CHROME IS COLOR
I wrote this essay for Dr. Koontz’s Latin American Art class in 2013. I’m publishing it now because Carlos Cruz-Diez passed away one year ago and I’m sad. He made beautiful art.
Throughout the course of his career, Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez “invented a new process of Latin American forms of expression (Bayon).” He started his artistic practice in France in the 1950s, opposed to the conventional standards of “figurative art” and dedicated his work and to the “optic studies of color.” He and other Latin-American colleagues at the time participated in the kinetic art movement. These artists established themselves as futuristic thinkers. They represented that one’s heritage wasn’t as prominent to their career as their expression was (Barnitz 189). Latin America was receptive to the resurrected ideas of geometric, optical, and kinetic art of Europe. These ideas spread geographically ranging from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela. Venezuela claimed optical art intuitively to cherish the rising modern technology world. The country had been apart of a military government and there had yet been any avant-garde development, it was the first movement to break away from academic and representational art (Barnitz 200). Cruz-Diez was interested in the visual experience and experimented with space, light, color, and form by incorporating urban space and viewer perception.
Cruz-Diez’s 2011 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH), Color in Space and Time, combines and divides several different color sequences in various forms of media. The goal of this exhibition was to form a unique experience with the viewer and separate it ourselves from our original three-dimensional physical plane, thus creating the Color in Space and Time. It showed kinetic sculptures and art works using color theory optics, engineering, and craft (Cruz-Diez). The viewer created a spectrum of color that involved shifting their viewpoints with light (Cruz-Diez 21). If one walked to the MFAH it’d be extremely difficult to miss the distinctly painted crosswalks on Bissonnet and Montrose Blvd. In this exhibition, Crosswalks was a signature piece. It was the first of this series in the US and draws on color theories that Cruz-Diez has worked with throughout his artistic career. Currently, the paint has deteriorated with the many cars driving on them, the feet of the pedestrians, and natural weather causes. Consisting of five street crosswalks, they vary in three distinctive color palettes. He produced this work to create an interactive relationship between the viewer, the viewer’s space between the paint, and the time they take to actually acknowledge and observe it.
These five crosswalks connect the MFAH’s central campus (2013). The combinations consist of a blue-green on Bissonnet, green-orange on Montrose Blvd., and a blue-orange reflecting the green-orange at the intersection of Bissonnet and Montrose Blvd. If someone were to look down at these crosswalks, they might confuse them for zebra stripes and could be mistaken as such without further evaluation. Their eyes are drawn to the color, the familiar optical illusion that’s often shown in Diez’s kinetic art. On each of the crosswalks, there is a black diagonal line that runs across the red, green, or blue vertical line. Depending on how the viewer looks at the crosswalks, the static vertical lines shift from looking horizontal to cut in half by the diagonal black line. It also adds depth to the paint. The viewer interprets these with vivid curiosity, which was the artist’s primary goal. Crosswalks incorporate kinetic and optic art through the space, vision, and movement (by walking).
Crosswalks
Double Physichromie, University of Houston
His work is created by a chronological sequence. They are produced and displayed for viewers to make decisive movements in front of them at different times and under different light conditions (Cruz-Diez 72). Crosswalks find meaning in that these color combinations are perceptible to what surrounds it, creating an interaction with artist-installation-audience. This work of art is not hanging on the gallery to be looked at by a visitor. The viewer interacts with Diez’s work, completely interpreting these simple lines into our own constructive analysis. In his interview with Adrian Bianco, Cruz-Diez states, “what is left after a concert? Nothing, or just the memory. It's an ephemeral art. What is left after an exhibition? The memories, the experiences.” When a viewer visits an art museum they interpret artwork in their own way. They build memories of what the art felt like when they saw it for the first time. Understanding the history of the time period, viewers become engaged with the fact that “kinetic art is one of the most significant movements in contemporary art, precisely due to the idea that the spectator should actively and physically be engaged with the work of art” (Cruz-Diez 72).
Physichromie 1, 1959. Caracas. 19 x 19 in. (50 x 50 cm.).
It is generally assumed that if one is from their country, then they represent their country in the entirety of their artistic practice. Cruz-Diez feels that he represents “an idea” more so than solely being Venezuelan by stating, “I haven't overtly made any folkloric gestures in my work. I don't know if my colors are "Venezuelan," it's certainly not my intention. People tend to think that if Matisse is French, then his art must be French. No” (Brodsky 71). Another art work that wasn’t represented in the Color in Space and Time exhibition is Double Physichromie (2009) at UH-Main Campus. The piece draws attention to the Welcome Center. Remember, that is one of his deliberate goals, to bring in the audience. One unique characteristic is that it carries light throughout daytime and night, creating a different visual experience for viewers at any time of the day (Sicardi Gallery).
Cruz-Diez explains his inventions of color and the creation of fisicromías (Physichromie 1) in Jose Navarrete’s article. He states that his interest of “color not only a material reality present in the painting, but also a construction of perception affected by the eventual relationships that can be established between the colors applied on the pictorial surface, the variability in the action of light, and the movement of the viewer's gaze.” Double Physichromie changes when you walk across it. If one faced the Welcome Center and start walking towards the right, the sculpture would not show the same effect, colors, or sequence as it does when one would be facing directly in front of it. When starting a new production, Cruz-Diez often reflects to the beginning of his career and how he can renovate his own ideas through new modern concepts. While in Houston, he created the outdoor works Double Physichromie and Crosswalks. Both of these pieces have much in common, but have unique focuses. Cruz-Diez creates a relationship with the viewer’s engagement through color and space, their relation to it, and the experience both give each other. A modern age thinker, even at 90 years old he sets himself as an explorer, finding different theories in the world as complex as color.
Works Cited
Barnitz, Jacqueline. "Geometric, Optical, and Kinetic Art from the 1950s through the 1970s." Twentieth-century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas, 2001. 189-214. Print.
Bayón, Damián, “In Reply to a Question: ‘When Will the Art of Latin America Become Latin American Art?” Artes Visuales, Mexico City (Museo de Arte Moderno, Chapultepec),10 (April- June 1976), 18-22.
Bianco, Adriana. "Carlos Cruz-Díez." Americas 63.4 (2011): 42-51. World History Collection. Web. 17 Feb. 2013.
Brodsky, Estrellita B. "Carlos Cruz-Diez." Bomb 110 (2010): 64-71. Art Full Text (H.W.Wilson). Web. 16 Feb. 2013.
Cruz, Diez Carlos, and Osbel Suárez. Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color Happens. Madrid: Fundación Juan March, 2009. Print.
Cruz, Diez C, Mari C. Ramírez, and Héctor Olea. Color in Space and Time: Cruz Diez. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Cruz-Diez Foundation, 2011. Print.
Jose Navarette - ArtNexus: https://www.artnexus.com/en/magazines/article-magazine-artnexus/5d63490390cc21cf7c0a21fe/74/carlos-cruz-diez
Sicardi Gallery, “Carlos Cruz-Diez: Physichromie Double - Sicardi Gallery." – CarlosCruz-Diez: Physichromie Double - Sicardi Gallery.
Sicardi Gallery, 2009. Web.22 Mar. 2013.