Between a Sigh and a Sigh:
A Visit with Alfredo Castañeda

Caleb Ives Bach

Mexico’s Alfredo Castañeda, principally a painter but also poet-philosopher, has for the last five years lived in Madrid. Family matters dictated the move, but Spanish ancestry and a strong attraction to Old World ways also entered into his decision to relocate. Almost like a reconquistador, or conqueror in reverse, Castañeda the Colonial passes his days in a studio which immediately overlooks the grounds of the Palacio Oriente, from which Spanish kings once dominated much of the Americas. A block away, on Plaza Ramales, there once stood San Juan Bautista Church where the Spanish master, Diego Velazquez, was laid to rest in l660. Curiously, two centuries later, amidst the confusion of the church’s demolition, the mortal remains of the great painter were somehow lost like so much detritus on the wind.

The demise of Diego’s dust is not wasted on Castañeda because the fleeting nature of existence serves as a subtext in almost all of his paintings regardless of their primary theme. As a creative person he not only wills things into existence but also asserts an additional power to take things apart (des pren derse). Disintegration and decomposition have always been central concerns, perhaps due to his formal training as an architect, a profession obliged to embrace the inevitability of structural decay. “It was there from the beginning, even when I was drawing as a young man,” Castañeda admits. “Once I did a drawing for a poet friend whose son was having his first communion. Part of the young man’s body appeared to disintegrate and when his father saw it, he said ‘I know what we should call it: Ya están creciendo las alas (The wings are already growing).’ I don't know whether this trait is a personal need but what you call disintegration I see as wings in order to fly.” To this intensely spiritual man who is inclined to speak in parables, visual and oral, he means flight heavenward to the realm of angels. With a twinkle in his eye but also a true believer’s conviction, Castañeda paraphrases an ancient Sufi concept: “Cuando se muere, puede convertirse a piedra, hierba, animal, hombre, y finalmente angel. Espero que sí!” (When one dies, one is converted into a stone, plant, animal, human, and finally angel. I hope so!)

We have his book out, the l989 monograph co-published by Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art and the Galería de Arte Mexicano, and we are going over certain earlier works. Many contain a variety of trompe l'oeil effects this deshacedor (unmaker) has employed to suggest deterioration: illusions of flaking paint on a weathered sign, cracked emulsion on an aged photograph, torn paper, or canvas slashed with a knife, remnants of a poster stripped from a wall, and disturbing bullet holes which perforate personages who dissolve and drift into nothingness. “I guess it is to be in harmony with time,” Castañeda explains. “It is as if the subject matter is forgetting itself. As an architecture student there was this strong feeling of honesty, to let materials speak of themselves with integrity: one didn't cover materials and call them something else because the false hood would be antiesthetic. One might then accuse my illusions of cracks, fissures, and aging of being false, but from my standpoint, from that of my heart asking me to do it, it’s not false. One has to listen to the interior voice, not some program or dogma imposed by others. Look, this is the first painting in which I created the illusion of bullet holes, as if the painting had been shot. It was a need of mine. It’s false because it’s painted but I had seen in an art magazine some precious landscape paintings done in Austria in the court of Franz Josef. They had been stored in a hunting room during the winter and perforated with arrows or bullets like targets during shooting practice. I was so attracted to the idea that I did Péguenme tres balazos en la frente (Hit Me Three Times in the Forehead).” The painting, seemingly peppered by many rounds, portrays a dog with a face, soulful and human, a canine version of the ephemeral personage common to many Castañeda works.

A typical day for the artist means rising mid-morning, attending to mundane business matters, reading some poetry or philosophical treatises, a mid-day meal followed by a two-hour siesta, and then nearly eight hours of sustained work in the studio from late afternoon until nearly midnight. Castañeda, the night hawk, favors the consistent level of illumination emanating from his fluorescent lights and is not particularly con cerned with natural light which can be uneven and even affect his mood. “Typically I have six or seven works go ing at one time so that I can have a dialogue with one and then another and on and on. They are alive, just as characters in novels are for their authors and so I talk with them and vice versa. When the conversation stops in one, I move on.” As we talk Castañeda repaints in a subtle mauve tone the outer area framing a small oval containing what appears to be a self-portrait, although it already possesses a patina of age as if executed long ago. He avoids confirming the subject’s identity and refers to the likeness as a personage but then he adds that we are made up of many personages. “I call this painting Nuestros años (Our Years). It’s not finished. I need to extend the wrinkles in the forehead to either side, into the area of the oval frame itself.” There is a purposeful confidence as to how Castañeda intends to proceed but at the same time the process is free, open ended, without everything set beforehand. Over the years, notebooks, now more than a hundred of them, have recorded ideas as they emerge, some of which he transfers to canvas or the smooth masonite panels he often uses. Invariably he makes changes along the way, hence his images are devoid of any plodding, mechanical replication of stale ideas. Rather they retain a pleasing freshness, a sense of life, or as he puts it, “an electrical charge.”

Castañeda paints in oil, employing a masterful technique first conveyed to him by two painter uncles, enhanced by advice from other artists, and perfected through years of patient searching and experimentation. He prefers to use soft watercolor brushes, not the long-handled flats or rounds usually associated with oil painting. Sometimes a magnifying glass is required while executing minute details. “I usually start with the eyes. Sometimes I get them right immediately; sometimes there is a struggle to get the correct feeling. Once I've painted the eyes, they tell me whom I am painting. I like eyes, faces, and hands—the parts that express the soul within. Bodies interest me less. I prefer them to be nonspecific or implied, often integrated into the background.” Castañeda says this as he mixes a flesh tone on his palette and begins to rework the throat area of a female personage who plays a guitar in a work entitled Nuestra canción (Our Song). “Because she sings, because she’s a little poet,” he explains, “she has to have a mouth so she’s female. My masculine personages have beards which obscure the mouth.” These days visages of an older, bearded man predominate, but periodically he paints that aspect of his soul he perceives to be feminine, yin as opposed to yang within that dualistic concept of the ancient Chinese. “It is like an encounter with the other you, that which is you and not you (lo que eres y no eres), what you have and don't have (lo que tienes y no tienes). At first I didn't know who she was but I called her Soledad M. de Villanarciso: Solitude, then ‘M’ for muerte, madre, mujer (death, mother, woman), from the place where one sees oneself in a mirror. Gradually she took on a full blown identity. In her name I generated an extensive body of poetry.” Among a handful of paintings he and his family retain is the first, germinal image of Soledad which today hangs in the sitting room of the Castañeda apartment. It consists of an enlarged black and white photograph of the patio in his house in San Angel upon which he has superimposed in paint a pensive, maternal presence, seated near a diminutive rag doll of a child with similar features. Trompe l'oeil cracks within the image of the latter evoke a sense of loss or bygone times.

From among works still in progress Castañeda retrieves one called Nuestro amor (Our Love) which depicts a male and female figure embracing in a kind of oneness wherein the man’s beard is unified with the woman’s flowing locks. Themes of duality and interdependency are dear to the artist’s heart, as is the visual device of congruence which he has employed at other times. For example, the l994 canvas, La suerte suprema (The Supreme Good Fortune), also involves adept juxtaposition, so that the beard of a torero is also the head of a bull being stabbed to death just as the animal’s horn penetrates his chest. The action is set against a blood red background but bits of the bullfighter’s traje de luces (suit of lights) drift upward into a celestial sea of blue as the soulful warrior ponders how he would like to enter immortality. The painting, with its obvious religious overtones, reflects the artist’s enduring interest in the bullfight, also in that metaphysical confrontation with one’s “other” so central to stories by Jorge Luís Borges.

As I ponder a postcard reproduction of this work, Castañeda discusses another favorite canvas done in l988 called Perdón y florecimiento (Forgiveness and Flowering) which depicts two balding gentlemen whose beards intersect one another as they embrace. Might it be a father and son who have finally settled some old score? This maker of mysteries doesn't say. We do discuss another form of desecration present in this and other works, that of scratching or in some other way intentionally defacing the otherwise meticulously painted surface. In this case the lines define arms extending from beyond the picture plane, perhaps suggestive of a supernatural presence that has interceded to bring about the reunion. Castañeda shows me a reproduction of another painting in which the violation occurs in charcoal as if some insolent kid has drawn on top of the paint to mock the artist’s proficiency (or maybe it’s the artist himself longing for days when youthful spontaneity ruled supreme). When I applaud the courage it must take to seemingly “trash” with a few ragged strokes a work that took many hours of careful work, Castañeda says, “Yes, sometimes it’s very hard. It can come out badly and it’s nearly impossible to correct. I think it started with an unsuccessful painting of a field of grass, expanse of sky, and one lone figure. In frustration across the canvas I painted in red paint the word “No.” The paint dripped marvelously like blood and suddenly the painting worked.”

For a number of years, Castañeda has carefully constructed each exhibition around a theme and sometimes actually hung the individual paintings as one extended, unified installation. “I see a show more like a collection of poetry in a book,” he states. “Sometimes I even include verses by favorite poets or poems I've written evocative of what I'm trying say in paint.” Castañeda marvels that the May 19th opening of his show in New York will mark 30 years to the day since the opening of his first exhibition in Mexico at the Galería de Arte Mexicano of Inés Amor. He didn't plan it that way; he seems to feel some cosmic confluence is at work, not easily explained by coincidence. “The show will be called Nuestro Yo y Mi Nosotros (Our I and My We) because I think we have multiple selves, collective identities. For some time I've wanted to do a book on that theme containing my own poetry and drawings but I have not yet found the right vehicle to underwrite and distribute the project.” Castañeda then vaguely explains elements in some of the other paintings underway, for example Nuestro proyecto (Our Project) which seems to depict his haunted bearded personage as a mystical draftsman at work at his drawing table. I point out that the painting is flat, devoid of much perspective and Castañeda agrees. “I like to show horizontal surfaces in elevation— table tops, rugs, tile floors—as they did in medieval illuminations.” In this case the so-called “project” is a rosette which in its six sections mimics a collection of cast iron faucet handles hanging on the studio wall which, out of context take on the power of talismans. “To the Arabs, that pattern symbolized sabiduría (wisdom). In the painting I've repeated it many times along the edge as if it has been stamped with a seal. In blue it will also appear on the drafting table and in red within the man’s heart.” Despite the touches of red and blue, the over-all tonality of the work is muted and tranquil: coloration which reflects Castañeda’s admiration for Flemish artists like van Eyck, Campin, Memling and Bouts who also translated masterful technique into sublime visual poetry. One senses within Castañeda’s color code that red stands for earthly action, often violent, whereas blue implies celestial spirituality. In another incomplete work behind us, Nuestra lucha (Our Struggle), blue and red figure prominently in an image of a horseman who literally rides himself as confirmed by the fact the horse has the same face as the rider. “It’s a double personage,” Castañeda says. “Two parts of the same individual: one part forceful and physical, the other part, bearing a banner, contemplative, spiritual but quietly urging his mount into action.”

In almost every exhibit, Castañeda includes at least one overtly religious painting, a work that embodies characteristics associated with the tradition of icons, retablos, and other devotional imagery. In the past Castañeda’s patented personages have manifested themselves in treatments of the Last Supper, Tobias and the archangel Raphael, Saint Christopher and the Christ Child, and the Annunciation. For the New York show, he is at work on his version of the Sacrifice of Isaac and for a subsequent exhibit he plans seven portraits of Christ. In the mid-seventies Castañeda did an entire show which gently poked fun at the many spurious holy personages that have become part of popular belief. Called Del común de los santos (From the Commonness of Saints), the exhibit celebrated saints he invented, including San Espejo el Menor (St. Mirror the Lesser), Santa Aparecida de Día (Saint Appeared in the Day), San Humilde de Corazón (St. Humility in the Heart) and his special favorite, San Black Ranger whose image, like that of the Marlboro Man, bears the phrase, “Come to where the flavor is.” “I don't know why but I feel a particular affinity for San José (Saint Joseph),” the artist confesses. “Perhaps it is because our son, Alfredo, was born on his day. The saint is also patron of fathers.” Castañeda then retrieves an l8th-century canvas from Mexico which portrays San José. With his keen eye for detail and nuance, he opines, “I think it was done by a nun. There is something about the delicate brushwork!”

If Castañeda’s work is rooted in the Christian tradition, it also owes a great debt to Islam, particularly that preference for geometric shapes and abstractions dictated by a faith which discourages realistic treatments of flora and fauna in competition with God. He often frames his works with an arch reminiscent of the East, and Oriental carpets, especially prayer rugs, also appear periodically. As a leitmotif he often superimposes upon his imagery a faint pattern of geometric tiles he first noticed at the ruined Augustinian monastery at Acolman outside Mexico City, a complex containing many Mudéjar traits transmitted from Moorish Spain. “That pattern of hexagons framed by rhombuses: it symbolizes sacred ground or a holy presence,” Castañeda says. “Since my childhood, I don't know why, a reproduction of the Alhambra at Granada that my grandfather had, moved me greatly: the abstract patterns. There’s a verse by Manuel Machado, the brother of Antonio. ‘Yo soy de aquellos hombres que de oriente vinieron, que todo lo ganaron y todo lo perdieron. Yo soy uno de ellos!' (I'm of those men who came from the Orient, gained everything and lost everything. I'm one of those!), he laughs. At some length we discuss Borges, a Castañeda favorite, who also had an affinity for the Arab tradition as manifested in fictions like El Aleph and El Zahir. “Si, el oriente, de donde venimos y donde tenemos que regresar” (Yes, the Orient from where we originate and where we have to return), Castañeda muses. A natural story teller, he then launches into several moralistic tales, first an Arab version of the Biblical parable of the prodigal son and another from A Thousand and One Nights.

In contrast to many artists' studios, Castañeda’s workroom is not full of visual imagery but resembles more a library with books everywhere. There are only a few on the visual arts: a monograph on Masaccio with favorite paintings marked; a treatise on Mexican architect Luís Barragán whose refined structures evoke a timeless silence much like Castañeda’s paintings; a photo essay on the bullfight. One entire shelf is devoted to the theme of pilgrimage, especially the medieval road to Santiago de Compostela, which the artist would like to follow, perhaps traversing the last fifty kilometers on foot. But the vast majority of the books deal with literature, philosophy, religion. “I go to museums but I'm not a fanatic for paintings. Literature says more to me, especially poetry.” Among his favorites are the mystics of the Counter Reformation, San Juan de la Cruz and Santa Teresa de Avila, from whom he quotes at length. He is also fond of the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Antonio Machado, and Fernando Pessoa, and especially the Sufis whose paradoxical notions he folds into his paintings and applies to his own life: dejar de ser para ser (cease being in order to be) and la esperanza nace de la desesperanza (hope is born out of despair). Castañeda takes equal delight in lesser known works such as the aphorisms of Antonio Porchia, an obscure Argentine poet: El mal de no creer es creer un poco (Worse than not believing is believing a little) or La cuestion profunda es para el hombre la simultaneidad, no la alternativa: ser y no ser al mismo tiempo (The profound question for man is simultaneity, not the alternative: being and not being at the same time). He’s also partial to another Argentinean, Roberto Juarroz who, in the first stanza of his Undécimo poesia vertical, wrote: No se trata de hablar/ni tampoco de callar/se trata de abrir/ algo entre la palabra y el silencio (It’s not a question of speaking/or of keeping silent/it concerns opening/something between the word and silence).

Reflecting on his situation, Castañeda admits, “Yes my world is a bit like a cloister, quite separate from the worldly tumult. Here I have my library, refectory, even chapel much like that of the monastery. In contrast to a successful musician who must perform and hence show his face, I can function perfectly without showing myself publicly.” But in addition to perceiving his daily routine in hermetic terms, he also sees what he does in a hermetic context as if he were an alchemist from ages past transmuting base metals into gold, searching for the fabled lapis philosophorum, pursuing that elusive arcanum. “Alchemy is another word from the Moslems—alkimia—just like algebra, almond, and alcohol,” Castañeda points out. “I take a bit of poetry, phrases or passages that I've underlined, and I mix those messages or keys as if they were materials (like mercury or sulfur) with colors and liquids to find a special light, a kind of medicine!” Castañeda never perceives what he does as work. “That reminds me of a torero here in Madrid who was greatly offended when someone inquired about the form of his work. He said, 'I don't work. Yo soy torero!' It’s the truth. I don't work either. Work is something very different from painting. Painting is like singing. It’s a form of living, of expressing your happiness that you are alive. It is a necessity!”

Although this supremely thoughtful and gentle individual is indeed consumed by ephemeral and philosophical concerns, there is also a robust, earthy side to the man. He delights in the rituals of the bullfight, takes a frequent fling at the lottery, and loves to visit the tapas bars in the historic district near his home, to wash down with strong red wine bits of sausage, cured ham or sardines. Most of all he values time spent with members of his extended family who live nearby and collectively operate a splendid restaurant which features authentic regional dishes of Mexico. Castañeda’s wife, Hortensia, oversees the kitchen and menu which draws on family recipes for such specialties as sopa de tortilla garnished with chicharrón (pork crackling) and dark, dried chiles; pollo al mole Poblano (chicken in Puebla-style chocolate sauce); and quesadillas de cuitlacoche (tortillas stuffed with blue corn mold). A little bar just inside the front door offers a full range of local wines, beers imported from Mexico, and especially tequilas, nearly 300 rare examples of which are also on display in antique glass cases near the entrance. Castañeda’s two sons, Adrián and Alfredo, both part-time painters, serve as maitre d' and cook, respectively, while daughter Ibiza, also an artist, tends bar and assists her mother.

If this culinary digression seems a bit removed from our central purpose, I should add that the restaurant adjoins a gallery called El guardian de lo pequeño (The Guardian of That Which Is Small) wherein Castañeda sponsors shows by Mexican artists from the younger generation. The restaurant, too, contains a representative selection of paintings by Castañeda’s own talented progeny as well as a representative selection of haunting images by the master himself. But it is the eatery’s signboard on the street that seems most compelling, the image of a double-bowed sailing vessel going in two directions or perhaps dead in the water, with once again that sacred pattern of tiles hovering overhead. It replicates a Castañeda painting inside the restaurant which bears the words, Entre suspiro y suspiro (Between a Sigh and a Sigh), both the establishment’s name and also a cryptic key to the timeless sense of nostalgia that permeates so much of his work. “By sigh, I mean that sigh that goes with longing,” Castañeda explains and he demonstrates by expelling a convincing puff of air. “For the sign I modified an earlier painting of a ship under full sail that seems to be dissolving from memory. Castañeda then shows me a passage he wrote for the back of the menu which in translation reads: “Tradition is a heritage whose richness we savor around the table. Thus our grandparents left their home, crossed the sea, and in the wise heart of the grandparent-land, sowed this family tree that now returns transplanted to give new fruits. We are what we eat and our bread is baked in two worlds” (La tradición es una herencia cuya riqueza saboreamos entorno a la mesa. Así nuestros abuelos dejaron su casa, cruzaron el mar y en el sabio corazón de la abuela-tierra sembraron este árbol familiar que ahora vuelve trasplantado para dar nuevos frutos. Porque somos lo que comemos y nuestro pan es cocina de dos mundos). In returning to Europe, the clan has come full circle but there will always be a tug and pull, a lonely sense of being neither here nor there but somewhere in between. Loneliness as a universal condition, that sense that no one entirely belongs to anything any longer, resonates in many Castañeda paintings and characterizes much of the human condition in our times.

Andover, MA, April 1999