Buenos Aires
Herald. Published Sunday, March 23,
2003
Art On Sunday
On the roots of
Latin American abstraction
By Alina Tortosa
For the Herald
Geo-metrías /Abstracción geométrica
latinoamericana en la Colección Cisneros opened two weeks ago at the Malba –Museum of Latin American Art of
Buenos Aires-. The well chosen pieces of
the Cisneros Collection – 110 in all, from the 1940s to the 1970s- provide a
fantastic insight into the work of the artists represented, as well as an
overall view of one of the most refined ensembles of Latin American art.
It is abstract art because the
artists grasped the very essence of line and harmony, creating works that are
whole in themselves, and not references to the physical world, and geometric
because they were concerned with the properties and relationships of points and
lines and shape as form and content.
In a world that seems to be coming
apart at the seams it is reassuring to learn about the processes that went into
creating the work exhibited, putting together a sensitive and coherent art
collection, and working to show it to advantage. Ariel Jimenez, the Collection curator and
curator of this exhibition, gave a guided tour to the press and to the public
the day of the opening, during which he explained the layout into six different
areas and the choices that make up the selection. He spoke of each work passionately,
describing the creative process and the subsequent historical implications.
In Latin America, what is called
geometric abstraction, also known under different names -Madi, concrete art, kinetic art- was the result of the work by artists from
Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Why these countries and not others in Latin America? Was it because they could not relate to
ancient sophisticated indigenous cultures, as in the cases of Mexico and Perú?
Not really. Actually the question today is: why artists who were born in
countries who had originally developed sophisticated indigenous culture did not
relate to the abstract geometric designs carved in stone by their ancestors and
chose to represent the world around them in a figurative expressionist and/or
picturesque manner? Perhaps the time has come to turn the tables on the
supposedly authenticity of some of the “authentic Latin American” painting and
sculpture. Could it be that these artists who chose to represent the folkloric
and picturesque images of their time were really turning their back on their
ancient indigenous past as not an adequate pattern to follow, and that those
abstract modern Latin American artists, labelled as to pro-European at the
time, had grasped the principles of ancient American abstraction, as is well
proven in the case of Cesar Paternosto, the Argentine minimal abstract
painter?
The phases of the exhibition takes us
through what is best in terms of intelligence and aesthetics in XX c art, which
fits exactly the aim of the Cisneros Foundation: to expose in no uncertain
terms the quality of Latin American creativity, beyond the periphery syndrome
of the politically obvious and the picturesque that has been promoted for
decades both by European and US curators –who preferred to keep Latin American
art within an intellectual play pen-, as well as by Latin American curators,
who wanted to conform to non Latin American standards, a preoccupation that I
have always found mystifying.
Huellas
(Traces) or The work as a surface for inscription,
Lo
cristalino (The crystalline) or The work as perfect body,
Mecánica
plástica (Visual mechanics) or The work as an active body,
Espacio-Tiempo
(Time-space) or The work as the site of an event, La metáfora
orgánica (The organic metaphor) or The work as a quasi-corpus
and La
dimension antropológica (The anthropological dimension) or
The
work sensitive to its social surroundings are the
stages through which the curator takes us to interpret and understand the
development of the work exhibited.
We are introduced into the show by
a virginal work by Alejandro Otero from Las Cafeteras (The Coffee Pots)
series, 1947, to illustrate how the vertical lines of the physical objects
eventually developed into Líneas coloreadas sobre un fondo blanco
(Coloured Lines over a White Background), a minimal abstract work, much in the
same way that Mondrian’s famous tree became his first abstract linear compositions. Ariel Jimenez, at this point, is also
registering the physical imprint of the artists’ hand through matter on the
support in the mystical and elusive work by Mira Schendell, among others, as well as in the dynamic and energetic work
by Torres García, and their psychological impulses, apparent in his need to
stress and to proclaim, totally
different to Schendells’ subtle impressions.
In Visual Mechanics, the
next stage, the work has achieved autonomy from the artist, devoid of physical traces, the result of intellectual
and mechanical processes that have willed them to be objects in a world of
objects. There is a kinetic quality in
the pieces by Lygia Clark, Willys De Castro, Judith Lauand, Tomás Maldonado and
Juan Melé that foretells the movement of the work of art into space, off the
wall.
In Time-space the work has
left the wall, it may be an environment or a construction we walk into or
around, which requires more time and attention than just passing by a static
object. It has become an event, a walk
within or without, a rite of passage into the three-dimensional world.
In The organic metaphor matter,
and the articulation or handling of matter, entail sensual and visceral
experiences. The work of art is to the
artists an intellectual pursuit spurred on by a physical perception of the
world around them and of themselves as biologically alert and sensitive
beings.
In The anthropological dimension
the artists concerns go beyond their own needs and impressions into the social
needs and experiences of the communities around them. But this social and
anthropological perception does not distract them from their aesthetic
preoccupations, they articulate these around their subjects interrelating them,
which is what makes the difference between art and propaganda tout court.
Pieces by European artists with
similar aesthetic preoccupations are exhibited as peripheral references that
set the work by these Latin American artists within a world context, as their
own work sets the work by European artists in a world context as well. It
illustrates a give and take situation in which both sides benefited.
This elegant and harmonious
exhibition is full of poetry and of passion. Good poetry deals with absolutes,
with an obsession to understand and to transmit economically to others what one
believes one has understood, avoiding stereotypes and exaggeration. An all through the work we can sense the
passion that went into living life deeply, trying to understand, to
acknowledge, to penetrate and to hold.
Once again, what we may call the
“new” Malba, under the curartorships of Marcelo Pacheco, head curator, and
Victoria Noorthorn, vice curator, has stood to its commitment of showing
regional art at its best. Neither the exhibition, nor the catalogue that goes
with it, should be missed.
(Geo-metrías /Abstracción
geométrica latinoamericana en la Colección Cisneros, Malba, Figuroa Alcorta
Av. Until May 19).
