It is a shame that “The Working Family” is now out of exhibition at Malba, because it is always worth revisiting it.
At least so we don't forget
what it was like to be a working-class family 60 years ago
.
Oscar Bony's work - which can now only be seen in the museum's online collection - crossed my cranial vault when I read that a new attraction was inaugurated in New York that recreates the iconic photo of Rockefeller Center workers during the construction of the skyscraper in 1932. What is similar about both works?
A lot, besides having been created in black and white.
To begin with,
what a great coup they achieved.
When Bony presented “The Working Family” at the Di Tella Institute in 1968, he revolutionized the art world.
She had “rented” that family to
show them on a stage for 8 hours a day
.
And he drew the attention of the public (and the Onganía government) to the little sign that explained that to make that piece he paid the man double what he earned during his regular work days.
The work was a complaint.
The photo of the Rockefeller workers - which tourists can now emulate - was initially intended to be advertising, but over time it also became a complaint about the working conditions of those workers.
So much so that every May 1st it goes viral on the networks.
That photo is known as
Lunch atop a skyscraper
and shows 11 men having lunch on a beam 240 meters high and without security.
It is now known that
the mythical image had a trick:
a few meters below there was a finished floor.
And everyone posed for the photo, just like Bony's family.
Another similarity between both works is that the protagonists were
real workers
: a metallurgist named Valentín Alsina, with his wife and son;
and construction workers.
On the 69th floor of Rockefeller Center.
As in a game of mirrors, the
mystery passed through everyone equally
.
Little or nothing was later known about the life of the “rented” family.
And of the 11 workers it only emerged that one was Basque and that at just 19 years old he had arrived in Argentina to later follow other paths.
He was one of those who ate lunch with astonishing tranquility in the heights and was portrayed in the photo that was published for the first time in the New York Herald Tribune with the aim of promoting the new skyscraper and showing the capacity for resistance of the United States after the debacle of '29.
And in some way the Argentine's work also tried to reflect the resistance during the Onganía government.
From the working class.
Not for nothing did the three members of the family have a book in their hands.
They do “something more” than work.
They read.
They study.
That was then synonymous with social mobility.
The Rockefeller photo was the snapshot that
defied death
.
Bony's challenges the new generations.
Who can believe that with those clothes, those shoes and those books, Valentín Alsina's family was a working-class family?
The INDEC reported that in order not to be poor a family needs $600 thousand.
Who knows how much the metallurgist will have charged to be exhibited for 8 hours on a stage.
See also
See also
Mar de Plata, the Beatles and a trip to nostalgia