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The Argentine Beat
la manana verde
As an avid art lover and maker, I do my best to go to an art museum everywhere I go. I have always loved seeing how the art changes each place I go, yet how some traits always carry over. Art is loyal to history. It tracks and represents different periods of time. Art tells personal and historical stories. It sends messages. But most importantly, it leaves impressions. Through art, the viewer escapes his own realm and goes into the world of the artist. But the world of the artist is up to the eye of the viewer. To each his own in the world of art. Every person perceives art differently, and that is the beauty of it. Landscape paintings are introductions into another place. Just as de Botton states, “Insofar as we travel in search of beauty, works of art in small ways start to influence where we would like to travel to.” Before I came to South America, I had a whole perception of the place in my head based upon the art that I had seen before. For some reason, Caribbean art stuck in my head with Latin America. The bright colors and funky designs always reminded me of down here (even though I had never been here before). Once I arrived, it wasn’t anything like I had pictured. Probably because Jamaica and Argentina are not the same! But hey, a few paintings from there made me want to come here.
It wasn’t until I had seen a few museums in Argentina that I was really introduced to Latin American artists. I fell in love. I absolutely love the art here. It kind of reminds me of me own. I feel like I haven’t seen many detailed paintings. Instead, they all have an abstractness to them, some more than others. Everything is so colorful and bold. There are so many designs and oddities to most of the art. It always seems that something is a little off from reality in the art, which kind of reflects how I feel about Latin America- it has its own beat.
My favorite museum so far was the Museo De Arte in Tigre, Argentina. I was awestruck by just about every painting. There were paintings of so many types of art, yet they all seemed similar in this “South American sense.” Every painting seemed to have a sense of adventure in which the artist made a bold decision to do something against the rules. The museum in Tigre was so beautiful. The building was big and white, right by the river with a balcony stretching to the water’s side. It was a perfect building for what it held inside. My favorite artist that was featured in the museum was Carlos Ripamonte (unfortunately I cant find the painting I liked online to post as a picture). He reminded me of an Argentine Van Gogh. I hope to find more of his paintings in the other museums that I visit while I am here. I can’t wait to go home and start painting. I have definitely found a lot of great influences down here.
making art abroad
I know that after your thorough and thoughtful blog post this is a bit of a side note, but... you wrote at the end, "I can't wait to go home and start painting." My response is, paint in Argentina!!
I say that because a friend of mine here in Paris gave me a similar nudge, and I am so glad she did. I have mostly abandoned visual art for poetry and creative writing at this point, but for me both things amount to the same: a way to channel my internal energy into something outside of myself. It's been amazing to see how much a new environment has impacted my writing, and then again, it makes sense: Given that the things we're thinking about, the places and people we're surrounded by, and the language we're speaking are all different, what we create is coming out of a somewhat new place.
It was a weird feeling to reread the first poem I wrote here and notice how unlike "me" it was in some ways. I'd be interested to know, if you do end up doing some visual art while abroad, if you see some different results as well!