Cuban Art and the Democratisation of Culture
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chapter 24 Cuban Art and the Democratisation of Culture Since the early 1960s, Cuban culture has assumed a unique position interna- tionally. At once distinctively Caribbean, yet also exemplary of developments world-wide, Cuban art has diverged from Eastern bloc traditions, as well as those of the West, to arrive at a seminal position for Third World cultural advances. Indications of this later achievement surfaced during the early 1960s when Che Guevara criticised both the Stalinist doctrine of ‘socialist realism’ and the Western fetish for isolated ‘personal expression’.1 Similarly, it was in this same period that Fidel Castro opposed the institution of any official style that would set narrow formal limits to the conception of art. While Khrushev, in the early 1960s, condemned all modern art as counter-revolutionary, Fidel significantly disagreed, with the observation: ‘Our enemies are capitalists and imperialists, not abstract art’.2 As a corollary to this position, Fidel ennunci- ated the basic axiom of Cuban cultural developments since 1959: ‘Within the Revolution, everything. Against the Revolution, nothing’.3 From the beginning, then, the cultural progress of the Cuban Revolution has been characterised by an unprecedented breadth in several respects. Perhaps the most profound manifestation of this advance has been a sustained com- mitment to what the Cubans call ‘cultural democracy’, an expansive process whereby the populace has assumed a far more participatory role in the cul- tural life of the country than normally prevails elsewhere in the world. As such, the Cuban Revolution has not only greatly expanded the audience for the arts, it has also substantially increased the number of those engaged in the arts. In addition, this newly enlarged public sphere and aesthetic context has led to an artistic vocabulary of remarkable formal, as well as conceptual, scope. Components of it range from pre-colonial African traditions and us pop cul- ture to pre-Columbian forms and European high culture. At its most profound, the art production of Cuba has gone beyond mere eclecticism to a new syn- thesis both internationalist in general orientation, yet specifically expressive of major issues confronting the Third World. This impressive accomplishment, along with an extension of cultural democracy, explains why ‘Cuba has been at 1 Guevara 1977, pp. 264–7. 2 Cockcroft 1983, pp. 3–4. For a further look at Khrushev’s opposition to modernity in the visual arts, see Berger 1969. 3 Castro 1961, p. 15. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004235861_026 cuban art and the democratisation of culture 341 the center of cultural activity in the Hispanic world for the past 20 years’.4 Fur- thermore, these factors also make clear why Cuban art and culture will in all probability continue to occupy a prominent position for countries around the world, which are now confronting the pheonomenon of cultural underdevel- opment that is interrelated to economic dependency.5 In order to address the important cultural dynamic of Cuba since the revolu- tion, several things will be necessary: 1) We must first discuss the concrete cultural policies instituted after 1958, as well as the theoretical basis for them. Such a discussion will entail a consideration of cultural democracy and the transformed public sphere it presupposes, in order to determine whether the arts have indeed become much more accessible to the Cuban populace as part of an emphatic decentralisation of political power since the revolution, par- ticularly since the mid-1970s. Concomitant with this consideration will be an assessment of the Cuban concept of ‘popular culture’ – a concept to be sharply distinguished from populism and mass culture. 2) We will also examine a few of the many notable artistic achievements engendered by this new cultural matrix – Nueva Trova music, the National Ballet under Alicia Alonso, the New Theater of Escambray and Cabildo Teatral, the criticism of Roberto Fernández Retamar and Roberto Segre, the highly regarded graphic design of posters for ospaaal and the Film Institute, the paintings of René Portocarrero and Raul Martínez, and, of course, the celebrated films of directors like Tomás Gutier- rez Alea, Pastor Vega, Santiago Alvarez, Marisol Trujillo and several others. 3) Finally, having discussed the cultural successes since 1959, we will then con- sider significant problems within the realm of art and culture that have yet to be resolved. Cultural Policies since 1959 Recently, Armando Hart Dávalos, the Minister of Culture in Cuba, stated: ‘What we hope to achieve in the future … is for art to penetrate all spheres of life’.6 Whether or not this goal will be attained is, of course, still open to question, but other achievements related to it are certainly no longer in doubt. Promin- ent among these accomplishments is the immense progress already registered towards incorporating diverse cultural activities into the everyday experience 4 González Echevarría, 1985, p. 155. 5 See, for example, Castro 1983. 6 Hart Dávalos 1983, pp. 12–13..