New Art Examiner
March 1985

Focus on Latin America (part 2)
Felipe Ehrenberg: An activist artist speaks out on art, politics, and social action
by Claire Wolf Krantz

Felipe Ehrenberg is a socialist activist artist from Mexico who spent last fall as a visiting teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In Part I of this interview, which appeared in the February New Art Examiner, Ehrenberg reflected upon his experience and aspirations as a politically committed artist. He described the role of the artist in Mexico as compared to the United States, explaining why and how artists in Mexico are both more politically active and more respected than here. Ehrenberg traced the interrelationship between Mexican art styles and changes in the Mexican political scene. He also talked about his own art, his work on the collectivization of artists, and his efforts to circumvent the gallery system.
NAE: Can you describe some of the major political issues that are divisive in Mexico now and how they are reflected in its art and culture'?
Felipe: Yes, the have's and have-not's have always existed in Mexico, as they have always existed in capitalist countries. But in Mexico, a revolution tried to heal this division and failed. Now this division has grown to impossible proportions. So you will find that artists who struggle for liberation and equality and socialism on one side are now facing those that are growing prosperous as leeches of the powerful. Unfortunately, the power-group in Mexico is often the people who buy art. They have their own museums. The Tamayo Museum in Mexico City is owned and run by the Monterrey group, who are quite reactionary. An enormous number of artists are being wooed by this infrastructure of wealth. They all too often forget the basic issues in the country for the sake of their own well being.

            Quality is also an element that comes into play. Many people say that political art is bad quality and art art is good quality. Now it so happens that art art has good quality and bad quality and political art has good quality and bad quality. But that is usually forgotten in the course of discussions.
NAE: How do you see contemporary Cuba, and Castro in particular, influencing Mexican politics and the arts? And what about America?
Felipe: It's not Castro we turn to when we see a society struggling to survive and prosper in spite of odds. It's not Castro, it's the society. Cuba's society has been an enormous example. It's a viable proposition. We can see that it's happened, so it's possible to fight for our own. But I don't think in Mexico there's any proposition to become like Cuba. We don't want to become like the Soviet Union either, God forbid. We want to make a better Mexico. A better way of life is that which you find in your own house. Cuba is not at all like the Soviet Union, and Nicaragua is completely unlike Cuba. I've been to both countries. If the struggle for socialism in Mexico prospers, it will not be like Nicaragua or Cuba, it should be as things work out in Mexico.
            The Cubans have been very stimulating in other instances. For example, people here tend to think that the arts are stifled by socialism and fomented by capitalism. That is not true. They can be stifled under socialism or capitalism, and in Cuba they have been enormously encouraged. There is a total amount of freedom in the arts. Recently we have seen issues arise there in which concepts get mixed up, such as those having to do with homosexuality and sexual liberation. People think that a Cuban writer who is a homosexual was hounded as a writer, and we forget that perhaps his opinions were counter-revolutionary. We forget that homosexuality in Cuba prior to the Revolution was fomented under the very decadent regime of a U.S. supported totalitarian government. So when Cubans reacted (surely, they may have overreacted) against homosexuality, they're not stifling the sexual liberty of an individual, they're actually reacting to something that was associated with the worst of a regime. I know many of my friends in Cuba are homosexuals, and they certainly have had problems, but their own convictions and their life's work have been revolutionary. 'They were with the revolution, and they are now in the position to say that it was worth it.

NAE: Are you saying that people in Cuba who are producing work that is considered to be counter-revolutionary are still encouraged to make that work?
Felipe: They're not encouraged, but they're not attacked. Because what is being counter-revolutionary, really? One thing is to be a challenge to a process. The Cuban process has to be challenged, and discussed in the arts, arid that is actually possible.
NAE: For instance, if homosexuality is a red flag to the Cubans, and someone did a show of' blatant homosexual...
Felipe: I can assure you that it would not be censored, but it certainly would be discussed because the subject would not only be homosexuality. It would be homosexuality and all that brings to mind. Now, for example, a very recent
movie called, "Up to a Certain Point" deals with how the sexes view each other. It's obviously attacking the shortcomings of' a society that hasn't quite made the sexes equal. Not only was that film not censored, but it was financed by the state. All movies in Cuba arc made with state funds
NAE: How does the flourishing of the arts and the governmental encouragement in Cuba affect Mexican arts?
Felipe: Enormously. Every year Cuba has different prizes for poetry and literature, and they publish everything, so that has stimulated and allowed many of our artists to express themselves in spaces that have not been available at certain times in recent Mexican history. The call goes to the whole Latin American continent. Argentinean writers who would never have been able to be published under a military regime in Argentina are able to publish and have their work distributed, thanks to the encouragement given by the Cuban government. The Cuban government, unlike this present government here in the U.S., is very much aware of the enormous specific weight culture and the arts have.
NAE: What about the visual arts"
Felipe: Alive and well, also. You will find this in Nicaragua, now, as well. Nicaragua has a film institute, art schools are growing, and art is encouraged throughout the land.
NAE: I'm interested in how Cuba's differences with the U.S. affect Mexico
in both the production and distribution of art.

Felipe: Whatever happens in Cuba affects Cuban artists but it does not affect Mexican artists.
NAE: What about the look of art?
Felipe: Also, no. Cuban art is Cuban, and Mexican art is Mexican, and you can very specifically notice the differences.
s And there are no influences back and forth?
Felipe: I'm sure there are, like everywhere else. That exists freely and gloriously. I'll give you one example, which is how pop art influenced Cuban art and gave birth to the poster movement, one of the most important artistic manifestations to come out of Cuba. Pop established an attitude towards art, the hard-edge look. And you will find anenormous American influence in music in Cuba. All the American stations reach Cuba. People listen to good American blues and jazz in their homes. They don't understand the language but they don't have to, they dig the music. American music has influenced Cuban music also. So in that sense the cross-fertilization takes place continuously and very healthily. The influences aren't direct. They can be the mutual admiration that two countries can share.
            In Mexico, however, there is the same fertilization but there are also different circumstances. The U S. penetrates our culture, mainly through television and movies and many of the marketable luxury goods that are produced in this country. So the American way of life has become a decisive influence in our life and in many instances it is interrupting the flow of our development. Sometimes it makes us embarrassed at being Mexican because what we produce is not glossy. The packaging of ideas also affects us. But there is no such thing as the exporting of Cuban art on a massive level. We come across a Cuban magazine; a show of' Cuban art will reach Mexico. But it's not the daily pounding of our senses front morning until evening which happens thanks to television and movies from the U.S. So in that case we're more affected by the American way of life and their artistic production than by Cuba.
NAE: Let's get back to you. How do you see yourself in relation to Latin American or Mexican art? Is there a mainstream Latin American kind of art and do you see yourself as part of it?

Felipe: The so-called mainstream is very internationalist and tries to model itself' after the metropolises of the French, German, Italians, and North Americans. I see my work as definitely being Latin American, but not being in the gallery-museum circle, I'm not of' the mainstream. We have a mainstream Mexican art and I think only lately has the mainstream Mexican art world started considering me, but onl because of the weight of my propositions and the fact that they have been taken up by many others. They cannot not consider me.
NAE: And how do you consider yourself') Do you See yourself as being part of something that is larger than yourself?
Felipe: Definitely, but not necessarily in the mainstream. I have resorted to some mainstream mechanisms and have rejected those that I don't need or are detrimental to my work. In that sense I think that I have had to show a sheer brute, mulish strength that I didn't know I had. That is something that you don't invent, you don't decide on. It just happens. I have driven across prairie land and altered the tracks. I'm over 40 now, and I see I glimmer of the road; I see that I won't have too many problems any more because my work is part and parcel of contemporary Mexican art. As a maverick, my life's work has proposed, not just criticized. It is a criticism because its propositions exist already and as such is has proved quite viable. I'm very happy about that. That's something you don't plant. When you grow older you have a life strategy and a series of tactical measures that you apply because they have worked in the past. In that sense, the devil does not rise because he is the devil, but because he is old -- that's a Mexican phrase.
NAE: How have Latin American artists fared in the international marketplace?
 Felipe: Well, the Mexican artist enters life with an enormous handicap. We're too far away from the sources of information that will spread our work around. Many of us feel that one has to come to the U.S. to be able to attract attention and be written up in the major magazines here. But look, I didn't ask you for an interview, I came here, and I'm so certain of my work that if nobody even heard of me I could still be a very happy person.

            I have all I need for my family and for myself So fame will not bring me any more. I might be able to buy a newer car, or maybe travel around a little bit more. But I don't need any more, and now that the kids are leaving home, I will need less. So it's not so much that I need fame, but I've tried to be as steady in my opinions and to stick to them as a person, as a citizen all my life. And there, being better known will not only perhaps save me from trouble later on, but will also increase my chances of' being heard.
NAE: So that you can be more influential.
Felipe: That's right. For a cause, not for myself. And that cause is for autonomous, independent life for our countries in the face of the American presence, the hegemony of the United States, and also towards the socialist state of the country. I can only fight with the weapons that I have. As an artist. I have to use art to do that.

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

 

 

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.