He likes the smell of the mixture of seawater, rotten squid and diesel, he makes lists, he inherited a rhinoceros head, he usually paints what he kills or eats… Less rare serial killers appear in ‘Criminal Minds’, we tell him. «When I was a child I had a dilapidated boat that smelled like that and that’s why I like it so much. It takes me back to my childhood,” explains Miquel Barceló. It is his version, somewhat ‘sui generis’, of Proust’s madeleine. He doesn’t think he’s a weird guy, even if his brother once thought so. The Mallorcan artist publishes ‘De la vida mia’ (Galaxia Gutenberg), a commission from more than 20 years ago. «Then I didn’t feel like telling my life at all. The editor insisted and once I went to Japan for a few months to work on some ceramics I took photos on my phone of my family, of my childhood, of my notebooks. I organized them into blocks and at night I started writing. I continued doing it in Paris, in Mallorca… I wrote directly in French, because it gives me a kind of absolute impunity. If I write in Catalan or Spanish, I immediately realize that it’s shit. In French I realize it too, but I forgive myself. Surely, I am a good reader and a bad writer. Good enough reader to know that it’s a very bastardized form of literature, but I like it. It has more to do with the fotonovela. Related News standard Si Ai Weiwei: “These are not easy times for art” Natividad Pulido standard No Lita Cabellut: “Goya taught me to look ghosts in the face” Natividad PulidoDeep down, this book is a self-portrait that, he confesses, It has taken him longer to correct than to write: «It looks like a painting, it has many layers of life, of corrections. It is done by touches, by gestures, sometimes very brutal and sometimes very small. It also has memory exercises. “It’s just like painting.” He wanted to make a written portrait of his parents. He was connected to his mother, who had just died, by a very special invisible thread. He had “a terrible relationship” with his father, but at the end of his life they managed to get closer. Today he plants trees, like he did. He talks in the book about his animals (“donkeys, pigs, cows, which I live with and see every day, and the fifteen dogs I have had”); of the poets (“as they have few publicists and sell few books, it is good to take advantage of the opportunity”)… Some famous people appear, like their friends Camarón de la Isla and Curro Romero; Also, the books (“I live in a cave of books, I haven’t managed to sign up for the iPad or the digital book, it hasn’t worked”) and its workshops. «They are made like this book, with many layers of life. They are like caves. Everything ends up looking like a cave. Theirs, without reaching Francis Bacon’s Diogenes syndrome, would be enough to make Marie Kondo syncope if she set foot in them. «Swimming, painting and reading is a good summary of a good day»And, of course, he talks about Africa, which dazzled him, captivated him and he misses very much. «It is very important in my life. There he wrote more than in other places. I only write when the temperature is 50 degrees, I will soon start writing in Europe. When the temperature rises above 40 degrees, you cannot paint. I used to write when it was very hot or when I was sick. My notebooks started with diarrhea, vomiting, fever. There have been difficult moments: a scorpion stung him in the eye, he caught cholera… In ‘De la vida mia’, Barceló comments, “there is a very underwater part.” Like Juan Marsé in his diaries, he believes that “swimming, painting and reading is a good summary of a good day.” The Mallorcan says that he spends 350 days a year soaking. He likes to dive into the sea smeared with paint and feel how it peels off his skin. A confessable sin for an environmental pioneer like him, concerned about these issues already in the 70s: «The problem has only gotten worse. The trees and the fish die; “It’s a hecatomb.” «To paint is to make mistakes. Nobody ever paints what they want, they paint what they can.” In the book he makes confessions like these: “I have made mistakes every day with my painting,” “in my studio I do nothing but rubbish,” “I continue doing the same things that 10 years old, at that age he had already done almost everything. “… Is he an inveterate frustration or was he a child prodigy? «Probably, both things at the same time. To paint is to make mistakes. Nobody ever paints what they want, they paint what they can. And it’s about accepting what comes out. It’s like a juggler. “If you stop, everything falls.” A fan of visiting artists’ workshops, he religiously made a pilgrimage to all of Picasso’s workshops. «I have not stopped admiring Picasso. Still there. “I recognize myself more easily in Picasso than in other artists.” A confession that is not politically correct, we remind you. «I know, and what do I do? It’s a fact. There are people I admire who are politically incorrect. You are, right? “Yeah. We read Céline, who was a pig. The list would be long, it is not necessary to invoke all the bad beasts that we admire. Should they be canceled for this reason? «Of course not. On the contrary, you have to open the windows. Barceló will draw on the Old Testament (Noah, Moses) in his three tapestries for Notre Dame. He has a house in Paris very close to Notre Dame. He was there when the cathedral caught fire. “It was terrifying,” Barceló remembers. He is going to create three tapestries for some chapels, which will be the actual manufacturing of the Gobelins. They will be woven in silk and some modern synthetic material. It will take them two or three years. One of the cards has already been finished. They will be vertical: six by two or three meters. As for the theme, it will be based on the Old Testament: Noah, Moses… “I like tapestries because they are public art.” For its realization, the artist acknowledges, there have been restrictions on the part of the archbishopric: the theme, the technical conditions, the completion time… «But this does not depend on me. “It is a very laborious process.” Barceló, under his dome at the UN headquarters in Geneva Afp “I became famous too young,” says Barceló. Specifically, at 27 years old. An age at which it is difficult to manage fame. «It was very disturbing at first. That’s why I went to Mali, so that it wouldn’t disturb me so much. “I needed all my time for painting.” In the book, there are allusions to some of his most ambitious (and also controversial) projects, such as his intervention in a chapel in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca or the dome of the human rights room at the UN headquarters in Geneva. «Sometimes controversies arise, but always for reasons that I don’t quite understand. There was a lot of controversy with my project in the cathedral of Palma, but it was artificial. It’s still there. My fresco was not provocative, but unexpected. In ‘My Life’ there are funny anecdotes, like when Patti Smith recited the lists from her ‘African Notebooks’ in New York, thinking they were poems. Yesterday afternoon, the book was presented in room 12 of the Prado, where ‘Las Meninas’ hangs. At the time, there was a project for Miquel Barceló to exhibit in the Prado with Miguel Zugaza as director of the museum. Finally, there was not an exhibition, but an intervention, ‘Paso Doble’, in the Casón del Buen Retiro. «I didn’t know that the presentation is in the ‘Las Meninas’ room. “I’ll tell them to give me a bed and I’ll stay there,” he jokes. Any project in sight in the Prado? «No, none. “I do have projects at the Louvre, but I have already done several.”
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