I went to Argentina for vacation... Buenos Aires, Ushuaia, Calafate and Bariloche. Simply amazing. Even though I am horrible at painting lansdcapes, I had a huge urge to just sit there and try and interpret through paint what I was looking at... When you think about it, it's almost a curse... being a painter that is, not vacationing. Everything we look at, we paint; at least in our heads we do. I sometimes find myself trying to let go of being a painter just so I can take in what is there in front of me. The truth is it's impossible, painter and person are the same person, and we have to accept that. I decided to take photos... a REAL painter would've painted, but I opted for my camera... and I have to say I love taking photographs. When done regularly, the process of composing starts to come from your gutt, and in my experience gutt is good.
I was also in Buenos Aires, and had to go to the musuem of Fine Arts (MNBA). I knew they had a really nice Bouguereau (The First Mourning) and an emblematic image in Argentinian figurative painting, Ernesto de la Cárcova's Sin Pan y sin Trabajo, which always reminded me of Bramley's Hopeless Dawn. Now both Boug's and de la Cárcova's work are absolutely wonderful. Boug's is much more subtle than the reproductions I´ve seen, and surprisingly de la Cárcova's painting is somewhat impressionistic. There are blues and purples in the hands... bits of broken color that are intelligently placed. All this would've been fantastic, if the museum would let people take photographs. But nooooo, only the most important museums in the world let people take photos, but here in LatinAmerica we don't trust ourselves yet. The reason they gave me is that the museum owns the rights of the works that are displayed so if I wanted something I had to go to the store. So I went to the store, and they obviously had nothing of de la Cárcova's work, no reproductions of the painting, no postcards, nothing. Their argument made complete sense.
So I realized that we hold on to whatever we can remember. Granted I could've taken notes on the painting, and sketched for a while... but I decided to look. And I stared at it for a looong time, and I tried to take everything in. I asked myself, not how he painted it (although that's an inevitable thought), but why it made me feel so connected to it... how and where is it that human emotion is so purely represented, that 100 years later, when the world is completely different than the one they depicted, I'm still connected to their image. And so I looked... and I guess looking is almost rhetorical... I didn't come up with any answers, it seems a bit intangible. I realize people may dismiss these sort of works as overly daramtic, almost kitschy, but I'm drawn to them. That's all I know, all I care about.
7 comments:
I have never, ever, found a reproduction of the images that most struck me while touring a museum in the museum store. It's very annoying. I imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that it is usually art I was previously unfamiliar with, therefor not as well known, not as popular, no need for reproductions.
Hola Nicolás, Maravillosas tus fotografías de Argentina y los colores esupendos! Espero que hayas tenido un gran viaje.
Saludos.
I just found your work last night. Wonderful. Great blog too. I recently went to see the early impressionist show at the Deyoung museum in San Francisco. Not only were cameras not allowed, but I had to leave my sketchbook at the door too! No writing implements near the paintings! I guess its going around...
see that's ridiculous jason... I can understand being hesitant because of some sort of copyright infringement, which coincidentally BY LAW doesn't happen when you take a photograph of a painting, or a photo of anything for that matter...
But not allowing a sketchbook is just absurd. No writing implements??? What are they going to do, pat evryone down and search for pens??? What are they thinking, that people are going to scribble on the paintings??? What about punching a painting??? That would surely ruin it... perhaps they should start sawing off hands then.
I've been running into this at museums more recently. They always give the excuse of copyright, though many of the works fall well outside of copyright concerns, and even if the requisite time had not passed, doing a sketch of something does not violate it's copyright. I wonder if it has to do with insurance companies wanting to charge more if there are people with art implements in the museum actively spending time near the works. Or it could be just some bureaucrat wants to increase the scope of his realm.
As to the lack of the right reproductions, if an art historian isn't going to talk about it, then how could it be important?...
Hi Nicolas,
As a Argentinean expatriate living in NY I wholeheartedly agree with you. I've had the chance to witness the MALBA grow throughout the years, in great part due to generous donations by the country's oligarchs. But as an institution it still retains archaic rules that (one could argue) hinder the spread of cultural knowledge, especially in the realm of formal representational visual arts. This being the principal reason I came to NY, to learn and study what was unavailable in Buenos Aires, meaning formal academic art instruction.
I'm a big admirer of your work, most inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
Saludos, Sebastian.
Maybe artists in Argentina were not recognized in the past, but nowadays many photographers from BA have succeeded in the world with pictures of their beautiful country landscapes. I am one of them. I travelled to Argentina last year and went straight to the North: Salta, Jujuy and Tucuman. I took the most amazing photos not only of views but also of people who live there. Then I got an apartment rental in Buenos Aires and took some urban pics just to have them as a proof that I was there. When I came back to Australia, the pictures sold in great amounts. I was even asked to return and take more. That is what I am going to do next Summer!
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