In this essay, the independent researcher and curator Carmen María Jaramillo (b. 1958) contextualizes the work of the artist and art critic Beatriz González within Colombian art of the twentieth century. She observes that while other artists have appropriated objects to create collages and assemblages, González, for her part, has appropriated images to re-signify them by means of her own pictorial process. The artist’s sources are wide-ranging, going from history paintings to print media, from advertising to illustrations, and so on. Jaramillo argues that by appropriating images by others, she explores their aesthetic reception as seen from different times, places, and cultural milieus. At the same time, the artist shows how reality has been constructed, narrated, and passed on through systems of representation. The scholar explains that González is indeed the first Colombian artist to use photography as a working tool. As a matter of fact, most of the images she works with have gone through a photographic process, whether they are pictures from the media, pictures of reproductions, pictures of impoverished quality, or pictures of canonical artworks. Working from copies, she produces new originals, questioning the idea of the unique object and bringing to the fore how “universal” (i.e., European) art is perceived in a local context, what she calls “her province.” González also challenges the art historical canon and common assumptions about painting with her works painted on everyday, found objects. She considers these objects as paintings, rather than sculptures, thus re-defining this medium with the use of unconventional supports and techniques.
This essay was published in a monograph on Beatriz González (2005), which also includes essays by the American art critic Holland Cotter and the Colombian art historian María Margarita Malagón. The former text is a complementary perspective on works discussed by Cotter in his review of González’s 1998 solo exhibition at El Museo del Barrio (New York City), written for the The New York Times [see the ICAA Digital Archive (1150182)].
Beatriz González (b. 1938) is a Colombian artist based in Bogotá. Her career spans six decades, from the early 1960s to today, and includes paintings, drawings, silkscreen prints, and curtains, as well as three-dimensional paintings on recycled furniture or everyday objects. González, who calls herself a “provincial artist,” appropriates and reinterprets images from the mass media and notable notorious European classic artworks; therefore, she has often been associated with the Pop Art movement, a position that she ostensibly rejects. Her work, in fact, does not deal with consumer culture itself; instead, it makes a chronicle of Colombia’s recent history. Indeed, it implies an investigation of middle-class taste in Latin America with regard to European artworks and exposes the uneven relationship between her country and the mainstream of the hegemonic centers (Europe and the United States), which is an undeniable legacy of colonialism. Beyond her expansive oeuvre, González has worked as a curator and museum education, in addition to art writing. [To read some examples of her critical writing on her own work, see documents numbers (1078663) and (1093273); in reference to other artists see documents (860646), and (1098901)].