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Art review: Branding the nation: Mexican identity in FEMSA collection
Ángel Zárraga, "September." 1917. FEMSA Collection. All photos courtesy of Ayala Museum
Consisting of 63 representative works of varying media and artistic movements, “Mexico: Fantastic Identity” approaches the question of its national aesthetics as a thematic progression; a journey that is not necessarily chronological, but pivots full circle on the idea of revolution and the search for identity after dissociating from the status quo.
Portrait of the Mexican as artist
The exhibit is prefaced with Cubist paintings by Diego Rivera and Angel Zárraga, both of whom received state funding to pursue artistic studies in Europe. Although European influences held sway over Mexican art at the turn of the 20th century, the national government was a critical force in its reinvention at the end of the Mexican Revolution. Curatorial notes identify then-Minister of Education José Vasconcelos as the visionary behind the government’s cultural agenda to “unify and consolidate revolutionary ideologies” through art.
Rivera, together with David Alfaro Siquieros and José Clemente Orozco (who are also represented in this exhibit), painted government buildings with murals depicting Mexican history and the triumph of the Revolution. These nationalist murals inspired the Mexican School of Painting, which championed figurative portrayals of Mexican traditions—the colors are vivid and the subjects larger than life—and perpetuated art as an instrument of propaganda.
Hugo Brehme, "Iztaccíhuatl." n.d. FEMSA Collection
This utilitarian function would be called into question in the 1930s and 1940s by artists such as Rufino Tamayo, whose works—while thoroughly Mexican in character—can easily be situated within the context of international art movements. The departure from the Mexican School continued in the 1950s and 1960s with José Luis Cuevas and other artists identified with Generacion de la Ruptura; the exhibit represents these anti-establishment movements with paintings that experiment with abstract and geometric forms, or with softer brushstrokes and darker tones.
“Mexico: Fantastic Identity” employs a clever conceit in showcasing the medium of photography: majority of the displayed works are portraits of prominent artists. This provides a pictorial history of Mexican artistic movements and its intimate, interconnected circles of influence.
Graciela Iturbide, "José Luis Cuevas." c. 1969. FEMSA Collection
But Mexican identity—as viewed through its art—cannot be pinned down to just politics (or lack thereof). The environment also exerts an influence, alongside history filtered through personal experience, and the spontaneous expression of the subconscious.
Landscapes, interior and exterior
Alejo Carpentier once remarked that the history of the Americas is a chronicle of the marvelous real—lo real maravilloso, more famously interpreted as magical realism—an existence where truth is stranger than fiction, and where the extraordinary is commonplace. Case in point: Paricutín, a volcano that sprung from a corn field in 1943 and erupted continuously for eight years before finally becoming extinct. Its brief, explosive existence was chronicled by Gerardo Murillo (“Dr. Atl”); indeed, the country’s volcanic peaks and diverse terrain have inspired the fertile imaginations of many a Mexican landscape artist.
The marvelous real manifests as an explosion of imagery, a juxtaposition of personal memory and collective consciousness. Frida Kahlo is represented by “My dress hangs there (1933)”—a symbolic self-portrait, where personal artifacts and reminiscences take precedence over figurative portrayals. Juan O’Gorman’s “The Myths (1944)” calls to mind Hieronymus Bosch and his layers of symbols and allegory: here, religion, industrialization, and volcanic eruptions vie for space in the Mexican psyche.
A country predisposed to accepting strangeness as the status quo must have held some appeal to the surrealist painters, a number of whom settled in Mexico after being displaced by the Spanish Civil War and World War Two. The mysterious, dreamlike environments and bizarre creatures of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington are on display, along with their equally surreal portraits—their collusion with the photographers once again underscoring the notion that identity is a construct.
Conquering the cultural marketplace
Agustín Lazo, "The remedies." 1930. FEMSA Collection
Exhibit collaterals bear a reproduction of “Puppet Show (1933)” by Antonio “El Corzo” Ruiz, which is a traditional Mexican scene orchestrated by a puppeteer and observed by children.
This is identity as performance—the exhibit organizers are nothing but self-aware.
One cannot view “Mexico: Fantastic Identity” without remarking on the heavy presence of FEMSA; this is after all, just a drop in the bucket of their extensive art holdings, which Julio Camarena Villaseñor, Ambassador of Mexico to the Philippines, describes as one of the most important private sector collections of Latin American art.
Alfredo Ramos Martínez, "Indian wedding." c. 1931. FEMSA Collection
Established in 1977, the Collection aims to show “the evolution, plurality, and richness of Latin American art from the 20th century onwards, with Mexican art as a cultural pole in the American continent.” It is also a material demonstration of what FEMSA CEO Carlos Salazar Lomelín refers to as the company’s mission to “simultaneously create economic, social, and environmental value in (their) communities.”
Scholars have interrogated the now-pervasive practice of corporate sponsorships of art collections and events; in brief, such sponsorships are viewed as an instrument for corporations to exchange one form of capital for another as a means of maintaining social legitimacy. The sociologist Paul DiMaggio, expanding on Pierre Bourdieu, identifies the cycle thusly: economic capital (sponsorships) is placed in the service of cultural capital (art collections), which translates into social capital (expanded networks and audiences) that can be parlayed into further economic capital (revenue).
Antonio Ruiz 'El Corzo,' "Puppet Show." 1933. FEMSA Collection
The FEMSA Collection’s focus on the 20th century mirrors the company’s emergence—it was founded in 1890, and has expanded to become the biggest Coca-Cola bottling company, not just in Mexico, but globally. By concentrating its arts initiatives on constructing and promoting Mexican identity, FEMSA combats the perception of “Cocacolonization”, or cultural colonization via the erosion of local cultures, as brought about by imported products primarily of Western origin; it is seemingly its antithesis, albeit one with the side effect of packaging local culture as a commodity to be consumed by a global audience.
Or in this case, the Filipino public, which is now considered a part of FEMSA’s host communities since 2013, with the entry of Coca Cola FEMSA Philippines in the local market.
Or in this case, the Filipino public, which is now considered a part of FEMSA’s host communities since 2013, with the entry of Coca Cola FEMSA Philippines in the local market.
It’s a clever exchange of capital, but there is little cause for complaint: for all our shared heritage with Mexico, this is the first time that an exhibit of this scale has been mounted in the Philippines, and “Mexico: Fantastic Identity” has the potential to generate public awareness and interest in Philippine-Mexico relations outside of history and trade, and allow our peoples to experience each other’s marvelous realities. — VC/BM, GMA News
"Mexico: Fantastic Identity, 20th Century Masterpieces. FEMSA Collection" runs until November 9 at the Ayala Museum.
