Appendix 1 Manifesto Los Disidentes1 We did not come to Paris to take classes in diplomacy, nor to acquire “culture” to serve our personal convenience. We came here to confront problems, to struggle with them, and to learn to call things by their real names. For this reason we cannot remain indifferent to the atmosphere of insincerity that constitutes Venezuela’s cultural reality. We intend to contribute to its improvement by ruthlessly attacking its defects, so that the blame may fall upon those truly responsible, or those who support them. A good deal of the work we have set out for ourselves is none of our business, but given the indifference of the people who should have made it their business, we have not hesitated to make it ours, and we will be as specific and detailed as possible. We are (and will continue to be) Venezuelan and we have been the first victims of this unfortunate state of things. Today we rebel against them and we speak out loudly because it is necessary. We go against all that we believe to be regressive or stagnant, against all functions under false pretenses. We have been the product of and witnesses to much nonsense, and we would be in a bad way ourselves if we could not speak our minds, in the way we believe is necessary. We have wanted to say “NO,” now and after “Los Disidentes.” “NO” is the tradition we want to establish. The Venezuelan “NO” that is so hard for us to say. “NO” to the false Salones de Arte Oficial. “NO” to that anachronistic archive of anachronisms called the Museo de Bellas Artes. “NO” to the Escuela de Bellas Artes Plásticas and its promotion of false Impressionists. “NO” to the exhibitions of national and foreign merchants who visit the Museo every year by the hundreds. “NO” to the false art critics. “NO” to the false folk-style musicians. “NO” to the false page-filling writers and poets. “NO” to the newspapers that support such absurd, and to the public that walks obediently to the slaughterhouse every day. We say no once and for all; to the Venezuelan consumatum est which will never be anything but a ruin. 1. Los Disidentes No.5, Septiembre, 1950, 1-2. Reproduced in Bélgica Rodríguez, La Pintura Abstracta en Venezuela 1945-1965. (Caracas, 1980), 243242. Translated by Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig.
78 |