Reinventing the landscape of the Canary Island

              NEXUS
If I were asked to single out the most
noteworthy development in painting in
the Canary Islands over the last two
decades, I would venture to say the re-creation
of island landscapes. We
should consider the iniportance and
originahty of this re-vision of nature
within the context of an artistic and
ideological debate which began in the
19th century and reached its prime
during the avant-garde period on the
islands.
AN ATLANTIC ARCADIA
1- In order to see the island landscape,
19th century artists found themselves
obligad to idealize it. Cirilo Truilhés
and Nicolás Alfaro's romantic
landscapes were idealizations of island
nature. Their images of pastoral Ufe
reflected the myth of an Atlantic
Arcadia, inspired by the classical
paradigm of happiness which reigned in
the Carden of the Hesperides, according
to the legend.
This romanticism also found its
expression in the exaltation of local
folklore; praising the characteristics of
the rural island population.
Romanticism always tends to take
advantage of popular customs in order
to emphasize a sense of identity. And
Reinventing
á e Landscape
ofáe Canary
Islands
although it may seem paradoxical, the
first attempts to introduce iconographic
models for this genre of regional art and
traditional landscapes in the Canary
Islands (from the foreigner's point of
view) were the landscapes of the English
colony in Valle de la Orotava (Edwards,
Alfred Diston, etc.) and Williams'
etchings illustrating Berthelot's work.
There is really no contradiction between
aesthetic idealization and the ideology of
regional art because, despite its
supposed commitment to reality, local
art is always an idealization. These two
aesthetic foundations sustained the
ideology of artistic regionalism in the
Canary Islands during the latter half of
the 19th centurj' and the first three
decades of the 20th.
In order to understand this
ideology we should consider the
aesthetic principies of the Regionalist
School of La Laguna. Here I would like
to point out some origins of the
iconography advocated by this school in
order to express their regionalist view of
the Canary Islands.
a) Firstly, the aesthetic basis of the
poets from the Regionalist School
involved a precise, delightful
representation of island landscapes,
which had not been achieved since
Cairasco de Figueroa's description of the
Doramas Forest. See, for example,
Nicolás Estévanez's "Canarias" and
Tabares Barlett's "La Caza" or "El Salto
del Negro". These examples show that
there is no longer a legitímate
mythological grounding: here, the scenic
descriptions - local images from the
vegetable or mineral world - reveal a
power of observation whose intention is
clearly ideological rather than merely
aesthetic. The regionalism in
Estévanez's poetry is not anecdotal; it
rises to the higher plañe of profoundly
nationalist feeling, albeit within a
romantic notion. The idea of the
homeland transmitted by these poems
tums the images of island nature (cliffs,
mountains, forests) into symbols of
coUective identity; as if the very essence
CENTSO «lANTCO M « T í MOOÍDNO
17B
of the Canary Islands could only be
inferred by describiiig llie characteristics
of its laiídscape.
It is theref'ore worlh noting ihal
the above-mentioned poels, particidarly
Tabares Barletí and Nicolás Estévanez,
had alrcady reflecled on the islands''
native vegelation in some of their mosí
iniportant works, before the painters of
the Lujan Sciiool began lo tuní their
attention to il. Nevertheless, the
idcological meaning bciiind the iinages
was quile dilfereut, as wc sliall see laler.
b). The second soio'ce of
iconograpiív is ui'baii i-alher than rural.
It is the image of La Laguna as a dead
citv: a heraldic svnii)ol of the decline of
a ('iilture and way of life. lis inossy
stones appear in the poenis infused with
historie significance. The niodel was
Bruges, the dead city, whose enigmatic
scenery appeared in nuieh of ihe poetry
of the Belgian svmbolists. It is a shanie
that no painlcí' íroin the Canary Islands
illuslraled Verdugo's admirable verses
about the íVontier citv at that time, as
Fernand Khnopff had done with
Rodenbach's poetic narrative about
Bruges (Bniges-la-Morl. 1892). And so,
lowards the end of ihe 19lh cenlury. La
Laguna svmbolized a gliost town; its
architeclure conceaied the treasured
relies of an aristocratic society
threalened by the unsloppable rise of the
two island capitals, whose busy porls
encouraged the social mobility which
reflected the emei'ging middle class
ideology. La Laguna became the
allegorical iuiage of slopped lime. That
is how it was seen by the poets: a dead
city which rejected the idea of progress,
as well as the concepl of time. What the
poets of the Regionalist School of La
Lagiuia portrayed in their images was a
melancholic crystallization of history.
c). The third source did nol
influence the visual arts of the time
Gonzalo Guiizálcz. "Ndriiinio \ Oil on
canvas. 1995. 130 x 130 cm.
either. Here I refer to the neo-Vianist
poetic movement, dedicated to idealizing
the Guanche people. But despite ihe
exaltation of the victim (rcpresented bv
the aborigines of the Canary Islands)
over the tyrant (svmbolized bv the
irivaders), the nobility always won in the
etid and the valué of bolh sides was
extoUed. Tliis idealization of tiie good
savage had already appeared not onlv in
the Poema de l'iaiía., but also in the
work of otir great historian Viera y
Clavijo. On the whole, except for some
images in Gumersindo Robayna's and
González Méndez's work, the
represenfation of aboriginal life iu the
Canary Islands was not as iin])ortant in
19tli centurv painting as in the poetrv of
the Regionalist School of La Laguna.
d) Finallv we should add that
regionalism s iconogra]3h\' was not
limited purelv to iniages of the
countryside and the citv of La Laguna.
Folklore also played an hnisortant role in
their poems, with portrayals of cotmtrv
men and women in the pastures. Nearly
all the poets sang the praises of the
"Folia' in their verses, and described
i(K llic images of countrv life. One
example of ihis is Tabares Barlett's
poem "La Lecliera ; the iconographic
model for the images of countrv folk
\\-hicli Ángel Romero Mateos aiid Pedro
de Cuezala later captured on canvas in
their subgenera of regional art úi the
Canary Islands: the paintings of
"magas".
Therefore, in order to reconstruct
the history of landscape painting in the
Canarv Islands, which is the central
tlieme of this article, we .should be aware
of the ideological link between the
poetry of the Regionalist School of La
Laguna and the beginnings of landscape
painting and regional art in the islands.
These four ideological sub-groups
of island images show us that, when the
Canary Islands wanted to reassess itself,
when it wanted to reallv know itself for
the first time, its only resourccs were
allegory (La Laguna as a dead city,
compared with the modern-foreign
urban landscape in Santa Cruz or Las
Palmas) or the idealized regionalism of
the islands. In the 19th century and the
earlv 2üth centurv there was no
alternative to the cultural dependence
which the islaiids liad suffei-ed until
tlieii: diere was onlv regioiíalisui, widí
all its clichés, or foreigii influeiices, both
in nainlhig and poetry. Here 1 ref'er only
to the reí'ereiitial f'unction of images (the
icüiiographv) and to the representational
conteiit, siiice iii terms of ianguage, the
work of these artists was obviouslv no
more than aii assimilation of both
po|jular realisin and svmbolism froni
elsevvhere in Europe.
The svnibolist idealization of
island life reached more extensive and
reCined heights in the city of Las Pahnas
in the early 19th century. 1 refer to the
poeti'v of Tomás Morales and Néstor de
la Torres painthigs. Theirs was no
longer the oíd svmbolism of the dead
citv, or the oíd obliging popular
regionalism, with those images of the
Canarv Islantls from the poetry of the
Regionalist School of La Laguna and
later the watercoloiu-s of the first cjiíarter
of the 20th century. To the contrary,
both Tomás and Néstor porti'ayed a
more optimistic, even Iriuinphant
cosmopolitanism in the Cíanary Islands.
The former depicted the ports and
cominercial áreas, whereas the latter
illustrated the mytli of the Carden of the
Hesperides with a greater poetic
emphasis thau any otiier artist from the
Canary Islands. It was therefore a
refined, cosniopolitan, idealization of the
Canaries: a far crv Ironi tliat of the
Regionaliíst School of La I^aguna and the
watercolour artists. Neverlheless, bolh
were idealizations all the same.
THE L U Í A N PÉREZ SCHOOL OR
QUESTIONINC THE CONCEPT OF
REALITY
The concept of realilv did not arise in
the art of the Canarv Islands until the
avant-garde period. Their rejection of
both the anecdotal approach and the
Gonzalo González, '.Nuciui'ni) , Oil on
canvas. 1995. 130 x 130 cni.
uncrilical e.xaltation of countrv lile led to
a search for the truc island landscape
and social realilv. Previouslv I poinled
oiU liow tlie first attempts to carrv out a
kind of self-assessment in art (of both
the landsca])e and the wav of life), liad
again resulted in itiealizatiou, so thal Üie
rejaresentations of the C^anary Islands
were no more than aspects of falsified
nature and society.
Jnan Manuel frujillo. oiie of the
first avant-garde intellectnals in the
Canaries, once said that "'the Canary
Islands are unaware of themselves and
are unaware that tliey are unaware . In
short, tliey believe they possess selí-knowledae.
biU in fact thev do not. The
avant-garde considered regioualism a
counterfeit of reaiity. For aitists, llie
Canarv Islands were vet to be
discovered.
The painters of the Lujan School
reacted against both regionalisni and
symbolism. In the early 30's, with the
first attempts to combine avant-garde
linguistic experiments and a new visión
of island landscape and reaiity, the
aesthetics of the surviving Regionalist
poets and painters were called into
(piestion. Some, like the poet Manuel
Verdugo, made quite extreme counter-attacks.
For the author of Estelas,
enamored of Greek culture, the
aggressive iconography of the avant-garde
artists in the Canaries must have
been even more intolerable than for any
other poet of the Regionalist School of
La Laguna. The way the painter Aguiar
úisulted the avant-garde artists in liis
diary reflects the regionalists" feelings of
dismay at the arrival of sucli trends in
the islands.
The magazines Ln Rosa de los
Vientos and Gaceta de Arte both
criticized regioualism and its supporters,
whorn Ernesto Pestaña Nóbrega called
"regionalist customs officers'. This
metaphor shows that, for avant-garde
cosmopolitanism and internatioiíalisni,
there cotdd be iiotliing worse (han the
construction of liarriers to the free
circulation of aitistic ideas.
La Laguna thus and its
significance as a dead city played no
|)arl in llie islands' artistic development;
it was no more than a reference point in
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174
historv. Iii tlieir attempt to iiivoke iife
and progress, the iiew artists wanted to
go bevoiid what thev perceived as the
artistic paraivsis of the Regioiíahst
School. This was their iiiotto: no more
folklore, no more historv. Or, as Pedro
García Cabrera said: "No straw liats
from Tenerife or island mantillas. These
are splashes of local color. Biit they ca:i
never be the central themes of art. That
is not regional feeling" ("El hombre en
función del paisaje', 1930).
However. avant-garde essentialism
in the Canarv Islands was open to a new
interpretation of regional lile. Ernesto
Pestaña Nóbrega, the critic from
Tenerife who liad previously coined the
pejorative term "regionalist cnstoms
officers", did distinguish betvveen good
and bad regionalism when he visited the
first exhibition in Tenerife of the yoimg
artists from the Lnján Pérez School: the
distinction between anecdotal, regional
art on the oiie hand, and essentialism on
the other.
THE 80'S: REINVENTING THE
LANDSCAPE OF THE CANARY
ISLANDS
This distinction fueled the debate about
landscape painthig in the Canary Islands
up until the niid-1980's. Around that
time, the reinterpretation of island
landscapes became a task of the iitmost
importance. Here I refer particnlarly to
the work of three artists from the so-called
Generation of the 70''s: Juan José
Gil, Gonzalo González and Juan
Hernández: and two others from a
previous generation; Pedi'o González (a
kev figure of the 60 s) and the poet and
palmer Manuel Padorno who, as a
theorist. was Ihiked to Manolo Millares
and Martín Ghirino in the 50 s and 00 s.
Within the context of tiie crisis of
avant-garde ideas, a reinterpretation of
,lu;ia José Gil, '-Orilla XIII'. l<)i).i. ÍU) .N i!0 raí
the island landscape became essential.
This involvetl t|uestioning the concept of
realitv first developed bv artists in the
30 s: this time, not from a social or
ideológica! perspective as in Felo
Monzones work. InU from a
phenomenoligical., poetic view]30int.
Recon.sidering the i.sland landscape
is a poetic task, in the seiise that w lien
the creator enibarks on the restoration of
the concept of natural realitv, he does
not renounce the critical capacitv of
subjectivity. The phenomenological
reduction which the subject establishes
becomes an innovatory experience ralher
than a redemptive ideology, e.xchidiiig
the naive idea of objectivitv.
Reconsidering the island landscape is
also a wav to greater knowledge, in that
it reveáis nol what is visible. Imt what is
possible: not the appearance. bm the
verv essence of the |)henomenon.
Here we shouid |)oint oiit that the
work of these artists is closelv liiiked to
Pedro García C'abrera's reflections on
the landscape in articles such as "El
lioml)re en l'uncié)ii del paisaje " or
"l'eoría de un día gris", as well as
Agustín Espinosa s "Lancelot'' and
Andrés de Lorenzo Gáceres "Isla de
pmmisión'.
Jnst like the above-nienlioned
paintcrs, the motto of these avant-garde
writers was also the reinvention of the
landscape in the Canarv Islands.
Towards the mid-80 s, Gonzalo
González was painting iieo-romantic
visions of the island scentírv. The
aesthetic eniotion slirred by sucli images
put liim in the romantic categorv of the
sublime, whose onlv preceden! in our
tradition are the Paisíi/cs cóxiiiicos of the
sm-realist artist Osear Domínguez. The
desolalion of these terrilories of fire
seems to illustrate the following lines of
poetrv l)V Pedro García Cabrera: "the
lava was the rock/ that souglit l'reedom
antl burned in the wings/ of the fire-bird:
it is all that reiiuüus/ of a paradise
of golden apples .
These burned landscapes signalled
the end of the benign visión of the idylhc
Canarv Islands as described in the mvth
of the (iaideii of Hesperides. Alreadv in
the 60's and 70's, César Manrique liad
mitm
tried to de-dranialize ihe count.r)''s
sceiiery, altliougli liis |)aiiitings are really
abslract visions of \'olcaiiic nature ratlier
thaii landscapes as sucli. Wliat Conzalo
González's paintings porti-ay is quite tlie
opposile: a neo-roiiiantic drairialization
of tlie landscape.
We coLild say thal some of
Gonzalo González's paintings depiel tlie
landscape as it is seen froni tlie middle
of the niost mountainoiis island,
according to the pheaonienologieal
viewpoint wliii'li Pedro García Cabrera
described admirably:
"The nioinitain doininates the
north of the island. drawiiig ils
to]30gra]3hv with vertical strokes,
incising the sea. In the soulh it faUs
away in hilly slopes, its gentle cur\'es
lapped by sand>- beaches. Then the
open bhíe of a round horizon: flatness.
The landscape of the Canary Islands. to
a certaiii extent, is tvvo-fold - bolh fíat
plains and niountains (...). And even
when (he inhaljitaiits, fleeing froni the
sea. froni the sea-borne invaders, climb
ui) inlo ihe inoinitaiiis, their horizon is
the sky iip thei'e and not down below, as
if it could exlricate itself froni tlie liigh
position oí ihe viewer. Froin the
settlenienl, the slopes descend to the
water's edge. iM-om the beach, the sea
rises to the horizon. In ihis
crystallographic geometry, the flatness of
the sea and the earth forin a right angle
whose edge would be lite sliore. The
seenery, then. portrays a relevant de]Mh.
A de|)th soaked in grays. The clouds
regúlate the extensión of the landscape.
There is a cleariy living inechanism.
Tlie distant balance of clear, static days,
when the horizon is defined by a perfect,
classical, majestic stroke, is broken by
the presence of gray. Dark avalanches
take possession of the whole panorama;
ihe rich blue vein contracts, fades and
disappears. The field of visión grows
.limii .|(.,r Cil. Orilla . \ . \ ' . 1<)93. 70 .x 70 (
smaller; it shortens in direct proportion
to the intensity of grays. To the island
no sea comes; paths. Froni the island no
sea leaves: treading paths also " ("Paisaje
de isla. Estudio del día gris". Algas,
19.35).
The link between distance and
proximity underlies the entire pictorial
language of Gonzalo (íonztilez, in (he
musical sense of repetition, lo wliich
Pedro García Cabrera also refers:
"The arl of island dwellers is that
of repetition. Of variations on a thenie' .
(...) "This action of the s|)irit,
coninnuiicated to the body, makes him
tnrn like a spiíuiing to|). And he soon
exhausts the narrow field of the island.
Then he has to go over and over the
same landscape. This is where a split
occurs. Either the reiteration of the same
things over and over (wherein island art
is rnonotonous). Or arhythm -
dissonance - as a consequence of
inaction". (Pedro García Cabrera:
"Til hombre en función del pai.sjae",
1930).
There is dissonance in Gonzalo
González's seascapes: dissonance and
dizzi:iess resulting from the
contemplator's inaction: accortling to
García Cabrera, ''island tlwellers are
contemplative. That is. dreamers.
Dreairiing is a rapid forní of activily.
The capacity to dreaní is directly
proportional to the dynamism of the
landscape . There is dynamism and
calm in Gonzalo González's paintings
which, in the light of Pedro García
Cabrera s theory of landscape, seems to
reflect the musical condition which
permeates the aesthetic sensitivity of
island-dwellers: serenity and dizziness,
melodv and rhytluu. The Baroque
nature of liis ])ainlhig is musical, like the
music created bv Baro(|ne architecture,
but also like |)aintings by Rubens: as if
the obsessive repetition of one eiement
were the portrayal, in scidpture, music
or painting, of Esquilo^ image of "the
countless laughter of the waves".
In Juan José Gil's work, the
reinvention of the landscape uses water
as the poetic eiement. ll is also musical
painting, as Pedro García Clabrera
stated:
175
"A musical feeling predominates in
island dwellers. Therein lies distant
love. But it is an active love, a dynamic
distance which moves nearer or fuither
according to the clouds and melancholia.
Sea, horizon, music, melancholy: this is
the island soul. The land is like the
orchestra at the cinema. Before the film
- water - the sonorous Unes, the
A luminous outlines become hazy and all
T
L that remains is the impression of a
confused stain of sounds. Absorption of
^ distance, complete" (Pedro García
•^ Cabrera: "Paisaje de isla. Estudio del día
A
m g™ )•
i I think that some of Juan José Gil's
n
' series from the 80's, based on the island
n landscape, are a result of this musical
a
'. feeling which belongs to island dwellers,
o
n described so precisely by Pedro García
a
Cabrera in the 30's. I refer particularly
to two of his most successful series:
"Paraislas" and "Fragmentos de la isla
de San Borondón". There is an almost
Wagner-like feeling radiating through
these works, both in an ancestral,
mythical sense, and in the sense of roots.
In the first series, the music is the
experience of what is out of reach; a
symbolist evocation of an other-island
("paraisla"). The musical harmony
evokes a weightless world, a more
transparent place. Whereas in
"Fragmentos de la isla de San Boron­dón",
the musical concept is one of
ruins. It implies an Atlantic
"Gotterdamerung". Ghostly music
which sounds through the thick fog,
inviting US to dream of "a former life",
as Baudelaire said; the scene of an
imaginary Atlantis which Platonic
legend turned into a political myth.
Juan Hernández infuses his images
of landscape with love. This infusión
stems from André Breton's poetic
interpretation of the island nature in his
text "El CastiUo estreUado" (1936),
where he describes his first climb to the
top of the Teide. This excursión glowed
with the love which the siureaJist poet
felt for Jacqueline Lamba, his wife at the
time, who had accompanied him to
Tenerife for the famous International
Exhibition of Surreahsm. In his series
called "El Faro", Juan Hernández depicts
the painted emblems of unobtainable
happiness. In the warm Atlantis night,
Cupid rides the length of Maspalomas
beach on a dolphin, whilst the diamond
shimmer of the lighthouse beam shines
on the oudine of another starry castle
where m£m knows no law other than
desire. The island is reinvented by love,
iridescent with its light which can cancel
out the tyranny of time.
In the early 90's, Pedro González
held an ambitious exhibition based on
the theme of island seas, using the words
from a poem by Tomás Morales: "The
sea is like an oíd childhood friend". In
these large-scale paintings, Pedro
González depicts a somber, powerful
sea; no more than the painter's intense
emotional projection of the existential
world. The sea is reinvented by the
subject's memory, as phantasmagoric as
the rest of his work. Whereas in the
work of Gonzalo González and Juan José
Gil the sea is musical, and for Juan
Hernández it is an allegory of love, to
Pedro González it represents the lost
time which that "oíd childhood friend"
evokes in us. A melancholy sea,
precisely because it proves the
impossibility of freeing ourselves from
the tyranny of time.
And, finally, I would like to
mention Manuel Padomo's view of
island nature in his series "Nómada
marítimo". He paints a constellation of
radiant images to illustrate the
phenomenology of island dwellers
described in his book "Égloga del agua":
joyfuUy declining to retum to the mother
country. In this series of paintings, all
the luminous metaphors of his poetry
can be seen: "the seaguU of light", "the
tree of light", "the sea's road", etc. This
link between painting and poetry can
only be understood in terms of his
absolute dedication to the task of
poetically reinventing the emblematic
landscape of the Canary Islands, with its
scenery shining under a different sun.
Poetry, painting and ideology are
inseparable realities in his work. And
we should remember that although this
series was painted in the early 90's, the
images stem from aesthetic ideas which
Padomo had already laid down much
earlier in his book A la sombra del mar
(1963). There he coined the phrase
which was to guide all his future
creative work, both in painting and in
poetry: "beautiful workshop, my island".
The island is, for all these artists, a
wonderful workshop.