New Art Examiner
February, 1985

Focus on Latin America (Part 1)
Felipe Ehrenberg: An activist artist speaks out on art, politics, and social action
by Claire Wolf Krantz

As the eighties progress, the art world is directing increased attention towards the interaction between art, society, and politics. The life work of Felipe Ehrenberg, a socialist activist artist from Mexico, exemplifies this concern. Ehrenberg 's interest in the social and political dimensions of art led to his recent appointment as a visiting teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. An idea central to his leaching is that artists need not he powerless victims in their society; that they can act on their own behalf and can influence social change.
Ehrenberg's position on this and other issues comes from his
experience in both capitalist and socialist systems. His involvement in political upheavals in his native country and elsewhere in Latin America shaped his thinking. Extensive travel throughout Europe and North a America also contributed to his understanding of international issues in art and politics.
Ehrenberg's artwork has been exhibited extensively in Mexico as well as in the United States and Europe. His career spans painting, sculpture, graphics, stage design, book making, film, and video. He writes regularly for thee Spanish-speaking press and continues to he instrumental in establishing small presses for book and magazine publishing in both England and Mexico. His collective activities include performances and conceptual work with Fluxus members in Europe and with various groups in Mexico, and he is also involved in various muralist activities. Lately, Ehrenberg has participated in groups as an organizer and teacher, leaving an ideological, rather than a stylistic imprint. Ehrenberg's interest now is to develop a specifically Mexican identity.      
Several countries in Latin America, particularly Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico, are developing new relationships with the arts, ones that can he both illuminating and helpful to American artists. Old, romantic notions of the artist, alienated from his society, uninfluenced by his social and economic milieu, producing work whose usefulness is questionable, are being seriously questioned both in capitalist and socialist countries. Felipe Ehrenberg makes no distinction between the arts and other essential human activities. In the following interview, he provides one particularly informed, thoughtful point of view on how we, in the arts, are affected by and can affect our culture as a whole.

NAE: how do you see the relationship between the Mexican artist and his society and how does that compare to the relationship that the United States artist has with his?
Felipe: well, basically we have the same relationship. We are sufficiently European to have modeled most of our society's habits and behaviors on European models. After all, Mexico is a country that was invented so to speak, by the Spanish sword. Our position, visa-vis Europe at first, and now the U.S., also causes many habits, common things, that are comparable. Our relationship to galleries and the way that we feel that we have to distribute our work through market channels make it practically the same. We have, though, always enjoyed our own traditions as well as a European source. We have lived with the weight of historical events very closely, and the major break came with the Mexican revolution. The legacy of how artists reacted to their society during and after those years has pervaded all our behavior. I don't mean to say by this that all artists will relate to their society with political consciousness or that all artists will be committed -- you have all sorts of artists. But certainly most Mexican artists, as compared to U.S. artists, are much more politically aware and active from their position as artists.
NAE: What do you mean by more active from their position as artists?
Felipe: In many ways, their activism is not only within their work itself. But somehow, artists and intellectuals, people in the creative arts, have very privileged circumstances. At times we have been court jesters; in other words, we can move in very, quotes, high circles, while our economic circumstances are not at all comparable to those of the people who invite us to their places. Also, literati, poets and writers, will very often be ambassadors; they will shoulder the responsibility of representing our country abroad. Official posts are also very often held by artists, especially in the ministry of education. For example, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico is a sculptress and the director of the University Museum of El Chopo is a muralist. I have a relatively high post, working as an advisor in the field of culture within the ministry of education. The ministers of education have often been writers or poets. We're quite woven into the fabric of civil service. That makes us much more active as artists. Even though what we are involved in doesn't necessarily draw upon our skills as artists, it does draw on our skills as human beings and we can't separate being a human being and being a writer or a painter, right?
NAE: In Mexico, do visual artists get the same kind of respect that the literati do?
Felipe: Not as much. Visual artists don't seem to have the same tradition of urbane living or polished socializing as literary people, but they do earn an enormous respect. A person announcing himself as an artist in Mexico is not subject to as much discomfort as he is in other countries that I've been to. We enjoy much more acceptance.
NAE: What qualities do artists have that your government or society considers important?
Felipe: Generally, society has learned, through the years, to rely on the judgment of artists as a sort of voice of their conscience.
NAE: In the U.S. the artist is sometimes used to legitimize certain things that are not...
Felipe: This happens in every country, and it happens in Mexico. Often these issues arise when artists have close dealings with the state. I myself am presently under fire because of my program which uses state funds for workshops which teach people how to set up small presses and community murals throughout the country. I am accused of setting up a smoke screen, of helping the state acquire a liberal veneer, and i answer, no. We try to avoid that sort of use. We teach, but inherent in our teaching are the recommendation and methods of how to be autonomous, even of the State. So we're relying on State money to set up things that hopefully will be able to function without state help. It does come under fire and i think it's refreshing to have that sort of polemics because you can't just work with the State and feel free to do whatever you want. You have to really think about it.

NAE:  And so what you're saying is that the qualities valued in the artist have to do with honesty and a kind of being in touch...
Felipe: With reality, with things happening, sure. I write a weekly column, and I know that the column is considered. So even if I weren't a salaried advisor, my opinions, and the -opinions of other artists and writers, would be considered. We have a stage to voice them on.
NAE:  Now, what part does the actual product that a visual artist makes play in this relationship?
Felipe: That has had different moments at different times. In the last six or seven years, especially before Mexico was proven to be bankrupt, Mexicans were enjoying a prosperity that was falsely based on our country's oil reserves, and fortunes were starting to be made in Mexico. Our economy had been artificially upheld until the last regime took over. A market in Mexico to absorb artists' production, which didn't exist before, suddenly appeared on the scene. So that sort of indirect patronage made the art product assume a completely different meaning than it had, say 30 years before, when there was no market to speak of in Mexico, and when most artists' production was on a massive public scale. Therefore the art product had different meanings.
NAE: So until recently when one spoke of an artist in Mexico, what one thought about was a person who did large public works.
Felipe: If not large, at least public. Some 30 years back, the TGP (Popular Graphic Workshop) was founded. The workshop's founders produced graphic art which was massively distributed at very low prices. Most muralists also did graphics. You know how strong Mexico is in their graphics.

I think it would be helpful to our understanding of Mexican art to trace its development from just prior to the Revolution until the present day. We had a very Frenchified dictator for 30 years, Rufillo Diaz, whose regime permeated the nooks and crannies of everyday life. Artists behaved very much like artists in France; they distributed their work through salons, did easel paintings, etc. Come the revolution and artists like Siqueiros became soldiers of the revolution, actually fighting against the dictatorship and then against the reactionary forces. Their work immediately changed in every sense -- not just from easel painting to muralism. As a matter of fact, we created the new consciousness in the world about the function of muralism. We developed a one-party system, the P.R.I. (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which is a contradiction in terms. By the fifties, the revolutionary party had been completely institutionalized and artists working for the state on large murals were courtesans, they were just repeating the ruling party lines. Public works were still being done but their quality had declined, their dynamics had disappeared. So there was a gut, visceral, and bitter reaction against the so-called Mexican school of painting, perhaps led by Jose Luis Cuevas. And so, the easel came into its own. It gave artists an enormous space in which to experiment once again, it afforded them the possibility of severing possible ties with the State and looking for a market. Of course, they found the market abroad. Cuevas was discovered through an exhibition at the O.A.S. (Organization of American States) which is quite a conservative organization, and started creating a market abroad. Many Mexican artists, even muralists, went down to easel size and looked for galleries in the Southwestern United States, where there are important collections of Mexican art. In the seventies many artists, including myself, rebelled again and started producing -- not large, public murals sponsored by the State but large public statements through collectivization. I was the founder of the first major, perhaps longest lasting group, Grupo Proceso Pentagono which still exists although now our activities are pretty low-keyed. The seventies were marked by an enormous amount of action, on the streets and in the alternative spaces (which we had formed), that allowed us to publicly touch on post-1968 issues. Nineteen-sixty-eight was an important post-revolutionary date because we had a very upsetting confrontation between liberals, progressives, the leftist, and the State that resulted in a revamping of our political system. At that time there were only two parties, the Revolutionary Institutional Party, and the Party of National Action, which is a far right party. By the late seventies, the Communist party was legalized and it subsequently coalesced with four or five other socialist groups to become the United Socialist Party, a coalition party that has a very strong influence on our political life. Now there are also other parties. All of these things have affected the arts and artists. We actively participate in politics. I myself ran for office in congress on a cultural platform that rounded off the general platform of the United Socialist Party. I wasn't the first artist to do that. Other artists, writers, and journalists on the left have been candidates for public office.
NAE: You said that the art itself changed, that your art became a public statement. Were these statements about political events in Mexico or were they about other things?
Felipe: I have found that the word "political event" in the U.S. separates into a very specific thing, but politics really are everything. If you comment on consumer society, or on relationships between males and females, or on the way the country is run, or even on mankind's solitude, you are making a political statement. So in that sense politics are woven into the fabric of all artists' lives.
In Mexico, for example, there was a confrontation some eight to ten years ago between figurative and abstract art. The market legitimized the production of abstract art and tried to shove aside figurative art. Abstract art is much more saleable to monied people because it doesn't confront reality or challenge the status quo, it deals with formal problems. It doesn't reflect the everyday happenings of our nation. I think the basic difference is not whether a work of art is abstract or figurative, it's what use it is given.
NAE:  Why do you do figurative art?
Felipe: I feel that my work can relate better to a larger public being figurative than being abstract. I have worked on abstract problems with a lot of pleasure,
but figurative work is more appropriate to relate to a larger public. I think you can average what kind of people buy your work. Highly cultured, cultivated people who have European and American collections at home are not prone to buy my work. Some of the most virulent of my paintings have not been sold. Definitely, monied people will not buy things that make them feel guilty.
NAE: It seems to me that people are willing to spend their money, that says one thing. But it seems that art does other things as well, which are a little bit harder to measure.
Felipe: My art breaks patterns, also, and I think that may be part of the importance that i have in Mexico. Being slightly older and well known, i was instrumental in the collectivization of artists in the 1970's. I have quite a bit of energy and I have worked very hard. I also was instrumental in people taking into their hands the distribution of their work, which meant several things; for example, teaching people how to administer themselves as artists, to take care of themselves. I taught people to set up their own presses and not wait to be published by someone else. The group movement seriously threatened the star system. When you do group work, the actions are collective actions and the group takes credit for the work. The meaning of a give work will be different if it is produced by a group of artists than if it's done by an individual voice. I see myself as an image-maker, not as an artist who works in a particular style or medium. I translate my knowledge into doing what I want to do, whether it's illustrating books, or organizing murals.
NAE:  Why do you make images?
Felipe: That is the easiest way for me to express myself to other people.
NAE:  How do you distribute your art, the work you do individually?
Felipe: I do my own administration. I do not have a gallery.
NAE:  Why?
Felipe: Quite some time ago, I was, like every other artist, ripped off by this and that gallery. It may have been because galleries rip you off, it may have been because I was not quite proficient in my own administration, I wasn't on the ball, so to speak. But early on I decided that it wasn't only the rip-offs, it was also the small pressures that a gallery starts applying. For example, you don't feel free to change. A line that you have been working on for two years, a vein in your mind, finishes. A gallery doesn't like it when you want to work on something new. Or they want more work of some' three years back. They say,"couldn't you make some more of these?" Well, that's bullshit for an artist.
NAE: You have personally had the experience of galleries ripping you off and telling you what kind of work to make?
Felipe: Yes. Also a gallery won't touch certain things you do because they don't feel secure about your work. In any case a gallery is somebody else's home. When you visit that other person's home, you have to behave the way they want you to behave and there are many homes that I don't want to visit. If it's just through homes-or galleries-that you can distribute work, well, that's wrong. There's an enormous amount of other possibilities of transmitting your work whether it's as an object of service. For example, I like doing ephemeral work and I've had several shows where most of the paintings were done right on the walls. People were invited to photograph them if they wanted to take them home and just pay a little amount of money to photograph them. That was another idea. If you want an image, you don't have to take the unique artist's
personal, hand-touched, hand-worked piece. If you want an image, so you take it. At that time, remember, was really into the image itself. I was exploring relationships between the artist and the public. To challenge the usual channels of distribution breaks precedent. How you challenge it takes many forms. Some artists that I know of make paintings and give them away. Well, I don't think that's very practical, but it does challenge the gallery as a distribution channel. So I chose to use unorthodox tools. I know how to use oils but they don't interest me at all. Oils are a prestigious medium. They already legitimize a work. I'm not interested in oils legitimizing my work. I'm interested in my work legitimizing itself. I'm not so worried about the uniqueness of the artist's hand giving the object value. I don't mind saying that I enjoy a measure of fame that is very comfortable to have, but I don't want it to come from the spaces where people usually get legitimized. I am interested in more than producing the images, but in exploring the behavior that will change the relationships between
the producer and the public.
NAE: How did your work become known?
Felipe: It just seems that most of my ideas have caught on. Teaching
has helped. I have influenced the younger artists in Mexico, at two
levels. One, my behavior as an artist, which although unorthodox,
demands an enormous professionalism; and two, the contents of my
work and how i deal with everyday existence. I have always felt that
to be truly international you have to be as local as possible, to
react to local, immediate issues -- be they emotional issues or what
you call politically-loaded issues. That, for me, is common sense.
I am certain that these things transcend into a wider view. Everything is a metaphor, which can have a variety of readings. But the metaphor has to have a reason, and that reason is your everyday circumstance.

NAE: Do you have any kind of vision for a world in which artists could operate a little more easily?
Felipe: Well, I am a guild person. I do believe that artists will be able to move freer and better if they are organized, if they associate. I feel that a body of artists will always be much stronger than individual artists. I'm a utopian. I wouldn't be able to function otherwise. I see the arts as a model for the larger whole. Many of the things that I've applied politically were first discovered through my work as an artist. I deal directly with people. I think honesty is a very important thing. I think art should be approached like raising children. You have to face a problem immediately. I don't think a commonsense way is so difficult for human beings to be. We're talking about the schizophrenia of dividing the activity of art from the activity of living. I think it's an aberration. I
feel closer to those who do not make that separation. It's important to do what your being dictates rather than external conditions like the market, or what you did two years ago. You are the vertebra of everything. You can't depart from yourself if honesty is really the dynamic factor that drives you. You will be Claire when you whisper a love word into somebody's ear, you will be Claire when you take care of your child, and you will be Claire when you walk down the street. Each one of these fleeting moments will be a different aspect of Claire, certainly, but you will always be Claire. I see art that way also. So the more you get away from outside circumstances that pressure you, the stronger you can be in your work. The main one is the gallery system. That's the one that makes you or unmakes you.
Now, if you're not into galleries then you're not into mainstream. I will be very happy to be considered a non-mainstream artist all my life. But it just so happens that if you are known, whether the mainstream likes you or not, you are always considered. For example, under previous directorships I've turned down shows at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. I know that many of my colleagues would jump at the opportunity of having a one-man show at a Museum of Modern Art. I wasn't interested. I didn't agree with what the museum stood for at that time, I didn't agree with the star system, I didn't agree with the mechanics behind it. I do have work in that museum right now. They wanted to have a show of an overall view of what happened in Mexico in the seventies, and I was an artist in the seventies. But when they asked me to contribute photographs of my work to an article in their magazine, I said, "Sure, how much are you paying me?" They said, "Oh, no, they can't pay me." I said, "Wait a minute, do you pay art critics?" "Yes, we do." "Do you have advertisers?" "Yes." "Do you sell the magazines?" "Yes." "And you also have a government subsidy?" "Yes, we do."" Then you have to pay me." "But we can't pay you." "Well then," I said "You can't have my piece." But it would be very good for you..." "No, you won't make me, I will make me."
People try to get into a specific gallery. A gallery doesn't make an
artist, although to all appearances that's the way it works. The artists make the gallery. Without an artist, the gallery is just four walls and some owner sitting in his or her room. The artists have to know that. If the artists in a gallery take their work away, that gallery goes broke.
NAE: When you talk about all of artists, work being political, that artists should not be schizophrenic, are you then saying that so-called personal work is also political work?
Felipe: Certainly, personal work is really an extension of your being. Every person's presence makes up a society or a nation; therefore, every person's presence is as important as the next one. Whatever each individual's opinion
may be, it affects what happens to the society. Some are more vociferous than others. Each artist's production, if it's a real extension of himself as a person, will affect his society. One way or another. In that case, a personal statement, when it is transmitted (publicized, known), will inevitably have an effect if it's a truthful one, an honest presence. And that effect can already be considered a political presence.
NAE:  So actually the politicizing of the art takes place when it leaves the artist s studio; it's not in the subject matter.
Felipe: That's right, it's not so much the subject matter but in what happens to the work. Is it used? How does it reach the public? What are the agents that affect it? Because form and content, etc., although they affect each other, are, in turn, affected by context. It's not the same thing to see Guernica in the Museum of Modern Art in New York as it is to see Guernica in Guernica. Many of the abstract artists that flourished in the Cold War years and afterwards had no political intentions --they were looking for forms, etc., but their work was used politically. All too often artists have artificial presences in the eyes of the public because they have been sifted through the funnel of somebody's opinions; i.e., certain critics or galleries. Some people just will not get shown.
NAE: If we get away from the work itself having political weight, and if we talk about the artist being a political person, how would you define an artist's being politically committed?
Felipe: Let's define a couple of things. For one example, i would say that a politically committed engineer who builds bridges doesn't necessarily have to reflect his commitment in his bridges. Yet the creature himself becomes a political entity. Let's put it this way. In 1970 in Paris there was a meeting of artists who were denouncing militarism in Latin America, and they presented all sorts of work in a show. Some had a high, evident, and explicit political content; others just donated their personal work in this context. That's one way.
NAE: So a political artist will be careful about where his work is because it will support a cause.
Felipe: That's right. I'll go back to the event in Paris in 1970. During the large show there were roundtable discussions and the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas LLosa stated that if an artist's work was revolutionary, that artist was a revolutionary. He was obviously referring to Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer; an enormous, universal author, who has always been close to the Nobel Prize for literature, but has never quite gotten it, partially because he was a supporter of the military regime in Argentina. Nevertheless, he has revolutionized literature in every sense. So that statement sunk in for a few minutes until some young person in the audience said, "well, what happens when people can't read?" What this means is that a person can be very revolutionary in his work, but if political circumstances cause his people to be unable to read the work, and he supports a repressive regime that creates such circumstances, then this man is not a revolutionary. That exchange was a very interesting one that I've kept in my mind. That's one of the reasons I've also stayed very close to a maxim of Gabriel Garcia Marques when he first arrived in Mexico as a young journalist. He said, "You know, you have to be famous. It's important for people in Latin America to be famous." What for? "To be able to negotiate your political position." And he did. He has become famous and he has not gone back on his political standing. I have also tried to follow that maxim.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist and writer living in Chicago.

In part ll of this interview, which will appear next month, Felipe Ehrenberg examines the relationship between art and State in Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the United States and discusses their artistic interaction.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.