THE IMMATERIAL LEGACY ——— AN ESSAY ON THE COLLECTION ——— EXHIBITION FROM 16 MAY 2014 TO JUNE 2015 Martin Kippenberger, Alba. Retratos series, 1988. MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation. Private long-term loan, Barcelona. © Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photo: Gasull Fotografia

Our History Starts Here is a series of three exhibitions that that reinvented urban rituals; fanzine culture, residue of the critically investigate MACBA’s own Collection, exploring the consumer society and Trojan horse within it; the vindication of political framework, cultural collisions and the moments of humour at the heart of certain fundamental artists whose work rupture in which art practices were involved from the late is often seen as grandiloquent. Special attention should be paid seventies to the early nineties, all from the point of view of the to the stories of small territories that, since the Middle Ages, the work that underpins the general activity of the Museum. Ancient Regime and the French Revolution, have served as a paradigm for rethinking the economics and social organisation The first in this triptych of exhibitions,The Immaterial Legacy. of a new present, thereby holding to question the economic An Essay on the Collection, takes its title from the book by models of Thatcherism and Reaganism prevailing at the time Giovanni Levi, who is considered, together with Carlo Ginzburg, through an extremely efficient analytical mechanism that might Piero Camporesi and Carlo Cipolla, one of the founders of the be called ‘judicial’ – after Ginzburg’s theses in The Cheese and the so-called Italian Microhistory, a branch of social history that Worms and those of Leonardo Sciascia in his ‘true stories’ – and focuses on the study of unnoticed processes or places, rather finally dealing, through a fecund reading of Marxism, with the than the analysis of great chronological events. central role of the so-called ‘subaltern classes’.

The exhibition is divided into six thematic areas – ‘The sacred The Immaterial Legacy features 109 works – some of them and the popular’; ‘The street, the map’; ‘The body and its presented for the first time at the Museum – that are reverse’; ‘Politics of fiction’; ‘Autobiography and tautology’; shown alongside numerous contemporaneous publications and ‘The intangible’ – reflecting on some overflows produced (independent magazines, books, newspaper articles, comics, in the field of aesthetics during this specified period, a time in etc.), together with a sound booth in which can be heard which, beyond some dominant notions (re-searching the genius several music compilations ranging from Basque Radikal loci in painting and other arts; escapism and exoticism of the Rock to bakalao; a chronology with unique information and oriental; revisionism of history under anti-modern and nostalgic the key historical/cultural changes of the period, shedding assumptions), there emerged new sensibilities and the so-called additional light on the works and the exhibition; and finally, a microhistorical practices of ‘re-situation’ that would connect bibliography collecting the work of novelists, poets, essayists the political with the corporal, the popular processes of secular and historians associated with the contents of the exhibition. tradition with autobiographical narratives, the search of the Other with research into indigenous heritage. THE SACRED AND THE POPULAR

Thus, this reading establishes approximations – some Faced with the successive arrival of populist interpellations enthusiastic, some critical – to the proliferation of musical of all kinds, people – popular culture – generate their own forms that reflect the life experience of the most precarious mechanisms of self-defence and propagation. Language is one and exploited sections of society; to the collective imaginary of them, along with community rituals. Other sacraments appear that relate to ways of rejecting class discrimination and the ceremonial procession making its way through the crowded struggle for finding one’s own poetic and rebellious voice. At the streets of Puerto Rican neighbourhoods in New York. same time, violence against the norm in the physical space of the city challenges social and economic hierarchies. The popular Worthy of mention are a set of pieces by Joan Brossa, related no longer has anything to do with the folkloric; iconoclasm to the poetic production of Marcel Mariën and Nicanor Parra, becomes a way of restoring the world’s sacred status, a way and to Beaux Arts, 1992, by Rogelio López Cuenca, which of bringing ethereal religion into the political here and now. constitute an escape from the questions treated in this section: However, these rescue and desecration operations do not take a preliminary narration or an advance on the exhibition that place in the realm of the abstract, but within the territory of MACBA will dedicate to Brossa in 2017. usage, in humour and in play, for example. Similarly, new ways of looking at nature appear that rethink nature’s implicit idea of THE STREET, THE MAP sacredness, anticipating subsequent post-ecological movements. The post-Franco city seems to rebuild itself through the same This area begins with a work that could be considered arguments used by the ideology of the democratic transition: foundational for the general contents of the exhibition, Mi political consensus that obscures the forms of urban control pathos doy, 1981/92, by Carlos Pazos, where the artist highlights and surveillance; the street as an ostentatiously festive how within any rhetoric there inhabits its own parody, an walkway, beyond which lies a hidden discrimination, in terms ancestral mixture of sadness and celebration of laughter. of economics, identity and sexuality. In another sense, the Following this work, we find a piece by James Lee Byars map abandons its topographical character to record primarily alluding to his characteristic rituals of death and gold. Next to geopolitical disputes, new exiles and ancestral diasporas. it a line of research opens that investigates the perimeters of However, this same street-space is also the home of rebellious the most caustic type of humour, something that runs through imaginaries against the social hierarchies, forms of activism this entire section. This series of works begins with a corrosive that violently reject the process of ‘touristification’ and replica and retort by Rafael Agredano on Picasso, understood metropolitan spectacle. here as the ultimate archetype of masculinity in the history of art. This is followed by Troglodite Erudite, 1987, by Sandro This section is structured around four film works where the Chia, a truly irrational tirade, and Nina Hagen, 1982, by Antonio collective becomes a hostile power against the complacent Beneyto, where the punk singer suffers a plague of giant insects. imaginaries of the city. Thus, Numax Presenta…, 1980, by Finally, we findINTERFACEs , 1977, by Richard Hamilton and Joaquim Jordà, and Gritos... a ritmo fuerte, 1984, by José Dieter Roth, a series that recreates the complicity between María Nunes, form a compendium of oral testimonies on the two artists and the humour behind most of their joint working-class self-organisation and the dynamics of musical productions. groups in eighties’ Barcelona respectively. On the other hand, Eleccions – crisi, 1978, by Francesc Abad and Ramon Santos – a 12 libros, mueble C y mueble S, 1988, by Pedro G. Romero, work that is still relevant today –, and Belchite/South Bronx: A explores unexpected relationships between gag and mystique, Trans-Cultural and Trans-Historical Landscape, 1987, by Francesc translation and betrayal, aura and silhouette, through references Torres, give us a fulsome tour of Spain’s political history, to Wittgenstein and Walter Benjamin. Following the theme of from the ruins of the town of Belchite drawing on archive ‘furniture’, we findInmensa , 1982, a maquette for a sculpture material of the Civil War – juxtaposed with images from by Cildo Meireles, referring to the rituals of ascension and the other contemporary urban battles in the South Bronx – to the formal physiognomy of Christian confessionals. In another automatic ritual of democracy and its protocols of reification sense, the works by Eva Lootz and Gabriel Orozco refer to the of ideology. pantheism of nature and its protean character. In a similar vein, with Volcano Saga, 1989, Joan Jonas recreates a medieval legend, Next are pieces by Miguel Trillo and José Antonio Hernández- set in the landscapes of Iceland, where a young woman has Díez regarding the identity signs of the – much more than – dreams that can predict the future. Finally, Perejaume’s Mar, tribes passing through a city in the process of industrial 1987, completes this selection of works around the natural as an restructuring. Then follows the agitprop of the Agustín element of fiction. We should also noteUntitled (Leaf Drawing), Parejo School collective and, by contrast, the frontal gaze and 1982, by Ana Mendieta, a piece with which the artist explores topographic look of Manolo Laguillo, whose apparent coldness the vast territory of pagan rituals of fertility and the metaphor does not hide the place – always at street level – from which of the terra mater. the city is photographed. Along with all these manifestations of street ‘buzz’ we find the work with textile patterns by Katalin Another singular approach to the idea of the sacred is to be Ladik, the mud-covered atlases of Pere Noguera and the maps found in Santo III and V, 1988, by Pepe Espaliú, two pieces that on the memory of the Holocaust by Guillermo Kuitca, a kind refer to sadomasochistic ‘rituals’ and to the Picasso mask – in of endless mapping within history. Closing this section is the concomitance with Agredano – as well as to the exquisite and Utopia series, 1977–85, by Lothar Baumgarten, whose title is popular leather saddle work. The last work in this section, already revealing. another work-manifesto for the exhibition, is Sacro Pagan, 1978, by Miralda, a videographic record that observes a pagan THE BODY AND ITS REVERSE Viaplana, where the authors embody the archetypal legend of Bonnie & Clyde. On a different register, weaving through Exploring the body’s own rearguard is equivalent to violating the differences and similarities between science, myth and the regulations of the social body. From the rejection of literature, and again not far from Borges, we findFauna , 1989, imposed gender to the negation of the bourgeois and patriarchal by Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera. Special mention phallocratic paradigm; from the technologies of altered should be given to The Live! Show (April 29, 1983), 1983, by consciousness to Otherness as ‘war machine’, other bio-political Jaime Davidovich, showing an episode of the programme forms appear at this moment that undermine the established broadcast by Manhattan Cable Television between 1979 and roles, recovering the corporeal and sexuality as new and 1984. In it the artist interprets the character of Dr Videovich, vital ideological foundations. At the same time, monstrosity who instructs viewers on how to deconstruct the evening news acquires a renewed status and is now not only a product of the and how to paint on velvet. John Torreano, guest commentator, fantasy novel, but the anti-cliché of the aseptic beauty and neat offers his particular views on contemporary art. The section uniformity venerated by social democracy. ends with Our Progress Lies in Hard Work, 1977-–78, by Art & Language. This section relates the photographs by Humberto Rivas of Violeta la Burra, 1977, to the ‘macho world’ of Sábado legionario, Another section of works includes pieces that challenge the 1988, by Javier Codesal; the abject face in Cap, 1981, by Joan new social fictions, many of them created in marketing and Ponç, to the aberrant and ‘metric’ hand in Cones on Fingers, advertising laboratories, or investigate the systems of signs: 1979, by Jana Sterbak, reminiscent of her other works on in the case of Gary Hill, on the importance of assembly and pain and what lies beyond desire; the archive of gestures by cut & paste for television languages; in the case of Daniel G. Bruce Nauman, 1994, and the shadows of Helena Almeida in Andújar, on the iconic power of the logos of large multinational Desenho habitado, 1977, to the much imitated collection of beds corporations. Finally, Recinte núm. 6, 1981, by Sergi Aguilar, and without owners of Hans-Peter Feldmann, 1990. On the other the drawings of Peter Friedl, inquire about the spectral nature hand, the still-life of absences in the Sèrie Aparences: La maleta, of the sculptural object and the object represented, respectively. 1994, by Eulàlia Valldosera, finds its counterpoint inThe Life of Closing this section are the photographs of ‘Bachelors’ by Phillis, 1979, the video by Tony Oursler that ironically refers to Jean-Louis Schoellkopf, 1988, and Actes irreversibles, 1978, a set the mythological character of Phyllis, who occurs frequently of images by Jaume Xifra illustrating his performance Holocauste in pastoral poetry. This section closes with The Kiss, 1984–85, pour un ballon. by Raphael Montañez Ortiz, where in common with other contemporary artists on the American scene the filmmaker AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND TAUTOLOGY portrays the narrative and sexual stereotypes of Hollywood cinema. There are two introspective and somehow symmetrical movements that can be seen in the aesthetic practices of this POLITICS OF FICTION period: one is a return to the artist’s biography; the other sees art re-examining its own linguistic perimeters. Both cases are The end of the Franco dictatorship brings a kind of liberation tautological, even ‘inbred’, but in the autism of these gestures from the various political commitments, while the culture of we also find the idea of a common story, a kind of dispute not leisure becomes the new sign of the times, in the smiling and for dominating the discourse, but for finding the germinal word, sometimes cynical face of the welfare state. The stories of urban a different and unknown language, new and ours at the same entertainment replace the programmatic pamphlet, and the time, which expands the meaning of literary devices such as the foundational essayists are supplanted by the hero and fictional dramatic monologue or the so-called stream of consciousness. spaces. However, some artists and authors understand that this ‘faked thing’ is not just about imaginary characters and This section is based on the work of four artists who embody, events, but a feint, in the Pessoa sense – an author rediscovered each in their own way, the above-mentioned autobiographical precisely around that time – hiding an intense truth that is and tautological operations. In this way, Martin Kippenberger’s not uncritical in the slightest, only camouflaged by what we two collages of the Duchess of Alba and the Countess of call verisimilitude. This section covers the political folds of Romanones, both from the Retratos series, 1988, demonstrate the ‘novel genre’, a title that refers not only to the novel or the the sharp, corrosive and turn-of-the-century humour that culture industry, but especially to the use of literary language characterises all his work. Elsewhere, Joseph Beuys’ F.I.U. and the invention of collective heritage, as noted by Borges, Flag, 1985, refers to the Free International University, ‘an another key author in this period. organisational place of research, work, and communication to ponder the future of society’, as expressed by the slogan of A first group of works show the artist as material and subject this organisation, whose principles were based precisely on of his own fictions. From Isidoro Valcárcel Medina’sLa chuleta, the manifesto written by the artist together with the novelist 1991, a piece that uses this ‘educational’ device to narrate the Heinrich Böll in 1973. The fact that Böll’s most famous book is public melodrama of the creative act, to Disfruta de una semana The Clown, 1963, gives us that histrionic rather than prophetic en Río de Janeiro, 1990, by the collective Estrujenbank, and dimension – the clown rather than the shaman – with which Untitled (Sèrie Snapshot, Part I), 1988, by Mabel Palacín and Marc Beuys colours this section. Thirdly, Félix González-Torres brings disdain for rhetoric and grandiloquence, the rejection of wit ACTIVITIES and brilliance in favour of the best prosody and something like a new ‘conceptism’, a sort of filtered and pared-down rhetoric, Thursday 29 May at 7 pm Presentation of the exhibition by Valentín Roma reduced to its essential through the sieve of Minimalism. Finally, and Julián Rodríguez Mike Kelley with Fresh Acconci, 1995, in collaboration with Meier Auditorium. Free admission. Limited places Paul McCarthy, shows us how in the complexities of his own biography lies the portrait of a lively and Dionysian way of Saturday 14 June at 7 pm understanding art, free of old and tired compartments. Disco-lecture by Víctor Lenore An overview of the period addressed by the exhibition through ten Building on aspects symbolised by these four artists, we find songs different works that are formed around semantic groups. MACBA Tower. Price: 5€ . Limited places Partenón de Libros, 1983, by Martha Minujin and Liegender, from the Erinnerungspur series, 1979, by Dieter Appelt, express the power of the body breaking into the public and private space, respectively. These are two key works for understanding the era. Martillo, 1977, by Manolo Quejido, and Pintar es fácil, 1989, by Muntadas, deepen, the first into the tautological nature of pictorial representation, and the second into a subtle irony of a type of commercial painting characteristic of the eighties. Fx bis Zz, 1990, by Thomas Locher, La triple negación, 1988, by Juan Luis Moraza and Corner Piece, 1992, by Richard Artschwager, share an interest in linguistic, spatial and conceptual problems as well as a Structuralist influence. In Ignasi Aballí’sPols , 1991, and Günther Förg’s Bleibild, 1987, both artists inquire into the support materials and into the condition of what is called plasticity. Finally, Untitled (Bulletin Board: Match Book Covers), from the M.I.T. Project, 1990–2009, by Matt Mullican, investigates the processes that transform empirical facts into an abstract and symbolic discourse, projecting into the future, as a form a closure, what the present exhibition has enunciated so far.

THE INTANGIBLE

Under this heading are five sound compilations performed by Víctor Lenore, journalist and music critic. ‘The democratisation of the fiesta’; ‘Tales of the neighbourhood’; ‘The Movida’; ‘The ‘rabble’ were right’; and ‘The isolation of indie’ are the titles of Daily guided tours This project is part of the each thematic nucleus where playlists, documentary material, (included in the admission price) Commemoration of the For times and languages please Tercentenary of the events of quotes and texts narrate their respective contents. consult www.macba.cat. 1714.

Opening times Weekdays, 11 am to 7.30 pm Saturdays, 10 am to 9 pm Accessibility sponsors: Sundays and public holidays, 10 am to 3 pm Closed Tuesdays, except public holidays Open Mondays Communication sponsors:

Exhibition organised and produced by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). In the framework of: Curated by Valentín Roma in collaboration with Víctor Lenore, Antònia M. Perelló and Julián Rodríguez. Follow us:

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Plaça dels Àngels, 1 08001 Barcelona www.macba.cat