Pina Bausch in memoriam

She was a very great artist. Like Wagner, she invented a new form of total art, turning ballet into a metaphysical and narrative genre. I had often heard great things about Pina Bausch but nothing prepared me for the overwhelming beauty and emotion of Agua, the first show of hers that I saw (CCB, Lisbon 2003). Since that first experience, never ever did I miss an opportunity to catch up on all her works that I had criminally overlooked in the years before. I managed to see Cravos and Ten Chi (Teatro de São Luiz, Lisboa 2005) , the great Cafe Muller — with herself performing — and The Rite of Spring, (Liceo, Barcelona 2008). I wish I had seen all of them.

The artist as icon

And now for something completely different. Taschen has just published a fabulous book retracing the entire career of Jeff Koons. It is impossible to look at his work without smiling. Koons himself is always smiling, as if inviting the viewer to share in the enjoyment of his work. It's schmaltzy, crunchy, shiny and glossy. His pieces are instant, cheerful, icons of popular culture. With the exception of the "Made in Heaven" series, which seem strangely literal, self indulgent and cold and whose shock value comes more from its sheer bad taste than from its explicit sexual content, Koons manages to combine wit, warmth, technical perfection and a complex simplicity in his multiple cross references to consumer culture, pop art, infantile imagery and sexual tease.  

The painter as hero

Julian Schnabel is a man of bold gestures. He is grand, immodest and generous. He built himself a palazzo on the Hudson river, when he decided to change medium he bypassed video and went directly to commercial filmmaking and, meanwhile, made a name for himself as a decorator, eschewing modern design for rich colours and deep textures. He is also squarely out of fashion. No respectable museum will touch his work. Is this perhaps unfair? The other day I stumbled upon a book published by Skira retracing his career and, much to my surprise, felt a strong compulsion to buy it. All of a sudden, his famous broken crockery paintings, which had always seemed to me slightly repellent, appeared full of energy and depth. His newer material, bold strokes of paint on found images, seemed beautiful and poetic. It seemed quite refreshing to find art that is openly emotional done by a painterly painter, as opposed to the dessicated, intellectual pieces  that fill so many museums and galleries these days... 

Museum night at MACBA

Performance art at the chapel: german/spanish rock by Monsters and Miracles. Kids, skaters and immigrants at the MACBA plaza. Art objects (Matt Mulligan, Rita McBride) and Manel and Victor having a good time inside the museum. The museum director chatting at the door. End