3 - Journalism and Essays: from Art to Politics

Summary

Vargas Llosa's literary criticism is complemented by his keen interest in other art forms. In his newspaper column ‘Piedra de toque’ [Touchstone], which appears in El País and is licensed to other newspapers internationally, he regularly discusses cultural issues arising from, for example, attending a theatre production or a concert, watching a film or visiting an art exhibition. Sometimes his curiosity is aroused by an interesting piece of writing, such as Hayden Herrera's biography of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo which he mentions in an article about an exhibition of the artist's work. It is striking to what extent the notions of Vargas Llosa's literary criticism also shape his approach to art. Discussing Frida Kahlo he highlights the total dedication to painting with which she overcame the extreme difficulties of her life and created a work of great coherence, ‘un estremecedor testimonio sobre el sufrimiento, los deseos y los más terribles avatares de la condición humana’ [a shattering testimony of the suffering, the desires and most horrendous vicissitudes of the human condition] (‘Resistir pintando’, p. 451). In an interesting twist he inverses his favourite antimetabole about the vital necessity of creating fiction and says about her: ‘Ella no vivía para pintar, pintaba para vivir’ [she did not live to paint, but painted to live] (p. 453), thus expressing the thought that Frida Kahlo could not have continued living without transforming her agony and her rebellion against that agony into art.