The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts THE ARTIST, MYTH AND SOCIETY IN THE CONTEMPORARY SPANISH NOVEL, 1945-2010 A Dissertation in Spanish by Katie Jean Vater © 2014 Katie Jean Vater Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2014 ! ii The dissertation of Katie Jean Vater was reviewed and approved* by the following: Matthew J. Marr Graduate Program Director Associate Professor of Spanish Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee William R. Blue Professor of Spanish Maria Truglio Associate Professor of Italian Guadalupe Martí-Peña Senior Lecturer in Spanish Charlotte Houghton Associate Professor of Art History *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Since the Early Modern period, artists have drawn, painted, and sculpted their way through the pages of Spanish literature. Seventeenth-century Spanish theater reveals both practical and aesthetic value for such characters; while authors, particularly playwrights, utilized artist characters for literary ends, they concurrently allied themselves with real artists fighting for greater social recognition for their work and allowed their artists characters to express those concerns on the page as well as on the stage. The development of the artist novel and the Künstlerroman (the novel of artistic development) in the nineteenth century reflected not only the achievement of social recognition sought by artists of prior generations, but also the development of the Romantic “charismatic myth of the artist,” which would go on to characterize general societal perception of artists (and their literary representations) for the next century. While the artist figure never disappears from Spanish literary production, the scholarly study of such figures wanes in current contemporary investigation. However, the sheer number of contemporary novels featuring artist protagonists suggests a startling phenomenon which deserves critical recognition. My dissertation aims to fill this lacuna by asking how the representation of the artist has necessarily changed, both in the repressive atmosphere of Franco’s Spain and the Spain of the Transition to democracy, which experienced a veritable explosion of freedom and excess, and subsequently, of a profound disappointment with the new social systems. My dissertation explores, in short, the literary representation of the contemporary Spanish art world and demonstrates how the authors of modern Spain have confronted the myth of the artist carried over from the Romantic period. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the “cultural field,” I examine the ways authors confront the notion of the artist as genius who ! iv creates not for material gain or recognition, but because he or she is moved by some unseen force of Art. The demythification of the artist is most often achieved textually by the author’s exposing of the complex systems which undergird the art world, thus destroying the notion of “disinterestedness” and a “pure aesthetic” which ostensibly drives artists to create. I explore several variations on this theme as the Spanish authors represent them. In Chapter 1, I look closely at the representation of bohemian artists as frauds in post-war three novels of female development: Carmen Laforet’s Nada (1944) and La isla y los demonios (1952), and Carmen Martín Gaite’s Entre visillos (1958). The idea of the bohemian artist as a different kind of person and a true “free spirit” is dismantled as the young female protagonists find in the artist’s studio and in their company that the same closed-minded attitudes towards women, and even towards art, that they find in the wider world are found in the studio as well. Chapter 2 is a study of the contemporary artist novel or Künstlerroman as embodied by Ángeles Caso’s El mundo visto desde el cielo (1997) and Julio Llamazares’s El cielo de Madrid (2005). These novels portray the artist protagonists’ attempts to enact the charismatic myth of the artist even when the realities of the postmodern art word and the changing face of Spanish society in the Transition and post- Transition deny them that option. Chapter 3 examines two contemporary Künstlerrinromane, or female artist novels: Almudena Grandes’s Castillos de cartón (2006) and Clara Usón’s Corazón de napalm (2009). In these novels, the feminine protagonists face a very different set of challenges than their male counterparts studied in Chapter 2. Rather than the dilemma of living out the myth or not, the female artists struggle to accrue cultural capital and become professionally and commercially successful, all the while battling the social pressure to marry, have children, and conform in traditional ways that do not correspond to the “artistic personality.” I explore these societal pressures through a post-feminist lens while considering v their implications for the female artist protagonists. In Chapter 4, I consider the representation of the art-historian protagonist in la novela histórica culturalista, a heretofore unexplored aspect of the artistic field as depicted in the Spanish novel of the twenty-first century. Though there are actually a surprising number of this type of novel from which to choose, I study Eduardo Mendoza’s Riña de gatos, Madrid 1936 (2010) and Lourdes Ortiz’s Las manos de Velázquez (2006), both of which feature art historian protagonists who study Diego Velázquez. The recognition of the societal forces which shape the artist and his or her work is one of the central tenets of my project, as those forces contribute integrally to the demythification of the artist which all of the authors in question in some way undertake. While they reveal the inner workings of the cultural field, the novels as cultural artifacts become yet another voice in that field which constructs our understanding of artists. Through their reflection on the economic, cultural, spiritual, and personal effects that the art market in Spain has on the artists in their novels, they are also able to add their own voice to the many others that help to construct the contemporary vision of the artist. At the same time, they are able to comment, by extension, on the changing socio-economic conditions in Spain, as well as their own participation in the literary cultural field. Balanced between attention to canonical authors (such as Carmen Laforet, Carmen Martín Gaite, Eduardo Mendoza, Almudena Grandes, and Julio Llamazares) and rising stars, my work complements current scholarly trends in Spanish literary studies and proposes a fresh look at the way contemporary Spanish authors view the role of art and artists (both visual and literary) in their society. ! ! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………..... vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter 1: “Bohemia’s a Fallacy in your Head;” The Chica Rara and the Bohemian Artist in Spanish Postwar Feminine Fiction ………………………... 30 Chapter 2: “El arte se acabó con Duchamp:” Two Contemporary Künstlerromane by Ángeles Caso and Julio Llamazares ………………………………….87 Chapter 3: The Postfeminst Turn in the Contemporary Spanish Artist Novel by Women: The Case of Clara Usón, Almudena Grandes, and Nieves Herrero…. 153 Chapter 4: Making (Art) History: Two Novelas Históricas Culturalistas by Lourdes Ortiz and Eduardo Mendoza …………………………………………………217 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………… 272 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………….280 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Bob Blue, Guadalupe Martí- Peña, Maria Truglio, and Charlotte Houghton for their insight and encouragement throughout this process. Special thanks goes to my dissertation director, Matthew Marr, for his patience, support, and all his help. I would like to thank the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at Penn State for awarding me the Edwin Earle Sparks Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities. I am also grateful to the Penn State Institute for the Arts and Humanities for awarding me a Graduate Student Semester Residency which provided me with time, space, and funding to complete my work on this project. Finally, I would like to thank the wonderful friends I have made at Penn State whose support has been crucial to my success. Special thanks go to my family—Mom, Dad, Danny, Grandma and Grandpa—and to Drew and Charlie. Your unwavering faith in me and your encouragement have enabled me to complete this project. 1 Introduction On January 20, 2014, the New York Times ran a story about the perils and pitfalls of trying to determine an artist’s “authenticity.” The author of the piece, Sharon Otterman, explains that certain lofts in SoHo and NoHo are reserved for artists only, and those who wish to live and work there must submit documentation to prove their identity as such. Their applications are reviewed by a committee of fellow artists and critics who determine which candidates are worthy of the space—and the title “artist.” In order to better understand how the selection process takes place, the Times “submitted a Freedom of Information request for all of the rejection letters” recently issued (A17). An examination of the rejections gives us a “glimpse of how the city answers the age-old question of what is art” (A17). Often, the city’s response to that quandary is at odds with that of the artists applying for the space. The committee defines an artist as someone who can demonstrate “a serious consistent commitment to fine art” and “evidence of ‘substantial element of independent