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Lot Essay
One of Barceló's celebrated bullfighting paintings, El segundo is filled with swirling energy and drama. The sand of the arena is an absorbing void filled with infinite tension and potential as the bull enters the ring, the torero barely visible on the other side. The width of the canvas is the distance between a man and a lethal tonnage of bull, and Barceló has captured the breathless expectation of the moment of the beast's entry into the ring. The empty sand is a blank canvas upon which an ancient and fatal dance is about to unfurl.
The bullfight is an ancient Spanish tradition whose strange and intoxicating combination of absolute grace and skill with death remains central to Spain's culture today. The gold of the sand, and the red of the muleta in El segundo are the red and gold of the Spanish flag, tied into every level of that nation's identity. Geographers as early as Strabo introduced the idea that the Iberian peninsula resembles a bull's hide, an image still used today. The dance of the torero and the ritual and festivities that surround the bullfight remain a controversial source of fascination or repulsion for outsiders, with famous figures such as Hemingway among its foreign aficionados. Even today, Spain's toreros have the status of superstars. They and the bulls are respected and revered with an almost religious awe, their ritualized duel a mystical contest that celebrates both Spain's identity, and man's never-ending struggle with the larger forces of nature.
The corrida appeared as a subject in Barceló's paintings in 1990, the year that El segundo was painted. As early as 1988, he painted a poster for bullfights in Nimes, and in 1990 for Madrid, and this clearly piqued an interest in the corrida that would be seen in several paintings that year. These bullfighting pictures marked a startling contrast to the whiteness that had come to dominate so many of his paintings during the period. That whiteness had marked the artist's renunciation of the Western culture in which he was so heavily steeped. He had spent more and more time in Africa, in the desert, seeking out essential qualities of life, scraping away the accumulation of his education and cultural knowledge. This was visible in his large, light canvases, which incorporated scattered elements against a dazzling desert background. Barceló's exposure to tribal life in Africa allowed him to view his homeland, and especially the corrida afresh. The epic scale and implications of this fight between man and beast are treated with a freshness, while allowing Barceló to rediscover and celebrate his own Spanishness in the new light provided by his long absences from the country.
This enthusiasm for his home and his traditions is largely tied up in the passion that is so crucial to the corrida, and likewise to Barceló's painting. Working on a large scale, with grandiose and physical gestures, Barceló is both technically and emotionally a passionate painter. The transitory nature of each painterly gesture equates to the brief moments upon which the torero's life and death hang in the arena. This interest in the transitory, with fleeting all-important moments, and with the essential elements of life had appeared to Barceló in Africa, and now reappeared in the arena, in a place where death is a reality and where ideas are luxuries. El segundo is not a cold, rational or conceptual painting, but a thing of energy and raw beauty that pulses with a life. In this, Barceló saw the corrida as a metaphor and a parallel of his own artistic process:
'As in bullfighting, I believe, one doesn't paint with ideas. The painting happens outside ideas, in contradiction to ideas even, generating ideas. That is why such silent art forms spawn so many words. This is where painting and bullfighting resemble each other, in the verbosity which accompanies them, as though their own silence was so unbearable that it needed pasodobles and infinite pages. Exorcisms for the bedazzled. After all, it is a simple exercise, like a bird eating ants from a skull' (Barceló, quoted in Miquel Barceló 1987 1997, exh. cat., Barcelona 1998, p. 112).
Barceló's interest is not in reason and concepts, but in action and duende. A distinctive and indefinable quality that the Spaniards appreciate in great musicians, great flamenco dancers and great toreros, duende is a combination of heart, blood, balls and earthy energy that is present abounds in the great arenas, and El segundo alike.
Action and movement are as central to the execution of Barceló's bullfighting paintings as they are to their content. When working on his large pictures, Barceló often places the canvas on the ground and paints while walking around, and even on top of the picture. In the bullfighting paintings, painted in Majorca in 1990, this practice became even more ritualized and specific: 'I put myself in the middle of the picture, making turns, with the same movements as a bullfighter. The sand in the ring is full of footmarks and becomes the setting in which to paint. The arena takes up the whole scene, almost leaving out the crowd from the picture. The painting is overfull' (Barceló, in Miquel Barceló: Obra sobre papel 1979-1999, exh. cat., Madrid 1999, p. v). Barceló places himself in the centre of the canvas, and suddenly it is not only torero and artist that are interchangeable, but the arena and the picture too. Barceló's identification with the bull and the bullfighter is extended to the strange glyphs with which he has marked the reverse of many of his corrida canvases, adapting the brands of the bulls to incorporate the letters of his name, horned Ms and Bs showing the Spaniard relating to the bull as much as to the process.
Barceló's own swirling and twirling actions, as he thins the paint in the centre with his feet, create a centrifugal force, with the paint becoming thicker towards the edges, making El segundo an absorbing vortex, a whirlpool of drama and possibility. This is seen especially in the coagulation of the crowd at the top of El segundo. As the artist said, the spectators are not important to the picture, just as they are not important to the showdown between man and beast in the arena. There, in that sandy pool at the centre, the two opponents are the entire world, the arena the only universe that matters until one of them emerges victorious.
By taking the corrida as a theme, Barceló shows a loving rediscovery of the art historical canon that he had avoided in his travels. Many artists, both Spanish and foreign, have taken the bullfight as a theme, most famously Goya and Picasso, two towering giants of Spanish art. Like these two artists, Barceló's pictures on the subject explore the various stages and ceremonies, from the parades, to the entrances of the bulls, to the duel and finally to the death itself. In this sense, El segundo's title, which relates to two other works in the series in particular (El primero and El tercero) shows the introduction of the day's second bull to the arena. El segundo and Barceló's other works on the subject also bear similarities to Picasso and Goya through their calligraphic renderings of the bull and torero, and the fascination with the drama of the proceedings. At the same time, the materiality of El segundo, with its impastoed surface and mixed media, recalls Tàpies' influence. Having cloistered himself away from Western culture and Western art for so long, this return to the most quintessential Spanish theme shows him agilely picking from a wide range of influences in order to harness a timeless ritual in a new and exciting way.
The bullfight is an ancient Spanish tradition whose strange and intoxicating combination of absolute grace and skill with death remains central to Spain's culture today. The gold of the sand, and the red of the muleta in El segundo are the red and gold of the Spanish flag, tied into every level of that nation's identity. Geographers as early as Strabo introduced the idea that the Iberian peninsula resembles a bull's hide, an image still used today. The dance of the torero and the ritual and festivities that surround the bullfight remain a controversial source of fascination or repulsion for outsiders, with famous figures such as Hemingway among its foreign aficionados. Even today, Spain's toreros have the status of superstars. They and the bulls are respected and revered with an almost religious awe, their ritualized duel a mystical contest that celebrates both Spain's identity, and man's never-ending struggle with the larger forces of nature.
The corrida appeared as a subject in Barceló's paintings in 1990, the year that El segundo was painted. As early as 1988, he painted a poster for bullfights in Nimes, and in 1990 for Madrid, and this clearly piqued an interest in the corrida that would be seen in several paintings that year. These bullfighting pictures marked a startling contrast to the whiteness that had come to dominate so many of his paintings during the period. That whiteness had marked the artist's renunciation of the Western culture in which he was so heavily steeped. He had spent more and more time in Africa, in the desert, seeking out essential qualities of life, scraping away the accumulation of his education and cultural knowledge. This was visible in his large, light canvases, which incorporated scattered elements against a dazzling desert background. Barceló's exposure to tribal life in Africa allowed him to view his homeland, and especially the corrida afresh. The epic scale and implications of this fight between man and beast are treated with a freshness, while allowing Barceló to rediscover and celebrate his own Spanishness in the new light provided by his long absences from the country.
This enthusiasm for his home and his traditions is largely tied up in the passion that is so crucial to the corrida, and likewise to Barceló's painting. Working on a large scale, with grandiose and physical gestures, Barceló is both technically and emotionally a passionate painter. The transitory nature of each painterly gesture equates to the brief moments upon which the torero's life and death hang in the arena. This interest in the transitory, with fleeting all-important moments, and with the essential elements of life had appeared to Barceló in Africa, and now reappeared in the arena, in a place where death is a reality and where ideas are luxuries. El segundo is not a cold, rational or conceptual painting, but a thing of energy and raw beauty that pulses with a life. In this, Barceló saw the corrida as a metaphor and a parallel of his own artistic process:
'As in bullfighting, I believe, one doesn't paint with ideas. The painting happens outside ideas, in contradiction to ideas even, generating ideas. That is why such silent art forms spawn so many words. This is where painting and bullfighting resemble each other, in the verbosity which accompanies them, as though their own silence was so unbearable that it needed pasodobles and infinite pages. Exorcisms for the bedazzled. After all, it is a simple exercise, like a bird eating ants from a skull' (Barceló, quoted in Miquel Barceló 1987 1997, exh. cat., Barcelona 1998, p. 112).
Barceló's interest is not in reason and concepts, but in action and duende. A distinctive and indefinable quality that the Spaniards appreciate in great musicians, great flamenco dancers and great toreros, duende is a combination of heart, blood, balls and earthy energy that is present abounds in the great arenas, and El segundo alike.
Action and movement are as central to the execution of Barceló's bullfighting paintings as they are to their content. When working on his large pictures, Barceló often places the canvas on the ground and paints while walking around, and even on top of the picture. In the bullfighting paintings, painted in Majorca in 1990, this practice became even more ritualized and specific: 'I put myself in the middle of the picture, making turns, with the same movements as a bullfighter. The sand in the ring is full of footmarks and becomes the setting in which to paint. The arena takes up the whole scene, almost leaving out the crowd from the picture. The painting is overfull' (Barceló, in Miquel Barceló: Obra sobre papel 1979-1999, exh. cat., Madrid 1999, p. v). Barceló places himself in the centre of the canvas, and suddenly it is not only torero and artist that are interchangeable, but the arena and the picture too. Barceló's identification with the bull and the bullfighter is extended to the strange glyphs with which he has marked the reverse of many of his corrida canvases, adapting the brands of the bulls to incorporate the letters of his name, horned Ms and Bs showing the Spaniard relating to the bull as much as to the process.
Barceló's own swirling and twirling actions, as he thins the paint in the centre with his feet, create a centrifugal force, with the paint becoming thicker towards the edges, making El segundo an absorbing vortex, a whirlpool of drama and possibility. This is seen especially in the coagulation of the crowd at the top of El segundo. As the artist said, the spectators are not important to the picture, just as they are not important to the showdown between man and beast in the arena. There, in that sandy pool at the centre, the two opponents are the entire world, the arena the only universe that matters until one of them emerges victorious.
By taking the corrida as a theme, Barceló shows a loving rediscovery of the art historical canon that he had avoided in his travels. Many artists, both Spanish and foreign, have taken the bullfight as a theme, most famously Goya and Picasso, two towering giants of Spanish art. Like these two artists, Barceló's pictures on the subject explore the various stages and ceremonies, from the parades, to the entrances of the bulls, to the duel and finally to the death itself. In this sense, El segundo's title, which relates to two other works in the series in particular (El primero and El tercero) shows the introduction of the day's second bull to the arena. El segundo and Barceló's other works on the subject also bear similarities to Picasso and Goya through their calligraphic renderings of the bull and torero, and the fascination with the drama of the proceedings. At the same time, the materiality of El segundo, with its impastoed surface and mixed media, recalls Tàpies' influence. Having cloistered himself away from Western culture and Western art for so long, this return to the most quintessential Spanish theme shows him agilely picking from a wide range of influences in order to harness a timeless ritual in a new and exciting way.