Of my life (Galaxia Gutenberg) is a book full of life and also full of work: among its pages are not only biographical photos (“my mother and I”), but also paintings, doodles, notes and many artist’s notebooks, that place where The ideas settle until they become art, or where they are already art directly. It is a biography that is like life itself, which is not strict prose, but is made of fragments and explosions, without much order and concert.
It is the life, a part of the life, of the artist Miquel Barceló (Felantix, Mallorca, 67 years old), who this Thursday appeared at the Ortega y Gasset Foundation, accompanied by Joan Tarrida, director of Galaxia Gutenberg (publishing house with which the artist has been collaborating regularly), to talk about his book. Messy hair, a bit of beard, dark tones and loose attire… He seems what he is: one of the great names of Spanish contemporary art. He could be given ten years less.
– This book is a commission that is more than 20 years old. But 20 years ago I didn’t feel like telling my life at all.
Now it has finally been decided. On a trip to Japan, using the perspective provided by distance, he began to organize photos and write in French: “That gives me absolute impunity. In Catalan and Spanish I immediately realize that it’s shit. In French I forgive myself,” he says. And he continued writing, little by little, at night, a habit he maintained on other trips. He produced a book of brutal honesty, also fueled by conversations with Colette Fellous, the book’s editor for Mercure de France.
– This has more to do with a fotonovela than anything else. Well, it also looks like a painting, because there are many layers of life, many layers of corrections.
The French newspaper The World He has said, as Tarrida pointed out, that nothing like this has been read from an artist since Delacroix. Other artist biographies also influenced him, such as that of Tàpies, which Barceló read 40 years ago, but of which he strongly remembered the portrait of his father. Barceló’s mother died just a few months ago, and the paternal figures are very present in the work, like the fish and dogs of his life, which the artist has made an effort to remember. Animals are important, because he lives surrounded by them, donkeys, dogs. Since the 70s, the artist has been involved with environmental groups and environmental defense groups, and that love of nature is also reflected in his book. He lives surrounded by animals and also poets, that’s why he talks about poets, from Paul Verlaine to Edison Simons, who was his friend in Paris, and about many books, because he lives surrounded by paintings and books, more and more books, too many books. He does not mention other great stars he met, such as Warhol or Basquiat.
– Since poets have little audience and sell few books, it is good to promote them. Poets have changed my life more than famous people.
Of course: Curro Romero and Camarón appear, although Barceló claims to not be a big fan of the name dropping. This Thursday afternoon he will have a talk with EL PAÍS journalist Borja Hermoso in the Las Meninas room, in the Prado Museum, within the Eñe Festival programming. “They put a bed in that room for me, and I’ll stay,” he jokes.
The Notre Dame Tapestries
Understand that we admire artists who in their personal lives were despicable beings. He has never felt pressured by the threat of cancellation, rather he has never understood the controversies that have once surrounded him. “I already have enough problems with my work: we painters live off of incorrectness. “As they say painting is dead, you can do whatever you want.” Now he is working on the commission of three tapestries for the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, where he will represent themes from the Old Testament, which he claims to have already been sufficiently developed. The reopening of the temple, after the restoration work, is expected in December with great expectation: heads of state will participate and there will be a speech by Emmanuel Macron, president of the French Republic. Although Barceló has traveled a lot, although he dedicates much of his book to his experiences in Africa, in Mali, in the Country of the Dogons, he continues to work 12 kilometers from where he started painting, on the island of Mallorca, and he puts it as proof of his humility.
It vindicates the error, because painting is making mistakes, a process of acceptance, because you paint what you want, not what you can. He also claims the self-portrait, and in the end, the autobiography he presents. Since he started he tended to paint himself, when he had nothing else at hand. “Painting myself dirty and confused with a brush seemed paintable to me. Painting a naked lady in an armchair seemed like an imposture to me.” And he claims the quiet and Mediterranean life. He snorkels almost every day.
– Swim, paint, read. That’s a good day for me.