Vista de sala de la Colección ¿La guerra ha terminado? Arte en un mundo dividido (1945-1968)

Is the war over?

Art in a divided world. 1945-1968 Collection

sábado 22 enero 2011
5:46
Politics
Painting
Sculpture
Photography
Audiovisual
Art History
Language
History
Visuality

The reorganisation of the Museo Reina Sofía collection, housed on the fourth floor of the Sabatini Building and devoted to art produced between 1945 and 1968, considers some of the historical, aesthetic and artistic tensions in an uneasy world facing the new reality of the Cold War. The polarisation between Europe and the United States, between painting and object art and between freedom and equality is revealed as a game board where art defines its relationship with reality, at times evasively and at times propagandistically.

The tour picks up where Theodor Adorno’s assertion about poetry after Auschwitz and Alain Resnais’ cinematic responses to the Nazi concentration camps leave off, dragging the expressionist blackness of Adorno’s aesthetic and the dialectics of French cinematic essays from the 1940s and 1950s through the other rooms. This aesthetic (and ethical) game is echoed in the relationship between Spanish and Latin American expressionist paintings and featured in films by Debord and Berlanga, which also contain tensions with the same messages.

This podcast contains a conversation with Manuel Borja-Villel and Rosario Peiró, the former explaining the general outlines of the exhibition and the latter discussing the specific case studies that have a leading role in the exhibition rooms and the associated publication.

The background features some of the sounds that can be heard in the rooms, a play of voices that speak of visuality and language as the predominant mode of thought when it comes to presenting the works of art along with new acquisitions and bequests.

Production

José Luis Espejo

Locution

Norah Delgado O'Neill, Luis Mata

License
Creative Commons by-nc-sa 4.0

Is the war over?

Art in a divided world. 1945-1968 Collection

Is the war over? Art in a divided world. 1945-1968. Reorganisation of the collection. From
24 November 2010

"En el día de hoy..."
"Oh Jeff, do you think a murderer will let you see all that?"
"Le décret et la procédure, Nacht und Nebel (Nuit et brouillard)"
"La guerra, ha terminado"
“By order of the Mayor, I inform everyone under my command to remain silent.”

Manuel Borja-Villel, Director of the Museo Reina Sofía: This historical period was a specific period of tension between Europe and the United States. Europe didn’t want to lose artistic hegemony and the United States was aware that it had won the war.

“Franco and Eisenhower respond to the applause of the enormous crowd cheering our victory and peace, and giving a spontaneous welcome to the leader of this friendly nation.”

Rosario Peiró, Head of Collections of the Museo Reina Sofía: We use materials that aren’t specifically or traditionally thought of as artistic, but are very important and somewhat popular, like magazines, photography, film. For example, we included Berlanga’s film Bienvenido Mister Marshall.

[Extract of a song from the Bienvenido Mister Marshall]: “Americans, come to Spain in good health. Long live the extravagance of this great and powerful town. Olé Virginia and Michigan and long live Texas, which isn’t bad. Americans, we greet you with joy. Olé!”

Rosario Peiró: Another new feature is the inclusion of the Situationist International in the discourse, one of the main art movements in the second half of the 20th century, which is fundamental in terms of understanding certain attitudes about political art in Spain in the 1980s. Now we can see how they interrelate.

We also focus on the Lettrist film movement.

Manuel Borja-Villel: There’s some tension between the first part, where painting dominates, since it was believed that the hegemony of painting was going to change the world. So, the first part is along the lines of Picasso and Miró.

Rosario Peiró: Gego is a key artist who straddles national, international, Latin American, Spanish, performative and pictorial aspects. We’ve created a room that creates a dialogue between him and a generation of Spanish artists from the 1960s. We include images of Spain by great international photographers and have recovered the work of a little-known Spanish artist, Josefa Toldrà.

Manuel Borja-Villel: In the second part, objects of consumption predominate over painting. The two key figures are Duchamp and Cage.

Rosario Peiró: These cases are largely related to new acquisitions or new collections that have been bequeathed to us.

Manuel Borja-Villel: The exhibition was completed using different collections. It’s comprised of some purchases, but also includes some pieces that are impossible to buy.