metropolis m

Moving to Spain around ten years ago, I was surprised. Here was a European country where there was still a need for cultural and democratic institutions. The melancholy and the malaise that seemed to have beset the rest of the old Occident in those years, often in a nationalist guise, seemed relatively absent.

While the cultural sectors experienced cutbacks elsewhere, and democratic reason was under pressure from post-9/11 political panic, art was in Spain considered a relevant part of civil society and its debates. Art wasn’t suspect or forced to perform under explicitly economic imperatives. Sure, there were the prestige projects and the regionalist agendas, but at least art wasn’t under the sway of the populistic defensiveness that made art professionals in my country look to Spain with envy and go ”Oh, but exhibitions like that can’t be done here… in Denmark people are are expecting something more accessible.” In short, modernity – in the positive sense of this term – was still relevant here. Art could be its own reason and purpose.

Sometimes the Spanish refer to Europe as an entity that they aren’t part of (’in Europe they eat supper earlier than we do’, etc.); this seems odd, but there are probably good reasons for it. When one considers the palpable difference in public attitudes towards art in Spain versus the rest of Europe at that time, there was no reason for the Spanish to maintain their conventional reverence for all things from the North, and even less for everybody else to maintain historical clichés of España negra.

Why am I writing in the past tense? Because in the meantime, I have moved away, and am perhaps nursing a slight nostalgia. More importantly, my Spanish friends are telling me about political and economic changes that make art institutions more careful and considered, to put it diplomatically.

I am sure I am generalising, and there are surely parts of the workings of Spanish society that I am clueless about. But while the rest of Europe seemed to be run by neo-Stalinist behaviourists who were deciding their politics from counting the drops of saliva that the electorate would secrete by the mention of certain keywords (’immigration down? reduced taxes? more control with cultural spending?’ etc.) – there was something else happening in Spain.

Lars Bang Larsen
Art critic, researcher


This text is presented at the Metropolis M ARCO booth in English and Spanish and on this website.

Lars Bang Larsen

Recente artikelen