An exhibition of David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896“1974) in the context of a Bienal dedicated to Oswald de AndradeËs (1890“1954) notion of antropofagia can only make sense as a belated, yet timely, tribute to the compatibility of vision, purpose and commitment that united this Mexican iconoclast with his Brazilian counterpart. Beyond the questionable causalities of biographical accounts,¹ the affinities between these two outstanding representatives of Latin American art and literature extend to many areas. Their pioneering roles as both theoreticians and exponents of a radical avant-garde art in our continent during the 1920s and 1930s serve as a starting point to duly assess their similarities. In these capacities, Siqueiros and Oswald not only laid the foundations for a sensibility fully attuned to the transformation of artistic practice brought about by the historical Avant-Garde, but also set forth a political project of cultural emancipation for our societies. OswaldËs idea of antropofagia found an equivalent in SiqueirosËs peculiar reformulation of tradición to fit the New World context. In each case, however, their aesthetic proposal was the expression of an equally radical political endeavor that consumed their lives, frequently jeopardizing their iconoclastic careers. Such a project was none other than the construction of a new society where art, liberated from the yoke of capitalism, could achieve true autonomy. Their unrelenting faith in this politico-artistic goal·the ultimate avant-garde utopia·led them to assume an aggressive anti-status-quo attitude that established "contradiction" as a permanent political strategy.² Thus, in both the Brazilian writer and the Mexican painter, the political was, from the very beginning, a determining factor around which the contradictions of their intellectual and artistic personae will revolve. This fact explains their militant radicalism on behalf of Anarchism (Oswald) and International Communism (Siqueiros). As conflictive as both of their postures were in the long run, this also explains their marginalization from institutional and canonical circuits. This text is therefore an attempt to retrieve their polemical contribution to the new tradition of the first Latin American avant-garde, a contribution that is still pertinent for our conflictive present.

It is precisely the degree of intellectual and existential affinity between Siqueiros and Oswald that has led me to select the former as ideally suited to illustrate the pertinence of the anthropophagous model, not just for Brazil, but for our continent as a whole. Such a task entails departing from traditional characterizations of this artist that portray him exclusively in terms of his relationship to the genesis of Mexican muralism. Instead, I will approach SiqueirosË intellectual and artistic production from the point of view of the crucial role he played vis-à-vis the emergence of an ex/centric³ avant-garde in Latin America. Indeed, Siqueiros and Oswald are two of only a handful of artists in our continent (Joaquín Torres-García and Hélio Oiticica could also be mentioned here) who were able to visualize and even theorize, with exceptional clarity, the critical role which avant-garde art was called upon to play in our societies. This was not the case of the other two officially-sanctioned "grandes" of Mexican muralism, Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, who remained pragmatic exponents of this. Despite their scattered writings on "vanguardist" art within the specific context of Mexico, their theoretical contribution to this issue is irrelevant for our present view of the Latin American avant-garde.⁴ In contrast, SiqueirosËs and OswaldËs utopian endeavors belong to a broader project which motivated their call-to-arms through manifestoes. That is, the legitimation of Latin American art and culture on its own terms. The lack of universal acceptance and validation of such a hybrid model·the result of the inversion of the "local" and the "hegemonic"·is a vivid stigma that continues to plague Latin American art and culture today. A comparison of SiqueirosËs and OswaldËs theoretical and artistic contribution in this area can thus prove useful to contemporary Latin American artists struggling with the widespread contradictions of our presumably borderless, ultimately ungraspable, global present.

The conceptual and ideological affinities between them are the result of two extraordinary spirits who became synchronized to their period from the standpoint of being against it (or not). In this sense, both understood early on the value of contradiction and negation·the chief stimuli of the historical Avant-Garde in Europe·for the elaboration of a critical cultural practice. Their contribution to the consolidation of a Latin American avant-garde lies precisely in having attempted to replicate that negative impulse in our submissive context. This is evident in two of their early manifestoes. SiqueirosËs "Tres llamamientos de orientación actual a los pintores y escultores de la nueva generación americana" ["Three appeals of timely orientation to the new generation of American painters and sculptors"] (Barcelona, 1921)⁵ and OswaldËs "Manifesto pau-brasil" (São Paulo, 1924)6 condense the artistic and ideological concerns that united them, as well as establish important precedents for their paradoxical conceptions of the Latin American avant-garde.⁷ Curiously, both texts represent a call to Mexican and Brazilian artists/writers to abandon the stale academicism of the past and in its lieu "extend a rational welcome to every source of spiritual renewal from Paul Cézanne onwards."⁸ Thus, they pursue an antinomic double objective: on one hand, encouraging the development of "new means" for literature and the visual arts through the incorporation of avant-garde principles; on the other, the promotion of truly independent perspectives based on the recovery of indigenous traditions.

"Tres llamamientos" and "pau-brasil" also elucidate the common avant-garde sources they shared. In addition to Cézanne, whose art they considered the foundation for a new sensibility, it is evident that these artists subscribed to the rappel-a-lËordre that informed postwar avant-garde neo-classicist tendencies, mainly in France and Italy (B. Cendrars, F. Léger, G. de Chirico, C. Carrà, etc.). Undoubtedly, here lies the regressive aspect of their progressive utopias. This is particularly surprising in Oswald, whose earlier avant-garde masterpiece, Memorias sentimentais de João Miramar [Sentimental memories of João Miramar] (1917“1925) had been clearly inspired by cubo-futurist montage. In "pau-brasil," however, the dadaist impulse has given way to the exaltation of synthesis and equilibrium, a stance that brought him closer to SiqueirosËs own neoclassicist pole.⁹ As I have argued elsewhere,¹⁰ the Mexican painterËs inclination towards classicism is but one end of the constant oscillation between dynamism (a concept originally coined by futurism) and the rational return-to-order, whose ambivalence characterized his entire oeuvre. Indeed, the metaphor of the artist as "engineer" or "constructor" of a new age is present in both texts.¹¹ Thus, where Siqueiros called for "the preponderance of the constructive spirit over the decorative or analytical," the language of "cones, spheres, cylinders and pyramids" as "the scaffold of all plastic architecture," and subjection to the "inviolable laws of aesthetic equilibrium," Oswald listed "synthesis," "equilibrium," and "the constructive spirit," as the key elements of the new avant-garde aesthetic.¹² Moreover, both called for a new perspective, a new scale, and dynamism as the basis for the new forms of expression.¹³ The emphasis on dynamism serves to establish SiqueirosËs and OswaldËs links to futurism. Futurism·both in its original form as well as in its postwar hybrid incarnation of "cubo-futurism"·fascinated both artists, however, the fascist affiliation of the movement inhibited them from publicly acknowledging its influence upon their work. This is particularly evident in the celebration of modern life and technology that informs these manifestoes. Siqueiros, for instance, enthusiastically declared, "We must live our marvelous dynamic age! Love the modern machine, dispenser of unexpected plastic emotions, the contemporary aspects of our daily life, our cities in the process of construction[. . .]" Oswald, in turn, reveled in the "new forms of industry, transportation, aviation. Electric posts. Gas stations. Railroad tracks."¹⁴ The full awareness of the artistic and mythical potential of modern mythical technology was, thus, an operative factor in their theory and practice.

The purpose of the artistic and ideological credo set forth in "Tres llamamientos" and "pau-brasil" was not only Mexican and Brazilian forms of expression, but to serve as the basis for the radical cultural project of this avant-garde in our continent. Both manifestoes already announced the transgressive impetus through which both artists sought to challenge the authority of the Eurocentric idea of culture. This mode of transgression was rooted in their paradoxical recovery of two incongruous elements: our indigenous New World civilizations and the technological means unleashed by modernization. De AndradeËs multiple references to the "credulous and dualist race" and later to the Tupi, as well as SiqueirosËs admiration for pre-Columbian societies (particularly the Aztec and Maya), point to their belief in a Golden Age whose degree of civilization, in their minds, equaled or surpassed in their time that of their contemporaries.¹⁵ For Oswald, it was clear that, after the initial achievements of the Brazilian avant-garde, the task at hand lay in "Being local and pure in his region and time."¹⁶ For the Mexican, too, the main objective of the future was to "come closer to the work of the ancient settlers of our valleys, the Indian painters and sculptors (Mayas, Aztecs, Incas, etc.)" whose work embodied all the principles of synthesis and equilibrium that contemporary art struggled to emulate. At the same time, Siqueiros rejected false "nationalisms" or "archaeologisms" in favor of the right of Mexicans and Latin Americans to express themselves at a universal level. Accordingly, he strongly advised that the search "to be modern and international first and foremost" should not detract Latin American artists from the essential goal: "We must contribute artistic values of our own to world aesthetics."¹⁷

It could be argued that the tension between the indigenous past and the technologically-dominated future found expression in the shocking notion of a regressive utopia at the core of their radical project. This form of utopia exemplifies SiqueirosËs and OswaldËs resort to contradiction as a productive political and ideological strategy. The tension between the pre-Cabralian/pre-Columbian past·still free of European domination·and the technocratic society of the future, is the motivating force that stimulates their need to write and theorize about art. That same tension drove them to simultaneously ponder their utopian vision of the present vis à vis the historical reality of their time. From the tension between the mythical and the historical, there thus emerged a new critical, theoretical, and creative vision for the art of our continent. In this respect, their project closely paralleled that of their contemporary Mário de Andrade, who declared: "We are the aborigines of a future perfection."¹⁸ From their point of view, the challenge was to assume the right to both produce and export original cultural products. Brazilian and Mexican art would thus cease being peripheral, becoming a rich productive force and an "exportable" raw material. The role of technology, then, would be to facilitate a new form of exchange between the Old and New World societies. As a result of this exchange "the universality of the epoch would cease to be ex-centric in order to become concentric; the world would become regionalized and the regional would thus contain the universal."¹⁹

Continuous parallelisms between their avant-garde models became even more accentuated in writings of the late 1920s and 1930s, particularly de AndradeËs "Manifesto Antropófago" (1928), the Prologue to Serafim Ponte Grande (1933), and SiqueirosËs "Rectificaciones sobre las artes plásticas en México" [New thoughts on the plastic arts in Mexico] (1932). Their affinities related to the way in which·fully confident of their cultural heritage and optimistic about the future·they proposed to assimilate (to their own ends) the artistic and cultural legacy of the West. In OswaldËs "Manifesto antropófago," the recovery of native cultures initiated in "pau-brasil" is thus elevated, through the symbolic exercise of cannibalism, to a cultural practice. This model implied the absorption of "the OtherËs" values ("the Sacred Foe") to construct oneËs own. Thus, antropofagia represented a process of blending of other cultures (African, Indian, Portuguese) in the formation of Brazilian culture. Artistically, it posited the radical devouring of existing literary, philosophical or artistic models as a means of constructing a new movement founded on a specific regional ethos. In SiqueirosËs case, the type of cultural and artistic assimilation proposed by de Andrade worked both through the notion of mestizaje as well as the seemingly absurd notion of an avant-garde based on tradición. From the very beginning, Siqueiros believed in an art that would merge the best of our continentsË racial and cultural heritage. Thus, in the "Three appeals" (as well as in his writings of the 1920s and 1930s), Siqueiros posited a new definition of tradition that represented an inversion of its function within the Eurocentric model. Shedding its references to stale cultural systems (ancien régime societies), tradición was "the accumulation of experiences" derived from American and European artistic movements which should serve as the foundation for the Latin American artistËs work. Thus understood, tradición, became associated with the idea of an unlimited reservoir for New World art.²⁰ In both models, the result was a hybrid notion of avant-garde art and culture that dismissed the copy in favor of a simultaneous appropriation of both European and indigenous sources.

Additionally, they duly emphasized the constructive spirit of this New World avant-garde which saw itself as an agent of the esprit nouveau for building an artistic movement grounded on a less unilateral paradigm of cultural identity. In de AndradeËs case, however, identity was not a topic to be represented but, rather, the right of both individuals or groups to freely exercise their self-determination. Antropofagia was, thus, nothing less than the exercise of identity, i.e. the potential of individuals to legitimize themselves in relation or opposition to hegemonic Otherness. Supported by these values, OswaldËs antropofagia was a slap against all forms of colonialism, a new beginning, an emancipation through art. While there is no doubt that the anthropophagous paradigm was his terrain, I must underscore that Siqueiros also conceived of identity as a function of legitimation and not an issue of representation. In terms of modern culture, the synthesis implicit in tradición is a condemnation of both foreign and internal forms of political domination as well as a strategy for the assertion of indigenous values ignored for centuries. As he himself explained, "I believe that a set of circumstances (tradition, geography, race and social conditions) have given us the possibility of accomplishing something which would be a real contribution to universal beauty, and yet be alien to the snobbism so characteristic of European culture today."²¹ Dominance, then, became for both the "sacred foe."

Despite the divergent emphasis which each artist placed on the value of "the new" (de Andrade leaning more towards dadaism while Siqueiros remained more in line with neoclassicism), OswaldËs literature and SiqueirosËs mural and easel production of that time "devoured" a number of key influences (techniques, processes, materials) transforming them into tools for contradiction.²² By doing so, they produced novel paradigms for both Latin American literature and the visual arts which are really ungraspable in their syncretism of antinomic elements. This convergence of emancipatory vision and purpose is nowhere more evident than in the value they accorded to the new means of technical reproduction (photography and cinema) in their conception of an avant-garde practice after 1933. SiqueirosËs notion of a cinematographic mural·which he began to elaborate in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires and which culminated in the monumental Retrato de la burguesia [Portrait of the Bourgeoisie] (Mexican Electricians Union, Mexico City, 1938“40)²³·finds an astounding equivalent in OswaldËs conception of the mural novel exemplified by his work-in-progress: Marco zero (1933“1945), an unfinished epic in three volumes which de Andrade considered the most important collage-challenge of his career. For Siqueiros, the cinematographic mural represented "the union of monumental painting with cinematography [. . .]." As such, it synthesized both his well-known experiments with new technologies and materials (photography, cinematographic camera, airbrush, stencils, mechanical brush, etc.) as well as his long-time absorption of futurist theory and practice. Simultaneously, OswaldËs mural novel, "participate[d] of painting, cinema and public debate," tending towards "social phrasing." The structuring element of this novel was the "cinematographic prose," a resource present since his early writings, which Antônio Cândido has characterized as consisting of "scenic discontinuity" and the "attempt at simultaneity."²⁴

Despite the geographic and cultural differences that separated them, the similarity of response of the two creators to the dilemma of their epoch is not only highly revealing but poses some mandatory questions: a) What factors drove both artists to develop such similar avant-garde approaches to the ancient media of mural painting and to traditional narrative? b) What does this coincidence have to say about the status and role of avant-garde practice in our ex/centric context? Clearly, the resort to cinematographic montage as the most important creative principle of their work in the 1930s was the result of a period in each of their lives when the political factor took over as the driving creative impulse. For Oswald, this crisis was the result of the economic disaster of 1929 ("Black Tuesday") which severely affected the Brazilian coffee-based economy. The latter had, for a long time, supported his familyËs economic interests. Shortly afterwards, de Andrade rejected his previous position as member of the São Paulo avant-garde to join the Communist Party. In SiqueirosËs case, a two-year period of imprisonment in Taxco (1930“32) was followed by almost a decade of exile (Los Angeles, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, New York, Spain (during the Civil War) marked by staunch political activism on behalf of the antifascist cause. The socio-political struggles to which they were committed during this time brought about a similar awareness of the key political and artistic issues affecting their era: the ascent of fascism and the challenge that mass media brought upon traditional forms of art (painting and sculpture). As in the 1920s, they were quick to visualize and theorize about the critical role avant-garde art should play in this monumental world crisis. Thus, in the early 1930s, Siqueiros and Oswald·even before their German contemporary Walter Benjamin (1934)·were able to foresee the role which both of these factors would play in structuring the future as well as the role of cinema in this process. Above all, they were keenly aware of the ascent of the masses as the principal receptors of a new type of artistic experience characterized by "the lack of aura."²⁵ Needless to say, very few of their contemporaries in Latin America shared in these concerns or even suggested their equation.

Whether applied to a wall or to a novel, the principle of cinematographic montage provided the key for an art that would merge their avant-garde concerns with the nonorganic work of art with the ideological need to make art accessible to the masses in their struggle against fascism. As practiced by the principal movements and tendencies of the European avant-garde between 1919“1942, this illustrative principle consisted in the juxtaposition of disparate elements (originating in diverse semantic or visual contexts) in one same composition. The fusion of these images in a single plane or sentence not only contradicts the organic nature of the traditional work of art, but simultaneously underscores its status as an artificial construct. Montage presupposes the fragmentation of reality and its impossiblity of synthesis in the nonorganic work of art. Such an impossibility is experienced as "shock" by the viewer or reader who is called upon to actively participate in the process of completing the workËs meaning. The use of this resource by Siqueiros and Oswald, must be seen in light of the contradictions posed by revolutionary practice itself in the mid-1930s.²⁶ In fact, like Benjamin, Siqueiros and de Andrade both felt that the radical avant-garde achievements of the previous decade were insufficient to counteract the overwhelming enemy: fascism. Even the anthropophagous model lost its edge when confronted with this phenomenon, which, in OswaldËs own words, resembled a "burst of smallpox."²⁷ In light of these contradictions, the application of the montage technique to the mural or novel represented a way of producing a form of "authentic realism" capable of competing in psychological impact ("shock" as analyzed by Benjamin) with cinema. Indeed, their approach to montage differs substantially from popularized versions of this technique, such as those represented by the well-known political montages of John Heartfield. In their work of the 30s and 40s, rather than emphasize the complete discontinuity of fragments, Siqueiros and Oswald tended towards a type of montage based on narrative totality. While in strict terms, the emphasis on the work of art as embodying any kind of totality ran counter to the belief in fragmentation that characterized avant-garde practice,²⁸ it nevertheless allowed them to document aspects of our socio-political reality in conflictive but outstanding ways.

In this context, SiqueirosËs cinematographic mural and OswaldËs mural novel of the 1930s represent updated versions of the regressive utopia of that decade. As in the latter concept, they sought to merge contradictory elements into a productive political strategy which was a priority for both. Both represent original (let us say, ex/centric) responses to the blind alley of avant-garde European painting and literature during the critical manifestations of the 1930s, mainly socialist realism. At the same time, the paradoxical attempt to re-create the illusion of movement on a wall or a page·using the essentially static resources of language or painting·was coherent with the ungraspable contradictions of the avant-garde models elaborated by Siqueiros and Oswald ten years before, for which I have coined the term regressive utopia. In both cases, instead of abandoning the pictoric or literary medium in favor of the spatio-temporal illusion of the cinematic medium, they gambled on the idea of "re-activating" both painting and literature through the technical means provided by cinema. Genuinely concerned with the future of art, they were openly antagonistic to the de-humanizing effect that mass-media provoked on the age-old genres of mural painting and the novel. Once again, a spirit of contradiction was the guiding force of their actions.