Santero Arthur Lopez could save art's soul.
Noah Baumbach, young director of the new feature film
The Squid and The Whale
, recently characterized his effort as emotional and therefore a bit of a rebellion against the heavily intellectual New York environment in which he was raised. In so doing, Baumbach touches on a problem in creative culture that is only now beginning to fade away. Like cinema with pretensions of art rather than entertainment, much of visual art for the past 40 years has been focused on theory and concept. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with such a dynamic, when theory begins to refer to nothing but itself and conceptual art is more often self-referential than not and even history begins to exist only for the sake of wry reference and aggressive deconstruction, well, there's a certain amount of joy and emotion surrounding the artmaking process which is lost.
Emotional-centered artwork, too, is often at the core of exciting political, activist or popular works that easily resonate with broad audiences beyond the cultural elite. Unfortunately, work made purely from emotion tends to lack discipline in terms of craft, composition and a sense of historical context. The best artists, of course, span the intellectual/emotional divide, being trapped on neither side of what ought to be an imaginary gulf, and practice their trade with a sense of history and an eye on the present-
but these are rare birds. Rarer still is to find such sensibilities in fusion with traditional artisan work. So I was surprised recently, when touring the behemoth collection of a local aficionado, to stumble upon "It Is As It Was," a large carved
bulto
by local and much celebrated artist and
santero
Arthur Lopez.
Lopez, a Santa Fe native born with plentiful artistic aptitude, studied graphic design in college-it's not like he was going to make a living being a fine artist, right?-and spent nine years slogging on glossy projects for fancy clients in Los Angeles. En route to a big job for Macy's in New York, he passed through Santa Fe only to learn that his father had come down with cancer. His plans derailed by the need to help care for his father, Lopez began painting and drawing without a particular client in mind. On a visit to Spanish Market he saw
santos, bultos
and other carved work and thought, "I could do that." Turns out he could, and rather well. Lopez' work was accepted into Spanish Market the first year he applied and he's been a staple ever since. In 2005, one of his pieces was the Spanish Market poster-and you know you're a badass when your work is promoting the largest exhibition of traditional Hispanic arts in the country. Lopez also began a relationship with Parks Gallery in Taos early on in his career and the less restrictive gallery environment has allowed him to push the boundaries of his very traditional craft.
"Many artists say we're confined because Spanish Market focuses on traditional work," Lopez says, "but even if you count Winter Market, that's only four days-you've got the rest of the year to do what you like-don't let one show define the kind of artist you are."
Or one kind of expression. By 2003, Lopez was making some pretty explosive work. Depicting Saint Lucas not as a delicate portrait artist painting Mary, but as a tattoo artist emblazoning a Guadalupe on a prisoner's back isn't too big of a leap, nor perhaps was depicting Cayetano, patron saint of bread, labor, the unemployed and gambling as being crucified on a Wheel of Fortune, pushing things too far. But "Forgive Me, Son for I Have Sinned" in which a priest is confessing to an altar boy, took all the beauty, detail and composition of a craft largely inspired by the Church and made an uncharacteristically bold and outspoken statement.
"It's not an attack on the Church," says Lopez. "It's more of a truth-it's stating an obvious truth that a lot of people choose not to see." And Lopez wasn't done yet with his "obvious truths" about the Church. In "It Is As It Was"-a reference to the last Pope's characterization of Mel Gibson's
The Passion of the Christ
-a mass is assembled below a papal figure, among them a nun who isn't allowed to enter the priesthood, an impoverished pregnant woman painfully honoring the Church's ban on contraceptives, a shame-faced altar boy, several gay couples and graves from both worldwide AIDS victims and the Holocaust. The Pope in the piece, not a specific individual but meant to represent the Church as a whole, has his back turned to all of these forms of suffering and injustice. "The Church has turned its back on certain problems and individuals," says Lopez. "That has nothing to do with my faith; I consider myself to be a devout Catholic, I just don't agree with everything."
Indeed, Lopez imagines a day when the Catholic Church is a welcoming and open force rather than a closed and restrictive one. He sees hope, for one, in the fact that he hasn't been shunned for speaking out through his artwork. In a town where crowds seemed ready a few years ago to stone Los Angeles artist Alma Lopez for her digital depiction of the Virgin in a floral bikini at the Museum of International Folk Art, that's a big step. Maybe when Arthur Lopez has mended the rifts in the Church, he can set his sights on fixing the art world. Then again, maybe he already has.
