This article discusses the conceptual art of Colombian artist Antonio Caro in the 1970s. It analyzes how Caro's text-based works introduced a new approach to addressing social issues through art in Colombia. While some critics condemned Caro's work as too influenced by international styles and detached from Colombian reality, other influential critics praised it for being avant-garde and in step with international conceptual art movements. The article examines how Caro's conceptualism engaged with both international art trends and local political circumstances, and argues that understanding his work in relation to both contexts is necessary to appreciate its contributions to conceptual art in Colombia and beyond.
This article discusses the conceptual art of Colombian artist Antonio Caro in the 1970s. It analyzes how Caro's text-based works introduced a new approach to addressing social issues through art in Colombia. While some critics condemned Caro's work as too influenced by international styles and detached from Colombian reality, other influential critics praised it for being avant-garde and in step with international conceptual art movements. The article examines how Caro's conceptualism engaged with both international art trends and local political circumstances, and argues that understanding his work in relation to both contexts is necessary to appreciate its contributions to conceptual art in Colombia and beyond.
This article discusses the conceptual art of Colombian artist Antonio Caro in the 1970s. It analyzes how Caro's text-based works introduced a new approach to addressing social issues through art in Colombia. While some critics condemned Caro's work as too influenced by international styles and detached from Colombian reality, other influential critics praised it for being avant-garde and in step with international conceptual art movements. The article examines how Caro's conceptualism engaged with both international art trends and local political circumstances, and argues that understanding his work in relation to both contexts is necessary to appreciate its contributions to conceptual art in Colombia and beyond.
This article discusses the conceptual art of Colombian artist Antonio Caro in the 1970s. It analyzes how Caro's text-based works introduced a new approach to addressing social issues through art in Colombia. While some critics condemned Caro's work as too influenced by international styles and detached from Colombian reality, other influential critics praised it for being avant-garde and in step with international conceptual art movements. The article examines how Caro's conceptualism engaged with both international art trends and local political circumstances, and argues that understanding his work in relation to both contexts is necessary to appreciate its contributions to conceptual art in Colombia and beyond.
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Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Third Text Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctte20 Art Does Not Fit Here Gina McDaniel Tarver Published online: 22 Nov 2012. To cite this article: Gina McDaniel Tarver (2012): Art Does Not Fit Here, Third Text, 26:6, 729-744 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2012.734571 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Art Does Not Fit Here Colombian Conceptual Art between the International New Avant-Garde and Colombian Politics Gina McDaniel Tarver In November 1972, Antonio Caros contribution to Colombias annual Salon of National Artists (Salo n de Artistas Nacionales) the nations most prestigious art exhibition proclaimed loudly aqu no cabe el arte (art does not t here). Caros crude, banner-like, text-based artwork certainly did not t neatly into the salon, which as usual was dominated by fairly conventional forms of painting, sculpture, prints and drawings displaying a high degree of technical skill. New to the salon that year was its arrangement into four sections: political art, gura- tive drawing, geometric art and primitivist paintings and prints. 1 Caros AQUINOCABEELARTE was located in the political art section, refer- ring as it did to recent police killings of student protestors and indigenous activists. Sharing the political art section were gurative paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings by six other artists, mostly narrative artworks that illustrated in a direct manner the struggle of the poor, particularly farm workers, against exploitation. Caros work questioned the place of art, even such political art, within a nation in crisis and provided a different model for the conuence of art and politics. From his debut in 1970 on, the obvious differences between Caros art and that of most of his compatriots its lack of technical polish, its cheap media, and perhaps above all its reliance on text rather than image led some Colombian art critics to condemn it as being too concerned with international fashion and out of touch with Colombian reality. 2 Crucially, though, other inuential critics and curators hailed this new art, which they quickly labelled Conceptual, praising it precisely because it was in step with international currents, celebrating it as avant-garde, and giving it a prominent place within Colombias art institutions. 3 Caros text-based, anti-aesthetic, de-skilled, intentionally impover- ished and socially engaged art denes, through those characteristics, what is now most commonly known as Colombian Conceptual art, Third Text, Vol. 26, Issue 6, November, 2012, 729744 Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online # Third Text (2012) http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2012.734571 1. XXIII Salo n de Artistas Nacionales 19721973, Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, Bogota , 1972; see also Camilo Caldero n Schrader, ed, 50 an os: Salo n Nacional de Artistas, Colcultura, Bogota , 1990, pp 180186 2. One prominent critic, responding to the work of Caro and Jorge Posada, wrote: Do these young artists have an idea of the reality that surrounds them, of the country that they live in, of the cultural circumstances that correspond to them, of the artistic activity that is taking place at this moment? It seems to me that in the case of Caro and Posada, their information about what is happening in international art does not compensate for their ignorance of closer and more throbbing realities. Germa n Rubiano Caballero, Jo venes en Museo Moderno, El Tiempo, Bogota , 5 April 1973. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 3. The rst example of such favourable criticism came with Caros artistic debut at D o w n l o a d e d
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which introduced into the national art scene the possibility of a new artis- tic approach for addressing social issues. 4 Caro and the few other Colom- bian artists of the early 1970s who produced Conceptual art sought, as had Europes historical avant-garde, to bridge the gap between art and life through radical new art forms. 5 These artists fullled a double imperative of being up-to-date with international trends while speaking to a national audience about pressing local problems. In displaying an art that looked international and was formally innovative (one of the most common postwar denitions of avant-garde), they were immedi- ately able to gain the crucial support of art institutions. At the same time, the young Conceptualists developed their art in tune with vernacu- lar political ideas to respond to and potentially impact on national cir- cumstances in the art scene and beyond. Their conceptual approach to bridging the gap between art and everyday life challenged accepted ideas about art and its social function and, not surprisingly in fact, intentionally generated various conicting interpretations. It cleverly and simultaneously addressed multiple (sometimes overlapping) potential publics, international and local, ranging from art professionals and museum audiences to university students and readers of the daily newspapers. It is useful and necessary to look at this art as it related to the international art scene. While critics at the time touted it as international, few then or since have analysed its similarities and differences in comparison with other Conceptual art that represented the new avant-garde at the dawn of the 1970s, in large part due to the new Antonio Caro, AQUINOCABEELARTE, 1999 replica of 1972 original (lost), acrylic on posterboard, 70 x 800 cm, collection Museum of Modern Art La Tertulia, photo: Jose Katta n 730 the XXI Salo n Nacional in 1970. Venezuelan critic Juan Calzadilla, who had served as a juror for the salon, wrote appreciatively of his artwork as an anti-artistic form that corresponds to political art of our days and revealed that he had wanted to award it a prize. Juan Calzadilla, Soy espectador de un funeral, El Espectador, Bogota, 21 October 1970. Calzadilla compared Caros rst artwork to arte povera, but by 1971 critics regularly and consistently referred to Caro as a Conceptual artist. 4. On Colombian Conceptual art as having introduced new artistic approaches to social issues, see Ivonne Pini, Arte y poltica en Colombia (de mediados de la decada de 1970 a la de los ochenta) (Art and politics in Colombia (from the mid- seventies to the 1980s)), in Ensayos: Histor a y teor a del arte, 10, Bogota, 2005, pp 201203. D o w n l o a d e d
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ways in which it challenged artistic conventions internationally. 6 While Colombian Conceptual art has certain characteristics in common with well-known, mainstream Conceptual art (use of text, rejection of an aes- thetic approach to art, institutional critique), it also challenged some of the widely circulated ideas of what Conceptual art was all about (such as denial of the importance of the visual experience and centrality of theory). Examining the ways in which Colombian Conceptual artists created their work in critical dialogue with international Conceptual art can help round out the current picture of Conceptual art, or, more broadly, Conceptualism (a term advocated by certain critics like Luis Camnitzer to avoid too close an association with the Conceptual art that grew out of Minimalism in New York). 7 It will complement recent studies that explain Latin American Conceptualism as distinct from European and United States Conceptual art in its denitively political prole. 8 Yet this art cannot be explained solely vis-a` -vis international Conceptualism. To understand how it differs from Conceptualism else- where, and how (and why) it contributed something new to Conceptual- ism, it must be seen within the political context of Colombia, an environment marked by the growth of left-wing guerrilla groups and social protest wherein intellectuals, especially within Colombias National University, were questioning their role in fostering political revolution. 9 Bernardo Salcedo, what is it?/que es?, 1971, book, each leaf 16 x 10 cm, published by the Centro de Arte y Comunicacio n, Buenos Aires, photo: Abigail Winograd 731 5. For the idea of a historical avant-garde as opposed to a postwar neo-avant- garde, and the identication of its distinguishing feature as the desire to bridge the gap between art and life, see Peter Bu rger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1984. 6. The term avant-garde is difcult to pin down; its meaning has shifted and been contested since its rst use in the nineteenth century, and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, artists and critics were challenging the formalist Greenbergian denition that focused on the original exploration of unconventional artistic techniques and concepts, attempting to recover a more political denition. See Johanne Lamoureux, Avant-Garde: A Historiography of a Critical Concept, in Amelia Jones, ed, A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts, 2006, p 197. Nevertheless, an examination of international art journals of the period reveals that the formalist denition still predominated. For a contemporaneous example of Conceptual art presented as the latest avant-garde, see Charles Harrison, The British Avant Garde, Studio International, London, 1971. 7. Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver and Rachel Weiss, Foreword, in Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver and Rachel Weiss, eds, Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s1980s, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1999, p viii 8. See, especially, Luis Camnitzer, Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 2007 and Mari Carmen Ramrez, D o w n l o a d e d
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In this article, I will rst analyse two works that directly address the internationally current idea of a new avant-garde: Bernardo Salcedos what is it?/que es?, subtitled manual para la nueva vanguardia/manual for the new vanguard, from 1971, and Jorge Posadas Documentos sobre la nueva vanguardia (Documents on the new vanguard), from 1972. Through these works the artists established a critical dialogue with inter- national art. I demonstrate how these works may be read as questioning international and conceptual approaches to art while subtly pointing towards politics. Then I consider two works addressing political activism that Caro exhibited simultaneously in 1972: AQUINOCABEELARTE and Documentacio n e informacio n basada en Manuel Quint n Lame y su obra (Documentation and information based on Manuel Quintn Lame and his work). While the rst refers textually and visually to recent popular protests against the government, the second recovers a his- torical gure, Manuel Quintn Lame, an indigenous activist lawyer earlier in the century, and both point to the political instrumentality of the written word. One unexplored route to understanding why Colombian artists began to create text-based works in 1970 in their attempts to integrate art and life is through the widely discussed and inuential socio- logical discourses of the day. Particularly illuminating with regard to the art and life merger proposed by Colombian Conceptualists is the theory and practice of study-action that came out of the sociology department of Bogota s National University. MANUAL FOR THE NEW VANGUARD When artists like Bernardo Salcedo, Jorge Posada and Antonio Caro began to produce their new kind of art in 1970, were they merely, as some critics believed, concerned with keeping up with international trends, with joining the new vanguard? Salcedos now little-known artwork what is it?/que es? (1971) commissioned for a foreign art institution and designed for both Spanish- and English-speaking audiences can help us understand the nature of the relationship between Colombian Conceptual art and the international art scene, as it parodies and questions the idea of a new international avant-garde. Without a doubt, there was strong incentive for Colombian artists to participate in international art trends. To do so in the early 1970s in Colombia was to full the wishes of such nationally powerful art insti- tutions as Bogota s Museum of Modern Art (opened in 1963), Medellns Coltejer Art Biennial (established in 1968), and Calis American Biennial of Graphic Arts (established in 1971). 10 All three institutions were founded (and funded) on the belief that the development of Colombian culture through internationalisation was vital to Colombias development as a modern and competitive nation, that cultural development was a necessary complement to current attempts at economic development. This developmentalist philosophy dominated the 1960s and continued with some force into the 1970s, and had the support of both capitalists and cultural leaders. 11 From its very beginning, Colombian Conceptual art received staunch institutional support, since it seemed to full the demands of internation- alism, speaking, as it were, a language that famous art world pro- 732 Tactics for Thriving on Adversity: Conceptualism in Latin America, 1960 1980, in Camnitzer, Farver and Weiss, op cit, pp 5271. 9. Aside from Miguel Gonza lez, cited below, Colombian critics of the 1970s overlooked, or at least glossed over, Colombian Conceptual arts relationship to national political issues. Only recently have art historians (like Pini) focused on the links between this art and politics. This glossing over was the result of the focus on internationalism and of the still conservative formalist approach to art criticism in Colombia at the time. 10. The American Biennial of Graphic Arts had several important international art competitions as direct predecessors, including the Panamerican Graphic Arts Exposition (1970) and international painting and printmaking competitions held as part of Calis annual National Art Festival between 1963 and 1969. Miguel Gonza lez, Las Bienales Gra cas de Cali, Re-vista del arte y la arquitectura en Colombia, vol 2, no 6, 1981, pp 3335. 11. For a developmentalist statement of cultures role in national development as made by a capitalist, see Rodrigo Uribe Echavarra, Discurso de apertura, in I Bienal Iberoamericana de Pintura Coltejer, Coltejer, Medelln, 1968, p 5; for a similar statement made by Marta Traba, a distinguished critic and curator in Colombia in the 1960s, see, for example, a statement from 1968 quoted in Alvaro Barrios, Orgenes del Arte Conceptual en Colombia, Alcada Mayor de Bogota , Bogota , 2000, p 21. D o w n l o a d e d
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fessionals respected and understood as cutting-edge. Ready proof came when the international jury of the II Coltejer Art Biennial in May 1970 awarded the prize for the best artwork by a Colombian artist to Bernardo Salcedos Hecta rea de heno (Hectare of hay) a huge pile of numbered plastic bags lled with hay that is considered the rst example of Colombian Conceptual art. 12 Such institutional support gave Colombian Conceptual art a high prole nationally, despite there being very little of it within the national art scene. Colombias two international biennials resulted only in a small degree of international exposure of Colombian Conceptual art. 13 With his exhi- bition of Hecta rea at the 1970 Coltejer Biennial, Salcedo came to the attention of Argentinian Jorge Glusberg, director of the Centre of Art and Communication in Buenos Aires. Glusbergs mission was to promote systems art (one of the many synonyms for Conceptual art at the time) as an international phenomenon that included Latin American artists. He invited Salcedo to exhibit with the Centre and to create a project for it in 1971. 14 The project Salcedo produced was the book what is it?/que es? It is a small book, measuring sixteen centimetres by ten, and contain- ing forty leaves. Its sparse text is in both English and Spanish and appears on odd pages only, with most of each page left blank. Each page closely follows the same format. There is a small banner running diagonally across the top left corner of each printed page that reads una obra ar- mativa/an afrmative work. Then there is another phrase that varies from page to page. At the top, the phrase appears in Spanish, at the bottom, in English. The bilingual text and the fact of its publication in Buenos Aires are indications that this work was aimed specically at an international audience. Only the subject of the phrase changes from page to page. Each phrase, though it could stand on its own as a complete sentence, is pre- ceded and followed by ellipses, that device in writing which makes visible an absence. Each phrase answers the question what is it? with a negative statement, for example, . . .a kiss, it is not. . .. While some of these statements merely seem to negate conventional forms of art . . .a drawing, it is not. . ., . . .a landscape, it is not. . . others negate what might be interpreted as more contemporary and radical forms of art an object, a gesture, a moment. Not all of the statements suggest an art form; some simply describe an object, like a cow, a table, a ower, or more complex, less tangible things, like a greeting, a friend, a love. Still others make reference to a type of institution, like a museum and a government. In short, the book includes a wide range of things that it the new vanguard art? is not. Is the work a reference to the avant-gardes dynamic of negation (ie the history of avant-garde art movements rejecting the work of their predecessors)? Or perhaps the work is a semiotic investigation into how we understand reality, into the relationship between reality and art, as famously played with by artists like Rene Magritte or, more contemporaneously, Joseph Kosuth with One and Three Chairs (1965) wherein he presents a referent (object) and both visual and verbal references to it. 15 Salcedos book may also be understood as a parody. Read this way, it makes fun of the reductive tendencies of so much contemporary art, from Minimalism to mainstream Conceptual art the new avant-garde with 733 12. The jury comprised British critic Lawrence Alloway, who wrote at the time for Art in America, Italian art historian and critic Giulio Carlo Argan, and Spanish critic Vicente Aguilera Cerni, who contributed to Studio International. 13. Salcedos Hecta rea appeared in Jacqueline Barnitz, Medelln: The Biennale, Arts Magazine, vol 44, New York, summer 1970, pp 5455. Ideally, internationalism was a two-way process. The hope was that international biennials would promote internationally current art within Colombia, allowing Colombia to become up-to- date culturally, and also launch Colombian artists onto the international stage. Unfortunately, as happened with the earlier American Art Biennial in Co rdoba, Argentina, this second aspect of the internationalist goal was not achieved. On internationalism in Argentina, see Andrea Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, and London, 2007. 14. Glusberg included Salcedos Hecta rea in the Centres Escultura, Follaje y Ruidos (Sculpture, Foliage and Noises), an outdoor exhibition held in the Plaza Ruben Daro in Buenos Aires, November 1970. Jorge Glusberg, Del pop-art a la nueva imagen, Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone, Buenos Aires, 1985, pp 100, 107108. 15. The work has some afnity with one produced in 1972 by Polish artist Jaroslaw Kozlowski in an exhibition called Metaphysics. A photographic image of an ordinary room was projected on a wall with objects in the room being numbered. The viewer heard a tape-recorded track in four languages questioning what the D o w n l o a d e d
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which his work of the early 1970s was most consistently grouped that either insisted that art has nothing to do with anything external to it or approached art as an analysis of art (Ad Reinhardts art as art, Joseph Kosuths art as tautology). 16 Salcedos book expresses amusement at how such isolationism, such an inward turn of art, creates the senseless possibility of listing what art is not (and lists were popular with Concep- tual artists), how it opens to endless possibilities of denial. But beyond making fun, this handbook seems to ask, if you keep eliminating, what is left? At the very least, as Colombian curator Mara Iovino wrote in the catalogue for Salcedos major retrospective in 2001, the continual rejection of possible answers serves nally to leave the questioning open. 17 Given all its negation, just what is it that makes what is it? an afrma- tive work? Perhaps it is the blank space in the centre of the page which invites the reader to project an image of what it might be, visually echoing the openness of the questioning process. If one considers the blank white surface as a screen upon which one can project, what is it? may be seen as an interactive, constantly changing and never complete, generative work. 18 It is signicant that Salcedos book invites the viewer to picture what it might be. Compare this invitation to Kosuths One and Three Chairs. Kosuths denition may evoke various images in the mind of the viewer it invites visualisation, as well yet Kosuths inclusion of a specic chair and a photograph of that same specic chair creates tension between their specicity and any image the viewer might produce. The viewers own visualisation is therefore exposed as inadequate, although, simultaneously, so is the linguistic description. By leaving out any image, indeed, any given denition, lin- guistic or otherwise, Salcedo leaves nothing explicit to contradict what- ever image the viewer may generate. The individuals creative potential for visualisation, then, remains the most positive value of the work. In this sense, instead of being read as making fun of the new avant- garde, what is it? may be read as suggesting instead that the historical avant-garde, with its declarative manifestos and claims to progress along a path to be marked out by the artist, is a model that does not apply, or that any new, vital avant-garde would have to be very different from the old; would have to be open and questioning, with the partici- pation of the viewer being crucial to the work. 19 There is not only great humour but potentially a powerful message in this unusual manual that answers no questions, placing the onus of guring things out back on the reader. In short, it is not clear whether Salcedos book, with its exaggerated ambiguity, was advocating or rejecting the ambigu- ous and indeterminate qualities of the new avant-garde in art, but ironi- cally, despite its lack of images, it did preserve the importance of visuality in the visual arts. 20 Salcedos choice in creating a manual, and a pocket-sized one at that, is key in interpreting the work. Conceptual artists elsewhere had already proposed books as an art form, it is true, so that Salcedos choice could reect merely his engagement with the international art scene. 21 But no doubt a vanguard manual in 1971 would have had strong extra-artistic, political connotations in Latin America, post-Cuban revolution, where Chairman Maos Little Red Book was widely read and carried in the pockets of Marxist guerrillas. Lest it seem that interpreting Salcedos 734 viewer saw, for example: Number 1. What is it? It is a room. Is it a room? Tony Godfrey, Conceptual Art, Phaidon, London, 1998, p 273 16. International critics of the early 1970s frequently discussed the reductive tendencies of contemporary art; for example, on its withdrawals, see Charles Harrison, Notes towards Art Work, Studio International, vol 179, no 919, February 1970, pp 4243. Interpreted as a parody of these tendencies, Salcedos book might be compared to John Baldessaris painting Everything is Purged. . . (19671968). Kosuths lengthy analysis of the analytical condition of art, Art After Philosophy, originally appeared in three instalments in Studio International, vol 178, nos 915917, October, November, December 1969, pp 134137, pp 160161, pp 212213 and cited Reinhardts famous dictum Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else (1963). 17. Mara Iovino, Bernardo Salcedo: El universo en caja, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Banco de la Repu blica, Bogota , 2001, p 34 18. Ibid. Iovino, noting the cinematographic qualities of Salcedos work and the inuence of cinema on the artist, wrote that what is it? is analogous to a humorously unresolved suspense lm. 19. Although historical avant- garde was not a termin use yet in the early 1970s, the period did see an increased awareness and analysis of early European avant- garde art (especially Dada and Russian Constructivism) through publications like Camilla Grays The Great Experiment: Russian Art, 18631922, Abrams, New York, 1962 D o w n l o a d e d
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book as pointing to revolutionary politics is a stretch, consider other works by Salcedo that, maintaining the objective, cold, straightforward appearance of mainstream Conceptual art, point outside such artistic practice, works such as the previously mentioned Hecta rea. Hecta rea inevitably links itself to measurement of land and agricultural production; in Colombia in 1970, hectare was a term used frequently in pressing dis- cussions of land distribution and agricultural reform. At the very least, Salcedos art raises questions about the way that avant-garde art and revolutionary politics at one time such close comrades are related in the early 1970s. THE NEW VANGUARD IN COLOMBIA Not many Colombian Conceptualists received even as much international visibility as Salcedo did and his artwork barely registered within main- stream international publications but in Colombia their artwork was regularly singled out in exhibitions and newspapers. 22 The fact is that while they adopted an international language of art, they did so mainly to address a national audience and to treat national issues. There was a great risk of being misunderstood but, read in the context of current Colombian political discourse, the t between their new artistic language and revolutionary ideals generated in Colombia becomes clear. They were not so much bringing a new vanguard to Colombia as creating their own new vanguard with links both to contemporary internal politi- cal thought and to external artistic currents. An examination of Jorge Posadas Documentos sobre la nueva van- guardia, which was similar to Salcedos earlier book, may help further elucidate the idea of a new vanguard in Colombia that referred to both art and politics. 23 Unfortunately, Posadas work no longer exists, nor do any photographs of it. Based upon a description of Documentos, however, one can imagine how it looked. In a review of the Salon of Young Artists held in Cali in July 1972, in which Posadas Documentos appeared, Colombian critic Miguel Gonza lez singled out the work of both Posada and Antonio Caro for praise. Describing Documentos as a book made out of aluminium whose content is the metal itself and nothing else, he applauded it as one of the most extreme works of another type of vanguard characterised by its attitude of resistance. 24 One could read Posadas work, based upon Gonza lezs scant descrip- tion, as a manifesto for an avant-garde of pure formalism, and an example of contemporary reductivism, wherein the material is everything and the work is drained of all else. The spirit of resistance of Colombian Conceptual art is more profound than this supercial approach to art, however, going beyond formal matters to become a different kind of avant-garde, as Gonza lez argued in his review. The problem with most contemporary vanguard art internationally, Gonza lez stated, is that it came to rely on novelty for the sake of novelty, for its shock value, but the public had become accustomed to scandals and began not to react at all, seeing avant-garde works as a joke, as works apparently without meaning and totally empty. 25 Gonza lez believed that the work of Posada and Antonio Caro should be taken seriously, however, and con- sidered for its point of reference in the social and political situation of 735 (subsequently revised and republished several times, including in 1970) and through articles in journals like Studio International. It should be noted that this recuperation of an older avant-garde did not occur as frequently in Spanish publications as in English ones. 20. This importance of the visual experience emphasised rather than erased by blankness is at odds with certain famous mainstream denitions of Conceptual art. For example, Kosuth asserted arts viability is not connected to the presentation of visual (or other) kinds of experience. Joseph Kosuth, Art after Philosophy, in Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, eds, Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1999, p 168 21. The best-known examples of books as Conceptual art are probably Ed Ruschas books, which Salcedo could have encountered or at least read about. An exhibition of Ruschas books is reviewed, for example, by Timothy Hilton, in UK Commentary: Coins, Stamps, Books, Comics et al., Studio International, vol 181, no 930, February 1971, pp 7275. 22. Salcedos book is listed in Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 1972, University of California, Berkeley, California, 1997, p 212. This listing is the only published attention the book seems to have received. 23. Posada was eleven years younger than Salcedo, and in 1972, when Posada made Documentos, Salcedo was already a well- known and respected artist (and a mentor to Posadas close friend Antonio Caro). Documentos may have D o w n l o a d e d
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the country; he saw it as critical of all realities, even of the present posture of art and the international aesthetic. 26 How is Documentos, then, related to the social and political situation of Colombia in 1972? It may be seen, like so much of Colombian Concep- tual art, as an ironic and highly self-reexive work. (Being made of metal, its pages must have been reective to some degree, perhaps to emphasise the need for self-reexivity.) As Gonza lezs own praise of the work demonstrates, critics during this period, nationally and internationally, hyped the idea of a new vanguard, and I believe that Posada knowingly played with this idea. Posadas Documentos is rst and foremost clearly a refusal to put van- guard ideals into writing. It is no revolutionarys handbook, being too cumbersome to be carried around for frequent consultation. 27 Because the book had no printed content, what it looked like, its form, would have been all the more important to its reading. The pages were solid and blank: there is no dogma inscribed in their steely surfaces. The book was an un-manifesto, and in that way against old avant-garde approaches. Posadas book, like Salcedos, rejected and even mocked the old model, being instead open, about dialogue, about addressing and even creating a space for a public that would formulate and act upon its own ideas for change. This argument is not intended to aver that Colombian artists were unique in the international art scene of the time; in fact, it shows their work as part of a larger Conceptualist move- ment in Latin America that had similar goals. 28 They, like other artists during this period of unrest, felt that much advanced art was too arro- gant, authoritarian even in its demands on the viewer, and that the label avant-garde, at any rate, had become more about trends and estab- lishing international reputations something of which Salcedo and Posada may have willingly taken advantage, but with the aim of subtly undermining and critiquing the situation. Unlike Conceptual artists else- where, however, their rejection of an older model of vanguardism with its dictatorial tendencies extended to include a resistance to theorisation, and none of them wrote explanations or manifestos to support or prose- lytise their art, accepting the risk of misunderstanding and the possibility of falling outside the historical record. 29 The refusal of these artists to show a clear way forward and even to explain their art may be seen as one way of partaking in the revolutionary culture of the day, which should be considered in analysing these works. One of the major contributors to revolutionary ideology in Colombia was Camilo Torres. Torres was a charismatic Catholic priest and former uni- versity professor turned Marxist guerrilla, a forerunner of liberation theologists. He consistently argued that the intellectual should not put himself above the popular classes but should stand beside them, listen to them, and assist them in communicating their own concerns. He believed so strongly in standing beside the popular classes that he joined the militant Marxist group the National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberacio n Nacional, ELN), refusing to take a position of leadership in the group and instead ghting and dying as a regular soldier. Many of the young artists to emerge in the Colombia of the early 1970s among them Antonio Caro and Jorge Posada studied art at Colombias National University in Bogota , the university at which Camilo Torres taught before joining the ELN. Torres, along with the 736 been made in homage to Salcedo, created in dialogue with his earlier book. 24. Miguel Gonza lez, Salo n de Artistas Jo venes, El Pas, Cali, 27 July 1972 25. Ibid 26. Ibid 27. Ibid. Gonza lez wrote that it was installed on a small white base and was done in considerable dimensions whose size one may compare to any common manual. 28. Camnitzer, Conceptualism in Latin American Art, op cit, and Ramrez, op cit 29. Since theory is deemed such an important part of Conceptual art, this lack of theorising on the part of Colombian artists (and critics) is at the heart of the argument that Conceptual art did not exist in Colombia during this period. For example, see Carmen Mara Jaramillo, Colombia, an os 70, Alcalda Mayor de Bogota and Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo, Bogota , 2003, pp 6165. See Camnitzer, Conceptualism in Latin American Art, op cit, pp 3335, wherein he interprets the outpouring of theory by other Latin American Conceptualists as reecting the need to explain and clarify their radical practice and to ensure that their often ephemeral, nonmaterial works registered in the historical record. D o w n l o a d e d
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scholar Orlando Fals Borda, founded the sociology department at the uni- versity. As a former professor, involved with and encouraging student activism, Torres had an impact on the intellectual formation of those emerging from the university both during and after his time there. At the National University, he shaped the sociology department and the approach to social sciences that it taught, and he had a broader impact through the wide publication of his books and articles and through the medias accounts of his activities. Though he left the university in 1962 and was killed in 1966, his legacy at the university and beyond continued to be powerfully felt well into the 1970s. 30 Torres and other members of the sociology faculty particularly Orlando Fals Borda, Juan Friede and Germa n Guzma n Campos taught that intellectuals needed to take an active role in social transform- ation, arguing for a synthesis of theory and practice. They developed a model of study-action, also known as action research, as a way in which social science might serve the struggle of the exploited urban and rural classes against imperialism and the Colombian oligarchy. 31 The way that the young Conceptual artists of the early 1970s would approach art has interesting parallels to the model of study-action. Posada and Caro, in particular, created an art that not only expressed resistance to the status quo but also encouraged members of the middle class to cooperate in the struggle against oppression, and that furthermore experimented with new methods, all aspects that were important to the approach to social science being taught at the National University. These artists conveyed the idea that they, as artists, could not write the formula for change, yet they hoped, even if limited by the bourgeois nature of ne art, that they could contribute to revolution. In a 1973 inter- view, Caro stated: As petit-bourgeois artists we have many defects in our ideas and our works, but we are inclined to the revolution and close to the working class people. 32 In the same interview Posada acknowledged that his work addressed an intellectual, petit-bourgeois minority, that also is our ally in revolution and may co-operate with us in the long run. 33 In Posadas book the pages, empty sheets of metal, are more mirrors than a set of records, plans or instructions, just as Salcedos pages are like blank screens onto which the viewer could project her/his ideas. The pos- sibilities for change are shown by the artist to be open, and the task of for- mulating a plan is reected back equally upon each viewer. THE ART OF PROTEST Many works of early Colombian Conceptual art, particularly those of Antonio Caro, point much more directly at the political situation in Colombia than do what is it? and Documentos para la nueva vanguardia, which remain extremely cryptic. A clear concern with politics so notably absent from mainstream Conceptual art in its earliest years of development links Antonio Caros art to Latin American Conceptual- ism. 34 Antonio Caro, more than any other early Conceptual artist in Colombia, parallels the periods revolutionary politics in his art of the early 1970s. The suggestion that art should be reworked from the grass-roots as an activity that considers and benets ordinary people is particularly evident in his work, especially in a series of posters and 737 30. Antonio Caro, in correspondence with the author, 29 October 2005, mentioned his relative lack of enthusiasm for what he learned in the art department of the university; in contrast, the classes in the sociology department red his interest. 31. The model is also known as participatory action research. Orlando Fals Borda was a key intellectual in spreading this idea. For a statement about action research, roughly contemporary to the art discussed in this article, see Orlando Fals Borda, Reexiones sobre la aplicacio n del metodo de Estudio- Accio n en Colombia (Reections on the application of the Study-Action method in Colombia), Revista Mexicana de Sociolog a, vol 35, no 1, JanuaryMarch 1973, pp 4962. 32. Co mo ven los jo venes el arte colombiano?, El Tiempo, Bogota , March 1973, press clipping from the archive of Antonio Caro 33. Ibid 34. Only in 1970 did certain artists associated with Conceptual art in the United States, like Hans Haacke or Adrian Piper, begin to address such social issues as exploitation of the poor, racism and sexism, as Conceptual art turned from an aesthetics of administration to a critique of institutions, in the words of Benjamin H D Buchloh, Conceptual Art 19621969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions, October, vol 55, winter 1990, pp 105143. The Argentinian collective work Tucuma n Arde (Tucuma n Burns) is probably the most famous example of art involved in politics in Latin America. On Tucuma n Arde, D o w n l o a d e d
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banners he created in 19721973 that he referred to in retrospect as pamphlet-type work. 35 AQUINOCABEELARTE, to begin with, directed the viewers atten- tion to the theme of popular protest through its text while bringing the visual qualities and materials of popular protest into the realm of ne art. The phrase that gives the work its title is spelled out in a loud rush of text, with all the words run together. It is made up of large, blocky, black capital letters, each painted on a separate standard-sized sheet of poster board. In the 1972 National Salon, Caro hung the sixteen sheets closely together. The lack of spacing between words, along with the heavi- ness and squareness of letters, makes the phrase difcult to read at rst sight. It is like a visual shout: what comes across instantly is its urgency. The reader only absorbs the meaning of the phrase after the initial impact of the visual onslaught is overcome. The letters are not all exactly the same size. Their irregularity, plus the materials used (acrylic paint on poster board), gives the work a crude, cheap, handmade appearance. The work insistently asks the viewer to look AQUI (HERE), and both the immediacy and ambiguity of that word are crucial. Here, which also implies now, refers to the works context, but it may mean the salon, the museum, the country. In the context of the National Salon, the viewers rst understanding of Caros AQUINOCABEELARTE may have been as a critique of the salon. The XXIII Salon of National Artists was in fact controversial, since it discontinued the awarding of prizes, and many Colombian artists boycotted it. The title alone might question whether the salon reected the real state of art in the nation, since it showed itself incapable of suiting the needs of artists. But beyond questioning whether or not the salon was representative of national art, Caros posters condemned recent brutal government repres- sion against individuals who participated in public manifestations demanding government concessions and reform. The key to this reading is in the works small text, given at the bottom of each poster, which included the names, dates of death and places where individuals were killed during protests. Such information came from local newspa- pers and magazines. His inclusion of the names of the government actions in which the individuals listed were killed Operacio n Control and Masacre Febrero 26 ensure that the viewer has the infor- mation needed to understand the work in a wider context than that of the salon. The context of the early 1970s, as the artist explained: . . . was [one] of student protests, worker problems, persecution of indigen- ous peoples; there were problems in Cali surrounding the Pan-American Games (something similar to [what happened with] the Olympics in Mexico in 1968), etc. 36 Caros typically biting work suggests a comparison between the civic pro- tests that met with government violence and the protest of artists against the salon. The protest of the artists was successful (the organisers reinsti- tuted the prizes the following year). But, in the light of the ne print in Caros work, their complaints seem unimportant. Art does not t here is therefore a slogan calling for a revision not just of the salon but also of the relationship between art and the broader context of civic protest and political violence in Colombia. In other words, Caro used an impor- tant art venue (crossing the virtual picket line created by other artists over 738 see Camnitzer, Conceptualism in Latin American Art, op cit, pp 6072. 35. Antonio Caro, Teorema, 7, Bogota , October November 1976, p 15 36. Correspondence with the author, 29 October 2005. According to the artist, Operation Control was a military action against indigenous groups in western Colombia who stood up against government policy, and the Massacre of February 26 was the police response to civic protests (or, as the government preferred to call them, public disturbances) in Cali surrounding the Pan American Games held there that year. D o w n l o a d e d
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art institutional issues) to stage a critique of the institutions of art as a starting point for broader social critique. Aqu no cabe el arte in this way also exemplies Colombian Conceptual art, which relied upon its condition as ne art and worked from within art institutions. AQUINOCABEELARTE seems to demand a change, but of what kind? The slogan implies that there is no room for art in a society in which dissent is answered with brutality. That art in its traditional sense as it appears for example in the National Museum, site of the National Salon is inappropriate. Or, conversely, that in this context what constitutes art must, of necessity, change. Which means that what is now art (Caros art) does not t well in the elite space of the museum; it hangs there as an uncomfortable and discomting intruder. The form that Caro used for this work, as well as its content, made the workout of place inthe museum. Caroborrowedfromthe aesthetics of pol- itical protest. Partly this means that he combined different types of visual devices common to social protest. The work, for example, is made up of indi- vidual letters like those held up in banners by members of a group to create a message, a way of communicating that not only conveys their message but also expresses it as a cooperatively generated collective. Each separate poster that comprises Caros work not only has a separate letter, it has infor- mation about the death of one individual. In this way, they are similar to a type of poster commonly held in protests against violence, which generally bear the name of a person who has been killed along with a photograph of the deceased, and are usually held by a close relative or friend. Though AQUINOCABEELARTE is made of individual posters, Caro hung them so close together that they approximate the pancarta or banner. Scale is an important aspect of the pancarta, since, as contem- porary Colombian artist Catalina Lozano put it: A pancarta is a means of expressing ideas and ideals held by a group, it enunciates collective desires and nonconformities and it aspires to commu- nicate, if not universally, at least to a great number of people. 37 Again, the form itself communicates, even before the words of the pan- carta can be read. This point is proved by the illegible banners, with text barely hinted at, in depictions of social protest by earlier socially con- cerned Colombian artists, as in Luis Angel Rengifos print Primero de mayo (First of May) of 1955 and Debora Arangos painting Huelga de estudiantes (Student Strike) of 1957. Finally, the hand-made quality of AQUINOCABEELARTE is meaningful as well. It indicates that the work was created quickly in response to a particular situation (tactically), for, as Lozano put it, uttering immediate desires coming from concrete needs. 38 So not just the look but also the reasons for and ways of making are crucial elements of the aesthetics of protest to which Caros work is related. By drawing from these visual devices, Caros work calls forth vividly the broader context of social protest, bringing it into the museum, encouraging the elite audience to consider it. THE ART OF CRITICAL RECUPERATION Another work that Caro created in 1972 is enmeshed with the theory of study-action that was central to the universitys sociologists, and in 739 37. Catalina Lozano, Pancarta: Idealismo y urgencia, call for entries by the Lugar a Dudas artist space, Cali, July 2007. This call for entries is bilingual, and the English translation is from the call for entries. 38. Ibid D o w n l o a d e d
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particular with a strategy they advocated for critical recuperation of the history of social struggle. Caro showed this work, Documentacio n e informacio n basada en Manuel Quintn Lame y su obra, simultaneously with AQUINOCABEELARTE at the Independent Salon, and his choice of presenting Manuel Quintn Lame at that salon is signicant, as both the work and the salon are about protest and the potential for gaining power by using established systems. The Independent Salon, organised as an alternative showcase for national art that would reect the desires of artists in response to an artists boycott of the National Salon, was held at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogota . Just as the Independent Salon must be understood in relationship to the National Salon, Manuel Quinn Lame can be best comprehended as complementing and contrasting with AQUINOCABEELARTE: whereas the later work is a protest against particular and current events, the former is about nding a constructive way forward by looking back, of establishing continuity with past social struggles and, in doing so, contributing to a long-term strategy for change. Manuel Quintn Lame also belongs in form and content to Caros pamphleteering stage, but was not as transparently political as AQUI- NOCABEELARTE. As its title implies, it plays on the contemporary vogue for information in art, presenting its information as if it were neutral fact through the use of plain and concise language. 39 Yet Manuel Quintn Lame introduced a historical gure who was anything but neutral, to whom Caro would continue to pay homage in later works. In the early twentieth century, Manuel Quintn Lame (1883 1967), a self-taught lawyer of indigenous descent, united and led indigen- ous groups within Colombia in a movement to regain land they had lost to inequitable government policy. Arrested more than 200 times, the indigenous leader spent a total of eighteen years in prison. At the time Caro created the work, Quintn Lame was not very well known to the general public, although he was revered by indigenous people and also greatly admired by leftist intellectuals. 40 An activist group of sociologists, anthropologists, economists and historians called La Rosca (of which Orlando Fals Borda was a member) had published Quintn Lames memoirs the previous year as part of their programme of study-action, which included among its techniques critical recupera- tion. 41 The idea behind critical recuperation is that the political consciousness and effectiveness of the working class base is built up through the awareness of successful past efforts of the exploited classes in their struggle against the oligarchy. 42 With his work on Quintn Lame, Caro harnessed art as a possible tool for this kind of critical recuperation. Caro lined one side of the exhibition hall with ten identical posters, each of which reproduced a fragment of Quintn Lames unusual and elaborate signature. Quintn Lames signature, and the detail of it that Caro copied, is reproduced in La Roscas edition of Quintn Lames book with the caption: He always printed it as if it were a seal, without leaving out a single detail, on all the letters, memoirs, petitions, and even receipts that he wrote over the course of more than sixty years. 43 The fragment showed the Lame part of his signature, with the mysterious and complex ourish that the indigenous leader added 740 39. Caro talked about this in an interview: I made a version of Manuel Quintn Lame very closely tted to or in the fashion of information art, trying to be objective, with concise information. Victor Manuel Rodrguez, Entrevista a Antonio Caro, Revista Valdez, 5, Bogota , October 2003, p 341. 40. Caro noted how the subjects lack of popularity affected the reception of the piece, contrasting Quintn Lame with Carlos Lleras Restrepo, former president of Colombia, who was the subject of the artwork Caro created in 1970 for the National Salon: Manuel Quintn Lame. . . strangely went unnoticed despite being much more important; I did not have the fortune of choosing a fashionable symbol, indigenism not being in fashion or only in fashion with a very small sector, and it did not have the same popularity as Lleras. Ibid, p 344. 41. Manuel Quintn Lame Chantre, En defensa de mi raza, introduction and notes by Gonza lo Castillo Ca rdenas, Rosca de Investigacio n y Accio n Social, Bogota , 1971 42. Fals Borda, op cit, p 55 43. Quintn Lame, op cit D o w n l o a d e d
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to the e. 44 As Colombian curator and critic Jose Roca explained, Quintn Lames signature is a highly symbolic: a syncretism between typical nineteenth-century calligraphy and an indigenous pictogram. 45 This part of the work comprised what Caro called the visual variation of the works information. Reproduced on its own, it would not have been obvious that it was part of a signature. Rather, it would almost have appeared merely a decorative pattern, easily identiable as indigen- ous for Colombian viewers. 46 Only the Lam (due to its elaboration, the e is not clear) would have hinted that it was something more. Caros posters covered the windows of the hall, so that their blank backs could be seen outside the window. The last poster, closest to the entrance, also had biographical information about Quintn Lame and about Caros art project printed on its reverse side. The text, then, was visible to passers-by through the window, and especially visible just before entering the exhibition space, but not visible from inside it. The works visual variation conventionally occupied the gallery space, but the work leaked its information onto the street. In fact, it is only outside the space of art that the meaning of the artwork becomes clear. The project expanded further into the street in that it also consisted of yers that Caro handed out to people who passed by the universitys exhibition hall. These yers, like small versions of the nal poster in the gallery, had a fragment of Quintn Lames signature on one side and information about the indigenous leader and about Caros work on the other. Quintn Lames signature signies deance. Caro uses Quintn Lames idiosyncratic handwriting, the mark of an individual, to create a concep- tual work infused with subjectivity. At the same time, as Roca stated, This signature has a formal quality that goes beyond the individual, signifying the presence of two communities in an uncomfortable coexis- tence. 47 Quintn Lames signature was his most important legal tool (as imposed by a system of European origin) in the battle to gain rights and recognition for people the government treated as dispensable. Quintn Lame chose to wage his battle from within the Colombian legal system, using the law to defend the rights of indigenous people. The repetition of the signature itself indicates the possibilities for wielding power: it might signify the number of times Quintn Lame used it in his legal battle with the government; or it may be to emphasise the number of indigenous people whom he represented and who are still out there, in need of representation and potentially powerful if united and organised. By resurrecting Quintn Lames mark, Caro not only restores a presence that the ofcial histories have systematically obliterated, he also more broadly revitalises the power of an individual hand in the struggle against an oppressive system. 48 And, as Quintn Lames signature with its unusual visual ourish suggests, it was not just as an individual that he acted (individualism itself being a European value) but as a member of a deep-rooted community. Quintn Lame used the power of the foreign system but at the same time insistently maintained a distinct and indigenous identity. As usual with Caros work, the context of this installation was an important part of the work. By inscribing the mark of indigenous resist- ance in an elite social space (a private university), Caro called upon the elite audience to consider the continued relevance of Quintn Lames 741 44. Once again, I amdescribing a work that no longer exists, although Caro continues to create versions of this work using the signature. My description is drawn from interviews with Caro, in particular one I conducted on 3 April 2001. 45. Jose Roca, Necrological Flora: Images from a Political Geography of Plants, ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America, vol 2, no 3, spring 2003, p 33 46. It is reminiscent, for example, of painted tomb decorations at Tierradentro, one of Colombias most famous pre-Colombian archaeological sites. Tierradentro is in the department of Cauca in which Quintn Lame was born. 47. Roca, op cit, p 33 48. Ibid D o w n l o a d e d
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Antonio Caro, AQUINOCABEELARTE, 2006, replica of 1972 original (lost), acrylic on posterboard, sixteen posters, 70 x 50 cm each, collection of the artist, photo: Jaime Moncada Calixto 742 D o w n l o a d e d
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cause. By late 1972, the ongoing battle for agrarian reform was heating up. In 1973 President Misael Pastrana Borreros administration would give the anti-agrarian movement strength by pushing through new legislation granting concessions in support of large-scale mechanised agriculture. The government furthermore encouraged the break-up of the National Peasant Association into splinter groups, and some land- owners began to organise assassination squads to intimidate the peasants and weaken their movement by killing its leaders. As documented by AQUINOCABEELARTE, it was a time in Colombia when the govern- ment itself was increasingly using violent and repressive means against anyone daring to organise protest, and the period in which rebel guerrilla forces were becoming better organised in their own armed struggle for land reform. Caros work has little aesthetic pretence; it is instead pragmatic. He has repeatedly emphasised the importance of communication in his works of art. As an example, this work is all about getting a message across effectively, one that encouraged deep reection, and he chose a format (posters and yers) common to popular political struggle. During the earliest phase of Conceptualist production in Colombia, Caro and his fellow Conceptualists created many text-based works that, despite being made up primarily of words, have an immediate and Antonio Caro, Homenaje a Manuel Quint n Lame, 1992, achiote pigment on amate paper, 62 x 86 cm, collection of Banco de la Repu blica 743 D o w n l o a d e d
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intense visual impact. In contrast to better-known mainstream Concep- tual artists, and like those in other parts of Latin America, Conceptualists in Colombia never denied the vital role that visuality and materiality plays in the work of art. 49 They were highly aware of the visual force that the written text can have and the impact of materials on meaning. Caro, in particular, drew heavily from the aesthetics of popular protest, that is, from the look of the inexpensive posters and banners, often created quickly, that express an urgent need and that attempt to mobilise a particular public to meet that need. Caro, Salcedo and others also incor- porated lessons learned fromother forms of mass textual communication, such as advertising, print journalism, and even public education, into their textual works, with an eye to the visual power of written words in convincing a target audience to act in a certain way, that is, with an awareness that language is an instrument of power. On the surface, these artists were in step with the new avant-garde, which at the time was a largely a-political concept that was gaining recognition through international art magazines, but they have more in common with other artists internationally who, in various locales and in relative isolation from one another, proposed a new avant-garde as a form of activism, as a way to respond, to educate, to create a community, and ultimately to shape society. Their art may be understood best not in terms of inter- national fashion but in the context of Conceptualism in Latin America, with its involvement in Marxist thought and, more specically, in light of the model of study-action generated and put into practice within Colombia. I presented an earlier version of this paper at the symposium Latin America: The Last Avant-Garde, co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, City University of New York, and the Department of the History of Art, Yale University, New York City, 45 April 2008. I thank the organisers, Irene Small and Daniel Quiles, and also extend my gratitude to friends and colleagues who commented on this version: Edith Wolfe, Ana Mara Reyes, Erina Duganne, Luis Camnitzer and Erin Aldana. 744 49. On the role of the material in Latin American Conceptualism, see Mari Carmen Ramrez, Rematerialization, in Universalis: 23 Bienal Internacional Sa o Paulo, Fundaca o Bienal de Sa o Paulo, Sa o Paulo, 1996. D o w n l o a d e d
Voices Off: Reflections On Conceptual Art Author(s) : Art & Language Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Autumn 2006), Pp. 113-135 Published By: The University of Chicago Press