- Orientalism
in Mexican Art
by Rubén
Gallo
In
this paper I will examine a curious phenomenon: The
decade of the 1990s –– a time period which
will go down in Mexican history as marking the entrance
of the country into the North–American Free Trade
Agreement with the United States and Canada –– has
not yet produced any art that addresses Mexico's increased
economic dependence on the United States. Instead,
art from the 1990s has been characterized by an intense
and ongoing fascination with the culture of China,
Japan, and other Asian countries.
Why Asia?
I will offer two answers to this question. First, I will
consider this recent explosion of "Orientalism" (as I
have decided to baptize this phenomenon, echoing Edward
Said's term) in the context of Mexico's historical perception
of the "Orient." I will then propose a second
explanation, which will consider the role of this phenomenon
in relation to the artistic production of the last two
decades.
In
recent years a substantial number of young Mexican artists
have dedicated their work to the exploration of Orientalist
themes and issues(1). As a result, we have seen a proliferation
of works referring to Far Eastern Culture: Eduardo Abaroa's
tantric drawings, the Buddhist paintings of Rodrigo Aldana,
Yishai Jusidman's series of sumo wrestlers and geishas,
the sculptures of characters like "Hello Kitty" and "My
Melody" by Edgar Orlaineta, Daniela Rossell's little
Chinese-style fish and the rising sun and other Japanese
symbols that appear in the work of Pablo Vargas Lugo.
In the face of this wave of Orientalist allusions, it
is worth looking into the significance of this curious
phenomenon. Why have these Mexican artists decided to
take up a culture that is so foreign to that of the country
where they live? What is the meaning of this collective
interest in Far Eastern iconography? Could this perhaps
be a sarcastic commentary on the relationship between
art and national identity?
Eduardo Abaroa, Facts of Sea-Monkey-Like
Life, 1995, Epoxy Sculpture
Yishai Jusidman, Sumo VII, 1995, Oil on Wood, 49x49 cm.
Edgar Orlainata, LSD Trips and Auto-Parts Have a Lot in Common, 1999,
Mixed Media Installation
Daniela Rossell, From the Series Pecados, 1996-98, Wheat Wafers, approx
20x15cm.
Pablo Vargas Lugo, Finale, 1995, Inflatable Rubber Installation
Part I:
Mexico and its "Orientalist" History
To answer these
questions, we should begin by situating this "Orientalism" in
its historical context. Latin America, we should remember,
was born out of a frustrated orientalist undertaking: Christopher
Columbus stumbled upon the American hemisphere in his failed
attempt to discover a new route to the Indies. In a prank
of history, the Europeans were under the impression for
a couple of years that Mexico –– and the entire
continent, as well –– was the Orient. Columbus's
ship's log –– the first orientalist work of Latin
American literature –– is filled with wonderful
descriptions of the lands Columbus assumed to be "Cathay" and "Cipango
(the ancient names for China and Japan) but which were
actually the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba.
The world eventually
learned to distinguish between Orient and Occident and
Mexico ended up being an occidental country that was to
develop an orientalist tradition of its own. In art, the
first sign of orientalism appeared at the end of the sixteenth
century as the product of a curious incident that culminated
in the canonization of our first martyr. In 1596, a galleon
of New Spain was shipwrecked off the coast of Japan at
a time when –– to the misfortune of the twenty–six
passengers aboard – anti–Christian hatred was
rife in that country. No sooner did the travelers touch
land than they were made prisoner, mutilated, exposed to
public torment, and eventually crucified. One of the victims
was a Mexican friar who went down in history as Saint Philip
of Jesus. This episode became one of the favorite subjects
of colonial painting; innumerable canvases and prints were
made over several centuries showing the young, defenseless
friar attacked by the heartless Japanese. The murals in
the Cuernavaca cathedral executed towards the end of the
seventeenth century and the engravings of José Maria
Montes de Oca in 1801 are among the most finished examples
of the genre.
Representations
of Saint Philip of Jesus's torture gave vent to one of
the least praiseworthy aspects of our orientalist tradition:
the picturing of the Orient as a dangerous place, a horrendous
culture that represented mortal peril for Mexicans. This
negative and paranoid outpouring of orientalism reached
its most ominous extremes in the early years of the twentieth
century, which was unquestionably one of the most aberrant
and ignored in Mexican history: the anti–Chinese movement(2).
In 1888, the
US. Government in an effort to halt the wave of Asian immigration
to the State of California, decided to suspend work permits
for Chinese immigrants. Immediately, the Chinese population
in Mexico began to grow: hundreds and hundreds of Chinese
workers settled near the border in the hope that the law
of the United States would eventually change and allow
them in. This is what gave rise to the huge Chinese quarters
of Mexicali, Mazatlán, Tampico, and Chihuahua. By
1910, Torreón had the most numerous and prosperous
Chinese community, many of whose members were proprietors
of shops and enterprises that displayed signs such as, "Port
of Shanghai," "Wing Hay Lum Groceries," "Oriental Laundry," "Wah
Yick Bank:' Many of these shops were located on "Chee King
Tong Street."
In spite of
their prosperity, the Chinese were not well liked in Torreón.
The poor ones, willing to work for a pittance, were accused
of undercutting Mexican wages and the wealthy ones of employing
only their countrymen and of sending their profits back
to China. Resentment and hostility mounted until the disorders
of the Revolution touched off an explosion: on May 15,
1911, Madero's troops took the city by surprise. Amidst
the confusion and chaos, the mob attacked the Chinese businesses.
There was sacking, mayhem, and innumerable killings that
culminated in a massacre that took the lives of three hundred
Chinese. Anti–Chinese prejudice became one of the
most terrible effects of the intense nationalism fostered
by the post–revolutionary government: mass deportations
of Chinese were carried out in the twenties; in 1930, a
law was passed which prohibited marriage between Mexican
women and Chinese men; and in the years that followed,
ultranationalistic organizations were founded with names
like the "Executive Committee of the National Anti-China
Campaign" (composed of representatives of the legislatures
of Sonora and Sinaloa), the "Anti–Chinese Committee
of the Port of Veracruz"; and the Mexican Anti–China
League" of Chiapas. José Angel Espinoza, one of
the most violent of the anti–Chinese, published a
series of pamphlets bearing such titles as "The Chinese
Problem In Mexico" (1931) and "The Example of Sonora" (1932)
which proposed strategies for the "deschinatización
de MŽxico" [cleansing Mexico of Chinese].
The anti–Chinese
movement is not, however, the ultimate manifestation of
Mexican orientalism. Paradoxically, an intense Sinophillia
came into being among Mexican intellectuals during the
worst years of this ultranationalistic movement. In 1920,
the poet José Juan Tablada published Li–Po
in Caracas, an exquisite book of ideographic poems that
includes the following composition (the original written
by hand in the form of a waning moon):
Thinking/ that the/
moon's re/flection/was a
cup/of white Jade/ with au/reatic wine /upon reaching out/to
drink/it one night/ he drowned/ having gone out/ on the
river/ to row / LI–Po
In the decades after
the Mexican Revolution, Post–revolutionary China
was to become a kind of promised land to socialist intellectuals. The muralists
peopled their paintings with Asian countenances in a world of freedom, abundance,
and prodigality. In the field of letters, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Our most
renowned Socialist, did something similar: in 1949, he set out on an ideological
pilgrimage to the recently proclaimed People's Republic of China –– a
trip that prefigured another Sinophile adventure by French avantgardists of
the Tel Quel group in 1974. Lombardo Toledano narrated the details of his trip
in "A Travel Diary to New China" (1950), a curious pamphlet filled
with ardent praise for the land of Maoism, whose great achievements were to
inspire not only Mexico but all the rest of humankind. "Just as the sun
travels from East to West," Lombardo Toledano tells us, "so, before
long, will the Chinese Revolution bring light to the peoples of the West." Mao
Tse-tung, our author goes on to say "is the leader of the greatest national
anti–imperialist revolution
of history, the liberator of the Chinese people who make up a quarter of the
planer's population. Bedazzled by such achievements, Lombardo Toledano could
only conclude that Mao's China had achieved nothing less than the elimination
of suffering, thereby ushering in a new stage of mankind. "I have witnessed," he
declared, "how a long past of man's exploitation of man, of ignorance,
enslavement, and grief is dying, and how a new world of energy, creative spirit,
social Justice, economic progress, popular education, and heightened political
awareness is being born."
These examples
mark the extremes between which the pendulum of Mexican
orientalism swings: on the one side, the positive tendency
to identify the Orient with the most fantastic and wonderful
possibilities for human existence, as Lombardo Toledano
imagined in China; on the other, a negative tendency to
associate everything oriental with peril and death, as
in the case of a murderous Japan imagined by the worshippers
of the Mexican saint. Oddly enough, Mexican popular parlance
appears to have preserved only negative connotations of
the oriental. To this day, we say "Chinese torture" to
describe something terribly painful, like the punishment
which San Felipe allegedly suffered at the hands of the
Japanese. Likewise, many "orientalize" certain annoying
respiratory illness by calling it the "Asian flu." There
are also pejorative little ditties that call up the worst
moments of the anti-Chinese movement: " chino, chino, japonés,
come caca y no me des" [Chinaman, Chinaman, Jap, hand me
no crap, eat it yourself] -a refrain which, in addition,
demonstrates the typically orientalist phenomenon of obliterating
all differentiation between various Asian cultures, such
as the Chinese and Japanese. "La china Hilaria" is another
expression in which the word "china" has a negative connotation – a
euphemism for "la chingada," the worst insult that exists
in our culture. The same is true in the case of "la quinta
china," another euphonic substitute for the same dreaded
insult.
All these phrases
reflect the notion of Chinese thing as a menacing otherness.
There is another less violent expression that nevertheless
retains the association of the Chinese with extreme alterity.
To say that something "está en chino" [itÕs in Chinese]
implies that it is indecipherable and categorically unfathomable.
Some years ago the kidnapping of a Japanese businessman
in the city of Tijuana was reported in the scandal sheet
Ovaciones with the headline "El secuestro del japonŽs. ¡Está en
chino! [The kidnapping of the Japanese is in Chinese!]
This expression embodies a comment regarding the inscrutable
nature –– to the Occident –– of Chinese
ideograms and, by extension, of many aspects of Asian cultures:
not only the language but everything oriental is in Chinese.
It never ceases
to amaze that all these popular references to things Chinese
are indicative of negative aspects of orientalism –– the
Orient as a dreadful menace –– and that, on the
other hand, there should be no expression that suggests
any positive association with things Chinese. The Enciclopedia
de México tells us that the exclamation "¡Chino
libre!" is used as an expression of relief at finding oneself
freed of "obligations and inconveniences." The apparent
upbeat tone of the phrase fades, however, in view of its
origin as explained in the encyclopedia which tells us
that "It is said that the expression originated with a
Chinese who had been unjustly sent to prison and upon being
released, expressed joy at being a free Chinaman." Despite
the apparent jubilation of exclamation, the legend lurking
behind it conjures up the darkest moments of the anti-Chinese
campaign in Mexico.
While we lack
expressions that refer to things oriental in a positive
sense, we are overburdened with words that hark back to
Columbus's initial mistaking of America for Asia. In colonial
times, certain women of mixed blood who dressed in elegant
and colorful costumes came to be known as "chinas." Some
sources say that chinas disappeared in the capital but
remained living in the city of Puebla for some years and
for that reason their garb went down in history as "traje
de china poblana" [Pueblerina china dress]. Another legend
claims that the first china poblana was a woman named Catarina
de San Juan, a slave who had arrived in Mexico from the
Philippines aboard the Manila Clipper, erroneously known
as the China Clipper. In any case, it is clear that the
chinas poblanas had nothing to do with China.
"Chino" also
means curly, as in reference to a person's hair. In this
case, the word is even more paradoxical, since neither
the Mexicans nor the Chinese have curly hair. By extension, "chino" also
means a "curler" and a woman who goes out with a kerchief
over head, is said to "trae puestos los chinos" [be wearing
curlers]. However, among all the Sinological expressions
that seem to relate neither to Mexico nor China, perhaps
the strangest is "ponerse chinito;Ó which means to "get
goose pimples" from the cold or a draft. In this case the
word seems to refer to a rough surface and serves as an
antonym for "liso" [Smooth, straight (hair)].
Part II:
Orientalism in Recent Art
None of this
background, however, –– not the torture of Saint
Philip of Jesus, the anti–Chinese movement, Lombardo
Toledano's Sinophilia, nor the persistence of cultural
stereotypes in popular parlance –– can help to
explain the orientalism in the young artists of Mexico
City. What, after all, do these citations from Mexican
history tell us about Yishal Jusidman's Geishas, Eduardo
Albaroa's tantric drawings, Daniela Rossell's chinese cutouts?
Clearly, these creations are as far–removed from the
anguish expressed in colonial paintings of murderous Japan
as from the misguided Sinophilia expressed by Lombardo
in his travel journal. It is now time to turn to the second
part of our argument: an examination of the relationship
between recent Orientalist references and the history of
artistic production in Mexico.
In art, the
Orientalist tendency in question arose in the present decade,
coinciding with the collapse of the pictorial movement
that peaked in the '80s, Neomexicanismo. Neo–Mexicanism
was an attempt to find a form of artistic expression that
was as typically and authentically Mexican as the first "Mexicanism," the
project of the Mexican School of Painting in the first
half of the century. The Neo–Mexican painters, including
the well–known figures of Nahúm Zenil, Julio
Galán and Dulce María Núñez,
wanted to use art to affirm and celebrate the Mexican identity.
Not only were their enormous canvases crammed with all
sorts of objects, foodstuffs and places that can be considered
symbols of the Mexican soul –– bleeding hearts,
the Virgin of Guadalupe, chili peppers and nopales,
crosses and crucifixes, mountains and volcanoes, bull fighters
and charro outfits –– but also they sought
to construct a transhistoric myth of "Mexicanness" by defining
a continuous thread running through the national culture
from the pre–Columbian period through today(3).
From the perspective
of Mexico's national identity, the Orientalism of the '90s
can be considered a critical reply to the Neo–Mexicanism
of the '80s. First of all, the East, and especially Japan,
which is the favored reference point for Orientalist artists,
is the structural opposite of Mexico. Not only is Japan
on "the other side of the globe," but its cultural values
are the exact opposite of Mexico's. Japan is an island;
Mexico is continental. The Japanese drink tea; Mexicans,
coffee. Japanese food is based on the purity of its flavors
and ingredients; Mexican cuisine on an incestuous combination
of flavors and ingredients, like mole, a perverse sauce
whose ingredients include hot peppers and chocolate. Japanese
aesthetics emphasize emptiness and voids; Mexican aesthetics
prefer a taste for the baroque and a medley of colors.
Calligraphy, Zen and the tea ceremony are rituals of silence;
the fiesta, bullfighting and the public market are celebrations
of a glorious racket. Japanese wrappings are opaque, hiding
the object behind an infinity of layers, papers and ribbons,
whereas our packaging (peanuts served in paper cones and
soft drinks sold in little translucent plastic bags) are
above all transparent. In Japan, everything is ordered.
In Mexico, everything is chaotic.
The Orientalist
artists have done more than choose the absolute opposite
of Mexico as their principal cultural reference. The Orientalist
project goes further than that. It seems to refute the
ambitions of Neo–Mexicanism point by point. If the
art of the '80s was nationalist, the art of the '90s is
internationalist. If the former emphasized painting, the
latter rejects it in favor of media like sculpture and
installations(4). If the former insisted on figuration,
the latter favors abstraction. If the former wanted to
firmly anchor its artistic project in Mexican historical
continuity, the latter presents its images and figures
within a completely ahistorical space. If Neo–Mexicanism
sought to be the main expression of a cultural essence,
Orientalism considers identity a game of masks in which
there are no essences, only appearances.
Despite the
tendency to reject the values and beliefs of Neo–Mexicanism
and replace them with their opposites, it would seem that
there is one point on which Orientalist artists share a
basic strategy with their predecessors. The artists of
the '90s have chosen a series of images and figures that
are apparently just as much cultural stereotypes as those
used by the nationalist painters of the previous decade.
The Orientalists' subjects are nothing more than clichés,
standing in the same relation to Oriental culture as chilis
and nopales, pre–Columbian pyramids and banners do
to Mexico. It seems that like the Neo–Mexicanist painters,
the Orientalist artists practice a kind of reductionism,
in this case, of Oriental culture, by presenting something
complex by means of clichŽs and stereotypes.
But despite
this apparent correspondence, Neo–Mexicanism and Orientalism
use cultural cliches for completely different ends. In
Neo–Mexicanist painting, the cultural symbol serves
to root it in the myths, history and culture of Mexico.
The images, whose significance is usually unmistakable,
establish a close relationship between the artwork and
the historical, political and religious discourses that
make up "Mexican culture." Thus, images of the Virgin of
Guadalupe, for example, can only be read as a reference
to the Catholic religion whose presence is felt throughout
Mexican life; a portrait of Pancho Villa is a symbol of
the Mexican Revolution; a juxtaposition of Villa and the
Virgin is a commentary on the tension between politics
and religion. Clearly, then, Neo–Mexicanism creates
an economy of meaning in which each image can be exchanged
for one and only one specific cultural reference. The artworks
resulting from this transaction are presented as an extension
of the national culture, as an artistic elaboration on
the various religious, political and historical discourses
that constitute the Mexican identity.
If Neo–Mexicanism
makes use of stereotypical symbols to integrate the production
of art into Mexican culture, Orientalism seeks to use the
same kind of symbols to produce the opposite effect: to
liberate art from any reference whatsoever to national
culture. Its purpose is not to promote a discourse on Oriental
culture, but to demonstrate the impossibility of such a
project. It is completely impossible to relate the Orientalist
images to any real historical or cultural context. What
do we know, after all, about geishas? Only what they are
not–that they are not Mexican, that they do not have
any historical or political relevance and that their appearance
is unreal. Unlike the images of Pancho Villa and the Virgin
of Guadalupe, a geisha can only complicate any kind of
relationship we might try to establish between artworks
and historical reality.
We are completely
ignorant of the significance and connotations these mysterious
figures represent. We know everything about the symbols
used by Neo–Mexicanists, and absolutely nothing about
those used by the Orientalists.
Thus we can
conclude that there is an essential difference between
the cultural stereotypes of Neo–Mexicanism and those
of Orientalism: the bleeding hearts, crucifixes and Virgins
of Guadalupe are closed symbols, while the geishas, sumo
wrestlers and rising sun are open symbols. The significance
of closed symbols is determined a priori, by an immutable
law according to which each sign must clearly refer to
a single referent. There is no place for ambiguity In this
strict economy of significance; a bleeding heart can only
represent the passion of Mexico; a pyramid, the presence
of pre–Columbian civilizations. But open symbols,
in contrast, lack any predetermined significance. They
have no a priori association with any particular referent;
above all they are ambiguous. In terms of signification,
an open symbol is a wild card(5). Anyone who has one can
give it any value or any meaning they like. Closed symbols
are highly rigid; open ones enormously flexible.
All the Orientalist
artists uses open symbols. The purpose of their work is
to give a highly subjective meaning to an image characterized
by its opacity. The reason why these artists choose symbols
that lack political, historical or religious connotations
is precisely in order to fill them with a new significance.
Rossell's 1997-98 work Pecados ("Sins," but also
a pun on ÒfishÓ) for instance, uses highly stylized fish
shapes whose outlines evoke the delicacy of Japanese paper
cutouts to examine aspects of Mexican Catholicism as it
is practiced by the people. Like the sacramental host,
these Pecados are made of wafer. In this work, the
open symbolism of the fish is infused with meaning: the
perfectly round shape of the host contrasts with the elaborate
and uneven outlines of these fish, the holy sacrament of
communion with the pagan consumption of wafers bought on
the street; the purity of the host with the stench of the
fish; purification with "sin." In Jusidman's work, the
open symbol of the geisha is turned into a pretext for
a series of investigations and experiments with monochromatic
painting (which means, like the geisha, applying white
on white). And Vargas Lugo's collages take as their starting
point the form of the rising sun––another open
symbol––to produce a series of games with the
colors and patterns formed by the sun's rays.
At the end
of the day, Orientalism should be seen as an effort to
give significance to whole series of open symbols in a
way that avoids the rigidity and referential monotony of
Neo–Mexicanism. In their installations, sculptures
and paintings, these artists are carrying out an operation
very similar to what Roland Barthes did in The Empire
of Signs. Barthes confessed that his little book had
nothing to do with Japan or Japanese culture. Although
its pages were full of references to the tea ceremony,
sumo wrestlers and kabuki actors, Barthes explained that
it was inspired not by a geographical place but an imaginary
space. Japan was nothing more than an idea, an open symbol
that the French serniologist wanted to fill with a highly
subjective significance. "I can also–though in no
way claiming to represent or analyze reality itself [ … ]
isolate somewhere in the world (faraway), a certain number
of features (a term employed in linguistics), and out of
these features deliberately form a system. It is this system
which I shall call: Japan.Ó(6) For Barthes, Japan was a
system, a collection of open symbols to be filled with
a highly personal interpretation.
These young
Mexican artists have done the same in their Orientalist
exercise: they have opened a space of imaginative freedom,
a terrain filled with open symbols that are about to be
filled with significance. In these pieces, we find no references
to the cultures and traditions of the Far East, but simply
a utopian space that exists outside of history and cultural
references, a non–place that is transformed into the
setting for investigations and experiments that range from
the role of the host in Catholicism to the texture of monochromatic
painting: a true rising sun in Mexican art.
1. In
his influential study, Orientalism (New York:
Pantheon, 1978), Edward Said analyzes Orientalism in
terms of European colonialism. I do not think this can
be applied to the situation in Mexico. I use the term
to refer to artworks that allude to elements of Far Eastern
cultures, such as geishas, sumo wrestlers, the rising
sun, as well as disciplines like calligraphy and Buddhism.
In these cases, "Orientalism" has more to do with stereotypical
symbols than with a serious comment on Far Eastern cultures
as such.
2. For a more detailed history of anti-Chinese prejudice in Mexico see: Humberto
Monteón González, Chinos y antichinos en México: documentos
Para su historia (1988); Jose Jorge Górnez Izquierdo, El movimiento
antichino en México (1871-1934): problenas del racismo y del
nacionlisino durante la Revolución Mexicana (1991); Juan Puig,
Entre el río Perla y el Nazas: la china decinionónica Y sus braceros
emigrantes, la colonia china de Torre—n y la matanza de 1911 (1993).
3. I should emphasize that this effort by the Neo–Mexicanist
artists to create a trans–historic national myth coincided with the official
cultural policy of the '80s. The most outstanding example is the exhibition México:
esplendores de treinta siglos (from Olmec heads to the abstract paintings of
Rufino Tamayo). In 1990 it traveled very successfully to New York, Los
Angeles and San Antonio. The show did not include Neo–Mexicanist works,
but did share their vision of the history of Mexican art and culture as an
unbroken continuity. (See cat., Mexico: Splendors of 30 Centuries, New
York: Metropolitan Museum, 1990.)
4. While some Orientalist artists do practice painting, their conception of
the medium is completely different from that of Neo–Mexicanists. For them,
painting is not a vehicle for expressing passion, but rather–as in the
case of Jusidman's geishas and sumo wrestlers–a conceptual exercise.
5. Or even a profane version of the mu, the generative nothingness of Zen.
6. Roland Barthes, The Empire of Signs (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982),
p. 3.
©1999
Rubén Gallo
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