Thirteen Ways of Looking at Latino Art by Ilan Stavans and Jorge J. E. Gracia

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THIRTEEN WOF LOOKING

LATINO A

ILAN STAVANS and JORGE J. E. GRACIA





13 THIRTEEN WAYS

OF LOOKING ATLATINO ART

Ilan Stavans and Jorge J. E. Gracia

Durham and London 2014



© 2014 Duke University PressAll rights reservedPrinted in the United States of America on acid- free paper ♾Interior designed by Kristina Kachele Design, Typeset in Scala by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataStavans, Ilan.Thirteen ways o looking at Latino art / Ilan Stavans

and Jorge J. E. Gracia.pages cmIncludes bibliographical references and index.

978-0-8223-5627-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 978-0-8223-5634-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Art, Latin American—20th century. 2. Art criticism.. Gracia, Jorge J. E. . Title.6502.5. 73 2014

709.8′0904—dc232013026382

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support ofThe Research Foundation for the State University of New York,which provided funds toward the publication of this book.



CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii

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1 Einar and Jamex de la Torre, La reconquista 17

2 ’ María Brito, Conversation 35

3 Andres Serrano, Piss Christ 49

4 Francisco Oller, El velorio 61

5 ’ Mariana Yampolsky, Elva 75

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Carmen Lomas Garza, Heaven and Hell 93

7 _ ,Chicano Graffiti 107



8 José Bedia, Siguiendo su instinto 123

9 Luis Cruz Azaceta, Slaughter 139

10

Martín Ramírez, No. 111, Untitled (Train and Tunnel) 153 11 !

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Skull ) 167

12 María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Above All Things 181

13 Adál, La Spanglish Sandwich Bodega Bag(2000) 195

209 The Artists 219

Index 227



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Miriam Angress, at Duke University Press, has been a passionate supporterof this project since its inception: a wholehearted gracias. Derek García de-serves an aplauso for his indefatigable pursuit of the rights to use the galleryof thirteen images. Susan Albury, during the copyediting process, stream-

lined the manuscript admirably. Amherst College and the University at Buf-falo offered a generous subvention to produce a high- quality publication.



THIRTEEN

Ilan Stavans: Jorge Luis Borges, in his book El hacedor (1960), offers this par-able: “A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoplesa space with images of provinces, kingdoms, bays, ships, islands, shes,rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he

dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth o lines traces the lineamentso his own face.” Art is the face we give to our emotions, the map of ouridentity. That map isn’t always easy to survey.

The vortex of these conversations is the nature o human expression.The conversations delve deeply into the cultural lens through which peopleunderstand themselves, in particular in the context of Hispanic civiliza-tion (from the Patagonia to the U.S.- Mexico border), where looks are con-nected with authenticity. These conversations are born at the crossroadswhere art and thought meet. Each of them uses as springboard a visualpiece (a painting, a photograph, an installation, etc.) produced by a Latinoartist in the United States. I say Latino and not Hispanic . I am a veteran ofthe culture wars. There is no reason to rehash well- worn arguments. Forour purposes, I use Latino to mean a person of Hispanic descent (from



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Latin America, the Spanish- speaking Caribbean, or the Iberian Penin-sula) who was either born in the United States or moved here.

The dialogue is carried out through a variety of media, with electroniccorrespondence serving as the primary channel, supported by telephone,earth mail, but—quite apropos—not in tête- à- tête encounters, that is,cara a cara, for while I have been a reader of your oeuvre, you and I have

never met. Ultimately, the objective is to elucidate Borges’s meaningfulquestion: To what extent is art a map of our environment? Is it also a com-pass to interpret our dreams, not only as individuals but as members ofvarious groups, from the family to the congregation, from the communityto the nation?

For some time, I have been engaged in similar conversations with jour-nalists, historians, translators, and theologians. I am a passionate loverof the dialogue as a revealing form o intellectual engagement. There issomething Talmudic in dialogues. Rabbinical discussion thrives in theexercise of give and take. The assumption is that no individual mind iscapable of full knowledge unless and until it connects with other like-minded minds, through which it is able to probe into a topic not only bymeans of erudition but through what, to my mind, is the central force de-ning knowledge at all times: chance. The encounter with other mindsprecipitates an improvisational dance arousing the participants’ episte-mic acuteness.

These conversations follow the same approach, although the parame-

ters here are somewhat different. You are a philosopher. I am an essayist,translator, fabulist, and cultural commentator. I have never seen you en

persona ; that is, I don’t know how your face looks. I have never even seenyour likeness in a photograph. Nevertheless, I am able to imagine it, basedon what I have read of yours. Does one’s work, hence, produce a map ofone’s identity? Do we look like what our words say about us?

For starters, an anecdote. Years ago, when I was in my early thirties, Imet Carlos Fuentes on a Mexico-New York ight. I had read him consis-tently throughout my youth. And I followed him on and in printedmedia. It wasn’t difficult for me to identify him. Obviously, he didn’t havethe same referent. He shook my hand with puzzlement, then said: “Ah,but I thought you were a woman. I imagine you with an altogether differ-ent face. Are you sure it’s you? What kind of name is Ilan? Isn’t it Ilana?



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And I visualized you in your sixties.” I asked Fuentes why. He said it wasthe tone of my voice on the page that had given him a certain impression.The impression of a wise, elderly woman.

There’s a gap between who we are and what we say. Being and sayingare different dimensions. That’s because words are tools to congure theworld according to our own will. Everyone uses the same reservoir of

words but no one uses them in the same way. Words are our , a state-ment o identity. In any case, once death erases us all, once we exit thestage, we no longer are. The present tense of the verb has become unus-able. Only the past tense is applicable. And what were we? What we wereis what we left behind: our actions, our ideas, the memory of us that sur-vives in others. And, in equal measure, what we said.

This reminds me of the last two pages of The Eye (1930), a short, per-haps the shortest, novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It states: “The two boys,those two pupils of mine, will grow old, and some image or other of mewill live within them like a tenacious parasite. And then will come theday when the last person who remembers me will die. A fetus in reverse,my image, too, will dwindle and die within the last witness of the crime Icommitted by the mere fact o living.” Words, words, words: for writers,the word is our epigraph as well as our epitaph. Let me return to the topicof dialogues. What I love about a dialogue is the interaction it fosters, theencounter of two minds who, through words—words in the present andalso words that hopefully will last—discover something new about them-

selves and the other. The encounter provokes all sorts of reactions. Thosereactions are serendipitous: they are the result of accident and cannotbe replicated. Internal and outside circumstances come together in thismano a mano encounter. And they trigger fresh, spontaneous ideas.

Jorge Gracia: Yes, Ilan, dialogue for me is indispensable precisely because I ama philosopher. Philosophy is the only discipline in which dialogue is of theessence. In the West, philosophy began in Greece, and it was the Greekcommitment to dialogue and talk that gave it birth. We have the nest ex-ample of philosophizing in the dialogues of Plato, where a teacher, Socra-tes, engages young minds in the pursuit of truth. And yet, seldom doesa Platonic dialogue end with an answer to the problem posed in it. It isof the essence of dialogue to be open. The inquiry is what counts, not the



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solution. Enlightenment results from a deeper understanding of a ques-tion explored in it, not from an answer reached. Answers tend to be nal,dogmatic even, the ends of conversations and o inquiry. But a dialogueends as it begins, open, without an answer, but with a more clear graspof what is involved, what has been discussed. The end of a dialogue is abeginning.

There is something very signicant about this, because knowledge isalways in the process of revision, and understanding is progressive, eveni it never progresses in the way it was designed to. To be a philosopheris to engage in this endless pursuit and to always end up wanting. It is asif one were thirsty, with a thirst that is compelling, all consuming, andneedy. And yet, the water o knowledge that calms it is never found. Thereis no philosophical view or philosophical claim that has ever gone unchal-lenged or is universally accepted. So why do philosophers continue in aquest that has no end? It is difficult to be a philosopher. And not just dif-cult. It is devastating. Precisely because, although early in our lives phi-losophers tend to want answers and seek them desperately, eventually werealize that we will never nd them. We understand better that it is notthe end we crave, but the road toward it. This is the moment in which weunderstand our discipline and become true practitioners o it. Philosophyis ultimately a Faustian enterprise.

Socrates is without a doubt the epitome of the philosopher, and his lifeis the paradigm of the philosophical life. What did he do? He was a sort

o bum. His wife supported him, and he spent his time talking to youngmen, challenging their views about the world and themselves in any wayhe could, demolishing the dogmatic structures that had been passed onto them by their parents, ancestors, and society at large. I hate to thinkwhat his wife said to him when he got home after a day o leisure whileshe was laboring as a midwife. And I am sure she did not appreciate thathe would say to her that he was also a kind of midwife, although not ofbabies, but o ideas!

No wonder Socrates was ultimately condemned to death for corruptingthe youth of Athens. Surely it is true that he was corrupting the youth,although this had nothing to do with sex. He was making them realizethat what they thought they knew they did not know. This idea becamea mantra: I only know that I know nothing. So, we may ask, if there are



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no answers, what is the purpose of the search? Why engage in these dia-logues? And does not the philosophical enterprise, as so many have ar-gued, undermine the very bases of society? Does it not dynamite thefoundations of religion, morality, and science?

The answer to the last two questions is the same: yes, of course it does.This is why not only Socrates, but other philosophers have been held in

ridicule and abuse by the Social Establishment for their views. We needonly think of Averroës, the greatest Islamic philosopher of all time, andAbelard, one of the shining lights of medieval thought. Both suffereddearly for being philosophers and living the philosophical life. The criticsof philosophy do not realize that, even if philosophy may not provide anyanswers, it makes progress in other ways. For one thing, it makes us real-ize the unsupported evidence we have for views we regard as sacred cows.Getting rid of false beliefs or realizing the weak bases on which we holdthem constitute, without a doubt, great improvement and progress. It isbetter to see, even if what we see is that we are perched on a rope over aprecipice, than to not see at all and continue walking on the rope, not real-izing where we are. The danger is that by seeing, we will more likely fallto the abyss. But do we really want to save ourselves through ignorance? Itis better to die knowing than to live blindly. Why? Because that is our na-ture. As Aristotle so perspicaciously pointed out, curiosity is in the natureo humans. That curiosity separates us from the rest of nature. We areknowing animals and to shut ourselves in ignorance turns us not just into

mere animals—they cannot do otherwise than they are—but into some-thing much worse than animals. Dogmatic ignorance yields monsters.

A critical dimension is essential to philosophy and clearly ourishes indialogue. A dialogue is a give and take. It is a way of opening us to others,to see another perspective, and to be challenged by the other. Inbreedingleads to deception. We need others, their perspectives, and their help. Theconfrontation with others in dialogue challenges our views, underminesour dogmas, and makes us human, because it is the nature of a dialogueto be open. Often I see people engaged in conversations that amount tonothing more than two monologues. This is not dialogue; true dialogueinvolves an exchange of views, an engagement with the other. Nor can wehave a dialogue if what we say is not open to change. Dialogue requiresthat the parties that participate in it be willing to consider the views of the



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interlocutors and, more than that, be willing to change their views whenpresented with better views.

Unfortunately, many philosophers, not just many people, live in dog-matic cages, conceptual structures they cannot escape. It is so comfort-able to continue believing what one believes! This applies not just to reli-gious beliefs, but to scientic theories and philosophical views. It applies

even to our intercourse with our social groups, friends, and family. Forthose of us who function in the world of science and scholarship, it appliesto the disciplines o learning we practice. We feel comfortable when wehear what we are used to hearing. Why should I, a philosopher, engage anartist, or a literary writer, or a physicist in dialogue? Isn’t it more conve-nient to stay with those who think like we do, who share our assumptionsand prejudices? Because it is in dialogue with them that we can moreeasily see how silly and wrong-headed some of our views are. This is mymain reason for engaging in this dialogue with you, Ilan.

As a nonphilosopher, you pose to me challenges that other philoso-phers could not pose, challenges based on ideas and perspectives to whichI have no access. The fact that you are a writer is already a tremendouschallenge because you think along different lines from the ones alongwhich I think. Where you see red, I see blue; where you see an unsup-portable claim, I see a logical one. This leads to questions. Why did he saythat? Why does he think in that way? We could, very easily, ignore eachother in this dialogue. Go our merry ways, along the ruts we have been

using for years. If we do this, the book will be a failure. We need to dosomething different. We need to engage each other and, through us, ourdifferent disciplines. We need to “cut the crap,” as some would say, andget to the point. If we are successful in doing this, then the book will besuccessful.

We are engaged in a kind of struggle, but not a ght. The aim is under-standing and enlightenment rather than victory. Only i both of us geta deeper grasp of the concerns that we voice will there be a victory, andit will be a victory for both. We have tools that we bring with us: someknowledge, a certain practice, and much experience. And just like wres-tlers, we also have much we share. Apart from the fact that we are bothhuman and males, we love art and we have an interest in exploring theexperience of ethnic minorities, and in particular of Latinos, in the United



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States. It also helps us that we have a neutral ground that serves as aeld that circumscribes us and as a silent point of reference: the thirteenworks of art on which the discussion is based. They provide parameters,limits, and possibilities. Looking at them we will see and think differ-ent things, but our visions and thoughts should crisscross in interestingand exciting ways. Sometimes we may bypass each other. We may go on

tangents that to the other might appear irrelevant, but the art pieces willbring us back, forcing us to consider each other’s responses. Meetingplaces and places apart will keep us nimble. Ultimately, it is who we arethat will determine the course of the exchange.

I am a philosopher and you are a literary writer. Our ancestries andhistories are very different, and yet we are both from Latin America, youfrom Mexico, with its rich Amerindian past, and I from Cuba, an islandwhere Africa is ever present. You came here for reasons I ignore, butwhich are not in any way related to a phenomenon such as the CubanRevolution. My training was in classical, medieval, and analytic philoso-phy; yours was in literature. How does all this affect what we see andthink, and how we approach the art we have chosen to discuss?

IS: It’s all a game. In your last paragraph you present experiential elements(Mexico’s Amerindian heritage, the Cuban Revolution) as factors deningwho we are. But does experience constitute biography? Are we always thesum of the elements that have shaped us as individuals? Yes and no. I’ve

turned fty recently. As one reaches middle age, fate becomes an impos-ing concept. Am I already fully dened? If so, is life over because at thispoint there is little room for change? To what degree does surprise—improvisation—play a role in our daily being? Are our responses predict-able, not only to others but to ourselves?

Even though for the most part I’ve lived a stable, settled life, I’ve alwayslived it trying to surprise myself. No sooner do I succeed in one of mygoals, than do I put it aside, looking for a different one. Repetition is whatI have dreaded the most. How do I dene the connection between repeti-tion and the self? By invoking the work routine. Routine is behavior xedinto a set pattern. Of course, there is much comfort in routine. To havea xed schedule, to know how one’s day will look even before the day be-gins, grants us condence.



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But routine can become a prison if one’s imagination isn’t allowed tobe free. My weekly schedule has been set for decades. So why hasn’t itbecome boring? Because deep down that routine is a mirage. Aside fromdoing what I regularly do, I’ve left my mind loose, so as to engage all sortso ideas. That engagement has been my primary diet all these years. Thekey to that diet is creating an assortment of endeavors where those ideas

can be fully explored. And, most important, not allowing the ideas to be-come stilted, that is, being open to surprise. Not knowing something isnever a deterrent. In short, for me, life is a game. There’s chance, maybeeven arbitrariness, in it. I do not know where I’m going. That keeps meintrigued. The game, in short, is about who I am, about my face in differ-ent moments, which is really different faces every one of those moments.It is about what I show of myself to others, what I hide for myself. I’mintrigued by our dialogue because it offers thirteen sessions o hide- and-seek. Thirteen opportunities for surprise.

JG: Faces, yes, the reader might expect that our conversation would be aboutthem, for faces are what we hide and what we seek to see when we playa game. What do we do when we play hide-and-seek with a baby? We un-cover our faces and say, “Pick a Boo, I see you!” But the works of art thatare the bases of our conversations do not consist primarily in faces. Twoworks, those by Martin Ramírez and Adál, have no faces in them. Someothers have faces but they do not seem to take center stage. Andres Se-

rrano’s Piss Christ consists of a photograph of a crucix dipped in urine,and the Christ on the cross has a face, but it is small in comparison withthe whole work, and almost lost in the turbidity of the urine that sur-rounds it. And in some other works we do not have a single face that isthe focus of attention, but a plethora of them, suggesting perhaps that itis not the faces that are central but the assemblage.

Still, a face is what we see when we look at another person, or evenwhen we look at a mirror. It is where we read persons, where we take theirmeasure, where we encounter who we and others are. The face is para-mount. Love and dislike originate on a face. Later, of course, after the rstimpression, we move to other areas of the body and consider, examine, andevaluate them. This applies even when there is something in the body ofparticular attraction. When we look at another as a source of sexual inter-



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est, one would think that the rst thing we would do would be to noticethe erogenous zones of the body. But is this right? It seems that, althoughthe whole ensemble may attract us, it is the face, the look in the eyes, theexpression o intelligence and response that entices us and turns our inno-cent encounter into a re of passion. It is the face, although identity canalso reveal itsel indirectly. The body, the arms, the torso, the bust, the feet

and hands, lead us to the face. Perhaps more dramatically, the very speechwe hear, the tone of voice, and the thoughts lead us there. A piece of writ-ing, a sentence on a wall, is evidence of a face and coerces us, almost vio-lently, to look for what is behind it. And what is that but a face?

Until we nd that face and we encounter the eyes, reputed to revealthe soul, the stuff of which we are made, we cannot rest. But the face,even when found, marks only the beginning of a path of communication,understanding, and intercourse. Ultimately, what we want is to know theother, to enter into the other’s world, so that we can see, compare, andshare with him, or her, what we know and what we are. In our loneliness,we long for communication. The other’s face is the beginning of the pathto this secret knowledge, although the face does not have to be what wesee rst. Other parts of the vision lead to it, even if ultimately it is the facethat we want to see.

Don’t we nd this in the mystics? From what they tell us, what is thebeatic vision if not the encounter with God face to face? We are alwayslooking for faces, whether our search is religious, intellectual, or physi-

cal. The face gives us what we desire and need. It is in the face that weconsummate love.

IS: Throughout my adolescence, I frequently had trouble looking at my ownface in the mirror. Whenever there was a mirror around—and, as o late,mirrors are everywhere: in department stores, supermarkets, gyms, res-taurants, cars, let alone the privacy of our own home (happily, one of theonly places where the mirror remains exiled is the classroom)—I avoidedmy own semblance. I didn’t want to see myself. I didn’t want to see thechanges I was undergoing. I didn’t want to focus on myself. That ightwas ongoing.

I frequently dreamed of mirrors as a tormenting tool. This fear ex-tended itself to photographs. To this day, I don’t like looking at mysel in



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photographs because I always nd something bizarre about myself. Still,when it comes to identity what matters to others isn’t our body but ourface. We are who we are because of our facial features. When those fea-tures are disgured as a result of an accident, people are puzzled about us.They have trouble connecting us to the memory o how we looked. In con-centrating on the face, our dialogue is about the sense of self we project.

That sense of self manifests itsel in different dimensions. We are indi-viduals, of course, but we are also parents and siblings, and we’re friends,and we’re what our careers make of us: teachers, lawyers, doctors, entre-preneurs, etc. The face is the key to connect us to our various dimensions.

JG: So now we know that we are engaged in a game o hide-and-seek, wherethe end should be an encounter in which we face each other. But the en-counter is vicarious, primarily through these pages, in which we are en-gaged in conversation. I have seen your photograph and one of your inter-views on . And we have chosen as the basis of our game thirteen piecesof Latino art, most of which have faces in them. But why thirteen? Whyart? Why Latino? And why these particular thirteen pieces?

IS: Ah, the crucial number. Wallace Stevens once wrote an insightful poem,“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Divided into thirteen partsshaped in the form o haikus, the poem belongs to his rst book, Harmo-nium (1923), and might be said to be an exercise in perspectivism. One

section in particular I nd striking:

I do not know which to prefer,The beauty o inectionsOr the beauty o innuendoes,The blackbird whistlingOr just after.

Stevens’s title has become emblematic of the relativist way of perceiv-ing the universe á la Rashomon. There are multiple ways of appreciatinga single event. So why thirteen? The answer is, why not? It could be ten,which is the amount of ngers we have on two hands and the reason ournumerical system is decimal. Since Stevens published his poem, others



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have used the same approach. I, too, love the image: nothing is what itseems at rst sight; to understand its complexity, one must delve longer,deeper, with conviction. Thirteen is a metaphor, the way any number is.Needless to say, there are more ways to look at a face. But thirteen will do.

JG: My classical and medieval backgrounds do not let me rest with this expla-

nation. I need more, for thirteen is also a number lled with connotationsthat go back to medieval numerology, the Jewish Kabbalah, and Christianmysticism, all the way back to Pythagoras. I can’t think about this withoutrecalling Isidore of Seville’sBook of Numbers and the mystical insights ofPseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which ended up in the philosophy ofHegel.

Thirteen is composed of the rst two positive numbers, one and three.One is the symbol of unity, identity, and permanence, whereas two is thesymbol of duality, difference, and change. And three is the sum of oneand two, the synthesis of unity and duality, and thus the beginning of plu-rality. Thirteen, in being composed of one and three, becomes a symbolof the universe, the whole, and the fact that one and three make four, aneven number that is double the rst even number, suggests the whole-ness of the universe. It signies completion and as such was used in theancient religions of Egypt and Greece. So perhaps we can argue that inconsidering thirteen pieces of art we are considering the whole universein small, a microcosm, another popular idea of the Greeks.

Thirteen has been an important number for a long time. It is thenumber of Christ and the Apostles in the Christian faith. It is consid-ered both a lucky and an unlucky number. No one in our culture wantsto have thirteen people sitting at a table, and no one wants to do some-thing on the thirteenth day of the month. Tuesday the thirteenth is a veryunlucky number for Latin Americans, but it is Friday the thirteenth thatis unlucky in the Anglo-American world.

The metaphysics of numerology was rst developed by Pythagoras andhis disciples, who thought that numbers were the essence of the world.Everything was made up of numbers, and it was numerical proportionsthat gave the world and its components the characteristics they have.Pythagoras originally thought the universe was rational, just as numbers,but then one o his disciples discovered that there were irrational num-



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bers and this undermined the Pythagoreans’ trust in the rationality ofthe universe. The discovery marked a dramatic moment in the historyo human thought, and led to anguish and worry. If numbers are irratio-nal, then so is the world, and just as irrational numbers are unnished,so is the universe. Pythagoreans tried to keep the secret of the existenceo irrational numbers, thinking that this discovery would undermine

everything they believed in, leading to irrationality and indeterminacy—something ancient Greeks abhorred—and ultimately to the demise of sci-ence. But, of course, they could not do it. Humans have a hard time keep-ing secrets, and particularly important ones.

If we were to adopt a Pythagorean way o looking at things, the numberthirteen would have signicance for us and for this book. Perhaps it isgood, or perhaps it is bad. Maybe the book will not sell, or maybe it will bea best seller. And what does it say about its content? What do you think?

IS: By invoking Pythagoras, you’ve opened a dimension to the title, or at leastto this portion o it, I was hoping we would address. Numbers are con-crete, factual, and truthful. That, at least, is the perception embraced byour science-driven culture. But numbers are also deceitful, not to saymystical, and, needless to say, malleable. For instance, the number thir-teen symbolizes bad luck among Christians. Buildings don’t have a thir-teenth oor. Yet for Jews the number is a good omen.

JG: We will have to wait until the end or even later to nd out the meaningof the number for this book, then. So let us turn to the other questionsthat we have not yet discussed. One of these was: Why art? Why did wenot choose something else? Maybe because we just like art. This is oneof the reasons. But there is something more. I think the interpretation ofart, what we understand and project in our interpretations, says as muchabout the art as about ourselves. Art is visual and visceral, and it affects usdeeply. Sight is our primary sense, and visual art plays on this. If, as yousay, ours is a game o hide-and-seek, a conversation through which we arerevealing ourselves, what better than art to do it?

IS: Art never exists in a vacuum. The manuscript of a novel stored in a drawerthat is never read doesn’t exist. That is, it exists in an island, isolated, with-



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out societal consequences. Nor does a painting that is only in the painter’smind. Art is actuality: it exists in dialogue. That dialogue is an encounterbetween the artist and the public. And the public is never static. Nor is ituniform. Different people react in different ways to the same dance piece.

JG: Now we have an idea of why we chose art as a means of communication.

But why did we choose pieces of Latino art and the particular pieces ofart we did? The use of the term Latino signals for me something morethan for you, I think, from what you said earlier concerning Latino versusHispanic . In both Hispanic/Latino Identity (2000) and Latinos in America (2008), I discussed extensively the signicance of these terms. Hispanic is a more encompassing term that includes not only Latin Americansbut also Iberians, whereas Latino excludes Iberians. Moreover, Hispanic has a stronger cultural connotation, whereas Latino connotes the politi-cal and social struggles of Latinos both in the United States and LatinAmerica against the dominance of Anglo- Americans. We could answerthat we chose Latino simply by saying that we did so because we are Lati-nos, members of at least two of the main groups of Latinos in the UnitedStates, Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans. And that we choseLatino rather than Hispanic art because of the political and social dimen-sions of our existence in the United States. But such narrow ethnicism isnot persuasive to me, although it is surely true that these conversationswill deal in part with issues of ethnic identity in general and Latino iden-

tity in particular. I think we had something more universal in mind, evenif we are beginning with the particular.

IS: My answer is that we have chosen these thirteen pieces because theiraggregate makes us feel whole. It allows us the opportunity to offer anassortment o insights that ultimately—it is my hope, at least—willamount to a total vision. A total vision of what? A total vision of ourhumanity, which, needless to say, is never total. Or, better, it is total onlyinsofar as it is understood as an expression of the particular moment—thepresent—in which we exist now. Yesterday we had another total vision.Tomorrow will also have a different one.

The goal isn’t for us to illuminate the meaning of Latino art throughthese thirteen pieces, but to use these thirteen pieces as a catalyst to reect



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on our human condition and on the specic culture that denes us. I toohave a deep discomfort (a suspicion, really) with ethnicism. I don’t likepeople being categorized by their ethnic prole. Still, I have spent my lifestudying the Hispanic world in all its facets. Every time I focus on anotherperiod, another region, another aspect, I’m humbled by how much I don’tknow. That humility isn’t paralyzing. It puts me on my toes, making me

want to know more. Hispanic art, from the colonial period to the present,including the work of Latinos in the United States, has been a fascina-tion of mine for decades. I’m not a collector, but my houses, my private,domestic space, are lled with mementos. They also contain samples ofthe art I have bought throughout the years. This accumulation isn’t donein any pragmatic way. I don’t buy a piece of art as an investment. I acquirewhat I like. And I showcase what my friends have generously given to me.I nd joy in looking at this art. It is a companion. It propels me to under-stand its origins, its context, the motivation behind it.

Along those lines, the thirteen pieces selected for these conversationsare excuses. At the outset we had a few dozen possibilities, from which wenarrowed our gallery. You narrowed yours down to fteen or so and I didtoo. Serendipity played a role in the nal selection. In fact, I dislike callingit a nal selection. It surely was nal for the purposes of this book, but itisn’t nal beyond it. Some of my personal choices have been companionsthroughout my life. I’ve thought at length about these images; I have usedthem for teaching. On occasion, I’ve even written about them before, in

books like The Hispanic Condition (1995) and Lengua fresca: Antología per-sonal (2012). I wouldn’t dare to claim that any of these choices, yours ormine, are the best in Latino art. That’s because the words best or worst have no place in the semantics o human expression. A certain paintingby Tintoretto, say Susanna and the Elders (1556) orLast Supper (1592–94),isn’t his best. It simply is. You will agree that we could easily replace anyone of the thirteen images with another without much difficulty.

In any case, these are thirteen ways o looking at Latino art. And in sodoing, these are thirteen ways o looking at ourselves, our origins, ourthoughts, the culture we inhabit, and the abyss that is life.

JG: The miracle is that we agreed on those pieces, which brings to my mindanother dimension of this enterprise: negotiation. This is the nature of



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human society. Aristotle said a while back that humans are social ani-mals, and I would add that it is in the essence of society to negotiate, totransact, to give and take, and to compromise. This is the key to nding away to move forward among other humans that share commonalities anddifferences with us. You and I are individuals. We are different. Our ances-tries are different and so are our histories, and yet we also share things in

common. The miracle with so many chasms between us, not the least ofwhich is that we have never met face to face, is that in spite of them wehave been willing to engage in dialogue. For what? What is the payoff?What are we looking for?

I do not see anything other than understanding, understanding of eachother, ourselves, the communities of which we are part, and the worldthat surrounds us. Can we make it? We have begun and not begun thedialogue at this point. And the future is yet to be determined. Perhaps,instead of understanding and enlightenment we will end up in misunder-standing and frustration. This is the origin of wars. But the fact that wehave already agreed to have thirteen pieces of Latino art as the basis ofour conversations, even though we are not entirely sure how or why, is agood omen. If we are successful, we will have gained something that wedid not have before and readers will perhaps also gain something they didnot anticipate. So, shall we begin? Shall we try for a miracle?



Einar and Jamex de la Torre, La reconquista (2010),triptych, 61″ × 109″ × 4.5″, lenticular photographic imageon translucent medium. Used by permission of the artists.

Documents

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Latino Art by Ilan Stavans and Jorge J. E. Gracia