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Killing the Discursive Father?
27November
Articles

Killing the Discursive Father?

How can art reviews be made in the Americas? That’s a heck of a question. How can art reviews be focused on a young art where, as we read in this section of the magazine’s first issue, definition, identity and totality are key players? The Americas endure –even today– a hunger for totality that would like to contravene their historic support. Therefore among other things, the politics of differences has suited them so well –feminism, gay activism, green advocacy, the battling ghettos of the African-American communities, the diasporas’ discourses and the cultural islets ruled by migratory processes. The politics of differences has trained not only the optional thinking, but also the fragmental thoughts, those that warn that each and every soap opera, movie or installation doesn’t have to deliver an overall vision that might help bring the world home. How can art reviews be made in the Americas? That’s a heck of a question. How can art reviews be focused on a young art where, as we read in this section of the magazine’s first issue, definition, identity and totality are key players? The Americas endure –even today– a hunger for totality that would like to contravene their historic support. Therefore among other things, the politics of differences has suited them so well –feminism, gay activism, green advocacy, the battling ghettos of the African-American communities, the diasporas’ discourses and the cultural islets ruled by migratory processes. The politics of differences has trained not only the optional thinking, but also the fragmental thoughts, those that warn that each and every soap opera, movie or installation doesn’t have to deliver an overall vision that might help bring the world home. Argentine and Cuban filmmaking, for instance, are unbearably discursive in their effort to define something, to find, either through gnosis or theology, the destination of “our countries.” Thus, characters end up speaking more for the spectators –hey buddy, get set to hear a few lessons of pocket philosophy– than among themselves. Every line in the screenplays appears to be a poetic riddle –it’s rather a kitsch threat–, a revealing and gripping abstraction about the world. The Cuban art has walked down that same path: the finding of the referential hobbles the emergence of other imagery corners or nouns that do not necessarily connect with the national gesture of affirmation/dissidence. Back in the 1980s, Cuba certainly knew a staggering creative production, only comparable to the revolution of the national arts in the second half of the 1920s. But that referential burden of the arts –from a critical and de-alienating standpoint– has harmed expressions and interpretations that came up later on. There’s a fraction –a faction– of art review that has bogged down in those glory days –quite dazzling splendor, indeed– for which everything that has survived out of the head-on squaring-off or the obliquity sham that at the end of the day end up in the same spot –she’s speaking in English with me, but I do know what she’s “parlaying”, with due respect to a well-known Cuban band that uses that word a lot– means dissident, “sweet”, outdated, out-of-synch glamour. Tenderness is a problem; everything ought to be sour, acid and calming. That happens when art can be and tends to be disturbing in many ways, and when not everybody has been able to preserve the genuine freshness and renovation of Lazaro Saavedra, for example. How hard it is for us to construe artistic culture as a watercolor in the name of the same cultural diversity and thoughts we claim for. Responsible treatment of reality is one thing; the commitment that can choke off art freedom –quite relative by itself– is a completely different ballgame. In the face of that conceptual inferiority complex that is expressed as a superiority complex, the first ghost art review in the Americas should shoo away –and I realize I’m now sliding into just another dangerous abstraction: this has nothing to do with the missions of art review in the U.S., Paraguay or Honduras– is fundamentalism. On the other hand, it’s fueling a critical consciousness about the fact that the desire of founding the world all over again in every installation or performance does art no good at all. The art’s cognitive willingness could flow out in many directions, not necessarily centripetal. It’ll do more good if art review could take care of its own transcendentalist discourses in which each and every exegesis attempt has to be a programmatic platform that dictates, sanctions, regulates, explains, etc.1 everything in a didascalic way. On the other hand, though –no will for paradoxes– art review is supposed to be in sync with its own existence: the flight of interpretation. Restrained, reviewed interpretation, but review plain and simple. One of the greatest problems hammering the attitude toward art review –virtually all across the continent– has to do with the vulgarization of assuming this occupation exists, in the first place, just to legitimize or impugn.2 Lots and lots of adjectives; qualifiers, plenty of sanctioning (beating and beating) one way or another. Lots and lots of adverbs. We don’t realize we expect from art review that very authoritarianism we push aside in society. We look with might and main for hegemony, for the discursive Father figure. It’s needed in a symbolic level. Or better yet, more than anywhere else. The critic has the last say. And who the hell is a critic other than just another human being, as reliable and vulnerable as any subjectivity that is expressed? Not even the authority of the most respectful critic has in its hands the oracle that could determine the real value. Therefore, what the critic delivers is sheer interpretation, tentative to understand or offer keys to the comprehension of artistic processes that find themselves increasingly immersed in the inner dynamics of those very processes. The critic butts in, with his or her possible lucidity, to help unravel social and cultural realities which are less lineal or assumable with each passing day. But expecting in the first place from the critic a sentence on what’s right and what’s wrong not only clones an off-key, outdated model and bestows a Pantocrator gift –deceitful in fact because you’re the greatest, most intelligent and cultivated guy to be adored when you praise, and a mediocre, mean and miserable person to kick when you criticize– on the critic, but it also skews the very essence of the critical practice whereby people expect a line of reasoning rather than a timely judgment. Reasoning the processes. In my view, that’s the key to today’s critical activity. Working out the tug of war between totality and fragment is some sort of flexible combination that runs away from fundamentalism as a frivolity. Achieving consistency rather than tenacity; seduction instead of sensationalism. In the wealth of his or her reasoning, in the foundations and intensity of his or her objectivity –that could be off the beam every once in a while ‘cause nobody’s perfect– lies the value of a critic. Therefore, for me the right thing to do is the strengthening of a critical work based on the interpretation of processes beyond the descriptions and regardless of the dispersion and shortfalls in systematization caused by historiography. That is, shake off the never-ending alibi of discontinuity beyond the makeshift evaluations or authoritarian reports. And far beyond the righteous dictatorship of the “verifiable.” Art review is not cybernetics. With the coming of the Internet and the democratization of information access, discernment is required like never before. Now, for instance, the old modality of the libelous article is staging a comeback everywhere: personal lashings, sexual anecdotes, discrediting attempts that fall back on phony scientific elements and euphemisms that in cultural theory as known as lapels3; let alone digital “aphorisms” that are supposed to do in the work of an artist or expert with just a few whiplashes.4 No one pays heeds to that; people don’t have so much time for small-fry morbidity and digital tabloids. When those libelous articles come in, people remember that by just clicking on the “Delete” button, the little gazette goes straight where it belongs: to the trash bin of oblivion. A lifetime is not long enough to know and enjoy the trove of good works in the realms of both art and art review. No way you’re going to waste your time on baloneys. People pay no heed to those things because, first of all, eagles don’t prey on flies and, secondly, a gusty wind –or a nasty crook– can’t knock down a cathedral. That’s the talk of the town during the first three or four days. A week later, nobody remembers a single thing. In the meantime, cold reasoning and hard work seem to be the safest pathways; the rest is gone with the wind. Fussiness and much ado; cheap gossiping and buzzing. When a critique to an art review is marked by wisdom and lucidity, away from fussy hormones, is always welcome news because it points at something the critic didn’t see or just played down. This time, somebody else’s look does help. Good and knowledgeable art review always helps, no matter if it shows an opposite view. When something is criticized with knowledge, even when it’s done with sheer determination, it’ll never be against the whole. We must them know that some people standing “against” something are actually “rooting for” that something. The critic is not a public enemy. Reasoning is by far his best tool, no matter is some people might charge me with outmoded Cartesianism. Reason could be critical reasoning rather than definite conclusions or barren geometry. A dead man could rise by the hand of arguments, not with slaps or stockades in the form of wisecracking phrases or lesson-teaching whiplashes, those that look so ridiculous before the eyes of the cultivated spirit. Culture is not a pearly napkin or green silk tie. Culture is a succulent treat, Lezama-sprinkled and tasty in the same breath. Right in front of it, the dilettante lunges into it as if it were a plate of salmon and pineapple. But there’s always bottom line that realizes that the grapes are still unripe and that taking a bite off a good guava continues to be a great party at 2:00 pm. Dinner is ready, unless a mighty big shot shows up, far mightier than the critic’s virtual power, and tucks it in. Not just anybody ready to jump on it under the public enemy’s orders, but someone willing to take it out. Or as in one of Peter Greenaway’s wild movies, just gobble it up.