ART OnCuba 10

In this edition, ArtOnCuba places attention on an absolute assumption: the gregarious sense of the human being. Since art often is a more or less faithful interpretation of reality, and usually also quite the opposite, we will find within the context how many artists have searched the strength that union proposes. At least in the strictest theory.

The individual acknowledgement of many of them has its roots, independently from the talent of each one of them, on the symbolic power of a group constituted, from its birth, by a powerful potential which knew how to be taken for granted. A Dream Team. Having belonged to one of these mythological groups bestows cradle and a given aura of embryonic genius.

Anyway, and against all logic, the opposite may happen. Belonging to a group whose potential has been taken for granted on wrong assumptions may halt the career not only of the group but of one of its members, whose talent would have flowed better on its own course. A statement as simple as it is obvious. The group favors, the group asphyxiates.

The inner dynamics of each group—paying attention to its artistic proposal—has had to count, of course, with the individual interests of each of its members, which in many cases is decisive. And, almost always, these interests lead to separation. Not only in visual arts, of course. History is full of examples of fabulous groupings dissolved amidst the desperation of their fans.

That is why we prefer to give more credit to their beginnings than to their ends. Those first conversations and debates frequently are the real substance of what their historical corpus would be. To contemplate old photos, a lot of young people posing for a not so uncertain future, a collective whose gravitational center are the most basic affinities of existence, grants us a nostalgia and an odd melancholy when remembering the magic of any beginning.

For this edition we also focus on a topic that we will surely retake in future deliveries: what is religious in Cuban art. Divine and Profane, a text by Dr. Luz Merino Acosta, suggests a historical path which makes us very anxious to return to some stages and artists.

Several exhibitions called our attention, among them Verbum, by Iván Capote, with an impeccable selection of pieces and a coherence in the discourse talking on a career in frank and continuous rise. Also Zootheby’s, by Reynerio Tamayo, and La razón de lo irreal by Diana Fonseca and Glenda León.

All that in this Tenth Edition, a closed number that sees the light when very near to the third anniversary of the magazine.