"Art is a Permanent Accusation"

At first glance, the Colombian artist Fernando Botero would appear to be an unlikely candidate for artist most outspoken against the outrages perpetrated by the American Military in Iraq.

The work that made him famous — candy-colored, swollen globular people floating throughout the canvas, weightless despite their vast size — would seem to be the antithesis of any serious artistic dialog. The analytical philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto has written that Rosalind Krauss “spoke for many of us when she dismissed Botero as ‘pathetic.’”

I can say that before seeing the exhibition of the artist’s Abu Ghraib series of paintings at UC Berkeley’s Doe Library, I felt almost the same way. Although I think I would have leaned towards “bathos” rather than “pathos” in describing his work. On the other hand, as a child of the ’70s, raised with images from the oeuvre of Maurice Sendak and Margaret Keane, Fernando Botero’s bulbous hot air balloon people have always struck me as somewhat sinister and ominous — nightmares pretending to be daydreams.

So, in some perhaps subconscious way, it does not surprise me that Fernando Botero should be the artist to step up to the proverbial plate, a place so few of America’s contemporary artists, writers, and cultural cognoscenti have dared to tread.

In this conflicted culture where our own government seems determined to undermine our national identity, we seem to have lost the voice to protest this current wave of gratuitous brutality and crimes against humanity. Having had our identity as a nation shaken to the core — first by allowing a man to ascend to the presidency without the democratic vote and then exploiting a national tragedy as an excuse to start a bloodthirsty crusade — we remain, unfortunately, mute. This is, of course, no excuse for such a baleful silence. We find ourselves voiceless not because of censorship but because we lack the vocabulary to express our outrage. It is one thing to condemn the atrocities of others. It is another thing entirely when we need to reproach ourselves: What do we do when we have become “them”?

Step back in time and consider the atrocities of WWI. Artists at that time, feeling betrayed by an idea of a civilization that had been credited to the “adult” rational mind, rebelled and sought solace in the idea of the “child-mind,” creating the artistic language of Dada. Although the Dadaists celebrated that ingenuous psyche, they did not take into consideration that it is the nature of the child (even the child of the mind) to imitate the adult. Dadaist art had begun to incorporate the very horrors they had initially rebelled against within the first generation. In many ways, however, it is precisely this shock of discontinuity that makes Dada work.

But what happens when you live in a world where there is no shock of discontinuity? Or where discontinuity is often the norm? Can the language of Dada still work in a world bursting with television “reality shows” which are both entirely staged and heavily scripted?

To surmise that we lack the vocabulary to express our most undeniable outrage begs the question — why? Is it for some lack of human education? Does a poverty of another sort come into question? Can we base this silence on a poverty of spirit or deprivation of soul, perhaps?

I was moved by Arthur Danto’s amended description of Botero in his article for The Nation titled “The Body in Pain”: “masturbatory art — art whose point and purpose are to make vivid and objective our most frightening subjective thoughts. Botero’s astonishing works make us realize this: We knew that Abu Ghraib’s prisoners were suffering, but we did not feel that suffering as ours.” Mr. Danto is referring rather directly to Susan Sontag’s influential 2003 essay Regarding the Pain of Others, where she states, “One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. Images of atrocities have become something of a commonplace.” And she continues: “Is the viewer’s perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of such images? What does it mean to care about the suffering of others far away?”

Botero’s paintings poignantly address such questions, and he points out that he did not work directly from images but rather from his reaction to the photographs.

Botero has altered his usual pictorial language to address the subject matter at hand, even on a material level. His normally ebullient painter’s voice has changed into the Spartan-like tones of a scenic painter. Gone are the allusions to Diego Velázquez, Rafael Sanzio da Urbino, and Jusepe De Ribera, replaced by an almost uninterested utilitarian need to cover the canvas. He strips the oil paint of its quintessentially sensual nature, applying it thinly and with careless brush strokes, thwarting it from being anything other than a colorant. He mocks Willem de Kooning’s oft-repeated statement, “flesh is the reason oil painting was invented.” He forbids the colors to build up or glaze the surface, and there is no varnish, except in a few uneven, strangely sticky, and arbitrary places. Despite their size, these paintings give the appearance of being painted in a day or a few hours. They have a kind of immediacy in their nature that the subject seems to demand.

He replaces his usual rich palette of chromatic hues with unpleasant shades. Almost every color used in the Abu Ghraib series has been dulled down and mixed with black, except for a few oddities: the rubber glove, the gaudy pink bra and panties — each an intimately recognizable icon for the viewer. The dogs in his paintings, more hellhounds than watchdogs, are that strange color of green that can only be created by mixing black with yellow.

Indeed, these paintings are painful to look at, and not just for the subject matter. Up close, nothing seems to work — the drawing is coarse, the painting uninteresting, and the colors oppressive. Overall, the work appears to be what is commonly called “badly painted.” But this is entirely an illusion. If the viewer can achieve some distance, the painter’s conceit is revealed: seen across the room, all aspects of the paintings fall into place, and Botero’s intention becomes apparent.

Unfortunately, circumstances concerning this current exhibition do not allow for this distance to be achieved easily. The lighting is hideous, the room unsuitable for a painting presentation — too long and full of furniture — but the sheer spectacle of the room gives it a clandestine nature fitting for the exhibit.

It is dismaying and somewhat heartbreaking to read Robert C. Morgan’s plaintive entreaty in his essay “A Note on Botero’s Abu Ghraib”: “Given the importance of these works, there is a curious irony that hovers over the exhibition. Botero has made it clear that he is willing to give the entire suite of paintings to any American museum that wishes to take it. As of two days before the exhibition’s closing, not one museum had come forward with serious interest. Given the reluctance of American museums to take a clear position contrary to right-wing ideology, one can only imagine the outcry that would surround any director’s expressed interest in responding to the artist’s offer. To do so might constitute a courageous decision in contrast to the bureaucratic inevitability that continues to stifle any real progress towards the advancement of democracy.”

More than any other species, warm or cold-blooded, it is the nature of the human being to adapt. When faced with natural catastrophes, this evolutionary propensity is awe-inspiring. That humanity tends not only to survive but in so many cases to flourish after deluges, ice ages, conflagrations, and whatever else is included in nature’s repertoire, is admirable. While just as profound, the ability to adjust to the equally terrible waste of manmade horrors is also quite disturbing. The aptitude to overcome the wreckage of natural occurrences attests to the species’ capacity to survive, while the seemingly innate inclination to adapt to manmade horrors would at first glance be its opposite. Logically the species should refuse to adapt or accept and thereby decline to repeat behaviors that negatively affect its survival — but this is not the case.

I wonder if we are adapting to the atrocities encouraged by the present U.S. Government by becoming numb to the responsibilities of humanity. Do we really lack the vocabulary to express our frustration? Or have we refused to develop such a vocabulary because it has been deemed impolite to acknowledge the pain of others?

If so, then it is not that Botero speaks for the victims of Abu Ghraib. It is that he speaks for all of us.