Reviews - Hugo Crosthwaite

Reviews

Hugo Crosthwaite by Edward Lucie- Smith, July 2005, Arte al Dia, english spanish
Hugo Crosthwaite by Edward Lucie- Smith May 2005, Arte al Dia
Hugo Crosthwaite by Eileen Spiegler, April 2005, The Miami Herald
Hugo Crosthwaite by Alfredo Triff, March 2005, Miami New Times

HUGO CROSTHWAITE
A New Post-Modernist
By Edward Lucie-Smith (London)

Hugo Crosthwaite is a formidably gifted draftsman who belongs to a part of the Mexican and indeed the whole Latin American tradition somewhat removed from the areas occupied by either the tres groiules – the three great Mexican muralists – or the new generation of urban conceptualists now active in Mexico City. A number of Latin American artists look back to the Hispanic realism of the 17th century, imported into Latin America both through the medium of prints – mostly made in Antwerp rather than in Spain itself – and through exports from the studio of Zurbarán, which seems to have had a flourishing trade with the Spanish-speaking territories of the New World.

The residual Baroque element is extremely visible in Crosthwaite's work. It is, nevertheless, a form of the Baroque shot through with Surrealism. When Andre Breton arrived in Mexico and declared that certain Mexican artists, among them Frida Kahlo, were "naturally surrealist", he enunciated a truth that was profounder than he knew. What he sensed was the clash of cultures and the profound sense of the magical that have always been typical of Latin American culture. It is not surprising that Post Modernist ideas found fertile soil in Latin America, since Latin American artists, though fascinated by European Modernism from the mid-1920s onwards, had never felt completely comfortable with aspects of the Modernist enterprise – least of all, perhaps, with its inherent elitism. There arc a number of important Latin American artists who were Post Modernist almost before the whole idea of Post Modernism was invented. They include Jose Luis Cuevas and Rafael Coronel in Mexico, Jacobo Borges in Venezuela and Jose Gamarra, originally from Uruguay, but long resident in Paris. Crosthwaite's work is essentially a new manifestation of this long-established tendency. What these exemplars inspire them to do is to marry a feeling for what is grotesque – sometimes monstrous – with aspects of what can loosely be called classicism.

The fact that Crosthwaite's work is always in black-and-white, and often on a very large scale, concentrates one's attention both on his extremely secure grasp of form, and also on the fact that these forms are not arranged in a wholly rational way. In fact, the spectator is presented with a phantasmagoria. The artist is both horrified by the cruelty of the world and fascinated by the way in which what is grotesque becomes in a perverse way beautiful.

The exhibition at the ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Miami provided an experience whose impact lingered for some time in the imagination.

The Baroque art of the 17th century was, in its most essential form, an art of empathy. When we think about it now, we tend to think first of religious compositions, such as Rubens's Raising of the Cross or Caravaggio's Entombment and Flagellation, not of the almost equally numerous works that celebrate worldly glory.

The roots of this empathetic approach are to be found in the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Loyola's Spiritual Exercises encourage the Christian worshipper to identify closely with the sufferings of Christ and the saints. Baroque art for churches is designed to focus the senses as well as the mind — for modern spectators it endows acute physical suffering with an erotic glamour that, for contemporary taste, often seems inappropriate, but which, to the generations that immediately followed that of Loyola himself, seemed admirable and even comforting.

As an artist working in the opening years of the 21st century, Crosthwaite is operating in a world where the suffering is not visibly less, but where the certainties of Counter Reformation Christianity have almost entirely collapsed. His images are a reflection of this situation.
In a brief text written recently, he says: "My art is the means to define my life. My drawings allow me to fully express my longings, my fears and my hopes. All of my joy is drafted in black and white, and my trust is affirmed by the testament of a body of work that measures my character, as well as symbolizing the transfiguration of my love and my desires."

It goes without saying that this is not an attitude that the audience of the 17th century would have understood. Seventeenth-century artists would not have understood it either. What Crosthwaite has to say is clearly the product of a post-Romantic sensibility — of something that, in artistic terms, was developed in successive stages through the personalities of, first, Delacroix and Courbet; then Van Gogh and Gauguin.

What happens in his art is not only that the Baroque is deliberately drained of colour, but that it becomes fragmented. The spectator is presented with a universe that is being, almost literally, torn joint from joint — where, compositionally as well as emotionally, nothing quite fits together. This serves, not as a moral emblem, which would be the function of a conventionally religious work, but as a testimony of the artist's state of mind at the moment when the piece was created.

The first major exhibition of works by Hugo Crosthwaite, a 33-year-old artist from Tijuana, Mexico, is presently being held at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, Florida. The Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego recently acquired a 16-foot drawing, which will be included in a major exhibition in 2006, and Virginia Miller placed another of Crosthwaite's works in the permanent collection of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California. The artist also has been nominated for the Artes Mundi prize, awarded in Wales, United Kingdom, to artists who have achieved recognition in their own country and are emerging internationally, and is a finalist for the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

top

HUGO CROSTHWAITE
Un Nuevo Posmoderno
por Edward Lucie-Smith (Londres)

Hugo Crosthwaite es un dibujante excepcionalmente talentoso que pertenece a un segmento de la tradicion mexicana, y por cierto de Latinoamerica toda, algo alejada de las areas ocupadas ya sea por Los Tres Grandes –los tres grandes muralistas mexicanos– o por las nuevas generaciones de conceptualistas urbanos que trabajan actualmente en la Ciudad de Mexico. Hay una cantidad de artistas latinoamericanos que vuelven su mirada hacia el realismo hispanico del Siglo XVII introducido en Latinoamerica tan-to a traves del grabado –sobre todo por aquellos exponentes provenientes de Amberes mas que de Espana misma– y de las obras exportadas por el taller de Zurbaran, que parece haber mantenido un comercio floreciente con los territorios de habla hispana en el Nuevo Mundo.

El elemento barroco residual es extremadamente visible en la obra de Crosthwaite. Es, sin embargo, una forma del barroco tenida de surrealismo. Cuando Andre Breton Ilego a Mexico y declaro que ciertos artistas mexicanos, entre ellos Frida Kahlo, eran "naturalmente surrealistas", enuncio una verdad mucho mas profunda de lo que hubiera podido suponer.
Lo que presintio fue el choque de culturas y el profundo sentido de lo magico que siempre han caracterizado a la cultura latinoamericana. No es sorprendente que las ideas posmodernistas hayan encontrado suelo fertil en America Latina, ya que los artistas latinoamericanos, aunque fascinados con el modernismo europeo a partir de mediados de la decada•de 1920 en adelante, nunca se sintieron del todo a gusto con algunos aspectos del proyecto modernista –menos que menos, quiz's, con su inherente elitismo. Un gran numero de importantes artistas latinoamericanos fueron posmodernos aun antes de que se inventara la idea del postmodernismo. Entre ellos se incluyen Jose Luis Cuevas y Rafael Coronel en Mexico, Jacobo Borges en Venezuela y Jose Gamarra, originariamente de Uruguay, pero residente en Paris durante muchos anos. La obra de Crosthwaite es esencialmente una nueva manifestacibn de esta tendencia de larga data.

Inspirandose en los antiguos maestros, estos artistas combinan una cierta sensibilidad para lo grotesco –a veces lo monstruosocon aspectos de lo que podria definirse de una forma general como clasicismo.

El hecho de que Crosthwaite siempre realice su obra en blanco y negro y a menudo en gran formato concentra la atencibn del espectador tanto en su dominio extremadamente seguro de la forma como en el hecho de que estas formas no se encuentran organizadas de una manera totalmente rational. En realidad, lo que se le presenta al espectador es una fantasmagoria. Al artista le horroriza la crueldad del mundo y al mismo tempo le fascina la forma en que lo grotesco, de una manera perversa, se vuelve bello. La muestra en Virginia Miller Galleries de Miami ofrecio una experiencia cuyo impacto perdurara largamente en la imagination.

El arte barroco del siglo XVII fue, en su forma mas esencial, un arte de la empatia. Cuando pensamos en el en la actualidad, tendemos a asociarlo en primer termino con composiciones religiosas como La erection de la Cruz, de Rubens, o El entierro de Cristo y La flagelacion, de Caravaggio, y no con el numero casi equivalente de obras que celebran la gloria mundana.

Las raices de este enfoque basado en la empatia deben buscarse en las ensenanzas de San Ignacio de Loyola. Los Ejercicios Espirituales de Loyola impulsaron al devoto cristiano a identificarse intimamente con el sufrimiento de Cristo y de los cantos. El arte barroco utilizado en las Iglesias esta disenado para apelar a los sentidos tanto como a la mente —para el espectador actual, reviste al sufrimiento fisico agudo con un glamour erotico que a menudo resulta inapropiado para el gusto moderno pero que las generaciones inmediatamente posteriores a la de Loyola encontraron admirable y aun reconfortante.

Como artista que trabaja en los arms inaugurates del siglo XXI, Crosthwaite opera en un mundo en el que el sufrimiento no se ha reducido visiblemente, a la vez que las certezas de la Contrarreforma cristiana han colapsado casi por completo. Sus imagenes son un reflejo de esta situation.

En un breve texto escrito recientemente, manifiesta: "Mi arte es el medio que define mi vida. Mis dibujos me permiten expresar plenamente mis anhelos, mis miedos y mis esperanzas. Toda mi alegria esta esbozada en blanco y negro y mi confianza es avalada por el testamento de una obra que evalua mi caracter, al tiempo que simboliza la transfiguration de mi amor y mis deseos".

De mas esta decir que una audiencia del siglo XVII no habria comprendido esta actitud. Tampoco la habrian comprendido los artistas del Siglo XVII. Lo que Crosthwaite tiene para decir es claramente el producto de una sensibilidad post romantica, de algo que en terminos artisticos se desarrollo en sucesivas etapas a traves de la personalidad de Delacroix y Courbet en primer termino, y luego de la de Van Gogh y Gauguin.

Lo que sucede en su obra no es solamente que el barroco es deliberadamente despojado de todo color, sino que tambien se fragmenta. Al espectador se le presenta un universo que esta siendo casi literalmente dislocado, desarticulado, donde, tanto desde el punto de vista compositive como del emotional, nada parece realmente encajar. Esto sirve no como emblema moral —tal seria la funcion de una obra religiosa conventional- sino como testimonio del estado de animo del artista en el momento de la creation de la pieza.

La primera exposition de envergadura de las obras de Hugo Crosthwaite, un artista de 33 anos oriundo de Tijuana, Mexico, esta siendo presentada en ArtSpaceNirginia Miller Galleries, Coral Gables, Florida. El Museo de San Diego adquirio recientemente un dibujo de 5 metros, que sera incluido en una exposition de primera magnitud el ano entrante, y Virginia Miller co-loco otra de las obras de Crosthwaite en la coleccion permanente del Museo de Arte Latinoamericano en Long Beach, California. El artista tambien ha sido nominado como candidato al premio Artes Mundi, que se otorga en Gales, Reino Unido, a los artistas que han obtenido reconocimiento en sus países de origen y estan emergiendo en el ambito international, y es finalista en la Bienal de Whitney del 2006.

top

Hugo Crosthwaite: ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries

by Edward Lucie- Smith
Arte Al Dia Magazine, May 2005

There are a number of important Latin American artists who were Post Modernist almost before the whole idea of Post Modernism was invented. They include José Luis Cuevas and Rafael Coronel in Mexico, Jacobo Borges in Venezuela and José Gamarra, originally from Uruguay, but long resident in Paris. Crosthwaite's work is essentially a new manifestation of this long-established tendency.
As his work shows, Latin American artists of this type look back beyond Modernism to the main Hispanic tradition -in particular to Goya, but also to aspects of Velazquez and perhaps also to certain paintings by Ribera.

What these exemplars inspire them to do is to marry a feeling for what is grotesque - sometimes monstrous - with aspects of classicism. The fact that Crosthwaite's work is always in black-and-white, and often on a very large scale, concentrates one's attention both on his extremely secure grasp of form, and also on the fact that these forms are not arranged in a wholly rational way. In fact, the spectator is presented with a phantasmagoria. The artist is both horrified by the cruelty of the world and fascinated by the way in which what is grotesque becomes in a perverse way beautiful. The exhibition at the Virginia Miller Galleries in Miami provides an experience whose impact lingers for some time in the imagination.

top

Critic's Pick

by Eileen Spiegler
The Miami Herald, Friday April 1st 2005

Viewing the charcoal drawings in Hugo Crosthwaite's new show, Maniera Obscura/In a Dark Manner 1998-2005, is a little like being sucked into a time machine, hurtling past Greek mythological figures, Joan of Arc, Dante's Divine Comedy and landing in the middle of 19th century Romanticism. Crosthwaite pays homage to masters as diverse as Velazquez and Duchamp, whose Surrealistic style he employs on his guitar player in Tocando /as cuerdas (Touching the Chords). The trip is bewildering and exhilarating. The exhibit opens today with a reception from 7-10 p.m. at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, 169 Madeira Ave. in Coral Gables. The show runs through May 30. For information, call 305-444-4493 or visit www.virginiamiller.com.

top

In a Dark Manner: 1998-2005

by Alfredo Triff
Miami New Times, March, 24th 2005

In a Dark Manner: 1998-2005: The drawings of Mexican painter Hugo Crosthwaite borrow from plenty of disparate sources: José Guadalupe Posada; Mexican novelétas; Baroque figuration; daguerreotype; and the Mexican fascination with death, suffering, and deformity. To top it off, imagine this narrative against the hackneyed urban landscapes of contemporary Tijuana, a surrealist collage of decay and misery -- as if out of Paco Ignacio Taibo's noir novels. Crosthwaite's explorations of today's actual issues in Pescadores (dealing with prostitution on the U.S.-Mexican border), Beso Escondido (looking at transvestism), or in his Bartolomé (refracting the Abu Ghraib scandal) are momentous and -- against all this human drama -- even hopeful. -- Alfredo Triff Through May 30. ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, 169 Madeira Ave., Coral Gables; 305-444-4493.

top