The Tears of Things

Over His Dead Body: Kathleen Vanesian, Neo-Colonialist

by Jerome du Bois

In last week's Phoenix New Times, Kathleen Vanesian reviewed an exhibition by the recently late Cuban artist Pedro Alvarez at the ASU Art Museum. The tone of her piece echoes Marilyn Zeitlin's in the exhibition handout in their unreserved enthusiasm for Alvarez's mediocre paintings and collages.

Ms. Vanesian spends fully half of her column on Alvarez's background and suicide, and the other half on the artist's work. I won't dwell on either; I will touch on each one only briefly. There's a single sentence -- a phrase, to be precise -- that's my real target, and it reveals a stinky dark flower petaled with hypocrisy and exploitation. But first things first:

. . . five days after his show opened at ASUAM on February 7, 37-year old Alvarez, a native of Havana, Cuba, who had been temporarily living and painting in Spain, jumped from the fifth-story window of his room at the Twin Palms Hotel on Apache Boulevard in Tempe.

I noticed that none of the printed news reports carried the poor guy's picture, and neither does Ms. Vanesian's review, so I will post one, even though it's blurred and inadvertently sepia-toned. Ms. Vanesian nailed it, though: "like a young Elvis Costello with a buzz cut." So here you go, Pedro . . . another one done too soon:

Pedro Alvarez, 1967 - 2004.

As for his art, three examples appear below. I'll only comment on the first, African Abstract. Busy as it looks, most of the work is done by the first layer, appropriated comic-book panels, row after row; and by colored markers. That fellow in the lower left corner, for example, is almost all outlines and crosshatching. Oil colors fill in some of the bodies, just as in a coloring book. It is a crude illustration, not a serious artwork. Not to mention the piece defeats meaning.

In an earlier description of Alvarez's work, back in 1998, Marilyn Zeitlin writes:

Alvarez makes these paintings with a surface that snags the eye. It is never slick. Instead, he problematizes the illustration style, underming it to keep the work from being about facility. He does not want to amuse us too easily, nor to win our praise.

Or he isn't very talented, and it shows.

African Abstract (2002), collage and oil on canvas, polyptych: 6 paintings, 46 x 29 inches each.

On the Pan-American Highway (2000), collage and oil on canvas, 38 x 77 inches.

Andy Jean Michelle (2003), oil on canvas. (Not in exhibition.)

Now let's zero in on that one revealing statement:

Alvarez had lived through the very real privations Cubans suffered in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed and withdrew financial support from the island nation -- deprivation unconscionably compounded by the U.S.'s continuing embargo. The painter's humorous take on serious issues engendered by Latin America's centuries-old colonization by foreign intruders . . .

and she goes on a while, but you see the phrase I've emphasized. First, I don't debate about the embargo; that's a tar baby. Second, Castro is never mentioned as a culprit or an oppressor. Why not? Third, Russia is never called on to pony up anything. Why not?

The truth is the kind of person that Ms. Vanesian typifies -- priveleged by virtue of a purchased cultural mantel, flying to the Bienal (which she and her husband Richard did), eating lobster, buying art with cash -- all those fat wallets now exploiting the gigantic loophole in the embargo laws and Castro's voracious appetite for dollars dollars dollars -- these people couldn't flourish without the embargo. And neither can the artists. The main reason is found in a historical fact: when Cuban artists left the island in the 1980s, they shrank from big fish to little fish to tiny obscure fish to, God help them, teachers. It's a big art world out there. Those who stayed on the island began to flourish, to develop cachet, and when the dollar went legit the whole scene took off, and now this crew and its government blessing justifies the adjective "burgeoning." Ramos, Toirac, Tonel, Kcho -- you know who I'm talking about. They couldn't have it better, now.

When Ms. Vanesian tosses in this standard limousine liberal line, with not a single sentence of exposition or justification, she expects her readership to just nod, gulp, and swallow it. But she cannot mean what she writes, because the embargo tightens the market to the advantage of her, her Creative Class friends, Marilyn Zeitlin, Ted Decker, the Weithorns, and the Cuban artists themselves. It is a shield. Everybody's behaving. Have another mojito.

Meanwhile, the prisons fill, the people die. Did you think my title referred to Pedro Alvarez's dead body? Maybe. Or maybe I'm talking about Lorenzo Copello Castillo, or Bárbaro Sevilla García, or Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac -- all three summarily executed for the nonviolent hijacking of a ferryboat. Maybe I'm talking about each unharmful, gentle soul, misplaced inside a jail, who killed himself or was murdered and nobody knows or will know as he rolls away unrevenged.

Or maybe I mean this woman's nearly dead body:

Economist Martha Beatriz Roque, 58, political prisoner, who has already served a sentence of 3 ½ years for being part of an study group in Cuba that published a document titled “The Fatherland Belongs to All,” was sentenced again to 20 years in the latest massive crack down. She is the only woman among 75 pro-democracy activists, independent librarians and journalists, tried and sentenced in summary processes in Castro’s Cuba last April, taking advantage of the international distraction with the war in Iraq.

Held in solitary confinement in the infamous women prison “Black Mantle” in Matanzas province, she shares her small cell with rats and cockroaches. There is no window or running water. A hole on the floor serves as a toilet. She is not allowed any reading material.

Martha Beatriz has not received the medical assistance she needs for her rheumatic and ulcer conditions since last April. In addition, she presently has an uncontrollable arterial hypertension and the left side of her body is numb. She has lost about 40 pounds in less than three months. Due to an international outcry mainly from Europe and other countries (but, not the U.S.), she was transferred to the Military Hospital Carlos J. Finlay.

On August 2, 2003, her niece, Maria de los Angeles Falcon was able to visit her at the hospital. Although she was unable to see or speak with the doctors, according to the information provided by Martha Beatriz, her diabetes had been confirmed, and the doctors were treating the condition with medication.

She added that she is being given an anti-coagulant. Since her arms are purple and badly bruised, they have begun injecting her in the abdomen. Her blood pressure is now very low (90/60 and 90/40). She is confined to Bed # 17 in a single room, where two women prison guards remain with her 24 hours a day. The room has all its windows covered.

Have another mojito, Kathleen, with plenty of mint.

Pedro Alvarez's abrupt departure is an interruption in the legitimization of Cuban art by the Arizona State University Art Museum. This review was another argument for such legitimization. But I very much doubt any of the collection, now or in the future, can be cleansed of the suffering and death that went on in the background while the new generations of Cuban artists -- ironic, self-referential, hip -- took their place as what Jasper Johns once called all artists: "The elite of the servant class."

Serving neo-colonialists from around the world.

Posted by Jerome at April 7, 2004 02:02 AM | TrackBack