Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

150 Rachel Weiss
teach workshops in papier-mâché, and then Nisia Agüero and María Rosa Almendros
included her in the work of the Group for Community Development (Grupo
de Desarrollo de Comunidades), bringing her to its workshops and seminars in various
communities.” Her work in these activities was “without the slightest tinge of
irony,” done out of both conviction and economic necessity. E-mail communication
with the author, May 4, 2004. Interestingly, papier-mâché was a technique with
no history or tradition in Cuba, so its reincarnation as a “popular” expression was
pure invention: not yet meant for the tourist market (though it later became a mainstay),
papier-mâché was supposed to be a cheap, accessible medium through which
any- and everyone could overnight become an artist. The production was exhibited
in galleries throughout the island, the realization of the cultural “massiWcation”
policies of the revolutionary government. Meanwhile, although the fad was not
taken particularly seriously from the perspective of “high art,” Eiriz’s participation
had lent some aura of high cultural legitimacy to it. Again according to Navarro,
the papier-mâché fad “disappeared as quickly as it appeared. And one of the factors
was precisely that a large part of the general public resisted the idea that anyone—
even their most uneducated neighbor—could become an artist in a matter of a week
or two.” In addition, most of the production was exceptionally uniform, “ornamental,
and with an extreme poverty of formal and chromatic patterns, etc.” This may
have been due, at least in part, to the manner of teaching: among other things, in
the papier-mâché workshops the study of historical works of art was speciWcally and
programmatically excluded.
32. Eligio (Tonel), “70, 80, 90 . . . tal vez 100 impresiones sobre el arte en Cuba,”
282.
33. Fragment of the declaration of the Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación
y Cultura, Havana, April 1971. Política Cultural de la Revolución Cubana, documentos,
1977 edition.
34. Fearful of establishing a precedent in which artists acted independently of
any ofWcial cultural structures, the Ministry of Culture granted the artists permission
to reinstall the show in the Centro de Arte Internacional (now Galería La
Acacia) in January 1981, after its successful run in Fors’s house. In fact Flavio Garciandía
has joked that the artists should thank State Security for the gallery space:
the artists’ hugely successful self-promotion apparently convinced the security forces
that it would be better to cooperate with, and thereby coopt, the artists rather than
risk a runaway phenomenon of “underground” or “dissident” cultural activity.
35. While this was exceptional at that time in Havana, it is a practice with a
long and diverse history that includes Dada, surrealism, and Fluxus, all groups of
artists who also developed their own exhibitions out of frustration with the conventions
and institutions of exhibition-making that were available to them.
36. Around ten thousand people visited the show in two weeks, and even
Armando Hart, the Minister of Culture, came, making it “an almost popular event.”
Eligio (Tonel), “70, 80, 90 . . . tal vez 100 impresiones sobre el arte en Cuba,” 292.
37. This term describes a position that is opposite to formalism, in which the
content of the work is prioritized or absolutized above and beyond the form.
38. Flavio Garciandía, interview with the author, Monterrey, Mexico, April 19,
2003.
39. In April 1980, twelve Cubans crashed a minibus through the gates of the
Peruvian embassy in Havana and demanded asylum. The Peruvian chargé d’affaires
announced that any Cubans wishing to defect would be granted access to the embassy,