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| Exhibit Entrance to “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum. Photograph by Lance Gerber |
Curator Dan Cameron in this interview talks about his exhibition "Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954–1969"currently at the Palm Springs Art Museum for Pacific Standard Time, which is on view until January 14, 2018. Cameron talks about Modernism, the Kinetic, and its role in the development of Latin American art. This interview occurred before my review of the exhibition, which can be read here. Kinesthesia can be viewed at the Palm Springs Art Museum until January 15th, 2018.
Since we last spoke a few years ago, you were working on what you
described to me as an exhibition about Latin American Kinetic Art. Tell me what
prompted your interest in kinetic art in Latin America?
I had the
good fortune of being in Buenos Aires in 2012, at the same time that an
exhibition called ‘Real/Virtual: Arte Cinetico Argentino de los Anos Sesenta’
was at the National Fine Arts Museum. I was curious, and as I love Julio
LeParc’s work but didn’t know the other names, I expected to be there an hour
or two. I think I stumbled out 4 hours later completely disoriented, which is
always a good sign. From there, it was a matter of meeting the curator of
‘Real/Virtual/, Maria Jose Herrera, to discuss her curatorial approach and
research. She explained that it hadn’t been possible to do that show until
recently because of the fact that half the artists of that generation ended up
moving to Paris and never coming back to Argentina, so the question of just how
‘Argentine’ their work was remained somewhat contested. And as I was wondering
to what degree this happened in other South American countries, the Getty
announced its initiative.
During the time that is covered by Kinesthesia, Oscar Niemeyer
was building Brasilia and Lina Bo Barti was designing her glass house in Sao
Paolo. How do you think kinetic art fit in the development of modernism in
Latin America at the time?
If you look
at the case of Brazil, of course it’s a very close connection. But I think an
even more clear-cut case can be found in Venezuela, where Carlos Raul
Villanueva’s monumental Ciudad Universitaria, which took twenty years to design
and build, truly changed everything, particularly the relationship that
sculptors would have with architecture, and the role kinetic art would play in
that scenario. Such artists as Victor Vasarely, Alexander Calder, Jesus Soto,
Alejandro Otero and even LeParc created new site-specific sculptures for the
university campus, laying the groundwork for the massive architectural
commissions that Soto, for instance, would take on a bit later in his career,
or Otero’s visionary ‘Zona Feerica,’ which was essentially a field of large
kinetic structures.
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| Carlos Cruz-Diez, Chromosaturation, 1965/2017 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum. Photograph by Lance Gerber |
While you were doing the research and preparation for this exhibition,
what was the most surprising fact or aspect that may have changed your
perspective?
What really
startled me was the fierce resistance shown toward Kinetic Art in this country.
I think a lot of it had to do with the Parisian origins of the Kinetic Art
movement, and its unfortunate contrast to what the U.S. was focused on at the
time, which was promoting the New York School of Pollock, de Kooning, etc. With
many of the Latin American experts I consulted, there was a persistent rumor
that MoMA had scheduled a sequel to the famous ‘Responsive Eye’ exhibition of
1965, which dealt mostly with Op Art, and this sequel was going to be about
Kinetic Art. The concern was that ‘The Responsive Eye’ was so unexpectedly
popular, at a peculiar moment in history when the temples of modern culture
actually didn’t want crowds, and there were so few American artists in the
Kinetic Art movement, that the curator of ‘Responsive Eye’ was quietly packed
off to the West Coast, and the kinetic show never spoke of again.
Were there any political aspects associated with the Kinetic art
exhibited in Kinesthesia?
Not so much,
other than the fact that LeParc and his crew — Horacio Garcia-Rossi, Armando
Durante, Antonio Asia — were well-known in Argentina in the 1950s as student
agitators, and some were active members of the Communist Party. While in Paris
in the 1960s it was not at all unusual to support Castro’s revolution in Cuba,
for instance, anti-Communist hysteria in the U.S. was far more monolithic. If
you look at Robert Rauschenberg’s win of the 1964 Golden Lion in Venice as a
turning-point in Europe’s opinion of contemporary American art, which most
observers do, then Julio LeParc’s win of the same prize two years later must
have been galling to those who were hoping the U.S. might triumph two times in
a row. In any event, it would be fifty years before LeParc was given a solo
museum exhibition in the U.S., long after he was considered one of the most
influential artists in the world.
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| Installation view of Julio Le Parc’s Cloison á lames réfléchissantes, 1966/2005 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum Photograph by Lance Gerber |
The period in which this exhibition focuses on ends in 1968 with Julio Le Parc winning the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale. What happened to the Kinetic art in Latin America after 1968? What do you think was most significant event that affected the production of Kinetic art in Latin America?
LeParc won
in 1966, but the question is still an interesting one. I honestly don’t think
there was a single event one can point to so much as a general crisis that was
triggered by the wave of military dictatorships established throughout the
region by coups. Once artists began to flee countries like Chile and Argentina
at the risk of their lives, you can see interest in Kinetic Art evaporate
overnight, as artists turned toward other approaches that were more in keeping
with critical theory and concept-based art.
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| Gyula Kosice, La cuidad hidroespacial, 1946-1972 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum. Photograph by Lance Gerber |
Other than modernism, what role did science fiction and the space
race have in influencing some of the artists in the exhibition?
Not much, as
far as I can tell. Many of these artists were very interested in technology, of
course, but their connection to avant-garde painting in the case of the
Argentinians or the fusion of public art and architecture in the case of the
Venezuelans, seems to have superseded any connection to popular culture at the
time. The exception is, of course, Gyula Kosice, who was a futurist his entire
life, and is well-regarded by pop whose life is devoted to creating models for
sustaining human life into the distant future. His invention of the
Hydro-Spatial City may yet see its day if global warning keeps up.
Was there any kinetic artist that you wanted, but unable to show?
I became
very interested in what happened in Cuba at this time, especially with artists
like Sandu Darie, whose work has become extremely popular among major
collectors of Latin American art. Unfortunately, because of the surge of
interest in showing Darie’s work either by itself or with his contemporaries,
there was literally nothing to borrow. So the exhibition quietly became a show
of South American artists rather than Latin American artists non the broader
sense.
Finally, which of the 11 artists would you like to see have a
retrospective or solo exhibition in the future?
I think a
major Gyula Kosice show in the U.S. would be revelatory for a lot of people.
On View through January 15, 2018.
Palm Springs Art Museum
101 Museum Drive,
Palm Springs CA 92262
760-322-4800
http://www.psmuseum.org/
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| Gregorio Vardánega, Multiplication electronique III, 1966 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum Photograph by Lance Gerber |
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| Installation view of the “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum. Photograph by Lance Gerber |
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| Installation view of Julio Le Parc’s Continuel-lumiére cylindre, 1962/2013 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum Photograph by Lance Gerber |
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| Installation view of Julio Le Parc’s Continuel-lumiére cylindre, 1962/2013 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum Photograph by Lance Gerber |
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| Installation view of Julio Le Parc’s Continuel-lumiére avec formes en contorsion, 1966/2012 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum. Photograph by Lance Gerber |
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| Carlos Cruz-Diez, Chromosaturation, 1965/2017 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum. Photograph by Lance Gerber |
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| Carlos Cruz-Diez, Chromosaturation, 1965/2017 “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969,” Palm Springs Art Museum. Photograph by Lance Gerber |
All photographs are courtesy of the Palm Springs Art Museum.
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