DRAWS NEW PRAISE
The Cuban art show in London has made another recruit [see World Outlook, September 22]. This one is Nigel Gosling, art critic for the London Observer.
Writing in that paper September 10, Gosling begins, “A small London exhibition, at the Ewan Phillips Gallery in Maddox Street, may prove to contain an explosive charge which will blow a whole world of assumptions into smithereens.
"It is a collection of 40 works from Cuba and I believe it is a major portent."
Gosling continues, "Now, as every good American knows, Cuba is a Communist State, and we all know what Communist art is like. At least we did. For here are 14 artists, their ages ranging from 30 to 70, all apparently pat loyal to the regime and yet all working cheerfully in artistic idioms as far out as any West End dealer could demand.
"The hitherto unchallenged equation of Communised production with academic realism in art has been wiped out. Fidei Castro has split the Communist aton, taking the part he wanted, and a whole new source of creative power has been unleashed."
Gosling then goes on to describe the various influences he detected in the Cuban paintings: "For obvious reasons it is Paris oriented. Any culture wanting to be modern without taking anything from America will inevitably revert to France (though one day Britain may prove an acceptable alternative), and Picasso in particular forms a natural magnet. Spain and Africa, so important in his art, also form the base of this island's culture.
"Actually a good deal of New York has crept in indirectly -- which is all to the good. It fends off the slightly old~fashioned or over-refined atmosphere which permeates much Paris~inspired South American art."
Gosling then mentions the paintings he likes best but rushes on to draw more general conclusions:
",..freedom is the thing, with all the release of vitality and eloquence which goes with it.
"There is no question here of a cautious 'thaw' from Marxist primmess, no earnest compromise aimed at spooning the contemporary idiom down reluctant proletarian throats. These artists may sometimes strike European eyes as overcolourful or innocently brash, but the language they speak is totally natural.
"They are simply using the images which convey most forcefully what they feel about life.
"That this often involves a savage political slant is normal. What is abnormal is to see a picture in honour of Castro conceived in terms strikingly like those used by Peter Blake to celebrate the Beatles."
Gosling concludes, "basically it must rest on something in the Cuban character.
"'Between the European intellectual and the peasant of the Sierra Maestra...there exists a common factor which we revolutionaries can well understand, ' Castro has declared, and his lieutenant, the popular hero Che Guevara, has actually denounced Socialist Realism outright as being based on a nineteenth century art perhaps more purely capitalistic than the decadent art of the twentieth century. on
The London critic ends, "These lively offerings do more honour to their cause than a mile of pedestrian propaganda."
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