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"NO Master"
by Ximena Cousino
Artist - Painter and Draftsman
Ximena Cousino
Chilean artist, painter and draftsman.
It contains a long history in the Cultural Artistic world,
With exhibitions throughout Chile and abroad.
Recently in charge of directing the cultural programming team of a prominent Chilean presidential candidate.
NOT MASTER
Many years ago, I had a long conversation with a friend, a professor of aesthetics, brilliant. He prophesied that everything was going to be digital, that you didn't need to learn to draw to make art, that it would be obsolete. Conceptualism reigned, and would reign. My immediate response was, No teacher, there will always be people who need a lead pencil to draw, there is a neurological connection between the hand and the soul, the craft cannot die. There will always be a madman with love for doing, for creating, for wanting to capture nature like the first primitive man in some cave like Lasceaux or Altamira.
Job; mastery, the absolute mastery of an instrument that transforms matter into something sublime, intangible, transcendent and beautiful. Words in poetry, wind and strings in melody, charcoal in drawing, movement in dance...
There is a universal, objective beauty that cannot respond to theories, because it is of such magnitude that it stands alone. It stops our gaze, excites and captivates us. Whether it is Chinese porcelain, an Egyptian burial boat, a design on a pillar in an Abu Dhabi mosque, a bas-relief in a Gothic cathedral, or a drawing by Rembrandt, every untrained eye pauses on landing. The beauty of the Taj Majal needs no explanation, the human footprint covers it and extols it while giving glory to the nation from which it was born.
No dear friend, Duchamp, Rauschenberg and Bazeliz are very different. They need the speech, or they don't hold up. At first glance they do not produce emotion in an uneducated eye, an eye uncontaminated by cultural marketing. My educated eye saw in them the promise, the freedom, the creativity, the vertigo for fame, the delirium for the Rock Star, the god painter who is revered as wise, exalted and worthy of monuments, the museums that are the cathedrals of the 20th and 21st century. Hours of emptiness, full of aesthetic theory and vanity; The Cindy Sherman: narcissism, provocation, degradation and violence, Yoko Ono: vanity and pride, Andy Warhol is already worn out, emptied of content. A thousand painters, a thousand performances, more installations, always searching within the contemporary for something that justifies it. Suddenly you see sparks, you have faith again, and the endless walk through museums and galleries around the world continues, and the void continues. Chuck Close in the 80s had turned on a light, I couldn't believe it was oil on canvas. Richter only appeared on the international radar in the '90s, though he had been quietly working in his workshop doing the counter-speech to pop while Andy was riding the height of the Studio 54 craze, all pose and marketing. Despite the fury of abstraction and conceptualism, the spirit of someone who loves doing was still alive.
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Here in Chile it was Antúnez, Cienfuegos, Aldunate and the neo-expressionists who returned to figuration. I think we all became expressionists of some kind, Bororo, Benmayor, Dominguez gave a marketing and entertaining outlet that made this item a valid option to live. The donation laws allowed a boom of freedom until they were annihilated. Then the other gods appeared: the healers. They had the power to grant a platform or a springboard to the outside and make a race. But they didn't accept just anything, it had to be serious, conceptual. Be governed by the laws of the postmodern magister. Social criticism, breaking the frame, displacements, deconstructing, revising. From marketing to dogma. Then other sparks appear Castañeda, Babarovic and several who begin to incorporate the trade until Lorca appears. Still very young, he invaded the Museum of Fine Arts with an impeccable craft. A challenge where the bar is set high. Its appearance does not happen out of nowhere, there is a resistance movement, which is latent throughout the world. Challenge the concepts of the 20th century, of conceptual rubbish, and realism rises again. Could it be other gods? or the opening to a cultural renewal, where the value of what has been done to measure the time required by noble materials, which demand pause, observation, and measure, returns. Techniques that require humbly admitting the need to learn from our ancestors, from thousands of years of learning. A technique that requires mastery of the trade, of oneself and years of discipline.
Discovering that there is an increasingly powerful movement in Chile, a hunger that is becoming more and more evident for the trade brings me comfort. Knowing that I am not alone, and that there are others who are crazy in love with painting, gives me hope that art is a vehicle for beauty and goodness. Isn't it goodness to make beautiful things that resonate in time and speak of man to man of the humble and the powerful? Drawing, so despised by my dear teacher friend, is the basis of the humanity that wants to create, because it cannot do anything else because it was born a painter. The drawing pursued for so many years sounds on the canvas that tries to capture the emotion for an instant .
