Franklin Álvarez Fortún
b. Camagüey, Cuba, 1971. Resides in Havana.
The works of Franklin Álvarez Fortún—who graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 1998—exemplify trends in Cuban art that emerged in the wake of the 1993 exhibition Las Metáforas del Templo (Metaphors of the Temple), and were granted a certain legitimacy with the 1996 Primer Salón de Arte Contemporáneo (First Salon of Contemporary Art). In that exhibition, the young artist demonstrated the creative coordinates that would become his signature: a lively use of realist figuration within a conceptual framework; constant references to art history; and the idea of painting as a window onto both popular culture in Cuba and the circumstances of his own personal life.
Mental Projection establishes an irreverent dialogue between Cuban history and the culture of everyday life, building bridges between personages long sanctified by historic discourse and the economic and social realities of contemporary life in Cuba. That bronzed figure who proudly poses and flexes his physique à la Charles Atlas is José Martí (1853-1895), a figure venerated by Cubans—from all eras and across the political spectrum—as the paramount writer and intellectual of the 19th century, as well as the instigator of the island’s independence from Spain and the United States, a modernist poet, and an incisive reporter.
Since the early 20th century, Martí’s likeness has been a persistent icon in Cuban art, re-imagined in such magnificent works as Carlos Enríquez’s Dos Ríos (1939) or Jorge Arche’s José Martí (1943). The emphasis, however, has always been on his character as a symbol, isolated from any real or urban context. With precision and high-octane humor, Franklin inserts him in a humble Cuban backyard, one of those bricked-over little spaces where young people improvise their own weight rooms (generally handmade) in an effort to improve their bodies and their social regard.
This fitness theme first appeared in Álvarez Fortún’s work at the beginning of the 1990s, in paintings that portrayed his own classmates as unlikely bodybuilders. In a documentary, almost testimonial effort that deliberately echoes the nineteenth-century realist art of France and Russia, Álvarez Fortún portrays men and women who, in inner-city neighborhoods as well as exclusive spas, shape their bodies in an artistic spirit, in a society where physical appearance has started to be overvalued as a source of wealth and status.
The composition of this scene brings to mind a Richard Hamilton painting of 1961 that foreshadows English Pop Art. But the presence of the pig is a direct reminder of Cuba’s Special Period, when the shortage of food and fuel—a consequence of the end of Soviet subsidies—forced people to raise chickens on their balconies and pigs in their bathtubs and backyards, a phenomenon that was documented by flabbergasted National Geographic photographers.
Transformed by Álvarez Fortún into a paradigm of carnal, arduous, panting exhibitionism, José Martí abandons the gelid mausoleum where venerated heroes seem to dwell and recaptures his earthly, day-to-day condition as a survivor—as expressed in these visionary lines of his book, Versos Sencillos: “Con los pobres de la tierra / quiero yo mi suerte echar” (With the poor of the Earth / I aim to cast my lot).
—Abelardo G. Mena Chicuri
