Las mariposas son miopes (Spanish Edition)

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The working class Puerto Ricans live in the area known as Spanish Harlem. As we have seen, the name is not a coincidence. Since Puerto Ricans, like other peoples in the Caribbean, reflect a great intermixture with African peoples of the New World, it is natural that they should feel close to the U. Du Bois, had established not only a political structure in New York, but a powerful and inspirational artistic structure in visual arts, literature, and music.

Many historians feel that African-American music blues, jazz, etc became the primary original music of the United States replacing a complete dependency on European sources. In additon, white North American musicians like George Gershwin, drew on African American music to create an original fusion that reconstitured the classical music of the United States.

It is also well-known that African American music became very popular in France in the early 20th century, opening the doors to all of Europe. Finally, African American musicians of the United States absorbed the rhythms and instruments of Cuba which were also based on strong African sources, and completed the transferences and transnationalisms to which we have been referring.

By the late 20th century, not only Puerto Ricans, but large migrations of Cubans and Haitians as well as Dominicans, brought the artistic presences of the Caribbean to the eastern United States. By the time of this reading, the presence of the visual art forms of all these nations is well known in the United States through numberless exhibitions.

Wandering around the exhibition and its premises, I was struck by an amazing homage to a young Puerto Rican artist who was being honored by a sizeable group of people who had just cut a ribbon to open his exhibition to the public. I no longer recall the work presented since Puerto Rico celebrated these events regularly, and I attended many.

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But I do recall his youthfulness, his friendliness, and his seriousness. In the s, attending New York regularly as a Board member of the College Art Association, I never failed to visit both Harlem and Spanish Harlem, in addition to the more traditional art museums. I quickly learned the nomenclature of Spanish Harlem artists of all varieties: Both were organized in as cultural outposts for the Puerto Rican community.

Located in Spanish Harlem and boasting outdoor exhibitions, classes for the community, and cultural activities of all sorts, the collaboration between Island and migrant artists is unique. The main themes of Puerto Rican art can be seen as well in works by Taller artists. Political themes remain cogent to the present.

www.farmersmarketmusic.com: Ruben Garcia Cebollero: Books

Some works detail abuses of the Island itself and the destructiveness of U. Another political expression turned into an art form was the invasion of the Statue of Liberty in the New York Bay by artists who hung a Puerto Rican flag around the sculptured head. Alienation, loneliness, the split and fractured identity, and the search to recover a whole vision of self and existence are the themes of some works, while self-portraits portray interior states of mind.

Trained in the traditions of realism and surrealism, interested in abstract expressionism and conceptual art, Ballester slowly transformed his art into organic abstraction in which figurative and landscape elements play a role in dynamic and powerful works on a monumental scale. That an active social consciousness is at work is evident:. I use symbolic imagery and organic abstractions to depict the themes of struggle, vulnerability and volition. Intense colors, layers of paint, thick impasto, scratched and blended surfaces create depth, movement and dramatic contrasts which translate the experience of living within the urban landscape of human existence and interchange.

At the same time that he reaches outward to U. Ballester keeps himself firmly anchored in Puerto Rican culture and spiritual beliefs. James, the Moor Killer. Ballester conceives his work in terms of monumental images that push at the borders of his piece, large or small, like that of a frustrated muralist. Many of his paintings are fragments of much bigger ideas that seem not to be exhausted when he finishes creating one. In the process of growth, he changes and overpaints what is no longer compatible with the total composition.

He employs the ancient and difficult technique of encaustic — hot wax painting that comes down to us from ancient Greece, that vanished during the medieval and Renaissance periods in favor of tempera and oil paint. Revived in the 18th century, and again in the 20th, its effects, its visual and physical properties, and its range of textural and color possibilities, make it highly suitable for contemporary styles not adequately served by traditional oil painting or the new synthetics.

Molten colors are applied with bristle brushes and palette knives; the surface can be opaque or transparent, can be textured in many ways, or can be lightly polished with a cloth to bring out a dull, satiny sheen. If kept warm, free-flowing manipulations may be carried out. When I apply the mix on the linen surface I am drawn in by its matted mystic magnificence. Sensuality is the final aspect to consider in the work of Ballester. It is implicit in his choice of painting techniques and explicit in the work itself. Luminous shadows, convoluted fleshy forms that turn in on themselves like body parts, rotundities, sweeping gestural shapes and stroked surfaces, cavities and bony structures, breast-like forms, warm earth colors and patches like seas and skies, areas bathed in light and shadow, are characteristic.

Its origins may lie with pulpy plants, or with fragments of a human body. It either case, they are anchored to the earth below, and the sky above. The artist may be expounding Catholic or animistic spirituality, or both — like varied instruments in his symphony. To imaginatively record rites he has personally observed in his homeland, Ballester returns to the representational mode for the figures, who emerge arrayed in spectacular vestments.

A most important element of this portfolio was its experimental character. Fernando Salicrup, having worked for many years with computer-generated digital printmaking, was in a position to assist the artists with this new technique for the portfolio.

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In the course of discussion, various techniques employed in Europe, the Americas and Asia, were detailed. Examples such as the combinations of graphics with photography, with video, with the use of layering digital collage , with the digital manipulation of the photographs themselves, with the combination of digitals with traditional graphics like mezzotint, with printing on canvas, on aluminum, on Plexiglas, and on acetate, with the registration of movement, with the use of large scale images beyond the possibilities of traditional graphics, etc.

Accompanied by poetry written by his wife, Maria Boncher, which follows below in first person for the artist himself, Ballester produced a double work of art reflecting his experiences in Paris for a period of about two years. In short, a scene where Paris meets the Caribbean. A maze of photographic segments and violent linear evocations push at the boundaries of the work but are held down by the architecture and by fresh earth below in which rests a straw basket — a memory, perhaps, of Haiti.

Red and blue circles seem to be either traffic signs, or computer signs when one has trangressed the rules.

The poetry diptych positions a photograph of a young woman in a black coat and umbrella his wife against a muted image of Parisian architecture. The poem itself is superimposed over the image. The tremendous importance of this visit by Ballester to the former artistic capital of the Western world until it was replaced after World War II by New York 12 is that he not only had the opportunity to review the artistic palaces of Paris — where one can review the great masters of European art over the centuries — but that he also had an opportunity to meet living master artists of Latin America — many of whom had made their homes in France during the 20th century.

Visiting or living in France and other parts of Europe such as Italy or Germany was de rigueur for many Latin American, as well as North American artists even when they returned to their native countries after the experience and training. A number, however, remained in Paris or other cultural centers — though frequently visiting their native countries for reinvigoration and for exhibition. As a Latin American himself, he could now identify with the entire continent, and thus with the entire world of artistic production during the 20th century which, in the New Millennium, is becoming truly transnational for the first time in the field of artistic production.

In fact, there is not a single nation in the Americas, from Canada to Uruguay and Argentina that does not have an African-descent population, particularly on their Eastern shores. As a result, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean not only boast such populations, but maintain a myriad of cultural manifestations of distinctly African derivation. Thus we have the creation of caste systems in the colonial period which have been recorded in many paintings which meticulousely rendered images of the various intermixtures, known generally in Spanish and other languages as mestizaje mingling, mixing.

The other side of this pictorial culture and aesthetic is the strong maintenance throughout the Americas of cultural expressions derived, embellished, and constantly restructured by the repressed Africans and Native Americans. One of many people who have recorded and described these phenomena — which exist to the present and form the basis of hidden elements in contemporary aesthetics and practices — was Anita Brenner. A North American born in Mexico in who spent many years of her life there, she wrote the book Idols Behind Altars: The Story of the Mexican Spirit, in Stated briefly, her main idea concerned the preservation of pre-Christian religious images and practices by concealing them behind the enforced altars of the conquerors.

Thus they could continue to be worshipped and celebrated without endangering the lives of those who carried on the celebrations. These practices are carried on up to the present. At the same time these practices are invoked, they also represent a defiance of conquest, slavery, exploitation, racism, and misery through the military and economic intervention of super-national powers and persons. In this document, Carmen T. Lugo paid the artist the great tribute of adding his name at 30 to the names of the most illustrious artists of Puerto Rico in the 20th century: Also included were color reproductions of our works by the artist: The works themselves were powerfully rendered as semi —abstractions utilizing multiple techniques.

To this revealing list of titles can be added others of different vintages: Between Past and Present, the Squibb Gallery and others, — , p. For a more complete history of these issues and their effects on Puerto Rican modern art, see Shifra M. I am indebted to Samuel A. I raise this poit because the United Sates of America have appropriated the word to refer only to themselves. Pedro Albizu Campos, a brilliant scholar, has been compared to predecessors for liberty like George Washington U.

He is considered the first great theoretician of anti-colonialism. Albizu received a chain of degrees in the U. He also commanded seven languages — knowledge acquired in seven years of education in the United States. Many catalogues and Books can be found through galleries, college and universities as well as large libraries in major cities of the United Sates. Taller Boricua, Museo de las Americas, , pp.

Quoted by Shifra M. Goldman in the catalogue Spirits: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War, trans.

Desde que viajo en RENFE (Spanish Edition)

By Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Hunter College, New York, Anita Brenner, Idols Behind Altars: The Story of the Mexican Spirit, Boston: Pero ese indudable y merecido reconocimiento internacional le ha costado el insilio en su propia tierra. Atento a las corrientes procelosas y a las hechizantes seducciones del trayecto, tratamos de trazar un posible mapa de este recorrido suyo que mantiene su proa dirigida a un destino abierto…. Sobre su contenido, comentamos entonces: Una de y otra del en las que combinaba la estructura insoslayable de racionalidad inherente al dibujo con la pintura que, en su caso, ha tenido siempre hasta ahora como norte, lo esencialmente propio del pigmento: Conciente o inconscientemente, vuelve a sus maestros inspiradores, a sus propuestas adaptadas, exponiendo su rizoma de influencias.

Medito lo que quiero proyectar. Hay que perderse para poder descubrir. According to Octavio Paz, Picasso painted with the haste of a century coming to an end. Carlos Santiago, though beginning a new one, is caught in a similar vortex of production, of paintings that show a rapid maturity, along with an intensity and an aesthetic quality, surprising in a work developed in just a few months. Rationality against rage, reason in a deadly duel with confusion. If we follow closely the postulates from his earlier bestiary, we find ourselves at the center of human contradictions, conveyed with absolute conviction and a masterful composition constructed with a very loose brush-work.

He follows that earlier work with paintings like: Gestural With Rabid Bitch and Bull, presents the figures of such animals, coexisting among free-form color patches.

You can sense the turbulence in the figures, heads formed by nervous strokes, the tits, the fangs and legs almost blurred deliberately, creating a movement or tension. The atmosphere is definitely one of struggle, antagonistic from every angle you look at it. Different genders, different species, but the same rage. With Heartily, Santiago puts irony and distance between the painting and the spectator.

A lone black bull in the midst of a red field: Brute force, charging beast… the artist not only expresses confrontation and challenge within the bull-ring but perhaps sexual premeditation. Every contest is a libidinous undertaking. On the more ironic side, we find a painting like Digest it. The only apparently digestible thing in this work is a banana at the bottom of the painting. The rest of the composition is an atmosphere in between grey and white, invaded by slight patches that recall flies.

In a very stark, almost neutral composition, virtually the only figurative object, the banana is questioned by the more abstract part of the painting.

Rage emerges within the context of this exhibition with sharp edges. With Spurs Showing, is another painting symbolic of the constant fighting and bickering with which we live in our contemporary Puerto Rico. As in other paintings of his personal bestiary, Santiago employs roosters as his main characters. Here the birds appear to compete in a race, sights set on a distant point, the whites, yellows and reds in turmoil, all with a defiant stance.

They can also be symbolic of what has become the Puerto Rican national sport: That may very well be, because these paintings were manufactured right before elections. The political stance in the work of Carlos Santiago is tightly linked to dignity. Rage in these paintings is the manifestation of dignity violated, and thus they become an ethical pronouncement. But this proposition is buried within metaphors, rich with interpretations, that we have to sort to get to the essential. Opposed Paths Caminos contrarios is a very simple statement: Two figures, one standing in an upright position, the other upside down in a kind of visual oxymoron.

Santiago is not concerned with the novelty that could arise from a confrontation between our world and the characters in the painting. Learn more about Amazon Prime. Please try your request again later. En he publicado "Mirando al mar". Are you an author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography. Learn more at Author Central. Y aunque su vida se pone patas arriba, hay una cosa que no cambia: Como consumidora soy de las que prefiere ver, tocar y probar antes de comprar.

Entrevista con El Correo. Puedo convencerme de que no siento nada. Pero no, no puedo. Llevo semanas preparando esta cita. Y mejor no decir nada de mi ropa interior. Cierro los ojos, me pesan. Me falta algo a lo que aferrarme cuando asalten las pesadillas. Unos brazos que me sostengan y mezan mi cuerpo hasta arrastrarme a la tierra de Oniria.

Unos dedos que acaricien mi espalda y calmen los miedos. Y, lamento decirte, ya no me valen de cualquiera. Descansa en paz A golpe de click. De todos los colores. Ya no se escriben cartas de amor. A la vera del mar. Tu imagen, mis letras DistintoYo Me concentro en el sonido del mar, con la vista fija en el horizonte. El sol acaricia mi piel, suave. La sigo con la mirada. Imagino una historia para ella.

Finjo que no me gusta estar contigo. Cierro los ojos y lo intento, intento no pensar, dejar la mente en blanco. No puedo evitar hacer preguntas al aire, de esas que nadie va a responder porque nadie tiene la respuesta. Abro los ojos y hago pastitas con la boca. Gimoteo un poco, no me quiero levantar, siempre me parece demasiado temprano. Miro el reloj para comprobar que no es tarde. Me cuesta salir de entre las m. Tu Imagen, Mis Letras. Imper Le veo alejarse poco a poco, paso a paso. Espero que recapacite y vuelva, que vea lo que pierde y decida que no quiere hacerlo.

Sin dejar de acercarnos Dormirme en la curva de tu cuello.

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