Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools

Loomis, John A. Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.

If I could afford it, I would buy John Loomis’ wonderful Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools, a historical analysis of Cuba’s National Art Schools. I first picked it up because Alma Guillermoprieto cited it as a source for understanding the architectural goals of the schools she had had such an unfortunate experience teaching modern dance in. (My dissertation chapter centers around her memoir about her experiences in Cuba.) However, Loomis’ text is much more than an architectural analysis. As Gerardo Mosquera notes in the Introduction, “I would venture to say that we are at the beginning of an ‘architectural novel'” (xxix). Loomis not only is informed about the architectural styles, histories, and major players at the time, but he also make the effort to connect ideological and cultural movements. The effect is a book that includes detailed accounts of the development of cubanidad in Cuba, the history of architecture on the island, the idealistic goals of the Revolution, and lastly, the changing relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union that influenced these marvelous, but much forgotten, buildings.

In early 1961, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara designated the old Country Club Park as the site for the development of the arts in revolutionary Cuba. What developed were the National Art Schools’ five distinct building spaces for Modern Dance, Plastic Arts, Dramatic Arts, Music, and Ballet. The main architects were Ricardo Porro, a Cuban architect, and two Italian architects, Roberto Gottardi and Vittorio Garatti. Under Porro’s ideological direction, the goal was to create buildings that had social merit and reflected Cuban tradition. Porro took a cue from the negrista perspective, or the idea that Cuba’s heritage was largely influence by the African cultures present on the island. Like other artists and intellectuals of this time, the task was to synthesize Spanish and African influences in a way that reflected the true nature of cubanidad – but always in the service of the Revolution. They did this by utilizing the Catalan vault and African village model (circular and unified), while also using brick, a readily found material readily on the island. They also took advantage of situating the buildings within the green landscape set up by the former country club and golf course.

What they produced were unique buildings that sought to create an energy reflective of the time.  For Porro, this included anxiety and confusion in addition to excitement and creativity. He noted, “In the School of Modern Dance I wanted to express  two very powerful sentiments produced by the first stage, the romantic stage, of the Revolution: the exaltation, collective emotional explosion, but at the same time a sense of anguish and fear confronting an unknown future” (as quoted in Loomis, 43). He did this by creating an entrance with three large, open Catalan vaults that looked as if they were full of wind that stood juxtaposed to the entrances to the main areas inside (classrooms, plaza, performance hall, etc). The effect was a lifted, expansive area that also disoriented the person walking in it. Porro said, “When the dancer leaps, the surrounding space expands – explodes – around him. And this is what I tried to create in the interior of the dance pavilions. But at the same time the sensation of explosion was that of the emotional explosion that the country was living at the moment” (as quoted in Loomis, 43). Like many of the buildings, the plans were created in just a few months, as Fidel wanted to quickly show the grand effects of the Revolution to the international community.

The design and construction of the buildings went quickly but by 1965, only four years after conception, the buildings became the example of ideological attacks. First, the Catalan vaults were deemed unsafe, even though they had been approved previously. Second, the architects and the conditions they worked in (lush country club grounds) was seen as privileged and unproletarian. Likewise, the architects were questioned for their revolutionary credentials because they did not come from the working class, but had more bourgeoisie credentials. Underlying this was a mistrust of the Afro-Cuban elements that had been incorporated into the structures, from the circular, cellular patterns, to the more distinct buildings like the School of Plastic Arts that took cues from the idealized “mulatta body” including a papaya fountain and nipple-like domes.

This all happened also as the Soviet Union’s Khrushchev declared prefabricated concrete buildings as the idea of the communist agenda. As Loomis notes, “Again, it must be born in mind that the National Art Schools were first conceived and for the most part constructed before any such system appeared upon the island and before a truly intimate relationship with the USSR had developed” (119). Thus, the schools became symbolic of an “historicist” and individualistic take on Cuba that was undermined by the USSR’s universal communist perspective. As noted in the introduction, Loomis take the time to connect these buildings with a little explored time in the Cuban Revolution: the 1970s. This seems to mark a shift in what the Revolution could bear ideologically and materially, making way for switches in favor, not only for the schools, but for all artists (and homosexuals, and anyone not of the ideal proletariat background).

In July 26, 1965, the schools were declared finished even though they were only partly completed. The modern Dance and Plastic Arts compounds were finished, but the Ballet school was left mostly done but rejected by Alicia Alonso (she famously worked with the architects, then saw the finished product and said, “no me gusta” and never came back).  Now, some of the buildings are still in use by the schools, but being much ignored by the government, the buildings are in disrepair, and given in part to the surrounding jungle. Porro went to live in Paris, self-exiled in a way after being the scapegoat for the final evaluation of the art schools.

The final chapters of Loomis’ book connect the schools with other modernisms in art and architecture around Europe and the Americas. In this way, he places Cuba’s attitude toward the schools in with other countries who were trying to incorporate “other” ethnic models into their architecture. Loomis quotes Guilio Carlo Argan who wrote, “The historical problem was not the Negro sculpture but the crisis in European culture, which was forced to look outside its own circle to find value models” (as quoted in Loomis, 143). This crisis of looking at new value models did not always lead to a comfortable use of African methods or ontology, which often include more unified and holistic approaches in contrast with the duality or binary of Western culture. Nonetheless, Loomis contends that Cuban architecture, and these schools in particular, represent one of the best attempts at balancing the two systems. “Within this intellectual framework, Ricardo Porro’s interpretation and editing of the Afro-Cuban experience makes perfect sense, if we accept that it is an act of interpretation and editing…” (144). Loomis’ book provides a clear and well-researched account of how the schools represent an “interpretation and editing” of the Afro-Cuban experience, trying to show the challenges the Revolution faced in trying to uplift and support artistic and architectural communities.