Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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ism was a matter of coincidence more than of mutual knowledge (if we use 1964 as a reference),
particularly in the political stream. Some, no doubt, were by some magazine information or
returning tourist but in general, Latin America has a tradition which would lead to this art
regardless of what was happening in that particular stream in other countries.
The dynamics toward radicalism were given from preceding international and national
movements: there were Argentine destructionists in 1961, Greco was a link with “nouveau
realisme,” and then there were the political conditions. In Brazil, concrete poetry took place
in the 1950s and fed from Antropofagia in the 1920s. I think that all of that (and that is why
I take Simón Rodríguez as a paradigm), the fusion of poetry, politics and art in a long tradition,
makes a local clock for conceptualism particularly relevant. I agree we should not leave out
“shared historical determinants” and the percentages vary from individual to individual as
much as artist groups to artist groups, etc. But there is always the danger of unilateralness in
the definition of sharing. It took the U.S. half a century to “share” the ideas of university
reform and one can say that in fact they never really shared but finally “discovered.” The history
of this belated “insight” illustrates the dangers of presumption in a definition of sharing and
also explains your question about lack of coordination of art with the civil rights movement.
The lack of politicized academic tradition explains the blandness of artistic positions during
civil rights and Vietnam protests (I am separating art from artists-as-citizens here) in the U.S.
vs. the presence and integration of political issues in Latin America.
This interview was conducted by e-mail, January-February 1998. It is previously unpublished.