Buenos Aires in love with Art. ( Argentina)

Art in BA... hope you like reading this article of mine, cheers! Bob Frassinetti.



The Times They Are A-Changin'

The artistic scene in Buenos Aires has been growing increasingly during the
last few years. Slowly but a sustained rhythm the city of Tango is returning
to it's cultural glory. It was during the 60s and 70s when BA's cultural
and artistic scene was the avant-garde gate of Latin America.

It was a world in revolt. Everywhere there were new and impressive
movements. May of the '68 in France, Art & Culture in BA, Woodstock, New
York and London were giving birth to musical, pictorial, cinematographic
revolutionary movements that would set the tone for further developments and
innovations. In Buenos Aires there were hundreds of cultural centers,
underground theatres and pubs in which new and innovating bands were taking
their first steps into stardom.

Countless galleries all throughout the city and nearby towns exhibited
vanguard art locally produced.

What was the reason -if there is one- for all these cultural expressions?

I believe there is one, one main root from which branches develop and take
their own direction. And this main root was the social situation worldwide.

The possibility of a better world, of a new social order in which suffer
and pain were not the main features inspired millions of artists. It also
provided them with a broad audience eager for new art and cultural
expressions that portrayed their new reality.

But the world did not take the turn they were all expecting for it to
take. The times that followed were hard and painful. Dreams were trashed by
the world's powerful. The following decades to this cultural impasse can be
described as the entering into the system's main flow of mass production
and consumption.

Publicity and advertising attracted those 60s and 70s young
artists into a different way of art, much more bonded to the needs of money
which they had left aside decades ago.

However hard and terrible were those times, this does not imply -in no way-
that all alternative and avant-garde artistic movements disappeared. They
diminished considerably in terms of quantity and quality, and were set
aside.

Argentina, in particular, is a clear proof of this trace we've described
above. The 80s and 90s were even harder than the late 70s. The cultural
crisis was covered by an artificial economic wellbeing under Menem's double
presidency. The one on one peso and dollar opened our borders and let most
of the Argentinean middle class to explore the world, different cultures
and rise their living standards. But at the same time, slowly in the bases
of society a greater social, economical, political and cultural crisis was
developing.

On December 2001 things got worse and worse, and the so-called wellbeing
collapsed.

Times were hard."The times where changing",( Bob Dylan)

People wanted a change. They wanted things to change. And
society began to act again, not only in the political arena -the most
well-known area in the world thanks to the worldwide coverage of the huge
political demonstrations- but in the cultural field also.

Taking advantage of the new economical situation with a 3 dollars to 1 peso
exchange rate all sort of Argentinean artists began to have a chance in
showing what they did and living on that.

Many cultural events were to be found in several neighborhoods.
This new art & culture trend was not a second edition of what happened 30
years ago, it was completely new, expressing new and different art styles
and techniques, mixing avant-garde art, music, design and food in a
innovating atmosphere. This is how design fairs began and developed.

Even more, a group of art lovers got together and came up with a fantastic
idea: Gallery nights. Every last Friday of every month downtown Retiro
Buenos Aires turns into a huge showroom, as every art gallery, museum, art
shop, in the area open their doors during the night for a superb art event
in which new artists are presented, fine art is purchased and everybody has
a great time.

Following this fantastic view of art, last November 24th 2004, the 10th
Saraton -as in Sara's marathon- took place in Buenos Aires.

A brilliant art fair organized by Sara García Uriburu's art gallery.
12 straight hours of gorgeous art, amazing auctions and fantastic cultural
events delighted the over 1000 visitors. Hundreds of new and well known
artists take part in this event every year, exhibiting and auctioning
exquisite artworks specially done for this wonderful event.

No doubt about it! Buenos Aires is regaining it's cultural and aesthetic
avant-garde place in the Latin American concert, not only shining with it's
virtues and values but spreading the love for culture to neighboring
countries such as Uruguay and Punta del Este's summertime cultural
activities.