"Anti-Espaliú: from Model Figure to Intertext (or, Towards a Larger Cartography of AIDS Politics in the Basque Country and Spain)" [book chapter, 2015] (original) (raw)
Beyond Guernica and the Guggenheim: Art and Politics from a Comparative Perspective
2015
This book brings together experts from different fields of study, including sociology, anthropology, art history and art criticism to share their research and direct experience on the topic of art and politics. How art and politics relate with each other can be studied from numerous perspectives and standpoints. The book is structured according to three main themes: Part 1, on Valuing Art, broadly concerns the question of who, how and what value is given to art, and how this may change over time and circumstance, depending on the social and political situation and motivation of different interest groups. Part 2, on Artistic Political Engagement, reflects on another dimension of art and politics, that of how artists may be intentionally engaged with politics, either via their social and political status and/or through the kind of art they produce and how they frame it in terms of meaning. Part 3, on Exhibitions and Curating, focuses on yet another aspect of the relationship between a...
Political critique in Madrid's urban art scene: from the late '90s until now
The aim of this paper is to explore the political messages painted on Madrid's walls by urban artists from the beginning of this artistic and political movement (the end of the 1990s) to the present day. We developed an extensive fieldwork that has helped us to create the first compilation of the key political messages of urban art in Madrid, based on an exploratory research approach complemented by the use of social media search. This descriptive and documentary approach was followed while keeping in mind that a wall is a public channel open to all and an outstanding method for expressing any political opinion with the greatest amount of visibility. Over the time span analyzed, the investigation discovered 15 urban artists with political content in their artistic production. The findings indicate that the political theme of these artists' works focuses primarily on condemning the Spanish government for current issues such as corruption or the economic crisis, as well as past events such as the Iraq War. Other recurring themes include social criticism of municipal policies and the living conditions of underprivileged groups such as refugees and beggars, as well as support for feminism and critiques of the rapid gentrification process of certain historic Madrid neighborhoods, such as Malasaña and Lavapiés.
Gernika, Guernica, Guernica?: Contested meanings of a Basque place
2000
Raento, Pauliina & Cameron J. Watson (2000). Gernika, Guernica, Guernica? Contested meanings of a Basque place. Political Geography 19: 6, 707–736. ABSTRACT The town of Gernika/Guernica is the center for meaning and territorial continuity of Basque nationalist identity. The town and its symbolism represent the history of national conflict with the Spanish state. It is also the focal point of local disagreements; within Basque nationalism itself and between regional urban centers. The town's significance in the Spanish Civil War, representation in Picasso's painting Guernica, and commemoration in the Americas by Basque emigrants has made it a globally significant place. The contest of meanings related to Gernika/Guernica underscores the significance of naming, monuments, ritual, resistance, oppression, and conflict in the creation and maintenance of national identities. In its examination of the politics of a Basque place, the joining of the forces of geography and history proves to be useful in the analysis of meaning in place- and time-specific political processes. From this perspective, the recent development from conflict toward harmony in Basque politics is reviewed.
Guggenheim in the Land of the Basques: Repercussions and Paradoxes
Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte
Se ha hablado en muchas ocasiones de la transformación de Bilbao y de la influencia del Museo Guggenheim en dicho cambio. Pero en contadas ocasiones se ha analizado el efecto –o los efectos paradójicos– que su aparición tuvo para el resto de los museos del País Vasco.Es lo que se pretende en este texto. La descripción y valoración del proceso, los logros obtenidos, las polémicas y críticas generadas, los debates políticos y parlamentarios y el efecto en el resto de los museos del País Vasco, son algunos de los temas planteados. Para ello se recurre a bibliografía especializada, documentación oficial y seguimiento periodístico de una aventura polémica, criticada e incluso denostada que, sin embargo, marca un antes y un después en el mundo de los museos y de la gestión patrimonial.
Gernikaren itzalpean: Propaganda, Appropriation, and Depoliticisation of Basque Art Music
Circuit, 2018
The Bombing of Guernica stands as the best-known war crime during the Spanish Civil War. The town symbolically representing the Basque essences was destroyed by a German-Italian air raid lasting over three hours, and almost two hundred people were killed. Unfortunately, this abominable event remains contentious among disparate political factions, sometimes upholding its memory by means of tailor-made interpretations. As music often performs a political role within conflicts, particularly those involving violence, it is not surprising that the Bombing of Guernica has inspired several compositions of art music. Among them, we study three works by Basque composers, namely Pablo Sorozábal, Francisco Escudero, and Ramon Lazkano. Each case study respectively stands, politically speaking, as a propagandistic event, a musical appropriation, and a collateral depoliticization of the vivid memories around the war crime.
Journal of War and Culture Studies, 2010
Commemorative exhibitions and catalogues ABSTRACT The political significance of museums and commemorative exhibitions in post-Franco Spain has been comparatively little explored. By elaborating on the new critical literature on museums and the debate on the notion of governmentality developed by Michel Foucault, this article draws attention to the institutional rationale at work in the birthday centennials of key Spanish artists and literati of the 'Silver Age' celebrated at the turn of the millennium in various Spanish museums. Since the Nationalist uprising and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War disrupted the cultural revival and the artistic trajectories of figures like
This essay considers the ways Spanish artists during the long 1960s, especially those who have come to be associated with international Pop art, navigated the contentious political terrain of Franco's Spain, a dictatorship with ties to Hitler and Mussolini that was also an American Cold War ally. With artworks collapsing their 1960s present and the past-whether the historical eras of El Greco, Vel azquez, and Goya or the more recent past of the pre-Franco 1930s-artists such as Josep Renau and Equipo Cr onica express Spain's specific political and cultural
Political critique in Madrid’s street art scene: from the late ‘90s until now
Communication & Society, 2021
The aim of this paper is to explore the political messages painted on Madrid’s walls by urban artists from the beginning of this artistic and political movement (the end of the 1990s) to the present day. We developed an extensive field-work that has helped us to create the first compilation of the key political messages of urban art in Madrid, based on an exploratory research approach complemented by the use of social media search. This descriptive and documentary approach was followed while keeping in mind that a wall is a public channel open to all and an outstanding method for expressing any political opinion with the greatest amount of visibility. Over the time span analyzed, the investigation discovered 15 urban artists with political content in their artistic production. The findings indicate that the political theme of these artists’ works focuses primarily on condemning the Spanish government for current issues such as corruption or the economic crisis, as well as past event...
Reaching Out: The Basque Transnational Body in the Poetry of Kirmen Uribe
Studies in 20th & 21st century literature, 2020
In this paper we explore the contribution of Kirmen Uribe, a Basque writer, artist and cultural activist, to the process of political reconciliation in the Basque country, a socially transforming compromise brought about by the dissolution of the Basque terrorist organization ETA in October 20 th , 2011. Uribe achieved literary recognition and public notoriety within the Iberian cultural landscape with the publication of his novel Bilbao-New York-Bilbao in 2008, for which he received the Spanish National Literature Prize for Narrative in the following year. However, we argue that it is with his earlier collection of poems Bistatean Heldu Eskutik 'Meanwhile Take my Hand,' originally published in Euskara-the Basque language-in 2001, that Uribe initiates a strong, symbolic act towards reconciliation in Basque social relations. Using a methodological framework built on the juxtaposition of transnational and affect studies, we analyze the transformational thrust of an affective, reconciliatory language in Uribe's poems. Building on Deleuze and Guattari's notion of a minor literature, we first consider how this affective language overflows and deterritorializes the traditional geographical and discursive boundaries of Basque cultural nationalism; then, we analyze the production of Uribe's poetic expression within a specific temporality, in which Basque society demanded the end of violence in the Basque country; and, finally, we argue that this poet's selfconscious poetics of affect provides a cultural model for the democratization of the Basque social body reterritorialized in the transnational realm.