Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

The Mexican Pentagon 179
of a campaign of violent repression against dissidents that was as brutal as
that of Operation Condor.) The Mexican groups went ahead and produced
their countercatalog, a modest paperback with texts by García Márquez (the
only famous writer to accept their invitation), Alberto Híjar (a Mexican
professor of Marxist theory who was also a member of TAI), and Alejandro
Witker (a Chilean exile) that also included visual documentation of the
works produced by the four groups for the Biennale.
And what did García Márquez have to say about Mexican collectivism?
Very little—his text was merely Wve paragraphs long and it demonstrated
a complete misunderstanding of the groups’ projects. He referred to
the artists in the groups as “painters” and had nothing to say about their art.
His text simply endorsed their political stance: “These painters were alarmed,”
he wrote, “that the Biennale organizers responded to their objections [against
Kalenberg] with the argument that the event was apolitical. First point: during
these trying times in our continent, as fascism advances toward us like
a giant beast, one cannot do anything that is not political in one way or
another. Second point: life has taught us that those who proclaim to be apolitical
are really reactionaries ready to pounce.” 28
Ángel Kalenberg, for his part, did not do much better with his catalog.
Borges and Paz—as any reader familiar with their work would expect—declined
to write for the publication. Sarduy accepted, but sent a text titled
“Un baroque en colère” (An Angry Baroque) that did not mention the artists
selected and read like a random, jumbled fragment extracted from one of his
many publications on the subject. Consider the following quote, which gives
a clear idea of the general style of Sarduy’s text: “If anamorphosis—the point
at which perspective plunges into the illegible . . .—was used in the old
baroque to codify a surplus that was often moral—allegory or vanitas—, it
reappears in South American baroque without the trope of double meaning,
reduced to a pure critical artiWce and presented, beyond any didactic ambition,
as a ‘natural’ technique: neither a deceptive shell nor an encoded landscape.”
29 “Baroque” was certainly not the most appropriate label for street
performances such as those staged by Proceso Pentágono.
Even worse was Kalenberg’s own catalog text, a sentimental ode
to Latin America as a land of noble savages. To understand the new art produced
in the region, he wrote, critics need a new vision, “a vision that leaves
behind Eurocentric ways of seeing, one that can judge using a criterion that
is less gestaltic [sic], and realizes that though we might have an incorrect use
of syntax, we possess a life-giving sap that has dried up in Europe.” 30
It is unfortunate that neither Kalenberg’s catalog nor the “countercatalog”
offered an in-depth analysis of any of the actual projects presented