Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

146 Rachel Weiss
development of Cuban art: among other things, it increased the distance between
culture and the military and granted it cabinet-level status.
3. The artist Ernesto Leal has described it thus: “in that moment there was quite
a lot of awareness of ourselves as a generation . . . but I remember one time we met
in a park, where there were a lot of artists, and the discussion was whether we should
make a manifesto or not, a manifesto of the eighties, and there was a lot of disagreement
about trying to enclose that conWguration in a manifesto, about starting
again with that question of the avant-garde. Because things were very agitated then,
one thing happening and then something different, but in the end, all of it united
by conscience.” Interview with the author, Havana, March 18, 2002.
4. Although it would certainly be possible to discuss Cuban collectivism in terms
of the traditions of collectivity established in the mainstream of the art world, it
seems more productive, and more accurate, to explore it instead within the terms and
conditions that have principally given rise to it, rather than measuring it according
to parameters that are largely extrinsic. This is not to suggest that Cuban collectivism
has existed in a vacuum, but rather to insist that it, along with other local cultural
phenomena, has developed as a response to the speciWcities of the Cuban situation,
rather than mimetically in relation to “international” practice. This is essentially the
same method adopted by me and my colleagues in the exhibition “Global Conceptualism:
Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s.” See Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin,
1950s–1980s, exhibition catalog (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999).
5. The case is different for the most recent collectives, which actually do function
in a more consciously self-aggregating way, and which see themselves as constituted
more in opposition to an environmental tendency than toward individualism. These
later collectives are beyond the scope of this text.
6. The Cuban revolution represented a major break with the Soviet model, proposing
a looser, more dynamic and consciousness-based model. The historian Marifeli
Pérez-Stable understands this character of the Cuban process as one of its most
important resources: “the revolution’s own initial experience underscored the importance
of creativity to preserve Cuban distinctiveness. Popular effervescence was
itself a resource at the disposal of the revolution . . . During the 1960s Cuba deWed
reigning orthodoxy and rejected institutionalizing the Soviet model, which held
material incentives higher than conciencia. Instead, mass mobilization for production
and defense became the cornerstone of revolutionary politics.” Marifeli Pérez-
Stable, “In Pursuit of Cuba Libre,” in Cuba: Facing Challenge, special issue, NACLA
Report on the Americas 24, no. 2 (August 1990), 37. Jorge Castañeda’s description adds
an aspect of regionalism and points to the island’s distinct political and intellectual
tradition, but notes that in the end the upstart character of the Cuban revolution
dimmed considerably: “the island revolution . . . was freer, more democratic, disorderly,
tropical, and spontaneous, as well as being intellectually more diverse and
politically more liberal. With time, the resemblance between the models would grow,
and Cuba would come to look much more like the Soviet Union.” Jorge Castañeda,
Utopia Unarmed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 74.
7. This is true for readers both inside and out of Cuba. While Mosquera has
been, by far, the most widely published of the Cuban critics of this period, there are
several others who were also extremely important to the development of a critical
and theoretical discourse; these include Osvaldo Sánchez, Tonel (Antonio Eligio),
Desiderio Navarro, Orlando Hernández, Iván de la Nuez, Jorge de la Fuente, Lupe
Álvarez, Magaly Espinosa, and Rufo Caballero.