Oisín
11-22-2008, 01:44 AM
Europe’s Multiculturalists: Reaching for the Marmalade Skies
From the desk of A. Millar
Art has been much in the news of late, perhaps surprisingly considering the economic downturn. But, then, perhaps it is in such times that we turn our gaze to larger than life depictions. The ancients sort their gods before the onset of war, and no doubt most of us have regained some courage on seeing the portrait of a great thinker, leader, or saint, or the depiction of some virtue.
In the last few days the European headquarters of the United Nations has unveiled (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3651) its new ceiling, decorated by Miquel Barceló, and funded to the tune of 20 million Euros by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. It drips with large, boldly colored stalactites, and is the sort of art that one might see in a kindergarten classroom – made of papier-mâché – though it is of course much grander in scale. But aside from the size of the work, it compares poorly with the abstract painting of Mark Rothko (http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/rothkosplash.html) or the water lilies of Monet (http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80220).
Yet, that Zapatero has thought to use art as an instrument to assure his place in political history is not surprising. The two most well known artists of the twentieth century – Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali – were both Spanish, and moreover, new political movements have often demanded a style of art. The early Italian fascists had Futurism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism_(art)), for example, and Barceló’s art will represent the ideology of multiculturalism – destined to eventually go the way of other isms.
Nor is this the first time a government of Spain has sort the help of an artist, of course. Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica (http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html), was commissioned by the then Spanish government, for exhibition at the 1937 Paris International, when civil war raged throughout Spain, and government forces were under attack by Franco’s. Guernica itself depicts a Luftwaffe attack on the Basque town of the same name.
Not surprisingly, Picasso’s work sharply contrasts Barceló gauchely colored ceiling. So, indeed, does the Sistine Chapel (http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Nord.html) to which the work has been compared. It is unlike the US Supreme Court building (http://www.tencommandments.biz/), with its depictions of the Ten Commandments in the very fabric of the building. It is absent any symbol of justice, or temperance, or courage, or truth.
While Picasso may be attacked for painting in a manner that was “child-like” (although he was in fact an expert draftsman, as his earlier works show), Guernica portrays the barbarity of war with a simplicity that can be understood by children, but yet provokes us to think about war and peace, and the nature of humanity, and how easily it is lost. The Sistine Chapel enunciates the Old and New Testaments, and man’s relationship to God. Depictions of Moses on the walls of the US Supreme Court remind us of the long history of law and jurisprudence.
With its omnipresent fluffiness and unreality of color, Barceló asks us not to think, to provoke or be provoked, but to accept – to forego reason and immerse ourselves instead in childish dreaminess. Unlike Guernica, the Sistine Chapel, or the reliefs of the US Supreme Court building, it is a work in which dialectic cannot be discerned, nor from which it is possible to initiate debate. It is a work in which there is no hint of parliamentary opposition, no right versus wrong, no good or evil. It represents the vision of men who have neither gravitas nor substance. If we can discern its provenance, it leads back only so far as the 1960s, to the Beatle’s lyrics of “marmalade skies,” “tangerine trees,” and “nothing is real.” It is an LSD trip, or Futurism extra light.
Barceló’s ceiling is thus the perfect backdrop to Europe’s Prozac politics – the religio-political cult of multiculturalism – in which all difficult questions, all dissent, all real content, can be dissolved not by rational argument, but by the invocation of paint-box clichés.
[Link] (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3652)
From the desk of A. Millar
Art has been much in the news of late, perhaps surprisingly considering the economic downturn. But, then, perhaps it is in such times that we turn our gaze to larger than life depictions. The ancients sort their gods before the onset of war, and no doubt most of us have regained some courage on seeing the portrait of a great thinker, leader, or saint, or the depiction of some virtue.
In the last few days the European headquarters of the United Nations has unveiled (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3651) its new ceiling, decorated by Miquel Barceló, and funded to the tune of 20 million Euros by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. It drips with large, boldly colored stalactites, and is the sort of art that one might see in a kindergarten classroom – made of papier-mâché – though it is of course much grander in scale. But aside from the size of the work, it compares poorly with the abstract painting of Mark Rothko (http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/rothkosplash.html) or the water lilies of Monet (http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80220).
Yet, that Zapatero has thought to use art as an instrument to assure his place in political history is not surprising. The two most well known artists of the twentieth century – Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali – were both Spanish, and moreover, new political movements have often demanded a style of art. The early Italian fascists had Futurism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism_(art)), for example, and Barceló’s art will represent the ideology of multiculturalism – destined to eventually go the way of other isms.
Nor is this the first time a government of Spain has sort the help of an artist, of course. Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica (http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html), was commissioned by the then Spanish government, for exhibition at the 1937 Paris International, when civil war raged throughout Spain, and government forces were under attack by Franco’s. Guernica itself depicts a Luftwaffe attack on the Basque town of the same name.
Not surprisingly, Picasso’s work sharply contrasts Barceló gauchely colored ceiling. So, indeed, does the Sistine Chapel (http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Nord.html) to which the work has been compared. It is unlike the US Supreme Court building (http://www.tencommandments.biz/), with its depictions of the Ten Commandments in the very fabric of the building. It is absent any symbol of justice, or temperance, or courage, or truth.
While Picasso may be attacked for painting in a manner that was “child-like” (although he was in fact an expert draftsman, as his earlier works show), Guernica portrays the barbarity of war with a simplicity that can be understood by children, but yet provokes us to think about war and peace, and the nature of humanity, and how easily it is lost. The Sistine Chapel enunciates the Old and New Testaments, and man’s relationship to God. Depictions of Moses on the walls of the US Supreme Court remind us of the long history of law and jurisprudence.
With its omnipresent fluffiness and unreality of color, Barceló asks us not to think, to provoke or be provoked, but to accept – to forego reason and immerse ourselves instead in childish dreaminess. Unlike Guernica, the Sistine Chapel, or the reliefs of the US Supreme Court building, it is a work in which dialectic cannot be discerned, nor from which it is possible to initiate debate. It is a work in which there is no hint of parliamentary opposition, no right versus wrong, no good or evil. It represents the vision of men who have neither gravitas nor substance. If we can discern its provenance, it leads back only so far as the 1960s, to the Beatle’s lyrics of “marmalade skies,” “tangerine trees,” and “nothing is real.” It is an LSD trip, or Futurism extra light.
Barceló’s ceiling is thus the perfect backdrop to Europe’s Prozac politics – the religio-political cult of multiculturalism – in which all difficult questions, all dissent, all real content, can be dissolved not by rational argument, but by the invocation of paint-box clichés.
[Link] (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3652)