Revisiting the past from a contemporary perspective is a premise as necessary as it is delicate and, too often, boring. Depending on the motivations, you can generate tendentious rereadings or associations free of academicisms that can become the key to understanding some facts of the present. Apart from the Tricentenary theme, three interesting examples in this sense are coming together in Barcelona these days. These are three proposals that do not recreate battles or epic feats, but rather, based on the work with archives and documents, reveal unpublished materials or develop unusual associations.
The first of these is the new arrangement of part of the MNAC (National Art Museum of Catalonia), which rehouses the museum’s modern art collection. And he does it not based on chronological or stylistic criteria, but on the changes in the idea of the “modern artist”, his status, the conception of workshop and work, which not only brings new light to the way in which the pieces that follow can be seen, but refers to a direct dialogue with the current notions of artist, workshop and production. And as it could not be otherwise, the same watertight classification of discipline disintegrates and forces to exhibit painting, sculpture and architecture together with what was previously known as applied arts, and other new media such as photography, cinema and advertising. It is only from the coexistence of these manifestations, which contextualize the different elements of study, that a kind of Zeitgeist or spirit of the moment can be communicated.
On the same mountain of Montjuïc, a little further away, at the Joan Miró Foundation, Joan M. Minguet and Fèlix Fanès have curated a historical exhibition: Barcelona neutral zone, 1914-1918, which defines with absolute precision the space-time period to be treated and, even based on a multitude of documents (for which the curators are art historians and university professors) does not hesitate, however, to avoid academicism. And in relating, contrasting and establishing very interesting and not at all topical associations, like for example the one that presents Sunyer in the sphere of influence of Cézanne and not in the “noucentista” section or the one that attributes great importance to illustrated newspapers, photography, cinema and posters.
Precisely, one of the great curatorial successes is that the works of the artists are an important part of the exhibition but not the only one. That is to say, it is not expected that isolated paintings and drawings speak for themselves, but that they are wrapped or in dialogue with all kinds of elements, which include films, posters of boxing matches, photographs of the night in Barcelona or cars from Hispano-Suiza. How can we not communicate that the 1st World War was the 1st war photographed and in which the means of mass manipulation were introduced? Illustrated newspapers, very abundant at that time, give a good account of it.
Although Barcelona stayed out of the war, the impact of the war was not insignificant. It had an influence on the economy (trade and industry grew), and consequently, on social conflicts (the bourgeoisie became rich and inequalities grew). Barcelona was politically neutral, but intellectually it did take sides. There were Francophiles and Germanophiles. And there were also comings and goings, exiles and a great exchange. Not only some salons from Paris that could not be held in the French capital, will be presented in Barcelona, but also for some time creators such as Albert Gleizes and his wife Juliette Roche, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Marie Laurencin or Arthur Cravan lived in the city, among others. The purity, order and classicism of the Noucentism coexisted well with an environment of intellectual activity, creative effervescence and nightlife, as the exhibition very well shows. The importance of the mass media is evidenced at the end of it, which closes with fragments of Charles Chaplin’s film Shoulder Arms (1918). If the exhibition began with images of the 1st World War, which was the first technological war, it concludes with the satirical vision of that same war, provided by Chaplin.
Barcelona neutral zone (1914-1918) is a historical exhibition that constantly appeals to the present and helps to understand some of its dynamics, precisely because it is not nostalgic but maintains the tension between memory and critical review. And it makes us remember other looks at Barcelona (that city that likes to look at itself so much and that is often so self-indulgent) such as Joan Ollé’s play À la ville de… Barcelona, which we already mentioned, or novels such as La ciudad de los prodigios or Sin noticias de Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza.
We close the review by returning to the MNAC where Perejaume has been invited to “maneuver” in the museum and in numerous archives, disposing of materials from various sources and nature as we had never seen them before. Between the Wunderkammer and the atlas in the purest Warburg style, Perejaume presents more than a hundred pieces, among them, a work by Miró next to a hand by an anonymous author and the arm of the Olot giantess; a collection of diaries of the civil war; or an archive-inventory of types of clouds by Eduard Fontseré Riba, to mention only some of the wonders arranged and activated in this look at the past from the present.
Mirar la historia desde el presente o cómo activar el pasado
