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Do you think that flamenco has
now dissociated itself from other artistic currents?
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Salvador Dalí,
'Gitano de Figueras'. 1923 |
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I don’t think so... because look
where artistic currents are going. The thing is I work
with Israel
Galván and it’s more complicated. But
there was Enrique Morente, for example. And there’s
all the ‘mairenismo’ and Francisco Moreno
Galván even did flamenco esthetics with Agustín
Gómez; there were biennials of flamenco plastic
art in Córdoba linked to the contest with artists
in the wake of Informalism... And back then flamenco was
something else; it couldn’t be absorbed in the same
way. I think flamenco is very attentive, like a popular
art form, to the modern in the sense of fads and it has
transformed along the way. And about the question of whether
flamenco is attentive to contemporary creation... And
is Spanish rock? Well, it isn’t either. Is Spanish
theater? To this extent and bearing in mind that Israel’s
there, flamenco is one of the closest ones. Really, the
construction of the imaginarium in flamenco and modernity
has been cooked up with the same materials, although differently.
Since they’re the same materials, they’re
always going to have a bunch of points in common. In one
of my theses I expound how the group of Situationists,
of Guy Debord, which presented itself as the latest avant-garde,
the most radical one in the second half of the 20th century,
that secret group that set up all the ’68 stuff,
with their slogans, their strategies, at the limits of
the law... flamenco was a passion that united them.
And flamencos take it differently. The
problem is that the general artistic scene is deplorable.
If we compare it with Pilar López’s era,
like after the Spanish Civil War, for example, Pepe Caballero
masters late Surrealist esthetics like, for example, in
the film ‘Embrujo’, very related to Capuletti,
which he designed for Antonio... All of that follows the
international trend. And that breaks and moves on to Expressionism
and Informalism, to all the esthetics of Viola and Teixidor,
which does things for Escudero and is what leads up to
Moreno Galván and the esthetics of Antonio
Mairena. All of that follows certain esthetics which
is the background of the shows of artists such as Manuela
Vargas. It even influences the set decorations on
television. ‘Rito y geografía del cante’
is a stage which is really in tune with its era. The return
to ‘camp’, to the austere. All that kind of
poetics was related to the poets who were declaring it
and also to the painters. The problem is that now I don’t
know whether to blame it for what’s done to flamencos
or to the scene of what is ‘modernité’.
Do you think the exhibit might
surprise flamencos themselves?
Pedro G. Romero
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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In fact, I’m certain of it. There
are many pieces which are little known in general and
very few known ones in the flamenco field. Many times,
flamencos use things without knowing where they come from.
For example, all the Cubist graphic design of the guitar
is used a lot, but the relations of where it comes from
are lesser known. Picasso is a common place. The problem
isn’t the flamencos’, but rather the moderns’.
How can you make that album paying tribute to Picasso
which El
Cigala did and come out with a palette and paintbrush?
Of course, but you can’t think it’s his fault,
the poor thing. To get involved in those things, you have
to be aware of what you’re doing. I remember with
Morente years ago in a tribute to Luigi Nono; it was him
and La Pelota. There were many musicians in the audience,
and when they saw what they did, that it was a thing with
clapping at the wrong time, people were surprised. It
isn’t a matter of the validity or not of the experiment,
but rather that Lachenmann suddenly says he’s only
interested in what Enrique Morente does. It might be a
little exaggerated, but the important thing is that they
can talk to one another as equals, and be capable of finding
a common ground in which that conversation is possible.
When flamencos speak about knowledge and how they have
to be at university, it isn’t for there to be another
‘blow-off’ course, and put them all in high
schools and universities teaching compás classes.
I think two things are really important: DVDs and the
Internet. Strange as it may seem, when I started working
on shows about ten years ago, the artists didn’t
have much of a relationship with their own art, except
for what they had been taught by their maestros. The level
of baile and cante which there is now has a lot to do
with CDs, DVDs, the Internet and the access artists have
had to all of that material. It used to be slower when
things were gotten across orally. And you can tell. An
entire generation appears with incredible musical culture
about flamenco. And in baile it’s happening, the
entire generation that is most interesting, most modern,
is absolutely engrossed in a journey to recover the historical
legacy of flamenco. And that is the sense which the exhibit
might have for flamencos: to contribute elements to that
knowledge. After that, each person can pick it up where
he wants.
As a guide for visitors, which
pieces mustn’t be overlooked?
To me, there are key works. For example,
‘Cantante flamenco’ by Sonia Delaunay, this
Orphic painting with the guitar, seems huge to me. She
and Robert worked a lot on taking music to painting, within
the Orphic movement, where Picabia is also. The painting
by Courbet is strange, the ones by Manet are better known,
while Lola de Valencia is a pretty dancer, Lady Guerrero
by Courbet uses more the Lebrija thing. There’s
also a curious vision there. Then the previously unseen
pieces: there are the Bécquers, the watercolors
of the Borbones naked by Gustavo and Valeriano, which
demythologizes this lyrical vision; all of Marius de Zayas’s
work with portraits of Ramón
Montoya which had never been put on exhibit before;
there are things by Helios Gómez from the twenties;
the things by Ragel at the end of the exhibit also seem
very significant to me...
Many of the films are well-known, but
there’s even previously unseen footage of Escudero
and La Argentina, there’s that of the Lumières
and that of Carmencita. And then in the film series, since
the exhibit is so long and people end up exhausted, we
thought that they were going to sit down and swallow six
hours of cinema, and apparently not... Ha ha ha. But there
are jewels in the film series, movies like ‘La mujer
y el pelele’ by Baroncelli, the first version, which
is later reflected in Buñuel; that of Val del Omar
who I think is one of the most important artists from
post-Civil War Spain and I think is fully legible in flamenco.
La Argentina’s dresses, now when modernity in flamenco
is spoken of nowadays, it’s said that a bailaora
has gone too far... check out the designs! By Goncharova,
a Russian artist who dedicated herself a lot to flamenco,
there are the sketches of ‘Triana’ by Albéniz,
from which the dresses were even made. There are some
photos that will come out in the catalogue, and I can’t
imagine how they moved; they’re truly impossible
architectures. The best thing is to lose yourself, but
you need to have time to lose yourself, to savor and for
each person to find an esthetic proposal, since realism
and experimentation coexist in the same space. There,
for example, are the most realistic bailaoras and the
most abstract ones by Miró. Let each person find
something... and not rush.
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