miércoles, 30 de noviembre de 2016

The rift

                                                                                                     
                                                                                                   
                                                                                                       In memoriam
                                                                                                       Pablo Molinari
                                                                                                    


There was this rift in the family
when two of the dearest died
eight years apart

then another one died
dearest and closest
a beacon of light
lost in his suffering
and his efforts to interpret life
and his next of kin

tender and brightest he left
creating a dark and awkward hiatus
leaving behind
an area gloomed by questions
unanswered 

five more dearest were born 
into the family
other generations
as beautiful clever and darling 
as their elders

II

life goes on 
taking its toll it
goes on
adding and subtracting

whatever took place
goes on taking place
unawares or conscientiously

people react differently
to loss and bereavement
there are those who turn to God 
others to their next of kin
or friends

or turn into another
a shadow of themselves
inhabited by those
who left

there are no answers
and no solutions
to missing the dead

only a whiff of light
that turns experience
into partial understanding
into meaning or the lack of it

III

how can others grasp
the feeling of despair
of the bereaved
before the tragedies
that could have been
avoided

who will concur
agree accept
with them
other than themselves

nobody dares

there is little
they can do
other than empathize

and people will not
for it is to enter
themselves
into the domain
of gloom

IV

one does not forget
the dearest dead
those closest to ourselves
siblings and offsprings

for were they not
other versions 
of ourselves

were they not ourselves
who partly died with them
and live the terms
of our separation
as an ongoing experience

their absence as a presence
a reminder
that we in ourselves
are not complete

that there are
depths of meaning
layers of understanding
and misunderstandings
unresolved

V   

one does not weep
out loud
as when they had 
barely departed

there is the lingering
feeling of absence
of being torn apart
from those who should
be growing older with us

sharing discussing
planning quarrelling
making up
trying to come to terms
with differences

one has lost worlds
of compatibility
worlds of caring
and be cared for

VI

their absence is still
relevant
discouraging
poignant
meaningful

their past and 
their unachieved present
reel on 
a film in process
every day 
of every week
of every month
of every year

through different
moods and perceptions
rewinding in real time
or fast forward 

it reels on.

jueves, 24 de noviembre de 2016

On thinking


to think thinking *
is knowing
what one thinks
may be a misconception

it may might
be knowing
or not knowing

to surmise wonder stall
is thinking
not leading to knowing
necessarily

for doesn’t everybody
think
and yet can we say
everybody knows

concrete thoughts
vapid and disperse
mental processes
may be or may not be
creative

shall we assume
we are thinkers
who dabble
in useless perusals

some of us do
some of us don’t

so what is
and what is not

who knows

there are those
who think they know
and ignore

many and most

so be it

a few may
know
and not know

they know.  

* from The rift and other poems, Sifipublishing, Cornwall, 2016.

jueves, 17 de noviembre de 2016

I am trapped by them

I am trapped by them*
my long time lovers
there are too many of them

even if I ignore them
they are there
overwhelmingly present

shelves of them
stacks on tables

how does one do without them

and how can I live with them
crowding my space.

* from Autobiogardens and other poems, Sifipublishung, Cornwall, England, 2015



domingo, 13 de noviembre de 2016

The rift and other poems


My latest book at Walrus Books  in San Telmo - 
Estados Unidos 617

with an Epilogue by Luis Chitarroni that covers
 Autobiogardens and other poems 
and Born and bred in Buenos Aires as well.





viernes, 21 de octubre de 2016

Back cover of Autobiogardens and other poems



It was through the gardens in literature that I sensed the importance of gardens in a person's psyche.  From the gardens in fairy tales to Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini by Giorgio Bassani.  Umbrous space and quiet brought out a certain sensibility, central to an individual’s personality.  It was also the place where a person could hide from the world, or disguise her real intentions under other preoccupations, as in The cherry orchard by Anton Chekov, or in a A voyage round my father by John Mortimer.   My childhood memories were closely linked to gardens, but it was only when writing Autobiogardens that I realized that my interest in gardens in literature  stemmed  from the experience of my own perception of the gardens I grew up in.  

domingo, 16 de octubre de 2016

On politics



there are these  questions
these political questions

          of coming or going
being or becoming

          knowing or ignoring
or trying to ignore

are the motives and motifs
clearly stated 
or awkwardly defined

are the candidates 
socially concerned
community conscious

          or in the fray
to indulge their egos
and their pockets

there are these questions
these political questions.

martes, 4 de octubre de 2016

VERBOAMÉRICA


 El habla es el tapiz
en el que vamos tejiendo 
nuestra identidad

hilos de colores
y  otros transparentes
se entretejen en la trama

hablando bordamos
nuestra historia 


La nueva puesta en escena de parte de la colección del Malba nos la presenta de manera visualmente clara y despejada, respetando los espacios que cada obra necesita, a la vez que la interrelación entre ellas mismas y los textos que las sugieren o anuncian les confieren otra densidad.

El pensamiento fundamental y fundacional de Agustín Perez Rubio y Andrea Giunta,  los curadores, fue y es pensar cada obra en su entorno y su tiempo desde un lenguaje  vernáculo.  Lo cual, puesto asíparece sencillo.  No lo fue, si aceptamos que esta es la primera vez que se expone obra regional 
latinoamericana, sin que las formas de la misma se analice en los términos euronorteamericanos en los que se la ha descripto, estudiado y catalogado hasta ayer en muestras anteriores.

A la vez, se tomaron otras decisiones que aligeran y profundizan la proyección estética de las obras.  No se puso el acento en la historicidad ni en un seguimiento cronológico,  sí en su generación concep tual y  más importante aun visualmente  -  considerando que una muestra es una exhibición, el acto de mostrar –  en cómo se ven, como se acompañan, en el espacio compartido. 

Las pinturas matéricamente intensas, tan representativas de autores venerados como los pilares de la historia latinoamericana del arte, se benefician de la compañía de los diseños lábiles o abiertos en materiales que admiten o reflejan la luz de sus colegas histriónicos.   

Esta evolución en el renglón curatorial de ambos curadores es el resultado de años de estudios
intensos, de introspección,  análisis e intercambio de impresiones, pensamientos y conclusiones, aún en proceso. 

Si bien supuestamente en la región lo sabíamos, las obras y la puesta en escena de las mismas
aclaran e ilustran que no hay un arte latinoamericano, como no hay un arte norteamericano o un arte
europeo.  Tampoco hay una arte argentino o una arte brasileño o venezolano.  En cada país hay 
afinidades, tendencias y recursos materiales, o la falta de ellos, que marcan tendencias, sin llegar a 
definir un perfil autóctono.

Es una muestra que alienta varias visitas, por el placer de recorrerla, y para profundizar nuestra 
apreciación de lo que vemos.  Es interesante comparar las obras entre sí tomando nota de las fechas 
en que fueron hechas unas y otras. 

El catálogo 

El catálogo de Verboamérica, es más que un catálogo, en el sentido original de esta palabra, es un 
cuidadoso y exhaustivo estudio, escrito y visual, del arte de Latinoamérica, desde una mirada amplia e ilustrada.  Es el relato histórico contado respetuosamente de manera amena. De ahora en más es un 
libro central a la evolución del arte en nuestra América, ineludíble en cualquier biblioteca que se 
precie de tal.

Es de celebrar la decisión de imprimir este catálogo en una versión en español y otra en inglés, lo
que ha permitido que los textos se hayan impreso en un tamaño de font de cómoda lectura.


                                         

viernes, 23 de septiembre de 2016

Vanguardia, internacioanlismo y política /Argentina en los años sesenta por Andrea Giunta



                                                                                                                      Buenos Aires Herald
                                                                                                                     Published Sunday, July 15, 2001
REVIEW                                                                          

Art history that reads like a saga


By Alina Tortosa
For the Herald                                                                                    

Vanguardia, internacionalismo y política / Arte argentino de los años sesentaBy Andrea Giunta.
Paidos ,  Espacios del saber- abril  2001.

The new book by Dr. Andrea Giunta (1960, Buenos Aires) is a major academic achievement, a turn of the screw as regards previous publications by Argentine art historians on any given period. Other histories are basically linear accounts within a cultural and political context, the story of the development of certain artists or movements, or theoretical approaches to an aesthetical development.  In a comprehensive Introduction, eight chapters: Modern art in the margins of peronism, Proclamations and programs during the Libertadora (Revolution), The scene of the “new” art, The avant-garde as a problem, The decentralisation of the modern paradigm, Strategies of internationalisation, Apories of internalisation, The avant-garde between art and politics, Art as collective, violent action and a Conclusion, Giunta analyses in depth the building up of the different cultural, social and political influences, public and private systems of behaviour, aims and achievements, and the international and national political strategies to use art as a means to other goals.   The author has not only read widely, as is clear by the bibliography that supports the text, but held innumerable discussions with Argentine and foreign intellectuals from different persuasions and disciplines. It is this argumentative and interdisciplinary structure that gives the text elasticity, strength and perspective.

Many of the subjects Giunta writes on long delayed updates on the development of modern and contemporary Argentine art and on Argentine history tout court.  A much-needed research on the career and on the contribution of Jorge Romero Brest –about whom very little had been written so far- to the development of art in Argentina during the fifties and sixties focused from different perspectives,  are some of the many bonuses of this book.

Vanguardia, internacionalismo y política / Arte argentino de los años sesenta, reads like an appealing story.  It starts in the late forties and fifties with the liberation of Paris and the introduction into Peronist politics, which allows Giunta to trace the authoritarian spirit of Peronism  -a “popular” government that, while voting long delayed social laws, regimented all activities and disciplines to serve its own economic and political aims, taking an isolated backward cultural position-, and the reaction of the art world to the issues created by the limitations imposed on them by the government.    This long period of cultural ostracism divided Argentina into those who were for the Government and those who were against it, at times blurring intermediate preoccupations and commitments.   The second chapter, which deals with the de facto government that took over after Peron was ousted, outlines the efforts that were made to rejoin, or should I write, to join the Western world, by upgrading industrial developments and artistic endeavours, hoping to acquire an international stance.  This chapter  brings into light the work of those intellectuals who understood what was going on in the art world, and the blindness of a government and a society that believed that by outlawing peronism they could do away with it in the mind and heart of Peron’s followers, as if prescription did away with beliefs and feelings.  Some of the artists, who had been postponed under Peron’s Government for not adapting to his dictates, were shocked to find that they were postponed again on aesthetic issues.  The realization that being for or against did not necessarily sum up as merit  was to some a new frustration.

The end of the Second World War, followed by the Cold War designed the role played by the US in the interchange of American and Latin American art  exhibitions, and grants awarded to Latin American artists and writers.  The US, like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, played the flute to seduce artists and intellectuals to distract them from the strong appeal that the Cuban Revolution held for most of them.  A few Argentine artists, cultural operators and politicians felt that exposure and recognition in the US would place Argentine art at the centre of ongoing international events.  For a time and at some point everybody’s interests seem to meet.  Giunta examines minutely and objectively the thoughts and aims of institutions and individuals in this context. 

The good will relationship cultivated by Argentine artists and local government and cultural institutions throughout the first post Peron period finally gave way to strong dissension.   Artists felt once more that they had to fight for values that had been lost. 


The  writer  discusses the concepts of avant-guard, internationalism and politics as understood at the time  here and abroad from several angles.  Throughout the book she keeps to the agenda outlined in the title with Cartesian discipline.

sábado, 13 de agosto de 2016

Introduction to Born and bred in Buenos Aires

 


And so it is
that many things
have come to pass
that we knew not

we have learnt
that life is
but a crystal thread
woven into the air

that love is
gained and lost
but never
twice the same

that the meaning
 to life
 is life itself.

viernes, 29 de julio de 2016

On words and dreams





         does one choose the language to think in and dream in
         does one choose the words one thinks in or dreams in

         who does for us

         how does it happen that we wonder ponder articulate thoughts
         in one language rather than in another

         that our mother tongue is not necessarily the medium
         becoming a parent once removed     
        
         who watches within us discretely
         without breaking in into our deepest consciousness


         allowing a foreign tongue to take over.

miércoles, 27 de julio de 2016

too many words



So many words
too many words
          in the early morning
          reading the news

         too many and too idle
         they deny  the beauty
                   the texture 
                                  the innate sense
                             of language used lovingly

they repeat themselves idly
perfunctorily
discussing over and over

the same events.

lunes, 23 de mayo de 2016

Margarita’s tea party


Margarita advised her friends
and Judy’s
to be available for tea
on May 17

it was she said
Judy’s birthday

and so it went

quite a few women
met in Pueblo Eden
for a dancing class
and tea at a long table
covered with delightful pastry
provided by the hostess
and by her guests

teapots with tea leaves
rather than tea bags
no small issue

the celebration went deeper
beyond the table

when asked what present
was appropriate for Judy
Margarita had suggested a towel

and so it went

Judy was asked to sit down
in the living room
to receive her presents

a towel from each woman
different colours
elegantly wrapped

after the fourth towel
Judy smiled roguishly
realizing the gifts
posed an enigma

they did

the towels were meant
for Judy to donate
to a home to be opened
in San Carlos
for women who suffer
domestic violence

Judy was delighted

so were we all
twenty and some guests

it was once more Margarita
planning ahead for others.






viernes, 22 de abril de 2016

Liliana Porter: Wrinkle, wrinkle, little star

Buenos Aires Herald                                                              Sunday, November 23, 2003

On Sunday    

l                

By Alina Tortosa
For the Herald

Liliana Porter /Fotografía y Ficción, the show that opened last Tuesday at the Recoleta Cultural Centre in Cronopius, is a powerful statement on what an intelligent artist does with what is at hand.  Her highly poetical and understated work is a power station of contemporary multi disciplinarian aesthetics that works on several layers of perception: visual, literary, psychological, aesthetic and intellectual, far from your trodden conventional political correctness.

Porter (1941, Buenos Aires), a gifted draughtsman from childhood, attended the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes from the age of 12 in Buenos Aires, and in 1958 traveled to Mexico to attend the Universidad Iberoamericana, where she became intensely involved with print techniques.  In 1964 she arrived in New York for what she had planned as a short stay, but quickly came to terms with how much the city could afford her in terms of material and aesthetic opportunities and stayed on.  Grasping the current contemporary mood, she realized that her expressionist and ultra elaborate technical background were excessive and cumbersome. So she went back to basics starting with what was closest at hand: a sheet of white paper.

If a rose by any other name smells the same, in Wrinkle/Arruga, 1968, a sheet of white paper treated as medium for a work of art is still to a point a sheet of white paper, and yet in the progressive treatment of a crease on it Porter created an elliptical and substantial essay on meaning and matter.  The original sheet of paper, support or medium became a rite of passage from elaborate technique and expression to intuition, and from description to suggestion, beyond anything the artist had done before.

A nail, the shadow of a nail, a piece of string in Nail, 1972, or a hand pointing to a line in The line, 1973, are minimal metaphors on content and technique, on an elusive representation of a pragmatic reality, backed by what runs all through the show, a highly developed sense of humour linked to a poetical vision of the world at large.

In The Square, the 1973 series, the artist has drawn in pencil a square on its own, or this same square over the finger or fingers, or on the palm of the hand. She is introducing us into a virtual reality in the same way a writer uses words to tell a story or write a poem. Porter “wrote” square for us to read it.  In Untitled, the 1973 series, a hand holds a geometrical volume in one hand, while the lines of this same object are outlined on the other hand.  These sensual representations illustrate the gap as well as the link between the physical perception of reality and the knowledge of this perception.  We know that we know how it feels though we are not touching it.

Porter works tongue in cheek, playing games with herself and with us, her audience.  Porter’s Picasso was prompted by her desire to put her finger under the master’s drawing.  So she drew her own Picasso to be able to put her finger under the drawing by running a line in pencil over it.  This intention of turning the world into her playground explains much of her work. 

She takes images from literature, popular culture, politics, the bric-a-brac of daily life, draws them or sticks them on a canvas or on a sheet of paper, stands them on a shelf, draws lines to and from them, stands them next to or against totally irrelevant figures to create rare and awkward meetings. We see how they look into each other’s eyes in a pensive mood establishing what we imagine are unusual dialogues.   What does Pinocchio say to the man in a dark suit and hat? Or the man in a suit and hat to the chicken? A rather dark skinned Che looks up into the sky from a canvas while a rabbit looks at him from outside the canvas.

Is it the spirit of Alice in Wonderland running amok that sets up these impossible meetings and describes a reality beyond the real world we know? Porter has chosen to translate illusion into a visual scenario, playing games of hide and seek, of exquisite vitality to illustrate her perception of culture and of contemporary life.

Two films by Porter: “For You” and “Drum Solo” are shown in the context of this retrospective in two small rooms off the main exhibition premises.   The “action” into which the endearing inanimate characters are drawn illustrates the dramatic content of much of Porter’s work. It is in these films that we grasp the anguish and despair that is not that obvious in her visual art. In a sort of staccato mood the defenseless small toy figures lose their heads, they are ludicrously overfed to the point of engorgement or jump into an abyss.

Inés Katzenstein, the curator of this exhibition, looked conscientiously into Porter’s archives and body of work to design the show. Her conclusion was that what underlined the whole of her production was the use of photography, a medium Porter first used to record her work in other media and then developed into a discipline per se.

A well-illustrated catalogue published by the Centro Cultural Recoleta together with Malba/Colección Constantini is an updated textual story that runs through the whole of Liliana Porter’s career.  Essays by Inés Katzenstein, Mercedes Mac Donnell, Gabriel Rangel, Ana Tiscornia, Shifra Goldman, Ricardo Martín-Crosa, Miguel Briante, Pedro Cuperman, Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Charles Merewhether, Gerardo Mosquera, Gabriel Peluffo and Alberto Martín discuss every aspect of her work.


 (Liliana Porter /Fotografía y Ficción, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Sala Cronopius, Junín 1930. Until February 29).