Carl Judson - Guerrilla Painter Notebook

Money Can’t Buy You Love – Support for the Arts

In Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city, on the main plaza where the municipal offices are housed in old colonial buildings, the ground floor of one of these buildings is set aside for artists. The Salón Gildaro Antezana is a beautiful space about 20 feet by 90 feet with vaulted ceilings, a terrazzo floor and recessed lighting. The building itself is adobe with four-foot-thick walls. The entrance is through big, venerable double wood doors framed in stone beneath the colonnade. The foot traffic passing by is heavy, constant and diverse – all ages and every level of society. The deal is simple: Once a year applications are taken and 26 artists are awarded the space, each for a two week period. Sometimes two artists will share one time slot. At the beginning of your two weeks, a woman from the municipality unlocks the door and hands you the key. Hanging, opening, promoting, manning and closing the exhibition is your responsibility. The woman from the municipality provides janitorial services. Bolivia is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Salón Gildaro Antezana Cochabamba, Bolivia

In Bolivia (and much of the rest of Latin America, too, I believe) the primary and secondary school curriculum frequently includes pictorial components in homework assignments, and children become adept and imaginative illustrators. Whether campesinos in sandals, school children or society elites, the hundreds of people who come into the Salón Gildaro Antezana are sophisticated connoisseurs of graphic images (compared to us Gringos) and spend a lot of time carefully absorbing each work. Each exhibit generates enthusiastic coverage by local newspapers and television. Twice during the 1990s I was fortunate enough to have shows there – by far my most gratifying exhibition experiences.

Once on my way back from one of my volunteer stints in Bolivia, I had a two day layover over in Lima, Peru. This was near the end of the Sindero Luminoso terror reign when Lima had a bad reputation, and I was a little nervous. All of which I forgot upon discovering there were 36 special exhibitions of Latin American paintings by hundreds of painters from all over South and Central America housed in various ad hoc business and private venues around Lima. Many were old colonial houses with central courtyards. I ran up a considerable taxi bill, but I managed to see all 36 in my two days.

The giant gulf between the place of art in Peru vs. the U.S. is summed up by the following political curiosity: When Alberto Fujimori ran for president of Peru in 1989 as a populist champion of the poor, center-right establishment conservatives selected a candidate to run against him.¹ They selected Mario Vargas Llosa, an internationally renowned man of letters, among whose works is In Praise of the Stepmother, a rather sympathetic tale of a stepmother’s pedophilia using famous works of art as metaphorical springboards.

This would be more or less the equivalent of the Republicans having nominated someone like Philip Roth (Portnoy’s Complaint) for President (an idea with some merit, perhaps, but like so NOT happening!)

In the early 1990s while I was house sitting and painting in the Bay Area, I played poker once a week with some down-and-out fellows in the Tenderloin (red light) district of San Francisco. These guys introduced me to the 509 Club, a small abandoned store front at 509 Ellis Street with an ill matched assortment of folding chairs, a makeshift stage, microphone, a couple of lights and an old upright piano. On Tuesday nights the place would fill up with people from the neighborhood to watch a dozen or so performers of all types and abilities – all free (donations accepted). Sign-up for the performers seemed egalitarian – first-come-first-served, I think. I particularly remember an accomplished pianist, Brenda Broke, who played piano bars in the city coming to work out new arrangements, and Hubi (right). But the nights I enjoyed the most were when Mimi, a chunky, middle aged Chinese lady showed up. She dressed in a tutu and sang Chinese songs in a high falsetto while twirling coquettishly around the stage, adding theatrical emphasis by banging on the piano with her toes during pirouettes. While waiting her turn, you could hear Mimi at the back of the room giggling nervously in delighted anticipation of her pending performance. By conventional measure, Mimi was mentally “disturbed,” but she was treated with acceptance and affection by the local audience of mostly hard luck types. How many public places would allow someone like Mimi an opportunity to vent her creative enthusiasm, and then, without derision?

These are examples of “public support for the arts” that required interest and enthusiasm more than money.

The U.S. National Endowment for the Arts conducts an extensive periodic survey called Public Participation in the Arts. The most recent survey paints a discouraging picture of a steady decline in almost every aspect of adult involvement in the arts. (Obviously it doesn’t include people like us.) One reason for this trend that resonates with me is a lack of accepting and satisfying venues to exhibit or perform one’s work. Another is that most art is rather apart from instead of being a part of our culture.

1. Fujimori won the presidential election and was reelected for a second and then a third term. In 2000 he fled to Japan as a result of a political scandal. He was extradited back to Peru in 2005 to face criminal charges and is now doing time for illegal search and seizure, human rights violations and embezzlement.