Luis Camnitzer:
Retrospective Exhibition
1966-1990
Introduction by Jane Farver
Essay—Moral Imperatives: Politics as
Art in Luis Camnitzer by
Mari Carmen Ramirez
Essay—Politics and Ethnicity in the
Work of Luis Camnitzer by Gerardo Mosquera
Statement—Manifesto, 1982 by Luis Camnitzer
Essay—Access to the Mainstream by Luis
Camnitzer
Essay—The Idea of the Moral Imperative
in Contemporary Art by Luis Camnitzer
Chronology by Luis Camnitzer
Notes and Bibilography
Wonderbread and Spanglish Art
by Luis Camnitzer
In its short life, the U.S. has both adopted and developed a great variety
of cultural paradigms and myths that give cohesion to its national identity.
These constructs, by no means always a product of a conscious strategy,
overshadow and help to reduce the diversities in population identity,
a diversity which normally would tend to undermine a sense of unity. Some
of the ideas are notorious and past their prime, like the "American dream"
and the "melting pot". Some take their place in economics, like the "trickle
down" theory. Sometimes a little military action furthers the cause, like
the invasion of Grenada which was approved by 63% of the polled population.
"Wonder Bread" is one of these paradigms which operates on a cultural
level. It is a product sold and consumed as bread. Additives and advertising
provide its nutritional value without affecting any of the product's inherent
qualities. Over the years, the confluence of economic dynamics and culturally
conditioned taste buds has led to the establishment of "Wonder Bread"
as a benchmark for other products. Any effort by these other products
to resemble real bread is not so much seen as closing a gap but as an
act of refinement and sophistication. The products become variations of
what can be called "gourmet" Wonder Bread. Given the fact that even cultures
which have perfected real bread over millennia are slowly adopting the
same range of products, what normally would be no more than an example
of anthropological curiosity becomes also a paradigm for intercultural
relations. As an example of how values are shifted, the use of "Wonder
Bread" as a reference illustrates the flow of pressure between the hegemonic
center and the periphery.
The increasing pervasiveness of "Wonder Bread" outside of the U.S. is
directly explained by it satisfying expediency and economy and, less directly,
by the aura of status owned by those things imported from the hegemonic
culture. While direct pressure allows for a conscious decision about why
one should sacrifice one's taste buds, it is the indirect pressure which
subverts and eventually substitutes taste, creating a new canon. "Wonder
Bread" has become a symbol of modernity. Modernity has traditionally been
associated with progress and, therefore, seen as a necessary tool for
decolonization and independence. It is ironic that in this process values
are subverted to a point that, in fact, a new colonization takes place.
The reason to expand on this here is because, even if fraught with more
complex issues, the same process applies to art.
The pressure to shift values in art is buttressed by the still underlying
commonplace assumption that art historical processes are linear and develop
progressively in the search for quality. It follows that art which fills
the media with the latest news and achieves pervasiveness, becomes ipso
facto the canon. The desirability of the canon is internalized, and
following it comes to appear as a spontaneous, instinctive, indigenous
and authentic activity, when, in fact, it is the product of an artificially
created need. Taste acts as an acquired instinct. As an instinct, it bypasses
rational thought. As an acquisition it is controlled like any other merchandise
by, among others, values related to class status and property desires.
In a colonially dependent situation the controls operate from the cultural
and economic centers and shape these artificially created needs.
As with any colonizing process, the cultural pressure from the hegemonic
center creates problems for those living and working on the periphery.
A process of slow and organic development of cultural identities has been
interrupted by the adoption of imports well beyond what would be a normal
product of international contact and exchange.1
It is estimated that in Brazil, U.S. companies and their affiliates spend
in advertising the equivalent of one third of the government's budget
for education.2 UNESCO estimates that
between 50% and 70% of what is considered basic culture in the West comes
from radio, television and film. In Latin America, the U.S. controls 75%
of the TV programs, 65% of advertising, 55% of movie houses, 60% of records
and cassettes, 65% of the news and 35% of the publishing.3
One of the consequences is that a focus on art- making for one's community
has given way to the notion of art-making for the international market,
and in this process a new and alien concept of quality has had to be adopted.
Quality is not defined anymore by the degrees of revelation and mastery
of communication for and with one's people, but by how much leverage the
products achieve in the context of an external, often unknown, public.
Thus, the heroic scale and the aesthetic of spectacular superproduction
developed in societies of wealth become the standard against which the
artist of poverty is measured. Handicrafts connected with non-industrial
or obsolete industrial traditions become a tool to stereotype this artist
in his or her separation from the mainstream.
Western art since the Renaissance has developed an increasingly accelerated
dynamic of establishing "colonial techniques" or "minor art forms" within
the media covered by art history. Printmaking, for example, has become
a colony of painting. Instead of contributing original imagery, printmaking
primarily serves to translate and rehash imagery developed in painting.
The division between "super-spectacle" art and "modestly handcrafted"
art seems to be a political refinement of this dynamic since it helps
to secure the place of the rich hegemonic centers by slowly restricting
the definition of art to those products generated by them. This restricted
definition eliminates any possibility of qualitative comparison between
art from the center and art from the periphery. Whatever doesn't reflect
a minimum investment of money won't qualify as serious art. It also ignores
ethical and political substrata often informing art on the periphery as
consequence of the struggle for decolonization. From a hegemonic and formalist
point of view, much of art on the periphery will be perceived as a form
of a low-budget craft.4
It could be argued that successful penetration by the hegemonic concepts
of quality could only occur if the values displaced were weak or obsolete.
While many traditional values might indeed be obsolete (in Latin America
they tend to have originated under previous colonizations and have often
outlived their usefulness), the argument neglects a simple fact. New York
values, or international art market values, are derived from an infrastructure
that can afford them. Or, when they are derived, it is assumed that this
infrastructure can afford them. The assumption is one paradigm more used
in the attempt to achieve cultural unity. As a consequence of the mythical
reality of this paradigm there is also a "periphery" within the "center",
sometimes referred to as the Third World within the First World. It encompasses
internal colonies and dependent cultures and, important for this paper,
emigres from the geographical periphery. The adoption of these values
by a region where this infrastructure is absent (that is, absence of a
market coordinated with the local needs, of a market for the acquisition
of the produced work, of the possibility of survival through art-related
jobs, or of jobs in general for survival), creates problems and absurdities
which cannot be easily ignored. Professionalism in art, increasingly measured
by expenditures, relegates artists on the periphery to the category of
"Sunday painters". Participation in international events becomes an impossibility
because of the lack of money, not only for shipping work, but often for
even preparing slides and mailing documentation. In the absence of an
infrastructure, art schools are primarily created for reasons of international
status_a country is not considered "cultured" without them_and the students
are educated to become foreign grant recipients. If successful, they emigrate
and work in the hegemonic centers. The periphery invests in education
and the hegemonic center receives the benefits.
Those artists not emigrating are subject to the influx of secondary information
which, often, inhibits or masks the creation of local primary information
and thus postpones culture instead of generating it. Art on the periphery
stemming from these dynamics is more a post-cultural phenomenon. It is
primarily the product of an adopted or an imposed culture, rather than
a contributor to a culture in action. As a consequence, the periphery
develops what could be called an eclecticism of despair in which elements
are merged through
appropriation. Subservient and fragmentary mimesis blends with a defensive
syncretic use of resources and with recontextualization. The result is
an aesthetic which long predates postmodernism5,
but which often matches it in visual terms. Postmodernism, however, is
considered to be a post-industrial aesthetic, an aesthetic which responds
to the instantly available and omnipresent information distributed by
super technology, able to cancel out the possibility of distinct styles.
The use of eclecticism on the periphery is, at least partially, a way
of attempting to define an identity. Hegemonic post-modernism, on the
other hand, absorbs all identities into an amorphous conglomerate. The
misperception by the mainstream of the post-cultural eclecticism of the
periphery as a rehashed product of post-modernism is a poor and self-serving
simplification of much more dramatic process. A struggle for cultural
survival is dismissed by means of a dishonest construction of history.
The periphery, when not resorting to an isolationist use of tradition, produces hybrid art, the product of being in one place and looking toward another place. Manfred Schneckenburger, organizer of the latest Documenta exhibit, summed up the consequences of this state of affairs in an unfriendly but cogent way. In an effort to justify the fact that only one Latin American artist (Alfredo Jaar, from Chile) was included in what purported to be an overview of the best art in the market of the last five years, he declared that "it is not possible to show the situation of countries where art is always trapped between a great tradition lost and a wish for contact with the modern world."6
Given the different pressures the artist on the periphery is faced with several choices. The artist can: actively disregard the colonizing values and focus on the local audience; produce for the international market in spite of the handicap; or emigrate to the cultural center.
In the first case, even when focusing on the local audience, the artist
will tend to produce in reaction to colonization. A direct link to the
past is broken, interrupted or deflected by the presence of a filter that
factors in the values promoted by imperial culture. As Albert Memmi observes
in his "Portrait of the Colonized", a loss of history takes place with
the effect that "the colonized are kept out of the objective conditions
of contemporary nationality". Gramsci was reflecting on the same condition
when he noted that "remembering takes the place of thinking" in the production
of culture. Identity, under these conditions, easily becomes confused
with an artificial folklore. Fossil memories, bleached and dry, usurp
reality. Much of indigenist art, from Sabogal in Peru to Rivera in Mexico,
had this problem imbedded in the content of the work. A present generation
of artists is contributing a more formal and sophisticated approach; Cesar
Paternosto and Alejandro Puente, both from Argentina, and Esther Vainstein
(Peru) connect pre-Columbian traditions with modern constructivism and
minimalism.7
In the second case, in which the local artist focuses on the international market, the tendency is to produce makeshift works, intended to achieve the look of the international standard but affected by the material constraints that prevail locally. Equipped with craftsmanship, but confronted with scarcity of materials and resources, artists will try to compete with the "heroic" scale and the industrial finish of art produced in the cultural centers and will seek to disguise material shortfalls with affectation. Work under these conditions runs the risk of halflheartedness.
It is in the third case, in which the artist migrates to the cultural
center, that there is, in theory, the greatest chance for success in the
mainstream. Until the mid-fifties, that cultural center was provided by
Europe, but then slowly shifted to the U.S.A. It is estimated that from
1945 to 1965 alone, at least 17,000 researchers and high level technicians
emigrated from Latin America to the U.S.A. During 1986, 25% of Ph.D.s
awarded in the sciences went to non-U.S.. citizens, and according to a
report published by the National Research Council in January 1988, in
engineering Ph.D.s the figure reached 60%. In turn, 60% of this figure
do not return to their countries of origin. Out of the 500,000 people
who left Puerto Rico during 1980-85, 14% were professionals. Unfortunately
there are no figures specific to this brain drain in art. Enormous amounts
of money invested in the education of highly qualified personnel in Latin
America have thus ended up, in effect, donated to the U.S.A., where migration
on those levels was motivated primarily by economic considerations.8
Political exile was the other major reason for resettlement during recent
decades. A high percentage of these exiles, intellectuals fleeing dictatorships
from the right, went to Europe and Australia, which provided a friendlier
atmosphere for their dissenting ideologies than the U.S.A.
For the migrants themselves, however, the common unifying experience is
that of uprootedness, an experience also familiar to second generation
artists who underwent a non-assimilationist education. While uprootedness
may have little direct effect on the professional output of intellectuals
in the sciences, it becomes a major factor in the work of intellectuals
engaged in the communicative arts. The artist is faced, consciously or
unconsciously, with questions and choices: how much of the original background
should be sacrificed for the sake of assimilation into the new context
and acceptance into the hegemonic culture? How much change will be produced
by osmosis and, therefore, how much of the original background should
be consciously protected?
Some artists will attempt to erase the roots entirely, with the objective
of blending completely into the new environment. This is an enterprise
comparable to that of trying to speak a new language like a native. Wh.
While not an impossible goal, it is clearly more difficult than for the
aborigines with whom one is trying to merge.
Other artists, shocked by the new environment, will retreat toward their
original culture with redoubled efforts, seeking protection. They will
share the plight of those who remained at home addressing the local audience.
But their problems will be even more severe; in their case, the audience
addressed is absent and feedback from them is non-existent or, at best,
sporadic. The audience becomes an abstraction, frozen in a past that is
fogged by nostalgia and wishful mystification. The artist becomes doubly
alienated, trapped in a fiction that looks real.9
Both attitudes thus produce a semblance of reality which hides the conflictual
situation in which they are immersed. While generating aesthetically viable
products, they are haunted by a core of inauthenticity.
But some artists may try to strike a balance between the cultures of
the center and the periphery and confront their reality without the recourse
of escape. Avoiding denial of either the present or the past, they will
attempt to produce a synthesis of experiences. They will produce what
might be called "Spanglish" art.10 Used
in relation to speech, the term has negative connotations, implying the
absence of a functional tool, and its substitution by a non-working hybrid
of two languages. It is the confluence of a language incompletely remembered
with a language incompletely acquired, forced to make do in their new
integration. The negative interpretation obscures the origin and the need
that it fulfills. Used in relation to art, "Spanglish" represents the
merging of a deteriorating memory with the acquisition of a new reality
distanced by foreignness.
"Spanglish" art is probably the most authentic alternative for the uprooted
Latin artist. It is a natural and unaffected expression representing with
fairness the fact that one came from one place and went to another and
it functionally bridges the abyss left by that travel. It is an individualistic
solution which allows for release of the tension caused by the clash of
two cultures, and it permits the integration of both experiences into
one iconography. Inspired by the immediacy of individual experience, this
art will tend to distinguish itself from art that either reflects a programmatic
attitude or evinces political awareness. The cultural significance inheres
in the witnessing to a shared destiny, rather than in the activity of
a shared aesthetic search, and quality is dependent on individual effort,
rather than on group support or a community of interests.
It is difficult to find paradigmatic examples of "Spanglish" art. Since
"Spanglish" does not constitute a consciously adopted platform seeded
by programs, in most cases it remains as a component mixed with other
art-making elements. When I first used the word in relation to art, I
had the work of Ana Mendieta in mind. Artistically educated in the U.S.A.
and interested in breaking into the mainstream, her memories and nostalgia
prevented her successful assimilation. It was a fact which she first resented
and, towards the end of her life, assumed. Pressed for examples, I would
further use the work of Juan Sanchez and of Alfredo Jaar. Sanchez is probably
the clearest example of sophisticated New York/Puerto Rican expression.
He tries to get to his roots, but finds them layered under neighbourhood
experiences and interpretations. The independence of Puerto Rico becomes
a solution to all the levels of discrimination and humiliation, a way
of leaving rather than staying. Jaar is, among these artists, the one
who visually fits best into the mainstream. He shares the impeccability
and the immaculateness of hegemonic presentations. In part this is the
product of his own education and taste, but for him it also becomes a
manipulatory device to get his points across and understood within the
mainstream.
So, the notion of "Spanglish" art becomes more of a tool for understanding
than a neat form of classifying. It provides a helpful vantage point to
re-consider art that has simplistically been lumped together under the
ethnic label of "Hispanic."11The label
puts the so classified people in a dilemma, even when they are um-related
to art. In my own college I am faced with the choice of being undeservedly
classed as part of a "protected segment of the population" (the college's
language) and therefore used to pad some quota, or with reneging on my
own culture and background in order to free a slot for other people in
need of protection.12
Lately, the designation "Hispanic artists" has been used to classify
and neatly group together artists who have some connection with Latin
America. It is a classification spun Off by the mainstream culture which,
in effect, posits a distance between these artists and the mainstream.13
At best, this ascribed distance reflects their poor fit within the parameters
of the mainstream, their deviation from the hegemonic norm. At best because,
while distance may mean economic disaster for the artist, it can also
mean that at least some room is reserved for the development of an authentic
and powerful identity. At worst, the ascribed distance serves to promote
the devastating condescension of "look, they too can make good art." In
economic terms this may create an opportunity for survival, but it can
also lead to a precipitous assimilation into the mainstream in which a
freedom not yet fully achieved, is lost. In both cases. the label provides
no unifying idea beyond that of vague ethnicity or vague geography; the
artist remains separate, on his or her own, distracted from fully exploring
the construction of a larger cultural community.
Meanwhile, the viewer, influenced by mainstream values, will observe
this art with interest. To the degree that viewers' values are shared
by the artist, the presentation wild be understood as belonging to some
form of art, but at the same time, the distance ascribed to the artist
will suggest the possibility of finding something "exotic," something
belonging to the unshared culture that will explain and justify the ascription
of distance. If, by mainstream standards, there is anything intriguingly
exotic it will be applauded as a contribution to the mainstream audience
and coopted. If, on the other hand, the artist has found something interesting
in mainstream art and has adopted it for use in personal art, the results
will run the risk of being condemned as derivative. It is interesting
to see how the work of Wifredo Lam suffered from both pressures at the
same time. He is accepted as both bringing mysterious rituals into Western
art and as a derivative product of Picasso. As Cuban critic Gerardo Mosquera
points out, the result of this ambiguity is that his "Jungle" decorates
the coat room in the Museum of Modern Art.
Therefore, when coming from the periphery, success has a frontier. The
artist can only be moderately successful by the standards of mainstream
art. Moderate acceptance means that the artist is seen as competent, as
one who developed some individuality in the work without seriously revolutionizing
or shaking the parameters within which international art operates. This
perception allows the peaceful use of the work whenever the "Hispanic"
quota has to be satisfied. If there is some ethnicity present, even better.
In a twisted way, the "Hispanic" artist is then perceived as producing
a form of artistic "gourmet Wonder Bread", a bland category which here
exempts the viewer from having to deal with the artist's individual drama
of surviving the pressure of two clashing benchmarks by trying to create
a third one. From the point of view of the artist, "Spanglish art" as
a category preserves and expresses this drama.
The uprooted artist lacks the possibility of a powerful dialogue with
a correspondingly uprooted public. When it exists, that public is too
small or too distant to provide an effective feedback. Therefore it is
the "gourmet Wonder Bread" way of reading works of art which generates
most of the pressure. The artist classified as "other" is, because of
this pressure, led to abandon any effort to find an authentic integrative
iconography for the sake of opportunistic blandness or, instead, one of
two opposite modes. The artist tries to produce totally exotic work, that
is, conforming to the stereotype prevailing in the mainstream about what
the original culture of the artist is supposed to be. Or the artist tries
to eradicate totally any evocation of difference with an effort to camouflage
the work as an act of homage to the current canon of the hegemonic culture.
The feedback from the mainstream audience thus serves, unintentionally,
to complicate and retard the task of cultural synthesis and to exacerbate
the tensions that vex, and sometimes torment, the uprooted artist.
The "gourmet Wonder Bread" appreciation of art therefore serves as a
long range tool to achieve assimilation into the hegemonic culture. Not
only is the artist sidetracked from the pursuit of a new integrative authenticity,
but it is the creation of an audience fitting this work which is also
hindered. The artist is led to address the wrong audience, while the intended
audience can not develop to become a proper interlocutor. It is clearly
a natural dynamic of any hegemonic culture to attempt to reduce phenomena
such as "Spanglish" art to an expression of one first and passing generation.
However, it is less clear if, given the conditions generating emigration
towards the center, this reduction serves the interests of "Spanglish"
artists and their real and potential audiences.
"Wonderbread and Spanglish Art" is an expanded version
of "Latin American Art in the U.S.: Latin or American?," an essay written
originally by Luis Camnitzer for the exhibition Convergences/Convergencias,
organized by Jane Farver for The Lehman College Art Gallery, February
11- March 31, 1988.
Execution, 1970
Dictionary, 1969
Adhesive Labels, 1966-67
The Cake, 1988
(from the Zanoobia Series)