Up until a few months ago, my familiarity with the work of Cuban artist Micah Carpentier was casual at best. Though very much a part of the standard Latin American art historical narrative, his stature has always been dimmed by the legends of Siqueiros, Orozco and Rivera. Attempts to correct this traditional misjudgement have been feeble at best.
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| from The Song of Degrees, Micah Carpentier, 1971 (courtesy of the Carpentier Foundation, Madrid) |
It has been my great good fortune to have recently made the acquaintance of Carpentier's nephew Roberto Carpentier-Katz . A native of Puerto Rico, Carpentier-Katz divides his time between Manhattan and Madrid where he directs the Carpentier Foundation. His is a labor of love since the Rivera-Kahlo lobby has done everything in their power to suppress or diminish his uncle's legacy.
I made a special trip to Spain in order to research the Carpentier archive as part of a book I am writing about the relationship between Roberto Bolaño, José Bañón and Micah Carpentier and I was astounded by what I saw.
Aside from the remarkable work, the press clippings alone added up into a veritable bildungsroman of hope, triumph and crushing despair, a dispiriting story worthy of the most tragic of operas.
Nonetheless I came away fairly ebullient. How often does one discover for oneself new source of cultural caché? Few of my hipster colleagues in Brooklyn had ever heard of Carpentier. My editor, Dolphy Cane thinks there isn't much of a story here and my girl friend who is an adjunct professor of Latin American Literature is stubbornly convinced that the whole thing is a hoax.
Which is all fine with me. I will bask in my uniqueness for a little while longer while I wait for the world to catch up.
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