"Mexico Beyond Its Revolution" — now at the Tufts University Art Gallery — celebrates the centennial of the Mexican Revolution by reexamining our ideas about Mexican art.
Mexican art is often thought of only as a didactic force for revolutionary ideas, but the exhibit's title suggests that there is more to be discovered. Challenging the oversimplification of the issues that Mexican art grapples with, "Mexico Beyond Its Revolution" presents the viewer with a view that is far more complex.
Mexican artists of the 20th century have been concerned with not just illustrating the ideas of the revolution to the masses but also challenging, reexamining and, in some cases, purposefully ignoring these ideas. "Mexico Beyond Its Revolution" brings together the work of 24 artists, all of whom deal with this multifaceted construction of the Mexican identity. Though most of the artists are Mexican, some are not. The broad construction of the exhibition challenges the viewer's tendency to look at the art it presents with a single theory.
The viewer is immediately confronted with this reality in the painting "The Pearl (La Perla)" (1990) by Javier de la Garza. A huge, exceptionally colorful canvas, its placement right at the entrance of the exhibit makes it impossible to ignore. "The Pearl" shows an idealized vision of Mexican pearl fishermen, who are shown in bright, garish colors and from a low perspective. On one hand, this forces the viewer to look up at the fishermen, like monuments to the idealized Mexican peasant. On the other, the garish color denies their existence as true human beings and, instead, implies satire and questioning of their existence. The iconography of the painting is based on a film still from Emilio Fernández's 1947 rendering of the John Steinbeck classic, "The Pearl," a film which idealized indigenous Mexican people. De la Garza's garish colors and huge scale debunk this idealization, questioning the real purpose of such images and their manipulation by the post-Revolutionary government.
Though the exhibit presents critical views of revolutionary ideals, the role of art in defining those same revolutionary ideals is not ignored. The critical function of art in forming a visual language of revolution for the masses is celebrated in Alberti Beltrán's linocut, "Lázaro Cárdenas and the Spanish War" (1936-39). An image about the then-Mexican president Cárdenas's opposition to the rise of fascism in Spain, it speaks to a renewed belief in the leaders of the revolution as heroes. Cárdenas is shown as a strong figure on the left side of the image, holding a Mexican flag and pointing toward a grotesque caricature of Franco and his soldiers opposite him. The flag-bearing Cárdenas is not just an image of the opposition of revolutionary ideas to fascism, but also of the opposition of the Mexican identity to fascism. Beltrán's image is an example of a renewed faith in the primacy of the Mexican revolutionary ideal and is also important in its assertion of a particular Mexican identity.
The inclusion of Polish artist Mathias Goeritz in the exhibit is a reminder that questions of Mexican artistic identity are not easy to answer. Goeritz migrated to Mexico after World War II and examined Mexico's cultural legacy in his work. His mixed media work, "Nine Perforated and Gilded Sheets on Wood" (1960), is an exercise in how to look at the exhibit. Goeritz's piece is a set of nine blocks of painted wood covered in gold sheets. The sheets have been perforated so that they have a tactile texture, forming rows of rough holes. Without knowing any background about Goeritz, the piece appears like many other examples of works from the 1960s. Its bare-bones depiction and examination of the definitions of "canvas" reflect a general questioning of the trajectory of art. Goertiz's interest, however, also lies in the role of gold in the Spanish Conquest, and he incorporates these threads of Mexican history into his work. The viewer must decide whether to view the piece formally or historically, a choice that reflects the struggle of the exhibition to complicate ideas about Mexican artistic identity.
"Mexico Beyond Its Revolution" creates a kindred spirit between viewer and artist. The artists in the exhibition are grappling with the conception of the Mexican identity and how it should be shaped. Should it be grounded in the Revolution? Should it be international? Can it be a combination of these two? A viewer, no matter how much he or she knows or thinks he or she knows about Mexican art, will be led through these same questions. The exhibition resolves few of these questions, but what it achieves is a conversation and examination of the complexity involved in forming a modern national identity through art.
