SOCIAL PLASTIC WORKSHOP,  Chile art collective 

JOSEPH BEUYS.  His presence in the art world in Chile.

In the sixties of the last century, Chile began to experience the concerns raised in Europe and its social movements aimed at modifying society to perhaps make it fairer. Although it is true that they did not have the political reach that was observed in other countries, in our country, they paved the way for more advanced and strongly ideological movements, so that they would be considered in the art world. In the three years of the Popular Unity (1971-1973), an unusual interest was awakened by the European left in Chile, which they considered a new experience of the conquest of power through democratic means, which led to a parade of artists and knowledge of new trends, from the national artistic world. After the military coup, the ideologized left of art embarked on the path of exile, to Europe, to begin to return in the eighties.

As a consequence of the political evolution of the country, the art world in Chile underwent a radical change in its composition and scope. From being a conservative country in terms of art education monopolized by the University of Chile and duly recognized artists' societies, it opens up the possibility that different trends can be integrated into the national art world, both formally and informally. Then, from being an island country, far from the rest of the world, the concept of globalization begins to be incorporated in all fields of national culture, which will be fully recognized at the beginning of this century.

The foregoing is significant to understand how the ideas of Joseph Beuys will be assimilated by a group of Chilean artists, who with posterity will declare themselves his followers. Under the art concepts of Beuys, the works of national artists will emerge and be incorporated into daily work.

In Chile, the most significant thing in art, of Beuys' presence, are his thoughts, which were not appreciated in our country until after the seventies. The first exhibition that made the artist's thought and work known was “Beuys affair”, in 1978. [1]

One reason was late knowledge, considering that communications were slow and segregated. The country was an island, far from the world, due to the distance and its borders, and only the artists who could leave the country and travel, became aware of what was happening in the art world. This lent itself so that the traveling artists, who went to study in Europe, mainly in Paris, were the transmitters of contemporary artistic currents. Upon arrival in Chile, they spread their knowledge, together with the execution of works, which had the features of works by foreign artists, of which they had become aware, which gave rise to even talk of plagiarism or falsification.

In the early 1980s, with their return from exile, Chilean artists brought with them knowledge and relationships with their European peers. The above allowed the

creation of an internal current that understood that art went beyond what was preached in cultural art centers.

This is how in 1975 the first exhibition "Beuys affairs" was presented, where the essence of the way of making art was revealed. For Beuys, "every human being is an artist" and every action, a work of art. With this expanded conception of art, he aroused a stir and debates throughout the world. Works of art were for Beuys as ephemeral as life. That is why he never wanted to create works for eternity, but to give impulses for reflection.

But it will be in the eighties when following the guidelines in the way that Beuys understood art explosively awakens. This phenomenon is caused by the political environment that existed in Chile, where the dictatorship maintained a tight control of all artistic expressions, since the idea that art is capable of creating awareness in the population of the need for a democracy , where free expression is certainly one of its attributes.

In this way, art actions, performances and exhibitions and plays with content considered subversive by the regime began. The intellectual struggle takes to the streets and its actors are the artists who take an ideological, confrontational position. Conceptual art will be the way to say what could be said, but without interpreting, in a language destined to bring together those opposed to the regime, without any ideological reach, only the return to democracy.

Beuys is present as an ideological influencer of the movement, and it is the artists of that time who bear witness to how they were attracted by his concepts, of open art, every man is an artist, social plastics, changes to education, the care of the environment, the changes of the elites in the art and the direct citizen participation.

It is this generation of artists, which, once democracy has been recovered, will pay homage to Beuys, acknowledging his influence and thanking him for his teaching. Others will deny it, despite having been influenced by the German artist.

At this time, a disagreement arises between political art and ideological art. The first seeks to make present the excesses and becomes a denouncer of the abuses of human dignity, the torture and disappearance of citizens by the DINA/CNI. Instead, ideological art is for armed struggle and the reconquest of power. In the art actions, they presumed that, by remembering the Popular Unity government, they could confront the population against the force of the dictatorship.

In the years of CADA its components wrote: "every man who works for the expansion, even mental, of their living spaces, is an artist", which contains the idea of every man an artist.

In 1978, the exhibition Recreating Goya took place at the Goethe Institut, in which more than 40 national artists from different trends in contemporary art participated and was curated by Ernesto Muñoz. This exhibition would be transcendental for the adoption of Beuys's ideas in Chile, because it made possible the meeting of various people from the art world, among whom were the future National Literature Prize winners, the writer Diamela Eltit and the poet Raúl Zurita, the artist Lotty Rosenfeld, artist Juan Castillo and sociologist Fernando Balcellis, who would be the creators of CADA

In 1979, the Colectivo de Acciones de Arte - CADA was formed as a group of artists from various disciplines, who, under the supposed avant-garde creation of art actions, made public opinion aware of how art became aware of nonsense of the dictatorship and how these acts had repercussions on the population, with a clear political intention.

In the opinion of the writer Diamela Eltit, the CADA group was inspired by the avant-gardes such as Happening and Conceptual Art, with Joseph Beuys as the most influential, including Social Sculpture and Expanded Art in its artistic manifesto. Beuys' idea of Expanded Art, where creativity must be awakened and encouraged so that each one, through it, can achieve freedom.

The artists Luz Donoso and Hernán Parada, lightning or support interventions, whose purpose was to denounce the disappearances of people at the hands of the CNI, artistic actions, consisting of making use of videos on televisions located in shop windows where they showed the faces of missing people. There were a large number of actions of this type, full of risk and that were perpetuated in the group due to their daring. Very similar to the actions of Beuys, which he carried out.

Among others, the art actions stand out, Autumn by Cecilia Vicuña and Soft Bodies by Juan Pablo Langlois carried out at the National Museum of Fine Arts, gestures that, although lost in history, mark precedents. Elías Adasme made a series of interventions called A Chile and Alfredo Jaar with his intervention Are you happy?

When the country returned to democracy in 1991, the Gabriela Mistral Gallery was inaugurated with the exhibition La Realidad Emergente, curated by Ernesto Muñoz, where post-dictatorship avant-garde artists were presented, seventeen artists with experimental works that combined cultures and visions of Chile , in the style of Beuys, with diverse elements

In June 1992, La Mirada Oculta, also curated by Ernesto Muñoz, was presented at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo La Mirada Oculta, an exhibition that caused a stir due to its content and avant-garde for the time. 17 artists of different tendencies participated, with a reference action: Las Dos Fridas. It will be in this sample where the presence of the master Beuys and his influence is shown, both in the content and in the elements that the artists used in their works.

His definitive recognition from the public and especially from the art world, were various Beuys exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1993 and 2014, and at the Museum of Visual Arts in 2016. In all of them a presentation is made of his works and an account of the different milestones that presented his life and his discourse on social and political aspects.

It can then be said that art in Chile has two periods: art before Beuys and art after Beuys.

Ernest Munoz,

President

International Association of Art Critics-AICA

Chilean chapter

[1] Essays on Visual Arts. Practices and discourses of the '70s and '80s in Chile, Fernanda Carvajal, María José Delpiano and Carla Macchiavello: ..“it is worth noting that the only artist who made direct reference to Beuys at that time was Ernesto Muñoz in his individual exhibition in the CAL Gallery in March 1978, entitled "Actions and Documentation on the Beuys event".

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