The Las Vegas Art Museum's spacious central gallery has been given to a display of posters representing the art of Fernando Botero, while the two side galleries show paintings under the rubric, Latin American Art Now. It should have been the other way around.
If an art museum's business is to display art, why show posters at all. These, drawn from a private collection and gathered into an exhibit by the Museum of Latin American Art, could be understood as a collective historical document recording the career of the popular painter. That it could in any way suffice for the work itself only certifies the opinion that Botero's work is poster-weight, fodder for dormitory walls.
Shunting it to the side would better credit the actual paintings of Latin American Art Now. Seemingly an afterthought, these works of determined intellect and gravitas would benefit from a more generous display.
It should be understood, however, that Latin American Art Now, organized by LVAM curator James Mann, is not a comprehensive examination of contemporary art from the Western hemisphere south of Texas. That, indeed, would be both ambitious and welcome.
Rather, it comprises paintings by five mid-career artists, and is heavy on surrealism and magic realism, undeniably a significant strain of Latin American aesthetics, but one viewed in some circles as somewhat tired.
Writing last year in Art Nexus, Cuban art historian Gerardo Mosquera noted that these and other expected genres helped set a revolutionary and anti-colonial aesthetic agenda in the middle of the last century. To stress their centrality today, writes Mosquera, "sounds almost like an El Zorro movie."
But these modes clearly endure, and these painters sometimes take fresh and idiosyncratic paths within them. Puerto Rican Rafael Trelles, for instance, hints at the stolid solemnity of medieval altar panels in "Los Gemelos Divinos II" ("The Divine Twins," 2001) and "El Destino en el Sombrero" ("Destiny in The Hat," 1999), vividly chromatic paintings which disclose a surrealist sensibility in their elongated figures and other touches, such as the child-head pedestals of the former.
The surrealism of Cesar Menendez, from El Salvador, pulls influences in different ways in different paintings, from such diverse sources as Georgio De Chirico and Max Ernst. "Cazador de Puertos" ("Hunter of Ports," 2002) is richly toned but umbrous, with a centaur and classically inspired figures in a dynamic composition suggesting ritual supplication.
Meanwhile, Mexican painter Vladimir Cora has more of an expressionist bent, fixing stylized figures in backgrounds busy with abstract forms, such as the interlocking vascular structures of "Mary Entre Mangles" ("Mary Between Mangroves," 2003), a large, mixed-media piece. But his "Sol Negro" ("Black Sun," 2002), which also comprises two panels, hints at the work of Jasper Johns, both in the flagstone formations of the smaller, right-hand panel, and in the geometric forms of the left panel, which is dotted with small, black ovals like holes seen at an angle, and vague pentimenti of round dots.
Panamanian painter Olga Sinclair departs most clearly from the surrealist mode. Her still lifes of pears and her figure studies, rendered in pale, innocuous backgrounds, serve as touchstones for abstract gestures. It is almost as though a painting like "Naturaleza Festiva" ("Festive Still Life," 2003) is struggling to undo the substantiality of the depicted fruit with touches such as the oval of white paint that separates into whorls. In the triptych "Esclavos" ("Slaves," 2003), Michelangelo's sculptures, vaguely rendered in grays, are embraced by broad strokes of black, and counterpointed by dense regions of fiery orange or pink.
This is a promising show; promising in two ways. It demonstrates an interest in serving the Valley's growing population of Latinos. But it also promises more than it delivers. The museum would do well to try this survey again, giving the entire space to a larger selection of artists.
Chuck Twardy has written about art and architecture for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.