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Damián Bayón
(Buenos Aires, 1915 – Paris, 1995) is a writer, historian and art critic. In 1937-1938 establish and directs
the literary magazine
Bitácora
. In 1948 is one of the founders of the magazine of art critic
Ver y Estimar
, organized by
the Argentine art critic Jorge Romero Brest. He was counselor artistic of UNESCO. In 1992, he founded the Instituto
de América de Santa Fe – Centro Damián Bayón, in Santa Fe, Granada, Spain. Among the several books of poetry
and art critic of his authorship, see
Aventura Plástica de Hispanoamérica: Pintura, Cinetismo, Artes de la Acción, 1940-
1972
(Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1974);
Historia del Arte Colonial Sudamericano: Sudamérica Hispana Y el
Brasil
(Barcelona: Polígrafa, 1989) and
La peinture de l ‘Amérique Latine au XXème Siècle: Identité e Modernité
(Paris:
Éditions Mengès, 1990) written with the Brazilian art critic Roberto Pontual.
A ESTÉTICA DE UMA CONDUTA HUMANA
(1994)
1
Anna Maria Escallón
The aesthetic attitude of Rubens Gerchman has a multifaceted performance that corresponds to a single
thrust: the urban. And the reflection on this endless world that includes the deep human dimension is imbued
with all the vertigo of the last half of the XX century, period in which all its fullness includes multiplicity, spe-
ed, visibility, and prepares for the next millennium, as alludes Ítalo Calvino.
The reality is a floodgate that imagination of Rubens Gerchman opens with the force of modernity. He has
walked attentive, with an expression of a contemporaneous sensibility. He has given no rest to the aesthetics
investigations, nor he has left the warm accommodation paralyze him.
Gerchman, gradually, formulated the “open work of art”, and is increasingly aware of the different creative
attitudes and the many readings that his language implies. He is a man who has always been in the same fi-
xed idea: the human condition. However, this idea has been accompanied by a similar logical evolution, which
replaces the unique truths by others more human and versatile.
Gerchman always wanted to evaluate what is imperative to him through a mindful sensitivity to the quick-
ness of the suffocating crowds, to the paused heat of a special sensuality, life in the midst of everyday objects,
the story of human being in nature. All of these determinant conditions are essential, in the endless search for
identity. Not an identity that only expresses the Brazilian identity, but also, on a larger scale, the fragmented
history of existence. This possibility explains why Rubens Gerchman fully consolidated several languages in
his creative world. Rather saying, the nonconformity, in its broadest sense, turned him into a man who speaks
multiple languages with the same voice. Throughout his work, there is a tremendous internal coherence whi-
ch, in fragments, changes its outer shape until to accommodate a freer expression that dominates his spirit
in perpetual rebellion and forces him to reject the commonplace. Gerchman inwardly feels that in every aes-
thetic moment, inhabits other achievable circumstances and that the formalism just leads to repetition. So he
follows closely what Baudrillard said:
The technology evolves, the language transforms itself, the voice changes
fate compels us
... He is a transgressor who knows that
the end of the end is to live beyond the end, whatever the
means
; that, in his creative world, undertakes to designate things which will never be the expression of innocence;
1
ESCALLÓN, Ana Maria.
The Aesthetics of a Human Conduct
. In: BAYÓN Damián, ESCALLÓN, Ana Maria.
Gerchman
. Rio de
Janeiro: Printz-Z, 1994. (N.O.).