Going through news clips from the culture sections of Spanish newspapers I am reminded yet again of the ever-disastrous state of the arts in my ex-country. Retardation, lack of progressive thinking and perennial politic interference trumps any efford or possibility of getting Spain in the avant-garde of arts. Six examples from the news follow.
1.- Madrid tries to get a symbol of modernity, a landmark for the new millenium and world-class skyscrapers designed by international stars, but reportedly fails miserably: “the new four towers will not be symbols, neither a reference in the city; they will not be part of the cultural debate, neither of the architectural dialogue. It’s as simple and sad as this. They will be tall towers, tall and four”, writes architecture critic Anton Garcia-Abril comparing Madrid’s construction effort with the successful “Torre Agbar” by Jean Nouvel, a +130 million euro initiative with positive real estate, symbolic, urban, cultural, economic and politic repercussions, among others. The result of, in his words, Barcelona’s “daring urban policy and conscience of city”.
2.- Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia (the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) goes from 51,297 square meters (552,156 square feet) to 84,048 square meters (904,685 square feet)- but the galleries grow a ridiculous 20 square meters (215 square feet), the core of the costly and lengthy expansion going to “stairs, corridors and halls” (no less than 12,831 square meters or 138,111 square feet). One of the biggest museums in the world now, but apparently made of "stairs, corridors and halls", a constructed metaphor of Spain's twisted system of burocracy and government.
Similar to the Herzog & De Meuron celebrated expansion of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, in which the old building retains the galleries and the new futuristic building houses the restaurant, shop, education and other public services, but apparently poorly conceived, the Reina Sofia Museum is now (as always) in the eye of the storm after the new director presented a highly polemic new plan for the collections, dubbed as “conservative” by the most benign critic. The galleries devoted to temporary exhibitions will in fact be reduced in the new museum from the current five to three, all anew and shrunk in space, looking more like a small commercial art gallery than the cathedral-style museum of contemporary art now en vogue in America. These galleries will be most likely unable to present anything but small paintings of the historic avant-gardes.
The museum is paid for by, like most museums in Spain, the Central Government. Its direction and managers change every time the government changes in an election. The Jean Nouvel-designed expansion officially inaugurated now opened partially a year ago for a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective and then closed for construction. Now opens for giving some services (restaurant, shop) but it will not be fully operative –and the new display of the collection presented- in a number of years.
3.- Similarly, Valencia’s new Palau de les Arts (Opera House, kind of a Lincoln Center), designed by New York-based superstar and Valencia native Santiago Calatrava is having official (political) openings these days, with a musical program budgeted at 3.5 million euros. Politics and the architect will get together and smile, Lorin Maazel and Zubin Metha will conduct their orchestras during October and 3500 musicians of municipal music bands will play (this being a very Spanish tradition of “the bigger and the more people, the better looks like we're doing something”). Then, the Opera House will close and won’t be ready until the 2006-2007 opera season.
4.- The Spanish Art Auction Christies’ conducts in Madrid in the fall offers this year a rare Antonio Lopez canvas as highlight of the sale. The auction writer of a Spanish newspaper warns that the estimate of 400,000-600,000 euros is “a big amount affordable only by a very few in our country”.
5.- "Madrid finds her own SoHo" is the title of a long, celebratory article published in "El Pais", Spain's most important newspaper. "We're not going to be the SoHo of Madrid. We already are", says Oliva Arauna, one of the commanding dealers of the Madrid gallery scene.
Ten years after the agony and painful death of New York's SoHo as a gallery district and its conversion in an expensive shopping mall for European fashion victims, Madrid is proud to have her "own SoHo". What SoHo? Not a single mention of Chelsea in that article.
6.- Eugenio Ampudia is one of many contemporary Spanish artists whose work will not be supported or collected by the Reina Sofia and its new plan, for being either "too young" (he and many of his peers are in the 40's, just like, say, Maurizio Cattelan) or "not established" enough; rejected by a museum that will end being nothing but a big coffin for "Guernica" and the foreign tourists that flock to see the Picasso masterpiece. Reflecting on the Reina Sofia expansion and the current situation of the arts in Spain, Ampudia says:
"Nowadays, saying abroad you're a Spaniard doesn't help at all. It's a thousand times better to be a Brazilian".
Somebody said once, "When in New York is 3 am, in Europe is 1985". And indeed it is not fair to compare this mighty city with anything else in the world. But I have to wonder whether Madrid can be compared to even Kansas City or Minneapolis. Des Moines maybe? Friends in Madrid assure me the city is changing and is not the provincial, lacking place I used to live in and despise. But the news I periodically get from Madrid reassert my vision of that place as an irreparable cave of backwardness where the few things that ever get done are slow, wrong or nixed by politics.
