In most minds, the spotlight at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) is focused pretty narrowly on — what else? — books. So what were a bunch of art historians, art critics and gallery owners plus luminary artist Santiago Carbonell, who some call the best known painter living in Mexico, doing here this week?
The answer has to do with the sheer presence that the FIL has achieved.
Carbonell travels widely seeking inspiration for his hyperrealistic art. “Artists are the journalists of our times,” he quipped. “I always have my suitcase ready to travel.”
But this trip involved only the distance from his home in Queretaro to Guadalajara and the purpose was a relatively tame interlude of professional fraternization. At a conference of the International Association of Art Critics, which piggybacked on the FIL, Carbonell gave a talk on the relationship between artist and critic.
“The artist should be wherever things are happening,” Carbonell said, although he seemed so energized in his sneakers and so centered with his engaging conversation that it was easier to imagine him photographing a mujahideen hugging his girlfriend in the Hotel Peshawar, as he said he has done, rather than hobnobbing with academics.
But Carbonell apparently hangs out with both the high and the humble. On one hand, there are the academics, literati, gallery owners and even presidents. (He did somewhat controversial portraits of former Mexican president Felipe Calderon.) But on the other hand, he says he prefers “the art of the periphery,” such as the Amazon jungle, where “you might see a primitive person in huge earrings and then next to him a store selling Coca-Cola.”
Such creeping globalization explains why Carbonell feels the need to “go to places farther away than in the past.” In fact, he says that his next project involves the “Mitochondrial Eve,” and a group of women in war-torn East Africa who may represent a theoretical ancestor with a genetic link to all living women.
People attending Carbonell’s talk at the art criticism conference reported they were fascinated with his views and happy that the FIL indirectly gave them the opportunity to know him.
“The FIL is the most important book fair on the continent,” said well known reviewer Argelia Castillo, president of the Mexican section of the art critics association. “There are so many people here, so many books, and so many activities, including a lot of academic activities. I come every year.”