------------------. [Org.]. Terra Incógnita. Vol.3. Conceitualismos da América Latina no

acervo do MAC USP. São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de SãoPaulo, 2015

44 GIUNTA, Andrea. Vanguardia, internacionalismo y política: arte argentino en los años 60.

Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2008.

GLUSBERG, Jorge. Em: Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano. (cat. exp.), Buenos Aires,1972.


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http://www.ramona.org.ar/node/21556

http://www.ramona.org.ar/node/21556

45 -----------------------. Del pop-art a la nueva imagen. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de Arte

Gaglianone, 1985.

46 JAMESON, Fredric. Pós-modernismo: a lógica cultural do capitalismo tardio. São Paulo:

Ática, 2004.

47 LONGONI, Ana. El medio del incendio. Violencias insurgentes en la obra de

Horacio Zabala. In: DAVIS, Fernando [Org.]. Horacio Zabala, desde 1972. Sáenz Peña:Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero, 2013.

48 MARCHESI, Mariana. El CAYC y el arte de sistemas como estratégia institucional. In:

MARCHESI, Mariana; HERRERA, María José [Org.] Arte de sistemas: el CAYC y el proyecto de

un nuevo arte regional. 1969 – 1977. Buenos Aires: Fundación OSDE, 2013.

49 PALADINO, Luiza Mader. Conceitualismos em Trânsito: Intercâmbios Artísticos entre Brasil e

Argentina na década de 1970 – MAC USP e CAYC. Dissertação de mestrado. Programa de Pós-Graduação Interunidades em Estética e História da Arte, Universidade de São Paulo, SãoPaulo, 2015.

50 SANTOS, Milton. O espaço do cidadão. São Paulo: Nobel, 1998.

51 ---------------------; A natureza do espaço: Técnica e tempo. Razão e emoção. São Paulo: Edusp,

2008

52 SINGER, Paul. América del Sur 2006: de la geografia a la historia. In: GONZÁLEZ, Helena

& SCHMIDT, Heidulf. Democracia para una nueva sociedade (modelo para armar). Caracas:Nueva Sociedad, 1997.

53 ZABALA, Horacio. Dezessete questões sobre a arte. In: In: FREIRE, Cristina [Org.]. Terra

Incógnita. Vol.3. Conceitualismos da América Latina no acervo do MAC USP. São Paulo:Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, 2015

54 -------------------------. Entrevista com Horacio Zabala. In: FREIRE, Cristina [Org.]. Terra

Incógnita. Vol.3. Conceitualismos da América Latina no acervo do MAC USP. São Paulo:Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, 2015

--------------------------. CAYC al aire libre (cat. exp.), Buenos Aires,1972.--------------------------. Marcel Duchamp y los restos del ready-made. Buenos Aires:Infinito, 2012.ZANINI, Walter. A arte postal na busca de uma nova comunicação

internacional. In: FREIRE, Cristina. (Org.). Walter Zanini: Escrituras Críticas. São Paulo:Annablume: MAC USP, 2013.---------------------. Prospectiva 74 (cat. exp.). São Paulo:Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo – MAC USP, 1974.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ônio e Memória. UNESP – FCLAs – CEDAP, v.3, n.1, 2007.


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ENDNOTES

1. Group created by Jorge Glusberg in 1971. Its members were Jacques Bedel, Horacio Zabala, Juan

Carlos Romero, Luis Pazos, Luis Fernando Benedit, Carlos Ginzburg, Gregorio Dujovny, Alfredo

Portillos, Víctor Grippo, Jorge González Mir, Vicente Marotta, Julio Teich, and Glusberg himself.

In 1975, the name was changed to the Grupo CAYC.

2. A Polish director who created a theater-laboratory where all theatrical artifice was gradually

abolished: makeup, light effects, sets, soundtrack, costumes etc. Doing away with all the

traditional elements of theatrical language as well as the artistic act itself was an attempt to

focus on total communication between the actor and the viewers to foster a complete dialogue

between them.

3. Between 1969 and 1971, the conceptual exhibitions organized by Glusberg werestructured around theories of communication and the use of new technologies in thecreative process (I am think of the exhibitions Arte y Cibernética (Art and Cybernetics)

heldat Galeria Bonino in 1969 and Arte de Sistemas (System Art), held at the Museo deArte Moderno of Buenos Aires in 1971). In 1972, CAYC’s institutional agenda expanded;its exhibitions and colloquia revolved around a regional rhetoric intended to advocatea Latin American systems art. According to Mariana Marchesi, this new orientationpoliticized several members of CAYC and determined the direction the Center wouldpursue in the coming years (MARCHESI, 2013, p.66). Examples of this new orientationare the exhibitions Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (Towards a Profile of LatinAmerican Art), presented at the III Bienal de Coltejer in Medellín in 1972, and CAYC al

aire libre. Arte e Ideología (Outdoor CayC. Art and Ideology), t held in plaza Roberto Arltin Buenos Aires that same year.

4. Letter from Walter Zanini to Jorge Glusberg. March 28, 1972. Archive of the Museu de Arte

Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo.

5. Original version of the article A arte postal na busca de uma nova comunicação internacional

published in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, 1977. In: FREIRE, Cristina. (Org.). Walter Zanini:

Critical Scriptures. Sao Paulo: Annablume: MAC USP, 2013.

6. Zabala wrote a book on the relationship between Marcel Duchamp, ready-mades, and

contemporary art. See: ZABALA, Horacio. Marcel Duchamp y los restos del ready-made. Buenos Aires:

Infinito, 2012.

7. Translator’s note: Literally revised, “revisado” here suggests that the text stamped had been

read by censors.

8. In the text América Del Sur: de la geografia a la historia, Brazilian economist Paul Singer addresses

the historical differences between Anglo-Saxon America and Latin America. See SINGER, Paul.

América Del Sur: de la geografia a la historia. In: GONZÁLEZ, Helena & SCHMIDT, Heidulf. Democracy

for a new society (model to arm). Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1997.

9. Letter from Luis Pazos to Walter Zanini. April 30, 1974. Archive of the Museu de Arte

Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo . Translated from the original in Spanish.

10. The installation “Violência” was reconstructed at the 31st São Paulo Biennial in 2014.

11. Letter from Edgardo Antonio Vigo to Walter Zanini. January 15, 1975. Archive of the Museu de

Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo . Translated from the original in Spanish.

12. It is worth mentioning that Jorge Glusberg's political stance on the Argentinedictatorship was ambiguous, and he made use of controversial procedures to leveragethe art clustered around CAYC on the international circuit. Glusberg had indirect ties tothe Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983), and some of CAYC's funding came fromone of the largest illumination companies in Argentina, Modulor, of which Glusbergwas heir. A portion of the company’s profits came from military contracts—the military


62

was one of its largest customers. On this subject, see: CANCLINI, Néstor García. Culturas

híbridas. São Paulo: Edusp, 2011, p. 94.

ABSTRACTS

This article reflects on the maps made by artist Horacio Zabala over the course of the nineteen-

seventies. His production is evaluated in relation to institutions that supported experimental

artists from Latin America: the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo and

the Centro de Arte y Comunicación in Buenos Aires. Both entities were instrumental to

establishing a transnational conceptual art circuit through specific strategies, such as the

exchange of artists and art exhibitions. In order to analyze this institutional network of which

Zabala formed part, this paper looks to both primary and bibliographic sources.

Este artigo apresenta uma reflexão sobre os mapas realizados pelo artista Horacio Zabala, ao

longo da década de 1970. Sua produção é avaliada a partir de uma importante rede de instituições

que amparou artistas experimentais da América Latina: o Museu de Arte Contemporânea da

Universidade de São Paulo e o Centro de Arte y Comunicación, de Buenos Aires. Ambas as

entidades estabeleceram um circuito transnacional de arte conceitual, ao constituir estratégias

específicas, como o intercâmbio de artistas e exposições de arte. Para analisar essa trama

institucional da qual Zabala fez parte, este trabalho parte do cruzamento de fontes primárias e

bibliográficas como procedimento metodológico de pesquisa.

INDEX

Keywords: Horacio Zabala; CAYC; MAC USP; Conceptual art; Mail Art.

Palavras-chave: Horacio Zabala; CAYC; MAC USP; Arte Conceitual; Arte Postal

AUTHOR

LUIZA MADER PALADINO

Doctoral candidate at the Inter-unit Graduate Program in Aesthetics and Art History at USP. She

is a member of the GEACC – Grupo de Estudos em Arte Conceitual e Conceitualismos housed at

the Museum and coordinated by Professor Dra. Cristina Freire.


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A Conceptual Definition of theArtist’s Book and A New Look atUlises Carrión’s ThinkingPaulo Silveira

Translation : Andrea Giunta/Jane Brodie

Traslated by Andrea Giunta

Copyedited by Jane Brodie

Introduction

1 This article emphasizes the importance of Ulises Carrion's thinking and activities to an

art history that recognizes and privileges international experiences, specifically therelationship between Latin American and North American identities and theiroccasional connections with Europe. It addresses Carrión's production, mostly his workaround publications conceived by artists, particularly artists’ books. Bibliomorphicartistic production—of which the book is the paradigmatic form—is understood as aninstrumental component of cultural strategies.

2 The legacy of Mexican artist Ulises Carrión’s production has received a great deal of

attention on art circuits, whether those circuits revolve around artistic practices or thestudy of art. His legacy is particularly pertinent because of its influence on bothEuropean and Pan-American contexts. It reveals links that have united artists fromdifferent continents, as well as the differences and similarities between those whoremain in their countries of birth and those who move and find a place for themselvesin new social structures. Carrión has gained recognition gradually in academic researchas well. A number of methodologies have been used to grapple with his myriadpractices. The researchers who have discovered (or rediscovered) Carrión's work canbe divided into two main groups: the first are artists, most of them young, interested(and surprised) by the relationships between the current context and the historicalconceptual network that took shape in the sixties; and the second are historians and


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theorists who work critically on information and contexts (artwork and its producersand consumers, as well as archives who live with collections). Each of these subjects hasits own hypotheses and problems. Based on documentary sources, their researchmethods engage the work’s approach (rules, discipline) and status (condition, quality).That is, these subjects address the work of art (with all the ambiguity that the aura,with its passion for the supreme, entails), as opposed to the document (with itsbureaucratic and forensic meaning, its accessory character that leads it, often unfairly,to be stripped of aesthetic and artistic value). Editions published by artists—especiallyartists’ books—are a structuring and functional feature of contemporary art and thenew media. Because of their imponderable value and form, their language and function,these publications and related forms must be considered in their specificities, heedingat once their artistic nature and their communicability as well as, in an instrumentalsense, their value as primary sources for research.

3 In this case study, I will provide a summary and a reassessment of Carrión’s growing

and—arguably—constructively impertinent, as well as intermittent, presence inresearch conducted since the mid-nineties at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grandedo Sul, Brazil.1 The main aim of that research, which is ongoing, is to analyze theaesthetic and the rhetoric of the artist's book (understood as a category). While alwaysinteresting, that research encompasses branches of greater or lesser importance to thestudy of how new media and new languages took shape in the twentieth century;methodological issues in art research and art history; the formation of collections; therole of the university in contemporary art; editorial production in the arts; andwritings by artists. From the formal beginning of my research, I understood that mypoint of view would be rooted in a local context to, from there, expand into regional,national, and international circles. Carrión's name came into my work in an ambiguousand seemingly-contradictory way: he was a constant point of reference in efforts tocreate unique or small print-run books (justified, paradoxically, by artisans and artistsas a repudiation of conceptualism); and he was one of the protagonists in mail art towhich Dick Higgins’s concept of “intermidia” was key. 2

4 The perspective of my research on Carrión is not national. Its aim is to salvage from

oblivion links connected to the political commitment of Brazilian art in the seventieswhich was obscured by commercial interests during the eighties (the decade when theBrazilian art economy focused on "expressive"—and emphatically non-conceptual—production). In relation to the network3 and what I call verb-visual discourses, Carriónand his influence was limited in the Portuguese-speaking Brazilian university contextand in Latin America generally.4 In Brazil, the growth of graduate and postgraduateprograms in art history are slowly giving Carrión and his legacy the academicrecognition they deserve.

Ulises Carrión

5 Ulises Carrión Bogard was born in San Andrés Tuxtla, Mexico, in 1941, and died in

Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1989, at the age of forty-eight (according to HELLION,2003, and other sources). Whether an exile (as DEBROISE and MEDINA argue, 2014: p.23)or an expat, his life was characterized by mobility, starting with a study trip. Creativecuriosity is what took him beyond Mexico. Europe was his home (it was from there thathe visited North and South America), and the center of activities that joined together


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his many facets: Carrión was a writer and a visual artist, but also an entrepreneur inthe art world, an advocate of the languages emerging in the seventies and eighties,especially those that involved word, image, and action (SILVEIRA, 2010,2011, 2012). Hearrived in Amsterdam in 1970, and in 1972 he opened the In-Out Center—an exhibitionvenue in operation for three years—as well as a small press. In 1975, he and Aart vanBarneveld founded Other Books and So, a space for the exhibition and sale ofpioneering publications. It is considered the first bookstore for artists’ publicationsanywhere in the world (HOFFBERG, 1979: p. 128). In-Out Center sold editions by a rangeof artists, many of them recognized figures in art history and others soon to join them.He had a large circle of friends in Amsterdam, and welcomed frequent guests from thecity and beyond. Unfortunately, the bookstore closed in 1978. In 1980, its collectionformed the basis for the Other Books and So Archive, open until the time of Carrión’sdeath nine years later. In the absence of someone to replace him, his death interruptedthe stream of information he set in motion.

6 At the beginning of the seventies Carrión declared to his friends his waning interest in

traditional literature and his perception of the inadequacy as the linguistic instrument.5 He considered the decisions that had led him to the visual arts inevitable. He knewthat the Other Books and So archive was a business undertaking, both a real entity anda construct, a mental device no less spontaneous than intellectual, something innate tohis theoretical convictions. According to his accounts, the archive, although itcontained elements not primarily aesthetic, was in the end a work of art (see, inparticular, CARRIÓN, 1980, and the video Bookworks Revisited. Part 1: A Selection,1987). As a major work (mater work), as a set with rules and order, the archive mightcontain other works, thus reflecting its context as part of a broader structure: thevisual arts were contained in culture, in a larger system. Carrión's generation wasaware of the importance of experiments and curatorial projects of this type insofar asthey confirmed temporality and discursiveness as fundamental to the visual arts. Theymight have economic potential (whether real or symbolic) if intimately linked to thedomains of the artwork itself (the archive gives rise to poetic passion—indeed that isone of its most prominent side effects). The following years would see the opening ofcommercial spaces, some of them more alternative than others, that would confirm theprinciples underlying Other Books and So. Such spaces are complementary to thesystem, and some stand out in recent art history. They include Printed Matter (NewYork), Art Metropole (Toronto), Boekie Woekie (Amsterdam), Florence Loewy (Paris),and Bookartbookshop (London). Distribution of publications via post was also key to acertain conception of "cultural strategies" (CARRION, 1980: p. 51).

This radical shift [the focus from what is traditionally called “art” to the widerconcept of “culture”] gives birth to quite a number of theoretical and practicalquestions, the most evident of them being, Where does the border lie between anartist’s work and the actual organization and distribution of the work? As it usuallyhappens, this question can only be answered by the artists themselves rather thanby theoreticians, historians, and bureaucrats. When an artist is busy choosing hisstarting point, defining the limits of his scope, he has the right to include theorganization and distribution of his work as an element of the same work. And bydoing so, he’s creating a strategy that will become a constituent formal element ofthe final work.” (CARRION: 1980, p. 51)


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Other books

7 Carrión's texts are essential for those interested in books and publications as prime

material for artistic expression and as support for the circulation of verbal-visualinformation. Although Carrion’s written work is abundant (encompassing works ofliterature and plays), his texts on the visual arts are relatively few. Carrión graduallyabandoned the conventional text and began using language in hybrid or unusualcontexts. Nevertheless, he did write a number of essays of great interest. "The New Artof Making Books" is essential reading on the artist’s book. It was published in MexicoCity in early 1975 in Plural magazine, edited by Octavio Paz (1914-1998), and the sameyear in Kontexts, based in Amsterdam, thanks to which it circulated internationally. Thearticle was later published in Second thoughts (1980), an anthology of a selection ofCarrión’s writings.6 The text’s distribution grew when it was featured in Artists’ Books: A

Critical Anthology and Sourcebook (1985), edited by Joan Lyons. Pursuant to that edition, itwas included in a number of international publications (exhibition catalogs, coursebrochures, internet sites, etc.). 7

8 Let's take a look at Carrión's rhythmic prose in his original publication in Plural

magazine in 1975:

El lenguaje del nuevo arte es radicalmente diferente del lenguaje cotidiano. Olvidaintenciones y utilidad, y retorna a él mismo, se auto-investiga, buscando formas,series de formas que hagan nacer, asocien, revelen, las secuencias espacio-tiempo....Las palabras en un nuevo libro son las portadoras de un mensaje, ni las portavocesdel alma, ni la moneda de la comunicación.Aquellas fueron ya nombradas por Hamlet, una ávido lector de libros: palabras,palabras, palabras....Las palabras del nuevo libro están allí no para trasmitir ciertas imágenes mentalescon cierta intencionalidad.Están allí para formar, junto a otros signos, una secuencia espacio-tiempo quenosotros identificamos con el nombre de “libro”....Las palabras en un nuevo libro pueden ser las propias palabras del autor o laspalabras del algún otro.Un escritor del nuevo arte escribe muy poco o no escribe nada. ...El libro más hermoso y el más perfecto del mundo en un libro con solo páginas enblanco, de la misma manera que el lenguaje más completo es aquel que se extiendemás allá de las palabras que un hombre puede pronunciar.

9 In the English version of Second thoughts (1980: p. 15):

New art’s language is radically different from daily language. It neglects intentionsand utility, and it returns to itself, it investigates itself, looking for forms, for seriesof forms that give birth to, couple with, unfold into, space-time sequences......The words in a new book are not the bearers of the message, nor the mouthpiecesof the soul, nor the currency of communication. Those were already named by Hamlet, an avid reader of books: words, words,words......The words of the new book are there not to transmit certain mental images with acertain intention.


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They are there to form, together with other signs, a space-time sequence that weidentify with the name ‘book.’.....The words in a new book might be the author’s own words or someone else’s words.A writer of the new art writes very little or does not write at all......The most beautiful and perfect book in the world is a book with only blank pages, inthe same way that the most complete language is that which lies beyond all that thewords a man can say.

10 "The New Art of Making Books" is in an imperative, direct voice. It is a series of

postulates that affirms Carrión’s conviction that the new book has emerged as analternative space of expression. While it is true that in 1975 Carrión was not yet usingthe terms “artist’s book,” or—his favorite—“bookwork,” expressions that would soon beenshrined, they do make themselves felt in the text. Carrión’s reflections are seductive,and they inspired admiration in those beginning to study the book as artistic support.Insofar as the text is (or attempts to be) programmatic—a declarative and regulatorydiscursive construction—it is reminiscent of the manifestos issued by the modernavant-gardes. In that sense, it can be seen as outdated and alien to contemporaryprocedures, even though one of their most important heralds.

11 Less dogmatic is Bookworks Revisted, a text based on the presentations he made in the

United States in November 1979 and November 1980. Carrión prepared thepresentation first for “Options in Independent Art Publishing,” a part of the Conferenceon Alternative Art Publishing held in the framework of the Visual Studies Workshop,Rochester, and second for the Art Institute of Boston (CARRION, 1980: p. 56 ). The textand presentations may well have been based on lectures with a similar theme he gavein Recife, Brazil in 1978 (at the Universidade Católica of Pernambuco ), in São Paulo (atthe Pinacoteca do Estado), and in Buenos Aires, Argentina (at the Centro de Arte yComunicación (CAYC)) (SCHRAENEN, 1992: p. 124), among other places. Everythingwould indicate that the images he showed at the lectures he delivered in the UnitedStates did not include books from Argentina or Brazil, since the topic was “Europe: ASurvey” (PHILLPOT in CARRION, 1997: p. 124) In the annotations included in the versionpublished in 1980, mention is made of a Brazilian artist:

The Brazilian Wladimir Díaz-Pino [sic] showed me, during my visit to Brazil in 1978,some of his early books (unfortunately they are now out of print). They are some ofthe best and most beautiful bookworks I’ve ever seen.8 (Carrión, 1980, p. 66).

12 Bookworks Revisited was published in 1980 in the Print Collector’s Newsletter (CARRION,

1980) and in Second Thoughts (CARRION, 1980). In a more colloquial and speculative, butno less professional rhetoric, Carrión recognizes the intellectual status of the artist vis-à-vis the publication. In paragraph 17 of Bookworks Revisited, he declared “We are nolonger innocent.”9

13 This statement would be repeated in the structure of Bookworks Revisited Video: Part 1,

1986, which is also associated with the aforementioned lectures. The “Part 1” in thetitle suggests a continuation that never existed. The video opens with a handwrittenphrase: "A selection, both limited in scope and arbitrary, but nevertheless of greatsignificance of bookworks from Ulises Carrión’s Other Books and So Archive." His discoursehere is didactic and conceptual; he used adapted versions of the channels ofcommunication available to him, namely lectures and video presentations. In Bookworks

Revisited (or A selection, both limited…), the description of the book shown at the opening


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of the video does not always appear in the transcripts (in this regard, see the versiontitled “Other Books” in Quant aux livres/On books, a posthumous collection (CARRION,1997: p. 190)). The introductory sequence shows the booklet In Alphabetical Order, itspages bearing photos of a small wooden file cabinet (a binder of cards with contactsused here as if it were a book object). Carrión explains the criteria that order the cardshe shows: "People I've met. Artists. Non-artists. My best friends, people I love. People Iadmire. There has been a change in our relationship of late." What bound him to hisfriends of different nationalities was simple: affection and attachment, qualitiesdemonstrated by his words, gestures and attitudes, as reported by some of his friendsand acquaintances. Thanks to this predisposition, as well as to the pragmatic attentionhe paid to his colleagues, Carrión was useful professionally to the artists and ideas closeto him. That is, undoubtedly, what led to “his construction of cultural networks as thekey means of artistic activism, including the production of artists’ books, mail art andearly conceptual videos” (DEBROISE and MEDINA, 2014: p. 30)

Other Jobs Works, Other Circumstances

14 Barring a few analyses of the cultural strategies and procedures Carrión used, there are

still no major theoretical studies of his art from a critical and formal perspective. Fewessays have been written on his production. Carrión forms part of a group of artistsengaged with the word or reading, in some cases with literature itself. Like the work ofsome of those artists, his revolved around the renewal of the linguistic possibilities ofthe visual arts and, therefore, complexities alien to traditional criticism. Some artistspreceded him stylistically in his experiments, others were his contemporaries, but mosthad direct or indirect contact with him, with Other Books and So as an important pointof confluence in those times: Dieter Roth (1930-1998), Robert Filliou (1926-1987), MarcelBroodthaers (1924-1976) , Emmett Williams (1925-2007), Ray Johnson (1927-1995),Jochen Gerz (1940), Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006), Jiří Kolář (1914-2002), Endre Tót(1937), Clemente Padín (1939 ), Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928-1997), Guillermo Deisler(1940-1995), the Noigandres group (a concrete poetry group active in the fifties andsixties10), the Poem Process movement (an outgrowth of concretism that originated inthe late sixties and early seventies but was more closely linked to visualcommunication11), among others. There are few stylistic constants in his work from avisual (nonverbal) point of view. His aesthetic identity is enmeshed in the functionalexpression of his thinking. That identity is, arguably, initially located in the set ofoperations and movements that built Carrión’s cultural persona, that is, his characteras at once the subject and agent of an instrumental and structural rearrangement oftime, space, and diffusion in art. The most striking aspect of his work may well be itscommunicative dimension. His interest in the reception of information and itsprocessed return for new consumption oscillates between admiration and irony as it isrendered metaphor in the present and as implicit mood in few key works. As a briefexercise in comparison, let’s consider three mild and playful works (he called them“divertimentos” (amusements): the video Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners (1980-81), the16mm film The Death of the Equipment Dealer (1982), and the performance or installationDe Diefstal van het Jaar, also from 1982, produced at the Drents Museum in Assen, theNetherlands.


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15 Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners was a project for the De Appel art center. It is

organized around the spread of gossip, recording its multiplication and dissemination.The project’s conclusions, presented at a formal academic event, hold that “gossip canbe used as a formal model for artificial communication chains, which reveals somethingabout its users and the chain itself "(catalog to the XVI Sao Paulo Biennial, 1981, p 79).A 40-minute video shows images of Carrión’s final lecture at the University ofAmsterdam, which took place on June 25, 1980. The presentation included an edition ofinterviews with—truth to tell—fake characters, graphics, fragments of opera, etc.

16 In De Diefstal van het Jaar (known in English as The Robbery of the Year and in Spanish as

El robo del año), a real diamond was placed on a cushion in the center of a constructedenvironment. It was left there, waiting to be stolen, for five days. Amsterdam-basedBrazilian artist Claudio Goulart (1954-2005), who was one of Gossip…'s characters, waspresent in disguise, photographing visitors until someone stole it. But to Carrión'schagrin, no crime occurred during the exhibition (it wouldn’t happen until a dinner athis residence).12

17 The film The Death of the Art Dealer records a performance where Carrion, holding a

portable camera, moves sideways, or forward and back, copying the movements of thecamera in a low-budget Hollywood film and quickly turning the camera on and off witheach cut. The Hollywood film was The Reckless Moment, 1949, directed by Max Ophüls.13 The dramatic audio track is the one from the movie playing on television during theperformance. The performance takes its name from a phrase that appears in anewspaper headline in a scene from the film on television.

18 Carrión's legacy is currently undergoing reassessment at the initiative, mostly, of his

friends and admirers. New academic research has also been performed, bolsteringCarrión’s value on the symbolic market. Much of the research revolves around twoissues. The first is formal, where Carrión’s ideas are used to justify works and conceptsthat he himself rejected (unique books that don’t circulate widely and books-objects,understood as modern bookworks, rather than artists’ books in the strict sense, that is,as legitimate forms of contemporary art).14 The second is contextual, and moreinterested than the first in the implications of cultural strategies and the network spirit—the latter expressed, above all, in mail art and regional, transnational, andintercontinental collaborations.

19 Brazil is particularly relevant to the current reassessment of Carrión. He delivered

lectures at the Universidad Católica de Pernambuco in Recife and at the Pinacoteca delEstado in São Paulo in 1978, and his works were included in some group shows of mailart and related topics during the seventies and eighties. He was a guest artist at theNucleus I exhibition at the XVI São Paulo Biennial in 1981, under chief curator WalterZanini (1925-2013) (the mail art exhibition was curated by Julio Plaza (1938-2003)). TheBiennial presented his Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners (Fofocas, escândalos e boa educação

in Portuguese), and its mail art exhibition featured his ideas for the Erratic Art MailInternational System (EAMIS), “an alternative to official post offices.” EAMIS“guarantees delivery of the entrusted pieces by any means other than the official postoffices,” provided the participant leaves a copy or duplicate of the message for theproject’s archives (that is, the Other Book and So Archive): "By using the EAMIS yousupport the only alternative to the national bureaucracies and you strengthen theinternational artists community." Volume II, Catálogo de Arte Postal (Mail Art Catalog)also featured a Portuguese translation of Carrión’s Mail Art and the Big Monster. In it, he


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insists that "postal" (mail) is an adjective that qualifies the noun "art," and should notbe confused with the Portuguese noun synonymous with cartão-postal (postcard). Onthose ground, Carrión states: "It has been said that Mail Art is easy, cheap,unpretentious and democratic. All that is rubbish” (XVI BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO, Catálogo

de arte postal, 1981, p. 13). He goes on:

Every invitation we receive to participate in a Mail Art project is part of theguerrilla war against the Big Monster. Every Mail Art piece is a weapon thrown atthe Monster who is owner of the Castle, who separates us one from one another, allof us. (XVI BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO, Catálogo de arte postal, 1981, p. 14-15).

20 Despite the admiration he enjoyed in Brazil, his thinking and work would not truly take

hold in the country until 2005, at the 5th Mercosur Biennial, curated by Paulo SergioDuarte. Carrion’s work figured prominently in the section entitled "A (re) invention ofspace." That show included works by Carrión in the form of literature and poetry(sometimes in book form, sometimes not), as well as other projects and postal actions,the videos mentioned before, and twelve editions of the newspaper Ephemera. In thewords of Martha Hellion, who selected the works by Carrión in the show, “My selectionwas diverse to show the different media Ulises used in an artistic language, so to speak,he deployed as part of cultural strategies—the basis for his communication anddistribution policy.”15 The range of materials laid before viewers eloquently confirmedHellion’s argument that Carrión’s many works had a common denominator—namelythe question of communication and distribution. In the catalog to the 2007 exhibitionLa era de la discrepancia: arte y cultura visual en México 1968-1997 (The Age of Discrepancy:Art and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1968-1997), Lourdes Morales would reiterate thatCarrión’s medium was the object (chiefly the book), but also the archive and method(mechanisms for circulation and distribution) (Debroise and Medina, 2014: p. 163 and167). Carrión formulated, tested out, and critically executed the mediation strategies heobserved in the work of his peers.

Closing Considerations

21 Returning to the question of the artist's book, it is odd how Carrión's convictions have

been coopted by some artists defend creations he would not have wasted his time on, orworks that he would have objected to because they did not meet his expectationsregarding distribution. When unsuccessful, the sculptural book and the book object (anartistic hybrid that is not really a book, but that participates in the book’s symbolic andcultural space, though rarely as an effective means of communication) tend to beconceptually precarious. Both are essentially modern, futuristic, and surrealist. But toboth of those media, Carrión preferred the bookwork, the artist's book, an artisticinstrument associated with visual and verbal communication and conceptually rootedin contemporary art and the transformation of languages. Though it has fallen intodisuse, the term "bookwork" is still necessary.16 The term “artist’s book,” which iswidely used internationally today, leaves room for conflicting interpretations.

22 Articles that, like “The New Art...,” are used by defenders of tradition—some of them

resentful, others conservative, and still others downright reactionary—to supportvalues of art and of craft that have little or nothing to do with contemporary art and itsforms of expression. Indeed, perhaps because of that resentment, intellectuals notoverly interested in editions or publications feel authorized to define what does and


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what does not constitute a type of work that goes against their theoretical conception.That leads them to make assertions like "Now that is an artist's book" even as theydisdain the communicational intelligence that defines it as such.

23 As Clive Phillpot points out, Carrión anticipated this problem:

Looking back from the vantage point of 1996, while still sharing Ulises’ view of whateveryone continues to call “artists’ books,” I have to report that the territorypopularly includes almost anything booklike, and that even the term “bookwork” isapplied to any of the phenomena in the territory—even unique unreadable books! Icould not even convince the compilers of a supposedly objective thesaurus of artthat “bookwork” had the meaning ascribed to it by Ulises and me. My citationswere countered by others that described objects quite contrary to what we hadespoused. (Phillpot en Carrión, 1997, p. 126)

24 Phillpot's feeling of powerlessness before the mutations of words and definitions

(perhaps a backward phenomenon) makes something Guy Schraenen said early onseem optimistic. For him, the problem is solved by an equation: "artist book =conceptual book.”

The artist’s book, together with Dadaism, are possibly the two phenomena thathave most greatly revolutionized the world of art in the twentieth century. Theartist’s book has contributed to this revolution not only through its form or itscontents, but basically through its way of spreading the work of art. [...] By meansof the book, by means of its format which is easy to circulate, the artist fromwherever his point of residence can introduce himself in the international circuit. (SCHRAENEN, in Llibres d’artista, 1981, p. 32).

25 The active, strategic dimension of circulation is, as already noted, important to Carrión.

We must heed his words:

Artists have started publishing books and magazines, distributing them, managinggalleries and other art centers, organizing cultural events that involve variousmedia and specialized professions. In other words, they have abandoned the sacredrealm of art and entered the wider, less well-contoured field of culture. Since artfor art’s sake is meaningless, the only valid way is art as an element of a culturalstrategy. This strategy will necessarily rest upon critical principles. (CARRION,“Critical Autonomy of the Artist,” 1997, pp. 152-153).

26

As Carrión pointed out in the lecture entitled About Criticism delivered in Boston in1985, “making artists’ books is not primarily dealing with aesthetics but culturalpolicie.” (CARRION, 1997: p. 177). He rarely, if ever, refers to book objects. What he istaking about are bookworks that circulate, that reach their objectives thanks to theirintrinsic coherence, their contents, the understanding of their sequential nature, theirawareness of the rhythm of reading, their rejection of linear language. And heemphasizes: “When such books finally exist, and when their existence has beenacknowledged, then we will have the right to say We have won!”(CARRION, 1983: p. 41).

27 New questions arise from academic research focused on, among other things,

recognizing the influence of Latin American art in the construction of contemporaryart. The recovery of an artistic memory obliterated by political regimes that limitedcivil rights, especially starting in the nineteen-sixties, is a task that has been, in myview, performed by historians, theorists, and critics. More or less recent personalexperiences with art history students and with artistic practices point to the need forfurther study of the historical relationships between networks (prior to the digitalworld), especially when they engage questions of identity and language. The ties that


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those networks forged must be assessed in a critical and comparative manner. After all,those ties made an art and communication system at once singular and plural.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CARRION Ulises, “Bookworks Revisited,” Print Collectors Newsletter, New York, 11(1), 1980, p. 6.

CARRION Ulises, “El arte nuevo de hacer libros,” Plural, Mexico City, 1975, pp. 33-38.

CARRION Ulises, Quant aux livres/ On books, Geneva, Héros-Limite, 1997.

CARRION Ulises, Second thoughts, Amsterdam, Void Distributors, 1980.

CARRION Ulises, “We have won! Haven’t we?,” Flue, New York, III(2), 1983, pp. 39-41.

DEBROISE Olivier, MEDINA Cuauhtémoc (ed.), La era de la discrepancia: Arte y cultura visual en

México, 1968-1997, 2.ed., Mexico City, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Turner, 2014.

HELLION Martha (ed), Ulises Carrión: ¿Mundos personales o estrategias culturales?, [Madrid,] Turner,

2003.

HOFFBERG Judith A, “Alternative Art Publishing Conference,” Umbrella, 2(6), 1979.

Llibres d’artista/Artist’s books, Barcelona, Metrònom, 1981.

LYONS Joan (ed), Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, Rochester, Visual Studies

Workshop Press; Layton, Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., Peregrine Smith Books, 1985.

SCHRAENEN Guy, Ulises Carrión: “We have won! Haven’t we?,” Amsterdam, Museum Fodor; Bremen,

Neues Museum Weserburg, 1992.

SILVEIRA Paulo, “Apontamentos sobre Ulises Carrión,” Anais do XXXI Colóquio do Comitê Brasileiro

de História da Arte, 2011, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, CBHA, 2011, pp. 681-690.

SILVEIRA Paulo, “O livro de artista como documento na metodologia da pesquisa em história da

arte,” Anais do XXXII Colóquio do Comitê Brasileiro de História da Arte, 2012, Universidade de Brasília,

Brasília, CBHA, 2012.

SILVEIRA Paulo, “The space and Time of Ulises” in MA CURATING CONTEMPORARY ART

STUDENTS AT THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART, Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners: Works by Ulises

Carrión, London, Royal College of Art, 2010, pp. 7-9.

XVI BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO (ed), Catálogo de arte postal, São Paulo, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo,

1981, pp. 11-15.

XVI BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO (ed), Catálogo geral, São Paulo, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 1981, pp.

78-79.

ENDNOTES

1. After informal research performed in parallel to his work at the Universidade Federal do Rio

Grande do Sul’s press, the author, as a master’s degree student from 1996 to 1999 and as a PhD


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candidate from 2003 to 2008, began studying the relationship between the artist's book and art

history. With the support of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico,

he is currently working on two studies on this same topic and one on the formation of

contemporary art.

2. The term intermidia is used here in the sense proposed by Dick Higgins in his article

"Intermidia" in The Somethig Else Newsletter, volume 1, number 1, February 1966.

3. The word “network” is used here in its broadest and enshrined sense in art, just as in “eternal

network”, an English expression used since the late 1960s by Robert Filliou (1926-1987) and his

circle ( because “the network is everlasting”), and consolidated from the launch of his book

Teaching and learning as performing arts, London, Occasional Papers, 1970 (republished in facsimile

in 2014).

4. His relatively unknown status is evidenced by an experience I had with art students in Mexico

in 2012. Martha Hellion had warned me that, even in his country of birth, Carrión was much less

known than I might have imagined. That situation was changing, though, thanks to a range of

efforts that yielded exhibitions and Spanish editions of texts by Carrión. Those efforts include the

publications ¿Mundos personales o estrategias culturales?, 2003, by Turner (accompanying an

exhibition); El robo del año, 2013, by Alias press, and the series Archivo Carrión put out by Tumbona

press, in conjunction with El arte nuevo de hacer libros, 2012, El arte correo y el gran monstruo, 2013,

and Lilia Prado Superestrella y otros chismes, 2014. Carrión was also featured in international

exhibitions of varying size, among them the 5th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre; Gossip, Scandal

and Good Manners: Works by Ulises Carrión, a retrospective held at The Showroom, London, 2010;

Dear Reader Don’t Read., at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2017 (and the

Museo JUMEX, Mexico City, 2017); and Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel, 2017. The importance of

the exhibition La era de la discrepancia: arte e cultura visual en México 1968-1997, UNAM, 2007, which

featured his work, should not be underestimated.

5. Although Carrión had already carried out experimental poetry experiments, living with the

collective Beau Geste Press, in England, seems to have been definitive, since it provided his first

books, such as Looking for poetry, 1973

6. The book Second Thoughts includes the articles "The New Art of Making Books," "From

Bookworks to Mailworks," "Rubber Stamp Theory and Praxis," "Rubber Stamp Art," "Mail Art

and the Big Monster," "Table of Mail Art Works,” “Personal Worlds of Cultural Strategies?,” and

“Bookworks Revisited.”

7. Prior to the publication of the anthology Quant aux livres / On books, 1997, the article had been

published in thirteen different books and newspapers in various languages. It was not until 2011

that its Portuguese translation was published in Brazil in book form. It is easy to find the text on

the internet. El arte nuevo de hacer libros (The New Art of Making Books) has been reprinted in

Spanish in Tumbona press’s Anomalous Collection, 2012, Mexico City.

8. O nome correto é Wlademir Dias-Pino. E na realidade o sobrenome originalmente não era

composto, não possuía hífen, que passou a ser usado pelo artista para evitar a separação em

referências bibliográficas e outros usos.

The correct name is Wlademir Dias-Pino. And in reality the surname was originally notcomposed, it did not have a hyphen, which started to be used by the artist to avoidseparation in bibliographic references and other uses. 9. It was through Carrion’s contact with the intellectual production of the “new avant-gardes”

that he recognized the intellectual status of the artist. Those avant-gardes were committed to

joining art and communication. The basis for this statement was the greater instrumental

commitment of art publications (bookworks and alike) to cultural strategies than to art. See as

well “Personal Words or Cultural Strategies?” a text from 1978 for a mail art project published

prior to “Bookworks revisited.” This text that stemmed from a lecture at the Visual Studies

Workshop, Rochester, New York in 1979. Both are reproduced in Second Thoughts (1980).


74

10. The early members of the Noigandres group, instigator of concrete poetry in Brazil,were poets Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003), Décio Pignatari (1927-2012), and Augustode Campos (1931). Ronaldo Azeredo (1937-2006) and José Lino Grünewald (1931-2000)later joined. 11. The Poema Processo movement officially lasted from 1967 (with a manifesto launched the

following year) until 1972. Figures active in it included Wlademir Dias-Pino (1927-2018)—an artist

featured in the first Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta in 1956—Moacy Cirne (1943-2014),

Álvaro de Sá (1935-2001), Neide Dias de Sá (1940), among others.

12. Mexico City-based Alias press released a small book and an installation, entitled The Robbery

of the Year, in mid-2013. Coordinated by Damián Ortega and with the collaboration of Martha

Hellion and her archives, the book collected photos taken by Claudio Goulart (1954-2005), a

Brazilian artist who lived in the Netherlands.

13. Known in Portugal as O momento imprudente and in Brazil as Na teia do destino; in Spanish,

usually called Almas desnudas (Naked Souls).

14. For key concepts, see Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), a project of the Getty Research

Institute. Its entry for artists’ books (books) reads: [...] Books, whether unique items or multiples,

made or conceived by artists, including commercial publications (usually in limited editions), as

well as unique items formed or arranged by the artist. For texts written by artists for the sake of

their informational content, use ‘writings.’ For artists’ books that emphasize the physical book as

a work of art rather than the content, use ‘bookworks.’ For works that look like or incorporate

books but do not communicate in the ways characteristic of books, see ‘book objects.’ Last visited

July 6, 2019. URL: http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?

find=artist%C2%B4s+book&logic=AND&note=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300123016.

For reflections on the conceptual problem of the "artist's book" as object or category, and

remarks on its place internationally, see SILVEIRA Paulo, A página violada: da ternura à injúria na

construção do livro de artista, Porto Alegre, 2001 (Portuguese only).

15. Communication by e-mail with Martha Hellión, May 19, 2013.

16. Returning to Getty’s art and architecture thesaurus, the entry for the term "bookworks"

reads: “Artists’ books that exploit the book form or alter its physical structure as part of the

content of the work. Also includes works where emphasis is on the fine crafting of the book. For

sculptures that look like or incorporate books but do not communicate in the ways characteristic

of books, use ‘book objects.’

Last visited July 6, 2019. URL: http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?

find=bookwork&logic=AND&note=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300178842.

ABSTRACTS

This article discusses the importance of the production and thinking of Mexican artist Ulises

Carrión (1941–1989) during the years he spent in Europe. It focuses on his adherence to the

network of the Pan-American and European avant-gardes of the seventies; his bookshop Other

Books and So; some of his works; and his network strategies and cultural practices.

Understanding his thought and his artistic production can shed light on the conceptually

problematic “artist’s book” category, a term that first arose in the seventies and then resurged in

art fairs and exhibitions as well as academic research in the 2010s.

Este artigo comenta a importância das pesquisas sobre a produção e o pensamento do artista

mexicano Ulises Carrión (1941-1989) durante sua vida na Europa, destacando a sua convergência

para o espírito de rede das vanguardas pan-americanas e europeias dos anos 1970, a importância

de sua livraria Other Books and So, alguns de seus trabalhos e suas estratégias ligadas à rede e às


75

http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=artist%C2%B4s+book&logic=AND&note=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300123016

http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=artist%C2%B4s+book&logic=AND&note=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300123016

http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=bookwork&logic=AND&note=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300178842

http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=bookwork&logic=AND&note=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300178842

práticas culturais. Procura-se enfatizar que a compreensão de seu pensamento e de sua produção

artística pode possibilitar uma melhor compreensão a respeito das dúvidas conceituais pela

designação “livro de artista”, designação esta estabelecida como nós a conhecemos nos anos 1970

e nos anos 2010 vivendo momento de ampla e renovada divulgação, de feiras e exposições a

pesquisas acadêmicas.

Cet article traite sur la production et la pensée de l’artiste mexicain Ulises Carrión (1941-1989) en

particulier pendant sa vie en Europe. Il souligne la convergence de son travail avec les

thématiques traitées par le réseau des avant-gardes panaméricaines et européennes des années

1970, ainsi que l’importance de sa librairie Other Books and So. Également sont analysées ici

quelques-unes de ses œuvres ainsi que les stratégies liées aux réseaux et aux pratiques

culturelles. Nous essayions de souligner que la compréhension de sa pensée et de sa production

artistique peut permettre une meilleure compréhension des doutes conceptuels sur la

désignation “livre d’artiste”, désignation établie dans les années 1970. Ces livres, dans les années

2010, vivront une diffusion renouvelée, avec des foires et expositions, ainsi qu’un intérêt

croissant de la recherche universitaire.

INDEX

Mots-clés: Ulises Carrión. Other Books and So. Art postal. Livre d’artiste. Bookwork.

Keywords: Ulises Carrión. Other Books and So. Mail art, Artist’s book, Bookwork.

Palabras claves: Ulises Carrión. Other Books and So. Arte postal. Livro de artista. Livro-obra.


76

José Gómez Sicre and his Impact on theOAS’ Visual Arts Unit: For anInternational Latin American Art1

José Gómez Sicre and his Impact on the OAS’ Visual Arts Unit: For an

International Latin American Art2

Ivonne Pini and María Clara Bernal

Translation : Jane Brodie

1 In this text, we will explore how Cuban cultural manager José Gómez Sicre contributed

to the consolidation of policies on Latin American art from his post as director of theVisual Arts Unit of the OAS. To that end, we surveyed and analyzed his personalarchive, housed in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of the University ofTexas at Austin, to which we had access thanks to the Getty Foundation’s ConnectingArt Histories grant.

2 At the close of the nineteen-forties, the Organization of American States (OAS)

proposed, in a tacit but resounding manner, a set of parameters with which to promoteLatin American art in the international sphere. Acting through its Visual Arts Unit, theOAS supported exhibitions that, along with the Bulletin of Visual Arts, aimed tocontribute to the formation of a specific model, one that, in the eyes of José GómezSicre and others, would ensure the insertion of art produced in Latin America in theglobal circuits of modern art.

3 The postwar period—the one addressed here—witnessed a shift in relations between

the United States and Latin America. In the context of the Cold War and after thetriumph of the Cuban Revolution, the United States launched new programs to counterwhat it deemed the danger of the spread of the Cuban model. We are interested here inhow those changes restructured the dynamic of the art world and, specifically, in howthey affected the model advocated by the OAS’ Visual Arts Unit.

4 The OAS’ Visual Arts Unit cannot be analyzed without also looking at the policies

advocated by MoMA. Before and during the war, in the framework of PresidentRoosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy (Roosevelt was in office from 1933 to 1945), MoMA


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purchased works from Latin American countries as part of a diplomatic strategy to gainallies. The trips North Americans took to Latin America to formalize those purchaseswere also an excuse to learn about what was happening in the region politically andsocially, and to look for allies there. One of MoMA’s consultants in the forties wasLincoln Kirstein.3 He traveled to a number of countries in Latin America, and whilethere he would send the State Department reports on what he found.

5 In the nineteen-forties, the executive power of the United States created the Office of

the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to stimulate cultural and commercialexchange with Latin America. Due to his experience with Latin America and hiscontacts there through family business interests, Nelson Rockefeller was named itsdirector. The new entity had considerable impact on the art field through its ArtDepartment which, using its relationship with MoMA as an instrument, heldexhibitions. The Museum promised to coordinate the organization of the exhibitionsand their tours around the United States and Latin America. One of the coremotivations for strengthening relations between the United States and Latin Americawas cultural collaboration as a means to isolate first fascist-leaning and latertotalitarian-leaning tendencies in different countries. MoMA’s approach to LatinAmerica was tied to the agenda of the Inter-American Fund. In later decades as well,those shared interests were evident. In the late fifties, MoMA increased its acquisitionsof Latin American works in an attempt to counter the implications of the triumph ofthe Cuban Revolution. In the sixties, under President Kennedy, the Alliance forProgress reinforced ties between the United States and the countries to the south notonly in the economic and social spheres, but also in the realm of culture.

6 Relevant in this context is the relationship between José Gómez Sicre and Alfred H. Barr

Jr,4 the director of MoMA at the time. The correspondence between them, housed in theaforementioned archive, begins in 1942, but their relationship predates it. They metwhen Barr visited Cuba, where he was hosted by María Luisa Gómez Mena, a Cubansugar magnate and modern art patron.

7 The very first letter, dated August 1942, attests to an affinity between Barr and Gómez

Sicre that would allow them to work together on cultural policies during the Cold War.The letter reads: “Dear Pepe: You know that I cannot possibly repay you for all the timeand the thought which you gave us during our Cuban visit. You are a very remarkableman, for you combine intelligence and knowledge with extraordinary fairness anddisinterested appreciation of a great variety of artists and of art.”5 At the end of theletter, Barr asks Gómez Sicre to keep him informed of what was happening in Cubanart. He expresses interest in using his connections at MoMA to internationalize Cubanart and Latin American art in general.

8 The correspondence sheds light not only on how their relationship was built, but also

on the policies and expectations it entailed. In 1943, Barr asked Gómez Sicre to helphim get the support of Cuban President Gerardo Machado for an exhibition of Cubanart in the United States. That same year, Gómez Sicre had organized the "Exposición dePintura y Escultura Moderna Cubana" at the Institución Hispano Cubana de Cultura inHavana.

9 Barr’s request of Gómez Sicre would lead to the show “Modern Cuban Painters,” which

opened at MoMA in March 1944. While it did not have the formal support of the Cubangovernment, it was, according to the MoMA press release, sponsored by María LuisaGómez Mena;6 Alfred Barr, as the Museum’s Advisory Director, was responsible for


78

selecting the works to exhibit. At the exhibition, Gómez Sicre’s book Pintura Cubana de

Hoy, also funded by Gómez Mena, was for sale. The show toured the United States fortwo years.7 News of it reached Cuba, and it was reviewed in newspapers like the Gaceta

del Caribe under headlines like “Cuban Colors in New York.” The tone of that article, atleast, was triumphant. It spoke of “a heroic invasion of the Yankees.”8 Alfred Barr alsosent a letter to the editor of the Gaceta del Caribe in which he spoke of the successenjoyed by Cuban painting in New York.9

10 The correspondence between Gómez Sicre and Barr also speaks of a show of

watercolors and drawings entitled Watercolor and Drawing by Six Cuban Painters, whichtoured with the support of MoMA. That exhibition, unlike the earlier one, wasexhibited at less prominent locations in the United States. In recognition of his work onthe two shows, the MoMA Board of Directors gave Gómez Sicre an honorary ten-yearmembership to the Museum.

Latin American Art in the Context of InternationalModern Art

11 Gómez Sicre arrived in New York with the support of Barr who, in the letters they

exchanged, advised him to apply for a scholarship to get a master’s degree in fine artsfrom New York University. What mattered, Barr explained, was not going to classes butfinding a way to come to New York and make contacts. But soon after Gómez Sicre gothis funding, something unexpected happened: Barr’s tenure as the director of MoMAcame to an end. He did stay on as an adviser to the new director, René d´Harnoncourt,which meant the exhibitions planned during his tenure took place. Notwithstanding,the fact that Barr was no longer the director of MoMA was an obstacle to therelationship between the Cuban and the Museum. The fact that the publication ofGómez Sicre’s book Cuban Painting Today (1944) was funded by María Luisa Gómez Menainstead of by MoMA attests to the lesser interest on the part of the Museum’s newauthorities in supporting Gómez Sicre.10

12 Though Gómez Sicre’s relationship with MoMA yielded no additional fruit, Barr’s

strategy did: Gómez Sicre was able to establish the ties necessary to move toWashington and begin the career that would make him the influential figure hebecame. According to an autobiographical text in the Neetie Lee Benson Collection,Gómez Sicre was responsible for establishing a program of art exhibitions at the Pan-American Union (1946), which would be turned into the OAS in two years’ time. In 1949,Gómez Sicre was named the head of the institution’s Visual Arts Unit, and in 1976 thedirector of the Museo de Arte Contemporáne de América Latina (Museum of LatinAmerican Contemporary Art) (he retired from that post in 1983). Gómez Sicre was keyto furthering a certain model of Latin American art. To that end, he built a collection ofthe region’s art that informed its international profile for thirty-six years, a model thatpromoted certain individuals over others.

13 Our study of the archive showed that Gómez Sicre’s post at the OAS and his relationship

to Alfred Barr and MoMA affected not only the conception of Latin American art in theUnited States but also in a number of art collections and institutions in the regionitself. Thanks in part to his many trips to Latin America, Gómez Sicre became aninfluential personality who advocated a model that attempted to incorporate Latin


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America into the international modern art model while also rendering it exportableand acceptable to the international market. He enacted those ideas from his post at theOAS and through regional initiatives like the Salón Esso,11 which he organized and inwhich he acted as a juror.

14 Gómez Sicre was expressly against local schools and in favor of modern art, a term he

relativized. His conception of the modern was clearly influenced by Alfred Barr.12

Gómez Sicre believed that Latin America should make use of an international artisticlanguage like the one prevalent in the United States, and that its artists should pursue astyle compatible with the rest of the hemisphere. He held that the United States shouldbe the engine behind the construction of the international language: “As the richestand most developed country, it should be the primary driver and the natural center ofculture to the benefit of all the countries in the continent” (GÓMEZ SICRE, 1959: p.22-23).

15 His argument makes clear his belief that forming part of Western culture, doing away

with regionalisms and—of course—with any hint of political narrative, as well asembracing an international language was the means to legitimize Latin American art.Westernism and internationalism were, then, the cornerstones of the art he advocated.

16 The modernism Gómez Sicre championed did recognize the potential value of what he

called the “Latin American accent” in modern art. If, he argued, Latin Americans usedto go to Europe to learn about art, they could now—whether they lived in Europe or inthe United States—help shape the fate of international modernism. In other words,they should go from being students and apprentices to being decisive players in theconfiguration of what they considered their own form of expression linked tointernational modern art.

17 Exhibitions like 32 Artistas de las Américas: Exposición realizada por la Unión Panamericana

attempted to establish a new canon of Latin American art, questioning muralism andupholding abstraction and expressionism. Held at the Museo Nacional de Bogotá in1949, the show was part of the agenda of cultural activities organized by the Visual ArtsUnit of the Pan-American Union (GÓMEZ SICRE, 1959: p.22-23). The works featuredbelonged to collections in the United States—MoMA in more than half the cases. Theintroduction underscored the exhibition’s central aim, namely to demonstrate Americaas ideal site for artistic creation in a free state:

Please take this set of works as an anthology of the most independent facetsof the artistic sentiment of the Americas. Like all anthologies, it is inevitablysusceptible to oversights. Any controversy it incites will be a sign that it hasachieved its immanent and final objective: to stimulate thought, whether infavor or against. That is what will kindle new lights and consolidateunshakeable concepts. This exhibition does not seek to incite needless controversy, but rather tomanifest that in the Americas man can let his spirit explore all categoriesand dimensions of creation—which is how it should be in a continentcommitted to the pursuit of freedom. If that conception took root, thatwould be sufficient reward for this exhibition’s mission (GÓMEZ SICRE, 1949:n.p.).

18 While it was ingenuous to believe that the exhibition could impose a homogenizing

model on modern art of the Americas, it did have a major impact on what wasincreasingly accepted in the region as modern art. Furthermore, it paved the way for


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the OAS, through its Visual Arts Unit, to play a leading role in defining what was seenas forward-looking art from Latin American.

19 In the catalogue to another show of Latin American art, this one at the Dallas Museum

of Fine Arts in 1959, Gómez Sicre insists on a change in paradigm. He describes whatviewers will find: it will not, he warns, be picturesque scenes, but rather works bymodern artist from ten countries using new forms of expression in their explorations.“The creative talents of Latin America have acquired a world vision which enables themto express national themes in subtle accents, rather than by raw, literal reproductions”(GÓMEZ SICRE, 1959: n.p.) Almost all the artists selected for the show, who arepresented individually after the general introduction cited above, subscribed togeometric abstraction. The brief biographies in the catalogue always refer to theirstudies outside their countries of origin.

20 Though Gómez Sicre did not support Mexican muralism, and wrote off interest in it as

interest in “imported works acquired in a tourist spirit,” he does recognize it as themost important antecedent to the internationalism that he pursued for Latin Americanart. In his view, three artists—Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros—were able, in the midst ofthe Great Depression in the United States, to go beyond borders. They were warmlywelcomed in the artistic centers of their neighbor to the north: “We could say that thatwas the first time a Latin American nation exported a prestigious work to NorthAmerican centers.”13

Gómez Sicre chooses central figures to signal whatLatin American art should be like

21 In the draft of his contribution to the issue of Vanidades magazine published in his

honor in 1976, Gómez Sicre wrote:, “[…] we have a distinctive accent in art, just as wehave a distinctive accent in Spanish.” He then goes on to list artists that, in his view,represent “the Latin American accent”: Orozco, Siqueiros, Tamayo, and Cuevas inMexico; Figari and Torres García in Uruguay; Carlos Mérida in Mexico-Guatemala;Amelia Peláez and Cundo Bermúdez in Cuba; and Alejandro Obregón in Colombia. Hedidn’t mention anyone in particular in Argentina because, he said, “there were toomany to name.”14

22 That concept of the “Latin American accent” was particularly dangerous insofar as it

epitomized a number of increasingly accepted affirmations that characterized theregion’s art as uniform. There was a risk, then, of replacing one set of stereotypes withanother.

23 Gómez Sicre advocated for a number of figures in modern art, but he championed none

more than Mexican artist José Luis Cuevas. Cuevas is mentioned a great deal in GómezSicre’s writings, speeches, and interviews. The young Cuevas’s criticism of “chabacano

Mexican nationalism” made him a figure central to challenging the vast paintedsurfaces and the heroism so characteristic of the work of the three great Mexicanmuralists. With its small drawings of distressed characters of unidentifiable nationality,Cuevas’s work seemed akin to the Existential philosophy so popular in the postwar era,hence his importance to Gómez Sicre’s criticism of muralism.

24 Also central to Gómez Sicre’s vision was Colombian painter Alejandro Obregón, whom

he credited with having introduced modern art to Colombia and Latin America without


81

—to his credit—having spent a spell in Paris (“senile city,” in the Cuban’s view). Othercenters of culture—like New York—were now better places to study, Gómez Sicre held.

25 In one text found in the archive,15 Gómez Sicre calls Obregón one of his “discoveries.”

“When Alejandro Obregón, already well-versed in techniques learned abroad, grabbedthe attention of the art scene in his country, a new phase began in Colombian painting[…] His debut in Washington in 1955 was a game-changer […] That was when a newObregón was born.”16 He then describes Obregón’s return to Colombia, asserting that bythen “He was the Alejandro Obregón that everyone was going to admire and pursue. Hisname was heard beyond the borders of his country. He was awarded prizes andmentioned by foreign critics as a phenomenon. There had been no need for him to seekthe shelter of the School of Paris.” “Alejandro Obregón saved his country’s art from adangerous crisis and gave Latin America a new way of seeing.”17

26 Marta Traba was no less enthusiastic about Cuevas and Obregón as the engines of Latin

American modernism. In her book Historia abierta del arte colombiano (written in 1968and published in 1974), Traba concludes, after laying out modern art’s specificcharacteristics, that in Colombia the first modern painter was Obregón. According toher, he grasped “the conditions in which modern art operates and adapted them toexpress himself without falling into a facile identification with any European model.That was possible thanks to his powerful poetic intuition as well as a personal need toadhere to a specific landscape, nature, zoology” (TRABA, 1974: p.130).

27 Gómez Sicre and Marta Traba’s relationship was characterized by shared opinions

followed by deep discrepancies. They mostly agreed in the nineteen-fifties, and theyshared a common task: to offset the weight of Mexican muralism in Latin America inorder to advocate instead an art not bound to nationalist protests and, therefore,capable of engaging in debate on purely visual questions. Their shared mission in thefifties and sixties was to uphold a Latin American art on a par with international art.

28 The archive consulted has little to say about what caused the increasing distance

between Gómez Sicre and Traba. There are fragments of an interview in which GómezSicre gives his version of the interests that joined them and the reasons for their laterestrangement. He explains that he met Traba in the late fifties: “We were immediateallies against the reactionary and passé indigenism, against the dogmas of Mexicanmuralism […] Together, we defended abstraction, whether informalist or geometric,and we were bound by a love of drawing. She was part of what has been called the NewLeft: she was an anti-Stalinist and a staunch opponent of the false morality oftraditional Communists […] Marta and I had similar tastes. We liked painting, drawing,and craftsmanship.”18

29 That passage suggests the parameters Gómez Sicre deemed essential to consolidating

the category of Latin American art. In the Carta abierta a los jóvenes del taller libre II thatGómez Sicre wrote for El Nacional newspaper, he attempts to lay out for young artistssome of the things he considers key to his vision of Latin American art: a) Discipline: artis a demanding craft, and you must train in technique every day.19 b) Do not pursueoriginality as the only possible aim. c) “Deep reverence of nature as point ofdeparture.” d) Avoid any nationalist intent. As pointed out above, for Gómez Sicre itwas essential that an art that would be called Latin American have a hefty dose ofinternationalism. To that end, he often cited José Luis Cuevas as a counterexample ofMexican muralism and its outgrowths, and of indigenism—embodied in Guayasamín—


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which he saw as the degeneration of what is called Latin American art. The final pointon his list (point e) is self-criticism.20

The Art-Ideology Relationship

30 Gómez Sicre argued that Latin American art worthy of exhibiting abroad is produced in

a state of freedom. For him, that freedom was not about producing art without externalpressure or coercion, but about not working under leftist regimes. In the undatedmanuscript to a catalogue text he titled “Para la exposición en Berlín,” Gómez Sicrestates: “The works gathered here have a common denominator: they were all created ina state of freedom, and they all bear witness to what man can achieve when not heldback by religious doctrines or political ideologies.”21 His other writings, along with hismanifest preferences for certain artists and schools, make it clear which “politicalideologies” he had in mind: anything in any way connected to communism was, in hisview, unacceptable.

31 An analysis of his personal archives shows that he selected artists for exhibitions and

other events not only on the basis of their work but also of their political beliefs. Hewas a staunch opponent of any left-leaning political position.

32 In an undated interview, he is asked about his distaste for leftist thought. He explains,

“[…] Like almost all Cubans, I was a follower of Fidel on January 1, 1959.22 I intended togo home and serve my country. In fact, I offered to but they were not interested. AfterCastro declared himself a Communist, I began to openly oppose the Revolution.”23 Thatis significant because, as was to be expected, Gómez Sicre’s relationship with Cuban artwas affected by the Revolution. The artists who left the island immediately gained hissupport. He wrote about their work and even gave them solo shows in the OAS’galleries—not, in many cases, because of their skill as artists but because of the politicalbeliefs that led them to leave the island. Similarly, the artists who chose to stay in Cubaafter Castro declared himself a Communist were, with just a handful of exceptions, theobject of his harsh criticism.

33 Regarding the accusation that he had written off leftist artists, Gómez Sicre explained,

“I didn’t leave anyone out [of the Esso salon] because of their politics, as long as theywere not Siqueiros-style Communists.”24 That denial in his answer is striking because itmakes more evidente the weight that his ideology has on his choices. In the sameinterview, he denies his ties to the CIA, but admits having played a role in the Cold War,especially in Cuba. “I have never been an ally of banana-republic right-wingers orfascists. In politics, I have always admired anticommunist liberals like Betancourt inVenezuela and Arévalo in Guatemala. I am and have always been anti-Franco and anti-Batista.”25

34 Despite those ambiguous statements, it is clear that artists who, in one way or another,

had shown leftist inclinations were not considered by Gómez Sicre; those who wereselected were influenced by “internationalism.” But that wasn’t all. At stake as well wasa series of requirements that were not intrinsic to the artist’s work. Cuban artistWifredo Lam, for instance, met all the requirements to be an “international LatinAmerican.” Notwithstanding, Gómez Sicre’s aversion to him was patent.

35 When he is asked, “What do you think of Lam as a painter?” Gómez Sicre replies, “He’s

not bad. He did some good work, mostly in the forties. But he is by no means the genius


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that Lydia Cabrera and Lam himself make him out to be. Since the forties, he hasrepeated himself a lot. Personally, he is detestable. He was very much the Trotskyiteand the surrealist until 59, when he reinvented himself as a pro-Soviet Leninist. Youknow that Lam doesn’t talk like a Cuban? That’s what Picasso said.”26

By Way of an Epilogue: Gómez Sicre’s Reception in theArt Milieu

36 The evaluations of Gómez Sicre’s work at the OAS attest to the battles he waged and the

aims he pursued. He was, by the end of his career, worn out by his run-ins withbureaucrats and peers, and by his campaign to change the image of Latin American artand to advocate some of its artists. All of that was at stake, he believed, in his role as anart critic.

37 In an interview held after he left the institution, Gómez Sicre, at the request of

Alejandro Anreus, provides an account of his advent at the OAS. In an attempt to showhow important he was to the OAS and to demonstrate the changes he ushered in there,Gómez Sicre tells Anreus that, “When I arrived it was called the Pan-American Unionand there were a few parrots on the grounds. I had to struggle against the bureaucracyuntil my departure in 1983.”27 Gómez Sicre does not provide an accurate sense of hisimpact on the OAS. In some cases—like when he claims to have “discovered artists”—heoverestimates it, and in others—specifically regarding his influence on public andprivate art collections in the United States and Latin America—he underestimates it.

38 The press clippings, transcriptions of speeches, catalogue texts, and letters from artists

and critics found in the archive speak often of how influential Gómez Sicre was. Theexhibitions he organized at the Pan-American Union/OAS were, in many cases, artists’first shows in North America (Alejandro Obregón) or even outside their home countries(Fernando Botero, Gómez Sicre assures). The contents of the archive make frequentreference to him as the one responsible for “discovering artists” which, to him, meantintroducing them to the international scene. That was, in part, the source of his power.As the center of art was migrating from Paris to New York, the opportunity to showwork in the United States with the support of a protégé of Alfred Barr was not to beshunned.

39 The OAS exercised influence not only on the image of Latin American art in the United

States but also in Latin America itself. According to Gómez Sicre, “Not only was theOAS’ gallery in Washington extremely active, but it also advocated abroad the mostrenowned artists who passed through it. The São Paulo Biennial, in Brazil, was abefitting venue from which to expand the nascent prestige of those artists who,because of their talent, had triumphed in the Washington gallery. Indeed, the OASserved to provide a wide range of artists with access to an important venue in whichmany Latin American countries did not participate because they did not accept theirmodern artists. It was through the OAS that different artists entered each edition of theBiennial after having had their first shows in the OAS’ gallery.”28

40 The texts in Gómez Sicre’s archive evidence his constant concern with how Latin

American art was being received outside the region. He wanted to bring an end to theimage of traditional and indigenous art. In one of the many accounts of his life found inthe archive, he states that the only Latin American artists shown regularly at the New


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York Museum of Modern Art were Wifredo Lam and Roberto Matta. He believed it wasbecause they were seen as part of the School of Paris. He complains that since 1944, theyear when the exhibition of Cuban art was held at MoMA, “the museum has not showna single group of works that represents Latin America or that recognizes itscontribution to universal art.”29

41 In a handwritten text entitled “Arte Latinoamericano 1954-1983” written during the

final phase of his public activity, Gómez Sicre takes stock of the history of LatinAmerican art in the United States, identifying three stages: the initial support ofmuralism; the importance of Brazil through Cándido Portinari in 1939; and the rise ofHaitian art. In his judgement, all three were fleeting moments governed by externalcircumstance. He also assesses his own work. He argues that his impact was wide, notlimited to just a few countries. Unlike the earlier three instances cited, his work would,he believed, leave a lasting legacy.

42 Gómez Sicre’s influence on the development and spread of Latin American art is a

subject of controversy for the art world both in his time and later. In an articlepublished in El Universal in January 1983, Marta Traba wrote that after a long career thetime had come for Gómez Sicre to step down from his post at the OAS. She argued that,despite claims to the contrary, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Latinoamérica was not apriority of the OAS, as was evident in its meager budget and shabby condition. Sherecognized Gómez Sicre’s important role as the creator of the museum and thecollection, which in her view was erratic, but she argued that someone “moreknowledgeable” was needed at the helm of the museum.

43 A few years later, on the occasion of the tribute paid to him at the Museum of

Contemporary Art in Washington (1989), Juan Acha wrote to Gómez Sicre: “I amconvinced of your professional merits as an advocate of Latin American visual artsinternationally, as well as of your critical knowledge of the evolution and the greatestexponents of the region’s production.” Remembering when they met, he states, “Wesaw you as an example. Without setting out to, you influenced the sensibility and theintellect of those of us working or beginning to work as art critics … in any case, youfreed our arts from provincialisms.”30

44 In the article “Pequeño homenaje a José Gómez Sicre” published by Peruvian painter

Fernando de Syszlo in Lima after Gómez Sicre’s death, he writes: “Before Gómez Sicre,there was, as I see it, Argentine and Mexican art, Peruvian and Venezuelan art. He wasthe one who saw that all of those expressions, albeit in a hidden or ineffable fashion,were bound by common denominators […] He invented not only the term LatinAmerican art, but also the idea that it holds.”31

45 Raquel Tibol and Shifra Goldman, on the other hand, are highly critical. They accuse

him of having brought U.S. corporations into Latin American art, specifically throughthe Salón Esso. Tibol argues that the Organization of American States attempted toimpose abstract art to the detriment of the figurative movements around the continent—and Gómez Sicre played a central role in that project, enacting a cultural policydirected by the State Department. She condemns North American cultural imperialismthat sought to impose a single artistic tendency and that led to neglect of importantstrains of Mexican art.

46 In the aforementioned interview with Anreus, Gómez Sicre acknowledges his influence

on the formation of collections of Latin American art. He argues that he advisedbusinessmen on how to build good collections. Study of Gómez Sicre’s archive shows


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that, for him, art played an important role in politics. His insistence on an art thataffirmed the values of the Americas but was also in keeping with universal movementsturned him into a figure who, in the fifties and sixties, influenced the notion of whatLatin American art should be. He turned the many exhibitions he was involved inorganizing and the OAS’ Bulletin of Visual Arts into sources of information andbibliographical references for a range of North American critics when they addressedwhat was happening in Latin America. The influence of the internationalist modelconstructed in the nineteen-fifties and sixties endured beyond that period. It madeitself felt in controversial exhibitions of the nineties that continued to try to defineLatin American art in homogenous and supposedly cosmopolitan terms framed by thenarrative of international modernism.

47 Translated by Jane Brodie

48 Bibliography

49 GOLDMAN, Shifra M. (1995), Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin

America and the United States. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

50 José Gómez Sicre Papers, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Archive,

Universidad of Texas at Austin.

51 MESA MENDIETA, Alexandra (2019), “Arte moderno en el Museo Nacional de Colombia

(1948 – 1963), in H-ART: revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte Nº 4., Bogotá.

52 TRABA, Marta (1974), Historia abierta del arte colombiano, Colcultura, Bogotá.

NOTES

1. When Goméz Sicre was named director of the Visual Arts Unit, the organization was known as

the Pan-American Union. The name was changed to the Organization of American States (OAS) in

1948. We use that name in this text, regardless of date.

2. When Goméz Sicre was named director of the Visual Arts Unit, the organization was known as

the Pan-American Union. The name was changed to the Organization of American States (OAS) in

1948. We use that name in this text, regardless of date.

3. Kirstein (1907–1996) was a central figure in the New York cultural scene due both to his work

at MoMA and his role in the founding of the New York City Ballet.

4. Alfred Barr was the director of the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1929 until 1943,

when he was named adviser to the director and, later, director of collections.

5. Letter from Alfred Barr to José Gómez Sicre dated August 16, 1942. Unpublished material in the

José Gómez Sicre Papers, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas

at Austin, box 7, folder 2.

6. In the undated press release entitled “Museum of Modern Art Announces Exhibition of Modern

Cuban Painters” announcing the opening of an exhibition that would feature work by Ponce de

León, Amelia Peláez, Carlos Enríquez, Mariano, Mario Carreño, and Cundo Bermúdez.

7. From October 1944 to May 1945, the show traveled to Chicago, Utah, Washington, and

Minneapolis. Information in a letter dated September 22, 1944. Unpublished material in the José

Gómez Sicre Papers, Archive Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at


86

Austin, box 7, folder 2. Letters to Gómez Sicre from MoMA dated 1946—by which time he was

working at the Pan-American Union—indicate that the show was handled according to the norms

of the time: a number of works were sold not only to some of the institutions that housed it on

the tour, but also to MoMA beforehand, and the money was divided between Gómez Sicre and the

participating artists.

8. “Colores cubanos en Nueva York” at Gaceta del Caribe, Havana, May 1944.

9. Letter from Alfred Barr to the editorial board of Gaceta del Caribe, dated July 18, 1944.Unpublished material in the José Gómez Sicre Papers, Archive Nettie Lee Benson LatinAmerican Collection, University of Texas at Austin, box 7, folder 2. We find this letterparticularly interesting for a number of reasons: 1) it mentions problems that aforeigner would have trouble detecting during a short visit like Barr’s to Cuba; 2) it iswritten in fluent Spanish, which is startling since most of the letters the NorthAmerican critic wrote to Gómez Sicre were in English; 3) Gómez Sicre and his ally,María Luisa Gómez Mena, are mentioned as benefactors and as opponents to WilfredoLam’s project (Gómez Sicre and Lam had serious ideological differences); 4) it is notsigned by Barr, though his name appears at the bottom. For all of those reasons, onemight think that Gómez Sicre was directly involved in writing the letter in order tovalidate his position.

10. The correspondence makes it clear that Gómez Sicre had to seek María Luisa Gómez Mena’s

support since MoMA had retracted its early support because it could not use more than a certain

amount of paper.

11. The Esso Salons of Young Artists (1965) were held in over twelve Latin American cities. The

award-winning artists in each one then participated in a competition in Washington at which

two winners and six mentions were named. Gómez Sicre formed part of all the international

juries—presided over by Thomas Messer, director of the Guggenheim Museum—except for the

one in Mexico.

12. The question of how much Clement Greenberg’s stance at this time influencedGómez Sicre’s conception of modernism merits further study.

13. Text from the “Artes Plásticas en Latinoamérica 1954–1983” archive.

14. Participants in the show included Luis Barragán, J. Antonio Fernández Muro, SaraGrilo, Emilio Pettoruti, and Rogelio Polesello.

15. No date or place of publication, but there is a note in which Obregón thanks him forthe text for an exhibition catalogue.

16. Collection, Universidad of Texas at Austin (n. d., n. p.). This text was presumably written for

an exhibition catalogue.

17. Interview with Alejandro Anreus (n.d.). Unpublished material in the José Gómez Sicre Papers,

Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas at Austin, Box 1, folder

4.

18. Interview with Alejandro Anreus (n.d.). Unpublished material in the José Gómez Sicre

Papers, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas atAustin, Box 1, folder 4.

19. In the aforementioned interview with Vanidades, he stated that conceptual art and

happenings were “nonsense” and he was happy Latin American artists had not been infected

with them.

20. Unpublished material in the José Gómez Sicre Papers, Nettie Lee Benson LatinAmerican Collection Archive, University of Texas at Austin. In July 1948, the Taller Libre

de Arte was opened in Caracas—a brainchild of, among others, Gómez Sicre. The studio


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set out to be a space where young artists could work, gather, and hold exhibitions. InMarta Traba’s view, though, the Taller Libre de Arte “was more tied to the past than tothe future”. Marta Traba, Mirar en América, Caracas, Fundación Ayacucho, 2005, p. 268.

21. Unpublished material in the José Gómez Sicre Papers, Nettie Lee Benson LatinAmerican Collection Archive, University of Texas at Austin.

22. The day the Cuban Revolution declared victory over Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar.

23. Interview with Alejandro Anreus (n. d.). Unpublished material in the José Gómez Sicre

Papers, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas atAustin, Box 1. Folder 4.

24. Interview with Alejandro Anreus (n. d.). Unpublished material in the José Gómez Sicre Papers,

Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas at Austin, Box 1. Folder

4.



4...



4.



4.

28. Text by José Gómez Sicre assessing his work in the José Gómez Sicre Papers, Nettie LeeBenson Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas at Austin. Folder 3.

29. Text by José Gómez Sicre assessing his work in the José Gómez Sicre Papers, Nettie Lee Benson

Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas at Austin. Folder 3.

30. Unpublished manuscript of the speech Juan Acha gave honoring Gómez Sicre,Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, 1989, in the José Gómez Sicre Papers, NettieLee Benson Latin American Collection Archive, University of Texas at Austin. Folder 3.

31. OIGA magazine, July 30, 1991, p. 57.

ABSTRACTS

Starting at the end of World War II and with the onset of the Cold War, the Organization of

American States’ Visual Art Unit, under director José Gómez Sicre, advocated a specific model of

Latin American art. Gómez Sicre’s relationship with Alfred Barr, the director of the New York

Museum of Modern Art and, through it, his influence on the museum’s policies regarding Latin

America art—that is, the decision to support a specific formula and what that formula should be

—was pivotal. The model he championed centered on three aspects: internationalism, Western

thought and anticommunism. That model entailed a harsh questioning of what were seen as local

formulations at a distance from that central vision.


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Depuis le début de la deuxième après-guerre et surtout avec le développement de la Guerre

froide, le département des Arts visuels de l’OEA, sous la direction de José Gómez Sicre, a

encouragé un modèle particulier d’art latino-américain. La relation entre José Gómez Sicre et

Alfred Barr, le directeur du New York Museum of Modern Art, ainsi que les politiques promues

par le MoMA de New York ont contribué à valider une formule artistique qui devrait être

stimulée en Amérique latine. Celle-ci consistait à mettre en exergue trois aspects considérés

comme centraux : l’internationalisme, l’occident et sur le plan politique l’anticommunisme. En

parallèle, les approches locales qui éloignaient l’art du modèle centralement promu furent

fortement questionnées.

INDEX

Mots-clés: Art latino-américain, guerre froid, OEA (Organisation des États américains), MoMA,

José Gómez Sicre, Alfred Barr, l’internationalisme, anti-comunisme

Keywords: Latin American art, the Cold War, OAS, MoMA, José Gómez Sicre, Alfred Barr,

internationalism, anticommunism

AUTHORS

IVONNE PINI

Ivonne Pini is a distinguished full professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia

(Universidad de los Andes). She also teaches in the Art History Department of the Universidad de

los Andes. She is the executive editor of Art Nexus and a member of the editorial committee of H-

ART. Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte, the publication of the Universidad de los Andes Art

History Department. She has written a number of books and essays, and contributed chapters to

books on Latin American art.

MARÍA CLARA BERNAL

María Clara Bernal Ph.D is an associate professor in the Universidad de los Andes Art History

Department (Bogotá) and director of that university’s post-graduate Arts and Humanity Program.

She is the editor of H-Art: Historia, Teoría y Crítica de Arte and the president of the Comité

Colombiano de Historiadores del Arte.


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The Brazilian Cultural Mission andthe Arte Nuevo Group: A RegionalDispute for Cultural Hegemony andParaguayan Modern Art Charles Quevedo.

Translation : George Flaherty, Andrea Giunta and Jane Brodie

Introduction

1 Though signs of change first began to appear in Paraguayan art in the nineteen-

twenties, it was not until the fifties that they sunk in. This essay will reexamine thoseinitial attempts and analyze the context that enabled the consolidation of modern artin Paraguay, which is historically enmeshed in that country’s cultural relations withBrazil.

2 In April 1920, after a twelve-year absence from Asunción, Andrés Campos Cervera

(1888–1937)—generally considered Paraguay’s first modern artist—exhibited at theSalón de Belvedere. The artist, who was later known as Julian de la Herrería, showedseveral works he had made during his European sojourn, spent mostly in Madrid andParis, as well as a series of works with Senegalese motifs painted during a short stay inDakar. Among the artworks on display were paintings with an unquestionableFauvist bend, a visual language unknown to a local scene characterized by isolationfrom international trends. The exhibition “made a deep impression on a milieuaccustomed to seeing the landscape through the old academic andpicturesque conventions" (Plá, n.d.: 116). Though jarring, the show was a relativesuccess economically (a number of the works were sold). His later work, most of itceramics, would engage indigenous iconography or rural scenes in a dialogue with localand popular traditions (Rodríguez-Alcalá, 2010).


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3 The work of Jaime Bestard (1892–1965) and of Ofelia Echagu e Vera (1904–1987) can be

placed within the framework that prevailed in the Rio de la Plata between in thetwenties, thirties, and forties, a context tied to the “Return to Order.” Bestardattempted to restore the figurative image in Paraguayan art while incorporatingelements of post-cubist abstraction, purism, and metaphysical painting andreinterpreting classic early-Italian models (López Anaya, 1997). Starting in the thirties,Ignacio Núñez Soler (1891-1983) worked on images of the Asunción of times past,addressing with a measure of nostalgia the “progress”—political events and popularcelebrations, for instance—that had erased a certain urban space. For Núñez Solerurban identity means salvaging from oblivion. Though arguably academic, his workelaborated a very distinctive version of “naive art” (Rodríguez-Alcalá, 2010).

4 This foundational phase of Paraguayan modern art, which began in the twenties and

continued into the fifties, brought autonomy as forms were released from theirprevious "descriptive" function (Rodríguez-Alcalá, 2010). During this period,Paraguayan modernism, like all Latin American modernisms, addressed at oncequestions of formal renovation (rupture) and the urgent search for identity part andparcel of the rise of the modern city underway at that time. In Paraguay, this processwas fragmented and scattered; modernism in art was not articulated collectively orprogrammatically (Rodríguez-Alcalá, 2010).

Figure 1: Julián de la Herrería, Árboles color malva (Mauve-colored Trees), 38 x 53 cm, 1928


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Figure 2: Jaime Bestard, Rancho con árboles (Ranch with trees), oil on wood, 30 x 30 cm, ca.1940.Jorge Gross Brown Collection.

5 The second moment of Paraguayan modernism began with the First Week of

Paraguayan Modern Art, which took place in July 1954. With it, the Arte Nuevo groupemerged (Josefina Plá (1903-1999), Olga Blinder (1921-2008), Lilí Del Mónico(1910-2002), and José Laterza Parodi (1915-1981) were its core members). This was, to acertain extent, a moment of “avant-garde activism,” insofar as the modern waschampioned in “political-pedagogical” terms. Though difficult to characterize becauseheterogeneous, the Nuevo Arte group’s proposal addressed issues that had surfaced inthe twenties and thirties, that is, during the first phase of modernism. Central to thegroup’s vision was a strain of social realism with an expressionistic bend, Mexicanmuralism, the work of Candido Portinari, a certain cubist-constructivistgeometrization, and stylization that would eventually lead to non-figuration(Rodríguez-Alcalá, 2010). The importance of the Arte Nuevo group in the fifties would—as Escobar argues (2007)—not be based on a cohesive and clear agenda but rather on itsstrategic position and its capacity to bring together scattered attempts atexperimentation, to mobilize aesthetic possibilities, and to create a climate of renewal.

6 Though it aspired to bring about thorough-going change in the history of Paraguayan

art—explicitly and collectively expounding its determination to renovate—the ArteNuevo group was in fact largely a re-reading and extension of the first modernParaguayan experiences. Ceramics by Josefina Plá and Laterza Parodi took up the formsJulián de la Herrería had created in the thirties, bringing to bear on themcontemporary ideas developed in new territories like the international exhibitions andbiennials that Paraguay would begin to participate in. This could be seen as what HalFoster (2001) calls a recovery, a reconnection with a past practice that implies at oncedisconnection from a current practice and the development of a new one.


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7 Paradoxically, the discourse of rupture at the core of the Arte Nuevo group’s practices

was coupled with frequent reference to a genealogy that goes back to Julián de laHerrería. Works made in the thirties by an artist who had not been heard from for overa decade were exhibited locally and internationally alongside those by members of thegroup. De la Herrería was a constant presence and object of reverence throughoutthese years. The collective print workshop founded by Livio Abramo in 1956 was calledthe Taller de Grabado Julián de la Herrería. An article published in the Asuncionnewspaper La Tribuna in July 1957 reports on an exhibition of modern art in the halls ofthe Paraguay-Brazil Cultural Institute in his honor. Furthermore, the opening of theFirst Week of Paraguayan Modern Art coincided with the 17th anniversary of de laHerrería’s death in a clear attempt to establish him as a founding father of Paraguayanmodernism. In 1954, art critic Miguel Ángel Fernández, who was very close to the ArteNuevo group, wrote of de la Herrería:

“Classical” means “exemplary,” and his work is indeed exemplary. His examplecontinues to spread: enthusiastic disciples are picking up on the many paths hiswork opened up. Today, with more fervor than ever, they are heading down thehigh roads of America (1954: 5).

8 By “enthusiastic disciples,” the ones exploring “the many paths” of de la Herrería’s

work, Fernandez was undoubtedly referring to the Arte Nuevo group. It embraced thepower of his vision but then updated it. Paraguayan art history may have placed toomuch emphasis on the component of rupture in the Arte Nuevo group’s practices onthe basis of a certain reading of the thinking of the group's main theorists (RamiroDomínguez, Josefina Plá, and Olga Blinder). The continuities, the sense of a singleprocess unfolding in a plethora of approaches that run through history, may have beenobscured. The First Week of Paraguayan Modern Art was almost a performative act, anoutgrowth of the discourse of the advocates of incipient modern art. It brought into thepresent the impulses and powers at play in the initial modern moment. Thecorrespondence between the Arte Nuevo group and early modernism is, arguably, acase of Hal Foster's reworking of the Freudian concept of “deferred action.” Fosterholds that an event only comes to fruition when recoded in another event that explainsit. According to Foster:

The historical avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde are constituted in a similar wayas a continuous process of protension and retention, a complex relay of anticipatedfutures and reconstructed pasts—in short, a deferred action that throws over anysimple scheme of before and after scheme, cause and effect, origin and repetition(2001: 31)

9 No less significant in critic Miguel Ángel Fernández’s words is the objective of taking

Julián de la Herrería’s contributions to “the high roads of America.” In fact, a centralconcern of the Arte Nuevo group was to gain visibility in Latin American artisticcircuits, to internationalize, which largely meant, at that time, to break out of artisticisolation (Giunta, 2004). The strategic internationalism of Brazilian modernism,starting with the creation of modern art museums in São Paulo (MAM-SP) and in Rio deJaneiro and, in the early fifties, of the São Paulo Biennial, put on the agenda of LatinAmerican art the need to break out of isolation and to venture into new circuits insearch of recognition. The Arte Nuevo group resolutely pursued taking Paraguayan artinto those new circuits and gaining recognition on them. At the same time, the grouptook on the task of “updating Paraguayan art,” understood at the time to mean raisingup “backward” art, bringing it up to international levels and standards. An article


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published in Asunción under the title "The Exhibition on Palma Street" illustrates thisvery well:

10 The exhibition of paintings and ceramics to open today will be displayed in the shop

windows of various commercial establishments on Palma Street. It will showcasemodern art, a trend that must prevail if we are to reach the artistic level of the mostadvanced countries, which have taken a leap forward in the field of art and culture.(1954: 6)

11 From the time of its founding in the mid-fifties and through the early sixties, the Arte

Nuevo group relentlessly pursued the goal of "internationalizing" Paraguayan art. Itsmain contribution was to insert Paraguayan modern art in the regional space. That aimwas furthered by the strategies deployed by Brazilian cultural diplomacy in Paraguay—in a context of vying with Argentina for regional hegemony—and by a concurrentreorientation of Paraguayan foreign policy by the Stroessner regime.

12 I will now turn to the conditions of possibility that enabled Paraguayan modern art’s

incursion into the regional space. With neither substantial private-sector support ofthe sort provided by the Brazilian industrial bourgeoisie in the forties or the publiccultural policies of the sort pursued by Brazil starting in 1940 and by Argentina after1955, Paraguay found other ways to bolster its modern art and to modernize its artinstitutions. My hypothesis here is that various projects (Brazilian cultural diplomacyin a context of regional competition over hegemony; a new turn in Paraguayan foreignpolicy) and actors (artists’ collectives, critics, Paraguayan and Brazilian culturalmanagers) were able to overcome existing antagonisms. Thanks to unifying strategiesdeployed at a specific moment, it was possible to bring Paraguayan modern art onto theregional space as a palpable presence.1

Figure 3: Olga Blinder, Naturaleza muerta (Still Life), oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm, 1953. Roberto UgarteCollection


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Figure 4: Lilí Del Mónico, Figuras (Figures), oil on canvas, 45 x 48 cm, 1954. CAV/Mud Museum

Figure 5: Downtown Asunción around the fifties, Klaus Henning, untitled, ca. 1950

Henning Family Archive

Disputes over Regional Hegemony

13 Starting in the thirties, diplomatic relations between Brazil and Argentina were

increasingly tense. Brazil perceived Argentina as aggressive and expansionist. Itbelieved its neighbor to the south was seeking to isolate it in pursuit of continental


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hegemony. Each country took its own—and manifestly antagonistic to the other—stance on foreign policy in the forties. During World War II, Brazil declared war on theAxis and signed economic and political-military agreements with the United States.Argentina bet on neutrality, which the Allies saw as an unwillingness to join the globalcrusade against fascism. Despite frequent statements of intent to keep the peace,military activity increased on both sides of the border between Argentina and Brazil(García, 2011).

14 These divergent positions brought not only political-economic disputes, but also

tensions in the cultural sphere. From 1947 to 1949, three art museums were created inSao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and the Sao Paulo Biennial was founded; Brazil and itselites had put in place a formidable cultural bureaucracy. Through these culturalefforts, the Brazilian state asserted itself as a progressive player, and the country as anew artistic hub in an open bid for the cultural hegemony Argentina had enjoyed in thepast.

15 In 1947, the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo (MASP) opened its doors, and the following

year the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM-SP) did the same. Those institutions, along withthe Museu de Arte Moderna de Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ), would be key to shaping thecultural agenda of the forties and the future of art in the region. Through these culturalendeavours, emerging industrial sectors and the new industrial bourgeoisie in SaoPaulo sought to move beyond the strictly economic sphere. It was through themuseums of modern art—temples to the religion of modernization—that Sao Paulo inparticular lay claim to cultural hegemony, challenging Buenos Aires. The Brazilianresponse of the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennial was an optimal way to makethe country’s newfound power visible and to show it to be the most prosperous LatinAmerican city in the postwar period. The absence of Argentine representation at theFirst Sao Paulo Biennial (1951) was a clear symptom of the tensions between the twocountries at that time (Garcia, 2011).

16 Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Paraguay was an object of dispute

between Argentina and Brazil. With its defeat in the War of the Triple Alliance(1864-1870), Paraguay became a de facto dependent of Argentina’s, its port and cities.The elites of Asunción turned toward Buenos Aires culture. By the end of thenineteenth century, it was common for Paraguayan elites to complete their highereducation in Argentina. Teachers received scholarships to further their studies in theArgentine province of Entre Rios, and military officers went to the military college inBuenos Aires. Asunción’s upper classes were thrilled by the proximity of Buenos Aires,the metropolis to the south (Capdevila, 2010). Throughout what is called the liberal erain Paraguay (1904-1940), Argentina was the most important foreign actor (Mora, 1993).

17 In the forties, Brazilian President Getulio Vargas supported a series of actions designed

to confront Argentine hegemony. In 1941, he visited Asunción to create a base ofoperations. Brazil began offering Paraguayans scholarships to study in its territory, andeconomic, cultural, and military cooperation agreements were signed between the twocountries, including one that made Santos a free trade zone. Despite Brazil’s efforts,Paraguayan foreign policy from 1946 to 1954 still favored Argentina under Perón,though it did maintain cordial relations with Brazil and the United States (Mora, 1993).When General Alfredo Stroessner took power in 1954, Paraguayan foreign policy wouldchange direction, and Argentine influence would begin to diminish. To neutralize thetraditional Argentine presence and to manipulate the regional balance of power to his


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advantage, Stroessner strengthened ties to Brazil. He began to look eastward for a newtrade route. Brazil, meanwhile, had spent an entire decade trying to increase itsinfluence in the region, providing aid to “client” nations such as Paraguay, Uruguay,and Bolivia. Brazil was ultimately aiming to become South America’s hegemonic power(Mora, 1993).

18 Decree No. 7712, signed by Getulio Vargas in August 1941 and later by Paraguayan

President Higinio Morínigo, established a framework for exchange between the twonations in, among other areas, education, laying the groundwork for a vast program ofcultural diplomacy that would be known as the Brazilian Cultural Mission. (CintraNepomuceno, 2010)

Figure 6: Getúlio Vargas with Higínio Morínigo, Asunción, 1941.

Making a Mark on the Paraguayan Soul: The BrazilianCultural Mission

19 The Brazilian Cultural Mission (MCB) in Asunción (launched gradually, from 1941 to

1944), along with the Mission in Montevideo (launched in 1940), was one of the firstprograms the Cultural Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, orItamaraty, implemented in the region (Cintra Nepomuceno , 2001). In 1942, the Brazil-Paraguay Institute was created in Rio de Janeiro. The following year, its counterpart,the Paraguay-Brazil Institute, opened in Asunción. Brazilian historian Guy de Holanda,a member of the Institute, along with Paraguayan professors Hermogenes Rojas Silva,Mariano Morínigo, and Osvaldo Chaves were the ones who founded the School ofHumanities, which would later, in 1948, become the Universidad Nacional de AsunciónSchool of Philosophy.


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20 It was not, officially, until March 1952 that the educational and cultural programs

enacted in Paraguay were brought together as the Brazilian Cultural Mission. TheMission’s actions in culture initially revolved around teaching Portuguese language andliterature, though there were also exchanges between professionals in technical andeducational areas. A great deal of the Mission’s effort was geared to the School ofPhilosophy, since those involved in it were drawn from the intellectual elite key tospreading the pro-Brazil message. Essential to understanding the nature of theBrazilian Cultural Mission is a paragraph, cited by Reiter Chedid, from a confidentialreport sent to the Itamaraty Cultural Division in 1953:

Our work, which encompasses elementary school, high school, and highereducation, will leave its mark on the Paraguayan soul. If we continue to work in thisdirection, much of the local elite will, in a few year’s time, have been drawn in toand identify with Brazil. (Apud Reiter Chedid, 2010: 71)

21 The Brazilian strategy sought to modify relations between the two countries through

active intervention in the Paraguayan cultural field. In many documents submitted bythe Mission to Itamaraty, like the one above, the need to influence Paraguayan politicaland intellectual elites is clearly stated. The initial aim was to pave the way for aBrazilian incursion into Paraguay and the ultimate goal to replace Argentina as thedominant influence.

22 As part of that strategy, the Brazilian Cultural Mission approached the most prestigious

cultural and intellectual circles in Asunción through the School of Philosophy and theParaguay-Brazil Cultural Institute. Cintra Nepomuceno (2010) points out that theMission’s work went beyond those first courses in Portuguese language and literature.Starting in the fifties, the Institute enacted a broad and diversified agenda of culturaldiplomacy, working its way into the country’s cultural community.

23 The first exhibition of photography organized by the Cultural Mission at the

headquarters of the Paraguay-Brazil Cultural Institute featured works by Braziliansculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa (known as Aleijadinho). An important event, theexhibition, which opened in October 1953, included two hundred and eightyphotographs of Aleijadinho’s religious works from the collection of the CulturalDivision of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The exhibition was organized byLygia Martins Costa from the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. Theunsigned article “Exhibition Opens” published in La Tribuna newspaper reports that,according to Albino Peixoto, the head of the Cultural Mission, the exhibition would bethe first in a series on modern architecture and painting. A number of Paraguayangovernment officials were at the opening, among them the Minister of Education, Dr.Juan Ramón Chaves, who “made brief remarks on the cultural exchange between thetwo countries, which has been actively pursued by both parties” (La Tribuna,1953:5).That same month, Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón visited Asunción to meetFederico Chaves, president of Paraguay. The visit, which was an important episode inArgentine-Paraguayan relations, included the signing of agreements to accelerate aplan for the economic integration of the two countries (Mora, 1993).

24 The press of the time reports that Albino Peixoto, the head of the Cultural Mission, was

an active presence in the Asunción cultural community. He frequented groups like theCentro de Artistas Plásticos del Paraguay (CAPP) and the Asociación Amigos del Artewhich, along with the Centro Paraguayo-Americano and the Casa Argentina, werevenues where art activities took place (not only exhibitions, but also courses, lectures,


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competitions, and others). A sharp turn toward Brazilian culture on the part of certainfactions of the intellectual and artistic elites was clearly underway. Particularlyinteresting is Josefina Plá’s growing ties to the Brazilian artistic circuits thanks to theCultural Mission. Josefina Plá would become one of the main advocates and theorists ofthe Arte Nuevo group.2

25 Between January and March 1953, La Tribuna published several articles by Josefina Plá

on Brazilian culture. In January, she wrote a review of Paraguayan Poetry: History of a

Mystery, a book by Brazilian writer and critic Walter Wey, a member of the BrazilianCultural Mission. Plá describes the book, published in Montevideo in 1951, as animportant point of reference for Paraguayan literature. In subsequent articlespublished in March of that year—namely, “Interpreting Brazil,” “Brazilian FolkDances,” and “Orpheus Invention”—she offers a penetrating analysis of various aspectsof Brazilian culture. The texts evidence determination to pursue in-depthunderstanding of the culture of a country with significant weight in Paraguay (CintraNepomuceno, 2010). The same year, at the invitation of the Cultural Mission, JosefinaPlá delivered a lecture on “The Personality of Brazilian Doctor and Poet Jorge Lima” atthe School of Philosophy as part of a series of lectures on historical and cultural issues(other lectures were given by Paraguayans Dr. Vicente Ramírez, Miguel Solano López,and Antonio Ramos, and by Brazilians Lygia Martins Costa, Ary da Matta, and RobertoPeixoto). Josefina Plá’s interventions were unquestionably a way to reciprocate therecent interest in Paraguayan culture and artists shown by Brazil. They were also partof the process of forging relations with Brazilian cultural circuits, relations that wouldprove decisive to the Arte Nuevo group’s insertion in regional modern art. Theseexchanges also included Plá’s participation in the VI Salão de artistas plásticos in Rio deJaneiro in 1952, and the review of that salon published by Romanian-Brazilian criticStefan Baciú (“Josefina Plá. Mulher de sete instruments.” Note in Letras e tendencias

actuais na literatura paraguaia, Rio de Janeiro, 1952).

26 Brazil’s powerful cultural diplomacy entailed not only sending intellectuals and shows

by Brazilian artists to Paraguay, but more subtle measures as well. Paraguayan artistsand intellectuals were invited to Brazil to demonstrate genuine interest in theirproduction and in Paraguayan culture more generally. Together, these acts were a wayto show Paraguay that the time was right for true cultural exchange. The variousmeans by which Brazilian cultural actors (critics, museums, biennials, etc.) recognizedemerging Paraguayan artists in subsequent years were related, to varying degrees, tothe strategies deployed by Brazilian cultural diplomacy. That by no means questionsthe genuine value of Paraguayan production from those years. In September 1953, somemonths before the opening of the second edition of the São Paulo Biennial, Josefina Pláand José Laterza Parodi travelled to that city at the invitation of the MAM-SP to exhibittheir ceramics. The exhibition also included a major set of works by Julián de laHerrería. The positive review of the show published in the newspaper O Estado de São

Paulo was reproduced in the Asunción press.

27 During her stay in São Paulo, Josefina Plá gave a series of talks on Radio Cultura (PRE 4)

to make the work of Paraguayan artists (musicians, playwrights, writers, and visualartists) known in Brazil. At the invitation of the Escola da Arte, the aforementionedexhibition was held at the Biblioteca Municipal Castro Alves in Rio de Janeiro. On thatoccasion, Plá gave a talk on Paraguayan pottery. An article published in the Asunciónpress, “Demonstración a Josefina Plá,” spoke of an “event in honor [of the Paraguayan


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artist] organized by a group of Brazilian intellectuals” (1953: 5). The event reflects howimportant Josefina Plá’s activities in Brazil were to the Paraguayan intelligentsia.

Image 1067DB540000543A00006D086C37778EEF489F1D.emf

Figure 7: Josefina Plá and José Laterza Parodi in Rio de Janeiro, 1953.

28 Later in the fifties, other emerging Paraguayan artists close to the Arte Nuevo group,

like Edith Jiménez and Hermann Guggiari, would be awarded scholarships by Itamaratythrough the Brazilian Cultural Mission. Jiménez studied printmaking at the MAM-SPEscola de Artesanato initially in 1958, though the scholarship would be extended fortwo additional years, during which time she studied at the Gravura Studio founded byLivio Abramo and María Bonomi. In 1959 and 1960, Hermann Guggiari lived São Pauloand Rio de Janeiro.

Dances and Dinners at the Casa Argentina, Culture inthe Brazilian Cultural Mission: The Place ofParaguayan Modern Art in the Region

29 In 1953, Paraguay, through the Brazilian Cultural Mission, was invited to participate in

the São Paulo Biennial for the first time (the Biennial’s second edition opened inDecember).3 The task of deciding who would participate in the Paraguayanrepresentation fell on the Circulo de Artistas Plasticos of Paraguay, and it was cause fortension among members of the Circle. A dispute ensued between a small sector led byJosefina Plá that included Olga Blinder, Lilí Del Mónico, and José Laterza Parodi. Theirstated support of new art put them at odds with the more established figures in theCircle, namely Roberto Holden Jara (1900-1984), Jaime Bestard (1892-1965), and PabloAlborno (1875-1958). Parenthetically, Olga Blinder—still at the beginning of her career


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—was not yet a member of the Circle, nor did she know Holden Jara, president of theorganization (Goosen, 2004).4 That was undoubtedly one of the reasons Blinder’sapplication to form part of the Paraguayan representation at the Biennial onlyheightened tension within the Circle. Also significant was the fact that some monthsbefore the opening of the Biennial, Josefina Plá and José Laterza Parodi had exhibitedceramics at the MAM-SP and in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition was well received byBrazilian cultural critics and other cultural agents, which served to bolster Plá’s side inthe dispute. Ultimately, Blinder and Laterza Parodi’s works did represent Paraguay atthe Biennial, as did works by Pablo Alborno, Jaime Bestard, Alicia Bravard, RobertoHolden Jara, Edith Jiménez, Ofelia Echagüe Vera, Adam Kunos, and Vicente Pollarolo.The Biennial’s catalogue text on the Paraguayan works—most likely written by poetand art critic Ramiro Domínguez—spoke of the presence of “veterans” as well as“young people.”

Figure 8: The Paraguay Exhibition, V São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, 1959


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Image 106147E0000073E0000051D94BAD94E598E2E739.emf

Figure 9: Text on the Paraguayan representation, Catalogue to the Second São Paulo Biennial, 1953

30 As a consequence of that dispute, the dissident sector of the Circle founded the Arte

Nuevo group, and organized its first show: the First Week of Paraguayan Modern Art,held from July 17 to 24, 1954. In fact, two years earlier, in 1952, the members of whatwould become the Arte Nuevo group had issued a document that came to be known asthe Manifiesto del Arte Moderno Paraguayo. The text speaks of the need to renewParaguayan art. From August 18 to September 4, just one month after the First Week,works by the Arte Nuevo group’s most active members (Blinder, Del Mónico, Plá, andLaterza), along with works by Julián de la Herrería, were exhibited at the SociedadArgentina de Artistas Plásticos in Buenos Aires, a venue near Florida Street indowntown Buenos Aires. That was when Olga Blinder met influential Argentine artcritic Jorge Romero Brest. The first recognition of the Arte Nuevo collective came fromBuenos Aires, a city that was still a point of reference in the imaginary of Paraguayanelites. The institutional ties between Brazil and Paraguay, through the BrazilianCultural Mission, would be decisive to positioning the modern art championed by theArte Nuevo group.

31 In 1956, Livio Abramo (1903-1993), Brazilian master printer, arrived in Asunción at the

invitation of the Cultural Mission. He, along with Oswaldo Goeldi and Carlos Oswald,constituted the first group of great modern printmakers in Brazil. It was with thearrival of Livio that the artistic-institutional exchanges fundamental to the regionalinsertion of modern art as envisioned by the Arte Nuevo group took on new weight.Livio created the el Taller de Grabado Julián de la Herrería, directed by Olga Blinder,Lotte Schulz, and María Adela Solano López from 1956 to 1960. The Cultural Missionthen helped form the Escolinha de Arte, founded by Augusto Rodrigues and based onthe Herbert Read education through art method. Olga Blinder was in charge of theEscolinha. From the time of his first stay in Asunción, Livio Abramo was in close contactwith the Paraguayan art scene, mainly through the Arte Nuevo group. In 1956, Blinder's


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paintings were featured in the group exhibition Retrospectiva de la Pintura Paraguaya,held in the gallery of the Sociedade de Arquitetos São Paulo. Shortly thereafter, herwork was exhibited in the MAM-SP.

32 The Arte Nuevo group dominated the Paraguayan representation at the IV São Paulo

Biennial held in 1957. Sculptures by two members of the group, Josefina Plá and JoséLaterza Parodi, were awarded the Arno Prize, the first international distinction evergiven to modern art from Paraguay. The presence of Paraguayan art abroad wouldgrow in subsequent years, as would recognition of it in the form of awards anddistinctions. Paraguayan modern art would not truly consolidate until the sixties,however, as Paraguayan artistic languages were modernized and the process, begun theprevious decade, of putting them in synch with regional production finished.

33 Years later, Olga Blinder would recall in an interview the Brazilian cultural presence in

Paraguay in the fifties, and how it was much better coordinated than the Argentinepresence. She gets at some key aspects of the times when she says:

–When you speak of your origins, you describe them as being very close toArgentina. But in terms of art, you say your tie to Brazil was strongerWhen my children were old enough for kindergarten, the model school was the onerun by the Brazilian Cultural Mission, and I sent them there. That was when Ibecame interested in education. As a mother, I started helping out at thekindergarten. Then Augusto Rodrigues arrived, and he told us about educationthrough art. Then Livio Abramo came, and he taught us about printmaking. I wouldsay there were four Brazilians who greatly influenced Paraguayan art: Livio Abramoin printmaking, Augusto Rodrigues in art education, João Rossi in painting, andSaturnino Brito in architecture. They were instrumental to a new vision of art inParaguay. For those reasons, I was close to the Brazilians. The Argentines didn’t doany of that; they had the Casa Argentina with its dances and dinners, while theBrazilians took care of culture. (Apud Goosen, 2004: 202)

Conclusions

34 Although as early as the nineteen-twenties, some Paraguayan artists produced patently

modern works—consider Andrés Campos Cervera—those experiences were fragmentaryand scattered. Modern art failed to take root, and the local art scene was isolated frominternational trends. It was not until the second half of the fifties that a combination ofprojects, most of them spearheaded by the Arte Nuevo group and the Brazilian CulturalMission—a fundamental instrument of Brazilian cultural diplomacy as it vied withArgentina for hegemony—lay the foundations for modern art from Paraguay and itsinsertion in the region. Significant to that process as well was the new interest in Brazilon the part Paraguayan foreign policy. Though often considered the launching ofmodern art in Paraguay, the First Week of Paraguayan Modern Art (1954) was actually areworking of earlier impulses.

35 The sixties witnessed the emergence of Los Novísimos, a group that challenged, in clear

avant-garde spirit, the Arte Nuevo group’s hegemony in the emerging field of modernart. Formed by José Antonio Pratt-Mayans (b.1943), Enrique Careaga (1944-2014),William Riquelme (b.1944), and Ángel Yegros (b.1943), this group “set out to constitutea creative alternative based on generational rupture, international openness, andradical innovation of expressive media” (Escobar, 2011: 383). The formal and informalnetworks that linked artists and strategies starting in the second half of the fifties


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produced a more complex cultural map that went beyond the fragile frameworks of thelocal scene and national history.

36 Translated by George Flaherty and Andrea Giunta

37 Copyedited by Jane Brodie

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BLINDER, Olga (1985). 1956-1985.Comentarios. Pintura-Dibujo-Fotografía-Grabado. Asunción,

Ediciones IDAP.

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BLINDER, Olga and Ticio Escobar (2000). Caminos de la línea. Catálogo de muestra. Asunción, Arte

Nuevo.

CAPDEVILA, Luc (2010). Una guerra total: Paraguay, 1864-1870. Ensayo de historia del tiempo

presente. Buenos Aires, CEADUC / Editorial SB.

CENTURIÓN MORÍNIGO, Ubaldo (1996). Josefina Plá y el periodismo paraguayo. Asunción, Edipar.

Demostración a Josefina Plá. (September 2, 1953). La Tribuna, p. 5.

ECHAURI DE MUXFELD, María Gloria (2012). Livio Abramo: su aporte a las artes visuales del

Paraguay (1956-1992). Asunción, FONDEC.

ESCOBAR, Ticio (2007). Una interpretación de las Artes Visuales en el Paraguay, Asunción,

Servilibro.

ESCOBAR, Ticio (2011). “Consideraciones sobre el arte desde la guerra contra la Triple Alianza” in

Telesca, Ignacio (ed.). Historia del Paraguay. Asunción: Santillana, pp. 375-390.

FERNANDEZ, Miguel Ángel (July 18, 1954). Julián de la Herrería. Una obra en fecunda

prolongación. La Tribuna, p. 5.

FOSTER, Hal (2001). El retorno de lo real. Madrid, Ediciones Akal. (English title: The Return of the

Real)

GARCÍA, María Amalia (2011). El arte abstracto: intercambios culturales entre Argentina y Brasil,

Buenos Aires, Siglo Veintiuno Editores. (English title: Abstract Crossing: Cultural Exchange

between Argentina and Brazil)

GIUNTA, Andrea (2004). Vanguardia, internacionalismo y política. Arte Argentino en los años

sesenta, Buenos Aires, Paidós. (English title: Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics.

Argentine Art in the Sixties)

GOOSSEN,Teresa (2004). Olga Blinder. Una biografía, Asunción, Goossen libros.

HEINICH, Nathalie (2010). La sociología del arte. Buenos Aires, Nueva Visión.

La exposición en la Calle Palma. (July 20, 1954). La Tribuna, p. 6.

MORA, Frank O (1993). La política exterior de Paraguay (1811-1989). Asunción, Centro Paraguayo

de Estudios Sociológicos / Ediciones y Arte Editora.


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Muestra inaugurada. (October 24, 1953). La Tribuna, p.5.

NEPOMUCENO, Maria Margarida Cintra (2010). Lívio Abramo no Paraguai. Entretecendo culturas

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PLÁ, Josefina (1992). Obras Completas I. Historia Cultural. Asunción, RP Ediciones / Instituto de

Cooperación Iberoamericana.

PLÁ, Josefina (n.d).Obras Completas III. Historia Cultural. Asunción, RP Ediciones / Instituto de


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RODRÍGUEZ-ALCALÁ, Hugo (1971). Historia de la Literatura Paraguaya. Asunción, Colegio de San

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RODRÍGUEZ-ALCALÁ, Javier (2001). Edith Jiménez. Retrospectiva: Obra Gráfica. Exhibition

catalogue, Galería Livio Abramo of the Brazilian Embassy’s Cultural Center, Asunción.

RODRÍGUEZ-ALCALÁ, Javier (2008) “Notas para una periodización contextual” in Hermann

Guggiari, book-catalogue, Asunción, FONDEC/Asociación CulturalComuneros.

RODRÍGUEZ-ALCALÁ, Javier (2009) “Reidy en Cachinga: De la política del café con leche a la

geopolítica del Hormigón Armado” in Irina Rivero and Rossana Delpino, Colegio Experimental

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RUIZ DIAZ, Amalia (2004). Murales de Asunción. Asunción, FONDEC.

RUIZ DIAZ, Amalia (2009) Jaime Bestard: arte y dignidad. Asunción, FONDEC.

TAVARES DE ARAÚJO, Olívio (2001). “Livio Abramo, la ética y la revelación de lo visible” in Livio

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ENDNOTES

1. On the cultural disputes between Brazil and Argentina, this work looks to MaríaAmalia García’s valuable contribution (El arte abstracto: Intercambios culturales entre

Argentina y Brasil. Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2011). My understanding of the minutiae ofthe Itamaraty and the role of the Brazilian Cultural Mission in Paraguay was furtheredby the dissertations written by Daniele Reiter Chedid (Aproximación Brasil-Paraguay: La

Misión for the History Department. School of Human Sciences, Universidade Federal daGrande Dourados - UFDG, 2010) and María Margarida Cintra Nepomuceno (Lívio Abramo

no Paraguai. Entretecendo culturas. São Paulo: Integração da América Latina, Universidadede São Paulo. Dissertação de Mestrado em Integração da América Latina, 2010). (English


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http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/84/84131/tde-18122012-105632/



title of García’s book: Abstract Crossings:Cultural Exchanges between Argentina andBrazil)

2. Born in the Canary Islands in 1903, Josefina Plá moved to Paraguay in 1926 with herhusband, artist Julián de la Herrería. She worked intensively as a writer and a visualartist, and as a journalist and art critic. Along with Hérib Campos Cervera and AugustoRoa Bastos, Julio Correa, Óscar Ferreiro, Elvio Romero, Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá, andEzequiel González Alsina (all of them members of the Grupo del Cuarenta), sheadvocated a deep change in Paraguayan literature in the forties in order to bring avant-garde visions to the country (Rodríguez-Alcalá, 1971).

3. The Biennial’s second edition took place in the Parque do Ibirapuera, which hadrecently been built to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the founding ofSão Paulo. The park was designed by Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) and Burle Marx(1909–1994). This edition of the Biennial came to be known as the Guernica Biennialbecause of the presence of Picasso’s celebrated painting (1937).

4. Her first solo show had been held at the Paraguayan-American Cultural Center inSeptember 1952. That was where she met Josefina Plá and, through her, she began tosee Lilí Del Mónico and José Laterza Parodi, regulars at the Plá home, more often.

(Goosen, 2004)

ABSTRACTS

During a relatively brief period—from the mid-nineteen-fifties to the early sixties—Paraguayan

artistic production, which had been marked by inertia and chronic isolation, underwent an

unusual process of renewal as it found a place in new regional artistic circuits. The Brazilian

Cultural Mission, which strategically pursued rapprochement as it vied with Argentina for

hegemony, coupled with a shift in Paraguayan foreign policy as the Adolfo Stroessner regime

opened up to the east, favored, on a structural level, the insertion of Paraguayan modern art in

the regional milieu. The Asunción-based Arte Nuevo group was central to that process.

En el curso de un arco temporal relativamente breve —desde mediados de 1950 a principios de

1960—, la producción plástica paraguaya, marcada por la inercia y el aislamiento crónico,

experimentará un inusitado proceso de renovación y de inserción en los nuevos circuitos

artísticos regionales. Las estrategias de aproximación al Paraguay impulsadas por la Misión

Cultural Brasileña, en el marco de una disputa por la hegemonía con la Argentina, y el giro de la

política exterior paraguaya en la búsqueda de una salida al Este, con Stroessner, crearon

coyunturalmente un marco favorable para la afirmación e inscripción de la plástica moderna

paraguaya en el ámbito regional. El grupo Arte Nuevo, será un protagonista central de este

proceso.

Dans un laps de temps relativement court −allant du milieu des années 50 au début des années

60−, la production plastique paraguayenne, marquée par l'inertie et l'isolement chronique,

connaîtra un processus inhabituel de renouvellement et d'insertion dans les nouveaux circuits

artistiques régionaux. Les stratégies d’approche du Paraguay préconisées par la Misión Cultural

Brasileña, dans le cadre d’un conflit sur l’hégémonie avec l’Argentine, et le tournant de la

politique étrangère paraguayenne dans la recherche d’une sortie à l’Est avec Adolfo Stroessner

ont créé un cadre favorable à l'affirmation et à l'inscription du plastique paraguayen moderne

dans le champ d'application régional. Le groupe Arte nuevo basé à Asuncion sera l’un des

principaux protagonistes de ce processus.


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INDEX

Palabras claves: Arte moderno paraguayo, Grupo Arte Nuevo, Misión Cultural Brasileña,

Josefina Plá, Olga Blinder, Bienal de São Paulo.

Mots-clés: Art moderne paraguayen, Groupe Arte Nuevo, Mission culturelle brésilienne. Josefina

Plá, Olga Blinder, Biennale de São Paulo.

Keywords: Paraguayan modern art, Arte Nuevo group, Brazilian Cultural Mission, Josefina Plá,

Olga Blinder, São Paulo Biennial.

AUTHORS

CHARLES QUEVEDO.

Charles Quevedo has an MA in social sciences from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias

Sociales (FLACSO). He was a fellow at the “Seminar Identities in Transit,” (2004-2005) Centro de

Artes Visuales/Museo del Barro and Rockefeller Foundation. He is the coordinator of the

“Intellectual and Political” Working Group of the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales

(CLACSO).


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Stitching the Social Fabric againstViolence and Oblivion. TheEmbroidering for Peace andMemory Initiative Revisitedthrough the Lens of CaringDemocracy.Suturar la trama social de cara a la violencia y el olvido. La Iniciativa Bordando

por la Paz y la Memoria reconsiderada desde el enfoque de la Democracia del

Cuidado.

Katia Olalde Rico.

* The project leading to this publication has received funding from the European Research

Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

(‘Digital Memories’ grant agreement n° 677955).

Needlework femininity and states of mind

1 In The Subversive Stich. Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, Roszika Parker argues

that it was not until the Renaissance that handmade embroidery began to be construedas a leisure activity performed by women in the intimacy of the domestic sphere(PARKER, 2010: 64). Ever since, the ladies’ upbringing played a determinant role innaturalizing the connection between embroidering skills and an ideal of domesticfemininity which, throughout the seventeenth century, proved to be consistent withProtestant morality in Europe and England (PARKER, 2010: 11, 82). Yet, this connectionwas far from being constrained to the ‘old continent’. During the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, the prominence of needlework was also noteworthy in the“clerical model of feminine education” (LÓPEZ, 2008: 38) imparted at schools associated


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to Catholic convents in New Spain (GONZALBO, 2010: 64). Similarly, cultivatingneedlework skills became part of the objectives of the Home Economics coursesdeveloped in the United States and England in the early twentieth century. The sameapplies to the gendered curriculum implemented during this period at public schools inMexico (LÓPEZ, 2008: 3; TORRES-SEPTIEN, 2001).

2 The relevance of introducing girls to handmade sewing and embroidery from an early

age stemmed from the belief that the temporality and posture entailed by theseactivities—namely the body stillness and bending over the work with downcast eyes—fostered a set of character traits and dispositional states that ladies were expected toshow, for instance, “docility, obedience, love of home”, modesty, self-containment, orgentle delicacy (PARKER, 2010: 11, 63). However, the controversies about the effect ofneedlework on women’s behaviour and mental state can be traced back as early as theeighteenth century. In her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter XII. On NationalEducation, Mary Wollstonecraft condemned needlework instruction arguing that“confining girls to their needle, and shutting them out from all political and civilemployments; (…) [narrowed] their minds (…) [and] rendered [them] unfit to fulfil thepeculiar duties which nature ha[d] assigned them” (WOLLSTONECRAFT, 1792: par. 52).Similarly, Mexican women writers and teachers who, alongside Wollstonecraft, strivedfor gender equality in education throughout the nineteenth century found ways tospread their proposals to reform gender bias in the public schools’ curriculum (LÓPEZ,2008: 63).

3 A few decades later, yet from a different perspective, Elizabeth C. Jenkins expressed her

doubts about the relevance of needlework in the College Course in Home Economicsoffered in the United States. In her 1917 assessment of course curricula, she contendedthat, far from teaching women how “‘to bring reason and proportion into the life ofemotions’ [a balance that was necessary for an efficient household management]. Skillof hand may but multiply our cushions and doilies” (JENKINS, 1917: 314).

4 With regard to women’s ability for self-control, Freud argued “that constant

needlework was one of the factors that ‘rendered women particularly prone tohysteria’ because day dreaming over embroidery induced ‘dispositional hypnoidstates’.” (PARKER, 2010: 11-12). Conversely, Jacqueline Enthoven would later claim that“the joyful use of colors, in the handing of threads and fabrics [...] would help [...]young mothers who fe[lt] restless and ‘trapped’ at home with small children [...] torelax and unwind”, thereby allowing them to find “a path to peace and serenity”(HOLLAND, 1965: 732). Furthermore, Enthoven maintained that children would “find iteasier to confide [...] when mother’s hands are busy, [and] the eyes are down on thework [instead of] looking directly at them” (HOLLAND, 1965: 732; ENTHOVEN, 1964: 22).

5 More recently, a study conducted with women quilters from a local group in Glasgow

showed that the way in which participants described their creative process wasanalogous to the state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has conceptualized as ‘flow’ (BURT &ATKINSON, 2011: 58; CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, 1996: 110), namely an optimal or deeplyjoyful state that occurs when “a person’s body and mind is stretched to its limits in avoluntary effort to accomplish something that is difficult or worthwhile”(CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, 2008: 3). As this author remarks,

[…] in that state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered.Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal.Experience is in harmony. And when the flow episode is over, one feels more


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“together” than before, not only internally but also with respect to other peopleand to the world in general. (CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, 2008: 41)

6 For the Glasgow quilters, “[m]easuring dimensions, designing patterns and

incorporating shapes” proved to be a demanding task, even for the most experiencedones. Thus “[m]astering new techniques and overcoming challenges led to feelings ofsatisfaction and boosted self-esteem” (BURT & ATKINSON, 2011: 56). This identity-enhancement was also nurtured by the sense of achievement they experienced as aresult of having managed to create tangible and durable textile artworks that could beuseful for other people or given as a gift to relatives and friends (BURT & ATKINSON,2011: 56; JOHNSON & WILSON, 2005: 123).

7 In the same vein, the studies conducted by Frances Reynolds with women “coping with

long-term physical health problems” (REYNOLDS, 2002: 99) have shown that bystimulating the participants’ minds (HUOTILAINEN, RANKANEN, GROTH, SEITAMAA-HAKKARAINEN & MÄKELÄ, 2011: 4-5) and allowing them to achieve feasible goals attheir own speed (REYNOLDS, 2002: 101), needlework has offered some women,particularly those “whose body is experienced as out of control by virtue of the diseaseor impairment process” (REYNOLDS, 2002: 99), the opportunity to restore “feelings ofpower and mastery over the impact that the illness was having on their lives”(REYNOLDS, 2002: 12; CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, 2008: 6, 49).

8 Moreover, Reynolds has observed that the enhancement of the “quality of life in the

present” that some participants experienced as a result of their needlework practicemotivated them, in particular those suffering a life-threatening illness, to “believe [...]at least [in] the-short term future” (REYNOLDS, 2002:102). Conversely, otherparticipants reported to have experienced “feelings of transcendence duringneedlecrafts, in that they felt connected to the larger world, to the spiritual world, tonature or to human history” (REYNOLDS, 2002: 103).

9 In the light of these different approaches, needlework appears to be in tension between

private and public, confinement and openness, daydreaming and clarity of mind, fancyhandy craft and self-care practice.

Creating and mending with needle and thread

10 In terms of its materiality, needlework’s constructive character is reflected on “the

creation of textiles and garments by stitching together pieces of fabric as in quilting,appliqué, patchwork, fashion sewing, and heirloom sewing” (STANSBERY, AMOROSOand JENNINGS-RENTENAAR, 2009: 33). Similarly, the seams used for strengthening orbinding slits reflect restorative qualities (de DILLMONT, 1890: 13), as do the stitchesused to “repair the wear and tear of use or accident” (de DILLMONT, 1890: 15-16).Furthermore, seams can assist the body’s healing process when used to stich wounds.

11 As can be read in the headline of a press release announcing the opening of an

exhibition at the United Nations headquarters in 2012, “Women are the Fabric, QuiltsReflect their Strength”, needlework’s constructive/healing quality might also resonatewith the metaphor of the social fabric, which, just as cloth, can be darned and mended.

12 When textile creations are seen in the light of the social fabric metaphor, they can:

symbolize affective bonds, as in the friendship handkerchiefs embroidered by Hutteriteyoung women in Canada “as a token of serious affection” for their boyfriends (TEXITLE


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MUSEUM OF CANADA; OLALDE, 2018c, OLALDE, 2019a); strengthen communitarian ties,as can be seen in “the collaborative sewing of a large patchwork quilt” done by womenfrom the Cook Islands in the South Pacific Ocean (KÜCHLER, 2014: 112); help preservekinship and generational bonds, as in the case of the quilters’ lineages in the UnitedStates (JOHNSON & WILSON, 2005: 121); and finally, contribute to the defense ofcultural identity, as can be seen in the shawal dresses crafted, during the first Intifada(1987-1991), by women inhabitants of Hebron, in the so-called occupied territories,using the Palestinian flag colours and the national symbols that were banned by theIsraelies (TAMARI, 2012: 86). Drawing on this last example, I would like to observe that,besides weaving and mending the social fabric, textile creations might serve as a meansof political expression and resistance against repression, violence and oblivion(DEACON, 2014; OLALDE, 2019b).

Connecting threads and stories of survival andresistance

13 In recent years, a number of textiles crafted by survivors —mostly women— of violence

inflicted by both state and non-state actors in armed conflicts and under authoritarianregimes have been displayed together in exhibitions where the stories of suffering,survival and resistance conjured up by these fabrics connect and converse, much as thepatches of a quilt.

14 In 2005, Ariel Zeitlin Cooke, Marsha MacDowell, and Steve Zeitlin curated the

exhibition Weavings of War. Fabrics of Memory,1 presenting a selection of rugs, wallhangings, patchwork tapestries and quilts —which they conceptualized as ‘wartextiles’— crafted by survivors of the two Afghan wars, the South Africa’s apartheidregime, the Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, the internal armed conflict in Peru, andthe Laotian communities who were persecuted after the Vietnam war ended.

15 In 2016 and 2017, another two exhibitions of fabrics depicting survivor stories were

organized: the first one, La vida que se teje, 2at the Museo Casa de la Memoria in Antioquía,Colombia; the second one, Stitched Voices, 3at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Wales.Both exhibits were complemented with panel discussions and workshops intended tofoster interactions and dialogues between the survivors present at the venue, visitorsand organizers of the event.

16 A gathering thread connecting the last two exhibitions was the display of some Chilean

arpilleras —or patchwork tapestries— from Roberta Bacic’s Conflict Textile collection, 4

and of embroidered handkerchiefs commemorating the victims of murder and(enforced) 5disappearance during the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico. The peculiarity of thesehandkerchiefs was that the vast majority of them had not been stitched by survivorsseeking to provide their testimonies with a tangible and material shape, as the arpilleras

did (AGOSÍN, 2008: 45); instead, they were embroidered by solidary participants basedon the information collected from the press by other volunteers before them (OLALDE,2015b: 60-61; OLALDE, 2019a).

17 Considering that most of the participants who embroidered these handkerchiefs were

not themselves survivors coping with traumatic experiences (COHEN 2013: 164;GARLOCK, 2016: 61), but rather people sufficiently concerned by the increasing numberof murders and (enforced) disappearances in Mexico as to take part in a symbolic


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action aimed at supporting the victims’ relatives’ calls for justice, I argue that in thecase of the Embroidering for Peace and Memory Initiative: One Handkerchief, Onevictim (EPI) —namely the project that summoned people to embroider theabovementioned handkerchiefs—, the participation of people who had not been

directly affected by violence makes the constructive/healing aspect of these‘embroideries for peace’ different from that of textile testimonies crafted by survivors.Thus, my purpose in this paper is to discern what makes these handkerchiefsdistinctive in this respect and to explore the implications thereof.

Embroidering for Peace and Memory in Mexico: Onevictim, one handkerchief

18 The EPI was developed in Mexico City during the summer of 2011 by a group of civilians

and cultural producers who, alongside the Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad /Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), were seeking to raise awarenessof the humanitarian crisis hitting several regions of the country ever since the formerpresident Felipe Calderón decided “to move toward militarization” (SOTOMAYOR, 2013:42) to fight drug cartels, thereby initiating what has come to be known as the Mexican‘war on drugs’.

19 Briefly speaking, the EPI consisted of people embroidering together in the open air to

catch the eye of passersby, but also to invite them to join for as long as they wished.The periodical setting up of these ephemeral workshops included the temporarydisplay of the embroidered handkerchiefs in clotheslines that protesters would often

carry during marches and hunger strikes (fig.1).

Figure 1. Embroidery day organized by Fuentes Rojas. Coyoacán, Mexico City. Photo: Courtesy ofFuentes Rojas.


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20 The initial purpose of the EPI’s developers —who eventually assumed the name of

Fuentes Rojas / Red Fountains collective— was to perform a public space interventionthat would consist of displaying as many handkerchiefs as possible across Mexico City’smain square (the Zócalo) on December 1st, 2012. By means of this collective action —conceptualized as a ‘citizen memorial’— the number of victims would acquire a spatialquality, thereby denouncing the failure of Calderon’s military strategy on the same dayhis mandate would end.

21 Shortly after its release, the call to participate in the December 1st protest rapidly

spread in social media. As a result, at least forty embroidery groups were organizedboth locally and abroad throughout 2012. Ever since, a significant number ofhandkerchiefs have been embroidered in several countries and travelled around theworld to ‘meet their fellows’ in embroidery sessions and public protests which haveincluded, but have not been limited to, the one in Mexico City’s Zócalo on December

2012 (fig. 2).

Figure 2. Handkerchief embroidered in France and sent to Mexico in 2012. Photo Katia Olalde,November 3, 2015.

22 This article focuses mainly on the activities of the Fuentes Rojas collective and, more

concretely, on the analysis of the clotheslines used as a display device for thehandkerchiefs. There are three reasons for this choice: first, the emergence of the EPI isintertwined with the creation of the Fuentes Rojas collective (OLALDE 2018b); second, tothis day, this group’s weekly embroidery sessions have continued uninterruptedly; andthird, Fuentes Rojas has been actively involved in the transnational collaborationnetworks established throughout the years by a number of needlework memoryprojects such as Conflict Textiles and the Colombian costureros (sewing workshops),together with social workers, researchers, and human rights advocates. A materialexpression of these global solidarity networks is, for instance, the traveling wall


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hanging that many of these groups have been stitching together under a relay scheme

since 2015 (fig. 3).

Figure 3. Banner embroidered by several collectives around the world. Photo: Katia Olalde, November19, 2017.

A hands-on protest against violence and impunity

23 As I mentioned earlier, the target audience of Fuentes Rojas consisted mostly of people

who had not experienced violence personally. This relates to the fact that in MexicoCity, where the EPI was born, the ‘war on drugs’ has not been nearly as intense orrough as in other regions. Furthermore, a significant number of participants did notknow each other before joining the embroidery sessions. In this respect, participants inMexico City differed from needleworkers involved in other memory projects, in thatthe latter were survivors who already shared communitarian ties before engaging intheir needlearts groups. This is the case of the women from the associations Kuyanaku

in Peru and Mujeres Tejiendo Sueños y Sabores de Paz de Mampuján in Colombia (BACIC andSANFELIU, 2011; URIBE 2009: 44-45), whose communities were forcefully displaced.Similarly, EPI’s participants were distinct from the Chilean arpilleristas —or quiltmakers— who, under Pinochet’s regime, made acquaintance at the Vicariate of Solidarity

after their husbands and sons were subjected to enforced disappearance. Unlike thesegroups, proximity and common ground were not the starting point of the EPI, butrather one of the expected outcomes of the participative process itself (OLALDE, 2018b;2019a). The first step in Mexico City was encouraging strangers to get together; hencethe idea of the open embroidery sessions.

24 Embroidery’s technical features —the same attributes that allowed women “coping

with long-term physical health problems” to complete their needlework at their ownspeed (REYNOLDS, 2002:101)— allowed participants to meet the challenges entailed by a


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peaceful protest of this type. Unlike pottery or painting, stitchery does not get thehands dirty, nor does it involve time specific tasks such as drying or firing in a kiln. Inaddition, needlework materials are small and light, and therefore easily transportable(KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT, 2005: 48); furthermore, stitchery “is easy to pick up at anypoint” (BARBER, 1994: 30). In sum, embroidery is a clean, portable, and flexible art.

25 As I mentioned earlier, during the sessions organized by Fuentes Rojas, people were

invited to embroider for as long as they wished. As a result, numerous handkerchiefswere worked on in relays and completed by several hands. Needleworkers were askedto sign the handkerchiefs before leaving the site of this collective action, but the task ofstitching their names was usually left to future participants. Consequently, manyembroiderers devoted their eyes and hands not only to giving an account of the murderor the (enforced) disappearance of someone unknown to them, but also to recordingthe work done by previous participants, whom they most likely were never going tomeet. In this way, the outrage shared by a plurality of people materialized in tangibleobjects —namely, handkerchiefs— which occupy their own space and carry theimprints of the hands that transformed them. As I have posed elsewhere, thesecollective embroideries can be seen as addressing their audience by saying somethinglike: “These persons were killed or subjected to (enforced) disappearance. We, whoembroidered these handkerchiefs, do not (necessarily) know each other but we doshare our concern for the violence inflicted on these people whom we did not knoweither” (OLALDE, 2018b; 2018c; 2019a).

26 In order to display the embroidered items publicly, Fuentes Rojas joined the

handkerchiefs together with safety pins and stitches at the corners, creating banner-like assemblages that usually alternate a cloth and an empty space. This is the way thehandkerchiefs have been presented in rallies and embroidery sessions. However, due tothe lack of a background support —which would allow the cloths to remain flat—, thesebanner-like ensembles are hard to manipulate. During marches, the protesters carryingthe clothesline must keep their hands at the same height and walk at the same speed,

for otherwise the ensemble would not be properly displayed (fig. 4). This means that,for these assemblages to resemble banners, people carrying them must move in acoordinated manner. Once the ropes come loose, the handkerchiefs get wrinkled andwhat a moment before appeared as a coherent ensemble turns into a puzzle, whichmust be handled carefully in order to prevent the ropes and handkerchiefs from

getting tangled up (fig. 5). In other words, these banner-like ensembles have aperformative quality (OLALDE 2018c, 2019a).


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Figure 4. Fuentes Rojas et al. Marching along Paseo de la Reforma on the first anniversary of theenforced disappearance of 43 teaching students in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. Photo: Katia Olalde, MexicoCity, September 26, 2015.

Figure 5. Fuentes Rojas banner-like ensembles in Coyoacán, Mexico City. Photo: Katia OlaldeNovember 19, 2017.

Moving handkerchiefs

27 In her analysis of the Palestinian testimonies included in the American Edition of the

Goldstone Report, Rosanne Kennedy remarks that: “Both meanings of [the word]‘moving’ – as travel and affect – are relevant to [her] analysis” (Kennedy, 2014: 54).


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Following Kennedy’s approach, I have elsewhere argued that “in a country wherepublic display of dismembered bodies and severed limbs had become a commonpractice” (OLALDE 2018a: 198; DIÉGUEZ 2013: 29) and where fear and distrustdiscouraged interactions between strangers (MBEMBE in KODJO-GRANDVAUX, 2013;CALVEIRO, 2017: 137), embroidery proved to be a suitable way to peacefully protestagainst violence because of its ability to move in both senses of the term (OLALDE,2015a: 83-84; OLALDE, 2015b: 75-76; OLALDE, 2019a, OLALDE, 2019b). Furthermore, Ihave posed the idea that embroidering for peace in Mexico may be understood as anexpression of the nonviolent ‘comforting’ action —la acción noviolenta del consuelo—,which was coined by the MPJD from the standpoint of ‘spirituality in resistance’ —la

espiritualidad en resistencia— and practiced by MPJD’s members on a regular basis(AMEGLIO, 2013: 32-33; SÁNCHEZ SUÁREZ, 2013: 72; OLALDE, 2018c). Now I would like topursue these ideas further from the perspective of the ethics of care.

28 The handkerchiefs are small, light, and flexible, but also fragile: they get wet and dirty,

they get wrinkled and torn. On December 1st, 2012, the EPI’s citizen memorial wasabruptly interrupted by riots followed by police intervention. Participants were forcedto run away in order to protect themselves. Although they did their best to safeguardthe handkerchiefs, “many embroideries were lost by the end of the day”; others “wereplucked, trampled, spattered, and stained” (OLALDE, 2018a: 204).

29 Just as embroidery, the activities involved in the conservation and public display of the

EPI’s handkerchiefs —hanging up, folding, and patching up clothes— have beenhistorically associated with the feminine realm and the caring practices that take placein the intimacy of the domestic sphere. In 1990, Fisher and Tronto posited acomprehensive definition of care, which they understood:

On the most general level, [...] as a species activity that includes everything that wedo to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well aspossible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all ofwhich we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web. (TRONTO, 2013: 19;FISHER and TRONTO, 1990: 40)

30 Given that the world we live in includes the objects and narratives of memory that we

create and inherit to future generations (OLALDE, 2019a), and considering thatmaintaining or repairing our ‘world’ involves keeping ‘exemplary memories’ alive inorder to prevent the recurrence of atrocious acts of violence (TODOROV, 1993), I amencouraged to conceive of the activities involved in the EPI —that is, stitching andkeeping the handkerchiefs safe and clean; organizing the open embroidery sessions;assembling, displaying and folding the banner-like ensembles— as caring practices atthe most general level, that is, as practices aimed at “maintaining or repairing our‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (TRONTO, 2013: 19; FISHER andTRONTO, 1990: 40).

31 Now, whereas “the necessary connection between care ethics and femininity has been

subject to rigorous challenge” (SANDER-STAUDT; TRONTO, 2013: 13), the EPI’sdevelopers were less concerned with questioning this historical, yet naturalizedconnection, than with viewing femininity through the lens of political resistance. Inthis respect, the EPI was in tune with those suffragettes who saw in needlearts anopportunity to transform ideas about women and femininity (PARKER, 2010: 197).However, whereas the suffragettes resorted to their needlework skills to conjure up a“femininity represented as a source of strength, [and] not as evidence of women’s


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weakness” (PARKER, 2010: 175-76), the EPI made use of embroidery’s technicalspecificity, temporality, and bodily posture to evoke femininity seen as a source ofwarmth, solidarity, and openness (FUENTES ROJAS, in GARCÍA, 2014: 83; GARGALLO,2014a: 53, 97; GARGALLO, 2014b: 19; OLALDE, 2019b). In other words, far fromquestioning how the differentiation between sexes and genders has been historicallyand culturally construed and re-enacted, or contesting how caring practices have beendifferentially assigned (TRONTO, 2013: 32-33), the EPI emphasised the socio-historicalconnection between femininity and nonviolence (FUENTES ROJAS, 2014: par.8), therebyimplicitly downplaying femininity’s long-established association with submission andcompliance.

32 I therefore claim that, just as “Fuentes Rojas did not conceive their handkerchiefs as

objects of disinterested aesthetic contemplation”, but rather as tools for politicalexpression (OLALDE, 2018a: 200; OLALDE, 2018b; OLALDE, 2019a), the groups who joinedthe EPI saw embroidery not as fancywork (JOHNSON and WILSON, 2005: 115) —performed by women who were “granted a ‘pass’ out of [...] most daily domestic duties”(TRONTO, 2013: 58), thereby enjoying what Tronto has conceptualized as ‘privilegedirresponsibility’ (TRONTO,1993: 121; TRONTO 2013: 158)—, but rather as a way toparticipate in the endeavour of construing the victims’ claims as a matter of publicinterest on the national level (OLALDE, 2015a: 87) and as cases of human rights abuse inthe international arena (OLALDE, 2015b: 75-77; OLALDE, 2019a).

Showing that you care

33 Whilst the ethics of care approach is characterized —among other things— by its view

of people as relational and interdependent (Held, 2006: 156; MCLEOD and SHERWING2000: 259-60; JAGGAR, 2000: 456; TRONTO 2013: 32;), the extent to which face-to-faceinteractions are necessary for caring to be actually achieved remains open to discussion(BUBECK 1995: 129; BOWDEN, 1997: 1; SLOTE, 2001: ix; NODDINGS, 2002: 3; NODDINGS,2005: 116; TRONTO 2013: 6; HELD, 2006: 32-34). Nonetheless, the idea that caring entailsrelations tends to be generally accepted (NODDINGS, 2005: 111, 117; RUDDICK, 1998: 13–14; SEVENHUIJSEN, 1998: 82; HELD, 2006: 42).

34 Whereas it is true that the activities carried out by the EPI did not necessarily involve

or foster face-to-face interactions with the victims’ relatives —whom a significant partof Mexican society perceives as ‘distant’ strangers (NODDINGS, 2002: 3)—, participationin the embroidery sessions did entail visual and tactile contact with the handkerchiefsdedicated to those who were killed or subjected to (enforced) disappearance.

35 Considering the haptic quality of embroidery and the visual attentiveness it requires, I

would like to posit the idea that holding the handkerchiefs, heedfully reading themurder and disappearance cases, and taking the time to manually complete theneedlework stich by stich without feeling obliged to display any technical skills(OLALDE 2018b), might have offered the EPI’s participants the opportunity toexperience a state analogous to ‘flow’, just as the Glasgow quilters who participated inBurt and Atkinson’s study (BURT & ATKINSON, 2011: 58).

36 In his lecture “Breaking the Chain. Thoughts on Trauma and Transference”, Jan

Verwoert maintained that the eyes and hands are the vehicles of empathy, for it is


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through our gaze and manual gestures that we can connect with other people(VERWOERT, 2012: min. 03:40) and shape our emotions (SHOUSE, 2005).

37 Given that the clarity of goals, the absence of worry about failure, and the combination

of action and awareness, all of which characterize ‘flow’ (CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, 1996:111-12), make people feel “more ‘together’ […], not only internally but also with respectto other people and to the world in general” (CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, 2008: 41), andconsidering that embroidery is a hands-on activity, just as care often is (TRONTO, 2013:139), and that needlework, like care, demands time and attention (TRONTO, 2013: 166;NODDINGS, 2005: 114; KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT, 2005: 50), I would like to draw onVerwoert’s idea to suggest that the state of ‘flow’ might have offered the EPI’sparticipants who experienced it the opportunity to develop their capacity (NODDINGS,2005:114; HELD, 2006: 42, 125 ) to ‘care about’ the harm and loss endured by so manypeople in Mexico throughout the last twelve years (FISHER and TRONTO, 1990: 40;TRONTO, 2013: 22, NODDINGS, 2002: 3).

38 On these grounds, I would also maintain that the EPI might be seen as a vindication of

the benefits of needlework insofar as participation in the embroidery sessions wasintended to have a positive impact on the participants’ mind-set and behaviour —arather pedagogical function the EPI’s developers associated with the promotion ofdemocratic citizenship (FUENTES ROJAS, 2012: par. 2)—. Furthermore, I would claimthat taking care of the handkerchiefs entails not only preserving “the fabrication ofhuman hands” (ARENDT, 1998: 95), but most importantly, nurturing “the fabric ofhuman relationships and affairs” (ARENDT, 1998: 95) involved in the creation andpublic display of the embroideries (OLALDE, 2015a: 86-87; OLALDE, 2019a).

39 In sum, I would argue that in a country where social inequality and racism has resulted

in the differential exposure of people to abuse, impunity and neglect, the EPI resortedto needlework’s technical specificities, bodily posture and constructive/healingcharacter to urge passersby to develop their capacity to care about (TRONTO, 2013: 148)those ‘distant’ strangers who have directly experienced violence and even to encourageparticipants to move on to the subsequent phases of the caring process —namely, ‘carefor’, ‘caregiving’, and ‘care receiving’ (FISHER and TRONTO, 1990: 40)—6.

40 I am, moreover, encouraged to suggest that the EPI’s aspiration to promote democratic

citizenship (FUENTES ROJAS, 2012: par.2, OLALDE 2018b; 2019a) entails inspiringparticipants to engage in the practice of democratic caring or ‘care with’ (TRONTO,2013: 148)7 which, according to Tronto:

41 requires […] citizens […] to accept that they bear the political burden of caring for the

future. That future is not only about economic production but also about caring for thevalues of freedom, equality, and justice. That future is not only about oneself and one’sfamily and friends, but also about those with whom one disagrees, as well as the naturalworld and one’s place in it. That future requires that we think honestly about the pastand accept some burdens and responsibilities that have been deflected or ignored,realizing that if all such responsibilities are reconsidered, democracy will functionmore justly. (TRONTO, 2013: xii)

42 Finally, I would like to conclude by suggesting that, in the framework of the current

humanitarian crisis, the practice of democratic caring (TRONTO, 2013: 23) entails —among other things— undermining the tendency of private individuals living inneoliberal societies to care only for themselves and those closest or dearest to them, atendency that is leading a considerable sector of Mexican civil society and several


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politicians to keep trying to exclude the claims for truth and justice from the nationalagenda.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AGOSÍN, Marjorie, Tapestries of hope, threads of love. The Arpillera Movement in Chile,

Plymouth UK, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008.

AMEGLIO, Pietro, “Caminar y luchar: acción y espiritualidad noviolentas”, in D. J. Garcia (Coord.),

in Deyssy Jael de la Luz García (coord.), Las caravanas del Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y

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ENDNOTES

1. See http://citylore.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wow/index.html

2. See http://www.acantioquia.org/es/la-vida-que-se-teje.html

3. See https://stitchedvoices.wordpress.com

4. See http://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/

5. I write ‘enforced’ in round brackets because the Mexican General Law on Enforced

Disappearance and Disappearance by Individuals, that was sanctioned by the Mexican Congress

in November 2017 defines two legal concepts: ‘enforced disappearance’ and ‘disappearance

committed by private individuals’ (desaparición por particulares).

6. Fisher and Tronto “identified four steps in the processes of care: 1. Caring about. Atthis first phase of care, someone or some group notices unmet caring needs.

2. Caring for. Once needs are identified, someone or some group has to takeresponsibility to make certain that these needs are met.

3. Care-giving. The third phase of caring requires that the actual care-giving work bedone.

4. Care-receiving. Once care work is done, there will be a response from the person,thing, group, animal, plant, or environment that has been cared for. Observing thatresponse and making judgments about it (for example, was the care given sufficient?successful? complete?) is the fourth phase of care.” (TRONTO, 2013:22)

7. “In order to think about democratic care, which is not on this level of generalizationbut a more particular kind of care, [Tronto latter identified] a fifth phase of […] Caring

with [which] requires that caring needs and the ways in which they are met need to beconsistent with democratic commitments to justice, equality, and freedom for all.”(TRONTO, 2013: 23)

ABSTRACTS

Since the summer of 2011, solidary people from around the world have gathered in the open air

to embroider handkerchiefs commemorating the victims of the war on drugs in Mexico and to

welcome willing passersby to join in the activity for as long as they wish. In this article I draw on

the Ethics of Care approach to argue that this collaborative project resorted to the technical

specificities and constructive/healing character of handmade embroidery, as well as to the bodily


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http://www.bartleby.com/144/12.html

http://www.bartleby.com/144/12.html

http://citylore.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wow/index.html

http://citylore.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wow/index.html

http://www.acantioquia.org/es/la-vida-que-se-teje.html

http://www.acantioquia.org/es/la-vida-que-se-teje.html

https://stitchedvoices.wordpress.com

https://stitchedvoices.wordpress.com

http://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/

http://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/

posture and the temporality entailed by this activity in order to urge passersby to care about the

humanitarian crisis in Mexico. Furthermore, I pose the possibility that these embroidery sessions

create favourable conditions prompting participants to engage in democratic caring practices.

Desde el verano de 2011, personas solidarias alrededor del mundo se han reunido al aire libre

para bordar pañuelos en memoria de las víctimas de la “guerra contra el narcotráfico” en México

e invitar a los transeúntes que así lo deseen a sumarse a la actividad por el tiempo que quieran.

En este artículo recupero las discusiones llevadas a cabo en el ámbito de la ética del cuidado para

argumentar que este proyecto colaborativo recurrió a la especificidad técnica y al carácter

constructivo/sanador del bordado a mano, así como a la temporalidad y a la postura corporal que

esta actividad conlleva, con el propósito de urgir a los transeúntes a interesarse por la crisis

humanitaria que se vive en México. Sumado a esto, planteo la posibilidad de que estas sesiones de

bordado generen condiciones favorables para que los participantes se motiven a involucrase en

prácticas democráticas de cuidado.

INDEX

Palabras claves: guerra contra el narcotráfico, no violencia, feminidad, ética del cuidado,

arpilleras.

Keywords: war on drugs, nonviolence, femininity, ethics of care, arpilleras.

AUTHOR

KATIA OLALDE RICO.

KU Leuven – University of Leuven / Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – Escuela

Nacional de Estudios Superiores Unidad Morelia (UNAM–ENES Morelia)


125

Entretien(s)


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Traducir la impenetrable. Unaconversación con Julieta HanonoAndrea Giunta

1 Introduction

2 Esta entrevista con la artista Julieta Hanono se realizó durante de 2019 en ocasión

de su exposición Traducir la impenetrable, en el Museo de la Cárcova, en BuenosAires. Julieta nació en Rosario, Argentina, y vive París. Durante su adolescenciaestuvo detenida-desaparecida por la dictadura militar argentina. Estudió arte yfilosofía en Argentina y luego en Francia. Su film El pozo remite a su experienciaen prisión. Durante los últimos años su trabajo se ha centrado en el tema de latraducción.

3 El Museo de la Cárcova reúne una colección de calcos antiguos y clásicos que

Hanono intervino con sus instalaciones. Por un lado, trazó sobre el piso delmuseo, trepando entre esculturas y pedestales, una red con los nombres de poetaslatinoamericanas que se conectan con líneas de colores violeta (color delfeminismo histórico), verde (que representa la campaña por la legalización delaborto), naranja (que remite a la separación entre la Iglesia y el Estado). Nombresy líneas tejen una Cosmología de las poetas (2018-2020), una red que atraviesa todoel espacio del museo. En otra sala se presenta el video La riqueza de las naciones

(2016, colección MALBA), un video de doble canal. Uno proyecta la caída del sol enlas Cataratas del Iguazú, el otro un fragmento de La riqueza… de Adam Smith. Lainstalación propone una reflexión crítica sobre el pensamiento del economista yfilósofo escocés y su análisis sobre la constitución de la riqueza.

4 Traducir la impenetrable incluye el trabajo que la artista realizó en colaboración

con integrantes de la comunidad de pueblos originarios qom, provenientes de ElImpenetrable en Chaco, que viven en Rouillón, en las afueras de la ciudad deRosario, Argentina. Sus interlocutores en esta comunidad son Arsenio, quienrealiza las figuras de animalitos de barro y Ruperta, quien trasladó especiesvegetales desde Chaco a Rosario. La multitud de pequeños animales remiten a laidea de diáspora (Animalitos / La manada, 2018). Son tantas vidas como los


127

kilómetros que separan Buenos Aires de Resistencia: 935. La exposición incluye elherbario que Julieta realiza a partir de la impresión directa de las especiesvegetales que Ruperta le regaló de su jardín. Las impresiones en papel vegetaltranslúcido se superponen creando una textura visual delicada (El jardín mágico de

Ruperta, 2019). En otra sala cuelga una serie de impresiones realizadas en blancosobre blanco (Una capucha de nubes, 2013-presente) de un texto en elque Julieta condensa su experiencia de estar entre dos lenguas, el español y elfrancés. Ella agrega una versión en qom que traduce Arsenio. Sintetiza así laexperiencia diaspórica de la comunidad qom y la que ella misma condensa en suvida entre Paris, Buenos Aires y Rosario.

5 Andrea Giunta

6 Te formaste en el grabado, hiciste una obra con bordados (casi suturas amorosas),

comenzaste luego con la fotografía y el video y en los últimos años ampliaste tuslenguajes a los de la poesía y la traducción. ¿Podrías contarnos por qué seproducen estas elecciones, tal fluidez y coexistencia de los lenguajes?¿Encontraste un lenguaje definitivo o lo que te define es justamente esa migraciónconstante entre la palabra, sus dobles (las traducciones) y las mil técnicas paracapturar imágenes?

7 Julieta Hanono

8 tal vez estas migraciones pueden llamarse también cambios de piel, como hacen las

serpientes, especialmente las anacondas del río Paraná, que tanto me gustan, quecambian de piel, y siguen siendo las mismas pero diferentes, pues como ellas, yo cambiode lugar y de lengua

9 irme de Argentina significó irme de una lengua tan próxima al cuerpo (la lengua

materna, de mi madre) que me dejaba pegada en el afecto y no podía decir, pues todoera tan compacto, no podía encontrarme en el espacio de la justa soledad de mi ser,para crear mis propias armas, que podemos llamar un lenguaje, un nuevo abecedario

10 el encuentro con otra lengua lo vivo como una revolución, una vuelta de 360 grados en

el eje de mi misma, tuve que de-construirme (en términos derridianos), si empujo mástodavía doy la imagen de una cosmonauta que entra en un agujero negro y sale del otrolado, siendo la misma y distinta

11 para mí las técnicas están íntimamente ligadas a lo que uno necesita decir, al servicio

de una necesidad íntima, la técnica del grabado y en especial la punta seca, lleva en sí elgesto de la inscripción, es analógica a la escritura, es un modo de escribir donde elacento está puesto en la fuerza que ejerce la mano sobre la materia, sobre la placa dealuminio o de cobre, cuando de niña comencé a escribir, recuerdo que hacia palotes y …al comienzo la escritura hace mal, es como aprender a tocar la guitarra, los dedos agarrando

fuerte el lápiz contra el papel.., la sensación con la punta seca es similar, y no es anodinoque fuese la primera técnica que utilicé

12 la fotografía, fue una necesidad para entrar en mí, no podía hacerlo de otra manera,

necesitaba una imagen que me acercara a lo más real, salirme de la metáfora, de lanarración, del gesto de mi propia mano, que ya había realizado desde el dibujo o lapintura,

13 la fotografía capta, y de manera inmediata (pues la cámara que utilicé era una cámara

digital que capta la imagen y la reproduce en la pantalla al instante), posteriormente lasimágenes eran trabajadas para alejarlas para aun más y enfriarlas,


128

14 realicé fotos con el espéculo introducido en mi propio sexo, quería hablar del interior

de mi cuerpo que albergaba a mi futuro hijo, y ese espéculo era una lupa y a la mismavez una cerradura para ver y espiar, así me apropiaba de un lugar misterioso, y almismo tiempo hablaba de la caverna de mi madre y tal vez desde un lugar, de la lenguamaterna,

15 pude volver, entrar, armada detrás de una cámara de video (como el espejo de Perseo)

al pozo de Rosario, el centro de detención clandestina donde estuve detenida desde1977 a 1979, la técnica del video podía captar mi cuerpo allí, diría, podía hacer unregistro del presente, de mi inquietud, mi miedo, mi sorpresa al volver,

16 baje aparejada, protegida por la cámara que es como un otro ojo, (no es anodino filmar

en un lugar donde el tiempo queda fijo, es poner en movimiento lo que a estadodetenido, quieto) la experiencia de tocar lo real fue fundamental para todo mi trabajo,

17 como era tan difícil, casi imposible decirlo en imágenes, pues no había imágenes para

decir lo indecible, decidí nombrar toda esa desaparición con nuevas palabras, laspalabras desde esa otra lengua, la lengua francesa, que me había dado la posibilidad detomar distancia,

18 comencé a escribir, no desde la traducción, sino desde el balbuceo, como quien aprende

a hablar, y en ese ejercicio que finalmente es oscilatorio (pues sueño en francés comoen español) escribiendo en esta lengua nueva, volvía a la de antes, pero yaposicionándome desde otro lugar, y al mismo modo creando un entre-lenguasignificando mi no lugar

19 no puedo decir que mi lenguaje es definitivo pero sí diré que es definitiva esta

oscilación entre un lugar y el otro, lo comprendí desde el ejercicio de la escritura, enesa dialéctica pude entender el camino de mi propia persona para ser persona, cómonecesité mudar de piel y de lengua para salirme de la presencia de un pasado siemprepróximo, de un real como el de haber visto a los 16 años, lo inhumano de un centroclandestino, de haberlo tocado con mi propio ser, y de haber salido

20 Para muchos –y me incluyo– esa salida de la lengua materna puede ser

traumática. Quizás porque viví fuera de los Estados Unidos siendo mayor que voscuando te fuiste a Francia, supuso un desdoblamiento difícil, sin alegría. Esta es laexperiencia de muchos emigrados. Sin embargo, para vos fue una circunstanciacreativa, que sacó lo mejor de vos. ¿Quizás porque te alejaste de la lenguamaterna para ser la lengua madre de tus hijos? Como sea, creaste una cantidad dedispositivos visuales y sonoros (el ritmo de la palabra–poesía que se pronuncia)que te llevaron a lo que nombrás como una revolución. ¿Que condiciones propiascrees que tuvo que la lengua nueva fuese el francés? ¿Cuál era tu familiaridad conel idioma? ¿Crees que otra lengua hubiese provocado en vos la mismaexperiencia?

21 me fui y pensé que no iba a extrañar, rompí mi billete de vuelta, como quien se va de

una casa da un portazo y lanza esa llave lejos, tenés razón, la experiencia de salirse deuna lengua es dolorosa, siempre deja un gran vacío, lo que me decís con respecto a tupropia experiencia me resuena, pienso que todos los inmigrantes hacemos un duelo dela lengua materna, y no solamente de la lengua sino un duelo del paisaje que podríamosnombrar de la infancia

22 llegar a París no era solo huir de algo, era ir a encontrarme con otra cultura con sus

límites y sus posibilidades, pasar del otro lado del espejo, desde París me vi, no


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solamente argentina, me comprendí sudamericana, necesite irme al norte para saberque vibro desde el sur, en otro punto, con otra vibración energética

23 cuando me fui creí (y lo digo con el énfasis que uno le puede otorgar a una creencia

desde un punto de vista sobrenatural y salvadora) que los fantasmas del pasado se iríana disipar y sin embargo volvieron con mas fuerza, desmaterializados como ruinas queemergían en un paisaje nuevo y extraño,

24 pero esta condición de aislamiento de saberse un pez de otra agua me hizo constatar

que tampoco era pez del agua en mi lengua materna, irme fue entender que lasingularidad de una mirada personal nos condena a ser siempre extranjera

25 París me otorgó esa evidencia que fue cruel y salvadora, puntapié inicial de mi creación,

ese espacio que enciende que podemos nombrarlo poesía, lugar singular del ser, puntode soledad, que nos hace únicos y en un punto intraducibles

26 fue esa lengua que me posibilitó destruir mis mitos personales, mis tics de seducción,

mis facilidades, construyendo mi piso a la medida de la marcha de mis pasos, pudeentender que lo que nombro como arte es consecuencia del despliegue de mis ideasiniciales, de mis primeras emociones de niña, desde lo mas íntimo, ya descolocado delas gramáticas habladas por el otro, pues otra lengua ayuda a salirse de lo quedenomina Lacan el parlêtre (el ser hablado por los demás) y uno, balbuceando, aprendea escucharse

27 si en la prisión estaba sola, no estaba en soledad, pues nunca se está solo con sus

perseguidores acechando, París me obligo a ver, mis ojos tocaron las cosas, y pude tocarlo que siempre había visto en figuritas, ver la pincelada de Philippe de Champaigne, lospliegos del mantel de la última cena, sus rojos grises de la capa que cae del cardenalRichelieu, me sumergí en los nenúfares de Monet y vi una ciudad circular fruto de lareflexión que al mismo tiempo me asfixiaba, severa, pero me obligaba esta vez asalirme, volando, subiendo un espiral ascendente

28 cuando llegué un amigo gay me llevó al hospital y me hice un análisis de sida, me

sorprendí porque era gratuito y anónimo, mas tarde, cuando estaba casada y ya madrede mi primer hijo, aborté, lo hice también en un hospital del estado, no existe elparaíso, pero es verdad que ciertas cuestiones que tocan a lo femenino yo las encontréresueltas,

29 en Buenos Aires había leído El tercer sexo de Simone de Beauvoir, si bien las posiciones

patriarcales están en todas las sociedades y se ejercen detrás de diferentes mascaras,este nuevo contexto me otorgo cierta confianza y me ayudo a desanudar miedosconcretos ligados a momentos dramáticos de mi vida, en mi país de origen

30 París, la lengua francesa me dio alas, esas alas para poder sobrevolarme a mi misma

para entender que mi militancia de joven mujer está siempre y que hoy se encarnadesde otros lenguajes, pudiendo inventar soluciones visuales, poéticas, y agregarésonoras, pensado en lo que me preguntás, pues mi escritura es un doble juego depalabras y sones,

31 hoy mis proyectos artísticos, los hago encontrándome con otras personas, que

pertenecen a disciplinas diversas, que me enseñan sus otras lenguas, creando proyectosque me exceden y finalmente son producciones económicas políticas sentimentales

32 inscribir una nueva lengua en la lengua de mis hijos, ellos están atravesados por las dos,

yo les cantaba entre mis dos lenguas, el francés que hablo es el de una extranjera, ellos


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están acunados por mi acento, son mestizos, ser madre es salirse de la lengua delcuerpo de su madre, para crear la propia

33 Volvamos a El Pozo, ¿por qué decidiste regresar al lugar en el que te habían

tenido presa? Cuando entraste con la cámara, ¿era la primera vez que lovisitabas?

34 no fue una decisión muy pensada, fue más del orden de lo intuitivo, bajo al Pozo como

una arqueóloga que quiere encontrar objetos contundentes que prueben su idea acercade los vestigios del pasado, este pasado estaba muy vivo en mi misma, resonaba comoya lo dije de manera fantasmagórica, me perseguía en París, me impedía volver aArgentina, un abismo de ausencias,

35 necesité entrar en mi cuerpo a través de las fotografías de mi sexo y el espéculo que lo

espiaba, para más tarde poder entrar en mi prisión, tal vez pude hacerlo porque me salíde la lengua que me contenía y encerraba, en el lugar imaginario del útero de mimadre, salirme de su cobijo, liberarme, cuando desde mi propio cuerpo infantando dejéde ser solamente hija

36 tomar esta decisión, que como ya lo dije, no era premeditada, fue dar un salto a la

inversa, entrar a la caverna de el Pozo como quien entra a la gruta de su madre, fuecasi, como volver de la nada, de la misma nada de donde venimos

37 fue un viaje iniciático, tocar el Pozo fue tocar lo real, lo que es del orden de lo

impensable, desde antes de las palabras pues es indecible, la violencia total de lo quellamaría Giorgio Agamben un estado de excepción, ví lo que no pensé nunca ver y teníaque hacer de eso algo, pues se agolpaba en mí y me impedía vivir, yo quería decírmelo ami misma, tal vez así, para poder decírselo a los demás,

38 hubo cuestiones objetivas, un cambio de gobierno, una apertura en las cuestiones de los

derechos humanos, cuando hice una instalación allí, lo abrimos a los vecinos y fue juntoa las asociaciones de madres e hijos

39 la primera vez que bajé, ya lo hice con la cámara, recuerdo que la noche anterior estuve

muy enferma, era tan poderoso volver y saberme del otro lado, comprobar con mipropio cuerpo esa catástrofe irreparable, y el lugar me pareció mas pequeño

40 ¿Podrías describir cómo es y cómo se organiza la secuencia fílmica de El Pozo?

41 en realidad, filmé mucho, recorrí todo el espacio detrás del ojo de la cámara, elegí

ciertas secuencias que me parecieron que, más que ilustrar el lugar, lo sacaban de lanarración y hacían aparecer la estructura misma

42 en el film El Pozo, construyo otra narrativa que deconstruye, hago de este espacio un no

lugar flotante que es también una pecera,

43 la cámara esta ubicada en el hall circular del segundo piso, era el lugar de los

interrogatorios, la cámara gira, y se ven todas las puertas abiertas, restos de cosas en elsuelo, que pueden sugerir colchones tirados, ventanas tapadas, un pequeño escritorio(el del interrogador),

44 la cámara gira, la secuencia esta tratada a muy baja velocidad, la cámara allí también

puede leerse como el ojo del panóptico, para mí significaba otra cosa, yo la puse en eselugar y filmo desde un punto de vista que nunca hubiera podido tener desde micondición de prisionera, pues nosotros estábamos adentro de los cuartos, no podíamostener acceso al hall, esta ubicación corresponde a la de una persona libre, que ya seencuentra afuera o sino, a la del torturador, pero nunca desde la mirada del prisionero


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45 filmé de día, con luz natural, la secuencia de El Pozo, como una torre girando sobre si

misma, en un tiempo detenido en su continua rotación, luego ensamblo con unasecuencia que capturo de la instalación que realicé en el ex centro clandestino, era unproyector donde proyectaba una imagen de mi cara, finalmente decidí sacarla y dejar elhalo de luz, la luz del interrogatorio, la luz brutal del proyector que nos interpela yencandila

46 Todas tus obras mantienen un diálogo intenso con la escritura, con otros textos.

Convertís a la escritura en imagen. Elaborás la transición entre la palabra y laimagen. Y escribís. ¿Siempre escribiste o hubo un momento en el que comenzaste?

47 desde muy pequeña escribo, solo para mí, mamá me dio un diario íntimo, en cuero rojo

y con un candadito, era mi tesoro, amigo y confidente, yo tenia 7 años, a veces, lovuelvo a abrir, y encuentro vestigios de ésta que soy, los cimientos que hacen a estamujer de ahora

48 la escritura, si la entendemos como la construcción de un lenguaje, en el que me

inscribo en un estilo personal, comenzó en París, en el 2009

49 fue totalmente sorprendente, pues empecé a escribir sin pensarlo, desde el francés, un

texto que relata el viaje del encuentro con las bordadoras de Tehuacán, México, en laColina Negra,

50 las convoco para bordar a partir de un modelo, 395 veces, el resto del vestido que yo

había bordado, inspirada en los motivos de sus bordados

51 te referís a esta pieza, y hablas de suturas amorosas, voy a retomar tu bella definición, si,

era un gesto reparador, pedir que mujeres me acompañaran en esos días dedesasosiego, que me rodearan, abrazándome, con sus manos bordando, pues los 395bordados que las mujeres realizaron significan los 395 días pasados en cautiverio,

52 también fue mamá, que, esta vez me dio una tela blanca e hilos de color, para hacerme

un vestido para tener esperanza, y pensar que podía existir un día, en el que pudierasalir, vestida con mi vestido,

53 mi texto son fragmentos unidos entre las dos lenguas, donde se mezcla la experiencia

de la producción de 395 y el otro viaje, al corazón del pasado en mi lengua materna, losmismos se superponen, se contaminan, alterando un tiempo con el otro, el antes es eldespués, todo coexiste en el ahora, mientras que una lengua, la francesa dice, la otra, laargentina, dice de otra manera

54 escribí 4 paginas y seguí a 40, tuve el privilegio enorme de que mi primer lector, ya no

desde el círculo más íntimo, fuera el poeta y pensador martinicano, Édouard Glissant, elpadre del concepto de creolización

55 le mostré mi manuscrito, con tanta inquietud, él vivía en un gran apartamento a

Invalides, ya el tiempo le había pasado, estaba cansado pero erguido, este gigantehermoso, negro y macizo, y con la sonrisa de un niño travieso,

56 me pidió que numerara las páginas, y las iba leyendo y riendo de mis faltas de

ortografía, faltas que yo misma no veía, ni aun veo, me dijo, así esta muy bien corrigióalgunas, dejó otras, y así comencé a escribir

57 las palabras, mejor dicho, las ideas, me resultaban mas claras desde la otra lengua, yo

podía olvidar para recordar y así ubicarme como quien se mira a si misma, ser larelatora de una historia de tiempos mezclados,


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58 Es muy interesante tu relato sobre esa situación intersticial respecto del idioma.

Dicen que traducir es también traicionar. Y esto de hecho sucede en tus obras, enlas que las palabras pueden estar más allá de la escritura correcta, mezclando yalterando las lenguas ¿Funciona esta metáfora intersticial en tu proceso de estar-entre?

59 si, es justo, hay una suerte de traición, pero yo me preguntaría a quien se traiciona, ¿a

la lengua? al sujeto de la lengua? a cierto, attachement (la palabra me sale en francés) enespañol se traduciría por ser atado, a veces me pasa que entre-pienso en una y la otra ytal vez, traiciono la otra, la olvido

60 desde mi manera de escribir, diría, que traiciono a mi pasado, y si quiero ser más

precisa, a la manera de concebir mi lengua como me la enseñaron, a esa lenguaaprendida en los años de escuela

61 Freud en una definición magnífica define el inconsciente, lo nombra el ombligo del

remolino de los sueños, tal vez para mí la relación que tengo con la traducción, concibeuna suerte de traición al lazo de sangre, al lazo con la lengua matriz

62 ….y oscilando entre una y otra, entre dos lenguas, entre afuera y adentro, me desato, me

desanudo…

63 los indios shuar, en la selva amazónica dicen que la vida como la entendemos nosotros,

los modernos, los occidentales, no es la verdadera vida, para ellos la realidad es cuandoestán bajo el efecto de drogas alucinógenas, potentes sustancias que extraen de plantasy de raíces

64 si avanzamos en que toda relación hacia el otro implica una traducción, pues el

discurso que enuncio resuena distinto al del receptor, cada sujeto conlleva su lenguapropia, la marca matriz de una historia gestada antes de nacer y tal vez, para serreceptivo, necesitamos siempre traicionar nuestra primera escritura

65 y la poesía, no es una traición a la lengua, algo que aparece como una fulguración que

se construye desde lo inventado?

66 ¿Cómo es el juego entre las lenguas?

67 tal vez este entre lenguas sea como columpiarse en una hamaca, un balancearse entre

dos y abrir el juego, empujándose con la punta de los pies, tomando envión, estar en elaire, sobrevolando, como quien visita un lugar siempre nuevo, pues en ese va y viene,algo del orden de lo inusitado se produce

68 una mirada más alejada que permita poder nombrar las cosas con palabras, desde un

modo singular y así hacerlas aparecer al mundo, será como ser una bisagra que sostieneesa puerta que se abre que se cierra que va desde un lado al otro,

69 la bisagra es algo que sirve para mantener las puertas para abrir y para cerrar, yo veo mi gesto

inscripto en el aire, mi brazo extendido ilustrando la palabra, con mi mano torcida yo me alejo,

no, esto no es un mango ni es mi muñeca, es un destornillador

70 entre dos lenguas, es un juego entre dos hemisferios, reconocerme sudamericana, una

equilibrista entre norte y sur, sin renunciar a mi acento de extranjera, siendo unapasajera en viaje (como diría Charly) y guardar ese tesoro de sorpresa que es lacapacidad de aprender, ser Alicia, siempre pasando del otro lado del espejo

71 ¿Cuál es la lengua original y cuál la adoptada?


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72 la original es la lengua que me hablaba antes de mi propia voz, la que me acunaba en el

útero de mi madre, la matriz, la que aprendí a escribir primero con palotes

73 la adoptada es la lengua que me recibe y que encontré, es la lengua que tuve que

aprender sacándome los hábitos (los tics) que conllevaba la otra, la aprendí por mimisma, a los tantoneos, como quien juega al gallito ciego, creando las mismas armaspara acequiarla, haciendo mis papeles para ser ciudadana de otro lugar, adentrándomeen una administración diferente con otras leyes, dándome la cabeza contra otroscódigos,

74 me agarré a la nueva lengua, como quien se agarra a una tabla de salvación, me

encontré con la lengua francesa, y esta significó una apertura de campo, como quiencambia el lente de su cámara y utiliza otro objetivo, pude tomar la distancia suficiente ypude recuperar la otra, para volver a decir mi lengua primera, desde mi propiaoriginalidad subjetiva

75 ¿Soñás en las dos lenguas, pero todavía reconoces la diferencia entre las mismas?

76 sueño en las dos, es cuando despierto, cuando vuelvo a la superficie, una frase o una

palabra que emerge

77 ahora te escribo en español, estoy pensado en mi lengua primera, y ya contaminada por

al otra, escribiendo en español me encuentro muy cómoda, si lo haría hiciese en francéssería tal vez un poco más complicado, pero cuando vuelvo a leerme constato mi manerade escribir, ya atravesada por la otra lengua,

78 escribo diferente porque pienso diferente, la travesía entre dos lenguas me otorga un

espacio de aislamiento y tal vez avanzaría de levedad, desplegarme en la doble escrituraes vivir la resonancia, pues otra lengua no es ni un eco ni una sombra, estoy hablandoen una (pero me escucha la otra) es un lugar de compañía en ese entre-dos,

79 Homi Bhabha se refiere a la figura del mimetismo como una relación entre la

lengua del conquistador y la del conquistado, el subalterno. Se trata de unaestrategia, en un sentido, de supervivencia frente al poder. ¿Encontrás algún ecode esta relación en tu propia experiencia en Francia, país que llevó adelante unaguerra cruenta contra una de sus colonias, Argelia, para citar tan solo un caso?¿Cómo te ubicás afectiva y estéticamente en ese entramado de relaciones?

80 hablar de mimetismo a la lengua francesa seria obedecer al pie de letra sus leyes, y yo

me salgo, el gesto de dejar ciertas faltas de ortografía y errores semánticos es no solopoético, sino político

81 en todo el despliegue de mi trabajo, desde mis textos que se presentan cual fragmentos

testimonios, restos de imágenes de sueños, de carácter autorreferencial, hablados enprimera persona, hasta la traducción a diferentes técnicas, diferentes lenguas,

82 tomo como primera referencia el trabajo con las bordadoras mexicanas, cuando a partir

de ese modelo, ellas mismas traducen, a un modo personal, cada una, un objetobordando a su manera

83 pienso en el texto Ils, traducido por el maestro Arsenio, a su lengua materna, el qom, él

dice que se feminiza, se transforma en mujer para poder ser hablado y ponerse en ellugar de lo que habla,

84 insisto en que la traducción no es lineal, cada texto es equivalente, uno no traduce al

otro, no hay una subordinación de mi escritura en argentino a la escritura en francés,


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85 los horrores de la guerra de Argelia a nosotros, sudamericanos, nos tocan de manera

particular, hoy sabemos que junto el aval de EEUU se importaron los métodos detortura que eran utilizados por los militares franceses en la guerra contra la liberaciónargelina, para masacrar a los opositores, en la terriblemente célebre operación Cóndor

86 el modelo se contra resta en su propio campo, a partir de la lengua del colonizador, se

construyen interlocutores críticos, que constituyen una oposición desde la mismalengua del dominante, pienso a Franz Fanón y sus escritos iluminadores

87 ser entre el sur y el norte, significa esa distancia con mi lengua madre, me desanuda,

deviene un punto de cuestionamiento de la posición colonizadora y paternalista, que esfinalmente, el despliegue de mi practica artística,

88 mi entre-dos coincide con el concepto de creolización que inventa Édouard Glissant,

pensando que si el esclavo (en términos hegelianos) se sale de la opresión, dejando deser hablado por la voz de las ordenes del amo, inventa su lengua, que tiene en cuenta supasado de esclavitud, y esa nueva lengua es su liberación,

89 desde este lugar, mujer, inmigrante, desde una mirada que va del sur al norte, escribo

como hablo, con mi acento, pienso desde este acento, soy mestizada, contaminada,hablo y soy hablada, desde la lengua de la insumisión

90 En la exposición en el Museo de Calcos de la Cárcova vas a presentar obras

nuevas, obras terminadas, obras que están en proceso. Estas obras funcionaráncomo intervenciones entre la majestuosa colección de calcos, que reproducenobras emblemáticas de la historia del arte occidental y también prehispánico.Estuvimos en el lugar e imaginamos cómo se dispondrían tus propuestas.Anticipamos los diálogos y las fricciones que se originarían y, sobre esto, quizáspodamos pensar una vez que la exposición esté montada, como una coda a estetexto. Quisiera por el momento conversar un poco sobre las obrasespecíficamente. En principio, la exposición se titulará Traducir la impenetrable.Nos hemos detenido extensamente en la importancia que para vos tiene ellenguaje y la traducción, así como también los huecos, las perforaciones de lalengua que se producen en el ir y venir de una lengua a otra, síntomas que semanifiestan en desvíos gramaticales, en cierta incorrección respecto de losestándares de una lengua escrita, que el lector percibe como pequeños desórdenescuyo sentido, sin embargo, comprende. En tu escritura es grato introducirse en sutono desajustado pero comprensible. Comencemos con el título, Traducir laimpenetrable. Acabo de verificarlo en el diccionario y en verdad esa región debosque nativo en el Chaco (40.000 km2) se llame “el” impenetrable. ¿Por qué enfemenino?

91 hace años que título mis muestras comenzando por la palabra traducción, que escribo

al comienzo de una frase, la palabra traducción esta conjugada, y deviene acción, será,traer, mostrar, decir a mi propia lengua, y como bien vos lo escribís, haciendo unasuerte de juego, donde el error, funciona como un acto fallido que rompe el candado dela censura, construyendo una posibilidad utópica

92 pensé, entre otras cosas, en una obra de Jesús Rafael Soto, Penetrables (líneas verticales

tendidas a cierta altitud que forman una superficie cúbica o rectangular, donde elpúblico está invitado a entrar) la gente entra en esa selva de líneas, pero son líneasrectas, donde nadie puede enredarse


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93 la comunidad qom viene de otro lugar, un bosque tupido, una selva, donde es casi

imposible entrar si no se es nacido allí, por eso se llama impenetrable,

94 la tierra qom es un útero, la pacha mama (a quien tanto Ruperta como Arsenio le

rinden homenaje) feminizar, nombrándola desde un articulo femenino, es cargar esteespacio de potencia, el artículo singular femenino -la- adelante, la convierte, vuelve aser ese lugar, impenetrable, espacio de resguardo, de cobijo

95 -la- reactualiza, es una posición política y feminista, Traducir la impenetrable es volverla

a sus propiedades primeras, desalambrarla, dejándola libre

96 traducir la impenetrable intraducible vitalidad salvaje, es traducir la selva, la femenina,

la subversiva, las chamanas las brujas las serpientes que mudan de piel como devestido, la lengua no escrita, nómade, que fluye escapa, trepa indomable como unaenredadera

97 si lo femenino es misterio, lo misterioso no es penetrable, al misterio se nos inicia, para

comprenderlo es necesario bajar las armas, llegar desnuda, despojándose de lo que unoantes conocía, y dejarse tomar por el laberinto mágico, no tenerle temor al canto desirenas de las lenguas salvajes, ser hablada dejarse hablar por las aguas movedizas delas voces de las lenguas, mucho antes de nosotros

98 Ví fotografías extraordinariamente bellas de la instalación de pequeños

animalitos que conforman como una constelación animal. Son como estrellas ocomo luciérnagas que crean una textura cálida sobre el blanco prístino en el quecasi flotan o titilan. Contanos sobre el orígen de este trabajo colaborativo con losqom, sobre las distancias y sobre qué significa exponerlas juntas, como enmanada.

99 es tan bello lo que decís acerca de las figuritas de los animalitos cuando las nombras

estrellas, y luciérnagas, los también llamados bichitos de luz se prenden y se apagan,llevan luz en ellas mismas, flotan, son pequeñas, y esa luz itinerante que emanan,podríamos decir, dice un abecedario como en un balbuceo

100 los bichitos me encontraron junto con los qom, cuando comencé a pensar la exposición

para el Museo de la Memoria de Rosario, curada por María Elena Lucero, el hiloconductor de la muestra fue la traducción de uno de mis textos, Ils,

101 quien traduce es el maestro Arsenio Borges, gran artesano, el aprendió mirando a su

abuelo que le enseñó a sentir bajo sus dedos la arcilla

102 traduciendo, se identifica con la mujer que cuenta la historia de su partida a otro país,

Arsenio lloraba al hacer suyo el texto Ils, que relata el viaje desde Argentina a París y lasdificultadas de encontrarse en otro lugar, otra lengua,

103 el traductor, se traduce a sí mismo y se encuentra con su propio éxodo desde

Resistencia, Chaco en el impenetrable hasta el barrio Rouillon, en la periferia deRosario

104 me cuenta los kilómetros que hace a pie, para llegar a instalarse en los bordes de la

ciudad, empujado por la tierra que se secaba, la falta de comida, cuando me habla,comprendo que falta otra traducción, más cercana, que exceda la lengua escrita

105 traduzco a la artesanía, registro de la historia cotidiana escrita en letras minúsculas, la

que se escribe en la vida corriente, tizándose entre los vestidos, los utensilios, la cocina,los juguetes, lengua de oralidad, como la lengua originaria qom,


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106 los 709 son los 709 km que Arsenio camina para llegar a Rosario, cada bichito 1 km,

modelados en arcilla cocida sin pintura,

107 el Centro el Obrador, en barrio Rouillon, donde vive parte de la comunidad, es el

espacio que alberga este trabajo, su coordinadora, Mariela Mangiaterra, oficia de nexoentre mi proposición y el grupo, se discute en asamblea, el por qué los 709 animalitos,la gente emocionada, el precio lo determinan los artesanos, la inflación avanza, y en lapaga final se tiene en cuenta, un vínculo de confianza se establece, la obra es todo elproceso de producción que la constituye

108 para la muestra Traducir la impenetrable, se producen 935 bichitos que corresponden a

los Km entre Resistencia, Chaco y Buenos Aires,

109 relucen contra el blanco del plano, se expanden en la superficie, letras, o signos,

abecedario de barro que agrupados son un discurso, portador de energía animada, luzpropia, rítmica de luciérnagas, balbuceo de una nueva lengua que se inventa, porque laluz pequeña de cada una, en la suma, es una geografía abierta, el de la lengua antiguade la tierra libre que se desplaza

Julieta Hanono, Animalitos / La manada, 2018

110 Me deleita observar esos pequeños animalitos. Me proporcionan dos placeres

para la mirada. Por un lado, la sensación de manada, todos juntos son como unagrisalla. Por otro, el detenerse en cada uno, observar sus diferencias, tratar deadivinar o encontrar qué animal representan. Uno puede estar largo tiempoobservándolos. Me parece interesante que su número sirva para medir ladistancia. Y me pregunto, en estos momentos del debate sobre lo poshumano,sobre un feminismo que introduce las cuestiones relativas al antropoceno, la eraen la que el hombre decide las transformaciones, incluso la destrucción delplaneta, ¿qué sentidos adicionales tiene esa acumulación de vida animal? Piensoen la igualación o incluso en el desplazamiento de lo humano como parámetro demedida o como agente que establece las distancias a través de sus dispositivosmétricos. Aquí se trata de una medida animal. ¿Pensaste sobre estas posibilidadesinterpretativas y sobre sus conexiones con un feminismo actual, que no soloimplica denunciar la violencia hacia las mujeres, sino también la destrucción a laque parece irrevocablemente estar destinado el mundo en el momento actual del


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capitalismo global? Lo femenino como lo resistente al expolio de los recursosnaturales del planeta (exacerbado por el autoritarismo de nuevos líderes comoTrump o Bolsonaro), lo animal como parámetro afectivo que desjerarquiza lacentralidad de lo humano. ¿Qué piensas sobre estas relaciones que pueden noajustarse al lugar desde el que pensaste esa pequeña jungla de barro?

111 tus cuestiones abren, a medida que te respondo el hilo mismo de mi trabajo se va

desplegando

112 el bosque, la selva de barro es una invocación, ningún animalito es fruto de la

invención, cada pequeña figura carga con el peso del ansia de hacerla volver, Arsenio ysu compañera Clorinda, artesana también, uno al lado del otro, van corrigiéndose lasesculturas, ellos insisten en que los animalitos modelados, están en vías de extinción,cada uno conlleva la carga, es vestigio de lo que se está yendo, y del mismo modo suspreciosos animalitos ofician de testigos, testimoniando otro tiempo, el de sus primerasvidas en juventud, exodadas desde la abundancia de la selva a la precariedad de la villamiseria,

113 este territorio en movimiento, desde un punto de vista, representa y denuncia, lo que

se está destruyendo, pero desde otro punto, puede ser interpretado como aparición deuna memoria, supera la idea del vestigio, deviene una invocación,

114 los animalitos en grupo son un discurso desde otra mirada del mundo, no transformado

por la mano invisible (Adams Smith) del capitalismo mercantilista y global, un discursode horizontalidad donde todas las categorías de vitalidad van confundidas, desde lovegetal lo animal lo humano, se mezclan y se nivelan

115 en la cosmología qom la noción entre animal y persona humana es desjerarquizada, el

mito de la creación del pueblo qom esta trazado por esa doble pertenencia,

116 Cuando Kharta creó el mundo no existían el frío, la enfermedad, la muerte ni el hambre. Sólo

creó hombres, como eran inmortales no tenían necesidad de tener hijos. Estos hombres eran

mitad seres humanos y mitad animales. Tenían plumas y pieles en su cuerpo y garras en los pies

y las manos, algunos podían volar. Estos vivían felices cazando, pescando y recolectando, el

mundo estaba creado para ellos y formaban una unidad entre hombres y naturaleza…

117 las únicas enteras, son las mujeres, mujeres estrellas (mira que lindo en relación, a lo

que estamos hablando, cuando comparás los bichitos a estrellitas)

118 …En esa época, de tiempo en tiempo, las estrellas bajaban del cielo por medio de cuerdas de

chaguar para robar la comida de los hombres. Estas estrellas eran blancas, brillantes y tenían

forma de mujeres. Elé las vio descender por las cuerdas y como eran muy lindas quiso tomar a

una de ellas, pero estas mujeres tenían mucho poder y el hombre loro sufrió heridas en su boca,

así perdió parte de su facultad de hablar. Mientras estaba dolorido en el suelo observó que las

mujeres tragaban el alimento por arriba y por debajo, ya que también tenían dientes en la

vagina…

119 aquello que encarna lo femenino es poderoso

120 …Chiquii llamó a una reunión, deliberaron largamente y decidieron que el hombre mosca volaría

mas allá del mar para traer una solución. Cuando el hombre volvió trajo consigo el conocimiento

del fuego, hasta ese momento los hombres comían el alimento crudo. Trajo también el viento, el

frío, la enfermedad y la muerte.

121 lo femenino produce estupor, debe ser domado, los dientes de las vaginas rotos, el

encuentro con el otro se asevera el fin de la eternidad y el comienzo de la vida humana,


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122 …Los hombres se pusieron a cantar el día, llegó un fuerte viento mucho frío. Las mujeres que

estaban desnudas se pusieron a temblar y se arrimaron al fuego. Los hombres entonces tiraron al

fuego una piedra mágica que explotó y entrando en todas las mujeres les rompió los dientes de

abajo. De esa manera los hombres animales se unieron con las mujeres estrellas y sus hijos son el

actual pueblo Toba.

123 aquí lo femenino es entero, son casi-divinas, enfrentan a los hombre-animales, da a

pensar esta diferencia, con la concepción judeocristiana occidental donde la mujer escreada a partir de una parte del hombre, en términos lacanianos, si el concepto de faloes una ilusión y que este se comparte, se podría decir que ellas, desde sus orígenes,comparten el mismo atributo y los hombres, para encontrarlas, deben perder su parteanimal, que puede leerse como la renuncia a cierta manera de virilidad,

124 antes de la colonización, los qom se organizaban a través del concejo de ancianas y de

ancianos, viviendo en equidad de géneros, después de la evangelización, los curas ypastores, representantes de la religión monoteísta, se erigen en dirigentes de lacomunidad, conllevando un modelo masculino y paternalista, intentando demoler estesistema ancestral

125 Ruperta, representante qom, se define como guerrera, las guerreras legendarias eran

las amazonas, palabra que viene del griego antiguo ἀμαζών, sin pechos, la historia entreveraz e imaginaria cuenta que se cortaban el pecho derecho para sostener el arco,

126 Ruperta me dice que no le gustan los pastores (evangelistas) que les ponen una pollera larga a

las mujeres y les impiden hablar

127 ya durante el descubrimiento de las Américas, Colon habla de una isla donde viven

mujeres que podemos asemejarlas a ellas, el cura Gaspar de Carvajal cronista de laexpedición del conquistador español Francisco de Orellana en el 1542, escribe comoguerreras mujeres les disparaban desde el otro lado de la orilla, dardos de cerbatanas yflechas, consecuencia del impacto de su relato, el rio será rebautizado Amazonas o ríode las Amazonas, aquí parte de su relato

128 …Han de saber que ellos son sujetos y tributarios de las Amazonas, y sabida nuestra venida, les

van a pedir socorro y vinieron hasta diez o doce, que estas vimos nosotros, que andaban peleando

delante de todos los indios como capitanas y peleaban ellas tan animosamente que los indios no

osaban volver las espaldas…

129 Bolsonaro intenta olvidar que existen las amazonas, cuando expolia lo que considera

suyo, el Amazonas, y me pregunto si en la mente de los hombres autoritaritos, sigueintacto el deseo de doblegarlas,

130 los animalitos en manada, territorio de pura vida sensible y gratuita, donde todo se

confunde y se nivela, latiendo, diferente y al unísono, van construyendo un diqueimaginario a las políticas invasoras que destruyen el planeta, luciérnagas, mujeresestrellas, amazonas, chamanas, discurso visual escrito en letras de barro, feminista,presente


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Julieta Hanono, Cosmología de las poetas, 2018 al presente


131 El feminismo aparece en la exposición como archivo desplegado en el piso, cuando

trazas un mapa de las poetas, una cosmología la llamás, que produce lainteracción de los nombres. Y todo esto vas a hacerlo en colores significativospara la lucha feminista que en los últimos años ocupó las calles: el violetatradicionalmente vinculado con los feminismos; el verde, color que se vincula a lacampaña para legalizar la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo; el naranja, que


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representa la separación de la Iglesia y el Estado, el freno a que la Iglesia continúeejerciendo un poder sobre la sociedad civil para que el dogma que regula la vidade los creyentes se aplique a toda la sociedad. En la aplicación del dogma se dejade lado el hecho de que los abortos clandestinos, que suceden a pesar de la ley yde la Iglesia en todas las clases sociales, afectan especialmente a las mujerespobres, ya que los aborto baratos se realizan sin condiciones seguras para susvidas. ¿Por qué, entonces, anudar estos colores con la poesía? ¿es una relaciónpensada entre la política y la poética? ¿Por qué elegís a las mujeres que nombrás?

132 cuando atravesaban el mapa del mundo, las constelaciones guiaban a los antiguos para

orientarse en la oscuridad de la noche, mis poetas, son una cosmología de concienciaque late e ilumina, tramado desde el suelo del Museo entre los calcos de esculturas(representantes de una mirada solo masculina) la cosmología de sus nombresentrelazados sube y desborda, interpelando años de historia, es la impenetrable trepandolibremente, la subversión de la lengua resplandece

133 las nombro poetas, podría llamarlas luciérnagas, estrellas, sirenas, chamanas o

hechiceras, con sus palabras invocando espíritus y fuerzas, irradiando luz de preguntas,abriendo el juego de la lengua, de-construyendo la manera en que la historia masculinaha concebido la escritura, rindiéndola intraducible, misteriosa, por eso anudar poesía ypolítica es imprescindible,

134 citaré solo algunas, desplegando las intenciones de este mapa cosmológico, la más

remota es Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, expresión de la independencia al decidir su propiavida entrando al convento para hacer posible su deseo de ser una mujer que escribe, oAlfonsina Storni, que desde su poesía saca a la superficie el machismo de su época ytransgrede las normas sociales en su existencia personal, Violeta Parra nómade, que varecopilando las coplas antiguas de su tierra, escuchando la voz mas frágil, la de lospobres, Susana Thénon en su doble pertenencia a la lengua, traduciendo al francésavanzando el feminismo, junto a Alejandra Pizarnik escribiendo su amor femenino a lasmujeres entre Buenos Aires y París,

135 si las mas desamparadas, las mas pobres, sufren duramente la injusticia de un aborto

clandestino, unir las poetas con los colores emblemáticos del feminismo, reactualiza lovertiginoso de sus textos, le confiere un real, la poesía deja de estar en el limbo de lopoetizante, no es metáfora, es concreta, despoetizar la poesía es hacerla, como dice elpoeta Gabriel Celaya, un arma cargada de futuro

136 en la invención de la poesía, subversión de la lengua, no solo lo escrito dice, es el cuerpo

que habla, elijo estas poetas, un puñado de mujeres que escriben desde el cuerpo,construidas por esta relación entre escritura y vida, traductoras e interpretes de lasvivencias de otras mujeres

137 los lazos en colores que las unen inventan un tejido haciendo aparecer esta relación

secreta e invisible, la historia se rescribe, la personal, la de cada voz de la poesía de cadapoeta, y la de todas, unidas en la sororidad de sus intenciones, y en un mundo hostilque no quiere escuchar, ellas abren otra historia de luchas que nos envuelve desde elsuelo al cielo, la voz de la potencia femenina, en un coro de pensamiento escrito selevanta

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Julieta Hanono, El jardín mágico de Ruperta, 2019

139

El jardín mágico de Ruperta suena tan bello. Sé que te basas en el traslado deespecies vegetales, plantas, flores, que Ruperta realizó desde el Impenetrable,donde vivía, hacia Rosario, donde fue trasladada. Existe una poesía conmovedoraen esa travesía que vuelve dulce su extranjería, la situación diaspórica en la quese encuentra. Ese jardín es como una manta cálida en la que ella comprime elentorno de la selva en su jardín, casi un memorial de la naturaleza, un memorialafectivo que la acompaña y que cada día le recuerda de dónde viene. Tambiénaquí podemos pensar en lo poshumano. Vi las fotos que tomaste en el jardín deRuperta e imagino cómo se verá ese herbario impreso en litografía en un papeltranslúcido. Conversamos sobre poner estas hojas en vitrinas iluminadas desdeabajo en la sala en la que se encuentran los calcos prehispánicos. Separados comopara poder caminar entre ellos. Contanos un poco sobre esta obra y quérepresenta en el conjunto que vas a disponer en las salas.

140 Ruperta dice vivo en Miraflores, lo dice desde su jardín, en el barrio Rouillon, en la

periferia de Rosario, rodeada por sus plantas que trajo de su selva, ella es y está en losdos lugares y ese jardín significa su doble pertenencia,

141 Ruperta lleva con ella la mano verde, hace huertas en la comunidad, cuando me invita a

su jardín me las enseña, hay también macetas colgadas en las ramas de su árbol dondevienen a cantar los pájaros y su amiga Roberta dice que llora a la mañana, cuando los

escucha

142 ella escucha la selva y la selva es ella, y el herbario es una manera de decir que todo en

la vida sensible se confunde, todo es animado y su árbol es mágico como todo lo que larodea


142

143 pero ella también es chamana, y el titulo jardín mágico no es anodino, es un canto de

cada voz de los espíritus que animan cada planta y cada una es la memoria de lahistoria de su lengua, su gesto al traerlas, para rodearse de ellas, anula la distancia, yesa memoria se vuelve viviente

144 hubiera podido cortar las plantas, secarlas y producir un herbario en un sentido clásico,

pero calcar es también otra manera de traducir, crear otro nivel de lenguaje, unatécnica que me acerque a mis primeros trabajos, a la técnica del grabado

145 yo quería un papel que me encuentre con lo mas vegetal posible, fibra de la naturaleza,

elegí finas planchas translúcidas de papeles japoneses, finos como las hojas de lasplantas,

146 las cajas vitrinas que las albergan construyen una arquitectura del registro de lo

vegetal, contenido en bloques luminosos, nos abren la retina a la delicadeza del detalle,en las nervaduras, mínimo, frágil, resistente, palpita la estructura misma de lo vegetal,

147 su jardín se compone de plantas para curar y proteger, como el Mapic que ahora es un

árbol y sus chauchas poseen grandes propiedades nutrientes, o la Adelia que se colocaen las entradas de la casa para dar una buena bienvenida a los invitados

148 el jardín mágico es más que un pedazo de selva que va desde Miraflores a la periferia de

Rosario, es un testigo tangible de su doble corazón, que tiene un pie en cada lado,

149 y ese jardín, es tele-portado al Museo desde otras maneras, es deconstruido desde la

transformación de la materia planta en calco de papel, y reconstituido para elaborar elherbario en cajas,

150 palpitando de espíritus animados, el herbario pinta el autorretrato de Ruperta: sus

plantas elegidas albergan los secretos de su magia


151

Creo que también donde están los calcos prehispánicos vas a disponer la serie Una

capucha de nubes, con afiches impresos en blanco sobre blanco. Viene a mi mente


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inevitablemente el eco de Malevich o de la argentina Lea Lublin, que, como vos,vivía en Paris, Ambos hicieron obras en ‘blanco sobre blanco”. ¿Por qué estaimpresión? ¿qué rol juega aquí la lengua? ¿qué palabras imprimís?

152 …cuando llegué a Paris, era la bruma, ellos quisieron mostrarme la ciudad, y me llevaron a

Pigalle… cuando recién llegué, estaba envuelta entre los fantasmas del antes, comoquien está ante un precipicio frente al mar y si se lanza podrá volar o caer, así me sentíacuando me topé con esas obras de Lea Lublin, imágenes blancas contra blanco, formas,sanadoras en ese momento de desasosiego,

153 estaba frente a ellas y me fascinaron, eran un espejo, me encontré con lo que me

sucedía, mi ser que se reflejaba, empezar de 0, ser una página que parece en blancopero ya está escrita, en pintura invisible, Lea me pedía que mirara, que entrara con misojos para hacer aparecer ese discurso secreto

154 cuando el Macbal, Museo de Seine Marne, me propone hacer una estampa para el día de

la mujer, pensé en una frase que englobara un idea de feminismo muy abarcadora, yencontré este fragmento de la introducción del capital tomo 1 de Karl Marx,

155 Perseo para perseguir los monstruos necesitó una capucha de nubes nosotros a esta capucha, la

hemos bajado sobre nuestros ojos y nuestros oídos para hacer como si los monstruos no existen

más

156 el texto es enigmático, lo podemos leer desde la pura reivindicación política pero

también desde un punto de vista feminista, los monstruos siguen estando cuando semeten presas a las mujeres por abortar,

157 la misma articulación del discurso de la frase me llevó a pensarla en blanco, como

devenir nosotros mismos invisibles para vencer a los monstruos, como yo podía devenirvisible desde mi invisibilidad, para que el espectador se reapropiara de mi cuerpo?, unartista da a comer su cuerpo al otro, haciendo aparecer su discurso, pero también sucorporalidad,

158 por eso, son afiches y del mismo modo anti-afiches, no muestran directamente, su

intención no es la de comunicar (si pensamos lo que enuncia Foucault, con relación a lacomunicación como instrumento de palabras de poder) el blanco sobre blanco, hacenecesario un esfuerzo para hacer aparecer el discurso, este mismo no esta dado, es unapregunta, se establece una relación de deseo, el que quiere leerlo se implica en elmismo enunciado del texto que está leyendo

159 lo hice en francés, pero una capucha de nubes va traducido en todas las lenguas en las

que se desplaza, manera de apropiárselo, desde cada lengua, en cada nuevo lugar, latécnica para realizar el afiche resulta diferente, significando que otra lengua es otratraducción, otra técnica,

160 ¡Boguen! El abismo libre, blanco, ¡el infinito frente de ustedes!

161 Kasimir Malevich, Del cubismo y el futurismo al suprematismo. El nuevo realismo pictórico, 1916.

162 el cuerpo, frente a lo que no se ve, la mirada al coincidir con la luz hace ver lo que no se

veía, y así se puede descifrar el discurso secreto, y a la medida en que este vaapareciendo, entendemos que la palabra es acción, verbo, que ese texto escrito, se vaescribiendo en nuestro cuerpo


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Julieta Hanono, Una capucha de nubes, 2013- al presente

163 Hablemos del film-texto La riqueza de las naciones, que también se incluye en la

exposición en la Cárcova. Retomás aquí el texto de Adam Smith, del mismo título,de 1776. Entiendo que lo tomás como un punto de partida posible del ordeneconómico global, de la mano del mercantilismo inglés y de la idea de un ordeneconómico articulado por la noción de Commonwealth, de bien común, nuevaretórica de un colonialismo comercial que trazaba mapas que se sobre imprimíansobre el orden colonial fundado en los sistemas administrativos y de control queregulaban, por ejemplo, el comercio entre las colonias y la corona española. 1776es, si recuerdo bien, el año en el que se establecen las reformas borbónicas, conCarlos III, que establecen nuevos virreinatos y un sistema de comunicación unpoco más abierto que aquél que regulaba el reconocimiento de solo dos puertoslegales, Veracruz y el Callao. Todo indica que en este momento se estabancambiando las reglas del juego que regía la noción de ‘mundo’. Elegís para estefilm el capítulo “Las colonias” que transcurre como los créditos en el cine, deabajo hacia arriba. Y acompañás el texto con el film de un atardecer en lascataratas del Iguazú. El sol es chupado por el horizonte de arriba hacia abajo.¿por qué estableciste esta relación precisa entre imagen y texto? ¿Cuál es elsentido político que este tiempo demorado en el que transcurren imagen y textoquiere activar?

164 me estaba separando de mi marido, viajé con mi hijo menor, la habitación daba directo

a las cascadas, un hotel colonial dentro del parque de las cataratas del Iguazú

165 bajé con la cámara, estaba frente a las cataratas, el parque cerrando, ya no quedaba casi

nadie, los colectivos con los turistas partían, y me quedé sola frente al sol que caía,envuelta entre la luz y el sonido, era tan intenso que coloqué la cámara en el rebordebien frontal para captar lo que estaba sintiendo, y la dejé correr y me quedé al lado deella mirando como el sol bajaba entre las nubes de vapor el agua y los arcoíris, el cantode los pájaros los ruidos de los animales los zumbidos de los insectos, el olor de lasplantas toda esa vitalidad encendida


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166 gravé adentro mío la sucesión de ese tiempo como un tiempo de cambio en el interior

de mi misma, mi cuerpo era el sur, el tiempo del sol cayendo me daba a pensar en todoese viaje entre Argentina y París

167 cuando volví, dejé el film y tiempo más tarde (casi dos años) visualizando las imágenes,

entendí el contenido político de lo que había filmado, el texto de Adam Smith meapareció, desde su titulo, La riqueza de las naciones, despliegue histórico de laconstrucción norte sur, el capítulo de las colonias fue una evidencia pues corresponde ala situación histórica que hoy se reactualiza, las cataratas significaban lo exótico de unparaíso primero a conquistar, pero también lo escondido, esa triple frontera decontrabando, entre Brasil, Argentina y Paraguay, cuerpo de la tierra divido por lasfronteras que trazan los estados

168 los dos films, uno al lado del otro, hacen emergen otra pregunta, el capitulo 8 las

colonias, del libro 4 de Las Riquezas de las Naciones, es un genérico de film pero va a lainversa, sube, dirigido al norte, texto que da a leer la justificación de acciones quedestruyen a la impenetrable de la selva, y las cataratas salvajes van bajando, envueltasen el ruido y canto, coro de voces de sirenas de amazonas, interpelan al texto delcolonizador

169 En un breve esbozo biográfico señalás que tu obra se inscribe en un work in

progress, y usas un concepto muy evocativo para denominar este trabajo que vasucediendo sin establecer nunca un fin. Lo denominás traducción afectiva,vinculado a la comprensión del artista como intérprete traductor. Me interesa eseconcepto. Pienso, por ejemplo, en el de arquitectura emocional, que propusoMathias Goeritz. Él colocaba a la arquitectura en el lugar de una experienciatransformadora. En lugar de trabajar con planos trabajaba como un escultor,dando una forma particular a cada muro. Pienso que puede establecerse ciertoparalelo, aunque la materia escultórica y la palabra activan los afectos de formasmuy diferentes. Me dirás…

170 lo que dices me resuena totalmente, mi producción tanto en la escritura como en lo

visual se acerca más a lo concreto, que, a la metáfora, es construcción de un lenguaje enmovimiento, alfabeto nuevo, herramienta para deconstruir el muro de lo real,

171 cuando hablo del artista como un intérprete traductor, yo diría que este, traduce lo

intraducible, ese punto sin retorno, punto de resistencia a lo real,

172 si hablo de la traducción afectiva, es porque ya traducir significa integrar algo de sí

mismo en ese punto de vista desde el que se traduce, siendo el interprete de lasingularidad de lo intraducible del sí mismo, es una idea que parte de mi interrelacióncon las lenguas, la materna y la francesa

173 mi materia para producir es la misma materialidad de mi cuerpo, en cierto modo esto

se acerca a lo que avanzas cuando hablas de materia escultórica, pues es particular yúnica, territorio, tangible e intangible, espacio de abertura despliegue, yo me considerouna escultora de lenguajes visuales y sonoros

174 una traducción es afectiva cuando va más cerca y más lejos, cuando cambia la escala y

produce la propia, que es la única medida, la de si mismo,

175 ir tanteando mas allá del pensamiento del sentimiento del saber, es ir mas allá, y mas

aquí, habitada por tantas lenguas antes y después de nacer, atravesada por una historiapersonal y múltiple, ser un prisma de facetas tantas, trompo que gira gira gira


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176 Durante esta conversación que hemos mantenido durante más de un mes, fui

recibiendo tus respuestas y enviando nuevas preguntas. Me contuve ante elimpulso natural que tengo como escritora en castellano y como editora, decorregir o editar tus respuestas. Comenzás todas las oraciones en minúscula,faltan comas, acentos, puntos. Existen desacuerdos gramaticales. Se percibe contoda claridad que esos descalces tienen un sentido poético. Hoy vamos aconversar sobre si haré o no una edición de los textos. Imagino que no.Conversemos, entonces, como final de esta entrevista, sobre el significado queotorgas a esos continuos deslizamientos entre palabras escritas.

177 con respecto a la corrección de ciertos errores (faltas de acentos, comas) generalmente,

estoy de acuerdo, pero cuando se refiere a la construcción de la frase misma, soy untanto reticente, pues esto que podría leerse como un error o una confusión, es, enrealidad, el reflejo voluntario de una manera de nombrar un lugar, mi lenguaje

178 sacar las letras mayúsculas del comienzo de cada fragmento, es un modo de señalar que

lo que escribo es parte de un infinito, uno mas uno mas uno etc., nada tiene la jerarquíapara ser primero, pues tanto mis textos como mis trabajos en el orden de la plástica, yolos considero fragmentos, y los fragmentos son todos pedazos de algo, no tienen niprincipio ni fin, son parte del despliegue de lo mismo

179 dejo espacios y utilizo las comas, para significar con estos espacios, el vacío, que puede

sentirse como una respiración, una pausa,

180 compongo desde un punto de vista espacial, como si estuviera esculpiendo, tanto mis

textos como mis piezas de carácter visual, pueden leerse como partituras de música, oesculturas, a través de las cuales, traduzco e interpreto este gran rompecabezas en elque estoy inmersa desde antes de nacer, y si escribo en primera persona es porque voyafirmando, que doy testimonio.

RESÚMENES

Esta entrevista con la artista Julieta Hanono se realizó durante de 2019 en ocasión de su

exposición Traducir la impenetrable, en el Museo de la Cárcova, en Buenos Aires. Julieta nació en

Rosario, Argentina, y vive París. Durante su adolescencia estuvo detenida-desaparecida por la

dictadura militar argentina. Estudió arte y filosofía en Argentina y luego en Francia. Su film El

pozo remite a su experiencia en prisión. Durante los últimos años su trabajo se ha centrado en el

tema de la traducción.

Cette entrevue avec l'artiste Julieta Hanono a été réalisée en 2019 à l'occasion de son exposition

Traduire l’impenétráble, au musée de Cárcova, Buenos Aires. Julieta est née à Rosario, en

Argentine, et vit à Paris. Pendant son adolescence, elle a été arrêtée par la dictature militaire

argentine et disparue. Elle a étudié l'art et la philosophie en Argentine puis en France. Son film El

pozo (Le Trou) fait référence à son expérience en prison. Au cours des dernières années, son

travail s'est concentré sur le sujet de la traduction.


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This interview with artist Julieta Hanono was conducted in 2019 on the occasion of her exhibition

Traducir la impenetrable (Translate the Impenetrable) at the Museo de la Cárcova in Buenos Aires.

Julieta was born in Rosario, Argentina, and lives in Paris. As an adolescent, she was arrested-

disappeared by Argentine military forces during the dictatorship. She studied art and philosophy

first in Argentina and then in France. Her film El pozo (The Ditch) addresses her experience in

prison. Her recent work has focused on the problem of translation.

ÍNDICE

Mots-clés: Julieta Hanono; Argentine; El pozo; traduction.

Palabras claves: Julieta Hanono; Argentina; El pozo; traducción.

Keywords: Julieta Hanono; Argentina; El pozo; ; translation.

AUTOR

ANDREA GIUNTA

Andrea Giunta es Doctora y Profesora de arte latinoamericano y moderno / contemporáneo en la

facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Investigadora principal de CONICET.

Curadora de la Bienal 12, Porto Alegre, Brasil, 2020.


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Translate the impenetrable.Conversation with Julieta HanonoAndrea Giunta

Translation : Beatriz Vignoli

1 This interview with artist Julieta Hanono was conducted in 2019 on the occasion

of her exhibition Traducir la impenetrable (Translate the Impenetrable) at theMuseo de la Cárcova in Buenos Aires. Julieta was born in Rosario, Argentina, andlives in Paris. As an adolescent, she was arrested-disappeared by Argentinemilitary forces during the dictatorship. She studied art and philosophy first inArgentina and then in France. Her film El pozo (The Ditch) addresses herexperience in prison. Her recent work has focused on the problem of translation.

2 The show at the Museo de la Cárcova brings together a collection of reproductions

of antique and classic works on which Hanono intervened. She drew on themuseum’s floor, rendering amidst its sculptures and pedestals a network ofnames of Latin American women poets connected by lines in the colors purple(feminism’s historical color), green (the color of the campaign to legalize abortionin Argentina), and orange (the color of the campaign to separate the CatholicChurch and the State). With its network of names and lines, Cosmología de las

poetas ( Cosmology of the Poets, 2018-2020) runs through the entire museumspace. In another gallery, La riqueza de las naciones (The Wealth of Nations, 2016,MALBA collection), a dual-channel video, is screened. One channel shows the sunsetting over Iguazu Falls, and the other a fragment Adam Smith’s The Wealth of

Nations. The installation proposes a critical reflection on the thinking of theScottish economist and philosopher and on his analysis of how wealth isconstituted.

3 Traducir la impenetrable includes the work the artist produced in collaboration

with members of the Qom community originally from El Impenetrable, a region inChaco province, but who now live in Rouillón on the outskirts of the city ofRosario. Her interlocutors in the community are Arsenio, who makes clayanimals, and Ruperta, who took plant species with her when she moved from


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Chaco to Rosario. The multitude of small animals in Animalitos / La manada (LittleAnimals/The Herd, 2018) refers to the idea of diaspora. There are as manyanimals as there are kilometers between Buenos Aires and Resistencia: ninehundred and thirty-five. The exhibition includes as well El jardín mágico de Ruperta

(Ruperta’s Magical Garden, 2019), the herbarium that Julieta put together withprints of the plants Ruperta gave her from her garden. The prints on overlappingsheets of translucent vegetable paper create a delicate visual texture. Hanging inanother gallery is Una capucha de nubes (A Hood of Clouds, 2013-present), a seriesof white-on-white prints of a text in which Julieta captures her experience ofliving between two languages, Spanish and French. This version of the workincludes a translation into Qom by Arsenio. The work addresses diasporia—boththe Qom community’s and the artist’s, as her life bridges Paris, Buenos Aires, andRosario.

4 Andrea Giunta

5 You were trained in engraving, you made an embroidery piece (almost a loving

suture work), then you began making photo and video art, and in recent yearsyou have been expanding your languages to poetry and translation. Could youexplain these choices? What causes such free flowing coexistence amonglanguages? Have you found one permanent language, or what defines you isprecisely such migration among spoken or written word, its doubles(translations) and the countless existing techniques for image capturing?

6 Julieta Hanono

7 such migrations may perhaps be called skin changeovers, just like snakes do, anacondas

in Paraná River in particular, who I love so much, they shed their skin and remain thesame yet they change, because, just like them, I shed my place of residence andlanguage

8 leaving Argentina meant for me to leave a language that was so close to my body (my

mother tongue, the one spoken by my mother) that left me stuck in affection so I couldsay nothing, because everything was so thick, I could not find myself in a space withjust enough room for the exact solitude of my being, so as to weld together my ownweapons, what we can call a language, a new alphabet

9 meeting another language is something I experience as a revolution, a sea change

around the axis of myself, I had to de-construct myself (in Derrida’s terms), and bypushing even further I may look like a cosmonaut entering a black hole event horizonand coming out through on the other side, being at once myself and someone else,

10 techniques to me are intimately related to what one needs to say, serving an intimate

need, engraving technique, dry point in particular, carries within it an inscriptiongesture, it is analogous to writing, it is a way of writing which emphasizes the pressureexerted by the hand over the matter, over the copper plate or the tin plate, whenlearning to write as a child, I remember I drew sticks first, and... writing is harmful at

first, it is like learning to play guitar, fingers holding hard on to the pencil pressed against the

paper sheet... there’s a similar feeling to dry point, which is by no means meaninglesslythe first technique I employed

11 photography was what I needed in order to delve into myself, which I couldn’t do

otherwise, I needed an image to get me closer to the most real and to depart from


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metaphor, from storytelling, from the gesture of my own hand, which I had alreadyperformed both in drawing and painting,

12 photography catches [images], and it does it in an immediate way (since the camera I

used was a digital one that takes pictures and displays them onscreen instantly), andlater on those images were worked over so as to cool them down and push them evenfarther away,

13 I made photographs with a speculum inserted into my own sex, because I wanted to

speak about the inside of my body which was home to my future child, and thespeculum was a magnifying glass and a keyhole to peep and see through at once, so Imade a mysterious place my own, while at the same time I was telling the story of mymother’s cave and maybe, from a certain locus, the story of my mother tongue,

14 I was able to come back down into the pit, shielded behind a camcorder (like Perseus’s

mirror), at el pozo, the clandestine detention center in Rosario where I was detainedsince 1977 through 1979; video technique was able to capture my body in there, it wasable to record the present I would say, my uneasiness, my fear, my awe at returning,

15 I came down rigged, sheltered by the camera which is like another eye (it is by no

means meaningless to film in a place where time sits still, it is to put in motion whathas been frozen, detained), the experience of touching the real was fundamental for allmy work,

16 as it was so difficult, almost impossible to convey it in images, since there were no

images to speak the unspeakable, I decided to name all that disappearance with newwords, words that came from that other tongue, French language, which had given methe chance to distance myself,

17 I started to write, not translating but babbling, as if learning to speak, and in the

process of such eventually oscillating exercise (for I dream both in Spanish andFrench), by writing in that new tongue, I would return home to my old self, howeverstanding in a different place already, and creating an in-between languages as well,which meant my nowhereness

18 I cannot say my language is permanent but I shall certainly call permanent this

oscillation between one place and the other, this I understood through the exercise ofwriting, such dialectical swing showed a way for myself to be my own self, how it tookto shed my skin and tongue for me to pull myself apart from the presence of a pastalways too close, a real such as having witnessed, at 16, the inhumanity of a clandestinedetention center, having touched it with my very own being and having come out

19 For many –including myself— it can be traumatizing to depart from one’s mother

tongue. Maybe because I lived abroad in the States when I was older than youwere when you left for France, it meant an uneasy displacement, it felt joyless forme. Such is the experience many expatriates have. To you, however, it became acreative circumstance, which pulled the best out of you. Was it because youdrifted away from your mother tongue to become the mother tongue of yourchildren? Anyhow, you created a host of visual and sound devices (the rhythm oforal poetry-word) that led you to what you call a revolution. Which specificconditions do you think were provided by the fact that the new language wasFrench? How familiar were you with that language? Do you think anotherlanguage would have caused the same experience in you?


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20 I left thinking I would not miss anything, I tore my way back ticket apart, just like

someone who leaves a house slams the front door and throws away the key, you areright, the experience of departing from a language is painful, it always leaves a hugeemptiness inside, what you tell me about your own experience resounds in me, I thinkwe all immigrants must grieve for our mother tongue, not just for our mother tonguebut grieve as well for that landscape we might call childhood

21 arriving at Paris was not just fleeing from something, it was an encounter with another

culture with its possibilities and boundaries, it meant jumping through the mirror,from Paris I saw myself, not just as an Argentinean, I understood myself as SouthAmerican, it took a journey North for me to know I vibrate from the South, in anotherlocation, with a different energy vibe

22 as I left I believed (as deeply as one can hold on to a supernatural, soul-saving belief)

that ghosts from the past should vanish and yet they came back stronger,dematerialized like ruins emerging amidst a new, strange landscape,

23 but this isolation condition of being aware I was a fish out of another water proved to

me I was not a fish in water in my mother tongue either, and so my departure meantmy understanding of how the singularity of a gaze of our own dooms us to always beingforeigners

24 Paris bestowed on me such cruel, soul-saving evidence, which triggered my creation, as

a lightening space we may call poetry, a singular locus of being, a point of solitude,making us unique and to a certain extent untranslatable

25 it was that tongue which allowed me to shatter my personal myths, my comfort zones,

my charming twitches, building instead my own ground as my steps walked it, and so itdawned on me that what I call art is a consequence of unfolding my earliest ideas, myearliest emotions as a little girl, from my deepest intimacy, displaced already fromgrammars which are spoken by the other, since another tongue helps one to departfrom what Lacan calls the parlêtre (the fact of being spoken by anyone else) and this ishow one, by babbling, learns to listen to oneself

26 although I was lonely in the prison I was not alone, for you’re never alone when your

chasers are lurking around; Paris forced me to see, to touch things with my eyes, inParis I was able to touch what I had always seen in tiny pictures, to see Philippe deChampaigne’s brushstroke, the folds of last supper’s tablecloth, crimson grays oncardinal Richelieu’s drooping cloak, I dived into Monet’s water lilies and saw a circularcity out of reflection, both suffocating me in its harshness and at once pushing me out,flying, up an ascending spiral

27 when I arrived a gay friend of mine took me to hospital and I got tested for aids, kindly

amazed because it was anonymous and for free, and later on, when I was alreadymarried and mother to my first child, I aborted; I did it at a state hospital too, there isno such thing as paradise, but it’s true that certain specifically female issues weresolved beforehand for me when I got there,

28 in Buenos Aires I had read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Third Sex ( sic), and although

patriarchal standpoints are present in every society and exerted behind differentmasks, this new context made me more self-confident and helped me untangle actualfears, tied to dramatic moments of my life in my homeland

29 Paris, French tongue gave me wings, wings to fly above myself and be aware that my

political activism as a young woman is always present and is now embodied in other


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languages, enabling me to come up with new visual, poetic and I may add auralsolutions, now that you ask me, for my writing is a double play of words and sounds,

30 my art projects today, I make them by meeting other people, who belong to various

disciplines, who teach me how to speak their other tongues, creating projects that growbeyond me and at the end of the day are economical, political, sentimental productions

31 so how to inscribe a new tongue in my children’s language, they grew in both, I would

sing them lullabies between my two, the French I speak is a foreigner’s, they have beencradled by my accent, they are crossbreeds, being a mother is to depart from one’smother body’s tongue so as to create one’s own

32 Let’s go back to El Pozo. Why did you decide to return to the place where you had

been held imprisoned? When you returned in there with the camera, was it thefirst time you were there as a visitor?

33 it was not a decision I gave much thinking to, it was rather of an intuitive kind, I came

back down to el Pozo as an archeologist wishing to find forceful objects that were proofof her idea about the remnants of the past, a past that was vividly alive within myself,resounding as I said in a ghostly echo, chasing me in Paris, preventing me to return toArgentina, such an abyss of losses,

34 it took me to get inside my body through photographs of my own sex and the speculum

peeping into it, in order to later be able to get inside my prison, I might have been ableto do so because I could depart from the tongue that contained and restrained me,keeping me locked in the imaginary locus of my mother’s womb, and I could releasemyself from her shelter, free at last when out of my infant body I became more thanjust a daughter

35 making this choice, an unpremeditated one as I already said, meant jumping

backwards, entering the cave of el Pozo just like someone who enters the grotto of hermother, it was almost like returning from nothingness, from the very nothingness wecome from

36 it was a true initiation journey, touching el Pozo was to touch the real, what belongs to

the category of unthinkable, what comes before words, for it is unspeakable, the sheerviolence of what Giorgio Agamben would name as an exception state; I saw what I hadnever fathomed I would see and I had to make something out of it, for it clotted withinme and blocked my life, I wished I was able to tell it to myself, maybe that was the way,so I could tell it to everyone else,

37 there were objective issues involved, a change in government, a more open policy in

human rights’ affairs when I made an installation there, we opened it up to neighborsand did it along mothers’ and sons’ associations

38 the first time I came down in, I was already furnished with the camera, I remember the

previous night I became very sick, so powerful it was to return there knowing I wasnow standing on the other side, testing with my own very body such catastrophebeyond repair, and the place felt smaller to me

39 Could you describe El Pozo’s film sequence and how it’s organized?

40 I actually filmed a lot, walked through the whole space, always behind the camera’s

eye, later on I chose certain sequences that seemed to, rather than illustrating theplace, displace it from storytelling and reveal its structure


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41 on film El Pozo, I build up a deconstructing narrative, turning such space into a floating

nowhereness which is also a fishbowl,

42 the camera is set at the round hall in the first floor, there it was where interrogations

were held, as the camera spins it gets a view of all the opened doors, the debris of stuffon the floor, which may suggest mattresses thrown around, condemned windows, asmall desk (the interrogator’s),

43 the camera spins around, sequence is treated at a very low speed, the camera which is

set there can also be read as panoptic eye; it meant something else to me, I’ve set itthere myself and am filming from a viewpoint I could never have had from my prisonercondition, since we were confined inside the rooms, with no access to the hall, and sothis setting is coherent with the gaze of a free person, one who has been alreadyreleased, or either with the gaze of the torturer, but in no way with the gaze of aprisoner

44 I filmed El Pozo sequence in daylight, under natural lighting conditions, and it was like a

tower spinning over itself, during a time that sits still, caught as it is in perpetualrotation; then I edited it together with a sequence clip where I recorded the installationI had made in the former clandestine detention center, it was a projector screening animage of my face, then I eventually decided not to screen it and just leave the halo oflight, the interrogation light, the brutal, dazing, questioning light of the projector

45 All your works sustain a lively dialogue with writing, with other texts. You turn

writing into image. You work out transitions between image and word. And youwrite. Have you always written or there was a time when you began?

46 I write since I was a very little girl, just for myself, mom gave me a private diary, bound

with red leather and with a little padlock in it, it was my treasure, my intimate friend, Iwas 7 years old, I reopen it sometimes, to find vestiges of this woman I am now,foundations that make me be who I am

47 writing, if we understand it as my practice of constructing a language, a language

where can I inscribe a style of my own, started in Paris, in 2009

48 it was totally amazing, because I started writing thoughtlessly, out from French, a

narrative text on the journey I made to meet woman embroiderers in Tehuacán,México, at Colina Negra,

49 I summoned them to embroider after a pattern, 395 times, the remaining fabric of the

dress that I, taking their motifs as an inspiration, had embroidered

50 when you refer to this piece, you talk about a loving suture work, I shall follow from your

beautiful definition, it was a healing gesture indeed, asking those women to stay by myside back in time to those days of despair, to surround me, to hold me, with theirembroidering hands, because the 395 embroidery pieces those women made stand formy 395 days spent in captivity,

51 it was also mom this time who gave me white cloth and color threads, for me to make

myself a dress so I could nourish hope, so I could think there would be a day when Ishall be released, dressed in my dress,

52 my text is made from sewn together fragments between both languages, mashing up

the experience of 395 project production with the other journey, the one I make to theheart of my past in my mother tongue, they overlap with each other, both storiesleaking into one another, their timelines mutually interfering; what was before


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becomes what shall be afterwards, everything keeps coalescing into the now, Frenchlanguage enounces while the other language, the one from Argentina, enouncesdifferently

53 I wrote 4 pages and went on to 40; I had the enormous privilege that my first reader,

already beyond my intimate circle, was Martinican poet and intellectual ÉdouardGlissant, the father to the concept of creolization

54 I showed him my manuscript, I was so uneasy, he lived in a big apartment at Invalides;

time had flown past him, he was already weary but stood together, this beautiful, black,sturdy giant, smiling like a mischievous kid

55 he asked me to number the pages, read them one by one as he got amused by my

spelling mistakes, mistakes that were invisible to me, and still are, and he told me: it’svery good this way, he corrected some of them, left some as they were, and this is how Ibegan to write

56 It was easier for me to understand words, or rather ideas, from the other language; I

was able to forget so as to remember and stand therefore as one who looks at herself, astoryteller for a story of temps mêlés, mixed up times

57 Your account about your interstitial situation as regards language is very

interesting. They say translating also means betraying. And this in fact occurs inyour artwork, where words may be beyond standard written language, andlanguages get mixed up and transformed. Does this interstitial metaphor workwith your process of being in-between?

58 yes, that’s right, there is some sort of betrayal, but I would wonder who is betrayed,

language? language speaker (its subject)? or certain attachement (the word comes out inFrench) the word translates [for me] to bonding, it happens to me sometimes that I findmyself thinking in-between one language and the other, and I may betray, I may forgetthe other language

59 from the viewpoint of my way of writing I would say I betray my past, and more

precisely, the way I conceive my language as it was taught to me, that language thatwas learnt by me in my school years

60 Freud in a superb statement defines the unconscious, naming it as navel of the

whirlwind of dreams; maybe my relation to translation, conceives some sort of betrayalto the blood ties, to what binds me to my mother tongue

61 ….and as i oscillate between one tongue and the other, in between two languages, in between

inside and out, i untie myself, i disentangle my knots…

62 Shuar aborigines in the Amazon jungle say life as we modern western people

understand it is not real life; reality is to them what they experience under theinfluence of hallucinogenic drugs, powerful substances they extract from plants andfrom roots

63 even further on over the fact that every relationship with anyone else implies a

translation, because the discourse I enounce shall resound differently to the listener’s,every subject carries along his or her own language, the matrix hallmark of a historythat was hatched before one’s birth, so in order to become receptive we may alwaysneed to betray our earliest writing

64 and isn’t poetry a betrayal against language, a glowing flash, building upon a pure

invention?


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65 How is your interplay between languages?

66 such a sway in-between tongues may seem like swinging in a swing, a game cradled by

two until it starts, one of them pushing her own weight away from the ground with thetip of her feet, catching momentum, staying in the air, flying over, just like someonewho revisits a place that is always new, for as you come and go, something unexpectedis produced

67 a more distant gaze, one allowing us to be able to pin down things with their names, in

one’s own way, and displaying them that way in front of the world, shall be like being ahinge holding that door that open that closes and sways between one place and theother,

68 a hinge keeps doors together as they open and close, it’s a thing with that function, i see my

gesture inscribed in the air, mi spread arm illustrating the word, with my twisted hand i’m

receding, this is not a handle nor my wrist, it’s a screwdriver

69 between two tongues, it’s a play between two hemispheres, to acknowledge myself as

South American, to walk a tight rope between North and South, without relinquishingmy foreign woman accent, forever a travelling she-passenger (as Charly García wouldsay: pasajera en tránsito) and keeping as a treasure my amazement which equals myability to keep learning, being Alice, always passing through the looking-glass

70 Which is your original language and which is the one you adopted?

71 the original one is the tongue that spoke to me even before I had my own voice, the one

that cradled me when I was inside my mother’s womb, the matrix, the one I learnt towrite by first drawing sticks

72 the adopted one is the language that receives me and the one I found, it’s the one I had

to learn as I got rid of my tics involved in the other one; I learned it by myself, by trial-and-error, playing blind man’s buff, building from scratch its irrigation systems, goingthrough my somewhere else’s citizen paperwork, deep into foreign administration andlaws, hitting my head against its foreign codes,

73 I held on hard to my new language, just like someone who hangs on to her last resort; I

met French, and that meant a widening of my field of vision, just like someone whoswitches to wide-angle lens for her camera, I was able to zoom out enough distance andretrieve my (m)other tongue, so as to be able to utter my earliest language, from myown subjective uniqueness

74 Do you dream in both languages, but still recognizing the difference between

them?

75 I dream in both, it’s when I’m waking up, when I float back to the surface, a phrase or a

word emerging

76 I’m writing to you in Spanish now, right now I’m thinking with my earliest language,

already tinged by the other one, I feel so easy writing in Spanish, it would not be soeasy if I did it in French; but as I reread myself I can testify my writing style, crossedover already with the other language,

77 I write differently because I think differently, travelling between both languages

provides me with an isolation space and I might increase in lightness, to unfold myselfalong a dual writing is to live a resonance, because another language is neither an echonor a shadow, I’m speaking in one (but the other one is listening), it’s a meeting spot, acompany, that nowhere in-between two,


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78 Homi Bhabha figures mimicry as a relation between colonizer’s language and the

language of the colonized, the subordinate subject. This has to do with a strategy,in a sense, of survival in the face of power. Do you find any echo of this relation inyour experience [of living] in France, a country that waged a bloody war againstone of its colonies, Algeria, to give just one example? How do you negotiate youraesthetic and affective standpoint in that network of relations?

79 mimicking French language would mean to follow its rules by the book, but I depart

from it, the gesture of leaving as it is certain spelling mistakes and semantic errors isnot just poetical but political as well

80 all along the development of my work, from my texts presented as fragments,

testimonies, figments of dreams, self-referential literature, spoken in first personsingular, to their translation into different languages and techniques,

81 my starting-point reference is my work with Mexican embroiderers, when they

followed the pattern I provided them and translated, each in her own unique fashion,an object that was embroidered their way in the first place

82 I think of my text Ils, translated by maestro Arsenio to his mother tongue, Qom, as he

does he says he feels he becomes female, he becomes a woman so as to be spokenthrough and stand in place of what speaks,

83 I insist translation is not linear, every text is equivalent, one does not translate the

other, there is no subjection of my Argentine writing to writing in French,

84 the horrors of the war in Algeria are especially pertinent to us South Americans; today

we know that the torture methods French military men used to massacre theiropponents in the war against the Algerian independence were imported, with UnitedStates support, by the infamous Cóndor operation

85 model counters itself in its own field, critical conversation partners emerge from

colonial language itself, opposing the master in his own language, I’m thinking aboutFrantz Fanon and his enlightening essays

86 standing between South and North implies a distance from my mother tongue, it

unravels me, it becomes a spot from where to put into question the colonial andpatronizing position, and at the end of the day this is how my artistic practice unfolds,

87 my in-between-two hangs together with the concept of creolization Édouard Glissant

invented, thinking that if the slave (in Hegel’s terms) frees himself of oppression, nolonger being spoken by the master’s orders voice, he shall create his own language, oneaware of his past under enslavement, and such new language shall be his liberation,

88 from this standpoint, woman, immigrant, out from a gaze that looks from South to

North, I write as I speak, with my accent, I think out from this accent, I becomecrossbred, contaminated; I speak and am spoken from the language of insubordination

89 In your art show at the de la Cárcova Cast Museum (Museo de Calcos de la

Cárcova) you’ll be exhibiting new artworks, some finished, and some in progress.These works shall intervene and be placed among the stately cast collection,which reproduces milestones in the history of Western art and prehispanic art aswell. We stood there figuring out how your projects should be displayed. We haveanticipated the instances of dialogue and friction that might arise, which we maythink about [again] once the exhibition is installed, as a coda to this text. Rightnow, I would just discuss specifically your works. The exhibition is tentatively


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titled Traducir la impenetrable. We have already extensively considered theimportance you give to language and translation, as well as their gaps, minorinstances of incorrectness, punctures in language caused by the coming and goingfrom one tongue to another, symptoms manifested as grammar deviations fromthe standards of written language, perceived by the reader as slight malfunctionswith a meaning he or she however understands. It is pleasant to get immersed inthe out-of-joint but intelligible tone of your writing. Let’s begin with thetitle, Traducir la impenetrable. I’ve checked the dictionary and found out that theactual name of such 15445 square mile native woodland in the province of Chaco(40.000 km2) is “el” impenetrable. Why female?

90 for years now I have giving my shows titles beginning with the word translation, which

I write at the beginning of a phrase, the word translation as a verb becomes an action,it shall mean to bring, to show, to tell to my own language, and as you well write it, itinvolves playing some sort of game, one where error has a function as a Freudian slipbreaking the lock of censorship, building an utopian possibility

91 I thought, among other things, about a work by Jesús Rafael Soto, Penetrables (vertical

lines suspended at a certain height forming a rectangular or cubic shape, where theaudiences are invited to step in) people wander into that jungle of lines, but they arestraight lines, where no one can get entangled

92 Qom community comes from a different place, a thick forest, a wilderness, one almost

impossible to walk into unless one was born there, that is why it’s called impenetrable,

93 Qom land is a womb, mother earth, pacha mama (honored by Ruperta as well as by

Arsenio) and to make it become female, naming it from a female article, means tocharge this space with power, female article -la- ahead transforms it back into thatimpenetrable spot, a safe shelter

94 -la- refreshes its meaning, it’s a political feminist standpoint, translating la impenetrable

means to restore land its earliest properties, cutting the barbed wires, setting it free,

95 translating la impenetrable means an untranslatable wild vitality, it means to translate

wilderness, the female, the subversive, she-shamans, witches, the snakes that changetheir skin over as if it were a dress, an unwritten language, nomadic, flowing, elusive,climbing as untamable as vine

96 if the female is mystery, the mysterious is not penetrable, into mystery we are initiated,

in order to understanding it we need to put down our weapons, to come naked, to getrid of what we used to know, to let us be taken by the magical maze, fearing not thesiren song of languages from the wild, being spoken letting us be spoken by the shiftingwaters of languages’ voices, [that were here] long before us

97

I saw extraordinarily beautiful pictures of your installation with tiny littleanimals making up some sort of animal constellation. They look like stars orfireflies, creating a warm texture over the pristine white background, where theyseem to float or twinkle. Tell us about how you started this collaborative workwith the Qom, about distances and about what does it mean to exhibit them alltogether, as if they were flocking or herding.

98 it’s so beautiful what you say about figurines of little animals when you name them as

stars and fireflies, those also called light bugs turn on and off themselves, they carry


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their own light, they float, they’re tiny, and that traveling glow they send out keepsbabbling, we might say, an alphabet

99 tiny little animals met me together with the Qom, when I started to conceive my

exhibition for Museo de la Memoria in Rosario, curated by María Elena Lucero, theshow’s red thread was the translation of one of my texts, Ils,

100 who translates is maestro Arsenio Borges, a great craftsman, he learnt by watching his

grandfather who taught him to feel the clay beneath his fingers

101 as he translated he became identified with the woman who tells the story of her

migration to another country, Arsenio wept as he made Ils text his own, a textnarrating my journey from Argentina to Paris and the trials and tribulations ofstanding in a different place, a different language

102 the translator translates himself and meets his own exodus from Resistencia, Chaco in

el impenetrable till Rouillon district, an unprivileged suburban area in Rosario

103 he told me about the many kilometers he walked to settle down in poor city suburbs,

driven away by the drying cropland, scarcity of food, I understand as he talks that anew translation is needed, one beyond written language

104 I translate into craftsmanship, which is a record of everyday history written down in

lowercase letters, written in daily life, baking among dresses, utensils, kitchen, toys, anoral language, like the Qom original language,

105 709 meaning the 709 km Arsenio walked until he arrived at Rosario, each little animal

meaning 1 km, modeled from clay, baked and unpainted,

106 the space hosting this work is el Centro del Obrador, in Rouillon district, the

neighborhood where part of the community lives; the Centro coordinator, MarielaMangiaterra, hosted as a link between my proposal and the group, it was discussed at ameeting, why 709 little animals, people emoted, price was set by the craftspeople thatmade them, inflation increased, and this was taken into account for the final payment,a bond of trust was established, the work is the sum of the production process out ofwhich it came into existence,

107 935 little animals were produced for the show Translating la impenetrable, matching the

number of Km between Resistencia (Chaco) and Buenos Aires,

108 they glimmer against the background of a white plane, expanding across the surface, as

letters, or signs, a clay alphabet put together into a discourse conveying animatedenergy, shining their own light, rhythmically, like fireflies, babbling out a completelynew language that is being created on the spot, for each one’s every tiny little lightadds to an open geography, one speaking the ancient language of a free land beingdisplaced,


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109 I enjoy watching your tiny little animals. They provide my eye with two ways of

pleasure. On the one hand, there’s a sense of herding about them, which make uptogether some sort of grisaille. On the other hand, I like to stop and watch themone by one, observing their differences, guessing at or finding out which animaleach one represents. You can stay there watching them for a long time. I find itinteresting that their number is used to measure distance. And I wonder, in thesetimes of discussion about the post-human, about feminism introducing issuesrelated to Anthropocene, [current] epoch when man decides Earth’stransformations, even its destruction, what extra meaning there is to cluttering asurface with animal wildlife? I think about [the possibility of] leveling down oreven abolishing the human as a measurement parameter for distances or as anagent setting them through human measuring devices. It’s an animal measurehere. Have you given a thought to these possible interpretations and to theirconnections with contemporary feminism, one entailing to expose not onlyviolence against women, but the world’s seemingly irrevocable fate of destructionat the present moment of global capitalism? The female is what resists theplundering of Earth’s natural resources (aggravated by the authoritarianism ofnew leaders such as Trump or Bolsonaro), the animal as an affective parameterdebunking the human from hierarchic center. What do you think about theserelations, which may fit or not how you thought up this little clay jungle?

110 your questions open [new meanings], as I answer to you the red thread of my work

keeps unfolding

111 the clay jungle is an invocation, no little animal was invented from my imagination,

each figurine carries the load of the longing to bring it back; Arsenio and her compañera

Clorinda, a craftsperson herself too, working side by side, they edit each other’ssculptures as they work, they insist their modeled little animals are near extinction,and they share the load, carrying a vestige of what is being lost, and in the same waytheir precious little animals testify, having both witnessed days long gone, those oftheir early youth, exiled now from the abundance of the wilderness to the scarcity ofthe slums,


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112 this territory en motion, from a certain point of view, stands for and speaks up for what

is being destroyed, but from a different viewpoint it can also be interpreted as theapparition of a memory, exceeding the notion of vestige, becoming an invocation,

113 the herd of little animals articulates a discourse from another worldview, from a world

untamed by the invisible hand (Adam Smith) of market-centered global capitalism; theirsis a discourse where every category of the living, vegetal, animal, human are leveledup, mixed together

114 in Qom weltanschauung there are no hierarchies between the notions of human and

animal, Qom people creation myth is drawn by that dual identity,

115 When Kharta created the world there was no cold, nor disease, nor death, nor hunger. He just

created men, and as they were immortal they had no need to have children. These men were half

human and half animals. They had feathers and fur on their bodies and claws in their hands and

feet, some could even fly. They lived happily hunting, fishing and gathering, the world had been

created for them and men and nature were one…

116 only the women are complete, star women (see how nicely this fits what we have been

talking about, when you compare the little animals to little stars)

117 …In those early days, from time to time, stars came from the sky down in chaguar fiber strings

to steal food from men. Such stars were white, radiant and in the shape of women. Elé saw them

descend down the strings and as they were very pretty he tried to take one of them, but these

women were very powerful and the parrot man suffered injuries in his mouth, so he partly lost

his ability to speak. As he lay on the ground in pain, he watched as women swallowed their food

from above and below, for they also had teeth in their vaginas…

118 that which embodies the female is powerful

119 …Chiquii summoned a meeting; they deliberated lengthily and decided to send the flea man

flying beyond the sea for a solution. When he came back he brought along the knowledge of fire,

until then men ate raw food. He also brought wind, cold, disease and death.

120 the female inspires awe, the feeling that it must be tamed, vaginas’ teeth broken;

meeting the other ensures the end of eternity and the beginning of human life,

121 …Men began to sing the day, a strong wind came and it was very cold. Women, who were naked,

started to shiver and came closer to the fire. Men then threw into the fire a magic stone that

exploded and entering inside all women broke their teeth below. This was how animal men

mated with star women and their children are Toba people today.

122 here the female is whole, they’re near-godly, they stand up to the animal-men, this

brings into consideration a big difference with Western Judaeo-Christian idea thatwoman was created from a part of man, in Lacan’s terms, if the notion of phallus is anillusion and phallus is actually shared, we might say women, from their very origins,share the same attribute with men, and men, in order to meet them, must give up theiranimal side, and this can be interpreted as letting go a certain kind of manliness,

123 before colonization, the Qom organized themselves through councils of elders, who

were women and men, and lived in gender equality; after evangelization, priests andministers, who were representatives of monotheistic religion, appointed themselves astheir community leaders, bringing along a male-centered, patriarchal model, in anattempt to bring down this ancestral system

124 Ruperta, a representative of the Qom, defines herself as a warrior woman, legendary

warrior women were the amazons, a word that comes from ancient Greek ἀμαζών,


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breastless, the half-true, half imaginary story tells they would cut off their right breastso they could hold the bow,

125 Ruperta tells me she doesn’t like (evangelical) ministers, they make women wear long skirts

and prevent them from speaking

126 Already during the discovery of the Americas, Columbus tells about an island inhabited

by women we can imagine as resembling them; priest Gaspar de Carvajal, chronicler ofthe expedition lead by Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana in 1542, writes howwarrior women shot arrows and darts from their blowpipes at them from across theriver, and as a consequence of the impact of his story, said river was renamed Amazonor Amazon River, here is an excerpt from his recollection

127 …Known be they are subjects and vassals to the Amazons, and once informed of our arrival,

requested their succor and about ten or twelve came, these we saw, fighting ahead of all Indians

as women captains and fought so bravely that Indians dared not turn back…

128 Bolsonaro tries to forget that the amazons exists, when he plunders what he considers

his own, the Amazon, and I wonder if the wish to subdue them remains intact in theminds of bossy males,

129 little animals herding, a territory of pure gratuitous sensitive living, where everything

is mingled together at the same level, different yet pulsing as one heartbeat, buildingan imaginary dam to stop invader policies that are destroying the planet, fireflies, starwomen, amazons, she-shamans, a visual discourse written in baked clay letters,feminist, present



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130 Feminism shows up in your exhibition as a file displayed across the floor, when

you draw a map of poets, a cosmology as you call it, resulting from the interactionamong their names. And you’re doing all this in colors which are meaningfulregarding the feminist struggle that took to the streets in recent years: purple,traditionally linked with feminisms; green, a color associated with the campaignto legalize voluntary interruption of pregnancy; orange, which represents theseparation of church and state, a safety bolt necessary to stop church fromexerting such power over civil society that dogmas regulating believers’ lives areenforced across the whole community. Dogma enforcement neglects the fact thatclandestine abortions, which occur in spite of law and church across all socialclasses, have a particular impact on the poor, because cheap abortions areperformed in unsafe conditions that put to risk these women’s lives. Why, then,knot together these colors with poetry? Is this an intended relationship betweenpolitics and poetics? Why have you chosen the women authors you name here?

131 constellations guided sailors in days of old as they sailed across the map of the world;

my poets are a cosmology of consciousness pulsing and shining, woven from theMuseum floor among sculpture casts (representatives of an exclusively male gaze), thecosmology of their intertwined names rises and overflows, challenging and questioningyears of history, it’s la impenetrable freely climbing, language subversion in full glow

132 I name them as poets, I could call them fireflies, stars, mermaids, she-shamans or

sorcerers, with their words invoking spirits and forces, radiating the light of questions,opening up the game of language, de-constructing the way male history has conceivedwriting, rendering it untranslatable, mysterious, that is why we can’t afford not to knotpoetry and politics together

133 I shall quote only a few of them, unfolding the intentions of this map to the stars, the

most remote of them being Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, an expression of independencewhen she decides over her own life choices, entering the convent so as to make true


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her wish to be a woman who writes; or Alfonsina Storni, exposing in her poetry themale chauvinism of her times and trespassing social norms in her personal existence;Violeta Parra a nomad, compiling folk songs from the lore of her homeland, listening tothe most fragile voice, the voice of the poor; Susana Thénon in her dual identity withinlanguage, translating into French, advancing feminism, together with AlejandraPizarnik writing her feminine love for women between Buenos Aires and Paris,

134 if the least cared for, the most unprivileged, suffer the hardship and injustice of

clandestine abortion, then linking women poets together, using the emblematic colorsof feminism, brings to the present the vertigo of her texts, restores their actuality,poetry lays no more in the limbo of the poeticizing, is no longer a metaphor, it becomesconcrete; to de-poeticize poetry is to make out of it, as poet Gabriel Celaya says, aweapon loaded with future

135 in poetry invention, language subversion, what speaks is only what’s written, it is the

body who speaks; I have chosen these few poets, a handful of women writing from theirbodies, constructed by this relationship between writing and living, translators andinterpreters of what other women lived

136 colored ribbons that link them together weave a fabric revealing their secret and

invisible connection; history is rewritten, the personal history of each poet’s poetryvoice and everyone’s is joined together in the sorority of their intent, and in a hostileworld that will not listen, they open up into another history of struggles, from theground to the sky, the voices of female power, in a choir of written thought, rising

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Julieta Hanono, Ruperta’s magical garden, 2019

138 Ruperta’s magical garden sounds so beautiful. I know you build upon the

translocation of vegetal species, plants, flowers that Ruperta carried from elImpenetrable, where she lived, to Rosario, where she was displaced to. There is a


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poignant poetry to this voyage and it makes her Diaspora and alien status sweet.That garden is like a warm blanket where she comprises the wildernessenvironment into her garden, almost a memorial to nature, an affectionatememorial keeping her company and every day reminding her where she comesfrom. We may think about the post-human also here. I saw the pictures you tookin Ruperta’s garden and imagine how that herbarium might look once it’s printedfrom lithographic plates on translucent paper. We discussed the idea of placingthese sheet in glass display cases lit from below, with walking space betweenthem, at the prehispanic casts’ room. Please tell us a little bit about this artworkand what it means in the context of the ensemble you shall arrange in all rooms.Ruperta says ‘I live in Miraflores’, she says so from her garden, in Rouillon district, asuburb in Rosario, surrounded by her plants she brought from her wilderness, she isand stays in both places and that garden stands for her dual identity,

139 Ruperta carries her green thumb gift along with her, she grows vegetable gardens for

the community, which she shows to me when she invites me to her garden, where thereare also flowerpots hanging from the branches of her tree where birds come to sing andits friend Roberta says it weeps in the morning, when it listens to them

140 she listens to the wilderness and the wilderness is she, and the herbarium is a way to

put forth the idea that everything in sensitive life is mingled together, everything isanimated and her tree is as magical as everything about her

141 but she is a shaman too, and the title magical garden is by no means meaningless, it is

the song of the voices of every spirit that animate each plant so each one carries thememory and history of their language, her gesture of bringing them here, so as tosurround herself with them, dispels distance, and memory comes alive

142 I might have cut the plants, dry them and produce a herbarium in the classical sense,

but to transfer is also another way to translate, to create language at a new level, atechnique bringing me back to my earliest artwork, to engraving technique

143 I wanted a quality of paper that brought to me a feeling as close as possible to the

vegetal, to nature’s fiber, so I chose thin sheets of Japanese paper, as thin as plantleaves,

144 the protective glass display cases enclosing them build up an architecture of the

vegetal record, encased in lit up blocks, opening our eyes to the delicacy of detail intheir stark, fragile, tough nervations, pulsing with the structure of the vegetal itself,

145 her garden is made up of plants for healing and protection, such as the Mapic which is

now a tree and its pods have huge nutrient properties, or the Adelia which iscustomarily placed at the entrance of the house to welcome the guests in the right way

146 magical garden is more than just a piece of wilderness which travelled from Miraflores

to the suburbs of Rosario, it is a tangible witness to the dual identity of her heart,standing with a foot on each side,

147 and that garden is tele-ported into the Museum from other ways, it is deconstructed

since the transformation of plant matter into paper transfer, and reconstructed toelaborate the herbarium in showcases,

148 the herbarium, pulsing with animated spirits, paints Ruperta’s self-portrait: the plants

she has chosen treasure the secrets of her magic


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Julieta Hanono, Ruperta’s magical garden, 2018

149

I guess it is also in the prehispanic casts’ room where you’re installing the “Ahood made of clouds” series of posters printed in white on white. Inevitablycomes to my mind the echo of Malevich or Argentinean [artist] Lea Lublin, who,just like you, lived in Paris. Both made “white on white” pieces. Why is this printartwork here? What role does language play in it? Which words have you printed?

150 …when i arrived at Paris, it was mist, they wanted to show me the city and took me to Pigalle…

when I had just arrived, I was shrouded in ghosts of the past, as one who stands in acliff above the sea and if jumps may fly or fall, this is how I felt when I met those worksby Lea Lublin, white images against a white background, white on white, healing shapesat that time of dismay,

151 I stood in front of them and they fascinated me, they were a mirror, I found out what

was going on inside of me, my being being reflected, to start anew from scratch, to be apage that seems blank but is already written on, in invisible paint, Lea was asking me tolook, to get in there with my eyes so as to reveal their secret discourse

152 when Macbal, Museé de la Seine et Marne, suggested me to make a print for woman’s

day, I thought about an all-encompassing sentiment that might convey a wide-rangenotion of feminism, and found this quote from the preface to Capital book 1 by KarlMarx,

153 “Perseus wore a magic cap [a hood made of clouds, in the Spanish version] that the

monsters he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as

make-believe that there are no monsters!”

154 the text is enigmatic, we can interpret it from the point of view of a purely political

vindication but also from a feminist point of view, monsters are still there when womenare imprisoned for aborting,

155 the very way the quote’s discourse is articulated led me to think of it in white, how to

become invisible ourselves so we can defeat monsters, how could I become visible from


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my invisibility, so that viewers re-appropriate my body?, an artist feeds his or her bodyto the other, revealing his or her discourse, but also her or his corporeality as well,

156 so, they’re posters and anti-posters at once, they don’t display anything straightaway,

their intention is not to communicate, (if we think on what Foucault says, aboutcommunication as an instrument of dominant words) white on white, so that an effortis necessary in order to reveal discourse, discourse is not a given, it’s a question, adesire relationship is established, whoever wishes to read it involves his or herself inthe very statement put forth by the text she or he is reading in he first place

157 I made it in French, but una capucha de nubes (a hood made of clouds) is being translated

to all languages it travels along, which is a way to appropriate it, from each language, atevery new place, the technique to make the poster is different, which means anotherlanguage is another translation, another technique,

158 Sail on! The white, free abyss, the infinite is ahead of you!

159 Kasimir Malevich, On cubism and futurism to suprematism. New painterly realism, 1916.

160 the body, standing before the unseen, gaze as it matches light makes the unseen visible,

and so we are enabled to crack up secret discourse, and as it reveals, we understandword is action, verb, written text writes on over our bodies

161 Let’s talk about film-text Wealth of nations, also featured at la Cárcova

exhibition. You revisit here a 1776 text by Adam Smith with the same title. Iunderstand you take it as a potential departure point from the global economicorder, along with English market-centeredness and the notion of an economicorder articulated by the notion of Commonwealth, a new rhetoric enounced by acommercial colonialism which drew maps overlapping the colonial order basedon the administrative and control systems which regulated, for instance,commerce between colonies and the Spanish crown. Year 1776 is, if I recallcorrectly, when Bourbon reforms are instituted, during the reign of Charles III,establishing new viceroyalties and a looser communication system than the oneregulating acknowledgment of only two legal ports, Veracruz and el Callao.Everything suggests that the rules of the game that governed the notion of ‘world’were being changed at that time. You selected chapter “Colonies” for this film,running [it onscreen] upwards, like film credits. And you match the text withfootage of a sunset at the Iguazú waterfalls. Sun is blotted out into the horizon,downwards. Why did you establish this precise relation between image and text?Which is the political meaning this lingering time when image and text go byintends to activate?

162 I was divorcing from my husband, I traveled with my youngest son, our room had a

view right in front of the falls, a colonial hotel within the Iguazú waterfalls park

163 I got off with the camera, I stood facing the falls, the park was closing, there was almost

no one left, tour buses were leaving, and I stood alone facing the setting sun, wrappedin light and sound, it was all so intense I set the camera at a ridge for a front view so asto capture what I was feeling, and let it roll and stayed beside it watching the sun setamong clouds of steam and rainbows, birds singing animals making noises insectsbuzzing, the smell of plants all that vitality lit up

164 I recorded inside of me the sequence of that time as a time of change within me, my

body was the South, the timing of sunset let me think about all the span of my longjourney between Argentina and Paris


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165 when I returned, I left footage aside and later on (almost two years later) as I viewed its

images, I got the political content of what I had filmed, Adam Smith’s book showed upright from its title, Wealth of nations, a historic development of the North-Southconstruction, the chapter about colonies was an evidence since it matches a historicsituation which is updated today, waterfalls standing for the exoticism of a primevalparadise to be conquered, but also for what is hidden as well, that threefold border ofsmuggling, between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, earth’s body divided by frontiersdrawn by states

166 both films, side by side, call for another question, chapter 8, colonies, in book 4 of Wealth

of nations, it’s a generic film but sails in the opposite direction, upwards, pointing north,a text that allows to decode justifications for actions that destroy la impenetrable of thejungle, and the wild waterfalls run down, wrapped in noise and song, a choir ofamazons siren’s voices, challenging and questioning colonizer’s text

167 You point out in a brief biographical sketch that your artwork inscribes itself in a

kind of work in progress, and you use a very evocative concept to name this workthat endlessly goes on. You call it affective translation, in connection to artistunderstood as a translator and interpreter. I find that idea exciting. I think, forinstance, in the concept of emotional architecture, put forth by Mathias Goeritz.He would position architecture as a transformative experience. Instead ofworking from blueprints, he would proceed as a sculptor, giving a unique shapeto each wall. I think a certain parallelism may be drawn, although sculpturalmatter and words activate feelings in very different ways. You’ll tell…

168 what you say fully echoes in me, my written as well as visual output gets closer to the

concrete than to the metaphor, it involves constructing a language in motion, a newalphabet, a tool to deconstruct the wall of the real,

169 when I speak of artist as a translator and interpreter, I would say that the artist

translates the untranslatable, that point of no return, a point of resistance a lo real,

170 if I speak about affective translation, it is because translation already means to integrate

some of yourself into that viewpoint you translate from, standing as an interpreter ofsingularity of the untranslatable of self, it is an idea that departs from my intertwiningwith languages, French and mother tongue

171 my productive matter is the very materiality of my body, this idea somehow comes

closer to what you put forth when you mention sculptural matter, for it is particularand unique, a territory, tangible and intangible, an opening and unfolding space, Iregard myself as a sculptor in visual and aural languages

172 a translation is affective when it comes closer and beyond, when it can shift scale and it

creates its own, which is the only measure, that of one’s self,

173 to feel one’s way beyond thought and feeling and knowledge, it is to go beyond and

come back here, inhabited by so many languages before and after being born, livedacross by a personal and multiple history, to be a prism with facets so many, a spinningtop spinning spinning spinning round

174 During this conversation we have sustained for over a month, I kept receiving

your answers and sending new questions. I restrained my second nature impulse,as a writer an editor in Spanish, to correct or edit your answers. You begin allyour sentences in lower case letters; commas, accent marks, periods, full stopsare missing. There are grammar inconsistencies. I can clearly sense those


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dislodging points convey a poetic feeling. Discussion topic today is whether I shalledit your texts or not. I guess I won’t. Let us talk about then, as an ending to thisinterview, the meaning you give to that constant slipping among written words.

175 I usually agree to correct certain mistakes (accent marks or commas missing), but I

kind of refuse to correct my syntax or style, for what might be read as an error ormisspelling is, actually, the voluntary reflection of a way to name a place, my language

176 removing capital letters from the beginning of each paragraph is a way to signal that

what I write as part of an infinite, one plus one plus one and so on, nothing is the headto a hierarchy, for I regard both my texts and artwork as fragments, and fragments areall pieces of something, they have no beginning or end, they’re part of the unfolding ofthe same

177 I leave blanks and use commas, so that such blanks stand for the void, which can be felt

as breathing, as a pause,

178 I compose both my texts and my artwork from a spatial concept, as if I was sculpting,

both my texts and my visual pieces can be read as music scores, or sculptures, throughwhich I translate and interpret this huge puzzle I am immersed in since before I wasborn, and if I write in first person it is because I am assessing, giving testimony

ABSTRACTS




















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INDEX

Mots-clés: Julieta Hanono; Argentine; El pozo; traduction.

Palabras claves: Julieta Hanono; Argentina; El pozo; traducción.

Keywords: Julieta Hanono; Argentina; El pozo; translation.

AUTHORS

ANDREA GIUNTA

Andrea Giunta is a Doctor of Philosophy and a professor of Latin American and modern/ contemporary art

at the Universidad de Buenos Aires School of Philosophy and Letters. She is a main researcher at the

CONICET and the curator of Biennial 12, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2020.


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Traduire l'impénétrable. Entretienavec Julieta HanonoAndrea Giunta

Traduction : Pedro Miguel Palleo

1 Cette entrevue avec l'artiste Julieta Hanono a été réalisée en 2019 à l'occasion de son

exposition Traduire l’impenétráble, au musée de Cárcova, Buenos Aires. Julieta est néeà Rosario, en Argentine, et vit à Paris. Pendant son adolescence, elle a été arrêtée par ladictature militaire argentine et disparue. Elle a étudié l'art et la philosophie enArgentine puis en France. Son film El pozo (Le Trou) fait référence à son expérience enprison. Au cours des dernières années, son travail s'est concentré sur le sujet de latraduction.

2 Le Musée Cárcova rassemble une collection de chalcographies antiques et classiques

dans laquelle Hanono est intervenue avec ses installations. D'une part, elle dessine surle sol du musée, serpentant entre les sculptures et les socles, un réseau de lignesportant les noms de poètes latino-américains qui se connectent avec des lignesviolettes (la couleur du féminisme historique), vertes (représentant la campagne delégalisation de l'avortement en Argentine), ou oranges (qui font référence à laséparation entre l'Église et l'État). Les noms et les lignes tissent une Cosmologie des

poètes(2018-2020), qui traverse tout l'espace du musée. Dans une autre salle, la vidéo La

richesse des nations (2016, collection MALBA), une vidéo double écran est présentée. Surle premier écran est projetée la chute du soleil derrière les chutes d'Iguazu, sur l'autreécran, un fragment de La richesse des Nations d'Adam Smith défile en sens inverse (debas en haut). L'installation propose une réflexion critique sur la pensée de l'économisteet philosophe écossais et sur son analyse de la constitution de la richesse.

3 Traduire l'impénétrable comprend le travail que l'artiste a réalisé en collaboration avec

des membres de la communauté des peuples autochtones Qom, d'El Impenetrable inChaco, qui vivent à Rouillón, à la périphérie de la ville de Rosario, en Argentine. Sesinterlocuteurs dans cette communauté sont Arsenio, qui interprète les figuresd'animaux d'argile et Ruperta, qui a déplacé les espèces végétales de Chaco à Rosario.La multitude de petits animaux renvoie à l'idée de diaspora (Animalitos / La manada,2018). Il y a autant de vies que les kilomètres qui séparent Buenos Aires de Resistencia:


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935. L'exposition comprend l'herbier que Julieta compose à partir de l'impressiondirecte des espèces végétales que Ruperta fait pousser dans son jardin et lui a donné.Les impressions sur papier végétal translucide se chevauchent créant une texturevisuelle délicate (Le jardin magique de Ruperta, 2019). Dans une autre pièce est accrochéeune série d'impressions en blanc sur blanc (A cloud hood, 2013-présent) d'un texte danslequel Julieta condense son expérience d'être entre deux langues, l'espagnol et lefrançais. Elle ajoute une version en qom que traduit Arsenio. IDans cette œuvre, Julietasynthétise l'expérience diasporique de la communauté Qom et la sienne entre Paris,Buenos Aires et Rosario.

4 Andrea Giunta est docteur et professeur d'art latino-américain et d'art moderne et contemporain

à la Faculté de philosophie et de lettres de l'Université de Buenos Aires. Chercheur principal

CONICET. Conservateur de la Biennale 12, Porto Alegre, Brésil, 2020.

5 Andrea Giunta

6 Tu t’es formée dans la gravure, tu as fait une œuvre avec des broderies (presque

des sutures amoureuses), tu as commencé ensuite avec la photographie et la vidéoet dans les dernières années tu as élargi tes langages à ceux de la poésie et latraduction. Pourrais-tu nous dire pourquoi ces choix se produisent-ils? Pourquoiune telle fluidité et une coexistence des langages? As-tu trouvé un langagedéfinitif ou bien ce qui te définit est justement cette migration constante entre laparole, ses doubles (les traductions) et les mille techniques pour capturer desimages?

7 Julieta Hanono

8 il se peut que ces migrations puissent s’appeler aussi changements de peau, à la manière

des serpents, particulièrement les anacondas du grand Paraná que j’aime tellement, quichangent de peau, et qui sont toujours les mêmes mais différentes, car comme elles, jechange de lieu et de langue

9 quitter l’Argentine a signifié quitter une langue aussi proche du corps (la langue

maternelle, de ma mère) qui me retenait dans l’affection et je ne pouvais pas dire, cartout était si compact, je ne pouvais pas me retrouver dans l’espace de la juste solitudede mon être, pour créer mes propres armes, qu’on pourrait appeler un langage, unnouvel abécédaire

10 cette rencontre avec une autre langue je la vis comme une révolution, un tour de trois

cent soixante degrés sur mon axe, j’ai dû me déconstruire (en termes derridiens), si jepousse plus loin encore je donne l’image d’une cosmonaute qui entre dans un trou noiret qui sort à l’autre bout, toujours la même et différente à la fois,

11 pour moi les techniques sont intimement liées à ce dont on a besoin de dire, pour

satisfaire une nécessité intime, la technique de la gravure et spécialement la pointesèche, comporte le geste de l’inscription, elle est analogique à l’écriture, c’est une façond’écrire où l’accent est mis sur la force exercée par la main sur la matière, sur la plaqued’aluminium ou de cuivre, quand j’étais enfant et que j’ai commencé à écrire je mesouviens que je faisais des bâtonnets et …au début l’écriture fait mal, c’est comme si on

apprenait à jouer de la guitare, les doigts serrant fort le crayon contre le papier..., la sensationavec la pointe sèche est semblable, et ce n’est pas anodin que ce fût la premièretechnique que j’aie employée

12 la photographie, ce fut une nécessité pour entrer en moi, je ne pouvais pas le faire

autrement, j’avais besoin d’une image qui me rapprocherait de ce qui est le plus réel,


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m’extraire de la métaphore, de la narration, du geste de ma propre main, que j’avaisdéjà réalisé à partir du dessin ou la peinture,

13 la photographie saisit, et de manière immédiate (parce que la caméra que j’ai utilisée

était une caméra numérique qui capte l’image et la reproduit sur l’écran à l’instant),par la suite les images étaient travaillées pour les éloigner encore plus et les refroidir,

14 j’ai fait des photos avec le spéculum introduit dans mon propre sexe, je voulais parler

de l’intérieur de mon corps qui hébergeait mon futur enfant, et ce spéculum était uneloupe et en même temps une serrure pour voir et pour épier, et je m’appropriais ainsid’un lieu mystérieux, et je parlais à la fois de la caverne de ma mère et peut-être àpartir d’un lieu, de la langue maternelle,

15 j’ai pu revenir, armée derrière une caméra vidéo (comme le miroir de Persée) au Pozo

de Rosario, le centre de détention clandestine où j’ai été arrêtée de 1977 à 1979, latechnique de la vidéo pouvait capter mon corps là-dedans, je dirais, elle pouvait établirun registre du présent, de mon inquiétude, de ma peur, de ma surprise en revenant,

16 je suis descendue équipée, protégée par la caméra qui est comme un autre œil, (ce n’est

pas anodin de filmer dans un endroit où le temps reste figé, c’est mettre en mouvementce qui a été arrêté, sans bouger), l’expérience de toucher le réel a été fondamentalepour tout mon travail,

17 étant donné que c’était si difficile, presque impossible de le dire en images, car il n’y

avait pas d’images pour dire l’indicible, j’ai décidé de nommer toute cette disparitionavec des mots nouveaux, des mots à partir de cette autre langue, la langue française,qui m’avait donné la possibilité de me tenir à distance,

18 j’ai commencé à écrire, non pas depuis la traduction, mais à partir du balbutiement,

comme quelqu’un qui apprend à parler, et dans cet exercice qui est finalementoscillatoire (car je rêve en français aussi bien qu’en espagnol) en écrivant cette languenouvelle, je revenais à celle d’avant, mais en prenant déjà position à partir d’un autrelieu, tout en créant en même temps une entre-langue signifiant mon non- lieu,

19 je ne peux pas dire que mon langage est définitif, mais je dirai que ce qui est définitif

c’est cette oscillation entre un lieu et un autre, je l’ai compris dans l’exercice del’écriture, dans cette dialectique j’ai pu comprendre le chemin de ma propre personnepour être une personne, comme j’ai eu besoin de changer de peau et de langue pourm’extraire de la présence d’un passé toujours proche, d’un réel comme celui d’avoir vuà seize ans l’inhumanité d’un centre clandestin, de l’avoir touché avec mon être à moi,et d’en être sortie

20 Pour un grand nombre –dont je fais partie– cette sortie de la langue maternelle

peut être traumatisante. Le fait de ne pas habiter aux États Unis tout en étantplus âgée que toi quand tu es partie en France, a comporté un dédoublementdifficile, sans joie. C’est l’expérience de beaucoup d’émigrés. Cependant pour toice fut une circonstance créative qui a extrait le meilleur de toi. C’est peut-êtreparce que tu t’es éloignée de ta langue maternelle pour être la langue mère de tesenfants? Quoi qu’il en soit, tu as créé un certain nombre de dispositifs visuels etsonores (le rythme du mot-poésie qui se prononce) qui t’ont conduite à ce que tuappelles une révolution. Tu crois que des conditions particulières concernent lefait que la nouvelle langue fût le français? Quelle était ta familiarité avec cettelangue? Crois-tu qu’une autre langue aurait provoqué en toi la même expérience?


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21 je suis partie et j’ai pensé que rien n’allait me manquer, j’ai déchiré mon billet de

retour, comme quelqu’un qui claque la porte en quittant la maison et qui lance la clébien loin, tu as raison, l’expérience de s’extraire d’une langue est douloureuse, ellelaisse toujours un grand vide, ce que tu me dis par rapport à ta propre expérienceproduit un écho en moi, je pense que les migrants nous faisons tous un deuil de lalangue maternelle, et non seulement de la langue mais aussi un deuil du paysage quenous pourrions nommer celui de l’enfance

22 arriver à Paris n’était pas seulement fuir de quelque chose, c’était aller à la rencontre

d’une autre culture avec ses limites et ses possibilités, passer de l’autre côté du miroir,depuis Paris non seulement je me suis vue argentine, je me suis perçue sud-américaine,j’ai eu besoin d’aller dans le nord pour savoir que je vibre à partir du sud, sur un autrepoint, avec une autre vibration énergétique

23 en partant j’ai cru (et je le dis avec l’emphase que l’on peut accorder à une croyance

d’un point de vue surnaturel et salvatrice) que les fantômes du passé allaient se dissiperet cependant ils sont revenus avec plus de force, dématérialisés comme des ruines quiémergeaient dans un paysage étrange et nouveau,

24 mais cette condition d’isolement de se sentir un poisson d’une eau différente m’a fait

constater que je n’étais pas non plus un poisson de la même eau dans ma languematernelle, partir m’a fait comprendre que la singularité d’un regard personnel nouscondamne à être toujours étranger

25 Paris m’a accordé cette évidence qui fut cruelle et salvatrice, coup d’envoi de ma

création, cet espace qui allume et que nous pouvons nommer poésie, lieu singulier del’être, point de solitude, qui nous fait uniques et en un point intraduisibles

26 ce fut cette langue qui m’a permis de détruire mes mythes personnels, mes tics de

séduction, mes facilités, en construisant mon sol à la mesure de la marche de mes pas,j’ai pu comprendre que ce que nomme art est la conséquence du déploiement de mesidées initiales, de mes premières émotions de petite fille, à partir du plus intime,dépouillé déjà des grammaires parlées par l’autre, car une autre langue nous aide àsortir de ce que Lacan nomme le parlêtre (l’être parlé par les autres) et nous, enbalbutiant nous apprenons à nous écouter

27 si dans la prison j’étais seule, je n’étais pas en solitude, car on n’est jamais seul quand

vos persécuteurs vous guettent, Paris m’a obligée à voir, mes yeux ont touché leschoses, et j’ai pu toucher ce que j’avais toujours vu en images, voir la touche de Philippede Champaigne, les plis de la nappe de la Cène, ces rouges gris de la cape qui tombe ducardinal Richelieu, je me suis submergée dans les nénuphars de Monet et j’ai vu uneville circulaire fruit de la réflexion qui en même temps m’asphyxiait, sévère, mais quim’obligeait cette fois à m’extraire, m’envolant, dans une spirale ascendante

28 quand je suis arrivée un ami gay m’a emmenée à l’hôpital où j’ai fait un test de

dépistage du sida, j’ai été surprise parce qu’il était gratuit et anonyme, plus tard quandj’étais mariée et déjà mère de mon premier enfant, j’ai avorté, je l’ai fait aussi dans unhôpital public, le paradis n’existe pas, mais il est vrai que certaines questions quiconcernent le féminin je les ai trouvées résolues

29 à Buenos Aires j’avais lu Le troisième sexe de Simone de Beauvoir, même si les positions

patriarcales existent dans toutes les sociétés et elles s’exercent derrière différentsmasques, ce nouveau contexte m’a octroyé une certaine confiance et m’a aidé à


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dénouer des peurs concrètes liées à des moments dramatiques de ma vie, dans monpays d’origine

30 Paris, la langue française m’a donné des ailes, ces ailes pour pouvoir me survoler moi-

même pour comprendre que ma militance de jeune femme est toujours là et qu’elles’incarne aujourd’hui à partir d’autres langages, et je peux inventer des solutionsvisuelles, poétiques, et sonores j’ajouterai, en pensant à ce que tu me demandes, carmon écriture est un double jeu de mots et de sons

31 je développe aujourd’hui mes projets artistiques en retrouvant d’autres personnes, qui

appartiennent à des disciplines diverses, qui m’apprennent leurs autres langues, encréant des projets qui me dépassent et qui sont finalement des productionséconomiques politiques sentimentales

32 inscrire une nouvelle langue dans la langue de mes enfants, qui sont traversés par les

deux, moi je chantais pour eux entre mes deux langues, le français que je parle est celuid’une étrangère, ils sont bercés par mon accent, ils sont métis, être mère c’est sortir dela langue du corps de sa mère, pour créer la propre langue

33 Revenons à El Pozo, pourquoi as-tu décidé de revenir dans cet endroit où tu avais

été prisonnière? Quand tu es entré avec ta caméra, c’était la première fois que tule visitais?

34 cette décision je n’y ai pas trop pensé ce fut plutôt une intuition, je descends au Pozo

comme une archéologue qui veut trouver des objets accablants qui prouvent son idéeau sujet des vestiges du passé, ce passé était très vivant en moi, il résonnait comme jel’ai déjà dit d’une façon fantasmagorique, il me poursuivait à Paris, il m’empêchait derevenir en Argentine, un abîme d’absences,

35 j’ai eu besoin d’entrer dans mon corps à travers les photographies de mon sexe et le

spéculum qui l’espionnait, pour pouvoir entrer plus tard dans ma prison, j’ai peut-êtrepu le faire parce que je suis sortie de la langue qui me contenait et m’enfermait, dans lelieu imaginaire de l’utérus de ma mère, sortir de son abri, me libérer, lorsqu’à partir demon propre corps qui enfantait, je n’étais plus seulement une fille

36 prendre cette décision, qui n’était pas prémédité, comme je l’ai déjà dit, ce fut faire un

saut à l’envers, entrer à la caverne du Pozo, comme celui qui entre dans la grotte de samère, ce fut presque comme revenir du néant, du même néant d’où l’on vient

37 ce fut un voyage initiatique, toucher le Pozo ce fut toucher le réel, ce qui est de l’ordre

de l’impensable, dès avant les mots, puisque c’est indicible, la violence totale de ce queGiorgio Agamben appellerait un état d’exception , j’ai vu ce que je n’aurais jamais pensévoir et je devais en faire quelque chose, car cela se bousculait en moi, et m’empêchaitde vivre, je voulais me le dire à moi-même, qui sait… pour pouvoir le dire à tout lemonde,

38 il y a eu des questions objectives, un changement de gouvernement, une ouverture

dans les questions des droits de l’homme, quand j’ai fait là-bas une installation, nousl’avons ouverte aux voisins et ensemble avec les associations de mères et fils

39 la première fois que je suis descendue, je l’ai fait déjà avec ma caméra, je me souviens

que pendant la nuit précédente j’étais très malade, c’était si puissant de revenir et mesavoir de l’autre côté, de vérifier avec mon propre corps cette catastrophe irréparable,et le lieu m’a semblé plus petit


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40 Pourrais-tu décrire la séquence filmique de El Pozo? Comment est-elle et comment

s’organise-t-elle?

41 en réalité, j’ai beaucoup filmé, j’ai parcouru tout l’espace derrière l’œil de la caméra, j’ai

choisi certaines séquences parce que j’ai trouvé que plutôt qu’illustrer l’endroit, elles lesortait de la narration et faisaient apparaître la structure même

42 dans le film El Pozo, je construis une autre narrative qui déconstruit, je fais de cet espace

un non lieu flottant qui est aussi un aquarium,

43 la caméra est placée dans le hall circulaire du deuxième étage, c’était le lieu des

interrogations, la caméra tourne et on voit toutes les portes ouvertes, des restes dechoses éparses qui peuvent suggérer des matelas par terre, des fenêtres condamnées,un petit bureau (celui de l’interrogateur),

44 la caméra tourne, la séquence est traitée au ralenti, la caméra là aussi peut être lue

comme l’œil du panoptique, pour moi elle signifiait autre chose, je l’ai placé à cetendroit et je filme d’un point de vue que je n’aurais jamais pu avoir dans ma conditionde prisonnière, car nous étions dans les chambres, nous ne pouvions pas accéder auhall, cette place correspond à celle d’une personne libre, qui se trouve déjà dehors oualors, à celle du tortionnaire, mais jamais à partir du regard du prisonnier,

45 j’ai filmé à plein jour, la séquence de El Pozo, comme une tour qui tournait sur elle-

même en un temps arrêté dans sa rotation continuelle, puis j’enchaîne avec uneséquence que je capture de l’installation réalisée dans l’ex centre clandestin, c’était unprojecteur qui montrait l’image de mon visage, finalement j’ai décidé d’enlever cetteimage et de garder le halo de lumière, la lumière des interrogations, la lumière brutaledu projecteur qui nous interpelle et nous éblouit

46 Toutes tes œuvres entretiennent un dialogue intense avec l’écriture, avec d’autres

textes. Tu transformes l’écriture en images. Tu élabores la transition entre le motet l’image. Et tu écris. Tu as toujours écrit ou il y a eu un moment où tu ascommencé?

47 j’écris dès mon enfance, rien que pour moi, maman m’a offert un journal intime, en cuir

rouge et avec un petit cadenas, c’était mon trésor, mon ami et mon confident, j’avaissept ans, parfois, je l’ouvre encore, et je trouve des vestiges de celle que je suis, lesfondations qui font cette femme d’aujourd’hui

48 l’écriture, si nous l’entendons comme la construction d’un langage, dans lequel je

m’inscris dans un style personnel, a commencé à Paris, en 2009

49 ce fut tout à fait surprenant, car j’ai commencé à écrire sans y penser, à partir du

français, un texte qui raconte le voyage de la rencontre avec les brodeuses deTehuacan, au Mexique, dans la colline noire,

50 je les convoque pour broder, à partir d’un modèle, 395 fois, le reste de la robe que

j’avais brodée, inspirée des motifs de leurs broderies

51 tu fais allusion à cette pièce, et tu parles de sutures amoureuses, je vais reprendre ta belle

définition, oui, c’était un geste réparateur, celui de demander que des femmesm’accompagnent dans ces journées de désarroi, qu’elles m’entourent, qu’ellesm’étraignent, de leurs mains qui brodaient, car les 395 broderies que les femmes ontréalisées signifient les 395 jours passés en captivité,


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52 cette fois-ci, c’est aussi ma mère qui m’a donné un tissu blanc et des fils de couleur pour

me faire une robe porteuse d’espoir, pour penser qu’un jour arriverait où je pourraissortir, habillée avec ma robe,

53 mon texte comprend des fragments unis entre les deux langues, où se mélangent

l’expérience de la production de 395 et l’autre voyage, au cœur du passé dans malangue maternelle, ces fragments se superposent, se contaminent en altérant un tempsavec l’autre, l’avant c’est l’après , tout coexiste dans le maintenant, tandis qu’unelangue, la française dit, l’autre, l’argentine, dit d’une autre façon,

54 j’ai écrit 4 pages et j’ai continué jusqu’à 40, j’ai eu l’énorme privilège que mon premier

lecteur, non pas de mon cercle plus intime, fût le poète et penseur martiniquaisÉdouard Glissant, le père du concept de créolisation

55 je lui ai fait voir mon manuscrit avec beaucoup d’inquiétude, il habitait un grand

appartement à Invalides, pour lui le temps était déjà passé, il était fatigué mais il setenait droit, ce beau géant, noir et massif, et avec le sourire d’un enfant espiègle,

56 il m’a demandé de numéroter les pages et il les lisait et riait de mes fautes

d’orthographe, des fautes que je ne voyais pas moi-même, que je ne vois pas encore, ilm’a dit, comme ça c’est très bien, il en a corrigé quelques unes, il en a laissé d’autres, etc’est comme ça que j’ai commencé à écrire

57 les mots, ou pour mieux dire, les idées, m’arrivaient plus clairement de l’autre langue,

je pouvais oublier pour me rappeler, et me placer ainsi comme si je me regardais moi-même, pour être la narratrice d’une histoire de temps mélangés,

58 Ton récit sur cette situation interstitielle par rapport à la langue est très

intéressant. On dit que traduire c’est aussi trahir. Et en fait cela est présent danston œuvre, où les mots peuvent être au-delà de l’écriture correcte, ce qui altère etmélange les langues. Cette métaphore interstitielle fonctionne-t-elle dans tonprocessus d’être-entre?

59 oui, c’est juste, il y a une sorte de trahison, mais je me demanderais qui on trahit, la

langue? le sujet de la langue ? un certain attachement ? (le mot me vient en français) enespagnol on le traduirait par être attaché, parfois il m’arrive que j’entre-pense dans l’uneet l’autre et peut-être, je trahis l’autre, je l’oublie

60 à partir de ma façon d’écrire je dirais, que je trahis mon passé, et si je veux être plus

précise, la manière de concevoir ma langue, comme elle m’a été enseignée, cette langueapprise dans les années d’école

61 dans une définition magnifique Freud définit l’inconscient, il le nomme le nombril du

tourbillon des rêves, c’est peut-être pour moi le rapport que j’ai avec la traduction, ilconçoit une sorte de trahison envers le lien de sang, envers le lien avec la languematrice

62 …et quand j’oscille entre l’une et l’autre, entre deux langues, entre dehors et dedans, je me délie,

je me dénoue…

63 les indiens shuar, dans la jungle amazonienne disent que la vie comme nous

l’entendons, nous, les modernes, les occidentaux, ce n’est pas la vraie vie, pour eux laréalité existe quand ils sont sous l’effet de drogues hallucinogènes, substancespuissantes qu’ils extraient des plantes et des racines

64 si nous considérons que toute relation envers l’autre implique une traduction, car le

discours que j’énonce n’a pas la même résonance que celle du récepteur, chaque sujet


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naît avec sa propre langue, la marque matrice d’une histoire conçue avant sa naissance,et peut-être pour être réceptif, avons-nous toujours besoin de trahir notre premièreécriture

65 et la poésie, n’est-elle pas une façon de trahir la langue, quelque chose qui apparaît

comme une fulguration qui se construit à partir de ce qui est inventé?

66 Et ce jeu entre les langues, comment se passe-t-il?

67 il se peut que ce jeu entre langues soit comme se balancer sur une balançoire, c’est se

balancer à deux et ouvrir le jeu, en poussant de la pointe des pieds, en prenant son élan,être en l’air, survolant, comme celui qui visite un lieu toujours nouveau, car dans ce va-et-vient, il se produit quelque chose de l’ordre de l’inouï

68 un regard plus éloigné qui permette de nommer les choses avec des mots, d’une

manière singulière, et les faire ainsi apparaître au monde, comme si c’était unecharnière qui soutient cette porte qui s’ouvre qui se ferme qui va d’un côté à l’autre,

69 la charnière est quelque chose qui sert pour soutenir les portes pour ouvrir et pour fermer, je vois

mon geste inscrit dans l’air, mon bras étendu illustrant le mot, avec ma main tordue je m’éloigne,

non, ceci n’est pas une poignée et non plus mon poignet, c’est un tournevis

70 entre deux langues, c’est un jeu entre deux hémisphères, me reconnaître sud-

américaine, une équilibriste entre nord et sud, sans renoncer à mon accent d’étrangère,je suis une passagère en voyage (comme dirait Charly) et garder ce trésor de surprisequi est la capacité d’apprendre, d’être Alice, en passant toujours de l’autre côté dumiroir

71 Quelle est la langue originelle et quelle est celle d’adoption?

72 l’originelle est la langue qui me parlait avant ma propre voix, celle qui me berçait dans

l’utérus de ma mère, la matrice, celle que j’ai appris à écrire d’abord avec les bâtonnets

73 celle d’adoption est la langue qui m’accueille et que j’ai trouvée, c’est la langue que j’ai

dû apprendre en sortant des habitudes (les tics) que comportait l’autre, celle que j’aiapprise par moi-même en tâtonnant, comme celui qui joue à colin-maillard, en créantles mêmes armes pour la canaliser, en jouant mes rôles pour être citoyenne d’un autrelieu, pénétrant dans une administration différente avec d’autres lois en donnant de latête contre d’autres codes,

74 je me suis cramponnée à la nouvelle langue comme celui qui se cramponne à une

planche de sauvetage, j’ai rencontré la langue française, et celle-ci a signifié unélargissement du terrain, comme si on changeait la lentille de sa caméra et qu’onutilisait un autre objectif, j’ai pu prendre la distance suffisante et j’ai pu récupérerl’autre, pour dire une autre fois ma langue première, à partir de ma propre originalitésubjective

75 Tu rêves dans les deux langues, mais tu reconnais encore la différence entre les

deux?

76 je rêve dans les deux, c’est quand je me réveille, quand je refais surface, une phrase ou

un mot qui émerge maintenant je t’écris en espagnol, je suis en train de penser dans malangue première, et déjà contaminée par l’autre, quand j’écris en espagnol je me senstrès à l’aise, si je le faisais en français ce serait peut-être un peu plus compliqué, maisquand je me relis je constate ma façon d’écrire, traversée déjà par l’autre langue,

77 j’écris différent parce que je pense différent, la traversée entre les deux langues me

fournit un espace d’isolement et j’avancerais peut-être en souplesse, me déployer dans


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la double écriture c’est vivre la résonance, car une autre langue n’est ni un écho ni uneombre, je parle une langue (mais l’autre m’écoute) c’est un lieu de compagnie dans cetentre-deux,

78 Homi Bhabha parle de la figure du mimétisme comme une relation entre la

langue du conquérant et celle du conquis, le subalterne. Il s’agit d’une stratégie,en un sens, de survivance face au pouvoir. Trouves-tu un écho de cette relationdans ta propre expérience en France, un pays qui a mené une guerre sanglantecontre une de ses colonies, l’Algérie, pour ne citer qu’un seul cas? Comment teplaces-tu esthétiquement et affectivement dans cette trame de relations?

79 parler de mimétisme avec la langue française serait obéir au pied de la lettre ses lois, et

ce n’est pas mon cas, le geste de laisser quelques fautes d’orthographe et des erreurssémantiques n’est pas seulement poétique, mais politique

80 dans le déroulement de mon travail, depuis mes textes qui se présentent comme des

fragments de témoignages, restes d’images de rêves, de caractère auto référentiel, ditsen première personne, jusqu’à la traduction à différentes techniques, à différenteslangues,

81 je prends comme première référence le travail avec les brodeuses mexicaines, quand à

partir de ce modèle, elles traduisent elles-mêmes, d’une manière personnelle, chacune,un objet brodé à sa façon

82 je pense au texte Ils, traduit par le maître Arsenio, dans sa langue maternelle, le qom, il

dit qu’il se féminise, qu’il se transforme en femme pour pouvoir être parlé et se mettreà la place de ce qu’il parle,

83 j’insiste sur le fait que la traduction n’est pas linéaire, chaque texte est équivalent, l’un

ne traduit pas l’autre, il n’y a pas une subordination de mon écriture en argentin àl’écriture en français,

84 les horreurs de la guerre d’Algérie, nous touchent nous, sud-américains, d’une manière

particulière, nous savons aujourd’hui qu’avec l’aval des États-Unis on importait lesméthodes de torture qui étaient employées par les militaires français dans la guerrecontre la libération algérienne, pour massacrer les opposants, dans la terriblementcélèbre opération Condor

85 le modèle s’oppose dans son propre domaine, à partir de la langue du colonisateur, on

construit des interlocuteurs critiques, qui constituent une opposition dans la mêmelangue du dominateur, je pense à Franz Fanon et ses écrits éclaircissants

86 être entre le sud et le nord signifie cette distance avec ma langue mère, cela me dénoue

et devient un point de mise en question de la position colonisatrice et paternaliste, quiest finalement, le déploiement de ma pratique artistique,

87 mon entre-deux coïncide avec le concept de créolisation inventé par Édouard Glissant,

pensant que si l’esclave (en termes hégéliens) se libère de l’oppression, et qu’il ne parleplus par la voix des ordres du maître, alors il invente sa langue, qui tient compte de sonpassé d’esclavage, et cette nouvelle langue est sa délivrance,

88 à partir de ce lieu, femme, migrante, d’un regard qui va du sud ou nord, j’écris comme

je parle, avec mon accent, je pense qu’à partir de cet accent, je suis métissée,contaminée, je parle et je suis parlée, depuis la langue de l’insoumission,

89 Dans l’exposition du Musée de Moulages de la Cárcova tu vas présenter des

œuvres nouvelles, des œuvres terminées, des œuvres qui sont en chantier. Ces


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œuvres vont fonctionner comme des interventions entre la majestueuse collectionde moulages qui reproduisent des œuvres emblématiques de l’histoire de l’artoccidental et aussi préhispanique. Nous l’avons visité et nous imaginons commenton exposerait tes propositions. Nous avons anticipé les dialogues et les frictionsqui pourraient surgir et nous pourrions peut-être réfléchir, à propos de tout cela,une fois que l’exposition soit installée, comme une coda pour ce texte. Je voudraispour le moment parler spécifiquement de tes œuvres. En principe, l’exposition vas’appeler «Traducir la impenetrable» (Traduire l’impénétrable). Nous noussommes arrêtées longuement sur l’importance que tu accordes au langage et à latraduction, même chose pour les creux, les perforations de la langue qui seproduisent dans le va et vient d’une langue à l’autre, des symptômes qui semanifestent en écarts grammaticaux, en une certaine incorrection par rapportaux standards d’une langue écrite, que le lecteur perçoit comme des désordresmineurs dont il comprend, cependant, le sens. Dans ton écriture c’est agréable des’introduire dans un ton peu ajusté, mais compréhensible. Commençons par letitre, «Traducir la impenetrable». Je viens de vérifier dans le dictionnaire et envérité, cette région de la forêt native du Chaco (40.000 km2) s’appelle «el»Impenetrable. Pourquoi au féminin?

90 il y a des années que le titre de mes expositions commence par le mot traduction, que

j’écris au début d’une phrase, le mot traduction est conjugué, et devient action, il sera,apporter, montrer, dire à ma propre langue, et comme tu le dis bien, pour faire unesorte de jeu, où l’erreur fonctionne comme un acte manqué qui casse le cadenas de lacensure, en construisant une possibilité utopique

91 j’ai pensé parmi d’autres choses à une œuvre de Jesús Rafael Soto, Penetrables (des lignes

verticales tendues à une certaine altitude qui forment une surface cubique ourectangulaire, où le public est invité à entrer) les gens entrent dans cette forêt de lignesmais ce sont des lignes droites, où personne ne peut s’emmêler

92 la communauté qom vient d’un autre endroit, une forêt touffue, une jungle où il est

presque impossible d’entrer si on n’y est pas né, c’est pourquoi on l’appelleImpénétrable,

93 la terre qom est un utérus, la Pachamama ( à laquelle Ruperta et Arsenio rendent

hommage) la féminiser, la nommer avec un article féminin, c’est charger cet espace depuissance, l’article singulier féminin -la- qui précède, la transforme, elle redevient celieu, impénétrable, espace de sauvegarde, d’abri

94 –la– réactualise, c’est une position politique et féministe, Traducir la impenetrable c’est la

ramener à ses propriétés premières, enlever ses clôtures, la laisser libre,

95 traduire l’impénétrable, intraduisible vitalité sauvage, c’est traduire la forêt, la

féminine, la subversive, les chamanes, les sorcières, les serpents qui changent de peaucomme de robe, la langue non écrite, nomade, qui coule, qui échappe, qui monteindomptable comme une plante grimpante,

96 si le féminin est mystère, le mystérieux n’est pas pénétrable, on est initié au mystère,

pour le comprendre il faut baisser les armes, arriver nue, se dépouiller de ce que l’onconnaissait auparavant, et se laisser prendre par le labyrinthe magique, ne pas craindrele chant des sirènes des langues sauvages, être parlée, se laisser parler par les eauxmouvantes des voix des langues, bien avant nous


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97 J’ai vu des photos extrêmement belles de l’installation de petits animaux qui

forment une sorte de constellation animale. On dirait des étoiles ou des luciolesqui créent une texture chaude sur le blanc immaculé où l’on dirait qu’ellesflottent ou elles scintillent. Raconte-nous l’origine de ce travail collaboratif avecles qom, et parle-nous des distances et ce que signifie de les exposer ensemblecomme en troupeau.

98 c’est si beau ce que tu dis quand tu parles des images des petits animaux, quand tu les

appelles étoiles et lucioles, on les appelle aussi «bichitos de luz» (bestioles de lumière)ils s’allument et s’éteignent, elles portent la lumière en elles mêmes, elles flottent, ellessont toutes petites, et on pourrait dire que cette lumière itinérante qui émane d’elles,récite un abécédaire comme dans un balbutiement

99 les petites bêtes m’ont trouvée avec les qom, quand j’ai commencé à penser l’exposition

pour le Musée de la Mémoire de Rosario, avec María Elena Lucero commeconservatrice, le fil conducteur de l’exposition fut la traduction d’un de mes textes, Ils,

100 c’est le maître Arsenio Borges qui traduit, un grand artisan, il a appris avec son grand-

père qui lui a appris à sentir l’argile sous ses doigts

101 quand il traduit, il s’identifie avec la femme qui raconte l’histoire de son départ pour un

autre pays, Arsenio pleurait en faisant sien le texte Ils qui fait le récit du voyage del’Argentine à Paris et les difficultés de se trouver dans un autre lieu, avec une autrelangue,

102 le traducteur se traduit lui-même et il se trouve avec son propre exode depuis

Resistencia, Chaco, dans l’impénétrable jusqu’au quartier Rouillon, dans la périphériede Rosario

103 il me raconte les kilomètres qu’il fait à pied, pour arriver à s’installer au bord de la ville,

poussé par la terre qui séchait, le manque de nourriture, quand il me parle, jecomprends qu’il manque une autre traduction, plus proche, qui dépasse la langue écrite

104 je traduis à l’artisanat, registre de l’histoire quotidienne écrite en lettres minuscules,

celle qui s’écrit dans la vie courante, qui se tisse parmi les vêtements, les ustensiles, lacuisine, les jouets, la langue de l’oralité, comme la langue originaire qom,

105 les 709 ce sont les 709 km que parcourt Arsenio pour arriver à Rosario, chaque bestiole

1 km, modelées en argile cuite sans peinture, le Centro el Obrador (le chantier) dans lequartier Rouillon, où habite une partie de la communauté, est l’espace qui accueille cetravail, sa coordinatrice, Mariela Mangiaterra, est le lien entre mon projet et le groupe,on discute en assemblée, pourquoi les 709 bestioles, les gens sont émus, le prix est fixépar les artisans, l’inflation avance, et on en tient compte dans la paye finale, un rapportde confiance s’établit, l’œuvre c’est tout le processus de production qui la constitue

106 pour l’exposition Traducir la impenetrable, on produit 935 bestioles qui correspondent

aux km entre Resistencia (Chaco) et Buenos Aires,

107 elles brillent contre le blanc du plan, elles s’étalent sur la surface, lettres, ou signes,

abécédaire de terre cuite, qui en groupe sont un discours, porteur d’énergie animée,lumière propre, rythmique de lucioles, balbutiement d’une nouvelle langue quis’invente parce que la petite lumière de chacune, additionnée, est une géographieouverte, celle de la langue ancienne de la terre libre qui se déplace,


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108 Je trouve une grande joie quand j’observe ces petits animaux. Ils apportent deux

plaisirs à mon regard. D’un côté la sensation de troupeau, tous ensemble ils sontcomme une grisaille. De l’autre le fait de s’arrêter à chacun, observer sesdifférences, chercher à deviner ou à trouver quel animal ils représentent. On peutpasser longtemps à les observer. Je trouve intéressant que leur nombre servepour mesurer la distance. Et je me demande, dans ces moments de débat sur lepost humain, sur un féminisme qui introduit les questions relatives àl’anthropocène, l’ère où l’homme décide les transformations, y compris ladestruction de la planète, quel sens additionnel peut avoir cette accumulation devie animale? Je pense à l’égalisation ou même au déplacement de l’humain en tantque paramètre de mesure ou comme agent qui établit les distances à travers sesdispositifs métriques. Il s’agit là d’une mesure animale. As-tu réfléchi à cespossibilités interprétatives et à leurs connexions avec un féminisme actuel quiimplique non seulement dénoncer la violence contre les femmes, mais aussi ladestruction à laquelle semble inéluctablement être destiné le monde dans lemoment actuel du capitalisme global? Le féminin comme ce qui résiste à laspoliation des ressources naturelles de la planète (exacerbé par l’autoritarisme denouveaux leaders comme Trump ou Bolsonaro), l’animal comme paramètred’affection qui déplace l’humain de sa centralité. Que penses-tu sur ces relationsqui peuvent ne pas s’adapter à l’endroit à partir duquel tu as conçu cette petitejungle de terre cuite?

109 tes questions ouvrent, au fur et à mesure de mes réponses le fil même de mon travail se

dévide peu à peu, le bois, la forêt de terre cuite est une invocation, aucun petit animaln’est le fruit de l’invention, chaque petite figure, porte le poids du désir de la fairerevenir, Arsenio et sa compagne Clorinda, elle aussi artisane, l’un à côté de l’autre, secorrigent leurs sculptures, ils insistent sur le fait que les petits animaux modelés sonten voie d’extinction, chacun porte la charge, ce sont les vestiges de ce qui est en trainde partir, et en même temps leurs précieux animaux en sont témoins, en témoignant unautre temps, celui de leurs premières vies de jeunesse, en exode depuis l’abondance dela forêt à la précarité du bidonville,


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110 ce territoire en mouvement, d’un point de vue représente et dénonce ce qui se détruit,

mais d’un autre point de vue il peut être interprété comme l’apparition d’une mémoire,il dépasse l’idée du vestige, il devient une invocation,

111 les petits animaux en groupe sont un discours à partir d’un autre regard du monde, non

transformé par la main invisible (Adam Smith) du capitalisme mercantiliste et global, undiscours d’horizontalité où toutes les catégories de vitalité se confondent, depuis levégétal l’animal l’humain, se mélangent et se retrouvent au même niveau

112 dans la cosmologie qom la notion entre animal et personne humaine perd de sa

hiérarchie, le mythe de la création du peuple qom possède les traits de cette doubleappartenance,

113 Quand Kharta a créé le monde ni le froid, ni la maladie, ni la mort, ni la faim n’existaient. Il n’a

créé que des hommes, comme ils étaient immortels ils n’avaient pas besoin de faire des enfants.

Ces hommes étaient mi-humains mi-animaux. Ils avaient plumes et peaux sur leur corps et des

griffes aux pieds et aux mains, certains d’entre eux pouvaient voler. Ils vivaient heureux de la

chasse, la pêche et la récolte, le monde était créé pour eux, et ils formaient une unité entre

hommes et nature…

114 les femmes sont les seules à être entières, des femmes étoiles (tu vois si c’est beau par

rapport à ce que nous disions, quand tu compares les bestioles et les petites étoiles)

115 …A cette époque-là, de temps en temps, les étoiles descendaient du ciel avec par une corde de

chaguar pour voler la nourriture des hommes. Ces étoiles étaient blanches, brillantes et avaient

la forme de femmes. Elé les a vues descendre par les cordes et comme elles étaient si belles il a

voulu prendre une de ces femmes , mais elles avaient un grand pouvoir et l’homme perroquet a

reçu des blessures dans sa bouche, et il a ainsi perdu, en partie, sa faculté de parler. Tandis qu’il

était au sol, endolori, il observa que les femmes avalaient la nourriture par en haut et par en bas,

car elles avaient des dents même dans le vagin…

116 ce qui incarne le féminin est puissant

117 …Chiquii a convoqué à une réunion, ils ont délibéré longuement et ils ont décidé que l’homme

mouche s’envolerait au-delà de la mer pour apporter une solution. Quand l’homme est revenu il

apportait avec lui la connaissance du feu, jusqu’à ce moment-là, les hommes mangeaient les

aliments crus. Il a apporté aussi le vent, le froid, la maladie et la mort.

118 le féminin produit la stupeur, il doit être dompté, les dents des vagins cassées, la

rencontre avec l’autre assure la fin de l’éternité et le début de la vie humaine

119 ...Les hommes se sont mis à chanter le jour, un vent fort et très froid est arrivé. Les femmes qui

étaient nues se sont mises à trembler et se sont rapprochées du feu. Alors les hommes ont lancé

au feu une pierre magique qui a éclaté, est entrée dans toutes les femmes et leur a cassé les dents

d’en bas. De cette manière les hommes animaux se sont unis avec les femmes étoiles et à présent

leurs enfants, sont le peuple Toba.

120 ici le féminin est entier, elles sont quasi divines, elles font face aux homme-animaux, ce

qui donne à penser cette différence avec la conception judéo-chrétienne occidentale oùla femme est créée à partir d’une partie de l’homme, en termes lacaniens, si le conceptde phallus est une illusion et que celui-ci se partage, on pourrait dire qu’elles, dès leursorigines, partagent le même attribut et les hommes, pour les trouver doivent perdreleur partie animale, ce qu’on peut lire comme la démission à une certaine façon devirilité,


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121 avant la colonisation les qom s’organisaient à travers le conseil des anciens, hommes et

femmes, vivant en équité de genre, après l’évangélisation les curés et les pasteurs,représentants de la religion monothéiste s’érigent en dirigeants de la communauté,impliquant un modèle masculin et paternaliste qui veut démolir ce système ancestral

122 Ruperta, représentante qom se définit comme guerrière, les guerrières légendaires

étaient les amazones, un mot qui vient du grec ancien ἀμαζών sans poitrine, l’histoireentre vraie et imaginaire, raconte qu’elles s’amputaient le sein droit pour soutenir l’arc,

123 Ruperta me dit qu’elle n’aime pas les pasteurs (évangélistes), qui mettent une jupe longue à

leurs femmes et les empêchent de parler

124 déjà pendant la découverte des Amériques, Colomb parle d’une île où habitent des

femmes que nous pouvons assimiler aux amazones, le curé Gaspar de Carvajal,chroniqueur de l’expédition du conquistador espagnol Francisco de Orellana, en 1542,décrit comment les femmes guerrières lançaient de l’autre côté de la rivière des dardsde sarbacanes et des flèches, à cause de l’impact de ce récit, le fleuve sera rebaptiséAmazone ou fleuve des Amazones, voilà une partie du récit,

125 ...Vous devez savoir qu’ils sont sujets et tributaires des Amazones, et en apprenant notre arrivée,

ils vont leur demander secours puis elles sont venues jusqu’à dix ou douze, celles que nous avons

vu, qui se battaient par- devant tous les indiens comme des capitaines et le faisaient si

courageusement que les indiens n’osaient pas tourner le dos…

126 Bolsonaro essaie d’oublier que les amazones existent, quand il exploite ce qu’il

considère à lui, l’Amazone, et je me demande si dans l’esprit des hommes autoritaires,le désir de les soumettre reste intacte,

127 les petits animaux en troupeau, territoire de pure vie sensible et gratuite où tout se

confond et se situe au même niveau, le cœur battant différent et à l’unisson,construisent peu à peu un barrage imaginaire contre les politiques d’invasion quidétruisent la planète, lucioles, femmes étoiles, amazones, chamanes, discours visuelécrit en lettres de terre cuite, féministe, présent


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128 Le féminisme apparaît dans l’exposition comme des archives déployés sur le sol,

quand tu dessines une carte des poétesses, une cosmologie tu l’appelles, quiproduit l’interaction des noms. Et tout cela tu vas le faire en couleurssignificatives pour la lutte féministe qui a occupé les rues pendant les dernièresannées: le violet lié traditionnellement avec les féminismes; le vert , couleur quiest en rapport avec la campagne pour légaliser l’interruption volontaire de


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grossesse; l’orange, qui représente la séparation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat, pourempêcher que l’Eglise continue d’exercer un pouvoir sur la société civile pour quele dogme qui régule la vie des croyants soit appliqué à toute la société. Dansl’application du dogme on laisse de côté le fait que les avortements clandestinsqui ont lieu malgré la loi et l’Église dans toutes les classes sociales affectentspécialement les femmes pauvres, étant donné que les avortements bon marché seréalisent sans sécurité pour leurs vies. Pourquoi donc nouer ces couleurs avec lapoésie? C’est un rapport pensé entre la politique et la poétique? Pourquoi tuchoisis les femmes que tu nommes?

129 quand elles traversaient la carte du monde, les constellations guidaient les anciens afin

qu’ils puissent s’orienter dans l’obscurité de la nuit, mes poétesses sont une cosmologiede conscience qui bat et qui illumine, tissé depuis le sol du Musée parmi les moulagesde sculptures (représentantes d’un regard uniquement masculin) la cosmologie de leursnoms entrelacés monte et déborde, interpelle des années d’histoire, c’est la impenetrable

grimpant librement, la subversion de la langue resplendit

130 je les nomme poétesses, je pourrais les appeler lucioles, étoiles, sirènes, chamanes ou

sorcières, avec leurs mots invoquant des esprits et des forces, irradiant une lumière dequestions, en ouvrant le jeu de la langue, déconstruisant la manière dont l’écriture aété conçue par l’histoire masculine, en la rendant intraduisible, mystérieuse, c’estpourquoi nouer la poésie et la politique est indispensable,

131 je n’en citerai que quelques-unes, en déployant les intentions de cette carte

cosmologique, la plus lointaine est Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, expression del’indépendance quand elle décide sa propre vie entrant au couvent pour rendrepossible son désir d’être une femme qui écrit, ou Alfonsina Storni, qui avec sa poésiemet en lumière le machisme de son époque et transgresse les normes sociales de sonexistence personnelle, Violeta Parra nomade, qui fait un recueil des anciens refrains(coplas) de sa terre, en écoutant la voix la plus fragile, celle des pauvres, Susana Thénondans sa double appartenance à la langue, traduisant vers le français, et qui fait avancerle féminisme à côté de Alejandra Pizarnik, écrivant son amour féminin aux femmesentre Buenos Aires et Paris, si les plus désemparés, les plus pauvres, souffrentdurement l’injustice d’un avortement clandestin, associer les poétesses avec lescouleurs emblématiques du féminisme, réactualise ce que leurs textes ont devertigineux, leur confère une réalité, la poésie n’est plus dans le limbe du poétisant , ellen’est pas métaphore, elle est concrète, dépoétiser la poésie c’est la faire devenir,comme le dit le poète Gabriel Celaya, une arme chargée d’avenir

132 dans l’invention de la poésie, subversion de la langue, non seulement l’écrit nous dit,

c’est le corps qui parle, je choisis ces poétesses, une poignée de femmes qui écrivent àpartir du corps construite par cette relation entre écriture et vie, traductrice etinterprète du vécu d’autres femmes,

133 les liens en couleurs qui les unissent inventent un tissu faisant apparaître cette relation

secrète et invisible, l’histoire se réécrit, l’histoire personnelle, celle de chaque voix de lapoésie de chaque poétesse et celle de toutes, unies dans la sororité de leurs intentions,et dans un monde hostile qui ne veut pas écouter, elles ouvrent une autre histoire deluttes qui nous recouvre du sol jusqu’au ciel, la voix de la puissance féminine s’élèvedans une chorale de pensée écrite,

134


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135 Le jardin magique de Ruperta sonne si beau. Je sais que tu t’appuies sur le

déplacement d’espèces végétales, plantes, fleurs, que Ruperta a fait depuisl’Impénétrable, où elle habitait, jusqu’à Rosario où elle a été transférée. Il existeune poésie émouvante dans cette traversée qui adoucit son extranéité, lasituation diasporique où elle se trouve. Ce jardin est une sorte de couverturechaude où elle protège le cadre de la forêt, presque un mémorial de la nature, unmémorial affectif qui l’accompagne et qui chaque jour lui rappelle d’où elle vient.Là aussi nous pouvons penser au post humain. J’ai vu les photos que tu as prisesdans le jardin de Ruperta et j’imagine comment il va se voir, cet herbier impriméen lithographie sur un papier translucide. Nous avons causé sur la façon demettre ces feuilles dans des vitrines illuminées d’en bas dans la salle où setrouvent les moulages préhispaniques. Séparés pour permettre de circuler parmieux. Parle-nous un peu de cette œuvre et dis-nous ce qu’elle représente dansl’ensemble que tu vas disposer dans les salles.

136 Ruperta dit j’habite à Miraflores, elle le dit depuis son jardin dans le quartier Rouillon,

dans la périphérie de Rosario entourée de ses plantes qu’elle a apportées de sa forêt,elle est et elle se trouve dans les deux endroits et ce jardin signifie sa doubleappartenance,

137 Ruperta porte avec elle la main verte, elle installe des jardins potagers dans la

communauté, quand elle m’invite dans son jardin elle me les fait voir, il y aussi des potsde fleurs qui pendent des branches de son arbre où les oiseaux viennent chanter et sonamie Roberta dit qu’elle pleure le matin quand elle les écoute

138 elle écoute la forêt et la forêt c’est elle, et l’herbier est une manière de dire que dans la

vie sensible tout se confond, tout est animé et son arbre est magique comme tout ce quil’entoure


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139 mais elle est chamane elle aussi, et le titre jardin magique n’est pas anodin, c’est un

chant de chaque voix des esprits qui animent chaque plante et chacune d’elles est lamémoire de l’histoire de sa langue, son geste en les faisant venir, pour s’entourerd’elles, annule la distance, et cette mémoire devient vivante

140 elle aurait pu couper les plantes, les faire sécher et produire un herbier dans le sens

classique, mais décalquer est aussi une autre façon de traduire, créer un autre niveaude langage, une technique qui me rapproche de mes premiers travaux, la technique dela gravure,

141 je voulais un papier qui me mette le plus près possible de ce qui est végétal, fibre de la

nature, j’ai choisi des fines planches translucides de papier japonais, minces comme lesfeuilles des plantes,

142 les caisses vitrines qui les accueillent construisent une architecture du registre du

végétal, contenu dans des blocs lumineux, elles nous ouvrent la rétine à la délicatessedu détail, dans les nervures, minimum, fragile, résistante, palpite la structure même duvégétal,

143 son jardin se compose de plantes pour guérir et protéger, comme le Mapic, qui est

maintenant un arbre dont les fruits possèdent des propriétés nutritives, ou l’Adélia quise place à l’entrée de la maison pour donner la bienvenue amicale aux invités

144 le jardin magique n’est pas seulement une partie de la forêt qui est venue de Miraflores

à la périphérie de Rosario, c’est un témoin tangible de son double cœur, qui appuie unpied de chaque côté,

145 et ce jardin est télétransporté au Musée par d’autres moyens, il est déconstruit à partir

de la transformation de la matière plante en moulage de papier et reconstitué pourélaborer l’herbier en boîtes,

146 l’herbier palpitant d’esprits animés, dessine l’autoportrait de Ruperta: les plantes

qu’elle a choisies hébergent les secrets de sa magie



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147 Je crois que là où se trouvent les moulages préhispaniques tu vas installer la série

Un capuchon de nuages, avec des affiches imprimées blanc sur blanc. Là, je penseinévitablement à l’écho de Malevitch ou de l’Argentine Léa Lublin, qui habitait,comme toi, à Paris. Tous les deux ont produit des œuvres «blanc sur blanc».Pourquoi cette impression? Quel est ici le rôle de la langue? Quels sont les motsque tu imprimes?

148 …quand je suis arrivée à Paris, c’était la brume, ils ont voulu me faire voir la ville, et m’ont

emmenée à Pigalle… quand je venais d’arriver, j’étais enveloppé par les fantômes dupassé, comme celui qui se retrouve au bord d’un précipice devant la mer et s’il se lanceil pourrait voler ou tomber, c’est ce qu j’ai éprouvé devant ces œuvres de Léa Lublin,des images blanches contre blanc, des formes, guérissantes en ce moment de désarroi,

149 j’étais face à elles et alors elles m’ont fasciné, elles étaient un miroir, j’ai retrouvé ce qui

se passait en moi, mon être qui se reflétait, repartir à zéro, être une page qui sembleblanche, mais qui est déjà écrite, en peinture invisible, Léa me demandait de regarder,d’entrer avec mes yeux pour faire apparaître ce discours secret,

150 quand le Macbal, Musée de Seine et Marne, me propose de faire une estampe pour le

jour de la femme, j’ai pensé à une phrase qui engloberait une idée de féminisme trèslarge, et j’ai trouvé ce fragment de l’introduction du Capital, Tome I, de Karl Marx,

151 Persée, pour poursuivre les monstres, a eu besoin d’une capuche de nuages, et cette capuche

nous l’avons baissée sur nos yeux et nos oreilles pour faire comme si ces monstres n’existaient

plus

152 le texte est énigmatique, nous pouvons le lire depuis la pure revendication politique

mais aussi d’un point de vue féministe, les monstres sont toujours là quand on met enprison les femmes qui avortent

153 la même articulation de la phrase m’a conduit à la pensée en blanc, comment devenir

nous mêmes invisibles pour vaincre les monstres, comment je pouvais devenir visibledepuis mon invisibilité pour que le spectateur se réapproprie de mon corps?, un artistedonne son corps à manger à l’autre, quand il fait apparaître son discours, mais aussi sacorporalité,

154 et c’est pourquoi, ce sont des affiches et en même temps des anti-affiches, ils ne

montrent pas directement, son intention n’est pas celle de communiquer (si nouspensons à ce qu’énonce Foucault, par rapport à la communication comme instrumentde mots de pouvoir) le blanc sur blanc, rend nécessaire un effort pour faire apparaîtrele discours, qui n’est pas donné, c’est une question, il s’établit une relation de désir, etcelui qui veut le lire s’implique dans le même énoncé du texte qu’il est en train de lire,

155 je l’ai fait en français mais une capuche de nuages se traduit dans toutes les langues où

cette expression se déplace, une manière de se l’approprier, à partir de chaque langue,dans chaque nouveau lieu, la technique pour réaliser l’affiche apparaît différente, poursignifier qu’une autre langue, c’est une autre traduction, une autre technique,

156 voguer! L’abîme libre, blanc, l’infini devant vous!

157 Kasimir Malévitch, Du cubisme et du futurisme au suprématisme. Le nouveau réalisme pictural,

1916.

158 le corps face à ce qu’on ne voit pas, le regard en coïncidence avec la lumière fait voir ce

qu’on ne voyait pas, et nous pouvons ainsi déchiffrer le discours secret, et au fur et à


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mesure que celui-ci apparaît, nous comprenons que le mot est action, verbe, que cetexte écrit, s’inscrit en même temps dans notre corps

159 Parlons du film-texte La richesse des nations, qui fait partie également de

l’exposition de la Cárcova. Tu reprends ici le texte d’Adam Smith du même titrede 1776. Si j’ai bien compris tu le considères comme un point de départ possiblede l’ordre économique global, qui va ensemble avec le mercantilisme anglais etl’idée d’un ordre économique articulé par la notion de Commonwealth, de biencommun, nouvelle rhétorique d’un colonialisme commercial traçant des cartesqui s’imprimaient sur celles de l’ordre colonial fondé dans les systèmesadministratifs et de contrôle qui réglementaient par exemple, le commerce entreles colonies et la couronne espagnole. 1776 est, si mes souvenirs sont bons,l’année où sont établies les réformes bourboniennes, avec Charles III, quiétablissent les nouvelles vice-royautés et un système de communication un peuplus ouvert que celui qui ne reconnaissait que deux ports légaux, Veracruz et LeCallao. Tout indique qu’à ce moment-là, on commençait à changer les règles dujeu qui définissaient la notion de «monde». Tu choisis pour ce film le chapitre«Las colonias» qui se déroule comme les crédits au cinéma, du bas vers le haut. Ettu accompagnes le texte avec le film d’un coucher de soleil dans les chutesd’Iguazu. Le soleil est englouti par l’horizon du haut vers le bas. Pourquoi as-tuétabli cette relation précise entre image et texte? Quel est le sens politique que tuveux nous montrer avec ce temps décalé dans lequel ont lieu l’image et le texte?

160 j’étais en train de me séparer de mon mari, j’ai fait le voyage avec mon fils cadet , la

chambre donnait directement sur les cascades, un hôtel colonial dans le parc des chutesd’Iguazu

161 je suis descendue avec ma caméra, j’étais devant les chutes, le parc fermait, presque

tout le monde était parti, les bus avec les touristes partaient aussi et je suis restée seuledevant le soleil qui tombait, enveloppé entre la lumière et le son, c’était si intense quej’ai placé la caméra sur le rebord bien frontalement, pour saisir ce que je ressentais et jel’ai laissée tourner et je suis restée à côté d’elle à regarder comment le soleil baissaitentre les nuages de vapeur, l’eau et les arcs-en-ciel, le chant des oiseaux, les bruits desanimaux, les bourdonnements des insectes, l’odeur des plantes, toute cette vitalitéallumée,

162 j’ai enregistré en moi la succession de ce temps, comme un temps de changement à

l’intérieur de moi-même, mon corps c’était le sud, le temps du soleil couchant mefaisait penser à tout ce voyage entre l’Argentine et Paris

163 quand je sui revenue j’ai laissé le film et quelque temps après (presque deux ans) en

regardant les images j’ai compris le contenu politique de ce que j’avais filmé, le texted’Adam Smith m’est apparu, à partir de son titre, La richesse des nations , un panoramahistorique de la construction nord-sud, le chapitre des colonies en fut une évidence caril correspond à la situation historique qui se réactualise aujourd’hui, les chutessignifiaient l’exotique d’un paradis premier à conquérir, mais aussi ce qui est caché,cette triple frontière de la contrebande entre le Brésil, l’Argentine et le Paraguay, corpsde la terre divisé par les frontières tracées par les états

164 les deux films, l’un à côté de l’autre, soulèvent une autre question, le chapitre 8 Les

colonies, du livre 4 de Les richesses des nations, est un générique du film mais il va àl’inverse, il monte, dirigé vers le nord, un texte qui nous fait lire la justification des


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actions qui détruisent l’impénétrable de la jungle, et les chutes sauvages quidescendent entourées par le bruit et le chant, chorale de voix de sirènes d’amazones,interpellent le texte du colonisateur

165 Dans une petite esquisse biographique tu décris ton œuvre comme un «work in

progress» et tu utilises un concept très évocateur pour nommer ce travail qui estun continuum sans établir jamais une conclusion. Te parles de ton travail, commed’une traduction affective, lié à la compréhension de l’artiste comme interprètetraducteur. Ce concept m’intéresse. Je pense, par exemple, à l’architectureémotionnelle proposée par Mathias Goeritz. Lui, il donnait à l’architecture laplace d’une expérience transformatrice. Au lieu de travailler avec des plans ilopérait comme un sculpteur qui donne une forme particulière à chaque mur. Jepense qu’on peut établir un certain parallèle même si la matière sculpturale et lemot activent les affections de façons très différentes. Tu me diras…

166 Ce que tu dis est très évocateur, ma production aussi bien dans l’écriture que dans le

visuel se rapproche plus du concret que de la métaphore, c’est la construction d’unlangage en mouvement, un alphabet nouveau, un outil pour reconstruire le mur duréel,

167 quand je parle de l’artiste comme d’un interprète traducteur, je dirais que celui-ci

traduit l’intraduisible, ce point sans retour, point de résistance à ce qui est réel,

168 si je parle de la traduction affective, c’est parce que traduire signifie déjà quelque chose

de soi-même dans ce point à partir duquel on traduit, tout en étant l’interprète de lasingularité de l’intraduisible de soi-même, c’est une idée qui part de mon interrelationavec les langues, la langue maternelle et la langue française

169 ma matière pour produire c’est la même matérialité de mon corps, d’une certaine façon

ceci se rapproche de ce que tu avances quand tu parles de matière sculpturale, car c’estparticulier et unique, territoire tangible et intangible , espace d’ouverture,déploiement, je me considère sculpteur de langages visuels et sonores

170 une traduction est affective quand elle va plus près et plus loin, quand elle change

l’escale et elle produit la propre, qui est la seule mesure, celle de soi-même,

171 tâtonner au-delà de la pensée du sentiment du savoir, c’est aller au-delà et en deçà,

habitée par tant de langues avant et après d’être née, traversée par une histoirepersonnelle et multiple, être un prisme de facettes multiples, une toupie qui tournetourne tourne

172 Au cours de cette conversation que nous avons soutenue pendant plus d’un mois,

j’ai reçu tes réponses et j’ai envoyé de nouvelles questions. J’ai contrôlé l’élannaturel que j’ai comme écrivain en espagnol et comme éditrice, de corriger oud’éditer tes réponses. Tu commences toutes les phrases en minuscules, il manquedes virgules, des accents, des points. Il existe des désaccords grammaticaux. Onperçoit clairement que ces décalages ont un sens poétique. Aujourd’hui nousallons parler de la possibilité ou non de faire une édition des textes. J’imagine quenon. Parlons, donc, pour terminer cette interview sur la signification que tuattribues à ces glissements continuels entre mots écrits.

173 par rapport à la correction de certaines erreurs (faute d’accent, virgules) je suis en

général d’accord , mais en ce qui concerne la construction de la phrase même, je suis unpeu réticente, parce ce que cela qui pourrait se lire comme une erreur ou une


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confusion, est, en réalité, le réflexe volontaire d’une façon de nommer un lieu, monlangage

174 enlever les majuscules pour commencer chaque fragment est une façon de marquer que

ce que j’écris fait partie d’un infini un plus un plus un etc., rien ne possède la hiérarchiequ’il faut pour être premier, car aussi bien mes textes que mes travaux dans le domainede la plastique, je les considère des fragments, et les fragments sont tous des morceauxde quelque chose, ils n’ont ni début ni fin, ils font partie de la même chose qui sedéploie

175 je laisse des espaces et j’utilise les virgules pour signifier avec ces espaces, le vide, qu’on

peut sentir comme si c’était une respiration, une pause

176 je compose à partir d’un point de vue spatial, comme si j’étais en train de sculpter, mes

textes et mes pièces visuelles peuvent être lues comme des partitions de musique ou desculpture, à travers lesquelles je traduis et j’interprète ce grand puzzle où je suisimmergée dès avant ma naissance, et si j’écris à la première personne c’est parce quej’affirme, parce que je porte témoignage

177 Traduit par Pedro Miguel Palleo

RÉSUMÉS




















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INDEX

Mots-clés : Julieta Hanono; Argentine; El pozo; traduction.

Keywords : Hora Julieta Hanono; Argentina; El pozo; translation.

Palabras claves : Julieta Hanono; Argentina; El pozo; traducción.

AUTEURS

ANDREA GIUNTA

Andrea Giunta est docteur et professeur d'art latino-américain et d'art moderne et contemporain à la

Faculté de philosophie et de lettres de l'Université de Buenos Aires. Chercheur principal CONICET.

Conservateur de la Biennale 12, Porto Alegre, Brésil, 2020.


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Comptes rendus / PartenariatCritique d'art


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The Art of Solidarity: Visual andPerformative Politics in Cold War LatinAmerica, edited by Jessica Stites Morand María del Carmen SuescunPozas (Austin: University of TexasPress, 2018).George F. Flaherty

The Art of Solidarity: Visual and Performative Politics

in Cold War Latin America, edited by Jessica StitesMor and María del Carmen Suescun Pozas

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 310pages, Black and white images

1 What does it mean when an artist sends an artwork in solidarity with Salvador

Allende’s government in Chile, joining other artists who may or may not know eachother, separated by national borders? What is the significance of boycotting the SãoPaulo biennial in solidarity with the people living under dictatorship in Brazil, even ifyou have never travelled there? While “solidarity” is not usually thought of as jargon, itsometimes stands as a placeholder or stopgap for more detailed, micro-historicalanalysis of interpersonal relations and transnational politics that has yet to or maynever materialize in any historically verifiable form. As such, solidarity joins“community” and “resistance” in the pantheon of keywords that are essential to ColdWar cultural studies and at the same time quite elusive.

2 The Art of Solidarity: Visual and Performative Politics in Cold War Latin America (University

of Texas Press, 2018), edited by Jessica Stites Mor and María del Carmen Suescun Pozas,aims to more thickly describe the practice of transnational cultural solidarity in theAmericas. Solidarity-based cultural production, as Stites Mor and Suescun Pozas writein their introduction, is “broadly conceptualized as modalities of action within various


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art forms and media, the social and intellectual habits of participants, and strategies ofexpression and representation that grew out of and alongside transitional solidaritymovements” (2). The co-editors are especially interested in the role(s) of empathy infomenting and suturing solidarity relations. Thinking empathy is complicated, theyadmit, as it “gains full expression in the human body and its labors, as opposed tosimply being expressed in works or cultural artifacts in their finished form” (6).Empathetic politics is relational and always in formation—making it hard to writeabout in a conventional academic manner. However, it may be the only way to begin toaccount for the sensations and feelings that are the connective tissue of the New Leftthat emerges after World War II.

3 The study of transnational cultural solidarity has expanded in recent years.

Significantly, south-south axes of solidarity are of increasing interest to scholars,promising to break open networks that have been previously routed through the GlobalNorth. See, for example, Alan Eladio Gómez’s The Revolutionary Imaginations of Greater

Mexico: Chicana/o Radicalism, Solidarity Politics, and Latin American Social Movements

(University of Texas Press, 2016) or the catalog (various authors) accompanying theexhibition A los artistas del mundo ... = To the artists of the world ... : Museo de la Solidaridad

Salvador Allende México/Chile 1971-1977 at Mexico City’s Museo Universitario ArteContemporaneo. Stites Mor has made essential contributions, including her Human

Rights and Transnational Solidarity in Cold War Latin America (University of WisconsinPress, 2013). And, reading more broadly, Patrick Iber’s Neither Peace Nor Freedom: The

Cultural Cold War in Latin America (Harvard University Press, 2015) placed definitiveemphasis on the Cold War as a cultural field.

4 The Art of Solidarity is divided into four parts: 1) Preparing the Ground, Holding the

Ground, 1944-2015; 2) Resistance and Liberation, 1960-1974; 3) Cultural Economies ofSolidarity, 1970-1987; 4) Solidarity Action Beyond Movements. Melanie Herzogexamines how artist-activist Elizabeth Catlett, who trained in the U.S. and made hercareer in Mexico, crossed borders in her varied forms of politico-historical address toAfrican-American, Afro-Mexican, and mestizo audiences. Katherine Borland considersthe ways solidarity activists in the U.S., seeking to alert North Americans to theircomplicity in the 2009 coup in Honduras, translate tactics from Latin America to newcontexts. Javier González reads Ignácio de Loyola Brandão’s novel Zero as a formalexperiment in Sixties solidarity, an extension of a long-standing but evolving“aesthetics of resistance” in Brazil. Ashely Black looks closely at the interactions amongU.S.-based folk musicians Barbara Dane and Phil Ochs, and the status of Cuba and Chilein New Left solidarity. Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda mines the visual and performativeculture of the feminist movement in 1970s Mexico to consider its production of alliesfor its critique of gendered political violence. Lucinda Grinnell extends this analysis toconsider revolutionary lesbianism in Mexico in the same period, drawing from policesurveillance documentation in the national archive. Kevin Coleman looks atphotojournalism’s role in stoking solidarity or its opposite, contrasting coverage of the1954 Honduran banana strike in Life magazine and Cuba’s Bohemia. Jacqueline Adamsreprises some of her ethnographic scholarship on Chilean arpilleras as “solidarity art.”An epilogue by Ernesto Capello contrasts the various contributors’ approaches.

5 Taken as a whole, The Art of Solidarity is reaching in the right direction, toward a

consideration of empathy and also affects. Still more work can be done, however. Thefield of solidarity studies would benefit from more detailed and sustained case studies


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that are able to narrate the embodied complexities, nuances, and contradictions ofsolidarity, as both an interpersonal and socio-cultural phenomenon. In spite of its title,the collection would also benefit, with a few exceptions, from closer, more criticalreading of images. And while the essays together cross-media boundaries, includingphotography, graphics, literature, textiles, and film, there are moments when it is clearthat most of the contributors treat the image is more an illustration than an object ofinquiry in itself.

6 A fuller embrace of humanistic methods, especially from art history and cultural

studies more broadly, would allow for the interpretive sensitivity and flexibility tomake fuller sense of solidarity. Solidarity is always in formation and contingent. It iscontinuously renegotiated, sometimes anxiously so. It exists in tension with the diversecodes of conduct, including social obligation. In solidarity we are both political andsocial beings. It should not be reduced to being for or against something or someone,perfect total alignment or not. This is further complicated in the cultural sphere, wheresome of these relations are meditated through works of art and artistic gatherings,where discourses of quality, taste, judgement, and commitment (simultaneouslypolitical and aesthetic) distort these already tangled relations to the point of fuzziness.Solidarity, while coming out of the desire for community, does not produce constancyor democratically horizontal relations among those who claim it. The contradictions ofsolidarity are perhaps symptomatic of this Cold War stalemate. Nothing can stayideologically pure for long. The Art of Solidarity rightfully extends beyond 1989, the yearthe Berlin Wall fell, to consider the Cold War not unlike the so-called Long Sixties, aphenomenon that exceeds its initial periodization. Scholars interested arts activism,social movements, human rights, and transitional justice should consider thisanthology for their research and teaching.

AUTHOR

GEORGE F. FLAHERTY

Associate Professor, Art History. Director, Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS).

Department of Art and Art History. University of Texas at Austin


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Emiliano Zapata después de Zapata,VARGAS Santiago, Luis (editor),2019, México, Secretaría de Cultura,Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes yLiteratura, Museo del Palacio deBellas Artes, Fundación Jenkins.Uriel Vides Bautista

1 En el marco del centenario luctuoso de Emiliano Zapata Salazar (1879-1919), el Museo

del Palacio de Bellas Artes presentó la exposición Emiliano. Zapata después de Zapata.1

Este líder campesino, conocido también como el Caudillo del Sur, es el rostro másvisible de la Revolución mexicana y es uno de los héroes más importantes del panteónmexicano, además de ser símbolo mundial de resistencia contra la opresión.2 Bajo elconcepto curatorial de Luis Vargas Santiago, investigador y académico de laUniversidad Nacional Autónoma de México, la muestra sintetizó años de trabajo através de un recorrido por las representaciones visuales de Zapata producidas en losúltimos cien años tanto en México como en Estados Unidos.

2 A diferencia de otras exposiciones que se realizaron en 2019, Año del Caudillo del Sur 3, la

de Bellas Artes tuvo el mérito de reunir 146 obras provenientes de más de 70colecciones, tanto nacionales como extranjeras, para revisar críticamente lasnumerosas alteraciones que ha tenido la imagen de Zapata a lo largo del tiempo. Másque biográfica se trató de una exposición iconográfica que puso de manifiesto el poderde las imágenes para conformar, condensar y activar problemas sociales y políticos.Entre sus múltiples contribuciones se encuentran haber resaltado el papel de lasmujeres en los movimientos sociales de México y haber visibilizado a poblacioneshistóricamente excluidas de los relatos oficiales, temas que provocaron acaloradosdebates y distintas reacciones a nivel nacional.4


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3 El proyecto expositivo contempló también la elaboración de un catálogo que no sólo

compilara las obras exhibidas en el recinto cultural más importante del país, sino quetambién ofreciera una mirada actualizada de los estudios académicos sobre el caudillorealizados en México y Estados Unidos. En este libro, el lector se encontrará con nueveensayos de reconocidos especialistas, además de un texto curatorial que funciona comointroducción, los cuales abordan diversos aspectos de las imágenes de Zapata y seestructuran a partir de los cuatro ejes temáticos que articularon la exposición.

4 Conmemorar a Zapata en el siglo XXI, retomando las palabras de Luis Vargas Santiago

vertidas en el texto curatorial, “permite visualizar, contrastar, subrayar, reponer,contaminar, cuestionar y deconstruir los muchos legados, reactivaciones,mitologizaciones y distorsiones que han tenido Emiliano Zapata y su ejército desde quesus nombres figuraran por primera vez en los imaginarios de la Revolución de 1910”.5

Quizá esta idea podría resumir el objetivo principal de la exposición: desplegar lasdistintas, y a menudo contradictorias, imágenes de Zapata para mostrar lassupervivencias de sus legados y las transformaciones de sus sentidos.

5 La primera sección del catálogo, Líder campesino, presenta tres ensayos que abordan la

figura de Zapata desde una perspectiva histórica. El texto de Salvador Rueda, directordel Museo Nacional de Historia y estudioso consagrado del tema, revisa aspectosbiográficos del hombre que antecede al mito. Por su parte, Samuel Brunk, autor delcélebre libro The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata, se cuestiona cómo fue que seoficializó la imagen de Zapata después de su asesinato en la hacienda de Chinameca yrastrea los intereses que estuvieron de por medio durante el proceso. El ensayo de ArielArnal analiza la construcción fotográfica del zapatismo entre 1910 y 1919, y llama laatención sobre dos temas poco referidos en las investigaciones al respecto: lastransgresiones de género y el culto a la Virgen de Guadalupe dentro de las filas delzapatismo.

6 En La fabricación del héroe de la nación, la segunda sección del catálogo, se revisa cómo

Zapata se convirtió en héroe consumado durante el periodo posrevolucionario,destacando la estrecha colaboración de artistas e intelectuales con el Estado mexicano.Robin A. Greeley analiza la configuración de la imagen del campesino desde laoficialidad a través del hábil uso de la fotografía, las artes gráficas y el muralismo; eneste sentido el papel de Diego Rivera fue fundamental, pues fue el primero enrepresentar a Zapata como campesino en un esfuerzo por alcanzar la reconciliaciónnacional. El ensayo de Anna Indych-López se interesa en la difusión de la imagen deZapata a partir de las obras de Rivera, Orozco y Siqueiros que circularon masivamenteen Estados Unidos entre 1930 y 1931.

7 La tercera sección, Imágenes migrantes, explora la presencia de Zapata en los imaginarios

norteamericanos, particularmente dentro de las comunidades chicanas. Esta es la líneaque sigue el texto de Theresa Avila, quien resalta la importancia del héroe en la gráficaproducida por el movimiento chicano que emergió en distintas partes de EstadosUnidos a finales de los años sesenta. Michael Cucher rastrea en su ensayo el legadotransnacional del caudillo a través del muralismo chicano, en especial, en el ChicanoPark de San Diego, donde fue pintado por Víctor Ochoa. Cucher también se preguntacómo las comunidades chicanas leen actualmente a Zapata a través del feminismo y lateoría queer.

8 Por último, Otras revoluciones, la cuarta sección, aborda las apropiaciones de Zapata en

numerosos movimientos políticos, sociales y artísticos de los últimos 50 años. Nicolás


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Pradilla, por ejemplo, reflexiona sobre la persistencia de Zapata en los imaginarioscampesinos y urbanos en el México de los años sesenta y setenta, para mostrar que elcarácter espectral de su imagen aparece una y otra vez como deuda no saldada o dueloinconcluso en un contexto de violencia estatal. El texto de Mariana Botey, curadora,historiadora y artista transfronteriza cuya obra participó en la exposición, sostiene queel Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional que emergió con fuerza en 1994 posibilitónuevas formas de hacer arte desde bases políticas y al mismo tiempo nuevas formas dehacer política desde el arte.

9 Si bien Emiliano. Zapata después de Zapata es un catálogo que se desprende de la

exposición, funciona como un libro colectivo conformado por ensayos académicosampliamente documentados que se complementan con una cuidadosa selección deimágenes que facilitan su comprensión. La investigación iconográfica que realizó elequipo editorial del Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes es en este sentido merecedora deelogios. La riqueza iconográfica, aunada a los textos iluminadores, hacen que elcatálogo de la exposición sea una especie de compendio o enciclopedia zapatista, unafuente de consulta obligada para los interesados en el tema.

10 Otra de las aportaciones de esta publicación es también ¡Zapata vive!, un apartado que

recopila 17 entrevistas de personajes que de alguna u otra forma se han vinculado conla figura del revolucionario. El testimonio de Lila Downs, intérprete de la canciónZapata se queda, coexiste con el de Raúl Solís, “la escultura viviente de Zapata”, a quiense puede encontrar caracterizado como el revolucionario sobre las calles del CentroHistórico de la capital mexicana. Con esta pluralidad de voces se busca ofrecer al lectoruna mirada integral de quienes desde el arte o la academia reinterpretancotidianamente los legados zapatistas.

11 Tanto la exposición como el catálogo no sólo demostraron la trascendencia del héroe

revolucionario para las comunidades mexicanas en ambos lados de la frontera, sinotambién que la imagen de Zapata ha tenido siempre usos políticos, que está mutandotodo el tiempo y que no es propiedad de nadie, a pesar de los esfuerzos deliberados dealgunos familiares para regular su uso.6 A la luz del siglo XXI es necesario examinarcríticamente a los héroes patrios, deconstruir los mitos sobre los cuales se sostienen lasnaciones, cuestionar los puntos de vista fijos y proponer relecturas que nos permitanavanzar como sociedades.

NOTAS FINALES

1. La exposición, abierta al público del 27 de noviembre de 2019 al 16 de febrero de 2020, fue

visitada por más de 130 000 personas. Esta no fue la primera vez que el Museo del Palacio de

Bellas Artes presentó una exposición dedicada a la figura del revolucionario. Cuarenta años atrás,

en 1979, la reconocida crítica de arte Raquel Tibol coordinó una muestra que exhibió las

imágenes más destacadas del caudillo producidas hasta ese momento. Para más información al

respecto consúltese: Exposición homenaje nacional a Emiliano Zapata en el centenario de su nacimiento


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(1879-1979), México, Secretaría de Gobernación, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Instituto

Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1980.

2. La revolución mexicana fue una guerra civil que sacudió a México entre noviembre de 1910,

cuando Francisco I. Madero se levantó en armas contra el régimen dictatorial de Porfirio Díaz,

hasta finales de 1916, cuando se establecieron las bases para la promulgación de un nuevo pacto

social. Uno de los líderes que atacaron el latifundismo porfirista en Morelos fue Emiliano Zapata,

quien estando al mando del Ejército Libertador del Sur impulsó reivindicaciones agrarias que

fueron retomadas en la Constitución de 1917, de cuyo congreso fue excluido y fue asesinado en

1919. Al término del conflicto armado el viejo régimen había sido derrumbado y comenzó el

proceso de reconstrucción nacional por parte de la facción constitucionalista que resultó

triunfante. A partir de entonces la revolución se ensalzó como el acontecimiento fundacional del

México moderno.

3. En Ayala, Morelos, a comienzos de 2019, el gobierno de México encabezado por Andrés Manuel

López Obrador firmó un decreto mediante el cual se declaró a 2019 como el Año del Caudillo del Sur,

Emiliano Zapata Salazar, hecho que trajo consigo innumerables conmemoraciones en todo el país.

4. En este sentido cabe señalar las manifestaciones de organizaciones campesinas en el Palacio de

Bellas Artes el 10 de diciembre de 2019 y el 15 de febrero de 2020, que exigieron el retiro de La

Revolución, óleo de Fabián Cháirez, por considerar que el cuadro “denigraba” la imagen

tradicional de Zapata.

5. Luis Vargas Santiago (editor), Emiliano. Zapata después de Zapata (México: Secretaría de Cultura,

Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Fundación

Jenkins, 2019), p. 23.

6. Algunos descendientes de Emiliano Zapata registraron este nombre ante el Instituto Mexicano

de Propiedad Intelectual, el cual es una marca comercial desde el 5 de marzo de 2019.


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Art Museums of Latin America.Structuring Representation. Edited byMichele Greet and Gina McDanielTarver. (London, Routledge, 2018).Paula Bauer

1 Art Museums of Latin America. Structuring Representation. Edited by Michele

Greet and Gina McDaniel Tarver. (London, Routledge, 2018)

2 273 páginas

3 61 imágenes en blanco y negro

4 La mesa “Negotiating Identity: The Art Museum in Latin America”, llevada a cabo en

San Juan, Puerto Rico, en mayo del 2015, en el marco del Latin American StudiesAssociation International Congress, fue el punto de partida del libro editado porMichele Greet y Gina McDaniel Tarver, Art Museums of Latin America. Structuring

Representation.

5 Michele Greet es profesora de arte moderno de América Latina y Europa y directora del

programa de historia del arte en George Mason University y Gina McDaniel Tarver esprofesora de arte moderno y contemporáneo con foco en América Latina en Texas StateUniversity. Los aportes de la audiencia durante el Congreso y los diecisiete capítulosescritos por los académicos que convocaron para el libro, fungieron como arquitecturadel presente volumen. Su expectativa es que la lectura impulse los estudios de museosde arte de América Latina y que en el futuro nuevas antologías logren ampliar elespectro de su representación.

6 Aún cuando los capítulos no cubren en forma exhaustiva los casos que se analizan,

proveen, en su conjunto, de un marco que permite abordar prácticas e historiasdiferenciadas, que proporcionan un mapa regional y a la vez comparativo, articuladodesde distintas ciudades de América latina. Las tradiciones museográficas y el climasociopolítico y económico que atraviesa cada país en particular y que afecta a sudesarrollo, permite comprender que existen factores que hacen que unas regiones


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estén más representadas que otras. Optando por un criterio estricto en cuanto al tema ya la calidad académica por sobre la inclusión de todos los países de la región, aquellosque resultaron seleccionados refieren a museos de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia,Cuba, México, Paraguay, Perú y Estados Unidos.

7 Greet y McDaniel Tarver se preguntan cómo surgen, se estructuran y consolidan

instituciones como los museos de arte en estos panoramas complejos y cambiantes.Antes de intentar responder a esa pregunta, en la introducción del libro comienzancuestionando dos conceptos incluídos en el título. En primer lugar, contraponen lanoción de “Arte” a los parámetros establecidos por la cultura occidental. Por estarazón, el libro incluye capítulos como el dedicado al Museo del Barro en Asunción y alMicromuseo de Lima. A través de la incorporación de una colección de arte rural ypopular como sucede en el primer ejemplo, y del carácter ambulante del segundo, sedemuestra que estos museos se oponen a los parámetros instaurados por lamuseografía tradicional. Como afirma la autora del capítulo, Carla Pinochet Cobos,ambos son considerados como alternativas críticas al usual desarrollo de los museosmetropolitanos.1

8 En segundo lugar, aunque sostienen la denominacion “América latina” como una

categoría útil para el estudio de los museos de arte de la región entienden que estambién un constructo geopolítico. En ese sentido, dedican una parte del libro aperspectivas latinas dentro de los Estados Unidos. La decisión de incluir a los EstadosUnidos en este recorrido, no solo amplía el horizonte de estudio sino que tambiénremarca las complejidades de la diáspora lationamericana en Norteamérica, en especialsi se entiende que museos como el Museo del Barrio y el Museo Cubano contribuyeron aforjar una identidad propia que incluso llegó a pugnar con las de sus países de origen.

9 En último lugar, podría decirse que, incluso, la misma categoría de “museo” es

discutida en este libro, como sucede en el trabajo de Isobel Whitelegg en referencia a labienal de San Pablo.

10 En su estructura, Art Museums of Latin America. Structuring Representation se divide en

cinco partes: museos de arte y políticas de estado; museos de arte como construccionesde la modernidad; dinámicas locales de internacionalismo; perspectivas nacionales yregionales desde los Estados Unidos y reimaginando el museo de arte.

11 La primera parte indaga sobre el rol que juega el Estado en dicho proceso. Aquí se

evidencia que los museos públicos fueron la materialización de un ideal de nación porparte de los grupos dominantes. Eso los hace permeables a convertirse en campos debatalla ideológicos, como sucedió en el Museo de Artes Plásticas de México y tambiénen el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba, como explican Ana Garduño e Ingrid W.Elliott respectivamente. También se evidencia el personalismo preponderante en elcaso del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, según lo reconstruye lainvestigadora María Isabel Baldasarre, el cuál estuvo marcado por sus directores y porel gusto de los coleccionistas privados cuyas obras integraron las primeras colecciones.En la segunda parte, se hacen presentes las tensiones entre preservar la historia conuna mirada hacia el pasado, en muchos casos ligada al colonialismo, o apostar por lamodernidad para colocar a América Latina en un plano internacional. La tercerasección analiza cómo funcionan ciertas prácticas de institucionalización en contextoslocales que buscaban establecerse como modelos de modernidad, comparables aciudades como París o Nueva York. La cuarta parte del libro propone una lectura de lasporblemáticas de identidad, cultura y herencias latinas a través de la investigación de


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museos de los Estados Unidos. Incluye estudios sobre el museo de la Universidad deTexas en Austin por Florencia Bazzano, del Museo del Barrio por Deborah Cullen y delMuseo Cubano en Miami por Elizabeth Cerejido (hoy llamado Museo Americano de laDiáspora Cubana). Finalmente, la última sección propone alternativas de museosposibles a los modelos tradicionales. Las editoras ponen el foco en la idea de inclusiónque encarnan los tres ensayos aquí comprendidos.

12 Esta segmentación sirve para organizar la lectura, pero como se verá a continuación,

varios de los ejemplos elegidos podrían funcionar de manera transversal en lasdistintas secciones del libro. Muchos de los ensayos tocan problemas comunes. Porejemplo, las necesidades de representación y las dificultades económicas; el rol delEstado y su apoyo o desatención hacia las instituciones museográficas; las políticas quese siguen en la conformación de las colecciones; el mensaje que buscan transmitir losmuseos. A grandes rasgos, el libro busca esclarecer el proceso de institucionalizacióndel arte en América latina, utilizando como punto de partida un método históricobasado principalmente en el estudio de archivos.

13 El deseo de los países de América latina de mostrarse modernos ante la mirada

internacional se trasladó a los espacios museales. Esta búsqueda pasó por varias etapascomenzando por aquellas instituciones que no llegaron a existir más que en las ideas yen el papel impreso, como en el caso del museo de copias que Mario Pedrosa imaginabapara Brasilia, basado en el concepto del “museo sin paredes” de André Malaraux -segúnlo analiza el ensayo de Natália Quinderé- y el Museo de Arte Moderno Americano deMéxico que reconstruye Harper Montgomery, que solo llegó a materializarse en laspáginas de la revista Forma. Pero también se documentan los pasos tomados hacia suconcreción, como sucedió con el Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) que,como analiza Nadia Moreno Moya, funcionó desde 1963 en cuatro sedes distintas.Recién en 1979 se instaló en su sede definitiva, dotada de un edificio propio construidopor el arquitecto colombiano Rogelio Salmona, en la ciudad de Bogotá. Y por último, elcaso del Museo de Arte Moderno de la Ciudad de México, que abre sus puertas en 1964 –un año emblemático en la museografía de México, con la apertura de otros museos,como el Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia-, en cuya materialización, tal comolo demuestra Georgina Cebey, la arquitectura fue una parte esencial. Como se constataen varios de los ensayos incluídos en este libro, la necesidad de contar con un edificiopara alojar las colecciones de arte fue una discusión y una demanda recurrente. Cuandola falta de fondos no interfirió en el logro de tal objetivo y se encaró su construcción, laarquitectura funcionó, además, encarnando un ideal, ya sea de nación, de modernidad ode poder.

14 Como contracara de los museos públicos se podrían colocar los de carácter privado,

pero este libro pone en evidencia que en América Latina esos límites son confusos. Porejemplo, el MAM de Rio de Janeiro inició como una iniciativa privada, pero, como indicaAleca Le Blanc, necesitó del apoyo del Estado con el que sus impulsores no siempremantuvieron una buena relación. Estas relaciones son visibles en el Museo Nacional deBellas Artes de Chile, abordado en el ensayo de Amalia Cross: si los museos eran, entérminos generales, mirados bajo la lupa por promover artistas emergentes y máspolíticamente activos, durante los períodos de dictaduras militares las tensiones fueronmayores.

15 En su conjunto, estos textos permiten dilucidar los tejidos de poder que se pusieron en

juego a la hora de abrir un museo. En ocasiones, como puede seguirse en el texto de


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Isabel Cristina Ramírez Botero cuando analiza los museos de Barranquilla y Cartagena,estos entramados fueron opacos y escondieron intereses que trascendían la misión,valores y objetivos que encarna un museo de arte. En otros casos, como en el MuseoTamayo de México que reconstruye James Oles, estas relaciones fueronextremadamente públicas. La cadena de medios Televisa apoyó la iniciativa del museohasta que las diferencias con los Tamayo terminaron separándolos. Por el contrario, lacolección Jumex, analizada por Lassla Esquivel Durand, responde a los intereses y a lasposibilidades económicas de su fundador, el heredero de la mega empresa que lleva elmismo nombre y que, como resultado, llevó al museo a perfilarse siguiendo lastendencias del mercado. Pero nuevamente, en América latina esto resulta ambiguo yaque, como señala Esquivel Durand, en lugares “en que hay pocos o ningún museopúblico, o donde la infraestructura para los museos públicos se considera defectuosa,los museos privados pueden cumplir una función que complementa o inclusoreemplaza a la del museo público.”2

16 La recopilación de los minuciosos estudios incluidos en este libro

17 da cuenta de los innumerables actores e hilos que forman parte de la escena cultural de

América latina y que contribuyeron a la historia de los museos de arte en la región.

18 Las editoras reconocen la publicación Remix: Changing Conversations in Museums of the

Americas (2016) como un primer acercamiento sobre el tema. Sin embargo, Art Museums

of Latin America logra avanzar en el estudio de la historia del arte y de la museología enAmérica Latina, amplia los límites geopolíticos para cuestionar preceptos, incrementael conocimiento sobre estos temas en países de habla inglesa y propone una estructurade alianzas más cercanas entre las Américas. Además, se trata de un libro quecontribuye a la formación de un área de estudios novedosa en Latinoamérica, por lo quesu edición en español y portugués sería importante para su impulso y crecimiento.

19 A través de sus cinco partes, el libro funciona como disparador para nuevas propuestas,

en especial para jóvenes investigadores, como en mi caso, interesados en procesos deinstitucionalización del arte, relatos curatoriales y colecciones de arte latinoamericano.

NOTAS

1. Carla Pinochet Cobos, “Critical Deviations in Latin American Museums: TheExperiences of the Museo del Barro in Asunción, Paraguay and the Micromuseo in Lima,Peru”, en Michele Greet and Gina McDaniel Tarver (ed.), Art Museums of Latin America.

Structuring Representation. London, Routledge, 2018, p. 253.

2. Lassla Esquivel Durand, “Colección Jumex and Mexico's Art Scene: The Intersection of Public

and Private.”, en Michele Greet and Gina McDaniel Tarver (ed.), Op. cit., p. 160. Trad. de la autora.


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AUTOR

PAULA BAUER

Licenciada en Artes, Universidad de Buenos Aires


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Touched Bodies: the performative turnin Latin American Art, MaraPolgovsky Ezcurra, New Brunswick,New Jersey, Rutgers UniversityPress, 2019.Agustin R. Díez Fischer

Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, Touched Bodies: the

performative turn in Latin American Art, NewBrunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press,

2019.276 páginas, 27 blanco y negro, 13 a color

1 La historia del arte ha encontrado en los estudios comparados una perspectiva

productiva para el análisis de las formaciones culturales en América Latina.1 El modo enque esas comparaciones se realizaron ha sido sin embargo de diversas características.Algunos casos se han centrado en los vínculos transnacionales y canales específicos decontacto, otros han tomado como punto de partida procesos con característicascomunes ya sea ocurridos de forma simultánea o en lugares y tiempos distintos.2

También las comparaciones—especialmente aquellas que han tomado como modelo laliteratura comparada—se han extendido hacia el estudio transdisciplinar o transmedial.Touched Bodies: the performative turn in Latin American Art se ubica justamente en elcruce de esos desarrollos en los estudios comparados al analizar prácticas artísticasrealizadas en diversos soportes y que tuvieron lugar en Chile, Argentina y México en unperíodo comprendido entre mediados de los años 70 hasta comienzos de los años 90—denominados por la autora como los “largos 80”—.

2 Específicamente, la investigación de Polgovsky Ezcurra sostiene que durante las

dictaduras y postdictaduras—incluso en la “dictablanda” de la hegemonía priista enMéxico— tiene lugar un giro performático en las prácticas artísticas latinoamericanasque reformula los modos de politicidad que habían definido al arte hasta los años 70. La


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autora afirma que ese giro articula nuevas formas de experimentar la corporalidad,como los vínculos entre deseo y dolor, los límites entre lo humano y lo no-humano o larelación entre discursos y cuerpo. Su investigación, que se funda en su tesis doctoral enla University of Cambridge, se centra en el estudio de este giro en la obra de los artistaschilenos Diamela Eltit y Raúl Zurita, los artistas argentinos Liliana Maresca y LeónFerrari, y el artista mexicano de origen polaco Marcos Kurtycz, así como de colectivosespecíficos trabajando en simultáneo en la Ciudad de México.

3 Para abordar las características del giro performático, el libro analiza desde registros

de acciones, esculturas, collages o fotografías hasta arte correo, videos, obras de land-art o textos literarios. Esa perspectiva intermedial es uno de los puntos centrales de suanálisis y le permite productivizar su diálogo con los estudios de performance,específicamente abordar sus formas de investigación a través de los archivos físicos.Queda explícito en la introducción y los primeros análisis que el abordaje de este giroperformático concebirá los rastros materiales de estas experiencias como partesconstitutivas de los casos analizados. No hay en la perspectiva de Polgovsky unacontraposición entre la escritura y el hecho efímero o una nostalgia ante el evento queha pasado. Por el contrario, la autora apunta a analizar los documentos como objetosatravesados por experiencias corporales.

4 En un contexto como el latinoamericano donde las discusiones en torno a los archivos

resultan centrales en la esfera cultural, esta perspectiva es especialmente relevante. Suanálisis permite continuar expandiendo las formas de abordaje de los documentos másallá de su tratamiento como fuentes de investigación. Este camino ya se ha mostradoespecialmente productivo en los estudios sobre la materialidad de las revistasculturales en América Latina que nos han revelado cómo las formas de impresiónfueron espacios de experimentación centrales en las prácticas artísticas.3 Para losarchivos de performance, su perspectiva le permite analizar estos objetos no comosubsidiarios de una experiencia pasada sino como disparadores de otras formas deintervención política. ¿Pero de qué modo? ¿Cómo es posible pensar las formas deoperación política en estos objetos de estudio de características tan disímiles?

5 Polgovsky responde a estas preguntas retomando la noción de partage du sensible del

filósofo francés Jacques Rancière en función de identificar esos otros modos depoliticidad.4 En muy pocas palabras, ese concepto permite comprender los procesosartísticos como fenómenos que son capaces de desarmar la distribución de lo que puededecirse, sentirse o experimentarse en un determinado contexto. En el caso de Touched

Bodies, esa noción le permite analizar el modo en que las prácticas de esos “largos 80”asumen una nueva forma de pensar las políticas de las artes y cómo se distinguen de losproyectos de transformación radical de la sociedad y la emergencia del “hombrenuevo” que habían definido las décadas del 60 y 70.

6 El libro está distribuido en capítulos que abordan los distintos casos de estudio y desde

donde la autora va articulando las comparaciones. Los primeros dos capítulos del librose centran en la obra de Diamela Eltit—específicamente su performance Zona de Dolor

(1980) y su novela Lumpérica (1983)—y del poeta chileno Raúl Zurita con un detalladoanálisis de sus poemas Purgatorio (1979) y Canto a su amor desaparecido (1985), superformance La vida nueva (1982) y su obra de land-art Ni pena ni olvido (1993). En suanálisis, Polgovsky aborda el rol del dolor, del duelo y la lamentación en estos dosartistas. Al hacerlo, la autora presta especial atención hacia los lugares que les sonasignados a esas experiencias en el contexto de la dictadura y la postdictadura y en el


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modo en que los artistas confrontan esos territorios definidos. Especialmente en Eltit,se ve claramente la operatividad de la noción de partage du sensible de Rancière en elmodo en que concibe los lugares socialmente asignados al dolor individual. Estos doscapítulos analizan también la forma en que estos artistas reutilizaron el discurso de latradición judeocristiana para develar el uso paródico en las obras de Diamela Eltit deldiscurso sacrificial del que se valió el régimen dictatorial chileno y la resignificación dela lamentación bíblica en el caso de las obras de Raúl Zurita.

7 Los siguientes dos capítulos están dedicados a las series Brailes y Nunca Más de León

Ferrari y a las esculturas performáticas realizadas por Liliana Maresca durante los años80. En el primer caso, Polgovsky identifica la hipótesis ya anunciada: los modos depoliticidad elaborados en esa década confrontan los modelos revolucionarios de losaños sesenta y setenta. La autora apunta explícitamente a cuestionar las lecturasespecíficas sobre las prácticas conceptuales para pensar el modo en que los artistas dela posdictadura elaboraron otras formas de “políticas de arte”. Si bien el horizonte deconfrontación de Polgovsky es claro, puntualmente las lecturas en torno al arteconceptual de Mari Carmen Ramírez, puede argumentarse que sin duda los años 60articularon agendas más complejas que aquellas que apuntaban a una transformaciónrevolucionaria.

8 En ese sentido, el caso de León Ferrari resulta especialmente revelador. Polgovsky

afirma una escisión en la producción del artista argentino, una diferenciación entre susproducciones en los años 60 y los 80. En su postura, si los primeros estaban orientadoshacia la transmisión del lenguaje revolucionario, en las obras de la posdictadura,Ferrari apunta a colocar al espectador en un lugar más ambiguo, centrado en unaexperiencia háptica. Sin embargo, la performatividad de la escritura, el interés hacia losensorial—lo táctil pero también lo visual o lo auditivo—o el rol del collage establecensus raíces con anterioridad a los años 80. Una perspectiva performática intermedialcomo la que elabora Polgovsky es sin duda central para releer las décadas anteriores,quizá no en términos de ruptura sino de continuidad.

9 En el cuarto capítulo, la autora extiende el análisis sobre Ferrari para establecer una

comparación con la obra de la artista argentina Liliana Maresca. Ese parangón lepermite no sólo ahondar en las diferencias en los modos de concebir la política de lasartes sino también analizar la forma en que ambos artistas confrontan las estrategiasrepresivas sobre el cuerpo por el Estado y la Iglesia. En ambos casos, Polgovsky explicitasu vínculo con los estudios sobre el feminismo, específicamente los modos en que lasprácticas artísticas experimentaron sobre los mecanismos de opresión sobre el cuerpode la mujer.

10 Sin duda, la década del 80 ha recibido especial atención en la historiografía argentina

reciente, que la ha analizado desde los estudios sobre el feminismo, las prácticasartísticas postdictatoriales o el modo en que los artistas enfrentaron la crisis del HIV.5

Específicamente, es interesante pensar la complementariedad de ese amplio espectrode abordajes que permite comprender con mayor precisión los múltiples rostros de ladécada. Por ejemplo, la investigación de la historiadora argentina Viviana Usubiagapermite analizar el rol de la crítica y las instituciones en la escena artística o el papel desucesos específicos como la Guerra de Malvinas.6 Sin duda, la lectura de estasinvestigaciones -muchas publicándose casi en simultáneo- permite comprender otrosfactores del campo artístico que posibilitan precisar las características del campo en elgiro performático definido por Polgovsky. Vistos en su conjunto, estos trabajos nos


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devuelven una imagen de la década que complejiza su caracterización como unmomento de asimilación acrítica de la transvanguardia internacional.

11 Finalmente, los últimos dos capítulos se focalizan en México. Al hacerlo, el libro

defiende la productividad de realizar un análisis de las escenas de las dictaduras chilenay argentina junto con el caso mexicano, atravesado este último también por un régimenautoritario y la supresión de derechos civiles, aunque sin un golpe militar que tomaseexplícitamente el poder. En el capítulo cinco, Polgovsky analiza los modos que adquierela violencia en las performances de Marcos Kurtycz para compararlas con lasestrategias de guerrilla de colectivos como No-Grupo o Proceso Pentágono.Nuevamente se hace explícito en este capítulo la importancia de las formas rituales queadquiere la violencia en la escena artística.

12 Finalmente, el libro concluye con un análisis sobre los límites de lo humano. Polgovsky

recupera la primera formación de Kurtycz en cibernética en Polonia para analizar lasobras realizadas en México. Esta relación se torna especialmente productiva al indagaren el modo en que el rostro se convierte en una zona de contacto entre lo humano y lono-humano. En su análisis sobre los modos de interacción, el libro plantea un desafíoconstante en la cultura contemporánea: las formas de contacto corporal en unasociedad tecnificada.

13 En el cruce entre escenas artísticas simultáneas, Touched Bodies: the performative turn in

Latin American Art aporta no sólo al conocimiento de estas prácticas artísticas sino a lasperspectivas de abordaje de los procesos performáticos. En ese sentido, es necesariocelebrar los estudios sobre otros sentidos que traspasen la perspectiva oculocentristade Occidente. Sin duda, el tacto- ese “sentido olvidado” que, como ha dejado en claroPablo Maurette, ha sido un constante objeto de estudio en la historia cultural- puededevelarnos formas novedosas de comprender las décadas más recientes.7

14 Agustin R. Díez Fischer es doctor en Historia y Teoría de las Artes por la Universidad de

Buenos Aires donde se desempeña actualmente como docente auxiliar en la cátedraHistoria del Arte Latinoamericano II. Es director del Centro de Estudios Espigas de laUniversidad Nacional de San Martín.

NOTAS FINALES

1. Los estudios comparados han sido especialmente productivos en las investigacionessobre el arte concreto y sobre mujeres artistas en América Latina. En el primer caso, sedestacan, por ejemplo, las investigaciones de María Amalia García sobre los vínculosentre Brasil y Argentina o de María Cristina Rossi sobre los intercambios en el ámbitorioplatense. Entre las investigaciones sobre mujeres artistas se destaca especialmentelos trabajos de Andrea Giunta, específicamente su libro Feminismo y arte latinoamericano.

Historias de artistas que emanciparon el cuerpo, Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI, 2018 y laexposición “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985”, co-curada con CeciliaFajardo-Hill, presentada durante 2017 y 2018 en el Hammer Museum de Los Ángeles, elBrooklyn Museum en Nueva York y la Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo.


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2. La noción de una perspectiva comparada a través de la investigación de procesossimultáneos y los modos comparativos en el arte ha sido desarrollada bajo el concepto“vanguardia simultánea” elaborado por Andrea Giunta. Véase Andrea Giunta, “Adiós ala periferia. Vanguardias y neo-vanguardias en el arte de América Latina”, en La

invención concreta, Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2013, pp.104-117.

3. Para comprender el alcance y la productividad de esta perspectiva véase, porejemplo, las publicaciones de las I Jornadas Internacionales de Estudios sobre RevistasCulturales Latinoamericanas “Ficciones metropolitanas: revistas y redesinternacionales en la modernidad artística latinoamericana” organizada por NoraAltrudi, Andrea Giunta, Laura Malosetti Costa, y Cristina Rossi durante 2017.Disponibles en: http://publicaciones.espigas.org.ar/index.php/espigas/catalog/book/7

4. Rancière, Jacques, El reparto de lo sensible. Estética y Política, Buenos Aires, PrometeoLibros. 2014

5. Varios autores han abordado este período desde estas perspectivas, entre ellos,Andrea Giunta, Adriana Lauría, Francisco Lemus o María Laura Rosa.

6. Viviana Usubiaga, Imágenes inestables: artes visuales, dictadura y democracia en Buenos

Aires. Buenos Aires, Edhasa, 2012.

7. Pablo Maurette. El sentido olvidado. Ensayos sobre el tacto. Madrid, Mardulce. 2017.

AUTOR

AGUSTIN R. DÍEZ FISCHER

Agustin R. Díez Fischer es doctor en Historia y Teoría de las Artes por la Universidad de Buenos

Aires donde se desempeña actualmente como docente auxiliar en la cátedra Historia del Arte

Latinoamericano II. Es director del Centro de Estudios Espigas de la Universidad Nacional de San

Martín.


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http://publicaciones.espigas.org.ar/index.php/espigas/catalog/book/7

http://publicaciones.espigas.org.ar/index.php/espigas/catalog/book/7

Intramuros: Palimpsestos sobre arte ypaisaje, Nathalie Goffard, EditorialMetales Pesados, Santiago de Chile,2019.Sebastian Vidal

Intramuros: Palimpsestos sobre arte y paisaje Nathalie Goffard.

Editorial Metales Pesados, 2019, 112 páginas.

1 Los Palimpsestos son manuscritos que se graban múltiples veces. Como dice su autora,

la investigadora y ensayista chilena Nathalie Goffard, son capas de escritura, capas depaisaje, capas de libertad, composiciones independientes que van más allá de su matrizde circulación, exposición o texto de catalogo. Son escritos que se intersectan en elformato del deseo por explorar ejercicios de escrituras diversas como crónicas, poesía oensayos, y que le son devueltos al lector como una compilación ampliada que seorganiza funcionalmente en torno a su tema central: el paisaje. La apuesta de Goffard através de la lógica del palimpsesto se articula desde la insinuación de algo arcano,perdido, quizá justamente en su deriva reinterpretativa desde la función original deltexto que los convocó. Goffard en su prologo, nos advierte de esta idea y de un segundoconcepto articulador, la noción de intramuros. Intramuros en este libro actúa comometáfora del arte, del acto de escribir y de la idea que el paisaje emana de uno mismo.Goffard nos recuerda que la mirada laica, citadina y burguesa es la mirada del paisaje,que nació justamente en occidente en las sociedades capitalistas. Hoy, esa noción depaisaje en Chile se encuentra completamente reconfigurada con intervenciones yconsignas de demandas sociales producto del estallido social. Los signos hablan de unnuevo paisaje que a ratos nos sumerge en la angustia y desidia por “mirar” justamenteno sólo el intramuro, sino que el extramuro, aquello que creíamos incluido dentro de lafunción de la ciudad, pero que en la precarización de la vida había quedado fuera. Estelibro según su autora nos invita a entender el espacio del arte como operador


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simbolicamente en el intramuros, pero se articula desde el extramuros. De ahí que loscasos que este libro presenta hilvanan permanentemente dicha tensión.

2 Este libro, si bien fue escrito previamente al llamado estallido social y no atiende

específicamente a dicho fenómeno, opera con claridad como una manera posible deentender algunos factores de la situación actual. En él Goffard se pregunta por loscampos de visión del paisaje respecto al cambio de las tecnologías ¿Cómo vemos? ¿Quévemos? Las fotografías satelitales, el cambio de mirada hacía una verticalidad, no dejande llamarnos la atención respecto a la premisa que ella extrae de Yves Lacoste, respectoa que mientras más dominamos el paisaje, los espacios ocultos se reducen y la mirada seacerca a la verticalidad. El paisaje de lo que diariamente vemos en los videos que emitelas cámaras aéreas de Galería CIMA1 nos dan una perspectiva general desde la altura delas manifestaciones en la Plaza de la Dignidad (ex Plaza Italia). La idea de que el paisajeno deja de reescribirse o re-lerese como Goffard en su libro, invita a pensar en laimagen diaria del paisaje de aquella convulsionada zona de la ciudad. Un lugar donde laproxemica social se altera fuertemente con los canticos, banderas, piedras, gases, fuegoy rayos láser. Por otro lado, la óptica horizontal, deviene en una serie de imágenes deun paisaje totalmente modificado en el recuerdo urbanístico de la plaza previa alestallido. La ya celebre imagen de Susana Hidalgo2 al monumento a Baquedano cubiertode cuerpos emergiendo entre ellos coronado con una bandera Mapuche, casi como unacomposición neoclásica, no deja de ser un síntoma del palimpsesto del cuerpo social delextramuro que devoró sin piedad al intramuro. En este sentido, Nathalie refuerza laidea de la experiencia humana, en su función dominadora y segura de la vida comogeneradora de paisaje, algo que hoy justamente resulta confuso de ver en un Santiagoplagado de signos polifónicos y poliformes.

3 En otro capitulo del libro llamado Paisaje Amnésicos. Correografías suburbanas: de

flaneurismos y peregrinajes (originalmente pensado para la exposición La Ofrenda deAndrés Durán en la sala de arte CCU) Goffard analiza el concepto del flauneur desde laóptica de destacados teóricos como Francesco Carreri o Zygmunt Bauman donde secondensa la idea del caminar como un acto relacional y múltiple: “se camina hacia,desde, sobre, entre y a través”. El análisis histórico y poético del Flaneur, como escritorde la deriva o escritor paseante, es abordado en este capítulo en el concepto del “fraseourbano” propuesto por el poeta Jean-Cristophe Bailly y que se puede resumir en losiguiente: “frases hechas con las palabras de la ciudad, siendo cada recorrido,entendido como una nueva oración”. La idea del fraseo urbano, en una ciudad comoSantiago el día de hoy, motiva pensar en la fuerza de la consigna como un desborde deescritura y de signos, hechos por anónimos paseantes, marchantes o protestantes, cuyodeseo de vocear permanentemente la proclama en el muro y que los llama a hiper-saturar con rayados el concreto, cambiando sin duda, la fisionomía de la ciudad misma.El fraseo urbano, ya no se plasma como señala Bailly en el escrito del Flaneur en el papelde una publicación, sino que se ha desbordado desde la tradición heredada de la culturamuralista y grafitera en la base del monumento, en el monumento o en el asfalto de lacalle.

4 Otro interesante capítulo del libro, se titula Paisajes Secundarios: El patio de las delicias y

refiere a la obra “La ciudad posterior” del artista chileno Demian Schopf. El tríptico envideo de Schopf apunta a un estudio del paisaje desértico, un vertedero más bien, quesegún la autora escamotea la idea de una frontera marginal, una trastienda o patiotrasero, donde se practica la prostitución, el tráfico y consumo de drogas, relaciones


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sexuales extramuros y donde se acopia principalmente basura, la cual paradójicamentees en sí también una fuente de ingresos económicos. El llamado patio trasero, elvertedero, es sin duda, parte de un paisaje oculto por la modernidad. Un lugar yermopero necesario para que la urbe se desarrolle. Más aún en especifico como señalaGoffard, la quema de basura, en Alto Hospicio, se relaciona directamente con laextracción de aluminio para el intercambio de droga. Por medio de un interesanterecorrido de autores y obras, Goffard analiza el basural como fuente de inspiración parapiezas contemporáneas, estableciendo con ello la proximidad del tema no sólo en Chile,sino que en distintas latitudes del globo. La ironía que queda de manifiesto en lareflexión es que la idea de tríptico, es extraída de la célebre obra El Jardín de lasDelicias de el Bosco, cuyos paneles expanden de lo terrenal, lo celestial y lo infernal deser humano del siglo quince. “Una fórmula” como señalará el historiador del arteargentino José Emilio Burucúa que condice la noción de catástrofe universal, algo queen el caso del tríptico de Shopf no deja de develar el ocultamiento de un paisaje que seniega o se omite en virtud de un desarrollismo vertiginoso. Una negación como seseñala en el libro de “microhistorias banales propias de una marginalidad devenidarutinaria, en un lugar de pecados de una humanidad poco visible y de bajopresupuesto.”

5 El sexto capítulo del libro se titula Paisajes Mnémicos. El paisaje como proyección e ilusión, y

en él la autora vuelva a profundizar por las formas en las cuales el paisaje esconstruido, elaborado, interpretado en función de una preminencia del lenguaje comomodelo deseado. En palabras certeras de la autora “hay paisaje cuando el humano así lodecide, cuando opta por mirar el territorio de otra forma o de modo desinteresado”. Ysin duda esa selección hace aparecer algo. Ahora, la pregunta que se remarca aquí es¿qué hace que algunos paisajes aparezcan como tales y otros no? Y La respuesta deGoffard deambula por una serie de recorridos donde la imagen va reconectándose conla historia del arte y sus hitos, tanto en su función formal, simbólica y política.

6 El octavo capítulo es Paisaje Hápticos: Habitar la línea del horizonte y cuya motivación

surge del anuario 2017 de la galería Die Ecke. Tomando como base las ideas de AloisRiegl, así como de Deleuze y Guattari para entrar en el terreno del paisaje comocondición háptica, algo que deviene en la concentración de ideas sobre la tactilidad dela visión y la percepción de ella. Esto es pensado por Goffard desde la idea del océano,en funcionalidad con el sentido de espacio que provoca su locación flotante en virtudde la inmensidad y las líneas de horizonte. La experiencia de la flotación, le permite a laautora nadar entre conceptos que apelan a la fisicidad del acto de suspenderse en elagua, como percepción háptica y la imposibilidad que conlleva mirar la línea delhorizonte. Esta dicotomía intenta ser graficada a partir de la exposición “Líneas dedefensa” que realizó el artista y teórico peruano José Falconi en virtud del ejerciciovisual que provoca la relación entre horizonte-frontera bajo las tensiones cartográficasque esta obra presenta. Ficciones limítrofes que proceden con mayor actualidad a partirdel conflicto diplomático por lo limites que aconteció entre Chile y Perú.

7 Paisajes excedentes. De la serie como acto de re-colección. A diferencia de los anteriores

capítulos, corresponde a una integración de dos textos inéditos, en los cuales tomacomo idea fuerza una premisa del artista Jeff Wall: Los fotógrafos son cazadores oagricultores. A través de esta división del trabajo, Nathalie construye hábilmente unaserie de tesis entre las que destaco la noción de sedimentación del paradigmadocumental que tiene la fotografía hoy. Donde los postulados del fotoperiodismos o


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fotografía de información se van nutriendo de cientos de capas interdisciplinares ytecnológicas y donde el efecto palimpsestico va solidificándose para crear un nuevoestado residual de la imagen. De esta forma la fotografía documental en estado artísticocomienza a instalarse desde diversos paradigmas que se evidencian, sin serliteralizados, en la condición ecológica en incluso animalistica, la postcolonial, la delfeminismo, la de diversidades afectivas y sexuales, la de memoria traumática. Todasellas sin duda muy presentes en las calles bajo distintas figuras y formas.

8 Intramuros: Palimpsestos sobre arte y paisaje nos ofrece dentro de todo, la persistencia

de un objeto deseado, de un paisaje que hoy nos explota más intenso que nunca. Estelibro, nos abre muchas interrogantes a preguntas y reflexiones sobre el paisaje en unmomento donde la imagen de un país de hace sólo dos meses nos parece irreconocible,es cuando pensar el espacio y su construcción en cuanto paisaje se vuelve másnecesario que nunca.

NOTAS

1. Galería de arte en un edificio en altura ubicada en el pleno corazón de Plaza Dignidad (Ex Plaza

Baquedano) y que ha transmitido ininterrumpidamente las recientes protestas.

2. Actriz que retrató una de las fotografías más icónicas de la gran marcha del 25 de octubre que

congregó a más de un millón doscientos mil personas. En esta imagen se aprecia un grupo de

cientos de jóvenes subiendo sobre la estatua del general Baquedano, rodeados de humo mientras

en la parte más alta un joven extiende una bandera Mapuche.


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Podría ser yo. Los sectores popularesurbanos en imagen y palabra, Elizabeth Jelin y Pablo Vila confotografías de Alicia D’Amico,Buenos Aires, Asunción, 2019, 153páginas. Edición doble con un nuevovolumen de ensayos de SergioCaggiano, Ludmila Da Silva Catela,Elizabeth Jelin, Francisco Medail,Juan Cruz Pedroni, AgustinaTriquell y Pablo Villa, 112 páginas.Georgina G. Gluzman

Podría ser yo. Los sectores populares urbanos en

imagen y palabra, de Elizabeth Jelin y Pablo Vilacon fotografías de Alicia D’Amico, Buenos Aires,

Asunción, 2019, 153 páginas. Edición doble con unnuevo volumen de ensayos de Sergio Caggiano,

Ludmila Da Silva Catela, Elizabeth Jelin, FranciscoMedail, Juan Cruz Pedroni, Agustina Triquell y

Pablo Villa, 112 páginas.

1 La reedición de Podría ser yo. Los sectores populares urbanos en imagen y palabra, impulsada

por la editorial especializada en fotografía Asunción, tiene la rara virtud de presentar


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un cuidadoso facsímil y, además, un segundo libro: un extenso volumen de ensayossobre el libro. El proyecto de Podría ser yo recoge y analiza una serie de visitas a barriospopulares de Buenos Aires y del Gran Buenos Aires, realizadas entre 1984 y 1986. Lafotografía, a cargo de Alicia D’Amico, ocupó un rol central, pues lxs participantesfueron convocadxs para reflexionar sobre las imágenes tomadas en sus contextos devida y trabajo, en un cruce inédito entre sociología y fotografía.

2 La fotografía guarda un vínculo estrecho con las mujeres, pues históricamente ellas han

ocupado lugares notables en este medio, como ha demostrado la historia feminista delarte desde la década de 1970 (Trasforini 2009). Nuestro conocimiento de la carrera de lafotógrafa argentina Alicia D’Amico (1933-2001) se ha ido enriqueciendo sostenidamentedurante las últimas décadas.1 Si bien D’Amico no corrió la suerte oscura de otrasartistas, cuya obra fue obliterada de los relatos históricos, el calor de la ola verde quenos atraviesa nos invita a mirar nuevamente su prodigiosa producción y a seguirdescubriéndola.

3 Feminista “desde siempre”, en sus propias palabras, su compromiso con el feminismo

se hace militancia en la década de 1970. Su práctica fotográfica discurre por una grandiversidad de rumbos. Su imaginación visual, sus encuadres, su universo y susintenciones desafían cualquier intento de definirla de un modo unívoco. Gracias a laparticipación de Alicia D’Amico, el ya legendario Lugar de mujer se convirtió en un focode debates entre fotografía, activismo y libertad.2 La fotógrafa, ya establecida porentonces, había participado de otros proyectos feministas, incluyendo la revista Persona

y las Jornadas de la Creatividad Femenina. D’Amico participó de modo sostenido en Lugar

de mujer tras el regreso de la democracia.

4 Los boletines de Lugar de mujer dan cuenta de la naturaleza experimental y múltiple de

sus propuestas. Este espacio jugó un rol importante en el proceso de recuperación deldebate por la sexualidad libre, el aborto y la autonomía de los cuerpos. Integrado porfiguras como Ana Amado, María Luisa Bemberg, Narcisa Hirsch, Alicia D’Amico y SaraTorres, entre muchas otras, este espacio realizó desde 1983 actividades culturales ycientíficas relativas a la mujer mediante talleres, proyecciones, exposiciones,asesoramiento médico y legal, y debates. Los espacios de experimentación fotográficapropiciados por D’Amico en este ámbito fueron, siguiendo los lineamientos propios dela segunda ola feminista, instancias de concienciación donde se examinabancríticamente las nociones de mirada e identidad, desmarcando las imágenes femeninasde los códigos de representación dominantes y, por ende, patriarcales. Lugar de mujer seconvirtió, además, en sitio de exhibición, donde D’Amico y las participantes de sustalleres dieron a conocer su trabajo.

5 D’Amico es el ejemplo por excelencia de la mujer que mira. Tamara García Iglesias,

directora del bello documental sobre D’Amico El cuerpo de la mujer sin sombra,3 hallamado la atención sobre la imagen de “la mujer ventanera" que propuso la escritoraespañola Carmen Martín Gaite (1925-2000): “El recuadro liberador de una ventana paraque la mujer pueda alzar de vez en cuando los ojos a ella y descansar de sus tareas osoñar con el mundo que se ve a lo lejos es una referencia constante tanto en pinturacomo en literatura” (1993: p.134). Los términos de voyeuse/flâneuse definen a AliciaD’Amico, quien tornó femeninos los voyeurs/flâneurs típicos de la constitución de lacultura visual moderna.

6 El tomar la calle, ese espacio que históricamente ha sido refractario a la presencia

femenina, es un aspecto compartido por sus ensayos fotográficos, como Buenos Aires,


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Buenos Aires (1968), realizado junto a la fotógrafa Sara Facio (1932) con textos de JulioCortázar (1914-1984). Pero, allí, los protagonistas casi excluyentes son los varones: elloscaminan y habitan la ciudad. En Podría ser yo (1987), las imágenes son otras.Experimento radical en muchos sentidos, Podría ser yo fue proyecto peculiar para unafotógrafa del campo de las “bellas artes”, atravesado por ciertos cánones compositivosy técnicos. La cámara no es aquí meramente herramienta de “documentación”. Es unaherramienta de concientización sobre todo para quienes son fotografiadxs. En losdiálogos sobre las fotografías, auténtico foco de Podría ser yo, se repite el tema delreconocimiento: “Te costó verte en las fotos, ¿no? Sí, un poco. No tanto si es así comouno vive, ¿qué va a hacer?’”, afirma una de las entrevistadas (p. 18).

7 La fotografía torna visible algo para todxs y D’Amico entendía este proceso. En el taller

Autorretrato, realizado junto a la psicóloga Graciela Sikos en septiembre de 1983precisamente en Lugar de mujer, D’Amico había emprendido una investigación sobre laimagen femenina y la necesidad de recuperar la propia imaginación. En palabras de lafotógrafa, publicadas en la revista alfonsina: “Para llegar a la creación de la propiaimagen, un trabajo corporal previo permite a las mujeres distenderse percibirse,buscarse. (...) Asumen la responsabilidad total de decidir el momento en que les seantomadas las fotos. Mi parte consiste en interpretarlas y no traicionarlas. El autorretratoes luego evaluado, criticado, comentado en una segunda reunión” (1984: p. 8).4 En lugarde repetir la relación tradicional entre musa y artista, la colaboración de Autorretratos

sugiere una horizontalidad que desdibuja los roles prefijados por las normas del arte.Los (autor)retratos que D’Amico y sus colaboradoras no son bellos o halagadores, segúnlas formas que tradicionalmente han asumido estas imágenes.

8 Y, sin embargo, lo feminista en D’Amico excedió lo meramente iconográfico. El proceso,

abierto y ambiguo, despojaba de certezas el hecho simple de apretar el disparador. Elmodernismo cuidado de sus primeras fotografías se disuelve en un cuestionamiento delorden establecido aun en la estructuración del medio fotográfico. La fotografía es elcatalizador de repasos personales, que son también colectivos. Como el de la mujerdespeinada de Podría ser yo, que mira los pliegues de su piel y los rulos de su pelo con elorgullo del camino recorrido (p. 32). La mirada afectiva se entronca con la militancia yel compromiso indiscutibles de la fotógrafa.

9 Las vidas de las mujeres se hallan en las imágenes y en las palabras. El trabajo

doméstico es una de las “mil maneras de ganarse la vida” (p. 41). El encuentrofulgurante entre imagen y palabra desarma la naturalidad de la “empleada doméstica”y llama la atención sobre quién permite el ocio y/o el desarrollo profesional de lasmujeres privilegiadas (pp. 50 y 51).

10 Jelin y Vila reflexionan en “¿Veinte años no es nada?”, ya en el volumen de ensayos, en

la ceguera frente al trabajo femenino extradoméstico: “En el mundo del trabajador(obrero, hombre) no hay lugar para el trabajo femenino de ninguna especie” (p. 46).Solo cuando lxs investigadorxs hicieron una pregunta explícita a sus “investigadxs” ental sentido recibieron magras pistas de la actividad laboral dentro y fuera del hogarllevada a cabo por las mujeres. El tiempo de las mujeres de los sectores populares sefragmenta, se divide y se pulveriza hasta perderse. “El ocio es de los otros” se afirma enPodría ser yo (p. 205). Las mujeres tienen doble jornada.

11 En sus reveladores “Puntos de partida”, Agustina Triquell enuncia un asunto clave:

Podría ser yo no es un libro, como Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires o Humanario [dos fotolibrosrealizados por D’Amico y Facio entre 1968 y 1976], que haya sido incluido en


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investigaciones recientes sobre el fotolibro en Latinoamérica: “Es que en definitiva estees un libro difícil de encasillar y es en esta dificultad, en esta incomodidadclasificatoria, donde reside su mayor potencial estético político y donde también secimienta nuestro interés por esta reedición” (p. 14).

12 Como espectadorxs, nos perdemos de ver, de disfrutar y de ser afectadxs por muchas

obras porque son de mano femenina. Este hecho lamentable comienza a ser subsanadocon investigaciones de base que revelan la creatividad femenina en diversas latitudes ycronologías. A medida que nuestro conocimiento avanza, sentimos una emancipaciónestética y política, como ha mantenido con acierto Andrea Giunta (2018). El campo delarte, de lo que merece ser considerado tal, se altera. La incorporación y difusión decorpora amplios de trabajos de mujeres artistas (y de otros grupos desplazados delcanon) es imprescindible.

13 En un momento de sus reflexiones, Jelin se refiere a un archivo “guardado en la

privacidad de mi estudio” (p 86): las fotos y los materiales de Podría ser yo. Lainvestigadora quiebra, en este punto crucial, con la lógica académica: abre y muestrasus papeles, sus imágenes y sus recuerdos. Los integra y los entrega a un grupo deinvestigadorxs. Por su lado, Sergio Caggiano, en la larga entrevista incluida a Jelin yVila en el libro de ensayos, explica: “Cuando doy clases con el libro lamento no tenermuchos ejemplares o que las fotocopias no puedan ser de calidad” (p. 102).

14 Ambas reflexiones, de maestra y discípulo, dan cuenta de una misma intención y de una

misma preocupación. Si realmente creemos que la difusión y la publicidad de lasaventuras creativas de las mujeres valen la pena y que deben ser conocidas yreconocidas para alterar un orden simbólico, es necesario pensar críticamente en tornoa los archivos y su acceso. Muchxs hemos visto la privatización de los archivos o sucierre, en pos de investigaciones individuales e individualistas. Celebrar la reedición dePodría ser yo, y la elaboración de agudos estudios en torno al proyecto, implica repudiarlas prácticas de oclusión de los archivos, sobre todo de los femeninos. Los documentosdel archivo de Alicia D’Amico de acceso público son pocos. Entre ellos, se halla unacarta, dirigida a la revista feminista Woman of Power, que publicó en 1987 unas imágenesy una semblanza de la artista. Allí, D’Amico se refería sus imágenes de lesbianas:“Pienso que las minorías son sencillamente eso: minorías que forman parte de un todoy que hacen a la totalidad de la especie humana. No se conoce existencia humana sindiversidad y esa es precisamente su riqueza. La pluralidad de opciones forma parte dela democracia.”

15 También forma parte de este ideal democrático el acceso a la información y a la

imaginación de D’Amico. Muy frecuentemente, les historiadores del arte lamentanamargamente el borramiento de tal o cual artista. Esas cesuras de la memoria sereparan con generosidad y apertura de los archivos, que no son cotos de caza sinomáquinas de sentidos colectivos. “La revisión, el acto de mirar hacia atrás, de mirar conojos frescos, de ingresar a un texto antiguo con una nueva dirección crítica, es para lasmujeres más que un capítulo en la historia cultural: es un acto de supervivencia”,sentenciaba Adrienne Rich en 1972 (p. 18). Celebramos que nos permitan nuevamentever este proyecto único.


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BIBLIOGRAFÍA

Alonso, R. (2017), “In Praise of Indiscipline”, en Andrea Giunta y Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Radical

Women. Latin American art, 1960-1985, New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, pp. 220-227.

D’Amico, A. (1984), “Cómo somos”, alfonsina, 12 de enero.

Giunta, A. (2018), Feminismo y arte latinoamericano: Historias de artistas que emanciparon el cuerpo,

Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI.

Martín Gaite, C. (1993), Desde la ventana: enfoque femenino de la literatura española, Madrid, Espasa-

Calpe.

Rich, A. (1972) “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision”, en College English Vol. 34, No. 1,

pp. 18-30.

Trasforini, M. A. (2009), Bajo el signo de las artistas. Mujeres, profesiones de arte y modernidad,

València, Universitat de València.

NOTAS

1. Véase Alonso (2017: p. 224-225).

2. Después del retorno de la democracia a la Argentina en 1983, comenzó un proceso de

reconstrucción de los lazos políticos y afectivos entre feministas. Los grupos feministas

retomaron los objetivos sostenidos antes del golpe cívico-militar de 1976.

3. Véanse los detalles del proyecto en su página web: https://www.tamaragarciaiglesias.com/el-

cuerpo-de-la-mujer-sin-sombra. Consulta: 10 de enero de 2020.

4. La revista feminista alfonsina también fue el lugar de expresión de otros debates y

problemáticas. La fotógrafa e historiadora de la fotografía Sara Facio en “Mujeres y cámaras”,

publicado en el número 9 de la revista, trazaba una genealogía de la creatividad de las mujeres en

el campo de la fotografía periodística, mediante el rescate de la memoria de Margaret Bourke-

White (1904-1971) y Lisl Steiner (1927). La notable Facio continuaría su camino de visibilización

de la historia, profunda y variopinta, de las mujeres en la fotografía a través de diversas

investigaciones.

AUTOR

GEORGINA G. GLUZMAN

Georgina G. Gluzman es doctora en Historia del Arte por la Universidad de Buenos Aires e

investigadora del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Se desempeña com

profesora de la Universidad de San Andrés, donde dicta seminarios de arte argentino y estudios

de género. Es autora del libro Trazos invisibles. Mujeres artistas en Buenos Aires (1890-1923) (Biblos,

2016). CONICET-UNSAM.


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https://www.tamaragarciaiglesias.com/el-cuerpo-de-la-mujer-sin-sombra




Varia


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De Europa a América: la obra criticade Marta Traba y sus evoluciones Elsa Crousier

Introduction

1 Marta Traba, crítica de arte argentino-colombiana (1923-1983), es un personaje central

de la teoría y la historia del arte latinoamericano. Podemos destacar en su obra dosperíodos críticos: entre 1945 y los años 1960, adopta un punto de vista eurocéntrico,que toma como referencia el arte moderno europeo o “internacional”; pero a partir delos años 1960-65, dándose cuenta del peligro que representa la internacionalización delas artes latinoamericanas, empieza a reivindicar un arte moderno latinoamericano,que refleje o respete las identidades culturales regionales1.

2 El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la evolución de la crítica de arte de Marta Traba,

porque las diferentes teorías que defendió entre los años 1945 y 1980 sonrepresentativas de los puntos de contacto y divergencia entre las escenas del artemoderno latino-americano de aquella época. Veremos entonces en qué medida sepuede vincular esta evolución teórica particular con la definición del arte moderno enAmérica latina a lo largo del siglo XX.

I. Primer período crítico de Marta Traba: entre 1945 y los años 1960

3 La primera etapa del pensamiento crítico de Marta Traba se caracteriza por una

defensa activa – en América latina y más específicamente en Colombia –, de un artemoderno que siga las tendencias y los movimientos artísticos internacionales y sobretodo europeos2. Esta postura es debida a su trayectoria: estudiante de Letras en BuenosAires, su formación en Historia del Arte es esencialmente autodidacta3, y Europa(Francia e Italia) la fascina. Sus primeros artículos publicados entre 1945 y 1946 revelansu interés por lo que ella considera como un “modelo”4: en su texto “El salón de laAsociación Estímulo”, de 1946, evoca un “retraso” de las artes latinoamericanas, yconsidera que el arte europeo es la referencia, el modelo a seguir5. A partir de 1947,


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participa, como secretaria de Jorge Romero Brest, en las publicaciones de la revista Ver

y Estimar6. Las orientaciones del famoso crítico de arte argentino, claramenteeurocéntricas, confirman las de Marta Traba7.

4 Para continuar su formación, se traslada a Europa en 1948, primero a Italia (tres meses),

y luego a París (un poco más de un año, durante el cual asiste a clases en l’École desHautes Études de la Sorbona y en l’École du Louvre). Marta Traba regresa a BuenosAires en 1950 con Alberto Zalamea, periodista colombiano, para dar a luz a su primerhijo, y vuelven a Italia juntos en 1953, durante un año (en el cual asiste a clases deVenturi y Argan).

5 Cuando Marta Traba llega a Francia, como muchos intelectuales latinoamericanos, en

los años 1940-1950, ha idealizado la ciudad de París, por diferentes razones, como sumodernidad intelectual, la libertad de las mujeres (llega en 1949, año de la publicaciónde El segundo sexo de Simone de Beauvoir), pero sobre todo por su producción artística,en particular de arte contemporáneo.

6 Debe esta fascinación a su formación universitaria en Buenos Aires, como explica la

crítica de arte Victoria Verlichak: “[…] ir a París era una suerte de rito de pasaje, degraduación, existía tal cosa como un antes y un después de París en la vida profesional ycreativa de artistas, escritores, músicos” (Verlichak, 2001: p. 96). Tal admiración porEuropa en la creación artística latinoamericana tiene consecuencias directas en lavisión que tienen los artistas de América latina. La experiencia del filósofo EnriqueDussel es relevante: explica que, en las formaciones que recibían los latinoamericanosen los años 1950, Europa era la norma y deformaba por consiguiente la percepción quetenían de sí mismos: « Para nosotros no había en Argentina de esa época ninguna dudade que éramos parte de la “cultura occidental” »8. También explica que al alejarse deAmérica latina “descubrió” que era latinoamericano. Es esta imposición de una culturaeuropea de la modernidad la que dio origen al tópico de un “retraso” latinoamericano.

7 Es finalmente con este aprendizaje y esta cultura que viene a instalarse en Colombia en

septiembre de 1954 con la familia de su marido. A partir de su llegada, se integra en lavida intelectual bogotana y allí difunde su concepción del arte moderno, en una épocaen que el arte moderno “internacional” era desconocido y a veces rechazado enColombia. Como ejemplo, podemos mencionar el debate que opone en 1969 a MartaTraba y el educador Agustín Nieto Caballero: él, figura destacada de la culturacolombiana, afirmaba que Picasso era “un estafador y que cualquier niño podía pintarsus cuadros” (Serrato Ramírez, 2013). Esa actitud explica las intervenciones a vecespolémicas de Marta Traba en varios debates de la época9, cuya consecuencia fue, comodice Sol Astrid Giraldo E., que “Marta no se inventó el arte moderno colombiano pero ledio un lugar” (Giraldo E., 1998). Ella difunde entonces en Colombia la obra de losartistas europeos y norteamericanos más reconocidos, y da visibilidad a los artistasmodernos colombianos.

8 En cuanto a sus teorías, Marta Traba explica que la recepción del arte moderno

internacional por los artistas colombianos no debe consistir en una mera imitación delas obras, de los códigos estéticos o del estilo de otros artistas10, sino más bien eninspirarse en sus modelos teóricos y en los ideales que vieron nacer sus obras. Así, elarte moderno latinoamericano debe, según ella, construirse como un arte de alcance“internacional”, en el cual predominen la independencia del artista y la autonomía dellenguaje plástico con respecto a su lugar de creación y su contexto socio-político. MartaTraba quiere, de este modo, que emerja una conciencia de la modernidad en Colombia –


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que no es, en aquella época, una modernidad latinoamericanista –, y afirma: « No creoque haya un “arte colombiano”, sino un arte que se realiza en Colombia » (Traba, Díaz,1963: p. 1).

9 Al darles visibilidad, Marta Traba contribuye al reconocimiento por parte del público de

artistas que consideramos hoy como los mayores representantes de la modernidadcolombiana: Alejandro Obregón, Fernando Botero, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, EdgarNegret, y muchos más.

10 Si es reconocida como la crítica de arte que le da un lugar al arte moderno en Colombia,

es gracias a una presencia mediática global: presenta programas de historia del arte apartir de 195411, publica artículos en revistas y periódicos a partir de 195512, da clases envarias universidades de Bogotá13 y publica ensayos a partir de 1958. En los años 1960, elfin de la dictadura de Gustavo Rojas Pinilla le permite desarrollar aún más susactividades universitarias y funda el Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá en 196214.

11 El primer ensayo que publica, El museo vacío, se construye a partir de referencias

europeas (empieza por la famosa cita de Valéry sobre la crítica de arte). En este ensayo,desarrolla dos teorías de la historia del arte radicalmente distintas y se pregunta cómopuede utilizarlas para analizar el arte moderno. Se trata de las teorías de WilhemWorringer y Benedetto Croce. Su visión del arte moderno se acerca más a las teorías deCroce: la creación artística como producto individual y universal, en la cual lo que másimporta es la personalidad del artista. El arte no es otra manera de trasmitir nociones ovalores que podemos trasmitir de otra manera. Por otro lado, Worringer es famoso porsus esquemas espirituales-históricos: el hombre primitivo, el hombre gótico…, quetambién le interesan. Esta tentativa por considerar las dos teorías podría estarinfluenciada por las clases de Francastel, que considera que Croce “n’a retenu qu’unedes faces du problème. L’œuvre ne se situe pas simplement par rapport à la pensée d’unindividu, mais comme une communication de cette pensée à un entourage”15.

12 Estas dos tendencias guían a Marta Traba durante los primeros años, como afirma en su

ensayo. Más generalmente, trata de definir el arte moderno teniendo en cuenta losconceptos teóricos y filosóficos de su época (Bergson por ejemplo).

13 Aquí volviendo a la escena artística colombiana, la valoración de los artistas nacionales

“modernos” por parte de Marta Traba viene asociada a un rechazo violento delfolklorismo y del arte político o que lleva un “mensaje” (Traba, 1957: p. 5). Su discurso“occidentalista” 16y su vehemencia, llevaron gran parte de la crítica ulterior a oponerseradicalmente a sus teorías, sin tener en cuenta la clara evolución de su visión crítica apartir de los años 1965 (por ejemplo en: Jaramillo, 2012). Esa nueva orientación teóricade Marta Traba es, paradójicamente, más conocida en los otros países latinoamericanosque en Colombia, donde sobre todo se la recuerda por su primera etapa teórica17.

II. Segunda orientación crítica de Marta Traba: entre los años 1960 y

1980

14 Entre 1960 y 1966, Marta Traba va desarrollando paulatinamente la idea de que las

grandes potencias europeas y norteamericanas amenazan la expresión artísticalatinoamericana por su presencia en la escena artística del subcontinente y, porconsiguiente, Latinoamérica corre el riesgo, retomando las palabras de AdolfoColombres, de “terminar en un anodino apéndice de Occidente” (Colombres, 1995:


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p. 201). Entonces, Marta Traba descentra progresivamente su discurso teórico parapensar el arte moderno desde Latinoamérica.

15 Podemos vislumbrar este cambio a partir de 1961, ya que Juan Acha declara sobre su

ensayo La pintura nueva en Latinoamérica (1961): “por primera vez se enfocó el arte denuestros países como totalidad y con un espíritu latinoamericanista […] con unaconciencia ávida de reconocer su identidad cultural mediante la búsqueda desoluciones a los problemas artísticos y sensitivos que nos son comunes” (Acha, 1994:p. 55). Es el inicio de una reflexión que la lleva a considerar las mutaciones artísticas enel subcontinente teniendo en cuenta su contexto socio-cultural, y no solo desde unpunto de vista estrictamente estético o artístico18.

16 Tal descentramiento corresponde al contexto de la Revolución cubana – Marta Traba

viaja a Cuba en 1966, donde recibe el Premio Casa de las Américas por su primeranovela Las ceremonias del verano19 –, al boom literario latinoamericano, y a sudescubrimiento de las obras marxistas (en particular las teorías de Marcuse). Tambiénse debe al progresivo desarrollo y maduración en sus escritos de la idea de que el artelatinoamericano pierde su identidad al imitar los modelos europeos y norteamericanos.

17 Tal cambio de punto de vista viene acompañado por la progresiva constitución de un

verdadero marco teórico a partir de principios de los años 1970, una construcción en lacual es probable que su encuentro con Ángel Rama en 1966 haya desempeñado un papeldecisivo.

18 En su discurso, se puede observar la importancia de la sociología del arte de Francastel :

observamos su influencia en el primer periodo de sus escritos, pero también, de otramanera, en este segundo periodo. Lo que la interesa en esta parte de sus ensayos es lasociología del arte, en su sentido más amplio, o sea el hecho de considerar el arte comoun reflejo de la sociedad en la que nace.

19 Cuando no encuentra herramientas teóricas en historia del arte para describir ciertos

fenómenos plásticos, también recurre a la crítica literaria que adapta a las artesplásticas: encontramos a menudo en sus ensayos citas de Roland Barthes (como cuandoretoma su categoría de “hombre estructural” para describir la relación del sujetocreador con su obra en los cuadros de Gerzo, y los conceptos de descomposición yrecomposición), Tzvetan Todorov, Maurice Blanchot, etc.

20 Sin embargo, si sigue utilizando algunos análisis de pensadores europeos (sobre todo

Francastel y Marcuse), lo hace considerándolos como utillaje adaptable dentro delmovimiento de los Estudios Culturales latinoamericanos: sus teorías se acercanentonces a las de Ángel Rama, Antonio Cornejo Polar y Enrique Dussel, grandespensadores de la identidad latinoamericana de los años 1960-1980. Así es como MartaTraba se inscribe en esta corriente de investigación sobre las Identidades Culturales delsubcontinente.

21 Dentro de las diferentes etapas de las teorías sobre las identidades culturales

latinoamericanas, según la clasificación de Eduardo Mendieta, podemos ubicar a MartaTraba en el latinoamericanismo post-revolución cubana (tercera etapa en suclasificación), iniciado y teorizado por los intelectuales latinoamericanos (como DarcyRibeiro, Orlando Fals Borda, Augusto Salazar Bondy o Gustavo Gutiérrez), y no por otrospaíses con intención “imperialista”. Este latinoamericanismo de los años 1960-1980 seestructura alrededor de un pensamiento de la emancipación que puede aparecer bajo la


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forma de una “Filosofía de la Liberación”20 antiimperialista (desarrollada en particularpor Enrique Dussel).

22 Por otra parte, la crítica de Marta Traba se ubica en un contexto cultural muy preciso,

descrito por Antonio Cornejo Polar (Cornejo Polar, 2011: pp. 5-7), entre tres coyunturascentrales: la primera, la serie de cambios socio-políticos de los años 1960, laefervescencia social y cultural; la segunda, la preocupación creciente por la identidadnacional o latinoamericana en el discurso de los intelectuales; y la tercera, lareivindicación de una pluralidad heteróclita que definiría la sociedad y la cultura delsubcontinente. En ese contexto, podemos vincular las teorías sobre historia del arte deMarta Traba con las de Rama y de Cornejo Polar sobre la literatura, porque el primeropropone una adaptación del concepto de “transculturación” de Fernando Ortiz (Rama,1987) y el segundo desarrolla el concepto de “heterogeneidad cultural” (Cornejo Polar,2011).

23 Si, con su ensayo La pintura nueva en Latinoamérica (1961), Marta Traba empieza a

recentrar su interés en el subcontinente latinoamericano – ya que se trata de una de lasprimeras historias del arte latinoamericano21 – es en sus escritos de los años 1970 en loscuales desarrolla su nuevo marco teórico “resistente”, Arte latinoamericano actual (1972)y Dos décadas vulnerables en las artes plásticas latinoamericanas (1973)22. Sigue defendiendoun arte moderno en América latina, pero en esos escritos hace hincapié en los peligrosdel “imperialismo” cultural extranjero : así, declara que París y luego Nueva York “hanservido a un proyecto imperialista destinado a descalificar las provincias culturales y aunificar productos artísticos en un conjunto engañosamente homogéneo que tiende afundar una cultura planetaria, nuestra existencia artística ni siquiera se plantea comouna probabilidad” (Traba, 1975).

24 La influencia europea se convierte, en el discurso de Marta Traba, en una forma de

“dominación cultural francesa y europea”, que asfixia a Latinoamérica que “no hasuperado el estado colonial” (Traba, 1972 : p. 13). Europa era en efecto un modelodominante hasta los años 1920 (Traba, 1994: pp. 1-11; Bayón, 1980: pp. 5-33), época en lacual los pintores europeos venían a América para difundir su estilo académico (porejemplo el pintor francés Raymond Monvoisin o el alemán Ernesto Kirchbach), o dirigirlas Academias de Bellas Artes. Marta Traba les reprocha a los artistas latinoamericanosde los años 1960 el hecho de que sigan sometiéndose a ese antiguo modelo y a esoscánones artísticos al irse a formarse a Europa23.

25 Pero su denuncia más virulenta la hace en contra de la “colonización” o “satelización”

artística llevada a cabo por Estados Unidos, que sucede a la de Europa en elsubcontinente. En efecto, en su ensayo más famoso, Dos décadas vulnerables…, MartaTraba denuncia la llegada del pop art a América latina en los años 1960-1970, que no esun estilo o una estética (Traba, 2005: p. 143), sino “la imposición de sistemas decivilización […] típica de los imperialismos” (Traba, 2005: p. 63), ya que, según ella, setrata de un sistema cultural global, que representa una sociedad de consumo, industrialy tecnológica, y que no corresponde, en aquella época, a la situación socioeconómica deAmérica latina. En su análisis, explica que el pop art vehicula, por los medios masivos decomunicación, la ideología tecnocrática y consumista de esta “sociedad opresora”24.Recurre a una metáfora o un esquema lingüístico para subrayar, desde esta perspectiva,la diferencia entre la influencia del arte europeo, un “signo” susceptible de ser re-semantizado por los que lo utilizan – podemos hablar de una readaptación local deesquemas exteriores –, y la “dominación imperialista” (Traba, 2005: p. 61) del arte


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norteamericano, que emite “señales” de comunicación “un mero indicador mecánico,pauperizado, capacitado para marcar un camino a seguir pero impotente para abrir elcomplejo meollo de una estructura de sentido como es el lenguaje” (Traba, 2005:p. 64)25.

26 Al contrario, las obras de los artistas latinoamericanos deben, según ella, inspirarse en

la sociedad y el espacio en los cuales son creadas. No se trata solamente de representarun tema latinoamericano (objetos, personas o lugares), sino que también hay que elegirun “medium” en armonía con la sociedad que lo ve nacer – el “medium”, conceptodesarrollado por Hans Belting, designa los medios históricamente determinados paracrear imágenes26. Según Traba, entonces, la emancipación los artistas latinoamericanosestá vinculada con la elaboración de un “medium” que les sea propio, elaborando oadaptando estilos y formas nuevos o del exterior. Como decía José Carlos Mariátegui en1928, hablando de literatura: “Al poeta no le basta traer un mensaje nuevo. Necesitatraer una técnica y un lenguaje nuevo también” (Mariátegui, 2005: p. 276). Talelaboración de artes nuevas, a la vez modernas y latinoamericanas, permitiría aAmérica latina protegerse del imperialismo artístico. Éstos son los fundamentos de la“teoría de la resistencia” de Marta Traba, que construye a partir de las propuestasestéticas existentes que adaptan y subvierten los modelos dominantes, y vuelven atener, de este modo, la capacidad de comunicar con la sociedad que los ve nacer(Crousier, 2015: pp. 209-220).

27 En su ensayo Dos décadas vulnerables… Marta Traba trata de compilar las diferentes

formas de resistencia artística en el subcontinente bajo la forma de un panoramageneral, siendo consciente de la diversidad de las propuestas estéticas de los artistas27.Entre los artistas “resistentes” cuya obra analiza, analizaremos la obra de tres pintorescolombianos. El primero es Alejandro Obregón, y en particular su serie de cuadrostitulados Torocóndor. En estas obras el artista por un lado inventa y desarrolla su propioestilo pictórico: con colores que se organizan alrededor de grandes núcleos y luego sediluyen; y por otro lado representa una fiesta tradicional andina, que consiste enreproducir metafóricamente el combate entre España y América atando un cóndor a untoro para que se enfrenten en un combate sangriento. Otros artistas, como FernandoBotero, subvierten en su obra las influencias norteamericanas o europeas, o adoptan unestilo radicalmente opuesto. El pintor colombiano se inscribe en contra de la estéticaplana del póster, dando un volumen y unas dimensiones desmesurados a lo querepresenta, e incluso cuando reproduce obras maestras europeas, se aparta de losoriginales y les imprime su propia visión, deformándolos (como en Monalisa, 1977).Asimismo, Beatriz Sarlo, reproduce obras de Vermeer con colores vivos sobre objetos omuebles de la vida cotidiana, quitándoles su atmósfera solemne y dándoles una nuevafunción, la de los objetos en los que pinta. En 1964, propone varias adaptaciones delcuadro La encajera (1669-1671): Encajera almanaque Pielroja, Encajera en la noche de la

rendición de Breda, Un busto para la encajera del imperio, Encajera mona, Encajera en la playa;y en 1973, realiza un montaje bajo la forma de una pintura de esmalte en una cesta demimbre, Encajera in situ. Ésos solo son unos pocos ejemplos entre la multitud depintores cuya obra analiza Marta Traba.

28 Entre las estrategias de resistencia, terminaremos evocando otro tipo de ejemplo,

sacado de una novela de Marta Traba, que muestra una equivalencia literaria a susteorías de crítica de arte – cabe señalar, más generalmente, que observamos muchasinfluencias de sus consideraciones sobre las artes plásticas en su literatura, y su


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evolución temática es paralela28. El siguiente fragmento de la novela La jugada del sexto

día (1970) ilustra, en literatura, una posible estrategia de resistencia pictórica de losartistas latinoamericanos: una apropiación literaria de los cuadros de Vermeer, unaforma de transculturación.

– Muchos de mis cuentos giran sobre el mismo tema […] un tema que me obsesiona ;la transformación que sufre un cuadro a medida que lo mira el coleccionista. […] eldueño del paisaje, o de la escena flamenca, o lo que sea, comienza a ver operarse enellos los cambios más extraños ; siempre son terribles. […]– ¿ Por qué esa saña especialmente contra los cuadros ? – dijo Aldo.– Hemos aprendido que hay patrimonios – contestó Pablo encendiendo uncigarrillo –. Quiero decir, en otras partes hay patrimonios. Nosotros no lostenemos ; no tenemos nada. Tal vez sea una venganza. Quizás el deseo de mostrarque no hay nada estable, nada perdurable. Por eso descompongo lo que lógicamenteno es susceptible de descomposición : las cosas.[…] Lo que pasa en los cuadros de mis cuentos es irrefrenable ; un cuadro deVermeer, por ejemplo, se va llenando de gente, hasta que destruyen a la solitariaprotagonista. Puede ser que la devoren. (Traba, 1970.1: pp. 129-130)

29 Este fragmento revela que uno de los objetivos de Marta Traba, en su práctica

recurrente de la ékfrasis, podría ser el mismo que el de Pablo: apropiarse de unpatrimonio, no para destruirlo, sino para hacerlo suyo, por medio de una serie detransculturaciones. Además, el joven evoca el acto de antropofagia en su descripción,que evidentemente remite al movimiento antropófago brasileño, que consiste en“tragar” el legado europeo para apropiarse de él; asimismo, menciona la posibilidad deuna apropiación de las obras por su “digestión”.

30 Esta alusión metaliteraria a la técnica de la composición literaria de Marta Traba está

directamente vinculada con sus escritos de crítica de arte, como acabamos de ver en laobra de Beatriz González. También puede hacernos pensar en los cuadros del pintorperuano Herman Braun-Vega, que desvía y subvierte permanentemente obras maestraseuropeas o norteamericanas, al mezclar diferentes cuadros entre sí, o, como en estacita, al añadir unos personajes y al cambiar el contexto de algunas obras: es el caso, porejemplo de Buenos días Vermeer, también titulado Norte-Sur, de 1981, en la que se apropiadel cuadro Mujer con una jarra de agua (alrededor de 1662), para ambientarlo en uncontexto latinoamericano.

31 Para terminar con la segunda orientación de Marta Traba, en aquella época, después de

haber viajado por toda América latina, también hace el inventario de las diferentestendencias artísticas del subcontinente en los años 1960-1970 (Traba, 2005:pp. 158-204), bajo la forma de una cartografía: describe, por una parte, los países o lascapitales que desean asimilar los modelos de arte moderno difundidos por los polosoccidentales, que califica de “áreas abiertas” (Traba, 2005: pp. 158). Se trata de zonasque conocen un importante desarrollo económico y, por consiguiente, numerososintercambios con el extranjero, tales como Argentina (pero sobre todo Buenos Aires),Caracas o São Paolo. Por otra parte, califica de “áreas cerradas” (Traba, 2005: pp. 185)los lugares o países donde la tradición sigue teniendo un peso importante, y cuyosintercambios con el extranjero son más limitados (como el Perú, Colombia, etc.). Enestas zonas, la conciencia de la identidad cultural está vinculada con estascaracterísticas. Según Marta Traba, es en estas áreas cerradas donde los artistaselaboran las estrategias de resistencia más variadas.

32 En cada área, la crítica pone de realce y explica las obras vinculándolas con la identidad

regional. Analiza por ejemplo la obra de Szyszlo en el Perú, Cuevas y Toledo en México,


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Jacobo Borges y Carlos Prada en Venezuela, Abularach en Venezuela, HermenegildoSábat y Roberto Aizemberg en Buenos Aires…

33 Sin embargo, pese a este cambio radical de posición crítica en cuanto a las artes

latinoamericanas, nunca abandona a los artistas europeos, ya que sigue publicandoartículos y ensayos sobre los que le causaron impresión, en particular En el umbral del

arte moderno, en 1973.

Conclusión

34 Le evolución del pensamiento crítico de Marta Traba es compleja. Por una parte, se

trata de una reconsideración del contexto de producción de las artes latinoamericanas:ya no solamente busca despertar y estimular un arte latinoamericano moderno, sinoinscribir la cuestión estética en la actualidad social y cultural, para pensarla comoseparada o distinta de las culturas extranjeras. Pero por otra parte, estareconsideración viene acompañada de un cambio de escala, desde el arte colombianohasta problemáticas más generales que se plantean en el subcontinente en su conjunto,y que supone por parte de Marta Traba, frente a tal heterogeneidad de las arteslatinoamericanas, un considerable esfuerzo de síntesis conceptual.

35 Esta doble evolución, de la cual Marta Traba es consciente (como lo muestra su

desacuerdo con Jorge Romero Brest a partir de 197029 y el hecho de que haya criticado,en su artículo “Arrar en tierra” de 1974 (Traba, 1974: pp. 6-10), sus propias primerasteorías eurocéntricas e internacionalistas), no es una renuncia: no se trata de rechazarlos modelos artísticos europeos y su tradición estética, sino de desprenderse de unmecanismo de imitación. En este sentido, las alusiones a Europa en la obra trabiana sonambivalentes, entre el apego que expresa continuamente por obras, artistas, teorías ylugares de referencia, y el deseo de autonomía que se encuentra en el centro de susteorías culturales. Por eso podemos ver en el conjunto de la obra trabiana y en suevolución una síntesis de los principales debates sobre la definición del arte modernoen América latina y, en su cartografía, un primer intento por explicar los puntos decontacto y divergencia entre las diferentes escenas del arte latinoamericano de suépoca.

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NOTES

1. Sobre este tema y la bibliografía correspondiente, véase la síntesis de Florencia Bazzano-

Nelson (BAZZANO-NELSON, 2005).

2. Retomamos aquí las conclusiones del doctorado de Florencia Bazzano-Nelson. Su análisis se

centra en la crítica de Marta Traba redactada entre 1945 y 1959, en las revistas y los periódicos

colombianos El Tiempo, Mito, Plástica y Prisma (BAZZANO-NELSON, 2000).

3. Cursa una carrera de letras porque en aquella época no existía una facultad de Historia del

arte, y se gradúa en 1944.

4. Estos artículos son: “En el aniversario del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes” y “El Salón de la

Asociación Estímulo” (TRABA, 1945 y TRABA, 1945).


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5. “Un salón como el que nos toca comentar significa retardo” (TRABA, 1946: pp. 30-31).

6. Marta Traba trabaja con Jorge Romero Brest durante casi un año. Deja su puesto cuando se va a

Europa, en octubre de 1948, pero sigue siendo miembro de la asociación “Ver y Estimar” hasta

noviembre de 1953, fecha de la última publicación de la revista Ver y Estimar ( VERLICHAK, 2001:

pp. 76-77).

7. Jorge Romero Brest afirma, sobre Marta Traba: “Ella decía, muy generosamente, que había sido

mi discípula, pero en verdad, más que una discípula fue una colaboradora eficientísima cuando a

consecuencia del primer curso fundé la revista Ver y Estimar, de la que fue secretaria de

redacción” (ROMERO BREST, 1984: p. 8).

8. Añade: “La filosofía que estudiábamos partía de los griegos a quienes veíamos como nuestros

orígenes más remotos”, para mostrar el eurocentrismo en su formación académica y la exclusión

de una filosofía latinoamericana. (DUSSEL, 2004: p. 1).

9. Otros debates famosos caracterizan la crítica de Marta Traba, como el que la opone a Gonzalo

Ariza en 1958, y es, de alguna manera, una anticipación de la famosa oposición entre Julio

Cortázar y José María Arguedas. (BAZZANO-NELSON, 2000 : pp. 473-515).

10. Cita la famosa frase de André Malraux (Les conquérants): “No hay genio copista, no hay genio

servil”, en el artículo “El genio anti-servil” (ARAÚJO DE VALLEJO, 1984: pp. 149-150).

11. Marta Traba presenta varios programas televisivos de historia del arte, sobre todo entre 1954

y 1958, como lo muestra Nicolás Gómez Echeverri. En 1954: “La rosa de los vientos”; en 1954 y

1955: “El museo imaginario”; en 1955: “Una visita a los museos” y “El ABC del arte”; en 1957:

“Cursos de Historia del arte” y “Ciclo de conferencias”; en 1959: “Viaje alrededor del arte”; et en

1966: “Puntos de vista” (programa suspendido en septiembre de 1966 por razones políticas).

Otras difusiones tienen lugar ulteriormente. En 1983, Marta Traba vuelve a grabar un programa

de Historia del arte para la televisión colombiana, “Historia del arte moderno contada desde

Bogotá”, difundido en 1984, de modo póstumo (GÓMEZ ECHEVERRI, 2008: pp. 19-29). Sobre esta

temática, véase también el ensayo de Florencia Bazzano-Nelson (BAZZANO-NELSON, 2010: pp. 12‑56).

12. En los años 1950, principalmente en El Tiempo, Plástica et Mito, como lo muestra Florencia

Bazzano-Nelson en su doctorado. Marta Traba también crea su propia revista de arte (durante el

año 1957) – Prisma – que se inspira a la vez en Ver y Estimar y en Plástica. Ricardo Rodríguez

Morales afirma, sobre las revistas Plástica y Prisma: “desempeñaron en su momento un papel

importante en la afirmación de un movimiento artístico y estético de verdad contundentes”

(RODRÍGUEZ MORALES, 2000).

13. En Bogotá, en la Universidad de América, la Universidad de Los Andes y la Universidad

Nacional.

14. Sobre el contexto de Colombia en los años 1960, véase: “Marta Traba, la transgresión”

(PIZARRO, 2002: pp. 7-16); y sobre el Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (ZEA, 1994).

15. Observaciones publicadas posteriormente en 1965, en La réalité figurative.

16. En el sentido en el cual lo emplea Walter Mignolo, el “occidentalismo” es una forma de

colonialidad del saber.

17. Porque en aquella época vivía en Bogotá donde tenía una influencia directa sobre la vida

artística del país.

18. Véase el ensayo de Efrén Giraldo que, si bien no separa tanto las dos etapas del pensamiento

crítico de Marta Taba, ofrece un buen análisis de esta segunda etapa (GIRALDO, 2007: p. 98).

19. Publica varios artículos y presenta una conferencia sobre Cuba ese mismo año, en los que

aprueba los resultados de la Revolución cubana, y admira las artes y la arquitectura del país

(TRABA, 1966).

20. La “Filosofía de la Liberación” aparece en los años 1970, y su objetivo es definir una identidad

latinoamericana que se base en la realidad local del subcontinente. Si bien se trata de una

definición filosófica que busca descentrar los discursos producidos sobre América latina, también


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es política, porque, para Enrique Dussel, la Filosofía de la Liberación está pensada desde el

oprimido latinoamericano (DUSSEL, 2010: pp. 37-46).

21. Se suele considerar que este ensayo de Marta Traba es la primera historia del arte

latinoamericano, como lo afirma Gerardo Mosquera: “Marta Traba published the first book to

approach Latin American art in a global manner, attempting to give the subject some conceptual

unity” (MOSQUERA, 1995: p. 10). Sin embargo, antes, Ángel Guido había publicado en 1944

Redescubrimiento de América en el arte, y en 1945 Felipe Cossio del Pomar había redactado unos

capítulos sobre arte latinoamericano en La rebelión de los pintores: ensayo para una sociología del arte.

22. También observamos esta nueva orientación teórica en los ensayos dedicados a la obra de

unos artistas precisos (a menudo colombianos), como Los muebles de Beatriz González (1977), Los

grabados de Roda (1977), Elogio de la locura (1986)…

23. En La pintura nueva en Latinoamérica, habla de una “sumisión vergonzosa” de esos artistas,

porque “Los colonialismos […] parten de los colonos y no de los colonialistas” (TRABA, 1961: p. 43).

24. Retoma las teorías de Marcuse (El hombre unidimensional y Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical

Inquiry into Freud).

25. Marta Traba utiliza aquí la definición de Umberto Eco (ECO, 1968: véase en particular el

capítulo 5, “Estructura del mal gusto”).

26. Se trata de los “mediums” por los cuales las imágenes toman forma y aparecen (cuadros,

películas, herramientas…); incluimos el estilo de los artistas en este concepto, ya que es una de

las maneras de darles forma a las imágenes (BELTING, 2004: p. 7).

27. Hubo pocos movimientos colectivos de artistas latinoamericanos; entre ellos, cabe señalar el

muralismo mexicano, el movimiento antropófago brasileño o la Escuela del Sur de Torres García

en Uruguay (GIUNTA, 1995: pp. 53-67).

28. No podemos explicar aquí la totalidad de la evolución temática y geográfica de sus novelas,

desde Europa hasta América latina, pero es interesante señalar que, en ellas, la autora pone en

escena a unos personajes que paulatinamente dejan de ser fascinados por la ciudad de París (Los

laberintos insolados, 1967), hasta transformar el “París era una fiesta” (que cita en Las ceremonias

del verano, 1966), en “Santiago era una fiesta” (en Conversación al sur, 1981), haciendo del Chile de

Salvador Allende un nuevo centro, ya que fue allí donde se intentó forjar una alternativa política,

social y también cultural.

29. Porque “las experimentaciones del Di Tella excluían cualquier relación entre la obra, el país y

el continente” (TRABA, 1970.2).

RÉSUMÉS

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la evolución de la crítica de arte de Marta Traba (crítica de

arte argentino-colombiana, 1923-1983), porque las diferentes teorías que defendió entre los años

1945 y 1980 son representativas de los puntos de contacto y divergencia entre las escenas del arte

latino-americano de su época.

Se trata de un estudio centrado en un caso específico, que reúne las dos principales tendencias

teóricas del momento y refleja la evolución del pensamiento crítico latinoamericano entre 1945 y

1980.

Marta Traba es un personaje central de la teoría y la historia del arte latinoamericano, y podemos

destacar en su obra dos períodos críticos. Primero, entre 1945 y los años 1960, Marta Traba


233

adopta un punto de vista eurocéntrico, que toma como referencia el arte moderno europeo; pero

a partir de los años 1960-65, dándose cuenta del peligro que representa la internacionalización de

las artes latinoamericanas, empieza a defender un arte moderno latinoamericano, que refleje o

respete las identidades culturales regionales.

Mostraremos en este artículo en qué medida se puede vincular esta evolución teórica con la

definición del arte moderno en América latina a lo largo del siglo XX..

This article discusses the importance of the production and thinking

INDEX

Mots-clés : Marta Traba, crítica de arte, Argentina, Colombia, historia del arte latinoamericano.


234

Diego Rivera et Élie Faure :Contributions du peintre à lacritique française des arts duMexique ancien María Isabel Quintana Marín

Introduction

1 En 1918, vers la fin de la Grande Guerre, Diego Rivera et Élie Faure se rencontrent. À

cette époque, le peintre mexicain a déjà rompu avec le cubisme. Entre 1913 et 1917, ilavait fait des tableaux cubistes après s’être intéressé pour un temps au néo-impressionnisme, puis étudié le Greco et Cézanne lors d’une période précubiste.Cependant, de sérieuses confrontations théoriques avec ses confrères s’étaient soldéespar un changement de voie le menant de retour à la figuration.

2 Cette rencontre est marquante tant pour le peintre mexicain que pour l’historien de

l’art français. Rentré au Mexique en 1921, Diego Rivera reconnaît en Élie Faure l’un deses « maîtres»1. En effet, il y a dans son approche artistique des échos d’Élie Faure ausujet de l’ordre social, de la fonction de l’art, de l’architecture en tant quemanifestation de l’âme collective et lieu d’intégration populaire et artistique2. ÉlieFaure, lui, se dit redevable à Rivera d’une découverte du Mexique où il se rend en 1931afin d’étudier les civilisations précortésiennes3. « Si je suis venu au Mexique c’est grâceà Diego qui m’a initié il y a quinze ans dans mes sympathies pour le Mexique », déclare-t-il4.

3 Pourtant, avant leurs échanges, Élie Faure s’était déjà intéressé à ce pays ; il avait publié

des pages sur ses arts anciens en s’attardant sur les Aztèques dans le deuxième volumede son Histoire de l’art consacré à l’art médiéval en 19115. Pourquoi parler donc d’uneinitiation auprès de Rivera, et ignorer cette publication témoignant d’un certainnombre de recherches effectuées, de certaines connaissances acquises et transmises surl’histoire et les arts du Mexique ancien ? Cette omission volontaire soulève des


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questions à propos d’un revirement critique concernant ses anciennes recherches,d’une découverte particulière du passé artistique mexicain issue de sa rencontre avecRivera dont les premières appréciations écrites sur l’art précortésien – tout au moinsconnues au moment de la rédaction du présent article – datent de 1916. En quoi, quandet dans quelles circonstances Rivera lui aurait-il apporté en ce domaine un nouveauregard ?

4 Des éléments de réponse à cette question seront abordés par une approche évolutive de

la période comprise entre 1911 – année de publication de l’Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval,

mais aussi de l’installation de Rivera à Paris - et 1931 quand Élie Faure fait sesdéclarations au Mexique. Tout d’abord, l’analyse des premiers textes d’Élie Faure et deDiego Rivera sur l’art précortésien s’impose. L’intention étant d’identifier des sourceset d’observer en quoi leurs positions se différencient ou se rapprochent avant leurrencontre. Ensuite, leur période d’échanges en France sera traitée afin de déterminerdans quel contexte ils ont lieu, à quel type de discours de Rivera sur l’art précortésienFaure a-t-il pu se trouver exposé et avec quelle intensité, et à quel degré le critiqued’art a pu les adopter à cette époque. Enfin, il sera possible de suivre la progression dela pensée de Faure entre 1921 et 1931, tout en identifiant de possibles consonancesthéoriques avec le peintre, des moments d’échanges ou de transmission.

Deux visions des arts du Mexique ancien

5 Élie Faure écrit quelques pages sur l’art mexicain dans son Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval

de 1911. N’étant jamais allé au Mexique, il se sert de sources scientifiques pour sedocumenter. Pour son texte, il fait recours à l’archéologue et homme de lettres AugusteGénin, domicilié au Mexique. Faure lui demande des informations et lit ses Poèmes

Aztèques écrits entre 1884 et 1889 et publiés en 1890. Les illustrations proviennent engrand nombre de Briquet, certainement Alfred Briquet, photographe à Mexico6. Ilutilise aussi des clichés de la maison Giraudon et de C.-B. White, sans doute CharlesBetts Waite, photographe états-unien actif au Mexique avant la Révolution.

6 Auguste Génin écrit en poésie l’histoire des Aztèques en quatre parties – les Légendes,

les Mexis, la Conquête, les Ruines -, tout en soulignant la base scientifique de sontravail7. Pour préparer à la lecture de ses poèmes, l’auteur retrace en prose l’histoiredes Aztèques dans son avant-propos. Il remonte aux origines du peuplement ducontinent en supposant l’entrée par l’Amérique du Nord de vagues migratoiressuccessives qui retrouvent des races autochtones, primitives8. Descendues vers le Sud,les différentes migrations qui se déroulent au cours des siècles – entre autres, lesOtomis, les Mayas, les Zapotèques, les Toltèques - laissent des traces architecturales qui« attestent l’existence d’une civilisation préhistorique originale et parvenue à unehaute perfection »9. Avec les Chichimèques et les Aztèques, héritiers des Toltèques,« commencent les temps historiques »10. Bien qu’il décrive les Aztèques comme ayant« un caractère ombrageux et jaloux ; ambitieux et braves à l’excès »11, il affirme que« leur cruauté a été considérablement exagérée par certains historiens »12. Génins’interroge avec Prescott sur « quel était le plus sauvage du vainqueur et du vaincu »13,et il adhère aux affirmations de Bartolomé de las Casas qui entend certains récitseffrayants à propos des Aztèques comme des « évaluations de brigands » colonisateurscherchant à justifier leurs propres actes de barbarie14. Les Aztèques « n’étaient pas desbarbares », affirme Génin. Ils avaient une religion « sanguinaire » et étaient cruels dans


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la guerre, « mais ils avaient fait pourtant de notables progrès dans la voie de lacivilisation »15. Il admire leur vie domestique, leur législation, leur amour de la poésie,leur peinture, leur sculpture ; « ils étaient parvenus à un incroyable degré de perfectiondans les arts mécaniques et surtout dans la science astronomique », écrit-il16.

7 Dans Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval, Élie Faure se rapproche de Génin dans certains

aspects, mais il s’en éloigne à propos de l’art. Faure mentionne un possible déplacementvers le territoire mexicain de peuples conquérants – Toltèques, Chichimèques,Aztèques –, entrés dans le continent probablement par l’Amérique du Nord17. Cespeuples rencontrent des Inöits18 et des Indiens nomades, groupements étudiés par ÉlieReclus dans Les Primitifs. Les flux se succèdent et la rencontre des nouveaux arrivés avecceux qui les ont précédés crée des synthèses artistiques. Cependant, ces peuplesconquérants vivaient un « trouble ardent ». Connaisseurs de l’astronomie et de lanature, adorateurs du soleil en tant que générateur de vie, ils devaient pourtant couvrirles murs des temples de sang humain19. Contrairement à Auguste Génin, Élie Fauresouligne la sauvagerie des Aztèques qui héritent des Toltèques « l’art, le culte du soleil,la soif du sang », et dont les dieux ont besoin de « cadavres frais »20. Ainsi, en décrivantl’environnement à Tenochtitlan, il se figure des « flots de sang », « des amas de têtescoupées », « une horrible buée rouge »21.

8 Cette perception des Aztèques détermine la lecture qu’Élie Faure effectue de leur art en

se demandant :

« Du fond de cette horrible buée rouge qui montait de partout, prenait à la gorge,faisait rouler dans les veines un poison nauséeux, voilait le souvenir, commentl’âme énervée et découragée des peuples eût-elle pu saisir ou même entrevoir unpossible équilibre et dégager des formes qui l’environnaient ces grandes lois de lastructure vivante d’où sortit, par l’Égypte et la Grèce, la civilisation ? »22.

9 Pour Élie Faure, l’Égypte ancienne et la Grèce antique, tout comme le Moyen-âge

français qui dresse des cathédrales, représentent de grandes époques d’association etde rayonnement artistique. L’unité spirituelle qui leur est propre suscite la recherchedes structures dans l’art et l’éclosion d’une architecture reflétant l’ordre social. L’art deces civilisations exprime la synthèse, l’harmonie et l’équilibre, l’unité de leurs sociétés.Au Moyen-âge, le peintre, le tailleur de pierre, les guildes d’artisans travaillant au cœurde la cathédrale française cherchent ces qualités et expriment leur esprit constructif ence qu’ils ont à réaliser. L’Inde et la Chine connaissent aussi cette splendeur artistique.Ce n’est visiblement pas le cas à Tenochtitlan où les bas-reliefs des murailles, sirichement décorés qu’ils pouvaient l’être, « disparaissaient sous le sang » ; où « unevapeur d’abattoir masquait les idoles » ; où « la tradition de la matière sculptée nepouvait se transmettre à des générations mutilées »23. Leur sculpture laisse percevoirun certain souci de « symétrie essentielle », dit Faure, mais « non seulement ils nepouvaient pas dépasser, mais ils ne pouvaient pas atteindre l’étape architecturale del’évolution de l’esprit »24. Ainsi écrit-il :

« Ce n’est qu’une vague apparence qui a fait comparer les idoles de pierre que leursoutils de bronze dégageaient peu à peu du bloc aux purs colosses égyptiens dont lesplans se répondent, s’amènent l’un l’autre et se balancent comme le flot des sableset des mers. »25

10 Le critique d’art explique davantage la cause de cet art inabouti des Aztèques en raison

de « leur destin épouvantable [qui] les avertit qu’ils n’auront pas le temps d’étudier lesens de la forme, de s’élever dans l’abstraction, de parvenir à la notion d’harmonie. »26


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Cette conscience d’un si court avenir face au panorama terrifiant laissé par lessacrifices, se traduit sur le plan formel :

« En hâte, ils disent ce qu’ils ont à dire, des visions confuses et violentes, brèves,morcelées, un cauchemar pesant de tristesse et de cruauté. Même quand ils élèventdes statues entières, quand ils abandonnent pour un jour leurs combinaisonshiéroglyphiques de figures géométriques et de formes animées, on dirait à leurfaçon d’articuler les membres et d’architecturer les masses, qu’ils n’ont jamais vuque des troncs mutilés, des membres épars, des crânes scalpés, des faces écorchéesaux orbites vides, où claque le rictus des dents. La vie n’est là que par tronçons,coupée comme elle est dans leur âme, n’ayant que des tressaillements courts, figéepar le dogme et la peur. »27

11 L’historien de l’art affirme que tous les morceaux de corps vus, les Aztèques les

« combinent en formes confuses, vaguement architecturées » dans leurs statues28. Ilillustre la quête d’une certaine « symétrie essentielle » en décrivant une sculpturereprésentant un dieu « accroupi » sur un « socle ornementé », « les yeux caves au ciel »,qu’il identifie à Tlaloc. Il s’agit en réalité de Xochipilli, ces lignes mettant en évidencedes imprécisions quant à la connaissance d’Élie Faure de la mythologie aztèque. Sous lareproduction photographique de l’idole, la légende identifie également la sculpture au« dieu de l’eau ». Il reste à savoir si cette information erronée ne lui a pas été transmisepar le fournisseur du cliché, Alfred Briquet.

12 Élie Faure avait publié un extrait de son Histoire de l’art : l’Art médiéval dans la revue L’Art

et les artistes29 que le Journal amusant commentait de cette manière : « Élie Faure, dont onconnaît le talent de philosophe d’Art, nous entretient des prodigieuses et effrayantesconceptions esthétiques des Aztèques. »30 C’est l’impression que laisse ce texte nourri derécits sur la sauvagerie des Aztèques et d’informations obtenues par des intermédiairesqui font le pont entre le Mexique et le critique d’art qui n’y a jamais mis les pieds.

13 Cette année de 1911, Diego Rivera s’installe à Paris. Il est difficile de savoir si le peintre

a l’occasion de feuilleter ce numéro de l’Art et les artistes, tout comme il est difficile desavoir s’il lit l’Histoire de l’art : l’Art médiéval dès sa publication. Il n’y a pas pour l’instantde trace connue attestant de quelque intérêt particulier de Rivera pour l’artpréhispanique à cette époque-là. En revanche, dans les années qui suivent, Diego Riverarejoint les peintres cubistes qui, eux, s’intéressent aux arts nègres et aux grandescivilisations comme l’Égypte, ces modèles artistiques atteignant pour eux la« quatrième dimension » qu’ils désirent exprimer en peinture. Guillaume Apollinaireexplique cette quête des peintres nouveaux. Ils cherchent certes la géométrie qui est« aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est à l’art de l’écrivain »31. Cependant, au-delàde la géométrie euclidienne, ils souhaitent exprimer de « nouvelles mesures possiblesde l’étendu » : c’est la « quatrième dimension »32. Celle-ci est la « dimension de l’infini »,une « mesure de la perfection » qui donne aux objets « les proportions qu’ils méritentdans l’œuvre »33. Cette mesure, dit-il, « permet à l’artiste peintre de donner à l’objet desproportions conformes au degré de plasticité où il souhaite l’amener »34. PourApollinaire, les artistes apportant aux hommes une idée sublime de l’univers, les jeunespeintres « s’éloignent de plus en plus de l’ancien art des illusions d’optique et desproportions locales pour exprimer la grandeur des formes métaphysiques »35. C’estainsi qu’Apollinaire associe le cubisme au « grand art », à « l’Art religieux »36. Picasso,Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Marie Laurencin et Juan Gris, dit Apollinaire, éliminentl’« accident visuel et anecdotique » pour exprimer la « réalité essentielle […] rendueavec une grande pureté »37. Cézanne, ayant exploré la « réalité profonde », est placé en


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précurseur de ce procédé par Gleizes et Metzinger dans Du « Cubisme »38. Apollinaireécrit que cette démarche explique la prédilection des peintres nouveaux pour certainesexpressions artistiques : « […] cette imagination : la quatrième dimension, n’a été que lamanifestation des aspirations, des inquiétudes d’un grand nombre de jeunes artistesregardant les sculptures égyptiennes, nègres et océaniennes, méditant les ouvrages descience, attendant un art sublime […] »39.

14 Or, Rivera transpose ces principes aux arts anciens de son pays, comme le prouve un

texte adressé en 1916 à Marius de Zayas. Ce dernier expose quelques-unes de sesœuvres dans sa galerie newyorkaise cette année-là. Après quelques lignes sur letraitement cézannien de la forme en toute indépendance de l’ « accident perçu »,Rivera fait écho aux idées d’Apollinaire : « Dans l’espace plastique les choses ont unedimension supra-physique, qui s’accroît ou diminue en relation directe avecl’importance que son existence a dans l’esprit du peintre »40. Il cite comme exemple laperspective hiérarchique des primitifs italiens. Il prône la pureté de la forme, de lacouleur et de la matière, la « forme pure » comme offrant « une vision spirituelle del’univers ». Il affirme que le peintre doit confronter « l’existence des choses dansl’espace réel, visuel et physique ; et leur existence dans l’espace réel, supra-physique etspirituel »41, la forme, la couleur et la matière devant être traitées indépendamment del’accident visuel, en respectant leur pureté. Un tel traitement a lieu, dit-il, « dans lespeintures de Giotto, de Cézanne, du Greco, de Zurbarán, de Velázquez ou dans l’artoriental et surtout, dans la sculpture mexicaine et nègre »42.

15 Diego Rivera affichait un certain intérêt pour intégrer dans son œuvre les apports

esthétiques de son pays avant même que la guerre n’éclate, quand des lignes coloréesdans ses tableaux s’inspiraient du sarape. Puis, lors de son séjour en Espagne entre 1914et 1915, il a été sans doute affirmé dans sa démarche. À Madrid, le Mexique en pleinerévolution a dû être au cœur de ses entretiens avec Alfonso Reyes, Ángel Zárraga, JesúsT. Acevedo et Martín Luis Guzmán. C’est en 1915 que voit le jour La Querella de México,

un opuscule où Guzmán dénonce « l’absence du sentiment et de l’idée de Patrie » chezles dirigeants et les partis mexicains43. Il estime nécessaire une éducation d’ordremoral, spirituel, afin que le pays parvienne à résoudre « le problème de son existencenormale en tant que peuple organisé »44. Cette même année, Reyes rédige Visión de

Anáhuac (1519). Dans ce récit qui ne nie pas l’existence à Tenochtitlan des « têtes demort exposées » et des « témoins abominables des sacrifices » qui font « fuir le soldatchrétien »45, Reyes privilégie le moment où les Conquistadors découvrent les Aztèquesmenant une vie harmonieuse au milieu d’une nature généreuse ; un peuple aux mœursraffinés, organisé en guildes d’artisans, créatif, aimant la poésie et les fleurs, riche enmoyens artistiques et avec une importante architecture publique : des temples, desmarchés et des palais46. Il dépeint une ville structurée, conçue géométralement, où « lesédifices se regroupent en masses cubiques »47, et « [les] rues rayonnants [prolongent]les arêtes de la pyramide »48. Reyes ne condamne pas pour autant la rencontre avecl’Europe d’un regard nostalgique, il ne prétend pas à des « perpétuations absurdes de latradition indigène », pas plus qu’à des « perpétuations de la [tradition] espagnole » ;mais il invoque « la communauté de l’effort pour dominer [la] nature sauvage et rude »,ainsi que la « communauté, beaucoup plus profonde, de l’émotion devant le même objetnaturel », qui relient les Mexicains à la race du passé49. Il faut, suggère-t-il dans sonrécit, « l’œuvre de l’action commune » et « l’œuvre de la contemplation commune »50.


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16 Il n’est pas étonnant que Rivera, après avoir nourri son âme mexicaine dans cet

environnement, rentre à Paris plus qu’engagé dans une sorte de « mexicanisme »pictural. Il introduit encore des éléments allusifs au Mexique dans son Portrait de Martín

Luis Guzmán et surtout dans El Guerrillero o Paisaje zapatista, choix qui choque la grandemajorité de ses pairs dérangés par son « exotisme »51. Seul Picasso aurait salué sadémarche au départ, faisant changer favorablement les avis de la plupart d’entre eux52.Bien des années après, Rivera affirme avoir peint El Guerrillero dans un « étatd’esprit mexicain » et poursuivi de façon intuitive la « tradition de l’art mexicaind’avant la conquête » dans ses tableaux de l’époque53. Il dit également avoir développépleinement son « exotisme » ou « coefficient mexicain » en 191654.

17 Ainsi, avant leur rencontre, Élie Faure et Diego Rivera construisent des visions très

différentes sur l’art précortésien. Faure, qui analyse surtout l’art des Aztèques,confirme à travers ses observations la sauvagerie rattachée à ce peuple et une détressemorale. Rivera pour sa part, idéalise l’ancienne sculpture mexicaine en l’associant auxparadigmes artistiques des peintres cubistes.

Diego Rivera et le Mexique dans le milieu artistique etintellectuel parisien

18 Nous pouvons désormais nous attarder sur la circulation des idées de Rivera dans le

milieu parisien et les possibles appropriations pour la part d’Élie Faure entre 1918 et1921. Il est judicieux néanmoins de revenir un peu en arrière pour voir quelle placeoccupe le Mexicain dans la vie parisienne et quel genre de raisonnement il partage.

19 Au moment de sa rencontre avec Élie Faure, Diego Rivera était déjà une personnalité

marquante dans le milieu intellectuel et artistique où il s’était donné de faire découvrirson pays. Le peintre, qu’Ilya Ehrenbourg dit avoir rencontré en 1913, se faisaitremarquer à La Rotonde pour sa taille imposante, mais aussi car « il agitait un bâtonmexicain sculpté »55. « Il était de ces gens qui n’entrent pas dans une pièce, mais laremplissent tout de suite de leur présence », se souvient Ehrenbourg56. Son bâtonsculpté a dû sans doute suscité des conversations sur le Mexique avec les nombreuxhabitués du café57. Le poète russe rapporte la nature de leurs conversations : « Diego meparlait du Mexique, et moi je lui parlais de la Russie » 58. Il offre des détails sur lecontenu des causeries de Rivera :

« Diego aimait parler du Mexique, de son enfance. Il vivait depuis dix ans à Paris,[…], mais il avait toujours devant les yeux les montagnes rousses couvertes decactus, les paysans coiffés de larges chapeaux de paille, les mines d’or deGuanajuato, les révolutions incessantes : Madero renverse Dias [sic], Huerta reverseMadero, les partisans de Zapata et de Villa renversent Huerta.En écoutant Diego, je me mis à aimer le mystérieux Mexique ; les sculptures desAztèques se fondaient avec les partisans de Zapata »59.

20 Ilya Ehrenbourg transcrit les idées d’une conversation qu’il date de début 1917,

entamée un soir à La Rotonde avec Rivera, Boris Savinkov, Max Volochine, le modèleMargot et Modigliani, et qui se poursuit chez ce dernier avec en plus Fernand Léger etPavel Lapinski60. La chronologie d’Ehrenbourg est douteuse quant à la présence de MaxVolochine et de Fernand Léger à Paris début 1917 ; l’année 1916 serait plus probable.Retenons néanmoins les idées échangées lors de cette discussion. Ils causaient « sur laguerre, sur l’avenir, sur l’art ». Léger pensait à une reconstruction des territoires


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détruits qui solliciterait des ouvriers, des ingénieurs, des techniciens ; l’art s’inspireraitalors du travail, de la technique, du sport et de la science. C’était un avenir devantlequel Ehrenbourg ne se montrait pas optimiste : « Je déteste les machines », disait-il.Léger croyait à un réveil populaire, idée que Lapinski confirmait en supposant unproche dénouement dans lequel les socialistes pourraient intervenir réagissant contrele capitalisme destructeur. Pour Léger, l’art devrait suivre ce mouvement populaire. « Ilfaut une approche nouvelle » affirmait-il, « l’Art survivra s’il devine le langage de notreépoque »61. Le moment était arrivé pour que Rivera intervienne. Il confirmait ladécadence de l’art à Paris et prenait parti pour un art du peuple et pour le peuple, touten soulevant la sensibilité artistique des révolutionnaires mexicains et l’exempled’action collective laissé par les Aztèques :

« Paris meurt, l’art meurt, disait Rivera. Les paysans de Zapata n’ont jamais vuaucune machine, mais ils sont cent fois plus modernes que Poincaré. Je suispersuadé que si on leur montre notre peinture, ils comprendront. Qui a construitles cathédrales gothiques ou les temples aztèques ? Tout le monde. Et pour tout lemonde. »62

21 Rivera mettait en relief ensuite l’apport salutaire de l’art des « barbares » et des

« sauvages » à l’art actuel. « L’art doit avaler une gorgée de barbarie, affirmait-il. Lasculpture nègre a sauvé Picasso. Vous irez tous bientôt au Congo ou au Pérou. Il vousfaut passer par l’école de la sauvagerie »63. Le Mexicain éclairait Ehrenbourg au sujet deson désespoir face à l’avenir dépeint par Léger : « Ilya, tu es pessimiste, parce que tu estrop civilisé. […]. Tu es Européen, c’est là ton malheur. L’Europe agonise. LesAméricains, les Asiatiques, les Africains vont venir… »64

22 Ehrenbourg dresse le portrait d’un Rivera engagé dans une valorisation de son pays,

convaincu, d’une part, de la sensibilité esthétique des Aztèques et des populationspaysannes du Mexique actuel, et, d’autre part, du potentiel révolutionnaire, tantpolitique qu’esthétique, de ces populations. Rivera fait ressortir chez les Aztèques unmode de fonctionnement collectif qui donne lieu à des réalisations à dimension socialecomme le temple. Puis, il met en relief les facultés esthétiques des révolutionnaires deZapata qui les rendent capables de comprendre la peinture cubiste. Reliant le présentau passé, il inclut les Aztèques et les paysans de Zapata dans cette « école de lasauvagerie » qu’il faut suivre, les associant à l’art nègre qui a « sauvé Picasso ». C’estcette « gorgée de barbarie » qu’il croit nécessaire à l’art. Ehrenbourg présente Rivera entrain de renverser des jugements de valeur ; de souligner les facultés du monde extra-européen à donner des leçons en matière d’art et de civilisation ; de mettre en exerguedes qualités sociales et esthétiques chez des peuples soi-disant « non civilisés » car noneuropéens.

23 C’est en 1918 que Diego Rivera situe sa rencontre avec Élie Faure65 et c’est à cette date

qu’ils apparaissent en contact. Rivera peint le portrait de Faure en tenue militaire –rentré du front, il n’est pas encore démobilisé ; ce dernier collabore avec l’exposition deRivera et d’autres peintres retournés à la figuration qui se tient chez Eugène Blot entreoctobre et novembre. Quelques lignes de l’essai d’Élie Faure sur Paul Cézanne sontcitées dans le catalogue à manière d’avant-propos66. Rivera, bien qu’ayant quitté lecubisme, se revendique de Cézanne, de l’instinct qui conduit à la recherche desstructures, ce qu’Élie Faure admire et défend chez le Maître d’Aix qui annonce, selonlui, une nouvelle génération d’artistes bâtisseurs au cœur d’un nouvel ordre social.Faure s’entend très bien avec celui qu’il surnomme l’ « Aztèque »67. En 1933, il rappelleà Rivera combien sa rencontre a été décisive :


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« Nous avons une communion de pensée que je pense complète. C’est une grandejoie pour moi. Tu ne sauras jamais quel événement capital fut cette rencontre avectoi il y a douze ans. Tu étais le poète du Nouveau Monde surgissant soudainementdevant mes yeux depuis l’inconnu. J’ai ressenti en te connaissant et en tecomprenant une sensation inouïe de délivrance… »68

24 Bien que la chronologie d’Élie Faure s’avère imprécise quant à l’année où ils font

connaissance, cet extrait témoigne de l’empathie commune qu’ils éprouvent. Avantd’entrer en contact, le peintre mexicain et le critique d’art français ont déjà des idéespolitiques qui les rapprochent et des visions artistiques qu’ils y associent. En effet, leursmanières de considérer la dimension sociale de l’art et de concevoir l’architecture decréation et à usage collectifs s’apparentent. Par surcroît, Ehrenbourg présente Riveraen train d’évoquer l’exemple de la cathédrale dans le contexte d’une conversation quipressentit l’avènement d’un mouvement populaire socialiste changeant l’ordre social etartistique. Or, Élie Faure conçoit la Commune et la cathédrale comme des modèles pourl’instauration d’un nouvel ordre social collectif fédéré par les organisationscorporatives et syndicales. Pour Faure, la cathédrale est issue d’une émancipationpopulaire. Ainsi, ils ont tous les deux des conceptions politiquement révolutionnaires etvisionnaires du passé médiéval69.

25 Cependant, auprès de Diego Rivera, Élie Faure entend parler du Mexique comme jamais

auparavant : « Il me contait sur le Mexique, où il était né, des choses extravagantes.Mythologue, me disais-je, peut-être mythomane », se souvient-il70. En ce qui concernela passé artistique mexicain, Faure se retrouve face à des opinions différentes à lasienne. Tout d’abord, à cette compréhension du passé aztèque à l’image du passémédiéval ; à cette mise en parallèle entre le temple aztèque et la cathédrale pourdémontrer la puissance collective. Quand Faure affirme qu’ « il n’y a pas d’architecturemonumentale sans cohésion sociale » et qu’il voit l’art actuel « [obéir] à un obscurbesoin de subordination à quelque tâche collective », Rivera se dit que c’est « ce qu’ [ila] vu dans les fresques italiennes et dans l’art du Mexique pré-colombien [sic] »71. Puis,Faure apprend d’autres lectures esthétiques sur l’art précortésien. À l’époque de leurséchanges parisiens, Rivera se trouve très engagé dans ses interprétations modernes del’art préhispanique, comme en témoigne David Alfaro Siqueiros. Ce dernier arrive enEurope en 1919, après avoir participé à la Révolution dans les files de l’arméeconstitutionaliste à côté des paysans, des ouvriers, des indiens du Mexique. Siqueirosraconte qu’au contact du peuple, des tempéraments, de la géographie, de l’archéologieet de l’art du Mexique, de ses arts populaires et de toutes ses manifestations culturelles,lui et d’autres artistes avaient compris que « l’art avait eu un grand rôle social danstoutes les périodes importantes de l’histoire »72. C’est imprégné de cette pensée qu’ilaffirme être parti pour l’Europe et avoir rejoint Rivera :

« Ainsi se fit la rencontre entre la nouvelle ferveur et les nouvelles idées des jeunespeintres mexicains qui avaient participé directement aux luttes armées de larévolution mexicaine, représentées par moi, et une période extrêmementimportante de la révolution formelle dans les arts plastiques d’Europe, représentéepar Rivera. »73

26 En mai 1921, Siqueiros publie à Barcelone le fruit de leurs échanges dans « 3

llamamientos de orientación actual a los pintores y escultores de la nueva generaciónamericana », article paru dans le seul numéro de la revue Vida americana. Dans ce texteinspiré des principes cézanniens, il invite les artistes à réaliser un art universel dans un« esprit constructif » qui vise l’équilibre et les formes essentielles, « la structuregéométrale » obtenue par les « grandes masses primaires : cubes, cônes, sphères,


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cylindres, pyramides » qui composent « le squelette de toute architecture plastique »74.À ces fins, il convoque à une observation du passé précolombien :

« La compréhension de l’admirable fond humain de l’ "art nègre", et de l’art"primitif " en général a donné claire et profonde orientation aux arts plastiques[…] ; rapprochons-nous pour notre part, des œuvres des anciens habitants de nosvallées les peintres et sculpteurs indiens (MAYAS, AZTÈQUES, INCAS, etc., etc.) ;[…]. »75

27 Siqueiros préconise l’adoption de leur « énergie synthétique » et de la « vigueur

constructive de leurs œuvres » qui relèvent d’une observation de la nature76. Cetteinspiration du passé doit dialoguer avec un regard sur le présent, sur les villesmodernes et les productions techniques qui suscitent des « émotions plastiques »77. Ilreconnaît ce manifeste comme étant une combinaison des idées rapportées par lui duMexique et de celles de Rivera correspondant au « mouvement rénovateur du Parisd’alors »78.

28 Faisant échos à certaines de ces conceptions, Élie Faure parvient à souligner des valeurs

esthétiques dans l’art aztèque, bien que moins catégoriquement. Ses propos de 1911 setrouvent nuancés, voire révisés, dans son édition augmentée de l’Histoire de l’art : l’art

médiéval de 1921 où il modifie certaines phrases et rajoute des paragraphes. Toutd’abord, il reconnaît une certaine présence de lois dans l’art aztèque, quoique pas« tout à fait » saisies. Il écrit alors :

« Du fond de cette horrible buée rouge qui montait de partout, prenait à la gorge,faisait rouler dans les veines un poison nauséeux, voilait le souvenir, commentl’âme énervée et découragée des peuples eût-elle pu tout à fait dégager des formesqui l’environnaient ces grandes lois de la structure vivante d’où sortit, par l’Égypteet la Grèce, la civilisation de l’Occident ? »79

29 Puis, le critique d’art trouve un critère de comparaison avec les œuvres de l’Égypte :

« C’est par l’intuition de la masse, non par l’intelligence du profil qu’on peut comparerles idoles de pierre que leurs outils de bronze dégageaient peu à peu du bloc aux purscolosses égyptiens […] », écrit-il80. Il ne s’agit plus d’une « vague apparence »trompeuse comme en 1911, mais d’une « intuition de la masse » qui rend possible cettecomparaison. En outre, il rajoute quelques lignes sur l’aspect structurel et l’équilibreobtenus grâce au « souci d’une symétrie essentielle » chez les Aztèques : « Sans douteparviennent-ils souvent ainsi, par un effort qu’on sent douloureux vers l’expression laplus tranchante, à des résumés structuraux profondément émouvants, un équilibresoudain qui arrête et assied la forme titubante avec l’énergie du désespoir même. »81 Cen’est qu’au « premier abord », dit-il désormais, que « têtes et tronçons de reptiles,crânes dénudés, doigts humains, bréchets d’oiseaux », tous ces morceaux quicomposent la sculpture, « semblent accrochés au hasard », car il y a bien une« continuité du monstre composite », différente certes de celle des figureségyptiennes82. En réalité, écrit-il, « […] une architecture sommaire, mais imposante,faisant masse sous toutes ses épaisseurs, et vue par l’ensemble vivant plus que par leplan abstrait, le ramène à l’unité organique sans qui l’œuvre s’effondrerait. »83 Enfin, cen’est plus, comme écrivait-il en 1911, « qu’ils [n’ont] pas le temps d’étudier le sens de laforme », mais « qu’ils [n’ont] pas le temps d’en approfondir le sens »84 ; et leurs statues,où ils « combinent en formes confuses des morceaux d’animaux vivants », ne sont plus« vaguement architecturées », ces deux derniers mots étant supprimés de la phrasedans la nouvelle édition.


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30 Mais Élie Faure mentionne aussi des aspects sociaux des Aztèques en concordance avec

les affirmations de Rivera. Alors que dans l’Histoire de l’art de 1921 Faure aborde desparticularités esthétiques et expressives, dans L’Arbre d’Eden, recueil d’articles impriméen août 192285, il inclut le passé mexicain dans son répertoire des grandes époquesd’association. Faure décèle chez ses contemporains, pourtant très individualistes, une« connaissance approfondie de tous ces rythmes collectifs – égyptianisme [sic],chaldéisme, hellénisme, primitif, brahmanisme, bouddhisme, christianisme, islamisme,mexicanisme – où l’individu n’apparaissait pas »86. Ce sont des époques d’une « fortesynthèse religieuse », dit-il, dont l’attrait ne fait qu’annoncer l’avènement d’unnouveau rythme collectif87.

31 Élie Faure n’est pas le seul à se laisser séduire par le passé précortésien. En 1921, l’art

du Mexique ancien se trouve légitimé à Paris en tant que source d’enseignements pourl’art moderne à l’instar des arts nègres et des œuvres des civilisations anciennes. AlbertGleizes fait référence à la fascination que cet ensemble de modèles exerce sur lesartistes. « Les grands monuments asiatiques, égyptiens, mexicains, voire les artsplastiques nègres, conseillent les jeunes artistes tandis qu’ils ne s’intéressent guère à laGrèce et à la Rome », dit-il début 1921 à l’occasion de l’exposition internationale deGenève88, à laquelle Diego Rivera participe avec des travaux de différents périodes.Gleizes explique la supériorité des époques autres que la gréco-romaine, parmi lesquelsil inclut le Mexique d’avant les Aztèques : « Les arts asiatiques, égyptiens, toltèques,musulmans se développent dans un sens d’absolu spirituel, ceux de la Grèce dans unabsolu purement matériel »89 ; alors que les premiers ont « des proportions au collectifdont l’âme unique est devenue sensible », les seconds procèdent d’une « dimension àl’individu en hypnose sur lui-même »90. Sur le rapport des premiers à la réalité, Gleizesexplique :

« L’élément réaliste n’est que le départ d’une évolution vivante, aboutissant à créerle type, suscitée par l’idée religieuse chez les asiatiques et les égyptiens. Chez lesanciens mexicains [sic] et les musulmans cet élément réaliste est tellement réduit àsa vertu d’essence, que l’idée est incorporée à des formes pures, géométriques,régies par des quantités mobiles mathématiques. »91

32 Ainsi, le regard moderne sur des sociétés et des arts anciens du Mexique parvient à se

fixer dans les mentalités au lendemain de la Grande Guerre. Sans aucun doute, DiegoRivera part après avoir joué un rôle majeur dans la construction de ce regard. ÉlieFaure, parmi d’autres, se trouve influencé par ses conceptions jusqu’à un certain degré.Mais sa vision continue à évoluer après le départ du peintre.

33

Élie Faure sur les valeurs universelles des arts précortésiens

34 Les écrits et les échanges d’Élie Faure avec le critique d’art états-unien Walter Pach

permettent de suivre sa pensée des années 1920. Walter Pach, ami de longue date ettraducteur de ses ouvrages, étudie l’art précortésien lors d’un temps passé à Mexico en1922. Dès lors, des échanges à propos du Mexique et de Rivera se mettent en place entrele critique d’art français et le critique d’art nord-américain. Ce dernier, qui avaitdécouvert l’œuvre de Rivera en 1916 dans la galerie de Marius de Zayas92, assiste auréveil artistique qui privilégie la peinture murale et s’inspire du passé préhispanique.C’est alors qu’il fait la connaissance de Rivera, Jean Charlot et d’autres peintres.


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35 Dès son arrivée à Mexico en 1921, Rivera avait déclaré vouloir étudier l’art populaire et

les ruines préhispaniques93. Il avait confirmé et diffusé auprès des artistes mexicains lespropos du texte publié par Siqueiros dans Vida americana. « Ce que l’artiste européencherche avec tant d’empressement, ici, au Mexique, se trouve manifesté surtout dansl’art national abondamment »94, affirmait-il convaincu que les artistes pourraient tirerun grand profit de l’étude de l’art maya, aztèque et toltèque95. Au Mexique, se trouvait« la plus merveilleuse architecture » et « la sculpture ancienne la plus pure etsolidement plastique au monde », une sculpture « d’ensemble » et « en bloc, parexcellence », écrivait-il pour Azulejos96. Contrairement au caractère décomposé queFaure accordait à l’ancien art aztèque en 1911, pour Rivera, si quelqu’un avait dépecé lecorps humain, c’était bien Rodin. Il reprochait aux artistes mexicains d’avoir suivil’exemple du sculpteur français par la représentation « d’étranges dépouilleshumaines », d’« hommes sans tête, qui se tordaient », de « morceaux de torse quimarchaient sur des cuisses amputées »97. Il invitait les artistes à ne pas « dépecer lecorps humain », mais à rechercher les formes essentielles : « le cylindre, le cône, lasphère », sous l’inspiration des monuments et des arts précortésiens98. C’est dans cetteatmosphère à la fois traditionaliste et avant-gardiste que Pach rencontre Rivera en1922, année du retour de Siqueiros.

36 Cette même année, le musée d’ethnographie à Paris se réaménage pour exhiber des

pièces d’art précortésien et des objets actuels d’intérêt ethnographique en provenancedu Mexique dont Auguste Génin fait don. Élie Faure n’a pas dû manquer de suivre avecbeaucoup d’intérêt cet évènement, et surtout, les avis critiques de René Verneau,directeur du musée. L’anthropologue est surtout favorable à l’art ancien, présentant lesAztèques comme ayant une civilisation plus développée que les Toltèques, avec desmonuments comparables à ceux de l’Égypte et du Annam99. Chez les zapotèques - deuxstatuettes zapotèques illustrent la dernière page de l’article -, Verneau souligne toutparticulièrement « un sens de l’effet décoratif extrêmement original » et une« stylisation des formes toute spéciale, très monumentale »100. C’est l’occasion pourGuillaume Janneau d’évoquer dans le Bulletin de la vie artistique la « Renaissance »mexicaine qui est en train de s’accomplir en expliquant : « Quelques artistes,retournant aux sources d’inspiration des ancêtres, - faut-il nommer Angel Zarraga ? –en retrouvent les grands accents »101. Selon Janneau, ils mériteraient d’être exposésaussi au Trocadéro102. De quoi nourrir le goût grandissant d’Élie Faure pour le passémexicain. Alors que la réorganisation du musée fait du bruit à Paris, Faure écrit àWalter Pach qu’il a « une admiration très grande et chaque jour accrue » pour le « vieilart mexicain ». Avec des qualificatifs qui évoquent les opinions de Verneau, Faurerajoute : « C’est l’un des plus stylisés qui soient, et des plus nettement originaux. Je neregrette qu’une chose : c’est de ne pas lui avoir donné plus de place dans mon livre. Cesera peut-être pour une autre édition »103. Il doit se rapporter à son Histoire de l’art : l’art

médiéval où il s’attarde sur des aspects esthétiques et que Pach traduit cette année-là.

37 En 1926, L’Amour de l’art publie « L’Art au Mexique. I. Les Musées », un article de Walter

Pach sur l’art du Mexique ancien tout imprégné des observations esthétiques de Rivera.

À propos des anciennes créations précortésiennes, l’auteur avertit qu’« il faut du tempspour en apprécier la gradeur »104, pour se rendre compte qu’au-delà de leur aspect« effrayant », ces œuvres s’inscrivent dans un cadre universel105. Comme chez lesChaldéens et les Égyptiens, il décèle dans une sculpture de Chalchiuhtlicue uneconscience de l’ordre cosmique qui a déterminé « ses grandes masses », « ces angles »


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et « ces plans formidables »106. Cette conscience, écrit-il, permet que « la chose vue etl’abstraction » coexistent dans l’œuvre. Puis, dans deux serpents sculptés, il identifie« des calculs mathématiques, astronomiques », le nombre d’écailles correspondant àdes chiffres en rapport avec l’univers107.

« On a écrit tant de pages sur le côté d’horreur dans l’art mexicain, écrit Pach, qu’ilme semble utile de donner encore des exemples du génie évolué, équilibré, de cetterace. Si on les accepte, ou plutôt si on reconsidère nos illustrations et pénètre leurbeauté, on sentira le côté défectueux de notre point de vue lorsqu’il est appliquémécaniquement à un peuple dont les conceptions de la vie, du temps et de l’espacesont si différentes des nôtres. »108

38 Il ne manque pas de rapprocher une urne funéraire zapotèque du cubisme puisque, dit-

il, le rythmes obtenu par « le contraste répété et conscient entre les parties solides etles vides » serait « à un degré surprenant, analogue à ceux trouvés par certains peintrescubistes »109. Chez les Aztèques, successeurs des Toltèques, rajoute Walter Pach, « uneconception du réalisme, nouvelle pour la période, commence à se manifester »,certaines de leurs œuvres, telles un Cavalier à l’aigle, comme relevant d’un « emploimagistral des plans »110.

39 Suite à la lecture de ce texte de Walter Pach, Élie Faure fait preuve d’humilité :

« J’ai lu avec une sorte d’enthousiasme votre bel article sur l’art mexicain. Commevous avez raison de mettre de côté sa férocité pour ne parler que de sa qualitéplastique. Et comme vous en parlez bien ! J’ai été jaloux de ce que vous en dites,bien que, dans mon avant-dernière édition, qui est entre vos mains, je dise un motde cette qualité plastique, mais moins fortement que vous. »111

40 Élie Faure fait à nouveau allusion à l’édition de 1921 de son Histoire de l’Art : l’Art

médiévale. Il justifie tout de même sa démarche :

« Dans une Histoire de l’Art, il est, je crois, indispensable de parler, non seulement dela vertu plastique des œuvres, mais de leur sens expressif. […]. Aussi grandioses etaccomplis au point de vue plastique les uns que les autres, l’art égyptien, l’art grec,l’art chinois, l’art khmer, l’art aztèque n’expriment pas la même chose. À part çanous sommes d’accord et votre article est admirable. »112

41 Faure revient sur les spécificités des arts des différentes civilisations dans L’Esprit des

formes paru en 1927, mais s’il mentionne à nouveau les représentations de morceaux decorps chez les Aztèques, c’est en justifiant cette caractéristique autrement que par lasauvagerie : « Les statues aztèques qui saignent, tronçons coupés, monstres compositesoù des gueules en sang, des mains pourries, de crocs et des griffes se mêlent, ne fontqu’accentuer l’expression d’attente anxieuse du dieu Tlaloc, espérant la pluie commeun pauvre homme dont le soleil a calciné le champ. »113 L’esthétique à l’image de laboucherie provoquée par des dieux assoiffés de sang dans l’Histoire de l’Art : l’Art

médiéval de 1911114 devient celle qui traduit l’état d’âme d’un dieu assoiffé d’eau dansL’Esprit des formes. Et ce dieu est à l’image des hommes. En réalité, derrière lareprésentation de Tlaloc, Faure décèle un drame humain et commun à un peuple quiattend la pluie en temps de sécheresse.

42 Mais au-delà des particularités expressives, Faure souligne un aspect qui relie l’art du

passé mexicain à celui d’autres civilisations. En Chine, aux Indes, en Égypte, l’imaged’un dieu taillé par une multitude d’hommes, « semblait jaillir d’un même cœur, êtreconçue par une même tête, réalisée par une même main » ; ce fut le cas aussi en Franceavec « la cathédrale aux mille voix » et au Mexique : « En Chine, aux Indes, comme auMexique ou en Islam, comme en Égypte, comme dans la Grèce dorienne et l’Europemédiévale, le héros est presque inconnu. »115 Le Mexique ancien se trouve bien parmi


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les périodes aux « civilisations grandioses »116. Pour Faure, « l’esprit des formes estun »117, où que l’on aille, malgré la diversité stylistique permettant de distinguer unecivilisation d’une autre. Cet esprit correspond à une quête universelle commune quidonne lieu à des « analogies surprenantes de structure, de rythme, d’accent », assurantà l’œuvre sa stabilité essentielle et l’expression de lois durables118.

« Si l’on conçoit cela, souligne-t-il, les formes les plus éloignées des apparences dela vie, - l’art aztèque, par exemple, qui est à peu près illisible au premier coup d’œilet réunit, dans ses équilibres de masses, les objets et les organes les plushétéroclites et souvent les moins définis, - deviennent immédiatement etpleinement intelligibles »119.

43 Il n’y a pas pour l’instant d’évidence matérielle – pour le moins connue au moment de

l’écriture de cet article – prouvant l’existence d’échanges entre Élie Faure et DiegoRivera sur l’art préhispanique au cours des années 1920. Ils restent tout de même encontact à cette période-là et prévoient à plusieurs reprises de se revoir avant 1927.Devenu célèbre à Mexico grâce à Rivera en 1921, Faure affirme avoir reçu une invitationdu Ministère des affaires étrangères pour s’y rendre à l’occasion du Centenaire del’Indépendance, mais ce voyage ne se concrétise pas pour des raisons financières.Invitation, mais pas d’argent. « Rivera aurait dû y veiller », se confie-t-il déçu à CharlesPéquin120. Une nouvelle tentative de retrouvailles est prévue pour la fin 1924, commel’écrit Guadalupe Marín à Faure en octobre 1923121. Octobre 1926, Élie Faure informeWalter Pach d’une nouvelle invitation reçue122, mais ce projet n’aboutit pas non plus. Ilsne se revoient qu’en 1927 quand Rivera, après avoir vu Pach à New York123, passe unejournée avec Élie Faure avant de se rendre à Moscou pour les célébrations du dixièmeanniversaire de la Révolution d’octobre124. Les causeries en tête à tête sur L’Esprit des

formes n’ont pas dû manquer. Il leur faudra attendre presque quatre ans pour seretrouver à nouveau, cette fois-ci au Mexique, où Faure se rend enfin à l’été 1931 lorsde son périple autour du monde. Son but premier, dit-il, est d’étudier les anciennescivilisations locales125. En compagnie de Rivera, le visitant français se trouve immergédans la société mexicaine et visite des lieux emblématiques du pays, bien qu’ilrencontre aussi d’autres artistes, de même que l’archéologue Porfirio Aguirre qui luiapporte certainement des connaissances. C’est à Aguirre que Faure dédicace son article« Réflexions sur l’art mexicain » qui paraît dans L’Illustration fin 1932. Il aurait prévu deretourner au Mexique en hiver pour visiter les ruines mayas126, mais ce retour n’a paslieu.

44 Élie Faure déclare avoir sur ce pays des impressions complexes, mais vis-à-vis de l’art

aztèque, ses idées sont claires dans une lettre à sa fille : « […] j’admire sans réservel’ancien art aztèque. C’est peut-être plus beau que l’Égyptien. »127 Faure remarque queles Aztèques sont ceux qui « [ont infligé] à la civilisation et à l’art précortésiensleur caractère classique »128. Concernant leur sculpture, il écrit : « Leur art présentesans doute, au premier abord, un caractère atroce, qui répond à ce que nous révèle unexamen superficiel des mœurs du Mexique précolombien. »129 Il avertit ainsi de lanécessité d’étudier le passé mexicain en profondeur pour saisir la valeur esthétique decet art. Après une observation de leur organisation administrative et sociale, de leursconceptions cosmogoniques et de leur connaissance de l’univers, Faure souligne le sensde l’ordre, l’éthique et le progrès scientifique de cette société où « la mystique, laconnaissance et l’art étaient d’accord ». Il rajoute que « le sens ésotérique de cet artdoit, par conséquent, se chercher sous son apparence effroyable »130. Certes, du point devue expressif, l’art des Aztèques traduit un « goût des supplices », mais il exprime aussi


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une douce sensibilité. Faure relève cet aspect tout en avouant ses lectures erronées de1911 :

« À l’analyse pourtant, l’horreur de cet art s’atténue, en tout cas s’explique. Je doisfaire ici amende honorable, n’ayant su moi-même y voir, jadis, que la cruauté duprêtre et le sadisme du bourreau. Il montre bien souvent une humanité, parfoismême une tendresse d’autant plus émouvantes qu’elles se combinent, dans la mêmeharmonie plastique, à son apparence globale de férocité. »131

45 Enfin, Élie Faure consacre la « métaphysique grandiose » de cet art en l’associant à l’art

moderne :

« On a beaucoup parlé, depuis vingt ans, des "équivalences plastiques", ce qui aprovoqué chez nous ce mouvement d’un intérêt philosophique si particulier qui atraversé le cubisme entre Picasso et Braque et laisse après lui l’ébauche d’une èrearchitecturale nouvelle. L’art aztèque, en ceci, nous a précédés de loin. Il a réalisédes synthèses spirituelles que notre théologie anthropomorphique et notre moraledualiste ne nous autorisaient pas même à entrevoir. »132

46 À l’exception de quelques « études » et de certains serpents en pierre, « tout est en

équivalence plastique ici », écrit-il133. Il salue le sens de l’unité des Aztèquesqui« combinent dans la même masse des objets qui n’ont entre eux aucun rapportnaturel de continuité, ni même de contigüité, et moins encore de parentéanatomique. »134 Il les conçoit comme les héritiers de la discipline architecturale desToltèques et met en exergue leur esprit constructif qui se lie à l’emploi du symbole, àl’invention d’un « monde suprasensible », à la transposition des lois universelles135. Ilsont exprimé en « synthèses de pierre » les lois de la nature et les désirs de leursdieux136. « Royaume de la pierre, comme seule l’Égypte, ailleurs », écrit-il137. Il admireégalement le rythme, la géométrie, « la représentation réelle, l’équivalence,l’abstraction incorporées au symbolisme universel [qui] s’offrent d’elles-mêmes austatuaire […] »138. Sans mentionner la « quatrième dimension », il affirme tout de mêmeque l’art aztèque « c’est une combinaison sans fin de tous les angles de vue » et qu’ilsuggère « une dimension complémentaire » qui correspondrait à une « conquête par letemps des dimensions de l’espace »139. Faure ne peut que conclure : « Ici vécut etmourut la culture la plus originale de l’Histoire, avec celle de l’Égypte, de la Chine et del’Inde des Védas. »140

47 L’étude de l’art ancien mexicain permet à Faure de saisir aussi le mysticisme collectif

des Toltèques qui l’éclaire davantage sur d’autres moments de cohésion religieuse dansl’histoire de l’humanité :

« Non seulement la religion cosmique des vieux Toltèques, la plus "scientifique" detoutes, me fut ainsi révélée dans sa forte cohésion, mais aussi beaucoup d’autres quin’ont rien à voir avec elle, l’Hellénisme, l’Indouisme, le Catholicisme, l’Islamisme, leconstructions freudiennes des peuples primitifs, nègres et polynésiens au premierrang, qui impriment à leurs groupements arbitraires la vraisemblance d’un édificespirituel organiquement conçu. »141

Conclusion

48 Ainsi, les premiers textes de Faure et de Rivera révèlent qu’avant leur rencontre, ils

acquièrent des visions très différentes des arts du Mexique ancien. Pour Élie Faure, lessculptures aztèques composées de tronçons de corps ne font qu’exprimer la détressed’un peuple troublé par la pratique des sacrifices. Leur aspect fragmentaire empêcheque des valeurs esthétiques universelles propres aux arts des civilisations à grande


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cohésion religieuse comme l’Égypte ancienne ou la Chine se manifestent. Sesobservations confirment l’image véhiculée par certains récits historiques sur lasauvagerie aztèque. Diego Rivera, lui, a une lecture de la sculpture précortésienne enaccord avec la compréhension que les peintres cubistes ont des arts d’Afrique,d’Océanie et de l’Égypte ancienne comme traduisant des réalités métaphysiques etuniverselles. Il suit les traces de Cézanne et des théoriciens du cubisme – Gleizes,Metzinger et Apollinaire – et manifeste ainsi un mexicanisme teint de modernitéeuropéenne.

49 Rivera partage ses réflexions sur le passé précortésien avec son entourage parisien.

Elles sont à portée tant esthétique que sociale, présentant les Aztèques comme unpeuple uni dans un même effort, créateur d’œuvres à fonction sacrée et collective. Àl’époque de ses échanges parisiens avec Élie Faure, le peintre, toujours inspiré desleçons de Cézanne, se trouve en pleine réflexion avec Siqueiros sur l’esprit constructifdes civilisations préhispaniques et les valeurs universelles de leurs arts. C’est alors queFaure fait preuve d’un regard en cours de transformation à l’égard de l’art des Aztèquesoù il identifie, bien que modestement, des proximités esthétiques avec celui desgrandes civilisations qu’il admire : une intuition des masses, un certain équilibre, unedémarche architecturale, un sens de l’unité. En outre, il inclut le passé mexicain parmiles époques ayant connu la cohésion religieuse et sociale.

50 Après le retour de Rivera au Mexique, Faure continue à bâtir sa vision de l’art aztèque

tout en s’intéressant à ses valeurs universelles. S’il semble adapter l’avis scientifiqued’un René Verneau en termes de style et d’originalité, ses lectures du sens expressif semodifient aussi en accordant à l’art aztèque une grande dose d’humanité au-delà de sonaspect terrifiant. Puis, il reconnaît dans ses structures l’expression d’une âmecollective. Il nourrit son approche grâce à une circulation transnationale ettransatlantique des idées modernes sur l’art précortésien, qui connecte le Mexique, lesÉtats-Unis et la France. Lors de son voyage au Mexique en 1931, ses analyses formellesle mènent à mettre en relief chez les Aztèques une forme de création par équivalencesplastiques qui les place en prédécesseurs des peintres cubistes. Ses observationss’étendent aussi vers d’autres civilisations comme les Toltèques, chez qui il reconnaîtune grande tradition architecturale et une foi collective à même de l’éclairer surd’autres civilisations à forte cohésion religieuse.

51 Il a été dit qu’Élie Faure n’a pas été le seul à connaître un changement de regard à

propos du Mexique ancien dans le milieu artistique parisien des années 1910142. L’étudedu contexte de ses échanges avec Rivera a conduit à mettre en lumière la positiond’Albert Gleizes au début des années 1920, bien qu’il reste à savoir dans quelle mesure ila pu l’adopter durant le temps passé aux États-Unis, puisque les idées avant-gardistessur l’art précortésien ont traversé l’Atlantique pendant la Grande Guerre. Ce milieureste à étudier davantage, non seulement quant aux Européens ayant expérimenté cechangement de regard, mais aussi quant à la contribution d’autres Mexicains à cettetransformation. Bien que Rivera ait joué un rôle majeur dans la diffusion de la visionmoderne des sociétés et des arts précortésiens, il faudrait s’interroger sur la partaccomplie par des artistes présents à Paris durant cette décennie tels Gerardo Murillo,Alfredo Best Maugard, Ángel Zárraga ou encore Siqueiros ; tout comme il faudrait lefaire à propos d’un possible accompagnement par des personnalités diplomatiquescomme Alfonso Reyes et Alberto Pani. Retracer ces itinéraires personnels vaudrait la


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peine, les années 1910 s’avérant un moment décisif dans l’évolution du regard sur lesarts préhispaniques vers des conceptions esthétiques modernes.

NOTES DE FIN

1. Voir Diego Rivera, « Los "retablos" son por hoy la verdadera pintura mexicana ». Dans Id.

Obras : 1. Textos de arte / éd. Xavier Moyssén, Mexico, El Colegio Nacional, 1996, t. 1, p. 35. Article

paru pour la première fois dans Azulejos, janvier 1922, n° 5, p. 22-26.

2. Cette transmission est le sujet de la thèse Du cubisme à d’autres cathédrales : Diego Rivera et l’ ‘Art

social’ d’Élie Faure, préparée par l’auteure de cet article sous la direction de Philippe Dagen à

l’Université Paris 1 et soutenue le 26 novembre 2016.

3. « Élie Faure nos habla del arte mexicano – su espontaneidad – casi puedo decir que en México

todo hombre es un artista – Una invitación de Diego Rivera », El Nacional, 28 juillet 1931, p.12 :

« Especialmente mi venida a México se debe a mi deseo de visitar la ruinas de las civilizaciones

autóctonas. »

4. Ibidem :

« Si yo vine a México fue por Diego quien me inició hace quince años en mis simpatías por

México. »

5. L’ouvrage consulté à la Bibliothèque Forney à Paris comporte une double date : 1912 sur la

couverture et 1911 sur la page de titre. Dans une lettre de 1911, Faure compte apporter le volume

à Bourdelle. Selon une lettre à Maurice Reclus, la Commission d’achat des Beaux-arts l’examine

vers janvier 1912. Martine Courtois et Jean-Paul Morel signalent une publication en novembre

1911 dans Élie Faure, Paris, Séguier, 1989, p. 286.

6. Élie Faure, Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval, Paris, Éd. H. Floury, 1911, p. 161.

7. Auguste Génin, Poèmes aztèques, Paris, Fischbacher, 1890, p. 22-23. Génin mentionne des sources

comme Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Torquemada, Bernardino de Sahagún, Clavigero, Prescott,

Humboldt, parmi d’autres.

8. Ibid., p. 6-7.

9. Ibid., p. 8.

10. Ibidem.

11. Ibid., p. 11.

12. Ibid., p. 20.

13. Ibid., p. 21. Il s’agit d’une citation tirée de William H. Prescott. Histoire de la conquête du Mexique

avec un tableau préliminaire de l’ancienne civilisation mexicaine et la vie de Fernand Cortés / publiée en

français par Amédée Pichot, Paris, librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, 1946, t. I, p. 82. Pour Prescott,

la sauvagerie des Espagnols est d’autant plus condamnable puisque non seulement ils

exterminent des êtres humains, mais aussi toute une civilisation par la destruction d’œuvres de

l’esprit. En outre, lorsque Prescott décrit les coutumes rituelles et guerrières des Aztèques, il

mentionne souvent des pratiques des Romains, des Grecs et de l’Inquisition qu’il estime parfois

plus sauvages.

14. Ibid., p. 20.

15. Ibid., p. 19.

16. Ibid., p. 19-20.

17. Élie Faure, Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval, op. cit., p. 158.


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18. Aujourd’hui, des Inuits.

19. Élie Faure, Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval, op. cit., p. 161. Faure généralise quant à la pratique

des sacrifices humains par les trois peuples cités. Par la suite, il se rapporte précisément aux

Aztèques.

20. Ibid., p. 162.

21. Ibidem.

22. Ibidem.

23. Élie Faure, Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval, op. cit., p. 162.

24. Ibid., p. 164.

25. Ibidem.

26. Ibidem.

27. Ibidem.

28. Ibidem.

29. Voir Élie Faure, « L’Art aztèque », L’Art et les artistes, avril-septembre 1911, t. XIII, [n° 73-78], p.

18-23.

30. « L’Art et les artistes : revue d’art ancien et moderne des deux mondes », Le Journal amusant :

journal humoristique, 22 avril 1911, 64e année, n° 617, p. 3.

31. Guillaume Apollinaire, Méditations esthétiques : les peintres cubistes, 2e éd., Paris, Eugène

Figuière et Cie., 1913, p. [15].

32. Ibidem.

33. Ibid., p. 16.

34. Ibidem.

35. Ibid., p. [18]

36. Ibidem.

37. Ibid., p. 24-25.

38. Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Du « Cubisme », Paris, Hermann Éditeurs, 2012, p. 15-16.

Ouvrage publié pour la première fois en 1912.

39. Guillaume Apollinaire, Méditations esthétiques…, op. cit, p. 16-17.

40. Diego Rivera. « Marius de Zayas », dans Id., Obras. 3. Correspondencia / réunie et présentée par

Esther Acevedo, Leticia Torres Carmona et Alicia Sánchez Mejorada, Mexico, El Colegio Nacional,

1999, p. 28 :

« En el espacio plástico las cosas tienen una dimensión suprafísica, que crece o disminuye en razón directa

de la importancia que su existencia tenga en el espíritu del pintor. »

41. Ibidem :

« […], el pintor comienza a partir de dos principios opuestos e indiscutibles: la existencia de las cosas en el

espacio real, visual, físico; y su existencia en el espacio real, suprafísico y espiritual. »

42. Ibidem :

« La materia, la substancia también vive como accidente; calidad de la pintura per se; como estructura

substancial independiente del accidente visual y de sus consecuencias plásticas, […], como en las pinturas

de Giotto, Cézanne, el Greco, Zurbarán, Velázquez o en el arte oriental y sobre todo, en la escultura

mexicana y negra. »

43. Martín Luis Guzmán, La Querella de México. A orillas del Hudson. Otras páginas, 2e éd., Mexico, Cia.

General de Ediciones S.A.,1970, p. 12.

44. Ibid., p. 36

45. Alfonso Reyes, Visión de Anáhuac (1519), Madrid, Índice, 1923, p. 27.

46. Ibid., p. 25.

47. Ibid., p. 22 :

« Agrúpanse los edificios en masas cúbicas; […]. »

48. Ibid., p. [20] :


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« A sus pies, en un espejismo de cristales, se extendía la pintoresca ciudad, emanada toda ella del templo,

por manera que sus calles radiantes prolongaban las aristas de la pirámide. »

49. Ibid., p. 64 :

« Cualquiera que sea la doctrina histórica que se profese (y no soy de los que sueñan en perpetuaciones

absurdas de la tradición indígena, y ni siquiera fío demasiado en perpetuaciones de la española), nos une

con la raza de ayer, sin hablar de sangres, la comunidad de esfuerzo por domeñar nuestra naturaleza brava

y fragosa; esfuerzo que es la base bruta de las historia. Nos une también la comunidad, mucho más

profunda, de la emoción cotidiana ante el mismo objeto natural. »

50. Ibidem.

51. Diego Rivera, My Art, My Life : An Autobiography / collab. Gladys March, nouv. éd., New-York,

Dover publications, Inc., 1991, p. 65.

52. Ibid., p. 65-66.

53. Ibid., p. 65.

54. Diego Rivera, « Datos autobiográficos », dans Id., Obras : 1. Textos de arte / textes rassemblés

par Xavier Moyssén, Mexico, El Colegio Nacional, 1996, p. 90. Texte paru pour la première fois

dans El Arquitecto, mars-avril 1926, série II, n° VIII, p. 3.

55. Ilya Ehrenbourg, Les Gens, les années, la vie / traduit du russe par Michèle Kahn, Lyon,

Parangon/Vs, 2008, p. 154.

56. Ibid., p. 203.

57. Ibid., p. 153. Ehrenbourg mentionne un grand nombre d’habitués de La Rotonde, bien qu’il

n’indique pas une chronologie précise. Cette liste peut inclure des personnes ayant fréquenté le

café dans les années 1910 ou dans les années 1920, sans pour autant avoir coïncidé. Parmi les

personnes mentionnées : Chagall, Soutine, Kisling, Gottlieb, Dunikovski, Apollinaire, Max Jacob,

Jean Cocteau, André Salmon, Léger, Lhote, Metzinger, Gleizes, Severini, Élie Faure, Picasso, Maria

Blanchard, Gris, Foujita, Diego Rivera et Ángel Zárraga.

58. Ibid., p. 199.

59. Ibid., p. 197.

60. Ibid., p. 199-201.

61. Ibid., p. 201.

62. Ibidem.

63. Ibidem.

64. Ibidem.

65. Diego Rivera, « Datos autobiográficos », éd. cit., p. 91.

66. L’essai « Paul Cézanne » d’Élie Faure paraît pour la première fois dans Portraits d’hier, 1er mai

1910, n° 28, p. 99-126. Il est repris dans Les Constructeurs en 1914.

67. Élie Faure, « [Lettre] 216 » [À Charles Péquin le 28 juillet 1920], dans Id., Œuvres complètes /

préf. Henry Miller, Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1964, t. III, p. 1021.

68. Lettre d’Élie Faure à Diego Rivera daté du 20 janvier 1933, citée dans Bertram D. Wolfe, La Vie

fabuleuse de Diego Rivera / traduit de l’anglais par Régine Cavallaro, Paris, Séguier, 1994, p. 229.

Titre original The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera [1963].

69. La possibilité d’une lecture par Rivera de certains articles d’Élie Faure véhiculant ses idée

comme « L’Art social », « La Cathédrale et la Commune » et « L’Art pour le peule » n’est pas à

écarter.

70. Élie Faure, « Mon Périple : au Mexique où se heurtent deux civilisations », Le Petit parisien, 24

septembre 1931, 56e année, n° 19931, p. 1.

71. Bertram D. Wolfe, La Vie fabuleuse de Diego Rivera, op. cit., p. 89. Wolfe se base sur des extraits

de l’Histoire de l’art : l’art moderne d’Élie Faure pour reconstituer ses propos.

72. David Alfaro Siqueiros, L’Art et la révolution / textes choisis pas Raquel Tibol, sous la direction

de Georges Fournial, Paris, Éditions sociales, 1973, p. 12-13.

73. Ibid., p. 13.


252

74. David Alfaro Siqueiros, « 3 llamamientos de orientación actual a los pintores y escultores de

la nueva generación americana », Vida americana: revista norte, centro y sudamericana de vanguardia,

mai 1921, n° 1, p. 3.

75. Ibidem :

« La comprensión del admirable fondo humano del “arte negro” y del arte «primitivo” en general dió clara

y profunda orientación a las artes plásticas perdidas cuatro siglos atrás en una senda opaca de desacierto;

acerquémonos por nuestra parte, a las obras de los antiguos pobladores de nuestros valles los pintores y

escultores indios (MAYAS, AZTECAS, INCAS, etc., etc.); […]. »

76. Ibidem.

77. Ibid., p. 2.

78. David Alfaro Siqueiros, L’Art et la révolution, op. cit., p. 13.

79. Élie Faure, Histoire de l’Art : l’art médiéval / nouv. éd. augmentée, Paris, G. Crès et Cie., 1921, p.

183.

80. Ibid., p. 184.

81. Ibidem.

82. Ibidem.

83. Ibidem.

84. Ibidem.

85. Jean-Jacques Pauvert, éditeur des Œuvres complètes d’Élie Faure en 1964, signale que tous les

articles de L’Arbre d’Eden avaient été publiés antérieurement, bien que la date d’ « Architecture et

individualisme » ne soit pas déterminée. Voir Élie Faure, Œuvres complètes / préf. Henry Miller,

Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1964, t. III, p. 1143.

86. Élie Faure, « Architecture et individualisme », dans Id., Œuvres complètes / préf. Henry Miller,

Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1964, t. III, p. 296.

87. Ibidem.

88. Albert Gleizes, « Réhabilitation des arts plastiques », dans Id., Tradition et cubisme. Vers une

conscience plastique : Articles et conférences 1912-1924, Éditions La Cible, Paris, 1927, p. 92. Conférence

prononcée en lien avec l’exposition internationale de Genève le 22 janvier 1921.

89. Ibid., p. 81.

90. Ibidem.

91. Ibidem.

92. Voir Laurette E. McCarthy, Walter Pach (1883-1958) The Armory Show and the Untold Story of

Modern Art in America, Pensylvania, The Pensylvania State University, 2011, p. 130.

93. « Entrevista con el pintor Diego Rivera », El Universal: el gran diario de México, 21 juillet 1921, p.

11.

94. Ibidem :

« Lo que el artista europeo busca con tanto afán, aquí en México se encuentra manifestado, sobre todo en el

arte nacional, de una manera abundante. »

95. Ibidem :

« Y no quiero fatigar a usted hablándole de todo lo que puede sacar de provecho un pintor, un escultor, un

artista, en una palabra, si contempla, si analiza, si estudia el arte maya, el azteca, el tolteca, los que, en mi

concepto, no tienen que envidiar a ninguno. »

96. Diego Rivera, « La exposición de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes », Azulejos, octobre 1921,

n° 3, p. 22.

97. Ibidem :

« ¿Por qué en la tierra en que hay la maravillosa arquitectura de Teotihuacán, Mitla, Chichén, y

la escultura antigua más pura y sólidamente plástica del mundo, la exhibición que nos dan

nuestros pintores actuales parece representar los efectos de un descarrilamiento?


253

¿Por qué, aquí, donde hay escultura de conjunto y de bloque, por excelencia; aquí, donde hay

pirámides, nuestros jóvenes obreros de la plástica tienen propensión a fabricar extraños despojos

humanos?

Hombres sin cabeza, que se tuercen; pedazos de torso que marchan sobre muslos amputados…

[…]. »

98. Ibid., p. 23.

99. René Verneau cité dans Guillaume Janneau, « Au Musée de l’ethnographie », Bulletin de la vie

artistique, 15 octobre 1922, 3e année, n° 20, p. 468.

100. Ibidem.

101. Ibid., p. 469.

102. Ibidem.

103. Élie Faure, « [Lettre] 263 » [À Walter Pach le 22 octobre 1922], dans Id., Œuvres complètes /


104. Walter Pach, « L »Art au Mexique. I. Les musées », L’Amour de l’art, septembre 1926, 7e année,

n° 9, p. 288.

105. Ibidem.

106. Ibidem.

107. Ibidem.

108. Ibidem.

109. Ibid., p. 290.

110. Ibid., p. 293-294.

111. Élie Faure, « [Lettre] 347 » [À Walter Pach le 25 octobre 1926], dans Id., Œuvres complètes /


112. Ibid., p. 1062-1063.

113. Élie Faure, Histoire de l’art : l’esprit des formes, Paris, G. Crès, 1927, p. 184.

114. Élie Faure. Histoire de l’art : l’art médiéval [1911], op. cit., p. 162

115. Élie Faure, Histoire de l’art : l’esprit des formes, op. cit., p. 66.

116. Ibid., p. 421.

117. Ibid., p. v.

118. Ibid., p. v-vi.

119. Ibid., p. vi.

120. Élie Faure, « [Lettre] 243 » [À Charles Péquin le 2 septembre 1921], dans Id., Œuvres

complètes / préf. Henry Miller, Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1964, t. III, p. 1032.

121. Voir Martine Courtois, Jean-Paul Morel, Élie Faure, Paris, Séguier, 1989, p. 154.

122. Élie Faure, « [Lettre] 347 », éd. cit., p. 1062.

123. Voir Laurette E. McCarthy, Walter Pach (1883-1958)…, op. cit., p. 134.

124. Voir Élie Faure, « [Lettre] 366 » [À Walter Pach le 19 décembre 1927], dans Id., Œuvres

complètes / préf. Henry Miller, Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1964, t. III, p. 1070.

125. « Élie Faure nos habla del arte mexicano… », art. cit., p.12.

126. Ibidem.

127. Élie Faure, « [Lettre] 419 » [À sa fille le 8 août 1931], dans Id., Œuvres complètes / préf. Henry

Miller, Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1964, t. III, p. 1088.

128. Elie Faure, « Réflexions sur l’art mexicain », L’Illustration : journal universel, 31 décembre

1932, n° 4687, p. 613.

129. Ibid., p. 614.

130. Ibidem.

131. Élie Faure, « Mon Périple » [1932], dans Id., Œuvres complètes / préf. Henry Miller, Paris, Jean-

Jacques Pauvert, 1964, t. III, p. 561.

132. Elie Faure, « Réflexions sur l’art mexicain », art. cit., p. 615.


254

133. Ibidem.

134. Élie Faure, « Mon périple », éd. cit., p. 562.

135. Ibidem.

136. Ibidem.

137. Élie Faure, « Mon Périple : Le Mexique », Le Petit parisien, 30 septembre 1931, 56ème année, n°

19937, p. 4.

138. Élie Faure, « Mon périple », éd. cit., p. 562.

139. Ibidem.

140. Ibidem.

141. Élie Faure, Reflets dans le sillage, Paris, Jean Flory, 1938, p. 156.

142. Cette évolution s’inscrit dans un contexte plus large abordé par des auteurs comme

Benjamin Keen dans The Aztec Image in Western Thought et Élodie Vaudry dans Les Arts

précolombiens : transferts et métamorphoses de l’Amérique latine à la France, 1875 -1945.

RÉSUMÉS

En 1931, s’étant rendu au Mexique pour étudier les anciennes civilisations locales, Élie Faure se

dit redevable à Rivera de son attrait pour le pays. Cet article aborde les contributions critiques du

peintre à l’historien de l’art sur les arts précortésiens. Avant leur rencontre en 1918, Faure voit

dans la sculpture des Aztèques l’expression de leur sauvagerie, alors que Rivera transpose à

l’ancienne sculpture mexicaine les principes esthétiques de Cézanne et du cubisme. Durant leurs

échanges parisiens, le regard de Faure commence à se transformer dans le sens des idées du

peintre qui se rattache toujours au Maître d’Aix et identifie dans l’art précortésien des

démarches artistiques collectives. Après le retour de Rivera au Mexique en 1921, la pensée de

Faure continue à évoluer. Lorsqu’il retrouve l’artiste en 1931, il confirme les liens entre l’art

aztèque et le cubisme et honore d’autres civilisations du Mexique ancien..

En 1931, mientras se halla en México para estudiar las antiguas civilizaciones locales, Élie Faure

declara adeudarle a Rivera su atracción por el país. Este artículo aborda las contribuciones

críticas del pintor al historiador del arte sobre las artes precortesianas. Antes de su encuentro en

1918, Faure ve en la escultura de los aztecas la expresión de su salvajismo, mientras que Rivera

transpone a la antigua escultura mexicana los principios estéticos de Cézanne y del cubismo.

Durante sus intercambios parisinos, la mirada de Faure empieza a transformarse en el sentido de

las ideas del pintor que sigue apegándose al maestro de Aix e identifica enfoques colectivos en el

arte precortesiano. Después del regreso de Rivera a México en 1921, su pensamiento sigue

evolucionando. Cuando vuelve a encontrarse con el artista en 1931, Faure confirma los vínculos

entre el arte azteca y el cubismo, y rinde honor a otras civilizaciones del México antiguo.

INDEX

Mots-clés : Diego Rivera, Élie Faure, Aztèques, cubisme, arts précortésiens, Mexique ancien,

civilisations préhispaniques.

Palabras claves : Diego Rivera, Élie Faure, aztecas, cubismo, artes precortesianas, México

antiguo, civilizaciones prehispánicas


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