Beatriz González

Article by: Carmen María Jaramillo, José Alejandro Cortés

Article cover: Beatriz González

from the book: Beatriz González

There are artists whose works do not allow for indifference. They are works that invite reflection. Beatriz González's is one of them. In the process of reflecting on her painting, we not only confirm the relevance of her themes and the foundation of her plastic resolutions, but also the independence, constancy, and above all, the tenacity and coherence of her work. Tenacity and coherence that define her as a person, as an artist, as a citizen, as an art historian, as a researcher, as a teacher of teachers. Since her first exhibitions in the mid-sixties, her canvases revealed the sensitivity, irreverence, and humor that would thereafter drive her approach to expressive techniques, as well as her rejection of orthodoxies, her rootedness in local themes, her criticisms of the establishment, her repudiation of violence, her solidarity with human suffering, her interest in popular taste, and, based on all this, her bold handling of color and materials.

REINTERPRETATION OF THE PICTORIAL IMAGE

One of this artist's lines of work during the sixties and seventies was the reinterpretation of the pictorial image, as seen in the series Version of the Surrender of Breda, 1962, by Velázquez, with the series of Lacemakers, taken from Vermeer (1963), and with Curtain for the Orangerie Bathroom, 1978 (version of Monet's Water Lilies) or with Mural for a Socialist Factory, 1981 (version of Picasso's Guernica), among others.

Beatriz González /Mural for a socialist factory / 1981 / Enamel on Masonite

In much of her work, González makes visible how the canonical history of European art was received by the local public through reproductions, and not through direct perception. By virtue of this fact, the scale, color, texture, and other material characteristics of the object disappear, and with them, its aura. The character of the original vanishes, and one enters the realm of mediations: González suggests that when faced with a facsimile of a European painting, the observer is faced with an illusion (image) of another illusion (the forms of Western representation).

By reinterpreting these works through painting, the artist ironically restores their aura, while seeking to project the vision of "universal" —read European— painting from her "province." As an illustration, the image of Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass is borrowed for the creation of a huge canvas (Stage Curtain for a Luncheon, 1975). The reproduction from which she started to create her work was found by the artist on the cover of an encyclopedia fascicle displayed in a dusty showcase, and which was also discolored by the sun.

In this vein, it is worth noting that the facsimiles of works of art to which we have had access—and with greater emphasis in the 1960s and 1970s—have been of dubious quality. Even in higher quality editions, what is reproduced in print is the interpretation of a photograph—which alters the color of the painting—and not the pristine image of the original work. Thus, when the print reaches the hands of the public, it has been subjected to a double mediation—photo and print—which distorts any claim of verisimilitude in relation to the direct perception of the work in question.

Another way of ironizing the sacralization of art history—and incidentally, artistic circuits—is also evident in the work 10 Meters of Renoir, 1977 (version of Le Moulin de la Galette), where she offers a biting critique of the art market. In this work, González performs a serial repetition of a scheme of the French painting, until she obtains a ten-meter-wide canvas—signed on the edges as a factory mark—which was sold by the centimeter on the opening day of the exhibition. With this painting, the artist points out, on the one hand, how the function of great Western fetishes—masterpieces—is transformed in a country where these productions are not part of daily culture. On the other hand, she produces a subversive gesture by creating a copy that adopts the contradictory figure of a "serial original." In this way, she questions the assumptions traditionally attributed to great works or their authors. Through the serial repetition of the painting—which simulates photographic processes of textile design—she questions the idea of a unique object and enters into a relationship with another modality of the visual culture of her time. Likewise, the artist creates a paradoxical situation by combining the ideas of original—ultimately what she sells is her authorship and not Renoir's—and copy, in a single piece, when she simulates a manufactured product that is actually handmade.

Beatriz González/ 10 Meters of Renoir / 1977 / Oil on paper

In the case of González's production, mediation can be understood not only as mechanical processes, but also as the different worldviews of those who produce and insert images into specific discourses and circuits. In her works, the artist makes visible the transformation of meanings in the processes of reproduction and circulation. By modifying the idea of a unique image, González also weakens the—always utopian—possibility that it carries or communicates a univocal meaning. Likewise, by ironizing the idea of the original, Beatriz González transcends the principles of the avant-garde and enters the field of contemporary art. With her works, she formulates a question about the original, which in this case is transformed into the act of repetition, like an echoing sound, while in the displacement, interest in identifying the place of origin of the emission is lost, at the same time that the character of truth that has been attributed to the issuing centers is weakened.

THE LOCAL PRESS

Photography is a technical resource used as a tool by the most diverse disciplines and trades. In the case of González's production, the act of transferring an image from another field to the art world makes visible the coordinates within which it was inscribed: executor, public, and production conditions. This gesture highlights the sociocultural circumstances in which the image was produced, as it displaces them from their normalizing environment to a critical territory.

This operation also generates an inquisitive gaze towards the traditional conception of the pictorial, while disturbing the assumptions of so-called "good painting" by altering the aesthetic of beauty and simplifying the configuration of planes and volumes to the maximum, in accordance with the representation systems from which it borrows its images.

With the series The Suicides of Sisga (1965), Beatriz González began her mature production. In this work, the artist separates into fine layers the diverse worldviews that converge in the image: on the one hand, she highlights the representation scheme that characterizes the photographer, who has a scenography and a type of framing in accordance with the idea of representation that accompanies him; likewise, she makes visible the classificatory attitude of newspapers that publish the portrait on the "red" crime page, placing it as a minor drama, due to the social anonymity of the protagonists of the event. Finally, and although it is not of the greatest interest to the artist when approaching the work, the observer can wonder about the intentions of the couple who seek to perpetuate their portrait at the moment of sealing the death pact.

Beatriz González/ The Suicides of Sisga III /1965 / Oil on canvas

Through another play of mirrors, when creating this painting, the artist is resorting to multiple mediation, not in the cognitive and perceptual plane, but in the technical process: the image taken by the photographer, the one edited by the newspaper El Espectador, the one published in the newspaper El Tiempo taken from the reproduction that appears in the aforementioned newspaper, and the different oil versions that González creates.

Finally—and to continue tracking the paradoxical dynamic generated by the artist when processing visual forms related to technical reproduction through a conceptualization of painting—the pictorial procedure generates a phenomenon of restitution of the "aura" and transforms this image into one of the icons of Colombian painting.

The Suicides of Sisga is a significant example of how González examines the written press, taking it as a viewer, or symbolic form, that classifies political, social, judicial, or cultural events, through its different sections, in order to direct a reading of the world. From her keen perception, she shows how news is projected—in text and image—from enunciations that correspond to the character attributed to the protagonists and events.

In her work, it seems that the sections of the press are constructed and from there, the world is ordered. Thus, if a violent death caused by common criminals is reported, the event is narrated on the pages of the so-called "red" crime section, where a macabre delight with the image of the victims and the recounting of the facts is made explicit. In this way, in the second half of the sixties, the artist worked on a series of paintings and drawings taken from that section and named them according to the title appearing in the newspaper: Passionate Tragedy: Ex-Corporal Kills His Friend's Wife and Then Commits Suicide or Dressed as a Traffic Policeman but Covering His Uniform with a Trench Coat Was One of the Anti-Socials Killed Yesterday. The titling of the works also emphasizes the direction intended for the reception of the news, exacerbating sentiment or pigeonholing the facts. The construction of this series of works makes visible the impossibility of a neutral or objective reading by the media, and points out how reality is constructed through representation. Thus, this artist's gaze, rather than possessing a moral connotation, aims to formulate questions that intertwine the fields of aesthetics and epistemology.

Another section of the newspaper that the author takes up is the social pages, mostly filled with events involving President Julio César Turbay. This format allows her to emphasize the tragicomic character of the government in power, in the hands of an interpreter who appears in multiple "snapshots," always smiling and with a glass of whiskey in hand.

The series on Turbay constitute a specific example to understand how Beatriz González is one of the first artists to conceptualize printmaking in Colombia. Her works transcend the idea of manual reproduction through traditional media, so that the photos from the social pages are filtered through various technical procedures typical of commercial printing. As an illustration, in a work like Interior Decoration (1981), the photo she chooses of the ruler, singing Mexican folk songs at a party, is successively repeated along the canvas. Unlike the painting 10 meters of Renoir, Interior Decoration is a serigraph, whose size of 3 by 120 meters —divided into different pieces— transforms it into a real curtain. More than adopting the format of a "painting," the print adopts the character of an object, whose decorative nature is transferred to the content of the images it contains.

Beatriz González/ Interior Decoration /1981 /Serigraph on fabric (curtain)

On the other hand, we can refer to the work Plinth of Tragedy (which works with a version of Passionate Tragedy and metaphorically marks the transition from the Turbay government to that of Belisario Betancur) and Plinth of Comedy (1983) which presents an image of President Turbay at a social event. These works are edited in street poster printing workshops, so González adopts serial reproduction modalities that belong to image circulation fields alien to artistic tradition. In this work, as in the previous ones, the author maintains the idea of recontextualization of media images through commercial printing systems. Thus, if in some of her paintings she restores the aura of printed images, with these works she shifts said images, transforming their emission and reception coordinates. The displacement of circulation networks from the newspaper to the urban poster makes visible the acidic taste of a tragedy with comic overtones. With this operation, facts that may go unnoticed in the press are magnified by virtue of the change in image format, thus raising questions about the normalization of anomalous situations.

Another section the artist works with is the political column. If in the "red" crime section the protagonists of everyday tragedies are anonymous beings, in the section referred to, those reviewed are the ones who write official history and command collective tragedies. The interest in this journalistic section as a political country viewer arises in the mid-eighties, when she transformed the biting criticism she directed at the Turbay government into bitter criticism of the figure of President Belisario Betancur and the generals who accompanied him during the Palace of Justice siege in 1985.

Based on press photos, Beatriz González created series such as The Parrots, 1986-1987, and Mr. President, What an Honor to Be with You at This Historic Moment, (1986-1987). Through the titles of the works, and through subtle intervention of the photographs, the author reveals both the apparent neutrality of the press in the face of decisive historical events, and the ambiguous systems of representation that perpetuate the mirages of power. The artist reinterprets the images and intervenes them in the manner of colonial Peruvian paintings, where biblical figures—in this case the president—occupy a central place and are surrounded by a chorus of angels and archangels. Despite the sarcasm implied by the crossing of representations, these works, unlike those she created in the sixties and seventies, have a severe tone. In this case, the irony takes on a bitter character by exacerbating the colors of the faces and uniforms of the military, or adopts a gloomy tone by darkening the palette of the works where the president appears. Likewise, these works approach the sinister when she introduces unusual elements on the presidential cabinet table, such as charred corpses or funeral wreaths.

OBJECTUAL PAINTINGS

Colombian painters who consolidated their production in the 1950s (Alejandro Obregón, Fernando Botero, and Enrique Grau, among others) reflected on the possibility of generating a peculiar modality of modern painting from a context different from that of hegemonic countries. Thus, their works never stopped questioning the contextual referent, unlike what happened in the 1940s and early 1950s in the United States, where painting adopted a purist and self-referential character. In Colombia, the generation referred to, as well as the critics who accompanied these artists, achieved an independence of art from external normativity, both with regard to a tyranny of the canon or of what ought to be, and with regard to the interference of the Church and the State in the evaluation and circulation of works.

Beatriz González takes these findings as starting points and begins to question the nature of the image and representation—as has been observed so far—while also initiating an investigation into the limits of art. Insofar as she finds a field configured according to local conditions and possibilities, she can begin to question the nature of these outlined limits. The painter, then, simultaneously preserves and violates that particular autonomy.

In this way, González disturbs what until then was called "painting-painting," and incorporates into her works the use of forms, colors, and supports characteristic of the cultural contexts to which she alludes. Likewise, her approach to the universe of images coming from territories different from art history, as well as to the codes of sensibility and representation that distinguish them, allows her to transgress the limits of art, so that her work engages in dialogue with expressions characteristic of subgroups whose visual culture has been placed in a position of exclusion in relation to manifestations of modern art.

If the artist has reformulated the idea of printmaking, with the creation of her furniture, she conceptualizes the notion of "painting." In these works, she takes household furniture—bought or commissioned—and adds motifs that refer to the function commonly attributed to them. For this, she resorts to religious iconography as in the case of Salome (1974) where the biblical woman appears carrying the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The representation of the scene is supported by a large tray that seems to come from a communal dining room.

Beatriz González/ Salome /1974 /Enamel on metal sheet assembled on metal furniture

Within the iconography of religious art would also be the work Still Life (1970) which gives rise to her well-known series of furniture. In enamel on tin, the artist paints a version of the fallen Lord of Monserrate and assembles it, like a mattress, on a metal bed that she acquired in a commercial passage where handicrafts are sold. Likewise, in other works, she processes images that come from a 19th-century historical painting, and inserts them into another bed; in this case it is Mutis for the Forum (1973) which depicts the moment of Bolívar's death, originally painted by Pedro Quijano.

Beatriz González/ Still Life /1970 /Enamel on metal sheet assembled on metal furniture

By working with elements that lack modernist neutrality—enamel and tin—and interweaving them with objects loaded with specific connotations, the artist transcends traditional supports and techniques, expanding her pictorial thought into the realm of the third dimension. The artist claims her furniture as paintings rather than sculptures, and in this sense, she brings painting back to the frame while questioning the assumptions of this medium to redefine them. Thus, in her furniture, she dissociates the format from the idea of the stretcher; she transforms the illusionistic space of the Renaissance into experiential space; she detaches the conception of pigment from the notion of oil or acrylic, and she transforms the paintbrush into an artisan's brush. Likewise, she questions the idea of originality by transmuting images created by others, while also challenging the idea of authorship by working with objects that have been crafted by others, either handmade or industrially produced. In these works, painting becomes a form of thought or an artistic practice, rather than just a technique. The identity of painting, as something immutable and given, begins to acquire a mutable character, constructed in the very act of producing the works.

Finally, it can be stated that this painter's work allows for approach by an unprepared observer or one unfamiliar with the local environment, and at the same time offers multiple contextual connotations that add nuances to the interpretation of her paintings. In her work, therefore, tensions coexist between the general and the particular, or the global and the local, as do approaches that both validate and question the assumptions of modern art.