This is Luis Miró Quesada Garland’s final response to the comments made by Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias (El Comercio, Lima, August 21, 1955) regarding the latter’s conclusions concerning the newspaper’s survey about “classical” painting and “modern” painting. Garland claims that there has been a misunderstanding on the part of his interlocutor, Cantuarias, and clarifies his own arguments regarding the concept of “transcendence.” In his opinion, transcendence in art can only be explained in specifically visual terms. “Spiritual transcendence,” then, refers to “a higher stage” of form and color. Continuing in this vein, Garland is convinced that significance is “a transcendence of form that was spawned by form and only by visual form.” According to Cantuarias, if a work of art depended on its subject matter, it would possess an associative rather than an artistic significance.

In other remarks, Luis Miró Quesada Garland discusses the exhibition of Chinese painting reproductions presented in Lima by the UNESCO. In his, possibly prejudiced, opinion, they seem more like prints than paintings, but he nonetheless speaks in glowing terms of Chinese art, its spirituality and sense of harmony with the natural world. 

From May 29 to July 3, 1955 the “Cátedra Libre” section of the Sunday supplement of the Lima newspaper El Comercio published a survey about the aesthetic value of “modern” art as compared to “classical” art. [See the following articles in the ICAA digital archive, written by Cantuarias and published in El Comercio: “¿Es la pintura moderna respecto de la clásica, culminación o retroceso?” [As compared to classical painting, is modern painting an improvement on what came before or a step back?] (doc. no. 1137431); “¿Por qué se ha transformado la pintura?” [Why has painting changed?] (doc. no. 1137463) and (doc. no. 1137512); and “Pintura clásica y pintura moderna ¿ritmo acelerado o retorno a lo clásico?” [Classical painting and modern painting: speeding ahead or returning to the classics] (doc. no. 1137531)]. The subject remained controversial after a year of almost continuous debate on the question of abstract art. A number of Peruvian intellectuals and artists replied to the survey, many of whom played leading roles in the discussions about non-figurative art that were taking place at that time, including the architect Luis Miró Quesada Garland (1914–94), the abstract painter Fernando de Szyszlo (b. 1925), the poet Alejandro Romualdo Valle (1926–2008), and the social-realist painter Alfredo Ruiz Rosas (1926–2002). According to Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias (b. 1918)—the lead writer of the section and editor of the supplement—the replies indicated an understanding of the differences and similarities between “modern” and “classical” art, but also reflected the polarization of local opinion that was radically split between supporters and critics of abstract art.

Despite the objective nature of his comments, Cantuarias also took a position when he identified “figuration” with “significance.” [See “Cátedra libre: en el Perú se reconoce el valor de la pintura moderna. Dos direcciones de importancia: pintura moderna y pintura significativa” (doc. no. 1137563)]. This prompted an immediate response from the main ideological champion of modernist art in Peru, Luis Miró Quesada Garland, who described abstraction as art that was both “significant” and transcendent on its own terms. On a theoretical level, however, the debate revealed ambiguities in many basic areas of the discussion, such as the actual concept of “abstract” [see the five articles by Garland “En blanca y negra” (doc. no. 1137595), (doc. no. 1137612), (doc. no. 1137661), (doc. no. 1137678); (doc. no. 1137712); and “Sobre el significado del arte” (doc. no. 1137695). See also the articles by Cantuarias: “Sobre la influencia social en el arte” (doc. no. 1137629) and two others with the same title: “Sobre el significado del arte” (doc. no. 1226970) and (doc. no. 1137729)].