Reinaldo Pagán Ávila - Interview

HUMANS AS A PROJECT

By Reinaldo Cedeño Pineda
Translation by Ellen Rosenzweig

I've lived a double life. Nobody ever taught me how to think artistically. Inanimate objects can't tell the story, but they have lived it.

"Daddy, ask that man for a little paint, whatever's left over, because I want to paint, too."

The neighborhood called Sueño is one of the most coveted residential areas in Santiago de Cuba, given its tranquility, its geographical position and its well-preserved homes, many of them built in the mid-20th century. Reinaldo's father lived there, and while a painter created a mural on the wall, the boy painted his own.

But that was not the only place that Reinaldo grew up. After his parents divorced, he lived with his mother Clara in Vista Hermosa, an older and poorer district in the city's hills, with narrow streets and wooden houses, as well as a variety of local characters: the bully, the santero...

The artist was able to reflect both of these micro-worlds which destiny had immersed him in.

"I've embraced that working-class world, with its humor, irony and characters, which I combine with classical works; it was an environment that influenced me greatly. Sueño, the place I visited on my vacations, was the quiet part, more reflexive. I've lived a double life.

"I like working in different directions. I could be in a very detailed mode, and then do something more expressionist, much looser. My art branches off in several directions, and I never get stuck in just one genre. You can be sure of that."

He was chosen to participate every drawing contest since he was very young. His father, Luis Reinaldo, was a well-known photographer whose friends included artists such as Eleomar Puente and José Loreto Hourruitinier.

"The smell of turpentine confirmed to me that I was working in a artist's studio. And I liked the smell and watching the artists work. I was a quiet boy, very withdrawn, and I liked being in the studio. I would observe every brushstroke and the patience of the darkroom. All of that became a part of me. And on top of that, my mother, although she was never a painter, had a natural talent which she used to help me correct my drawings."

POOR STEPSISTERS AND PRINCESSES

He studied through most of the '80s at the José Joaquín Tejada Art School, from which he graduated in 1990 as a drawing and painting teacher.

"When I got into school, I had designs and shapes already in my mind; maybe that's why some things were easy for me. But nobody ever taught me how to think artistically; I had to learn that in the school of hard knocks. School taught me how to sharpen my skills, to improve. Painting was my forte, painting was a kind of an obsession for me.

"School was a time of experimentation for me. Some of the techniques I expected to learn weren't taught there because of a shortage of the necessary materials or tools, or the proper professor to teach us. I learned many of the techniques from books or by experimenting myself. I basically learned how to paint watercolors after I left school.

"My father had a lot of photography magazines and art books. I snapped some pictures, and he was always nearby, overseeing my experimentation. But I never felt inspired to do photography as I did with painting."

Did you think of photography as the poor stepsister of the fine arts?

"No, photography is an art that can be as profound as painting, and that has been proven by many who have developed it as an art. The thing is that most photographers have devoted themselves to commercial photography. The boundaries of photography are still unknown, not only in terms of experiments with chemicals, but also the mounting, framing, color effects or the combination of photography with painting."

Reinaldo made incursions into other art forms as well as photography. Indeed, he took it upon himself to turn watercolor, another of those poor stepsisters, into a princess, with his brush as his magic wand.

"I wasn't given as much in-depth instruction in watercolor as I would have liked. Watercolor has been underestimated and shunned as a technique for creating definitive pieces. Instead, it's considered appropriate for early versions, a preliminary step for a work in oil, acrylics or other media.

"There are only a few painters who have taken watercolor to lofty reaches, with concepts and content necessary for a masterpiece. I decided to take watercolor to its highest level. I started with charcoal drawings, which nobody was doing back then.

"As materials were scarce, I started painting in watercolors with good technique. It's very unusual to see a watercolor competing in a show, but I was able to get awards with my watercolors in the November 30th competition. I did them in the same themes that I always had worked on, using the same postmodernist codes and a mix of national elements.

"Some said that I was not applying watercolor techniques because I painted with the color white. They said I mixed it with other things, that I had used pencils, because the manner in which I used watercolor seemed incredible; I made it into real art. I did a series called La política cultural (Cultural Policy) and another entitled La mesa está servida (Dinner Is Served). Both were related to art itself - or rather the art market - a topic that has always concerned me.

"I believe you can use any technique to do the most contemporary art. Watercolors have been used through the years to make first drafts, and landscape artists are the ones who have given this medium a prominent place, but that doesn't mean I can't do contemporary work with it. There are two ways to paint with watercolors: applying it wet, which is the most common method; and using it dry, which I learned from books."

MARAT'S ONE HUNDRED DEATHS

Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793) was a famous doctor, columnist and hero of the French Revolution. Patriot Charlotte Corday appeared at his home, pretending to be a Girondist in need of protection, and was received by Marat in his own bathroom, where he was treating a skin disease. Then Corday pulled a knife hidden in her clothing and stabbed him to death.

Painter Jacques Louis David captured this useless, sudden and unexpected death on canvas, thus immortalizing its tragedy amid the uproar of that revolution.

"I feel it is one of the finest works in the history of art, given the color composition and the great drama contained in its story, you know? Sometimes I substitute Marat with a mannequin, because what interests me is the concept conveyed."

Pagán's work takes elements from that masterpiece and others from different styles and schools. He prefers to call this manipulation, despite the ambiguity and connotations of that term.

"Manipulation is not limited to the classics. My work is based on multiple references to art history: you can see Picasso, a Flemish painting or baroque work. There's some anachronism in my work.

"I try to achieve a cohesive environment and not too evident a gap in my work, or it can have a Cuban context, as is the case with El Cristo de la Hamaca (Christ of the Hammock). It is a Christ who is no longer a Christ: it's based on a Flemish work, but he's from the Cuban countryside, with a machete in his hand, lying on a hammock. Anyone looking at the painting assumes he's resting after a day's work, maybe after cutting sugarcane, and it's sort of a double metaphor, the way he suffers after a hard day's work.

The Death of Marat is a well-known masterpiece, but the titles of my works related to it change the context of the work. You can bring together 100 painters to paint something based on David's Marat and no two of them would create the same thing. When you use elements from a well-known work, you can make 100 original pieces.

"I've used Marat repeatedly, because I've had in mind a series based on a single reference, and I want to be able to paint 50 or 100 works, each different from the other, even though they are based on the same reference.

"When I talk about 'manipulation,' I am specifically referring to what some call 'appropriation' and what others call 'decontextualization,' but I prefer the term 'manipulation' because what I am really doing is manipulating things that already exist in art. You manipulate styles that others have manipulated or created, but it should be clear that when you appropriate these styles and forms, it is done in order to create a new work."

Aren't you afraid that these manipulations may permeate your work with strange or very well-known codes, or that reusing them may conceal your personal style, or disfigure it behind so many manipulations?

"I'm not worried about that. My immediate concern is being able to express myself. In my work, what I'm most concerned about is the idea conveyed, and I know everything will be influenced by my mind, my thoughts and the manner in which I deal with them.

"The way in which I build the idea, as I appropriate certain codes in art history, is like a methodology I create when I paint.

"I use things that have already been done to express my own concepts, everything from my point of view. What I'm most concerned about is being myself, and being able to communicate. It's like a chair: what I'm most concerned about is that you can sit on a chair comfortably. It doesn't matter if one arm is baroque, the back is Renaissance or the legs are surrealist."

DOUBLE METAPHOR

Reinaldo Pagán Ávila can't crack a joke easily. His humor is deeper and requires a lot of thinking; some might even say it's black humor. At the same time, his introspection, his "silent speech," is poured wholeheartedly into his series and canvasses.

"No matter what the subject, my work contains social criticism, and a profound humor and irony is implicit."

His closest friends know about his total concentration. He doesn't usually ask for attention; he radiates it. His son Wilban seems to be following in his dad's footsteps. His characters are the people he meets daily.

He doesn't get stuck in a particular medium or school, and he's not swayed by trends or fads. Behind his silence lies an artist with something to say. "If the message reaches me, if what I see touches me, I like the work, no matter what school it falls into. I adapt technique and form to the idea."

Reinaldo Pagán's first exposition was named Mi cara doble (My Double Face). With a coin-like format, by appropriating the style, figures and lettering of a coin, he casts a detailed and observant look at the Cuban reality.

But he didn't stop there: he created a second part, this time based on caricatures and called La otra cara (The Other Face). And this shouldn't come as a surprise, because this multiplicity of expression had become more and more evident. Indeed, his first national award (1993) was in Aquelarre, the top graphic humor competition in Cuba, and he also was awarded a prize at an exhibition in Olen, Belgium, in 1996.

His second show, Política cómica (Humorous Politics), was held at the Sculpture Prairie, a gigantic open space in Baconao Nature Reserve decorated with massive works by artists from a variety of countries. It was a humorous and slightly erotic exposition utilizing phallic as well as patriotic symbols. "The idea behind the exposition was to poke fun at some elements of cultural policy, and perhaps some things were not properly understood when they were taken out of context."

Why do you make constant reference to mannequins and puppets?

"It was part of a series that I planned to call Proyecto para la muerte de un burócrata (Death of a Bureaucrat Project). It criticizes a number of things, mainly a tendency to commit projects to paper without ever bringing them to fruition, so the project documents become the only works of art.

"This is a commentary on the utopian and the unfinished, as well as a philosophical concept. To me, people are an unfinished project, because there are a thousand questions, millions of concerns which have not been clarified or given solutions. These include questions concerning man's own existence.

"According to religious beliefs, man was created by God, and if that is true then we are nothing more than God's puppets. If you're an atheist, then you're ruled by power and laws, and you are still destiny's marionette. People are still finding themselves."

So you still deal with religious images, but your view of Christ is a very particular one.

"Look, the Flemish school of painting is one of the most interesting, one of those that have contributed the most to the world of art. It existed before the Renaissance and continued after the Renaissance. I've become very interested in the technique, and also in the fact that it was basically religious in nature, above all in the pre-Renaissance period.

"I was interested in appropriating some of the elements of Flemish religious painting, such as the angels, their Christs. I take them out the religious context, they're only a point of reference. Even though you see a Christ, for instance, in Christ in the Hammock, it is a symbolic Christ, a human being who lives in poverty, with limitations... in other words, there can be suffering as great as that of Christ's. It's metaphoric."

Talking about encounters, why have you established a link with Japanese engraving, which seems at least on the surface to be so unconnected with art in this geographical region and time?

"That reference to Eastern art is a double metaphor. The Eastern world has always faced discrimination from the Western world, and in Cuba it's easier to reach the mass media from the capital city than from our eastern region, I know that all too well. Wherever there is one of these characters, the Eastern element has a double meaning.

"Japanese engravings are very linear, the colors are flat. I violate that norm, because I paint characters that have volume; I mix the elements from one culture with the other. My work is a hybrid."

But don't you think that that very thing has made it possible for you to create an authenticity which, in a more cosmopolitan city, would have been more contaminated?

"Maybe... in a sense, those of us working outside Havana, out of touch with the things that are being done there, can do a form of art that is more national in scope, an art that doesn't imitate the latest trends. On the other hand, in these times anything is considered acceptable. Life here is slower, and that makes you look inside yourself, deeper into people."

There is another series called Somos inocentes (We Are Innocent), which also deals with people's potential, and that of children, but it seems to me that the artist's look is not so innocent...

"Look, the idea came to me when I was about to become a father, when my wife was pregnant. There was the process of finding a cradle, you live through so many things when you're getting ready for the baby. I tried to put myself in his place, how he must feel as a baby inside a cradle or a playpen.

"Generally adults don't think about when they were children, and in a way this is a metaphor for innocence. The title We Are Innocent is somewhat ironic, because although we may be innocent in that stage, it is obvious from my standpoint that no one is really innocent.

"I see things from a different angle; it's also a commentary on human beings. A poster or even a song title can be my inspiration. I feel I have the ability to manipulate anything. I'm always guided by an idea which I want to introduce in my paintings."

What about sugarcane?

"I fundamentally work in series, and in the case of sugarcane it was a project with the title Si las cañas hablaran (If Sugar Cane Could Talk), because I believe that everything, every tree, has a story of its own, and has lived the history of events. People tell history. Inanimate beings, naturally, can't retell history but they live through it. History is told from different points of view. Only the sticks on which Jesus was crucified and the cloth in which he was wrapped can accurately tell the true story.

"You have been on a sugarcane plantation and you know that it's a rough place that lends itself to playing pranks, hiding and indulging in pleasurable things like making love. That series is an effort to let the sugarcane tell its own story."

POSTMODERNISM IS GREAT BIG STEW

Ajiaco is a traditional Cuban dish influenced by many different cultures. It contains a variety of meats and root vegetables, mixed together to produce an exquisite taste. The ingredients lose their own individual flavors and become part of a thick stew. Respected Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz used it as a metaphor for Cuba and its identity.

The ajiaco is also a perfect metaphor in this context, according to Pagán:

"Postmodernism in Cuba is like Cuba itself. Cuba is an ajiaco, it has always been since the island's first incursions into art; it has been nourished by artistic echoes from other parts of the world. For instance, the Cuban Academy was founded by Nicolás de la Escalera and Juan Bautista Vermey, a French citizen. Cuba has always assimilated foreign trends by putting them in its own pot and cooking them in its own particular way. Postmodernism in Cuba is an idea, and Cuba's modernity is all its own."

Reinaldo joined two other painters from Santiago de Cuba, Yuri Moreno and Orestes Campos, to form the Cara-jo group. The name is short for Cara Joven (Spanish for "young face"), but it is also a play on words, since the word carajo is a somewhat of a swear word in Spanish.

"As a rule, the group works on a single project, we are three visual artists, but each of us has his own line of work, his own point of view, and the good thing about it is that the topic is analyzed and then divided up among us. We always strive to make ourselves known, and we have a number of projects that we haven't carried out due to a lack of funds. Cara-jo's goals are purely artistic. We also have plans to do cartoons and movies."

Critics have praised the originality of the works, even though there are still some problems with promoting the work, which is often unsystematic and lacking catalogues.

"Almost everybody speaks well of my work, which seems to be hedonist but really isn't at all. The opinions I'm most interested in are the ones related to my message, the ones that go beyond the aesthetic qualities of the piece and concentrate on the ingeniousness of the idea, you know?

"Everything I do is like embellishing what was done before, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in people enjoying my work. There are painters who have wonderful technique, but when you delve deep you realize that everything is just on the surface and inside it's hollow. It's like a woman who's very beautiful, but when you talk to her she has nothing to say.

"I think out the whole idea, even the title, before starting a piece. I think about the title and then the painting. I never paint unless I'm motivated, and the circumstances in which I paint don't matter at all. I can go weeks without painting; I might be reading, listening to music, writing. I have to fall in love with the idea before I bring it to life. I paint fast and complete my paintings very quickly. The only thing that takes me a long time is the form, and when an idea comes to me it comes as a series."

For Catholics, December 8 is the day of Our Lady of the Rosary. His parents, Clara and Luis Reinaldo, may have wanted a girl who they could have nicknamed "Charito," which is short for Rosario. But on that date in 1971 a boy was born to them, Reinaldo Pagán Ávila. In his endless fountain of color and ideas, sometimes everything flows so fast that there's no time to conclude groups of works or single works. His silence is fertile. The present is a flame burning in his pocket, and the future can already be seen in his eyes.