The Quiet Work

               For the last two years I have been working on research for my doctorate in history. I have found this work enormously rewarding because it has challenged me to the root of my sense of humanity, and to the drive of humanity that most interests me, the human potential to imagine...to create.  But what is creativity in the face of obstacles severe enough to break a person's life in two? Are artists any more susceptible to the crushing weight of repression than other human beings? Is artistic expression a matter of life or death or a matter of whim and conceit? The answer to that last question came long ago in my life and I can safely telegraph the answer here. One has no choice in the matter. But how that answer plays out in history and in particular in the history of societies driven by authoritarian control in the twentieth century, is to me the Rorschach test of creativity. The regimes of Stalin and Hitler offer their own diabolical perspectives as to the efficacy of control over artistic expression to be sure. But in the twentieth century they were not the only ones, nor necessarily the most adept.

               My research is a cultural history project focusing on three artists that serve as a broad cross-section of dissident, artistic expression during the Francisco Franco dictatorship in Spain (1936-1975). They are composer Antonio José Martínez Palacios from Burgos (1902 – 1936), poet and novelist Jesús López Pacheco from Madrid (1930 – 1997), and painter-sculptor Antoni Tàpies from Barcelona (1923 – February 7, 2012).  The “dissidence” of their expression stems from the meaning of their lives and art as counterweights to the Spanish dictatorship’s National Catholic cultural project, a project begun in the earliest days of the Nationalist controlled areas of Spain at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This then is a review of that work so far with a particular emphasis on one of the artists, Antoni Tàpies and his understanding of the role of art in society.

               Composer Antonio José, the name he went by professionally, was executed at the outset of the Civil War by the Falange in Burgos under circumstances closely reminiscent to those of Federico García Lorca in Granada. For me his story is outwardly the most tragic of the three. As a victim of the regime’s most violent repression, his abundant talent as a composer, musicologist, and choral teacher were cut short. I still believe that his status has yet to be fully recognized and hope this research can help promote him as one of Spain's preeminent twentieth century composers.

Author Jesús López Pacheco’s 1958 novel Central eléctrica was a centerpiece of Spanish social realism writing of the 50s and 60s and established his reputation among his colleagues as a preeminent spokesman for social change. He represents for me the artist who had achieved some recognition under the regime, but who, as an active dissident, suffered severely from its censorship policies. These policies, as seems apparent from my research, became even more intense in the years between 1951 through to the end of the dictatorship. In López Pacheco’s case, I have focused on archival evidence from documents held in the Archivo General de la Administración in Alcalá de Henares and personal interviews. In addition, the experience of the author as an exile at the end of the 1960s gives his story an added dynamic, common to other Spanish artists who fled the regime.

            The censorship documents on writers of the period also reveal that literature went through a rigid sieve of approval that other forms of expression did not.  In fact by the 1950s, the regime began to make an effort to use the plastic arts as a promotional component on the international stage.  And the reason for the use of contemporary art for this purpose was simple. No one in the regime, not the least Franco himself, saw a viable threat from contemporary painting and sculpture, and especially from the kind of abstract expressionist work of an artist like Antoni Tàpies.

              My work at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona has concentrated on the great store of periodical resources from the period of his early career and the Fundació's wealth of primary and secondary works. By the first Bienal Hispanoamericana del Arte in Madrid in 1951 supported by the regime, and through subsequent exhibitions in Venice, Barcelona, and Sao Paulo,  Tàpies was establishing himself as one of the most critically acclaimed Spanish artists since Picasso, Dalí and Miró. But his art, far from being a tool of the regime, became a force against it.  

             Antoni Tàpies discusses later in his life how he and other artists were well aware of the intent of the regime to manipulate contemporary Spanish artists and he recognized that cultural openings like the Bienal gave contemporary painters an advantage in terms of the distribution of their work both in Spain and abroad. Nevertheless, he disagreed with vehemently about the effects of artistic expression on society, and it is this view of art that for me has made him so important to my work. The way this story is unfolding for me now, Tàpies becomes the culmination of the power and presence of artistic expression in culture. 

             One interpretation of the regime’s view of modern art, and Franco´s himself, who visited some of the early exhibitions, was that art of a nature that demands more participation on the part of the viewer, more contemplation is lost on most and therefore not a revolutionary threat to the regime, or as Tàpies put it represented the “inoperancia” of art.  “To me,” he says “it demonstrates the exact opposite: the ignorance of Franco about contemporary art. The facts show that art, and all of culture, if not instantly triggering the spectacular revolutions that some imagine, do silent work, on the other hand, that prepares the consciousness in a manner generally more permanent than many violent acts.  Franco continually underestimated culture, intellectuals and artists without realizing that to his own discredit and that of all Francoism the consciousness of the inhabitants of the Spanish state were being fed by the intellectuals and artist”.  

         Using his notoriety through active involvement with student demonstrations for democracy in Barcelona, and through his own artistic expression he puts his reputation on the front line in the 1960s. Tàpies writes that this direct action involvement was a revelation that infused him with a new sense of humanity and community. He found this sense in both the  students who were fighting for more open universities and in those activists who were older and who had spent most of their lives fighting for democracy under Franco. It was they who had come to him as a well-known artist, seeking his help in a seminal student sit-in at the Canpuchinos de Sarría Convent in Barcelona in 1966.

            This sense of community and involvement revolutionized his understanding of the role as an artist. Instead of being concerned with strictly finding his own space in life through his artistic expression, he incorporated that space into a larger statement on how the artist confronts his material reality and his society.

       

Day Dream Believer

Many (many) years ago when I was in high school the Monkees surfaced. I only watched the TV show for a few seconds at a time while flipping channels. It wasn't funny, and anyway, please. None of us, meaning me and my friends, bought into this contrivance. I thought Last Train to Clarksville was a catchy little tune and I thought it was quirky that a band could be prefabricated and still have a hit in the real world, though I didn't understand much then how often publicity machines could crank out hits. But that was about it. We had more important music at hand that bridged the gap between fantasy and reality, first off. And believe me, for us music was the expression of both, and growing more so every year. It gave as an unspoken language and bond and it threw down a welcomed wall between us and the generation of our parents. The Beatles, the Stones, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix...they were real musicians, they played and wrote their own music. They didn't need some cardboard cut-out Hollywood tune factory to describe the world to us. The fact that Hendrix went out on his first American tour as an opening act to the Monkees was always bizarre to me. It was the musical equivalent of Jackson Pollock painting Mickey Dolenz's kitchen.
         Of course, this didn't stop us from building our own fantasy worlds around those "real groups". By my first year in college Paul was about to commit suicide for peace, Jagger really was Satan eternally going to a party, and Jimi Hendrix was God (okay...there were some who thought it was Clapton. Frankly, I would have taken either of them in place what I grew up with). But those were our choices, those fantasies. We chose to construct them, and we used them to while away the hours with a joint in hand and huge Koss Plus earphones with the liquid in the ear pads and the volume crank up higher than workers on speed at a munitions factory working overtime under contract to the Defense Department. No one could manufacture those fantasies for us-not the least of all some wanna-be, pseudo musical, bad imitation Beatle hair-cut (and goofy demeanor) group of child star actors masquerading as "artists".
          But then, of course, the inevitable. We got older and the fantasies started to inexorably grind down to an unrecognizable pulp. Paul is still alive, Mick Jagger looks like Dorian Grey a second after he stabs the painting, and Hendrix proved to be, well...mortal. From all reports I've read Davey Jones did not adhere to this inevitability. He seems in the end to have been a nice enough guy. He reportedly looked fit and was still lively on stage at 66. Having run into a variant of the clogged artery syndrome myself a number of years ago, though at a younger age where there is the possibility of shifting gears, I have great sympathy for those that knew him well, but didn't have a clue as to his condition. And maybe even he didn’t, and maybe that is best. Why let reality in the door?
         I stick a couple of sayings under my emails as a signature and they are there for a purpose. They always come in handy because they carry universal weight. They chime in for almost any human condition, but they are not trivial. Probably at some point I am going to run out of places to use them, but not yet anyway. One of them is pertinent here, I think. Davey Jones died Wednesday morning. The Monkees' lead singer was reportedly sleeping at the time and there is no way to know what near death incites he might have offered to us had he survived. He may never have another day dream, but my guess is that dream in the dark was as good as it gets. In Long Day’s Journey into the Night Eugene O'Neill writes "For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning!" Everybody gets one.

Good Will Hunting

            This is not a movie review blog, but nevertheless, I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and I couldn't get this movie out of head. I never get tired of watching it and I know why. I heard Robin William's voice (I'm channeling him , I swear) saying something to the effect "and those are the really good  bits, sport." He was, of course, speaking to Matt Damen's character  in Good Will Hunting about the little peccadilloes that make a relationship so endearing: the farts in the night, the parts of us that we don't show openly to others, but when in love, show unabashedly to our other. Robin Williams was spot on in this role. That he won an academy award should be no surprise. That he didn't win Best Actor award is a crime. Yes, Matt Damon was the protagonist and he and Ben Affleck won the Best Original Screenplay award for an astoundingly warm and nuanced script. But Robin Williams does more than play a character, he throws his character's life, his character's total history in your face every second in every move, every question he has about himself. Yes, the script that Damon and Affleck created make that possible, but the delivery is the clue. This role is one of the great lights of American acting. Williams is so deep into this man that his improvisations speak with the characters voice. And I do not doubt there were improvisations. There is plenty of brilliance to go around here and when a script is good as this and a actor absorbs a role so deeply as does Williams, it would be a huge mistake to not let him run with his role at times and that is what Damon and Affleck do.

Jardineros

Jardineros
       You have to love the Spanish word that Mexicans gave to outfielders in baseball. Jardineros. Outfielders are that. They, and not the pitchers, not the batters even, not the infielders for God´s sake...they are the heart of baseball. They plow the outfield. They nurture their space and wait patiently.They check the wind. They look to see where the sun is in the sky, where the clouds might surprise them, or where the light standards for their artificial garden don´t throw enough light on their land. They are the gardeners.
        Baseball is a came of patience and one wonders how the hell Americans ever could have claimed it their national pastime. And the truth is they don´t any more. We have too many distractions. We are not who we were and I do not say that nostalgically. It's over between baseball and us. Football rules! Basketball, soccer, tennis, ...hell beach volleyball, all now have a place and there is neither the time nor the patience for baseball. And I get it.
       We are a frenetic lot. When one sees how baseball appeared in the nineteenth century, I still marvel at how it took hold among us. But really the architecture created the attachment. We were looking for an organization and it provided a form and structure that settled our fears after a very frightening and debilitating civil war.
         But it is also important to remember that we were a nation created at a time when modern nations were created. We came to be when the idea of the imagined community that Benedict Anderson talks about was in fact being realized in many places in the world. So to us, this little off-shoot of an English game played on stoops in front of nineteenth century American tenements, that involved an individual, but also a team's concerted effort to win in life, was our imagination of an ideal. We were gardeners, tending our fields, but trying to grow something monumental at the same time. And of course we had fucked up.
          We had created a nation based on an ideal that many of us in reality did not believe in. We were a pseudo-people, who claimed one thing and did another. But the game we invented, and rounders and cricket notwithstanding we did invent it, was not a game at all in the end. It was real. It was our true creation. The Constitution enshrined slavery of individuals, Native Americans were driven from their homes, and when we stretched from ocean to ocean we decided that was not enough. But baseball knew better. Nine innings (more if you need them, but you have to pay the peanut man overtime), three outs an inning,...and three strikes and you´re out! No sudden death overtime. No penalty shots. No shoot outs. And no ties (unless it goes to the runner). It is our meme, as Richard Dawkins would say and I for one think it may be the greatest gift we have ever given to humanity.

Whitney Houston and Why One Note is Worth a Thousand Words

            I went to hear her sing at the Park West, as did many others I knew, sometime after the first album had come out. After that tour, no venue was big enough. I doubt that a singer in Chicago, or for that matter any musician in Chicago, hadn't heard that record and sung or played half of the tunes. Many were there that night. The one criticism I remember of that album (though I didn't totally buy the criticism) was that it sounded too tame, too controlled, that somehow they didn't let her sing. The arrangements were, no doubt, pop. The Michael Masser production was evident everywhere: lush strings, simple grooves, and yeah..not too much extemporaneous licks from Whitney. Maybe there was some truth to those observations. After all, she came out of the church. She had to be able to just let go. When you heard her in Lincoln Park that night there was no doubt she could cut through the music like a knife through butter when she wanted to. 
         But she also did have another, very subtle side to her voice that you could hear on the album - a texture that I had never really heard before in my life. It was a clear, bright, airy sound that she could twist in perfect intonation and leave in your ears, while she wandered off somewhere else, and she had the ability then to slip in and out of it at will. It was evident that night at the Park West, a venue that allows for more finesse, while still offering a room where a singer could belt. And that night she did belt. Man...did she. If there were any there who hadn't thought she could, they got taken to church real quick. You could feel the waves knocking people' s hair back (even what I had of mine back then). That is what people had said they didn't hear on the record. My theory, and I'm not the only one who thought this, was that maybe they (Masser, Clive Davis or whoever) just didn't want to take too many chances. She was young and they wanted to make sure this album stuck in the ears of everyone. They wanted to be sure Whitney was a pop star from the beginning. Well, they got their wish. I don't know if she got hers. 
          In the end it isn't that record that now rings true to me. She was always much, much more than that and what she gave everyone that night was something you cannot ever replace in music..the memory of a performance that you can still hear in your ears over twenty-five years later.

Noticias de una guerra: directed by Enterio Ortega Santillana

     Noticias de una guerra (Notes on A War) is a movie from 2006, the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939). If you do not speak Spanish, it is available with subtitlies. Director Eterio Ortega Santillana along with producer Elías Querejeta created this documentary/ reenactment using a combination of film footage along with voice-over actors to capture speeches of the time. The film was a product of comprehensive research in consultation with Spanish historian Santos Juliá and involved much archival footage not often seen. The idea of matching voice-over actors to the speeches of the era seems to have been meticulous. It  involved detailed lip syncing, and outright lip reading where text was not available. The speeches of Delores Ibárruri ("La Pasionaria"), in particula, are fascinating done this way. Those of Francisco Franco are a little disconcerting. I have heard radio speeches of his before and the actor who played him in this case seemed to work hard to make them emotive. The film's attempt at a documentary without diatribe is relatively successful, although with the Spanish Civil War, a balanced presentation can still be an oxymoron in Spain.

      There is one scene in the documentary, however, that is both chilling and bizarre, and reflects one of the fundamental problems the Nationalist narrative had. Early on in the war, Franco had understood that he could employ the idea of a civil war as a "Crusade" against the un - godly, secular (democratically elected) Republic that he was attempting to overthrow. At the same time, given that this was 1936 and Fascism was a serious contender for a state model throughout Europe, the use of Fascist rhetoric and symbology was attractive to all would - be dictators.When Franco speaks of "España totalitaria", he is speaking of a systematic, top - down, corporatist, Fascist world. But beyond the fact that German and Italian governments were funding his effort in 1936, Franco realized this combination worked as a mobilization tool that would aid in his vision of National Catholicism (think National Socialism).Nevertheless, to wed the conservative Church to Fascism, with it's clearly paganist imagery, was awkward.

      Even if you don't understand Spanish, there is footage near the end of the film that is striking. At one point in the midst of a celebratory mass for their great victory, Nationalist supporters try to kneel before a priest giving communion, while at the same time giving the Fascist, straight-arm salute. It is the equivalent of trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Or more to the point, it doesn't work. This isn't to say that in it's approach to Fascism the Church hierarchy didn't bend, but between them and the Fascists, they just could not figure out which "god" to whom they were paying homage. That scene alone is worth the whole film.