Tag Archives: Spain

Closing Soon: Lightness and Boldness. Goya’s Drawings

Francisco de Goya, I am still learning. Album G, 54
Ca. 1826. Black chalk, Lithographic crayon on grey laid paper, 192 x 145 mm.

Ligereza y atrevimiento. Dibujos de Goya, Centro Botín, Santander. Closes 24 September 2017.
One of the first exhibition’s in the recently opened Renzo Piano designed Centro Botín, this show is curated by the Prado’s Head of Drawings and Prints, José Manuel Matilla, and the Chief Curator of the Goya and 18th-century Art Department, Manuela Mena. The exhibition includes 80 drawings, from the Prado’s holdings of some 520, selected as representative of the different periods of Goya’s artistic activity from 1796 to his death in 1828. Also shown are preparatory drawings for a selection of prints from his series, Sueños, Caprichos, Desastres de la guerra, Tauromaquia and Disparates. This exhibition is the result of an ambitious research and cataloguing project based on the drawings of Francisco de Goya, thanks to the collaboration agreement entered into by the Fundación Botín and Prado Museum in 2014. The first volume of the catalogue raisonné is due to appear later in 2017 and a larger exhibition is provisionally scheduled at the Prado in 2019.

Opens today: ‘Zurbarán: Jacob and his Twelve Sons, Paintings from Auckland Castle’

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de Zurbaran, Francisco, 1598-1664; Levi III

Levi from the Auckland Castle Series

Zurbarán: Jacob and his Twelve Sons, Paintings from Auckland Castle, Meadows Museum, Dallas, USA, September 17, 2017 – January 7, 2018

Francisco de Zurbarán was born in Fuente de Cantos, in Western Spain, but spent most of his working life in Seville. Like Ribera, Zurbarán is also considered a Caravaggista (a follower of the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, active 1571-1610) particularly for his exceptional use of chiaroscuro.

These 13 paintings (12 by Zurbarán and one a direct copy of the work by Zurbarán) are a visual narrative of Jacob’s deathbed act of bestowing a blessing on each son, foretelling their destinies and those of their tribes. Although each painting holds its own as an exceptional portrait, seeing the works together provides a unique experience for viewers, transporting them across history to make them a witness to that moment. At the Meadows, the paintings will be displayed together in one gallery.

It is not known who originally commissioned the series, but they were auctioned from the collection of a Jewish merchant named Benjamin Mendez in 1756. Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, acquired the paintings for Auckland Castle, seeing in the public presentation of these works an opportunity to make a statement about the need for social, political and religious understanding and tolerance between Christians and Jews in Great Britain.

While in the USA, the paintings will also undergo in-depth technical study for the first time at the Kimbell Art Museum. This will include the use of infrared reflectography, ultra-violet light, x-radiography and pigment analysis. The goals of this work are twofold: first, to gain a better understanding of Zurbarán’s artistic process by exploring this unique series of related works; and second, to identify any additional needs for their ongoing conservation and care after they return to the U.K.

Accompanying the exhibition and conservation research will be an illustrated catalogue containing scholarly essays exploring the series from various historical, religious and artistic perspectives. Dr. Mark A. Roglán, Director, Meadows Museum, is the scientific director of the project and has helped to gather contributions by Claire Barry, Director of Conservation, Kimbell Art Museum; Professor John Barton, Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, Emeritus at Oxford University; Dr. Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at New York University; Dr. Christopher Ferguson, Curatorial, Conservation and Exhibitions Director, Auckland Castle; Dr. Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator, The Frick Collection; Akemi Herráez Vossbrink, PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge; Alexandra Letvin, PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins University; and Dr. Edward Payne, Senior Curator, Spanish Art, Auckland Castle. This exhibition and study have been co- organized by the Meadows Museum, SMU; The Frick Collection; and Auckland Castle; in association with the Kimbell Art Museum. A generous gift from The Meadows Foundation has made this exhibition and study possible, with additional support from the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica and the Center for Spain in America.

Forthcoming publication: Nigel Glendinning, Goya and His Critics, new edited edition

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Goyaysucriticos Nigel Glendinning (1929-2013) is remembered for his perceptive writings on Goya and for the range of his knowledge on the art and literature of 18th century Spain. He had a distinguished academic career at the universities of Southampton, Trinity College Dublin, and Queen Mary University of London. He was a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, and an Honorary Fellow of the Hispanic Society of America in New York, as well as the winner of the international Elio Antonio de Nebrija prize awarded by the University of Salamanca (2007). In 1998 he was created Commander of the Order of Isabel La Católica, an honour conferred on him by King Juan Carlos of Spain. In 2001 he contributed to the creation of ARTES and served the group as honorary president for more than ten years.

Glendinning’s work is celebrated in the forthcoming edited edition of his classic book, Goya and his critics (1977; revised Spanish edition 1983). The new volume, published by Ediciones Complutense, contains the text of the 1983 Spanish edition with a selection of Glendinning’s more recent essays on the topic. The editors, Sarah Symmons and Jesusa Vega, contributed two memoirs of Nigel as a Hispanic art historian, his contribution to Goya Studies and to Hispanic visual and literary culture. The publication also features a tribute by Valeriano Bozal.

Information on the book’s forthcoming launch will be published soon.

Conference: Digital Imaginaries of the South: Stories of Belonging and Uprooting in Hispanic Cinemas

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maxresdefault International Film Conference (IV TECMERIN Academic Meeting): Digital Imaginaries of the South: Stories of Belonging and Uprooting in Hispanic Cinemas, October 18-20, 2017, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid / Casa de América (Madrid)

Over the past twenty years, digital technology has become the standard in the film production, circulation, and consumption processes. Within this context, Hispanic cinemas have undergone deep changes, both within the countries with an established cinematic tradition, as well as in those that, due to several reasons, had not developed a robust cinematography throughout the 20th century. The analogue paradigm became deeply contested and a new digital framework, which was widely discussed by institutions, film critics, and academics, emerged. This moment coincides with the widespread generalization of national and transnational neoliberal policies that, far from backing diversity, have increased the gap between those “connected” and those “disconnected” (to draw upon Néstor García Canclini’s term); a gap also experienced by those that, even if connected, still occupy subaltern positions.

The speeding of these processes has resulted in an increase of mobility, at work both in the geographical displacement of film professionals and in the emergence of new narrative models that deal with questions of belonging and uprooting, springing precisely from these experiences of displacement. The cinemas of the Global South, and, most specifically, Hispanic cinemas, have actively taken part in these processes, ultimately playing a relevant role in terms of narrative and aesthetic models, and the production, circulation and consumption of film.

Following the main research axes of the R+D project “Transnational relations in Hispanic digital cinemas: the axes of Spain, Mexico, and Argentina” (CSO2014-52750-P), the International Conference Digital Imaginaries of the South: Stories of Belonging and Uprooting in Hispanic Cinemas conference will discuss these themes:

The representation of migrations, displacements, exile, and diaspora.
Transnational flows of cultural, economic, and human capital in the production and circulation of cinema.
The reconfiguration of the regional, national, and transnational Hispanic interactions within the new century.
Public discourses and film policies within the region.
Hybridization and identity in the narratives on colonization, decolonization, and revolutionary processes.
Activism and digital praxis.
Genres, authors, stars.
Film cultures and cinephilia: festivals, publications, and digital platforms.
Minor cinemas: indigenismo, experimental, and/or militant cinemas.
Historiographic, theoretical, and methodological problems of so-called Hispanic, Iberian, and Latin American cinemas.

Find out more on the conference website conference website.

Art in Translation Special Issue: Spain and Orientalism

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Art in Translation has announced the publication of a special issue on Spain and Orientalism, vol. 9:1 (2017), co-edited by Claudia Hopkins (University of Edinburgh) and Anna McSweeney (Warburg Institute).

This is the first English-language journal issue dedicated to Spanish Orientalism in art and visual culture in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The peer-reviewed articles, drawn from a panel at the Association of Art Historians conference in 2016, examine Spain’s complex relationship with her Islamic past and with Morocco, through art, architecture, photography and material culture. They address a range of topics including patterns of collecting, the reproduction of Islamic art and architecture for private and public spaces, the role of Spain’s Islamic heritage in the construction of a national identity as exemplified in Spanish exhibition pavilions, the intersections between art and colonialism, and the role of Spanish art and visual culture in the wider debates about Orientalism.

Table of Contents:

Editorial: Spain and Orientalism, by Anna McSWEENEY and Claudia HOPKINS

The Arab Room of the Palacio de Cerralbo, by Ariane VARELA BRAGA

Reconstructing the Alhambra: Rafael Contreras and the Architectural Models of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth Century, by Asun GONZALEZ PEREZ

Mudéjar and the Alhambresque: Spanish Pavilions at the Universal Expositions and the Invention of a National Style, by Anna McSWEENEY

Vision, Lamentation and Nineteenth-Century Representations of the End of al-Andalus, by Oscar E. VÁZQUEZ

Allende el Estrecho (Beyond the Straits): The Photographic Gaze on the Orient in Andalusia and Morocco, by David SÁNCHEZ CANO

Visualizing ‘Moorish’ Traces within Spain: Orientalism and Medievalist Nostalgia in Spanish Colonial Photojournalism 1909-33, by Elisabeth BOLORINOS ALLARD

The Politics of Spanish Orientalism: Distance and Proximity in Tapiró and Bertuchi, by Claudia HOPKINS

Select Bibliography: Spain and Orientalism

The issue can be accessed online through Taylor and Francis Online.

Call For Papers: Fashion, Costume, and Consumer Culture in Iberia and Latin America: A Session in Honor of Gridley McKim-Smith, CAA conference, 21-24 February 2018, Los Angeles

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For the next annual conference of the College Art Association (CAA), scheduled for 21-24 February 2018 in Los Angeles, the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies is organizing a panel in memory of the Hispanist Gridley McKim-Smith (1943-2013). The chairs, Mey-Yen Moriuchi and Mark Castro, invite paper proposals by August 14.

Fashion, Costume, and Consumer Culture in Iberia and Latin America: A Session in Honor of Gridley McKim-Smith

“Material splendor—rare and exquisite fabrics, dazzling displays of wealth and sartorial beauty—is a compelling value in Hispanic-American clothing” (McKim-Smith, Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque 2013, 111). Gridley McKim-Smith (1943–2013) argued that the “profound materiality and sensuality of costume is crucial in Spain’s American possessions, where only stuffs recognized as prestigious can insulate the wearer from public disgrace and where the most sumptuous silks or alpacas, sometimes interwoven with precious metals, can make the wearer both admired and desired.” (114) In honor of the late McKim-Smith’s research interests and scholarship this session will consider representations of dress and fashion in Iberia and Latin America. In the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds, depictions of costumes in paintings, sculptures, prints, and other visual media, as well as the creation of textiles and garments, demonstrate the power of dress in the construction of social, racial, gender, and cultural identities. The existence of extensive global trade networks facilitated the exchange and synthesis of artistic practices and craftsmanship permitting unique garments and objects which revealed the wearer’s style, aesthetic preferences, and social status. We seek papers from broad geographical and chronological periods, from Pre-Columbian to Modern, that consider the role of fashion, costume, and consumer culture in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds. How do clothes mediate identity, ideology, social rank, and subjectivity? What is the relationship between consumer culture and conspicuous consumption in Iberia and Latin America? How did dimensions of lived experience—psychological, performative, and political—survive in articles of dress?

Chairs: Mey-Yen Moriuchi, La Salle University, moriuchi@lasalle.edu; Mark Castro, Philadelphia Museum of Art, mcastro@philamuseum.org

The deadline for submissions is Monday, August 14. Click here for CAA’s proposal guidelines, which indicate that speakers on the panel must be members of CAA. Decisions on the proposals will be sent by Monday, August 28. If you have questions, please reach out to the chairs.

Featured Exhibition: Portraits

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Retratos. Colecciones Fundación MAPFRE de fotografía, Sala Fundación MAPFRE Recoletos (Paseo de Recoletos 23, 28004 Madrid)

The exhibition ‘Retratos’ is on at the MAPFRE Foundation until 3 September 2017. Focusing on portraits in the twentieth century, the exhibition features photographs by Spanish and Latin American photographers such as Alberto García-Alix, Cristina García Rodero, Graciela Iturbide, Anna Malagrida, Fernando Maquieira. It is divided in four themes, ‘Cities,’ ‘Communities’ and ‘Artists and Models’ which attempt to embrace and reveal the complexity of contemporary portraiture.