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ONLY BE MADRILENIAN
Only-Be Madrilenian
Gran Vía
The Gran Vía is known as the most important street in Madrid because, along its way, it houses clothes shops, cinemas, theatres and striking buildings.
Almodóvar’s Mapplethorpe.
One of the main attractions at Festival Off PHotoEspaña 2011 which takes place in Madrid this July is the selection of 31 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe chosen by Pedro Almodóvar for Galería Elvira González (http://www.galeriaelviragonzalez.com/). The collection spans 13 years, starting from 1976 up until 1989 when the great American photographer died of AIDS. It is hard to think of a person better-suited to this particular job than Almodóvar. Basing his choice on a pre-selection already made by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Almodóvar has provided his personal retrospective of the work of one of the most suggestive, interesting, iconic and influential photographers of the twentieth century. Like Mapplethorpe, Almodóvar’s work is characterized by a mix of formal and stylistic classicism, clean and rigorous aestheticism and a willingness to deal with themes which are on the borderlines of what is socially acceptable. Of course, it is impossible to imagine the work of either without the inspiration of Warhol and the world he created in The Factory: that vibrant lighthouse of creativity, halfway between Camelot and the Cour des Miracles, which opened its doors to a memorable group of artists, drug-takers, transvestites and musicians who blurred the lines between the sexes, high culture and low culture, and art and modern life. Mapplethorpe and his inseparable friend and ally Patti Smith, both hungry for art and catharsis, lived during the death throes of the 60s, prowling around Max’s Kansas City rock club each night, rubbing shoulders with Warhol and his entourage. Almodóvar could be said to have continued the legacy of Warhol during the 70s and 80s – the underground years of...
Maja Bajević in Madrid
At the Crystal Palace in the Retiro Park in Madrid there will be an exhibition called “Continuará” which is a show, on between the 27th May and 3rd of October, presenting the work of artist Maja Bajevi?, who was born in Sarajevo in 1967. What´s interesting is that the artist has carried out the project especially for this space, making it a particularly unique show, along with the reason that this will be the first time that Bajevi? will have an individual exhibition in Spain, where she has been not quite as successful as in the rest of the world. The show is, above anything else, based around 140 economical and political slogans released between 1911 and 2011. Interestingly, as well as the information provided by the slogans, they can also be compared, as a study of the different political epochs ruling the world over the past 100 years. The get the best out of the show, it is divided into different sections, according to whether it is day or night, including an installation, archives, projection and performance. On top of all this, the artist will attempt to incorporate into the exhibition the construction of the Cristal Palace in the Retiro Park. This part of the work will be called “Sleeping Beauty,” which, according to Bajevi?, is because it is like a woman who for many decades remained distant from all that was going on in her surroundings. More information: http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/futuras.html Palacio de Cristal del Parque del Retiro: Plaza Independencia s/n, 28001 Madrid, España MiLK If you fancy visiting “Continuará” and discovering one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists,...
Abd-al Rahman and the Debod Egyptian Temple
In the year 750, during the Christian era, a young prince called Omeya managed to escape from the massacre of his entire family at the hands of the Abasíes, and after heading for the north of Africa, in an extraordinary journey of fleeing his persecutors, he arrived five years later at the Muslim territories of the ancient Roman Iberia – recently renamed Al-Andalus, in the beautiful Arabic language. His name was Abd-al- Rahman, and he was the grandson of the last Omeya, making him in some way the most noble of the Arabs, the last descendant of the fighters who had been companions to the Prophet himself, now that his family had been appointed into another dynasty, making a break with the past – having abandoned the splendid city of Damascus, moving from the capital of Islam to Baghdad, a formidable and brilliant new city on the banks of the Tigris. Abd-al- Rahman was also Berber, from his Mother´s side, which permitted him to campaign politically in Al-Andalus, and win the trust of both the Syrians, and the Berbers there, in order to become the new governor of the province, and be finally recognised as an emir by the abasíes – satisfied with having him duty bound to them politically – during this time, the presence and influence of the Abasi extended to the remotest China. In the lands of Al-Andalus, far from his beloved Damascus, Abd-al- Rahman devoted the best part of his life to the construction of a series of palaces, gardens, and temples (the quibla in the Cordoba mosque is not pointed towards Mecca, but is...
Yayoi Kusama at the Reina Sofia in Madrid
In one of their first denouncing artworks the collective feminist group Guerrilla Girls (formed anonymously in the eighties by a diverse group of female artistic writers and filmmakers of all ages, ethnicity, sexual orientation and degree of professional success) specified with penetrating irony the advantages of being a woman in art. Among them was the advantage of working without the pressure of success, not having to share presentations with men, escaping the world through self-employment, knowing that there was room for their work to be recognized once they were over eighty years of age , to be sure that whatever work they accomplished it would invariably be labeled as feminist, to have the opportunity to choose between a career and motherhood, to have more time to work when their couples abandon them for someone younger or not having to feel embarrassed when they are called geniuses and see how their ideas continued to live in the work of others. It is difficult, for example, to not appreciate her influence from Donald Judd, and Joseph Cornell. She also maintained a close relationships with Yves Klein and Frank Stella. The influence and stimulating effect of hard work are difficult to discuss, however for many years she suffered the stigma of being a beautiful and unbalanced woman (she spent more than thirty years voluntarily interned in a psychiatric hospital almost as a contemporary reincarnation of the myth of hysteria. For some time, she even suffered the distrust of a certain division of feminist critic circle, which considered opportunist they way she used her beautiful body to promote her work, posing, naked for...
Dcode Festival in Madrid
And after a gap of some years, the DCode Festival will be held again on at the University Complutense of Madrid. With an innovative approach, this appointment is waiting for you on the 24th and 25th of June to enjoy music and art. If you like and follow this groove, you should attend the avant-garde music DCode Festival to be held in Madrid on 24th and 25th of June. This year DCode returns with new vigor after several years of absence, thanks to an agreement with the Complutense University of Madrid signed with promoter Live Nation to deliver this proposal that is a tradition among lovers of art and music. The proposal that inspires DCode is part of a new philosophy: to create a mixed space where music and art are to meet new and renowned artists to display and share their artworks. Concerts will be held at the Cantarranas Sports Complex behind the School of Information Sciences at the Complutense University. The exhibition Art Barte will be open from June 10 at the Centro de Arte C. Art Barte is an innovative exhibition that integrates the audience with the artists through the exchange. The artworks in the exhibition are not sold for money, but they are exchanged by means of barter, so attendees must have previously thought well what to offer for an artwork. Bids will be made at the end of the exhibition and the artists may accept or reject offers of goods and services the viewers may make. An innovation is that viewers don’t know the names of the creators of the artworks until the end...
Lygia Pape at the Reina Sofia in Madrid
Until the 12th of September, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid is showing the work of Brazilian artist Lygia Pape. The exhibition was organised in association with the Lygia Pape Project, and was commissioned by Manuel Borja Villel and Teresa Velásquez. The show comprises 250 works, which include paintings, reliefs, xylographs, cinematography, poems, texts, and performance pieces as shown though photography. One of the most interesting, and exclusive parts of the collection is the series of experimental cinema that Pape made. Lygia Pape was born in New Friburg, Brazil, in 1927. Her name figures amongst the greats of Brazilian art, standing out for her mastery with the plastic arts, and an aesthetic devotion to devising new languages with which to transform the normal order. She was a key participant in the formation in the Frente art movement, led by Iván Serpa, which went public around 1954, with an exhibition in Rio de Janeiro. The group was formed by alumni of Serpa, and various artists which included Lygia Pape and Ligia Clark, who debated the influences of abstraction and the idea of concrete art in opposition to modern, figurative and nationalistic painting. In 1959, Pape separated from the Frente group, and joined the group which would revise concretism, and found “neo-contretism,” developing a new art manifesto which would breathe new life into contemporary Brazilian art. Neo-concretism was born as an opponent to the rationalism of concretism, and denied the validity of scientific attitudes in art, approaching instead the problem of expression and seeking to incorporate new dimensions, and languages for a non-figurative art which engaged the spectator in order to...
Lartigue’s Floating World- Madrid
The photographic exhibition of Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894 – 1986) can be seen in Caixa Forum in Madrid until the 19th of June. Perhaps the most impacting impression people have when visiting the exhibition is the facial expression of the other visitors as they move in slow motion through the different rooms, which seem to have been designed to stop time. Until 1963, Lartigue’s photographic works were completely anonymous, but after the success of his exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, his works started to receive their deserved recognition. From that very moment, his prestige has not stopped growing. That can be explained by the facial expressions we referred to in the first paragraph, since all of them show in different but unequivocal ways the invincible power of suggestion of some snapshots that he began to take when he was eight years old. These snapshots were taken almost daily, and they were accompanied by several brief texts, with the firm intention of facing the fleetingness and expiration of things. One of the most important concepts in Japanese aesthetics called mono no aware. We can approach its definition by saying that it alludes to a deep feeling of empathy towards the perishable beauty of things. That aspect is reflected in Lartigue’s photographs, who was able to photograph as nobody else did, the daily life of the Belle Epoque world –which by the way, was not separated from a certain obsession with the orientalism in general and particularly with the Japanese art–as well as the interwar period. As a document of a whole generation that felt constantly...
¿Qué hace esto aquí?: Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid
The Lázaro Galdiano Museum will present the exhibition “Que hace esto Aquí” Contemporary Art from the Maria Jose Jove Foundation at the Lázaro Galdiano Museum and will display a very significant collection of art work of some of the most important European and Spanish origin contemporary artists. The exposition is part of the Maria José Jove Foundation private collection and it is the first time this institution from La Coruña has an exhibition in Mardid The art works that you will be able to enjoy in the museum will be varied and different in view of the fact that the idea behind this exhibition is to provoke in the viewer a hefty variety of feelings. In the exposition you will be able to see paintings from Pablo Picasso, one of the most important painters in the history of Art The art works that have been chosen to present this exhibition are those that somehow or another were significant for the different artistic movements that occured during the XX century. Beside the Modelo en el Taller from Picasso, a cloth from Miró belonging to the fortie can be seen as wel as artwork from Francisco Leiro, Tino Grandío, Antonio Saura, Salvador Dalí, Miquel Barceló, Zurbarán, Goya, Kandinsky, Manolo Millares, Manolo Valdés and Eduardo Chillida amongst other very well known artists More Info: http://www.flg.es/agenda/contenido/exposiciones_temporales.htm Museo Lázaro Galdiano: Serrano 122, Madrid MiLK The exhibition will take place in Madrid until the 20th of June and can be visited in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum. If you want to enjoy ¿Qué hace esto aquí? Contemporary art of the María José Jove Foundation and see...
