Q&A; WITH SHIFRA M. GOLDMAN : Taking ‘Artistic Gems’ Out in Public : ‘Modern Mexican Art’ Curator Sees Plenty of Jewels in a Show She Admits Isn’t Flawless

Exhibition curators generally speak with unbridled enthusiasm about their own shows. They soft-pedal shortcomings or ignore them altogether-- if they can see them. Shifra M. Goldman, guest curator of “Seven Decades: Modern Mexican Art From the Bernard Lewin Collection,” at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana through April 25, spoke in a recent interview to her show’s weaknesses as well as its strengths. She also spoke freely about the museum, the collection on which the show is based, other shows and art critics. “She’s a pistol,” said a Bowers spokesperson. sg,2 *

Question: How would you evaluate the Lewin Collection, on which “Seven Decades” is based, and how did it aid or limit your vision for this show?

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Answer: While the Lewin Collection is certainly the largest collection (of modern Mexican art) in Southern California and possibly the country, it’s one collection, and I was not free to draw from other collections. Still, I was able to glean a show that was more than simply a collection of precious objects.

Also, a collector who collects has one kind of collection. But we’re talking about a commercial gallery owner, someone who sells his work. After looking over the gallery collection, I chose X number of works to best represent a historical sweep, but the commercial activities of the gallery have left great gaps. As I write in the (exhibition) guide, the show is “an introduction to the pioneering and experimental conceptions and developments,” and as such, it “allows visitors to see a number of little-known artistic gems.”

Q: Artistic gems--is that like an unassuming wine?

A: By gems I mean works that are not constantly reproduced--outstanding small works that a museum might own. Mexican art is my area of specialization, yet there are works here that I’d never before seen. At (“Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991), they showed modern works that we’d seen over and over and over, even on postcards!

Q: Since you brought it up, how does “Seven Decades” compare to the “Splendors” show?

A: The “Splendors” show was enormous. (The 400-piece show was one of the biggest in LACMA’s history.) “Seven Decades” is a small show, under 100 works, and it has no pretensions to be a historical overview. To mount a purely historical show for Bowers would have been very difficult in terms of what I had available to me. The Mexican government could draw on all the resources of Mexico. And they did. They took pulpits out of churches, materials out of remote villages . . . and there were protests about that.

When the “Splendors” show hit Los Angeles, the impact was huge. Los Angeles has the largest Mexican population of any city outside of Mexico City, and it has an active Chicano art movement . . . so the local Chicano community was very excited, and (there were) 350 subsidiary events from the Chicano community alone.

Q: What were your overriding goals for this exhibition?

A: I wanted to put together a show that would correspond to major shifts in ideas. . . . I’m also very aware that modern Mexican art gets very rare play, at least outside of New York. I was very conscious, and so was Mr. Lewin, of the “Splendors” show, which was a splendid opportunity, but I thought heavily overloaded with ideological biases.

Q: For instance?

A: It helped (promote) the NAFTA cause by portraying Mexico as a great civilization that continues without any contradictions. Yet today we watch the uprising of the Mayan peasants.

But then, I’m an art historian, not a political scientist.

Q: As an art historian, why do you say modern Mexican art gets “rare play”?

A: Many critics know only Eurocentric art, and anything that doesn’t fit into that isn’t treated well. Latin American art is systematically (treated as) second class.

I’ve tracked the Los Angeles edition of the L.A. Times for 25 years, and I have yet to find a critic who has any appreciation for any period or master of modern Mexican art. To say that Tamayo is not as good as Picasso, that’s Eurocentrism. Even over the last 10 years, there are people who have written very stupidly about Latin American art, simply out of ignorance or (because they’re) convinced that there are only several European masters and they condemn everybody else. Putting down Tamayo as not a very good painter, (writing that) after seeing a Matisse you cannot even consider Tamayo. . . . You don’t have to paint like Matisse to be a very good painter. It was astounding to me that somebody could write this.

Q: So modern Mexican art is getting play.

A: The ‘80s were a Latin American art boom, equivalent to the Latin American literature boom of the ‘60s. Those who do not comment on this phenomenon would be out of step. But it has not been commented on well in these pages. In the past it was really horrendous, but some people who write for The Times today, and some outside writers who have been brought in, have been more sympathetic. The San Diego edition, for instance, had given excellent coverage, but I can’t say why. . . . They’ve been both critical and laudatory, but they’ve been flexible enough to get out from under their Eurocentric training. Learning as they go--that to me is a very good thing.

Q: What, specifically, still needs to be learned?

A: We have to combat the stereotypical notions that all art south of the Rio Grande is somehow exotic or folkloric, colorful and strident, and that one needn’t concern oneself with artists who didn’t work in magic.

This art is not an exotic art. It’s right in sweep with the international bank of ideas, only with a national concern. Like everybody, (Mexican artists) dip into this bank, they contribute to it, they withdraw from it what pictorial, aesthetic and conceptual ideas they want, then shape them to their needs, their roots, and what they want to say. Tamayo has done so splendidly. He was very influenced by Picasso and Braque, but his art is his own. Latin American artists are not imitations, or second class--these notions have to go.

Q: Where there any glitches in putting together the Bowers show?

A: Unfortunately, the museum didn’t find the funding to do a catalogue, and the newsletter is fraught with errors. One glaring, obvious mistake I hope people see through, they substituted Chicago for Chicano: Chicago mural movement instead of Chicano mural movement. The newsletter also identifies the Estridentista movement as loosely based on Picasso’s “Guernica,” and Goya as a spiritualist. I don’t know how Picasso’s “Guernica” came up, and Goya is not a spiritualist. (These are) very embarrassing errors. I wish they’d been more careful.

Q: Any other problems?

A: We lost one of the gems in our show when it was sold (by the Lewin Gallery) and sent to Mexico. I was very upset. It was very important to me to find another work by Maria Izquierdo, who is very hard to come by. By some tremendous quirk of fate, the Bowers owned one her works. Instead of “Horses,” we now have “Nanny and Child.”

Q: Why were you so upset about losing the Izquierdo work?

A: Unfortunately, the United States knows only one female Mexican artist. Frida Kahlo is like a star shining in a heaven without women. Olga Costa and Izquierdo are two others. Nobody among Mexican artists is given proper attention, and certainly the women get less.