Being a man or a horse, it does not matter, what matters is to get rid of the load placed on the back.
Walter Benjamin
I
Vanity Posture
The critical reception of art in Cuba shows that there are little antagonists questioning if any. Thus, the most humble and despised publication enjoys the charm of persecution in their home pages when these libels that irritate some and delight others. This event guarantees matching the same level of intellectual credibility or media boom to La Gaceta de Cuba and Extramuros, Unión and Somos Jóvenes, Artecubano magazine and its fragile monthly tabloid. Something similar happens with those who conceive “Satanic texts” in the tropical torpor. In these cases, it is irrelevant that the exercise of judgment comes from a visible authority or a stranger who will soon emerge from anonymity. Faits confirm that neither vanity pride is beyond good and evil when weakness is touched. Personal and others’ experiences in the visual arts critic prove that the controversial articles are widely read. This causes frustration in notes and complacent essays yawning of boredom at newsstands or morbid files, reluctant readers praise circulation. “Shaking the tree for having mangoes to fall on our head” is the appropriate formula to hold the “promotion-flow-distribution” string in the publishing field. Otherwise, monthly newspapers and magazines become serious or specific raw material in the diffuse lettered city. Why do hermeneutically correct and disciplined journal colleagues generate apathy? Our daily consensus perishes with a personal rant or electronic confrontations dyed hysterically.
That “vanity posture” preventing arguably contamination involves the greatest possible challenges in these times, where every time we read less and digital media moves to the tasty pulp, forcing the dominance of intensity over the extension without hyperbolic tropes. Just remember Gerardo Mosquera, Osvaldo Sánchez and Orlando Hernandez dissections on Juan Francisco Elso, Flavio Garciandía and José Bedia to capture the dimension of the challenge outlined. If a respectful art journal aspires to be acclaimed as a pacifist, it must demand freedom of style, analytical synthesis and testimonial screening of infinite chatter governed by shortages of clinical eye, cronyism and orders which are similar to quick-and-easy-to-make kitchen recipes.
It is not fair that the “disqualifying criticizes” need to comply with statutes of uncompromising ethics code, while the descriptive flourish is tolerated to occupy an endless spot with its display of improvisation, remakes and compliments as Eurocentric as provincial. An alternative would make the requirement fair to each party so they err or nail it fair and square. Until such a balance is not reached, it will have a Pyrrhic sense to examine the reasons that have turn the other times crucial platforms in publishing grass, unable to feed back the defenders of the “timeless cultural journalism” or enshrined historiography to reconstruct episodes, as if a police series resolved from the beginning of the investigation.
