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Premiere: Kings of Pastry
Directed by Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker
Fri, Oct 29 5:00 PM Fri, Oct 29 7:00 PM Sat, Oct 30 1:00 PM Sat, Oct 30 7:00 PM Sun, Oct 31 1:00 PM
 more info
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Brought to Light: Recent Acquisitions in Latin American Art
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On view Saturday, August 13, 2005 - Monday, January 2, 2006 at the Caroline Wiess Law Building
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Francisco Matto, Totems, n.d.
© The Estate of Francisco Matto
Since the establishment of the Latin American Art Department at the MFAH in 2001, the museum has acquired works by the most innovative Latin American artists active in Europe and the Americas during the 20th century. These works constitute the core of what the MFAH envisions will one day become the most important collection of Latin American Art in the United States.
Latin American artists are only now being recognized as pioneers in the development of modernism, a visual language previously thought to have originated entirely in Europe and the United States. Brought to Light showcases their ground-breaking contributions, which include:
• Innovative printing techniques (Antonio Berni);
• The use of furniture-as-frame (Beatriz González);
• The creation of a new visual language from vernacular and universal symbols (Xul Solar, Joaquín Torres-García, Julio Alpuy, Héctor Ragni, Francisco Matto);
• Exploiting the visual and chromatic properties of movement (Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alejandro Otero);
• Abolishing the traditional frame (Lucio Fontana, Rhod Rothfuss); and
• The introduction of water and light as valid artistic media (Gyula Kosice, Julio Le Parc, Horacio García-Rossi, Martha Botto, Thomas Glassford).
Antonio Berni´s Ramona Montiel Series
Antonio Berni´s series Ramona Montiel y sus Amigos (Ramona Montiel and Her Friends), depicts random scenes from the life of a fictitious character, Ramona Montiel. A social outcast from the impoverished, urban neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, Ramona embodies the plight of many young girls. She goes from making a living as a seamstress to being a vaudeville entertainer, and finally a prostitute. Through her network of influential "friends"— a count, an army colonel, an old man, and Don Juan — Berni portrays and parodies a cross-section of Argentinean society.
The Ramonas allowed Berni to refine his innovative printing technique called "xilo-collage-relief." The process involves the recycling of materials from Ramona´s daily life—fabrics, wigs, artificial flowers, brooms, clothes, tinsel, coins, and buttons—and creating molds of them that are then printed in a technique similar to woodcut. The result yields an impression with elements in very high relief on the handmade paper, creating a thick and richly textured printed surface. Through his unique combinations of commonplace materials with brutal realism, Berni sought to express the harsh realities of unbridled urban growth in Argentine society at the beginning of the 1960s.
A Universal Vernacular
In 1935, Uruguayan artist, teacher, and theoretician Joaquín Torres-García wrote his seminal essay The School of the South. In it he called for the establishment of a workshop that would stimulate artists to create a new artistic language combining the "universal" language of abstraction with the "vernacular" or indigenous cultures of Latin America. Universal principles, theorized Torres-García, are best represented through geometric shapes, which reduce ideas to their essence. Vernacular elements, while recognizable as coming from specific societies, can be understood across all cultures when expressed through geometry.
Héctor Ragni, who participated in The Torres-García workshop between 1934 and 1943, produced almost purely geometric art that featured primary colors. His Paisaje constructivo de Montevideo incorporates figurative references to the urban landscape of Montevideo in a grid-like composition that closely follows Torres-García´s ideas about abstraction.
Julio Alpuy, a member of The Torres-García Workshop between 1943 and 1962, moved away from the workshop´s strict geometric language after moving to New York in 1961. Genesis is a prime example of Alpuy´s desire to explore a more organic relationship between man and nature.
Cinetismo
The conflict of presenting movement in a static work of art has challenged painting from its beginnings. Resolving this contradiction became a source of utopian activity for a small yet groundbreaking group of Venezuelan artists called the Cinéticos. Beginning in the 1950s, these artists created motion through the displacement of the viewer, rather than trying to depict movement on the wall itself. In the Cinéticos´ proposals, the action of a person walking in or in front of an artwork produces vibrations on the retina that simulate movement.
Jesús Rafael Soto´s ambiguous black vibrations, Alejandro Otero´s music-inspired Rhythmicolors, and Carlos Cruz-Diez´s shimmering Physichromatic structures explore the uncertain space between the moving viewer and the optical illusion that never abandons the fixed plane or surface of the artistic object. Gego´s net-like constructions, on the other hand, transform the Cinéticos´ concern with movement into three-dimensional shapes that reverberate in space.
Light and Water
Latin American artists were among the earliest pioneers in the use of light and water as artistic materials. Artists such as Guyla Kosice embraced the fluidity of these elements and employed them as intrinsic materials for producing art. In Circular Table of Moving Water, for example, Kosice filled a concave plastic structure with water. The viewer acts as a "motor" to stir the work. With its natural flux, the water shows its state of constant change. Fascinating patterns of waves, drops, and air bubbles emerge and disappear as the viewer drives the work.
Julio Le Parc, an Argentinean artist based in Paris, co-founded G.R.A.V. (Group de Recherche d´Art Visuel), a group that promoted art as a collective endeavor that was stripped of individualism and activated by the spectator. The experiments carried out by G.R.A.V. involve a wide spectrum of kinetic and optical effects, employing various types of artificial light and mechanical movement in an attempt to forge a reconnection between the art object and the human eye.
León Ferrari´s Cyanotypes
From 1976 to 1991, Argentinean artist León Ferrari went into political exile in Brazil. He took up residence in São Paulo where he continued to experiment with a variety of media including metal sculpture, mail art, printmaking, video, and artist´s books. In his series of cyanotypes from 1980-1983, Ferrari configures a variety of aerial views of domestic, urban, and industrial labyrinths using schematic figures and modular partitions on architectural paper. He experimented with Xerox compositions and Letraset transfers as a way of producing works with repetitive elements in a non-precious and seemingly endless edition that were accessible to anyone. The result is a humorous yet critical view of the mechanics of modern life that he calls an "architecture of insanity," inspired by the crowded chaos of the Brazilian city.
Related Events:
Exploring the MFAH: Latin American Art
At the Caroline Wiess Law Building
Wednesday, October 5, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Friday, November 4, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Friday, November 11, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Friday, November 18, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Exploring the MFAH: Museum Highlights
At the Audrey Jones Beck Building
Tuesday, December 6, 2005 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
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