volume in violence FERNANDO BOTERO 98 T Opening spread: Fernando Botero at Istanbul’s Pera Museum. Photography by Serkan Taycan. Facing page: Abu Ghraib 79 . 2005. Watercolour on paper. 29.85 x 40.96 cm. T hey are not fat. They are voluminous and robust. They are not al- ways happy, either. The bombastic, roly-poly figures sometimes stare, expressionless, into oblivion. Even the word ‘Botero’ has come to denote roundness; the name is almost a synonym for rotund. “I have to explain it each time,” said an exasperated Fernando Botero during a press conference in Istanbul’s Pera Museum ( Canvas 6.3), hours before his vernissage. “I don’t do fat figures, I work with volume.” It is a beautiful day in early May in Istanbul and Botero is visibly delighted at the excitement sur- rounding his first show in the Middle East. On show for two months were 64 works divided into six sections, which covered themes such as Latin American life, bullfights, still-lifes and the circus. One question from the press on his Abu Ghraib series triggers a host of others. Botero and his daughter Lina shoot me a quick glance of acknowledgement. “It’s very good to talk about Abu Ghraib,” he had said to me earlier during my interview with him, which had focused solely on that body of work. As the press fired their questions about the Abu Ghraib series, I realised that the world is still very much intrigued by the Colombian artist’s drawings and paintings on one of the 21st century’s horrors. ThE POIsON WIThIN Early suspicions around the activity of the UsA’s 800th Military Police Brigade in Iraq had led to the appointment of Major General Antonio Taguba to investigate the matter. What he found was shock- ing: between October and December of 2003, United states Army personnel had engaged in acts of sodomy, rape, homicide and physical, psychological and sexual assault on prisoners in the Abu America was shamed. The world was horrified. Fernando Botero took the terrors of the Abu Ghraib Prison to heart and put them on paper and canvas. Myrna Ayad meets El Maestro , as he is affectionately known, during his first ever show in the Middle East at Istanbul’s Pera Museum. sPECIAL FEATURE 99 “Abu Ghraib became my obs and months, I watched and r report from every single pub television channel and I coul “Abu Ghraib became my obsession. For months and months, I watched and read every single report from every single publication and television channel and I couldn’t stop drawing.” sPECIAL FEATURE 100 This page: Abu Ghraib 66 . 2005. Oil on canvas. 33 x 32.1 cm. Photography by Sibila Savage. sPECIAL FEATURE 101 “It was important that the wor by the American public.They w Ghraib Prison, now known as Baghdad Central Prison. Taguba’s findings were published in the Taguba Report in May 2004, but the news had al- ready leaked and the world had heard about the horrors at Abu Ghraib a month earlier thanks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist seymour hersh. Of the millions worldwide who were paralysed by the news was Botero, who, consumed with the findings, spontaneously began to draw while on a plane. For 14 months, he worked “ex- clusively” on Abu Ghraib . “It became my obses- sion,” he says, “for months and months, I watched and read every single report from every single publication and television channel and I couldn’t stop drawing.” The Abu Ghraib series was not El Maestro’ s premiere artistic expression of political or hu- manitarian catastrophes. In response to the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arabs, Botero painted La Guerra (War) in 1973 – a mound of corpses, both civilians and army personnel, lay- ing dead amidst national flags. “That wasn’t the first time I reacted to conflict in the Middle East,” he smiles, going on to cite similarities between the Mediterranean and Latin American cultures. The similarities don’t stop there; La Guerra (War) also makes an indirect reference to works by Bot- ero which centre on the violence in his native Colombia. Massacre in Colombia (1999) and Mas- sacre in the Cathedral (2002) take their inspiration from the south American country’s tumultuous late 1940s, a period known as La Violencia . The violence spurred by drug-instigated guerrilla warfare in Colombia has also been a recurring theme in his work, especially as Medellín, his birth city, has been at the core of hostilities. Fol- lowing the 1993 death of Pablo Escobar, Botero painted the Colombian drug lord’s last seconds as he attempted to escape police but was gunned down. The Death of Pablo Escobar , do- nated to the National Museum of Bogotá, sees the criminal on a building’s rooftop, riddled with bullets. “There are so many catastrophes,” Botero says, shaking his head, “I follow the news and I see the wrong things happening in the world, but it’s not my job to [paint] them all.” “sabra and Chatila, Gaza, the Iran-Iraq war?” I ask, “Why Abu Ghraib?” Botero pauses, placing his hand on his neatly trimmed goatee and says, without hesitation, “It’s only when situations don’t correspond to the place. With Latin Ameri- ca, the problem there was out of ignorance, but the scandal with Abu Ghraib was that the UsA is a civilised country which did the same thing that saddam hussein did in the same country.” The human tragedies at Abu Ghraib were not the only aspect to prompt Botero’s empathy and rouse his anger. It was also the hypocrisy. “The Americans present themselves to the world as a model of compassion and the defenders of eve- rything good, and [go on to] fight everything that is bad,” he explains, “and then you see that they are doing the same thing [as hussein].” ThE PAsT REsONATEs Artists who artistically engage in human suffer- ing as a result of political conflict often cite Picas- so’s masterpiece, the Guernica . This issue’s four covers, for example, each illustrate Iraqi Modern- ist Dia Al-Azzawi’s We Are Not Seen But Corpses (The Massacre of Sabra) works, (nine in total), which hark creatively to Guernica , in both style and theme. Botero’s Abu Ghraib does the same. Just as the world is reminded of the carnage that occurred in the spanish Civil War, Botero’s Abu Ghraib is an equally powerful aide-mémoire . “I hope so,” says Botero; “That is my greatest ambi- sPECIAL FEATURE “It was important that the works were seen by the American public.They will look at them and say ‘yes we did this’ .” 102 103 Facing page: Above: Abu Ghraib 71 . 2005. Oil on canvas. 37.15 x 45.1 cm. Below: Abu Ghraib 60 . 2005. Oil on canvas. 131.13 x 62.25 cm. This page: Abu Ghraib 6 . 2004. Pencil on paper. 29.85 x 40 cm. Photography by Sibila Savage. sPECIAL FEATURE 104 sPECIAL FEATURE tion, because that is the point of art: it stays as a permanent accusation.” Interestingly, all three artworks are owned by public institutions: Guernica is located in the Museo Reina sofia in Madrid; a tapestry of it hangs in the United Nations headquarters in New York; Al-Azzawi’s We Are Not Seen But Corps- es (The Massacre of Sabra) is part of Qatar’s new Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (page 84), and Botero donated Abu Ghraib to the Univer- sity of California, Berkeley Art Museum. “I knew from the first moment that I wasn’t going to sell these works,” he says, “I don’t want to make a business out of human suffering and I knew they had to be in America.” since the premiere of the series at the American University Museum in Washington, DC, in November 2007, Abu Gh- raib has travelled to spain, Italy, Germany, China and France, among others. “I’m glad Abu Ghraib was shown in the UsA. It was important that the works stayed there and were seen by the Ameri- can public,” he explains; “They will look at them and say ‘yes we did this’.” But as a body of work which was inspired by atrocities in the Middle East, one would assume that it ought to be ex- hibited in the region. “I think it should, and eve- rywhere else,” believes Botero, adding that he has received proposals from organisations in the Arab world to show Abu Ghraib Botero has had a fair share of criticism for Abu Ghraib . Aside from receiving hate mail fol- lowing the UsA tour of the series – “some were not happy to see what they did” – El Maestro ’s rotund shapes were also considered somewhat ‘demeaning’ to the prison victims. The fact is, Botero’s corpulent figures, aside from being aesthetically amusing, insinuate a somewhat comical air about them. This does not go down well with some critics, who have considered that his paintings on violence are a form of glorifica- tion of the cruelty at hand. In a 2005 article from time.com, Vivienne Walt quotes Robert storr, curator, critic and Dean of the Yale school of Art, on Botero’s Abu Ghraib : “It seems a willed at- tempt by a comedian to do tragedy.” Botero had heard such comments before and was unfazed. “The style is the same, I don’t have two styles. sometimes artists do a ‘parenthesis’ in their pro- duction,” he explains, “take the example of Guer- nica : Picasso was painting Dora Mar in a portrait of love to this woman and then when the bom- bardment of Guernica happened, he stopped working on Dora Mar to work on Guernica . here is a parenthesis.” ThE hIDDEN hANDs The works, by all means, stir emotions. From dis- gust and dismay to compassion and anger, the drawings and paintings that comprise Abu Gh- raib trigger a lot more empathy with the victims than published photographs ever would. For a start, they are not replicas of the leaked images. Botero actually “imagined” the atrocities, based on the reports which he read and watched. Not since perhaps the era of Medieval art have there been paintings which reflect this much graphic, human suffering. Abu Ghraib highlights the tor- mentors’ intent to humiliate: the acts performed on the prisoners were made to shame them psy- chologically and inflict physical pain in what can only be described as sadistic outrages. What’s ironic is that the tormentors are barely evident in Abu Ghraib . They don’t need to be. There are of course authentic elements de- rived from the photographic realities of the Abu Ghraib abuse: army boots, naked blindfolded Not since perhaps the era of Medieval art have there been paintings which reflect this much graphic, human suffering. 105 Abu Ghraib 67 . 2004. Oil on canvas. 42.86 x 34.93 cm. sPECIAL FEATURE 106 comes into your art.” sPECIAL FEATURE “I was not conscious of the insinuations of Christ as I was painting Abu Ghraib , but everything you see and love eventually comes into your art.” sPECIAL FEATURE 107 men, women’s underwear, military working dogs (without muzzles), human pyramids, urina- tion, broomsticks, rope, wires... The list goes on. Basically, Botero travelled mentally to Abu Gh- raib Prison and delved into the minds of the tor- mentors and the tormented, envisaging the hor- rendous events. “The things that happened are much worse than the photos,” he says. Why two media then? “For me, drawings and paintings are just as important as each other,” he explains, “a drawing is not a sketch; it is a constructed im- age that takes time to do and is just as effective as a painting.” But perhaps another dimension explored by the series is a biblical one, and Abu Ghraib 66 appears like a direct allusion. The face of a blindfolded man is splattered with blood; with his mouth slightly open, as though crying for help or moaning in agony, his face is looking up, perhaps in the direction of salvation. some art- works within the series show a seemingly cruci- fied man; others depict victims in cells, reminis- cent of the cell that Christ was held in before his crucifixion. The works are not gory, nor are they gruesome – that’s not the intention – but the perceptible terror experienced by the prisoners beckons the injustice of it all and highlights their innocence. Again, in another reference, just as Christ was unjustly crucified, so too these pris- oners are unjustly tortured. And those who are unjustly tortured or killed are considered mar- tyrs. “I was not conscious of the insinuations of Christ as I was painting Abu Ghraib , but every- thing you see and love eventually comes into your art,” says Botero; “As a matter of fact, the only form of art that was seen in the churches of Latin America was that of a bloodied Christ and, perhaps at the back of my mind, I remembered that.” some critics, he added, “said I gave the vic- tims their dignity back”. Perhaps nothing will restore to the Abu Gh- raib prisoners their dignity or a sense of normal- ity. It is a distressing notion to consider the dates of the museum-housed works by Picasso, Al- Azzawi and Botero: 1937, 1983 and 2005. Over 70 years after the bombing of Guernica, and mankind has still not learned the devastating and long-lasting effects of such a tragedy. The current state of world affairs confirms William Faulkner’s quote: ‘The past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past’. “It’s not finished,” sighs Botero, “apparently, there are still things going on.” Just who the terrorists are is an open-ended argu- ment to be had by the powers that be. Mean- while, Botero, myself and, surely, all of us, just wish they would decide to stop the madness. For information visit www.bampfa.berkeley.edu sPECIAL FEATURE Facing page: Abu Ghraib 68 2005. Oil on canvas. 39.05 x 45.85 cm. Photography by Ben Blackwell. This page: (Detail) Abu Ghraib 2 2004. Pencil on paper. 40 x 29.85 cm. All images courtesy the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive unless otherwise specified.