Terrorism Revisited May 2011
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1. Some background notes Terrorism Revisited Let’s start with a bang. On Novem- Modernisme, Art, and Anarchy ber 7, 1893, opening night of the season in the City of Bombs at the Barcelona opera house, the Liceu,1 two Orsini bombs were tossed Eduardo Ledesma into the audience. The carnage was considerable, some twenty people were killed, many injured. It was the work of anarchist Santiago Salvador, in retalia- tion for the execution of Paulí Pallás, another anarchist who earlier that year had unsuccessfully tried to assassinate the Madrid appointed Captain General of Catalonia, Martínez Campos. Pallás’ terrorist act was viewed with admira- tion by some members of the working class, perhaps even by some sectors of the bourgeoisie, resentful of Madrid’s rule, but the explosion at the Liceu deeply shocked the upper echelons of Eduardo Ledesma is a graduate student in Barcelona society, the “bones families” Spanish and Portuguese at Harvard. His or good families. The Liceu bombing be- academic interests include 20th and 21st came a symbol of social unrest, expos- century Ibero-American literature (in ing the fissures of a polarized society. Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese) as well What followed—justified in the eyes of as film and new media studies. He is cur- many—was a period of police repres- rently working on his dissertation, which sion, of suspect round-ups, military tri- explores the intersections between word als and summary executions, directed and image in experimental poetry, from (mostly) at the working class quarters the avant-gardes to the digital age. Edu- of Barcelona. Hundreds of anarchists ardo is also an avid runner, and enjoys and their sympathizers were arrested, immensely running the Boston Marathon although a significant number of those every year. Eduardo Ledesma, Terrorism Revisited who were imprisoned had no anarchist gards to anarchism is tenuous, and ar- connections. A few were teachers of chival material is scant. Although other secular schools; others were simply la- Modernistes—Jaume Brossa, Gabriel bor organizers, and some were accused Alomar—considered themselves as in- by neighbors who had personal vendet- tellectual anarchists, Rusiñol was not tas to settle. Confessions were extracted openly affiliated with any revolutionary through torture, and the prison at the movement, and certainly did not par- fortress of Montjuïch became a feared take in any ‘direct action,’ but his re- site of unspeakable atrocities. Barce- sponse to anarchism leaves many ques- lona’s good society, for the most part, tions unanswered.3 tacitly approved or looked the other way, ignoring the government’s heavy- 2. Barcelona under a climate of fear handed tactics. These violent years also saw the The City of Bombs. The Rose of Fire. birth of Barcelona’s principal aesthetic The Catalan Manchester. The Paris of movement, Modernisme, a (more meta- the South. Turn-of-the-century Barce- phoric) explosion in the arts lasting ap- lona’s many nicknames invoked a city proximately from 1888 until 1910.2 which underwent rapid industrializa- Santiago Rusiñol, considered the patri- tion and the creation of vast fortunes in arch of the movement, has been charac- the manufacturing industries. The new terized by some scholars as an apolitical wealth allowed a flourishing of the arts, bohemian, distant from the daily strug- but exacerbated the contrast with the gle of the working class, in short, a poor—often immigrants from the south dandy practicing art for art’s sake. Re- or from the agrarian Catalan country- cent retrospective exhibitions of Rusi- side—who worked under intolerable ñol’s work and a fresh look at the “other conditions and lived in appalling Rusiñol” or the “unknown Rusiñol” have squalor. This led, perhaps inevitably, to begun to present some previously hid- social unrest, labor strikes, and the den or missed sides of the artist—his much reviled anarchist ‘direct action’, a addiction to morphine, his conflictive euphemism for bombings, political as- relation with women, his homo-social sassinations and church arsons. The tendencies, and his ambivalent attitude embattled bourgeoisie lived in a state of toward revolutionary social and politi- constant terror, and viewed the working cal movements, to name a few. I intend class as unruly and ignorant mobs to examine some possible connections (“masas”) on the verge of imminent between Modernisme and anarchism, revolution and in need of harsh disci- including Rusiñol’s own ambivalent pline. stance, but also that of other members of his cadre. Rusiñol’s position with re- 2 THE ROMANCE SPHERE, I, 2011 3. Modernisme and anarchism Brossa was a firm believer in the need to rupture with the past aesthetically As an artistic movement, Modern- and politically “a épocas nuevas, formas 4 isme was comprised of radical innova- de arte nuevas.”8 As Joan Ramon Res- tions, following a philosophy that pur- ina explains, the “vanguardia de lucha sued an arguably radical break with the social influye en el núcleo progresista aesthetic past, particularly that of the del Modernismo,” resulting in a blur- 5 Renaixença. A departure from aca- ring of the distinction between artist- demic conventions, a rejection of bour- activist and terrorist-revolutionary. Ac- geois values, and a social critique of cording to Catalan literature scholar state policy—both in regards to the arts Jordi Castellanos, the radicalized com- and in the sociopolitical arena— ponent of the modernista movement coalesced with the fierce individualism “comparte[n] la finalidad de la ‘propa- of its practitioners, artists such as San- ganda por la acción’ anarquista,”9 in a tiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas, Isidre context where the ends would justify Nonell or Pablo Picasso. But there was the violent means. Theirs was a funda- not a unified response to the events of mentally utopian desire first to destroy their day—no manifestos, no spokes- the existing social fabric, then to build a person for the movement,—and as the New City, a new Barcelona (within a art scholar Robert Lubar states, “the re- new Catalunya), like a phoenix rising lation between intellectuals and anar- from the ashes. Resina explores the chism [in Barcelona…] was never connections between the modernista 6 straightforward.” Not all Modernistes publication L’Avenç (The Future) and can be painted with the same ideologi- the anarchists: cal brush, as the spectrum ran from the fervent Catholic and conservative archi- Eudald Canibell, uno de los escritores del equipo de L’ Avenç, mantenía correspon- tect Antoni Gaudí, or the humanist poet dencia con Bakunin. También Emili Guan- Joan Maragall to the avowed anti- yavents, Cels Gomis, y el dibujante Joseph clericalist Ramon Casas, from socialists Lluís Pellicer, que formaban parte del pri- and anarchists to liberals, republicans mer grupo de la revista, fueron dirigentes and monarchists. But, undoubtedly, anarquistas. Los contactos entre intelectua- there was a radical branch in the les modernistas y el anarquismo se estre- movement which included figures such chan tras la desaparición de L’Avenç a as Jaume Brossa, Gabriel Alomar, Al- principios de 1894.10 exandre Cortada, Diego Ruiz, and Pere As the anarchist movement became Coromines, all of whom were ideologi- increasingly radicalized in the late cally close to anarchism (or, more accu- 1890’s, the links that existed between rately, anarcho-syndicalism). Gabriel moderate anarchists and less extreme Alomar was an atheist, a Catalan na- modernista intellectuals weakened. tionalist, and a political radical.7 Jaume Most modernists—even those who fer- 3 Eduardo Ledesma, Terrorism Revisited vently desired social justice—did not and in some cases like the respected support violence,11 and as Lubar re- Güell family, through the slave trade). marks “intellectual anarchism as a pos- Despite Falgàs’ astute point, one ture for social reform remained at a cannot deny the social quality (in both significant distance from the cause of style and theme) of much of Moderniste direct action.”12 art. See, for instance, Ramon Casas The However, at around 1900, subject Charge 1899,15 rejected by the Paris matter for the Modernistes remained fo- World Fair of 1900—perhaps because of cused on the urban and proletarian, its highly ‘charged’ message of social and had taken what art critic Cristina unrest.16 The main action depicts a Mendoza calls “a radical turn,”13 which mounted Assault Guard (Guardia de attempted to synthesize the aesthetic Asalto) trampling a protester, a com- and the political. Jordi Falgàs com- mon form of crowd control, strike reso- ments that the Modernistes “not only lution and worker suppression. Radi- tried to make political statements in cally from a pictorial standpoint the ac- terms of subject matter but also at- tion in the foreground occurs at the ex- tempted to experiment with their treme right of the painting, while the work’s formal qualities.” Most failed to crowd flees the police in the back- conjoin their new ‘revolutionary’ aes- ground. The painting represents a rup- thetic with a radical ideology, and al- ture with neoclassic tendencies— though they achieved a certain “the- typically showing a few well propor- matic and formal freedom,”14 their po- tioned figures, calm, static poses, a litical statements remained considera- composition centered in middle of the bly more ambiguous (at times clearly canvas, etc.—as well as an obvious so- troubled) and did not articulate any cial critique. An asymmetrical composi- clear social message. Falgàs attributes tion