Back to art

Tired of look­ing at the world through the small screen? Soon we will be able to go back to mu­se­ums and see live art again, in­ter­act with it with­out fil­ters, be­come in­ti­mate with it, recog­nise it and recog­nise our­selves in it. Six art pro­fes­sion­als tell us about the works they can­not wait to re­con­nect with.

Mercè Alsina, art critic and in­de­pen­dent cu­ra­tor

De­saparèixer de si, 2020, by Ares Molins i Masat, Guillem Rodri and Car­los Pina with Rita Batet. Sant Cor­neli Chapel, Tomàs Balvey Archive Mu­seum in Card­edeu.

“I will go to see De­saparèixer de si, a pro­ject that was sus­pended just a few hours after its in­au­gu­ra­tion. It’s an ex­hi­bi­tion by Ares Molins, Guillem Rodri and Car­los Pina with Rita Batet that I cu­rated with Enric Maurí for the cycle Sant­cor­neliarts (2). Why? To face the con­cept of run­ning away from one­self from the per­spec­tive of ex­plor­ing that oth­er­ness that in­hab­its us, in the con­text of an ex­hi­bi­tion that has been stolen from view and only ex­ists as traces. Through the text of the same title by David Le Bre­ton, the ex­hi­bi­tion uses art to re­flect on con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety and how in­di­vid­u­als some­times feel ex­cluded and im­mersed in an inner exile, en­trenched in so­cial life; and we claim our right to ab­stain. The ex­hi­bi­tion pro­poses a re­flec­tive tran­si­tori­ness, to think about re­al­ity and reestab­lish links with what’s in­side us. Per­haps after Covid-19 this will be an ur­gently needed ex­hi­bi­tion. The works were con­ceived specif­i­cally for this pro­ject based on joint work.”

Vicenç Furió, art his­to­rian

Els Penya-segats blancs a Rugen, 1818, by Cas­par David Friedrich. Oskar Rein­hart Foun­da­tion, Win­terthur.

“Dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times, I choose a work that ex­pands my spirit: Els Penya-segats blancs a Rugen, by Cas­par David Friedrich. It’s a mag­netic paint­ing, which has been linked to the artist’s hon­ey­moon and has some re­li­gious and even po­lit­i­cal sym­bol­ism. But what amazes me about it is its orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion, the spa­tial se­quenc­ing and the grad­ing of planes that lead the eye to the depths of the land­scape, the sea and the sky. I like the fan­tas­tic white lime­stone rocks, the con­trast of colours, so vivid and at the same time so nu­anced. I see the branches and feel the breeze. The work makes you imag­ine the thoughts of the fig­ure on the right, which in­evitably mix with your own thoughts see­ing the full image, the one you see as a spec­ta­tor. I’m drawn to the win­dow, the cor­ri­dor that leads the image to­wards the in­fi­nite.”

Teresa Grandas, Macba cu­ra­tor

Èxta­sis de la beata Lu­dovica Al­ber­toni, 1675, by Bernini. Església de San Francesco a Ripa de Roma. Muro pin­tado por el artista con pin­cel del número 8, entre los días 10 y 19 de sep­tiem­bre de 2006, by Isidoro Valcárcel Med­ina.

“There are a lot of works I would like to see when we can go out again, but in a mo­ment of con­fu­sion like the one we’re going through, I’ll refer to just two. One is the sculp­ture of Lu­dovica Al­ber­toni, by Bernini, in which the phys­i­cal sen­su­al­ity in the mys­ti­cal ec­stasy of the Bea­tus dif­fuses the bound­aries be­tween faith and eroti­cism, even more in­tensely than in The Ec­stasy of St. Teresa (1652). To me it ap­pears trans­gres­sive, be­cause of the con­fu­sion be­tween seem­ingly sep­a­rate no­tions and the role of power in defin­ing them, being the dri­ving force be­hind Dok­oupil’s pho­to­graphic essay Madon­nas in Ec­stasy (1987). The other work is the paint­ing Muro pin­tado por el artista con pin­cel del número 8, entre los días 10 y 19 de sep­tiem­bre de 2006, by Isidoro Valcárcel Med­ina. I won’t be able to see this work, as it was de­signed to dis­ap­pear shortly after it was made, erased by the thick brush of an­other painter. From the am­bi­gu­ity and sub­ver­sion of es­tab­lished no­tions, the artist re­flects on the mean­ing and fleet­ing na­ture of things. In very dif­fer­ent ways, the two works place us in a po­si­tion of doubt and re­flec­tion, both nec­es­sary today.”

Malén Gual, Pi­casso Mu­seum cu­ra­tor

In­te­rior, Strandgade 30, 1908, by Vil­helm Ham­mershøi. Aros Aarhus Kun­st­mu­seum.

“In this time of con­fine­ment and lone­li­ness, the works of the Dan­ish painter Vil­helm Ham­mershøi are an in­vi­ta­tion for con­tem­pla­tion, peace and rec­ol­lec­tion. Ham­mershøi, whose work has been for­got­ten over the last cen­tury and has been reval­ued with re­cent ex­hi­bi­tions, worked in his home­town of Copen­hagen and is best known for his in­te­rior por­traits. Using a lim­ited palette, his han­dling of light achieves an in­ti­mate and melan­choly at­mos­phere, out of time, both cold and el­e­gant at the same time. The fe­male char­ac­ters, his sis­ter Anna and wife Ida, por­trayed from be­hind, look out through a win­dow and half-open doors, but with­out at­tempt­ing to leave the room that pro­tects them. Are they afraid? Are they wait­ing for some­one? Isn’t this tense at­ti­tude of wait­ing, of un­cer­tainty, what we are feel­ing right now?”

Alexan­dra Laudo, in­de­pen­dent cu­ra­tor

Dou­ble Ex­cal­ibur, 2020, by Pere Llobera. La Capella, Barcelona.

“A few days be­fore the state of alarm began, we in­au­gu­rated Pere Llobera’s ex­hi­bi­tion Faula rodona. Sols i em­bog­its; entre la pre­cisió total i una cançó de Sau in La Capella. It’s a long and strange title that, bear­ing in mind what hap­pened next, seems pre­mon­i­tory to me in many ways, as was the spirit un­der­ly­ing the ex­hi­bi­tion. At the be­hest of I. Kertész, Llobera aimed to in­voke con­flict and won­der and speak of “the meta­phys­i­cally aban­doned world.” These days, I en­vis­age all the empty mu­se­ums, all the closed ex­hi­bi­tion halls and all the un­seen works on dis­play, and I find it a dis­turb­ing and beau­ti­ful image, which could well be a re­flec­tion of this mean­ing­less world. But at the same time I think no, this human-free ex­is­tence has au­ton­omy, a mean­ing that us alien to us, and, as Kertész says, it is per­haps hu­man­ity that has been meta­phys­i­cally aban­doned. The first ex­hi­bi­tion I want to see again is Llobera’s, to re­mem­ber how that evening we saw each oth­ers’ smiles and greeted each other with hugs and kisses; to con­tem­plate the dual mi­rage of the Ex­cal­ibur sword emerg­ing from the depths of the murky wa­ters and to think that won­der still ex­ists, we only have to in­voke it.”

Pilar Parcerisas, art critic and in­de­pen­dent cu­ra­tor

Por­trait of Thor Lütken, 1892, by Ed­vard Munch. MNAC.

“I’m fas­ci­nated by this por­trait of Thor Lütken, Ed­vard Munch’s lawyer, painted a year be­fore The Scream (1893). By a quirk of diplo­matic his­tory, it ended up here in Barcelona, tem­porar­ily trans­ferred to Amics del MNAC. For a year I’ve had a press clip­ping on my desk about this paint­ing, which often goes un­no­ticed in the mid­dle of por­traits of the wealthy bour­geoisie. This Munch is more than a por­trait of com­mit­ment. I’m at­tracted to the re­al­ism of the face, which pro­jects a dis­tant, serene and de­fi­ant look at the on­looker, with a Ni­et­zsche-style mous­tache; the arm hold­ing the head in a pen­sive po­si­tion, which con­trasts with the rocky, leafy land­scape of Nor­we­gian fjord blues at night, hud­dled under his jacket, with a cou­ple em­brac­ing by a lake. This paint­ing is no stranger to the love, sex, death, tragedy and mad­ness that un­der­mined Munch’s life.”

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