John Fogarty Seminar

“The Argentine Culture since the 70s” by Lucia Pacenza

In 2003, I was invited by the Australian National University to create a work in their International Sculpture Park, which gave me an opportunity to be the first Argentine artist who could erect a work in the public space of Canberra. During more than a month, I shared my work with professors and students from the University School of Art, achieving the installation of the Arch of the Sun as it had been conceived (*).

Such enriching experiences as this one should be more frequent. Little do we know in Argentina about the excellent Australian art and vice versa. I think that cultural interchange should increase to the benefit of both peoples. As Argentina integrates into the international current within the different circles, a more fluent dialogue with Australia would be interesting. Obtaining scholarships as those granted by the United States Guggenheim Foundation, participating in the region’s biennales such as the MERCOSUR, Sao Paulo and Habana ones, taking part in the European biennales held in Kassel and Venice, in art fairs as ARCO in Madrid, Art-Miami, etc, our culture shows its presence. We participate in language congresses as the one recently held in Mexico, in international museums’ meetings, in film festivals and those on theatre, music and all kinds of activities.

The impact of modern communications on culture has been as overwhelming here as it is in the rest of the world. Most of our young people, students, scholars and artists master the language of the Internet, which has presently become vital to everyone involved in cultural activities.

A look at the becoming of Argentine art over the last three decades reveals such an intense intellectual and artistic activity that I will be hardly able to summarise it here. For this reason, I will confine myself to the enumeration of some inevitable points in respect of our culture. To begin with, in literature, it is necessary to mention our best-known writer –among us as well as abroad-, Jorge Luis Borges, who, in one of his renown poems dedicated to Buenos Aires, wrote “it is not love that bonds us but fright, it will be for that reason that I want it so much”. He lived here and died in Geneva in 1986 (*). Borges’s work is the subject of study of Argentine and foreign universities; his prestige has gone beyond our borders, his books have been translated into all languages and he is an icon of literature, recognised and admired all over the world.

Another of our internationally renowned writers, Julio Cortázar, lived in Paris since the 1950s and died there in 1984. His work, though, almost always refers to Argentina, as if he had been living side by side with the people of Buenos Aires.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Victoria Ocampo, Héctor Tizón, Ernesto Sábato are also outstanding exponents of our literature. Many good writers, some of whom were disappeared, as Haroldo Conti, others, who lived in exile, have later come back and coexist in this globalisation era with the light and commercial best-selling literature, which is what big publishing houses generally publish and sponsor. Fortunately, Argentine ones –one-time prestigious in Latin America– are publishing again after the recent economic crisis, making books affordable for the Argentine public. The National Library, situated in an emblematic building designed by architect Clorindo Testa, conserves and disseminates our literature, welcomes large numbers of people, and hosts conferences and book launches (*).

Now, let us see: What role does the third millennium artist play? What are the limits of art? These questions –which are popular not only worldwide but also among us– were food for thought at the Biennale of the End of the World, recently held in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in Argentina. At present, a wide range of elements combines within plastic arts, not only paintings and sculptures, but also objects, videos, installations, photography, all of them either merged or in isolation. The generalised aesthetisation, globalisation, intermingling of languages, acceptance of the kitsch and of meaninglessness, are observed in many of the creations freely accomplished, approved by the critics and by the art market.

In our medium, there is great freedom of speech, which enables different artistic manifestations to flourish. We can visit all kinds of exhibitions at museums and galleries for free.

When approaching the recent history of our art, we can see that, after the sixties –characterised by experimentation and pop art–, conceptualism, understood as the art of ideas, lost interest in the practice of the pictorial métier. Yet, there was a return to painting with a realistic aesthetic in the mid seventies. Some of our most outstanding artists, for example, Antonio Berni (1905-1981), showed a realism that was critical of a technologically advanced society. His marginal characters, such as Juanito Laguna, are part of our social imaginary (*). With his powerful expressiveness, Carlos Alonso, painter and draughtsman, points at the dramatic reality of the contemporary individual (*).

At the end of the sixties, four painters made up the New Figuration group, for whom the image of man appears distorted and fragmented. They are the late Jorge de la Vega and Ernesto Deira, together with Rómulo Macció and Luis Felipe Noe. These artists are still in vogue; they are admired by their creative freedom and hold exhibitions frequently. Antonio Seguí and other artists such as Ezequiel Linares and Carlos Gorriarena approached the expressionist new figuration.

Rómulo Macció’s work shows, in a permanent development, different degrees of freedom reflected in his choice of topics as well as in his gesture strokes and use of colour (*).

Libero Badii (1916-2001), one of the foremost representatives of Argentine sculpture, kept his work in constant evolution. He has his own museum in Buenos Aires, which opened some years before his death (*).

Aldo Paparella (1920-1977), with his useless monuments made of painted cardboard, reflected the reality of his day. He contradicts the monuments’ idea of everlastingness and reveals the fragility of contemporary man (*).

Juan Carlos Distéfano; his sculptures have shown social violence, censorship and the violation of human rights (*).

The surrealist tendency has also been present in this period; we will only mention Roberto Aizemberg (1928-1995). Rather than participating in the surrealist tendency, his perfectionist painting is metaphysical (*).

There are also exponents of abstract art, another tendency of the last decades:

Since 1973, we find Alejandro Puente, whose paintings reveal a quest into Indo-American art (*).

Ary Brizzi proposes a world of clarity, harmony between opposites and balance between the rational and the sensitive (*).

Rogelio Polesello is a geometric art premier exponent with an endless repertoire of shapes (*).

Maria J. Heras Velazco works with the rigour of industrial production, playing with imagination and sensitivity (*).

In the eighties, postmodernism entails a return to an unpretentious painting that does not aim to innovate, using appropriations and quotes from the history of art. Coinciding with the idea of the end of ideology and globalisation, painting recovers after the heyday of conceptual art. In our country, the promotion of some artists took place abroad before it did here, an example of this is Guillermo Kuitca, who started his career at an early age, made forays into theatre, worked on scenography and on installations. His work is internationally valued; he lives in Buenos Aires, and has instituted a scholarship for young plastic artists (*).

Clorindo Testa, painter and architect. His deeply personal work is characterised by the richness of solutions and absolute freedom (*).

Also in the eighties, a quest to find the national identity is evident and social reality is exposed, as in the works of Víctor Quiroga, the artist from the province of Tucumán, and Diana Dowek (*).

Adolfo Nigro and Carlos Delmonte are exponents of the River Plate movement (*).

Since the sixties, there were several variants of conceptual art taking the social context as the subject matter of their works. Some of their foremost exponents are Víctor Grippo, Jorge González Mir and other artists belonging to the CAYC (Centre for Art and Communication) Group, since the nineteen seventies.

Leon Ferrari, a pioneer of conceptual art in its political side, uses different elements as objects, installations, etc. His present paintings evoke calligraphy alphabets (*).

Pablo Suarez (1937-2006) ironically represents some archetypical characters of the city, and their habits and customs in a very free-and-easy manner (*).

Since the nineties, the use of computers brings about the incorporation of digital art, photography, video-art, video-installation, performances, objects, as well as plastic and conceptual languages which coexist in full freedom.

As of the year 2000, all kinds of such visual experiences as photography, which has definitely become recognised as art, are included in official plastic art contests. Some of our photographers are Aldo Sessa, Alejandro Kuroptawa and Marcos Lopez. There is a revival of conceptual art, and we frequently find texts explaining the content of what we are looking at in an exhibition, to make its meaning clear.

Public Art

There are no laws allocating a budget percentage for the incorporation of works of art to new buildings in our country. Buenos Aires, endowed with so many beautiful nineteenth century works, lacks sculpture parks, and we rarely find contemporary pieces in its streets and walks, being Resistencia, a city in the province of Chaco, the only one which has devoted a prominent space to contemporary sculpture.

Institutions

In 1970, the Centro de Artes Visuales Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (Torcuato Di Tella Institute Visual Art Centre) closed down. It had been an emblematic institution of avant-garde art, whose director, critic Jorge Romero Brest, considered the death of painting a reality, on the grounds that it could not compete with the mass media for the audience’s attention.

In the same year, the CAYC (Centre for Art and Communication), led by art critic and businessman Jorge Glusberg, emerged as the successor of the Di Tella Institute, introducing different tendencies of American and European art (land art, body art, cybernetic art, etc.), organising meetings between Argentine and foreign artists, and with renowned intellectuals. The CAYC’s model was another institution created by artist Robert Rauschemberg, Experiments in Art and Technology, involving artists, scientists, sociologists and psychologists.

The National Fund for the Arts was created in 1958 with the object of instituting a financial system to support and promote artistic, literary and cultural activities in every corner of the country. In 2005, it incorporated the House for Culture with the aim of spreading artistic manifestations over the different regions of the country.

The Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, created in 1960 to support new plastic tendencies, has organised several exhibitions of Argentine artists abroad. Its building is currently closed because it is being refurbished, as is the Cinema Museum. At present, it has been temporarily moved to the Central Post Office.

The City Museum, set up in 1968, endeavours to retrieve and disseminate the essence of the city, from its architecture to the habits of its people.

Since the late 1970s, the Argentine Association of Art Critics carries out its activities promoting the different tendencies in contemporary art. It organises exhibitions and symposiums. In 1978, during the first international meetings of Art Critics, there were exhibitions (apart from debates and conferences) at which each critic would make an introduction of their artists, introducing curators to exhibitions.

In 1981, the Recoleta Cultural Centre, inspired by the Modern Art Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, set out to create a pluralist space for art attractive to young people, where new tendencies could be introduced. It receives resources from the town council and from sponsors. Public attendance has been and continues to be massive. This place is intended to put on exhibitions and, unlike museums, it does not have a permanent collection.

The National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA), which has celebrated its 110th anniversary, is the largest art museum in Argentina (*). Towards 1983, its permanent exhibition halls were refurbished according to international museological criteria, putting on several retrospective exhibitions of Argentine artists such as Emilio Petorutti, Antonio Berni, Alfredo Hlito and Fernando Fader. Other important exhibitions have also been held abroad. Since 2003, under the direction of architect Alberto Bellucci, the number of exhibited works has doubled, there is a permanent collection of Argentine and River Plate Art, and photography exhibitions as well as an open-air sculpture space have been incorporated.

The MNBA welcomes a thousand people every day –including groups of schoolchildren–, to whom it offers free activities.

The city of Buenos Aires is also the seat of the National Museum of Decorative Art (*), the Sívori Museum of Argentine Art, the Palace of the Arts and the National Academy of Fine Arts, which have been fostering publications and contemporary art exhibitions all over the country for more than 30 years. The MALBA (Latin American Museum of Contemporary Art) has been recently opened. It is a private museum set up in a impressive building tailor-made for it (*). It has a Latin American contemporary art collection and organises national and international exhibitions of present-day art.

At the national level, several provinces have set up museums and cultural centres to hold contemporary art exhibitions, the most important being Santa Fe, Córdoba, Mendoza, Salta and Neuquén, which is the seat of the National Museum of Fine Arts, with a new building especially designed by Architect Mario Roberto Alvarez.

Only in some Argentine provinces is Art taught at the university level, as in the cities of Rosario and La Plata, and since recently, also in Buenos Aires. In the mid eighties, the teaching of plastic arts –not in the university curricula in the City of Buenos Aires– started to increase its staff, and was enriched by the diverse specialisations of the new teachers. At present, the IUNA (of university status) and also the Rojas Cultural Centre are both devoted to the experimentation and dissemination of new plastic art experiences.

At the private level, several universities offer courses in the field of Art, such as El Salvador University, San Andrés and the Catholic University.

As regards musical education, we have a number of national and municipal conservatoires, private universities and the University of Buenos Aires, which in 1986 introduced an undergraduate course on Art History, with specialisations in literature, plastic arts and music.

Over the past 30 years, music creation has undergone a transformation given by the use of new technological tools and the non-conventional use of traditional instruments.

In the current sonorous context, elements of the past and of the present intermingle. Francisco Kropfl appears as a leader of electroacoustic music. Another important exponent is Gerardo Gandini. Both musicians, who had participated in the Di Tella Institute experiences, continued their careers in such places as the Buenos Aires City Cultural Centre and the Colón Theatre.

We take pride in our Colón Theatre (*) –currently closed for restoration– because of its history, its acoustics and the level of excellence of its performances. It has staged high-quality operas, symphonic concerts, ballet and chamber music even during the years of the crisis.

As for popular music after 1960, national rock appears influenced by the early North American music at the beginning, then establishing itself with local exponents and gaining great popularity. Just to mention one performer, Charly García has enjoyed his enormous popularity since then up to the present day.

Folklore music reached its peak in the urban space in the seventies, accompanying our culture’s tendency to become more popular. Mercedes Sosa, Atahualpa Yupanqui and Ariel Ramirez were some the most emblematic figures, as were Jaime Torres, Antonio Tarragó Ross , Teresa Parodi and other artists from the different regions of the country.

Tango, the Buenos Aires City music par excellence, has undergone an innovative process led by bandoneón player and composer Astor Piazzolla (*). His production, which is at the same time part of both popular and academic music, has assumed utmost importance in the renewal of tango, and has had an extraordinary impact on new generations of composers. Piazzolla’s music, though resisted by traditional tango fans at first, has been all over the world, and continues to be performed by great orchestras everywhere. Néstor Marconi, Daniel Binelli, Juan José Mosalini, Pablo Ziegler and Rodolfo Mederos are some of the premier exponents of modern tango, carrying on Piazzolla’s work. Tango is becoming more and more popular abroad, mainly in Europe; this is true not only of tango music, but also of its dance, which attracts increasing numbers of people eager to learn how to dance it and enthusiastically participating in dancing contests and meetings called “milongas”.

Argentine theatre has playwrights as Griselda Gámbaro and stage actors as Alfredo Alcón and Norma Aleandro. Towards the end of 1981, the event called Teatro Abierto (Open Theatre) brought with it expectations of a return to free creation. Between 1981 and 1985, the most representative stage actors in the country organised an event that had widespread repercussion in which they proposed theatre as a way of raising awareness about national reality.

National cinema –with its long tradition– has undergone different periods. At the end of the sixties, auteur cinema was led by artists such as Leopoldo Torres Nilson and Fernando Ayala; then a more politically involved orientation was introduced by Pino Solanas and Octavio Getino; and then the experimental and realistic cinema, as that reflected in Héctor Olivera’s films. A law enacted in 1984 abolished censorship and introduced an age classification system. Film making flourished and all issues were freely approached. At present, Argentine cinema receives great financial support from the Argentine government; there are several state and private schools and many young people receive grants to bring their creation to fruition and take part in international festivals.

Argentina stands out in the world because of its artists. Many of them have developed brilliant careers abroad. Marta Argerich and Bruno Gelber, pianists; Daniel Barenboim, conductor; Lalo Schifrin, composer; Gustavo Santaolalla, a film composer who has won two Oscar Awards; Julio Bocca, ballet dancer. They and many others are individual figures who grew up in our society. Many of the aforementioned institutions foster artistic creation by means of scholarships and contests which provide artists with the means to develop their creative work. However, the will and financial support of the economically powerful sectors are needed to disseminate culture, so as to project these works internationally.

Our cultural activity has been able to survive the different periods we have gone through. We presently keep on working trying to catch up with the rest of the world. The new generations enter the world of art with precarious means sometimes, by always full of great enthusiasm and great expectations.

(*) Picture

Bibliography

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