Glad to announce CritTeam´s artistic intervention at Barcelona Pavilion, with the support of Mies Van Der Rohe Fundación in the Barcelona Loop Festival 2022. We will present a video, a photobook and make three workshops on The Grid, an unprecedented  way of seeing the Pavilion. Come and see from the 8th to the 20th November.  

ArtsFAD 2021 Exhibition Inauguration

 On 1 June, at the Design Hub Barcelona, the FAD Awards 2021 Exhibition opened. Great level of art works were selected for this year, among them Nasrid Diptychs, by CritTeam. Exhibition will be open until the last day of August. 

Arte y pandemia

Pieter Brueghel The Elder, The Triumph of Death, circa 1562

Arte y pandemia es un tema más fértil de lo que parece a simple vista, por más que nos sintamos saturados ya (¡y lo que nos falta todavía!) del tema.

En lo personal, tengo para mí como un referente de lo que es crear en medio del confinamiento por el Covid-19 la obra "A Day's Harvest" de mi admirado y tremendo (en todos los sentidos de la palabra) Francesc Torres. Por su post me enteré de la muerte del igualmente grande Germano Celant. No decía Francesc en su post que Germano había muerto de Covid-19. Tampoco sabía (o tenía presente), antes de confinarnos por primera vez, que Apollinaire también murió de coronavirus, del coronavirus anterior a este, el de 1917.

El hecho de que la pandemia previa, la de principios del siglo XX, coincidiese con la primera guerra mundial determinó que se ocultase toda información sobre ella en la prensa del momento y, lo que es absolutamente inaceptable, de la historiografía canónica sobre dicho siglo. No sólo se resienten así las biografías de Munch, Klimt y Schiele (también víctimas del Covid previo) sino que los locos años 1920, la gran depresión, la obsesión higiénica de la arquitectura moderna, la transformación del "Warfare State" en "Welfare state", el New Deal, todo este entramado trepidante de inicios del siglo XX, de la modernidad más próxima, se explica mucho mejor si se tiene en cuenta esa pandemia previa que mató a más gente que las mismas guerras.

Las vanguardias históricas, a caballo de una pesadilla como la que estamos viviendo, demuestran que la creatividad surge hasta en los terrenos más adversos. Este artículo aborda el tema del arte en tiempos de pandemia desde Chile.

Architectural Drawing as Art Element

Painter Julie Mehretu uses architectural drawing in her way of painting. Nevertheless, what is more architectural in her paintings is the scale: just as Mies van der Rohe use to do with architectural model and photographs, her paintings are so big and well structured that the spectator feels that  he/she "enters" the canvas. The way she works also is linked to how architects work drawings, projecting images, layering, info, simultaneous data, etc. Surely it is the bricolage nature of architectural way of working what makes it potentially artistic. Julie pushes this potentiality to a beautiful level. 

El Árbol de la Arquitectura

Edificio 13, Universidad Pompeu Fabra. Autor: Juan Navarro Baldeweg

Mientras la arquitectura siga haciendo posible espacios como este, la arquitectura no desaparecerá.

Plot Against America

An excellent reading for this summer: "The plot against America", by Philip Roth. It opens our imagination on what could have happened as well as what could happen in the future.

Art in the street

The image is form La Vanguardia, and the rest of the album is worth watching

At the quarter of Gracia, in Barcelona, they decorate the streets in their anual celebration week. Modrian would have been delighted to walk down this instalation.

El valor de la arquitectura

La dificultad mayor que tiene la economía para dirigir el mundo es su incomprensión sobre la naturaleza humana. Todos sus gurús expresan su desconcierto acerca de la "human nature", como por ejemplo Alan Greenspan (ver post anterior).

La arquitectura conoce a la raza humana mejor que la economía. Ozenfant, que influyó mucho sobre Le Corbusier, hablaba del arte como la integración de las contradicciones internas del ser humano: las tres coordenadas las llamaba.

La autonomía de la arquitectura se refiere a esto. Por supuesto que es la más dependiente de las "artes mayores" ya que se hace con recursos ajenos al autor/a. Pero siempre se puede dar "liebre por gato" (Alejandro de la Sota) y después de satisfacer todos los requerimientos sociales, técnicos, etc. se integran todos en ellos en un todo armónico que nos habla de la riqueza subjetiva por encima de todo. La autonomía de la arquitectura tiene que ver con mantener lo estético como valor en la sociedad actual, una sociedad tan equivocada que tiene su mirada puesta en cada telediario en la Bolsa de Valores.

Teaching creativity

A page from the manuscript “La speculazione edilizia” (‘Building Speculation’; 1957)

Creativity is a mystery. How to teach something that is a mystery? Business people have their idea, like in this Stanford's video. The Institute of Creativity and Educational Innovation, University of Valencia has a more artistic idea: it relates perception to action. The latter is closer to the atypical action that produces new perceptions which is art. By the way, art and business is the theme of Italo Calvino's novel Building Speculation written in 1957. It tells the story of a writer that fails in becoming a business man. On the other hand, much later, the same Calvino wrote Six Memos for the Next Millennium which is certainly one of the best creative clues for the future.

At the Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (check the LAR tag) we did the other way round: after doing we started theorizing. Still it looks that Reflexiveness is at the centre of creativity.

Market and Con-temporary Art

This interesting book on "the curious economics of contemporary art" has just been published in Spanish. Written by an economist, professor Donald Thompson, is a good example of the theoretical benefits of joining art and economy.

As it always happens when aesthetic matters are involved, there are several ways of considering the central theme of the book: one, the amazing and crazy market of contemporary art. Another, market itself tends to be criticized when considered in art's world.

As every version of it art market has been de-regulated in the last two decades. One of the main expressions of this is the almost total disappearance of art criticism: except Robert Hudges, who considers brand-art pieces as "simple minded" works addressed to "business big-shots", art critics have been replaced by docile journalists that produce the "blither and rubbish" necessary for the "fatuity of art-world greed" (Hudges).

In architectural realm the situation is even worse, I am affraid: no respected critic has had the courage of denouncing brand-architecture and, which is more harmful in the long run, this whole situation has already contaminated architectural education. Today students of some of the best architecture schools in USA do not know who are Arnee Jacobsen, Utzon or Niemeyer, but they are saturated by con-temporay brand-architecture (temporary meaning that it is not going to last in time). The problem is that painting or sculpture can be hidden in a wardrobe, but architecture always involves public space and/or public money.

Do not miss the video with Hudges's critique on Hirst's work and the business of art:

Human Nature

Human nature is the responsible for the financial crisis, in Greenspan opinion (watch the BBC video here). And former Federal Reserve Chief does not just talk about current one: all of them, he says, from the South Sea Bubble in the XVI Century to todays.

The amazing thing is that the Homo Economicus is the only model economists use today: this is not serious at all. Current economy should not be considered a real science (in fact, it is a religion right now) since its models do not fit its subject. To make a long story short: the main problem is that economists are pure mathematitians that excuse their failures and dogmatic excesses about society by blaming the "unquenchable human nature" (Greenspan). How can coexist ideas like deregulation, free market and invisible hands in the very same discourse with "unquenchable human nature" and still pay these people such bonuses?

To have a remote chance of understanding human nature it has to be taken into account factors like art, for example, that are not reasonable or driven by interest. Any map of human soul that does not count on subjective impulses, beside moral attributes and mathematical skills is not going to be fully human. Economist should have the capability of dealing with the contradictions of human nature. So, little hope of fixing current state of the art of society in the hands of current leaders, I am afraid. Last hope are politicians...

Gastronomy and creativity

elBulli, the best restaurant in the world for the 5th time consecutive is not so because it does better what others do, but because it does totally new things: it investigates in pure creativity. In that sense we all can profit from the way Ferran Adria and his team work. They have a list of 23 principles in their Synthesis of elBulli Cuisine which could be subscribed by everyone involved in creative tasks. Harvard has seen the technical side of it. Maybe the creative stand, clear when one learns about the whole history of the restaurant and its research, is a much more coherent interest with an activity pleasure oriented as molecular gastronomy. True progress (because it articulates harmoniously contradictory aspects of the human being) has appeared when we all thought it was dead in a new form of art: gastronomy.

Aesthetic Science

Old intentions have created a new field: Neuroaesthetics.

Professor Semir Zeki at the University College London is the inventor of this new subject. At first glance, in his writings and research there is an inovative balance between art and science: art is not a simple object there. The primarily importance given to the aesthetic experience makes the difference, compared to Gestalt School, for example. Based in neuroscience, the constant references to artist's ideas, writings and complete works of art are inspiring in this proposal.

The main difference with any artistic research is that all the experiments of Neuroaesthetics pretend to learn more about the brain, whereas in art research always pursues to produce works that challenge the definition of art itself. Anyway, I find this trend stimulating.

Less plausible are some derivations of Neuroaesthetics. Specially those that struggle to invent a machine capable of creating a work of art: what is called esthetic prosthestic. That's plane and simply old Science Fiction.

Professor Zeki has an interesting blog in which, curiously enough, there are no images at all. Just words.

Total Enlightenment and Art at War

Marsden Hartley, The Iron Cross, 1915 (the link takes to a video on the painting by Washington University in St. Louis)

Korman & Melamid, Double Self-portrait, 1984

Until tomorrow (sorry for the delay) there are two wonderful exhibitions in Madrid: Total Enlightenment. Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990, at the Fundación Juan March , and ¡1914! Avant-garde and the Great War, at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Both are one of those luxuries that are going to disappear if the economic crisis gets really bad. If you cannot go, the catalogues are excellent pieces of literature on their respective subject, maybe the best one in both cases: Russian conceptual art and the relationship between war and the historical avant-garde.

Boris Groys, the curator of Total Enlightenment, has just published in Spanish an excellent book on current mediatic era: Bajo sospecha. Soon, in Revista de Occidente it will appear my review of the book.

The Oxford Conference: ¿ethics vs art?

photo: Tim Waters, Flickr

The conference on architectural education in Oxford has good intentions, but that is not enough I am afraid. The idea is literally to save the planet form artist-architects in the name of sustainability. The answer to this rather old good will is, again, in the historical avant-garde: “they claim to defend nature while poets respect it much more than gardeners”, used to say avant-garde artists at the beginning of the 20th century in defense of artistic abstraction. It is evident that there is still the need of explaining the precise artistic nature of architecture in contemporary times. A good start would be not to oppose ethics and art: that is pre-modern. Referring to Siza or Zumthor when talking about contemporary architecture (instead of Ghery and Starck) could also contribute to clarify what I suppose is our common enemy: spectacle and commoditization in architecture.

It is a pity that the conference does not take place at the St. Catherine´s College, the wonderful master piece by Arnee Jacobsen located precisely in Oxford. That work of architecture is capable of defending contemporary art all alone. By the way, the moralist stand of this 2008 Oxford Conference reminds me of the struggle against Jacobsen´s project in the oxfordian press of the time when the building was being constructed. Fortunately, some English schools have responded to the spirit of the conference: Brett Steele (Architectural Association) and Iain Borden (Bartlett) have struck back.

press release july08OXFORD CONFERENCE - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: press release july08OXFORD CONFERENCE

Light and movement

Digital animation in architecture is misleading: it "explains" so realistically a building that architectural values normally vanish automatically. The experience of architecture is synthetic and to animate an architectural representation requires truly creative skills. As it is an aesthetic fruition what is at stake an animation of architecture requires an artistic approach to give an account of it.

Just by chance, I am afraid, the video below has this value. It is by Henrik Wann Jensen (Stanford University) and Stephen Duck (MIT) and is intended to show the differences between Ray Tracing and Photon Mapping (the latter invented by Wann). The thing is that the model chosen is a unbuilt work of Mies van der Rohe and the video shows, besides the features of the computational tool, the living spirit of a non existing architectural masterpiece: light.

Visuality in the Digital era

Net.art is to our era what Cubism and Purism were to industrialization. Back in the beginnings of the 20th century people were disguised by the formal discoveries of the historical avant-garde, because they challenged what art had been until then. Internet has changed our world because it has changed our relation with it, that is undeniable. Art is still about making visible that part of the world that only makes sense when is seen.

Well, again, people fear to be teased by digital art and new media when they visit the exposition "Souls & Machines" at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. The combination of "art, technology, mystery, emotion and beauty" makes this exhibition, together with Javier Riera´s "Noche Áurea", worth visiting. Visuality is alive, long life to art. Have a look (which means enjoy in this context) to the work of Sachiko Kodama on ferrofluids and electromagnetic camps: it is a film, just a film, that shows what happens in front of your eyes when you are before the work at the museum.

Guernica, forma y cubismo

Me ha llegado esta peli sobre el Guernica que me parece interesante. Es de una estudiante de la Universidad de Georgia que dice que siempre ha estado interesada en el arte y en las TIC. Ha combinado las dos cosas en esta que es su tesis: una recreación tridimensional del Guernica de Picasso. Lo primero que me gustó es que contesta de una manera muy visual el lugar común de la simultaneidad como explicación última de la forma cubista. Lo de la cuarta dimensión cubista (el tiempo) como secreto del cubismo ya lo contestaron argumentalmente los propios protagonistas de las vanguardias, ahora la verosimilitud volumétrica de estas figuras en 3d que originalmente han sido pintadas en dos dimensiones ponen de manifiesto su esencia formal-espacial, y no una simple iconografía resultante de la simple superposición temporal. Esto me recuerda cuando un casi desconocido Mariscal ganó con su Cobi el concurso para la mascota de Barcelona 92. Entonces los incrédulos se frotaban las manos ante el reto de hacerlo tridimensional: el muñeco definitivo es una pieza de diseño excelente. Pasearse por dentro del Guernica y después ir a verlo en la nueva sala que le han preparado en el Reina Sofía es un planazo. La autora es Liena Gieske y la música es de Manuel de Falla. La página web de Liena explica como hizo la peli.

Rapid Prototyping: ¿libertad o coacción?

Parasol Metropolitano de J. Mayer para la plaza de la Encarnación en Sevilla, 2003 (en construcción)

Experimentos de superficies alabeadas armadas perpendicularmente del artista Richard Sweeney 2004

Máquina de Rapid Prototyping

Rapid Prototyping (RP) es una técnica (en la línea del CAD-CAM) que permite pasar directamente del autocad y del 3D a maquetas tridimensionales. Es como hace algunas de sus obras Richard Sweeney (en especial su serie Cartasia de 2007, ver entradas anteriores ) y, me temo, también que el excelente diseñador industrial, arquitecto y profesor alemán Jürgen Mayer. Digo "temo" por lo siguiente: cuando uno ve por primera vez las maquetas hechas con la tecnología RP puede suponer que provienen de una original idea de forma y/o de una habilidad artesanal superior. Sucede exactamente lo contrario: se trata de formas convencionales (superficies de doble curvatura armadas por planos perpendiculares), concebibles y ejecutables a través de la simple aplicación de una tecnológica específica, ella sí sofisticada. Una vez entendido el principio se pierde su efecto emancipador. ¿De donde su éxito, entonces?.

Posiblemente de una costosa novedad. Costosa, socialmente sobre todo, porque cuando se hace arquitectura con estos experimentos escultóricos se violenta el habitar al violentar la escala. Lo que diferencia la escultura y el diseño industrial de la arquitectura es precisamente la escala: violentarla produce sobresalto y con ello mucha repercusión en los medios. Todo este proceso de violencia contra el espacio público está de alguna manera vinculado al llamado efecto Bilbao: la introducción de un edificio-espectáculo como promoción turística de la ciudad.

T.W. Adorno, filósofo indispensable para entender la estética contemporánea, dudaba del entusiasmo de su colega Walter Benjamin acerca del futuro de La obra de arte en la era de su reproductibilidad técnica, precisamente porque temía que el arte cambiase su naturaleza creativa, lo que realmente lo hace innovador y original, para amplificar su difusión. La supuesta libertad que las ¿bellas? formas mecánicas del RP y el CATIA deberían considerarse más bien un daño colateral de la "dictadura de la tecnología" que ha denunciado vehementemente Kenneth Frampton.

PD (08/05/2009) Parametrismo es la base teórica del RP. El control de la forma a través de algoritmos, que condicionan unas variables fijas de cambio sobre las superficies. El lider teórico de esta corriente es Patrik Schumacher, socio de Hadid y profesor del Architectural Association. Los planteamientos de Schumacher exceden con mucho el ámbito de la técnología y reivindica valores estéticos y políticos en el Parametric Design.

Formas bellas

Hay un chico (se graduó el año pasado) inglés, vive y trabaja en Manchester, se llama Richard Sweeney. Hace con papel auténticas maravillas en maquetas (¿esculturas, edificios?). Creo que es oportuno en referencia a la discusión sobre formas bellas y arquitectura: estas formas parecieran bellas en sí mismas, ¿no? ¿pueden convertirse en arquitectura?. No dejeis de visitar la web de Richard, es realmente emocionante su producción.