Praeterita

Tapies at the MCA Chicago , a set on Flickr. I went to the Chicago MCA last Friday for a press preview of the new show by Theaster Gates. After I'd finished there, I walked into the galleries devoted to the show Destroy the Picture, and a heavily textured, brooding painting caught my eye. Was it a painting by Antoni Tapies? Yes it was, and it was accompanied by four others, all of them from the late 1950s, when he was in the first headlong charge of his career (when his work, in other words, was at its peak.) I haven't seen this many paintings by the Catalan master since I lived in Barcelona, over 18 years ago. So I sat on the bench in the gallery, and lost myself for a while in the dense surfaces of these strange pieces of art. Before I moved to Barcelona, I had only vaguely heard of Tapies, but once there it was difficult to avoid him. He is revered in Barcelona because of his opposition to the fascist regime of General Franco, and for his support of Catalan nationa...

There was a good article in yesterday's Guardian Newspaper (UK) about a forthcoming show of Joan Miro's work at the Tate in London. I remember when I was living in Barcelona, studying for my Fine Art MA, that an extremely pleasant way to spend an afternoon was to do the following: walk through the Barrio Xino and then across to the hill of Montjuic; climb the staircases up to the top of the hill, then walk through the park to the Fundacio Joan Miro; look around the galleries for a while, and then sit in the outdoor cafe, which was in a small courtyard with a fountain in it in a quadrangle formed by the museum buildings. You could sit there for hours, with the sun warming your face, chatting to friends, before maybe walking over and taking the cable car down and across to the other side of the port. The clip above is from a French film about the great man (thanks to Figaro Magazine). If, like me, you understand some French and Catalan, you'll get what he's saying ...

Aqui est á  un nuevo video que se trata de mi estancia en Barcelona hace quince a ñ os, cuando estudiaba para mi 'MA' y encontr é  por primera vez las obras de arte de Antoni Tapies. Oh sorry, I had a Spain flashback there. Here is a video that's about my time in Barcelona fifteen years ago, when I was studying for my MA and encountered for the first time the work of Antoni Tapies.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader