Escuelismo

Thursday night was the opening of the Escuelismo exhibit at Malba. The third floor had been closed since I arrived for its installation (second floor is hits of the permanent collection and two temporary exhibitions and first floor is recent acquisitions), but Cintia had taken me up on Tuesday to show me the installation crew and introduce me to one of the artists who was there gluing part of her piece together. The pieces in Escuelismo were mostly pieces in the permanent collection acquired in the big 2004 buy but not yet shown, some loans, and some post-2004 acquisitions.

Malba at night

I and Nico came early, at 5:30, and got to hang out in the café-turned press room per Cintia’s invitation. I was given a press folder despite my protests that I was not, in fact, a member of the press. Cintia thought this was funny and told me to keep it. It had a very specific summary of the exhibit concept, pieces, and artists, which is always helpful.

Nico and me. Note press folder.

We then moved up to the exhibition room and heard an introduction by one of the women from the publicity department and then—Cintia had to explain this to me—contemporary art inside jokes. This involved one of the artists flitting about the room, gesturing at different pieces, and singing in English, Spanish, and French, of which I understood zero percent. There was definitely some Celine Dion in there:

Cintia getting interviewed about the exhibit for a TV show! I told her she would be famous and she said the interview would air at 2 in the morning. A lot of porteños are awake then, anyway.

The title of the exhibit was Escuelismo: Argentine art of the 90s. The term refers not to an art movement but to a critical approach to contemporary Argentine art. Basically, by now much of this art is very conceptual, so you have to think of weird ways of mentally organizing it for it to make sense. “Escuelismo” was the name of an essay published in 1978 by influential Argentine writer and art critic Ricardo Martín-Crosa, so influential that artists actually started to produce work that followed trends he identified.

The three themes that he named in the essay were imagery of primary school (toys, cartoons, colored blocks, school supplies), traditionally “childlike” acts of creation (cutting, pasting, collage, crafts), and classroom relationships (teacher/student, individual/group). You can almost look at any art piece and qualify it as some interpretation of one of those themes, and that’s what the exhibition chose to do. The themes were assigned red, green, and blue colors and each given their own section within the exhibition space. I think the exhibition did a good job of making the art more accessible:

Cintia was kind enough to invite all of the Yale interns, who enjoyed the event and seeing the inside of Malba for the first time.


I was worried about Escuelismo being difficult to access—it definitely took me a while to understand the idea—and a few of them voiced that, but Paloma and Elena said that they were glad it made them think.

Chris looking at tiny people in one piece.

Nikos was especially fascinated and disgusted by a video piece that showed sketched cartoon creatures torturing each other, which was a commentary on how seeing violence in cartoons and video games conditions us to more easily accept it. When I took everyone around to see the rest of the museum, Paloma and Elena especially liked the Antonio Berni painting of the faces from my first post, and Nico liked this pink abstract acrylic number that I do not much care for. Everyone enjoyed the Pablo Reinoso bench that has wood slats extending to wrap around 2 stories of the museum.

From 7:30 onward the event was open to the public, when means anyone in the neighborhood could walk in, grab some champagne at reception, and head upstairs.

Other highlights of the evening were chatting with Socorro (news to me that this is a name. I was taught it as the expression you use when you cry for help in a disaster situation), a co-worker who started the same week that I did, about her childhood in Mendoza in the provinces, and then meeting Maria Costantini of the Costantini Foundation. A.k.a. un gran honor. She was very nice and shared some refreshing skepticism about the accessibility of some of the Escuelismo work. She prefers the museum’s early twentieth-century work, she said—big surprise as they were her family’s personal art collection. Overall, the evening was great and I am so grateful that Cintia included us all.

me, Chris, Tsega, Nico, Casey Blue, Marisa, Leslie, Elena, Nikos and Paloma out front afterward