The courage of the great artist Fernando Botero

When Colombian artist Fernando Botero died on September 15 at age 91, the media noted that he was the best-known Latin American painter and sculptor, and that his voluminous figures are in the most prestigious museums in the world.

However, few reviews of his passing mentioned that, as I discovered in the several times I interviewed him, he was also one of the courageous artists of his generation.
Botero was anything but politically correct when it came to expressing his opinions on some of the greatest icons of contemporary art.

He challenged the prevailing dogma among art critics by suggesting that much of today's avant-garde art is lousy, and claiming that art should be beautiful.

In an extensive interview in 2013, Botero told me, most current works of conceptual art - art in which the concept behind the work tends to be more important than the object itself - will soon be forgotten.

“Conceptual art, video art, etc., is in fashion, it is considered the avant-garde. But of course there are no eternal avant-gardes,” Botero told me. “All this production that seems absurd, well, it's the fashion of the moment.”

Art has become big business, with some artists buying their own works to inflate their prices, Botero told me.

Speaking of Damian Hirst, the British artist whose formalin-preserved tiger shark in a fish tank sold in 2005 for $12 million, Botero told me: “There is truly scandalous market manipulation.”

The Colombian painter cited to me newspaper articles according to which Hirst had purchased one of his own works at auction for an exorbitant price, and added: “That has little to do with art and a lot to do with commerce.”

Painting as a form of artistic expression will never disappear, Botero told me in that interview, broadcast on CNN en Español.

“Painting cannot be replaced by a video or an installation, because the video has more to do with television, and the installation with theater,” said Botero. Painting is somewhat more difficult, because it is done on a flat surface, and it is more difficult to find a personal style after all the works that have been painted in history, he added.

Most of the videos and installations currently on display are a kind of “extravagance contest,” in which artists compete to produce the most shocking work. The problem with this is that extravagant art is not necessarily good art, the artist told me.

Toward the end of that interview, I asked him if he thought art should be beautiful. “Art should be beautiful, definitely. Art can be about a more or less gentle theme, or it can be about a dramatic theme. Beauty is on both sides,” he replied.
Botero cited the case of Goya's dark and dramatic paintings as an example of tragic, but at the same time beautiful art.

But he added that “the vast majority of the paintings deal with gentle themes. I always say, who has seen a sad or negative or depressing impressionist painting? It doesn't exist, and there are thousands and thousands of impressionist paintings.”

Botero hated being described as a “painter of fat people.” His son, the writer Juan Carlos Botero, remembers that his father “never in his life thought that he had ever painted a fat man.” His art did not represent obesity, but rather emphasized the volume of things to magnify reality.

Botero's inspiration was the Italian Renaissance painters of the 15th century, especially Piero della Francesca.

And although he was not usually politically active, Botero made a series of paintings critical of the US prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, painting generals and cardinals as lonely and perhaps even depressed people.

Although some critics despised the apparent simplicity of his works, Botero found a unique style based on an ancient Italian school of art and used it to represent his homeland with a mix of humor and melancholy.

He portrayed Latin America like few others in any artistic form, and was not afraid to challenge the fashions of the moment.
We will always remember you, teacher!