‘New Worlds,’ Old Themes of Latin American Art

The substance of the Museum of Latin American Art’s current exhibition seems at odds with its title “New Worlds.” It samples paintings and a few graphics from various Latin American countries in about 40 examples loaned by the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington.

With the exception of Mexico’s Jose Luis Cuevas, most of these artists are little known outside their culture. But unfamiliarity doesn’t exactly equate with newness. Chronologically the bulk of offerings are situated in the mid-’70s. Stylistically most could have been made at least 30 years earlier.

“Enigmatic Eye” by Guatemala’s Rodolfo Abularach, for example, looks like an outtake from Odilon Redon’s 1882 “The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Moves Towards Infinity.” Similarly, Nicaraguan Armando Morales’ “Woman About to Return” closely resembles the pubescent nudes of Balthus from the 1930s.

All of which doesn’t mean that this art is entirely without interest. It just means that somebody created a semantic quibble in a title that might have played better as, say, “Timeless Worlds.” The work seems to come from a place where artists are just not in such a rush to pursue the muse of pell-mell novelty that seems to incite so much contemporary work.

Looking at the show is a bit like being turned loose in a strange attic and trying to divine the poetry of all the cobwebbed cherished old stuff its owner just couldn’t throw out. There is abstract art to be seen but it doesn’t feel as engaged as the semi-Surreal Fantastic Realism that dominates the show emotionally.

El Salvador’s Benjamin Canas presents a scene in which the viewer looks down into an amorphous space. It contains a young male figure dressed in rather Chaplinesque garb standing behind an empty crib. Next to him is a nude woman with wings and sunglasses. Her demeanor is less erotic than motherly. The picture is called “Kafka: Letters to Milana.”

The title reminds one that most of the figurative work is intensely literary. It brings to mind Latin American authors like Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, who are sometimes called “Magic Realists.”

Artists and writers both create imagery in which everyday reality has clearly been filtered through imaginative obsession. There’s a somnolent wistfulness that even touches the work of punk-flavored Brazilian Rubens Gerchman. His bright-yellow “Lindoneia” telegraphs a story of impossible love for a girl who died the moment she turned 18.

Sometimes the art is ironically self-effacing, as in “Boy With Umbrella” by Colombia’s Enrique Grau. The kid seems to be overprotecting his own innocence. Chilean Claudio Bravo’s photorealist lithographic diptych is called “Fur Coat Back and Front.” It feels like a self-portrait. In front view the handsome sitter has his eyes closed. Then he turns his back on us. The picture seems to give us permission to look only on the condition we don’t disturb the artist’s fantasizing.

Basically it’s all daydreaming--longing for lost, unattainable or erotic love. Cuba’s Agustin Fernandez admits his idea of a good time is a triple set of female breasts in “The Three Graces.” His countryman Rafael Soriano’s abstract “Night Rider” has an inescapable latent image of entwined lovers.

There’s some variety in a strong emblematic abstraction by Argentina’s Victor Chab and a metaphysical landscape by Uruguayan Ignacio Iturria. Mostly, however, this is art convinced it’s the pain of love that brings the world to a weird and wonderful standstill. The exhibition was organized by independent curator John Coppola and Maria Leyva of the AMA.

* Museum of Latin American Art, 628 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach; through Nov. 23, closed Mondays. (562) 437-1689.