Art From the Red Atlantis

“Adios Utopia,” Exhibition of Cuban Art, Walker Art Center, 2018

I am always hesitant when visiting an art exhibit of any country the U.S. is hostile to.  Given the U.S. government’s long history of hostility to Cuba, even ‘enlightened’ curators actually parrot that perspective.  The title itself echoes a bourgeois theme that socialism is ‘utopian.’  The Walker curators used the same word ‘utopia’ to describe a 1960s art exhibit centered around ‘hippies,’ i.e. the same neo-liberal framing of that art show. The huge difficulties faced by Cuba after the revolution can mostly to be put at the door of international capital.  Though having ‘socialism on one island,’ as Che Guevara knew, is impossible and resulted in more problems, especially modeling government on a one-party state.

The 'CCC" - Cuban Campesino Cavalry

At any rate, I do not know what paintings were left out of this show, as the main focus was not on 60 years of all Cuban art, but 60 years of mostly dissident Cuban art. There was a note on one wall that due to U.S. attempts to seize ‘confiscated’ goods and return them back to their original rich owners, some paintings or works were not sent by the Cuban museums, for good reason.

Cuba never had an official art style like ‘socialist realism,’ so Cuba’s influences are freer than the governments who strictly followed Soviet methods.  The exhibit notes that the atmosphere in Cuba changed after 1970, when the USSR gained more influence in Cuba due to the blockade.  At that point, attitudes to art became more narrow.  The show references the misery of the “special period’ after capitalism was restored in the USSR in 1991 and Russian aid and trade with Cuba stopped.  It enforced a depressing poverty on the Cuban people, which had damaging effects.

Nevertheless, the art I saw clearly says that Cuba is still a ‘painterly’ society that values art far more than the U.S., which essentially has no art movements anymore.  For instance, political art has mostly disappeared in the U.S.  This exhibit shows a wide range of Cuban styles, of materials, of methods, of themes.  The small revolutionary art section celebrates the peasants, workers and leaders of the insurrection against Batista.  The dissident materials poke at bureaucratism, long speeches, crushing poverty and hints at escape.

There is an odd display of black and white flags of many U.N. countries.  A large stone sitting on top of thousand’s of real teeth. An outstanding sculpture of a bloodied Marti as a peasant with a machete.  Revolutionary posters and paintings based on bold, mural styles.  Photography showing campesinos on horseback riding to expropriate a U.S.-owned sugar plantation.  Recordings of Castro reciting production numbers made incoherent and numbing. A painting of a ‘cultural’ meeting in which the attendees and leaders are shown in a conformist arrangement of identical individuals, sort of like a Soviet presidium.  Photos of Havana’s crumbling buildings propped up by wooden struts or rusting sugar factories that closed after the Soviet and eastern European sugar markets dried up.   An arrangement of cement blocks representing the walls around Cuba put up by the blockade.  A huge triangular display of abstract revolutionary paintings, with Che at the top.  A film of ‘Mardi Gras” dancers in the streets of Havana.  A photo of a diver ‘attempting to escape’ over the Malecon.

Walker gallery - 'Adios Utopia"

Styles vary.  There was a group of abstract ‘concrete’ painters.  Some figurative art similar to social realism.  Poster art.  Modernist and geometric art.  There were collages and wood and metal constructivism.  Photography and photo-realism.  Grotesque paintings of dead animals.  A boat made of books. 3-dimensional art.  Sly attempts at humor.  All in all a very varied show, showing the breadth of a certain strata of Cuban art.

I am still waiting for the Walker, which specializes in post-modernist abstract art and the terrible version in its ‘Sculpture Garden,’ to have a show of anti-capitalist U.S. art.   Then we can make fun of the capitalist 'utopia.' It should be a long wait.

The Walker is free on Thursday evenings, 5 to 9 PM.  Show runs through March 17, 2018.

Prior reviews of art exhibits at the Walker:  “Hippie Modernism,” “Frida Kahlo" and “Edward Hopper.  Other museums:  Museum of Russian Art “Women in Soviet Art,”  The Hermitage's “Travel Notes - The Hermitage,” The Minneapolis Institute of Art “Discovering American Art Now.”  Uzbekistan’s “Desert of Forbidden Art.” Book reviews:  “9.5 Thesis on Art and Class," “The Marxist Theory of Art.” and Berger’s “Ways of Seeing.” Commentary on the Tate Modern and Banksy's street art: “Art Is Dead” and  “Left in London.” Commentary on art crawls in Minneapolis: “The Minneapolis Spectacle."

Red Frog

January 21, 2018