EXPLOSION: BARCELONA

 

“Beyond useless discussions on figurative or abstract art, beyond all purist, fanatic, aesthetic or theoretical concerns, is the imperious need to scream, to inundate surfaces and leave a mark, to express oneself no matter how, revealing the energy potential of the being, to paint as a form of living, through the amorous or destructive image of the body […], of an expanding whole or of a concentric dynamic”. Thus wrote Antonio Saura about one of his series, in which the painter succumbs to the euphoria of colour, moving away from his usual palette of whites, blacks and ochres, to celebrate both the “expanding whole” and the “concentric dynamic”. Opposing, although successive, even simultaneous movements, which aptly describe the fire of an explosion.

 

Zabriskie Point is in Death Valley in California, an arid and erosional terrain which gives the title to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film. It was his first American production and was very badly received by both public and critics. In successive decades, this resounding failure gradually aroused growing interest. This is in part thanks to its exceptional soundtrack, with note worthy contributions by Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead, but also due to its ability to anticipate many social conflicts that are still unresolved today.

 

In this exhibition we focus in particular on two scenes. The first is a “symbolic detonation”, that of free love and desire released from its binary form in order to embrace the counterculture and Utopia; multiple lovemaking scenes by The Open Theater to the sound of Jerry Garcia’s guitar. The second is a “mental explosion” that Daria, the film’s main character together with Mark, projects on what she considers to be responsible for the death of her lover: extractive capitalism channelled toward infinite consumption. In both cases, the deflagrations confront us with fragments which dance, releasing energy.

 

Is Zabriskie Point a bomb? asked Guy Flatleyin a review in The New York Times. A few months later, Terenci Moix, in the magazine Triunfo, wrote: “Antonioni ignites an everyday violence […] places the bomb of a universe which is going to ruin”. There are undoubtedly explosions, orgies of bodies and objects, fragments which come apart, come close together and move away in a disjointed and excessive firework display. The Italian director provides us with a shapeless vision, in which the matter and the landscape are the true main characters which deny any identifiable representation in a simple and normalized manner. It is not a manifesto, or a generational portrait, but rather a film which is reluctant to become a submissive interpretative tool. For this very reason, here we limit ourselves to juxtaposing, like a collage, certain authors who demonstrate a clear connection with Zabriskie Point, bearing in mind both that inhospitable location and the film, as well as the context in which it was filmed over half a century ago.

The works invited to take part in this exhibition engage in a dialogue with Zabriskie Point from the perspective of “the imperious need to scream, to inundate surfaces and leave a mark”, like a joyful and radical explosion.

 

Death Valley’s lunar landscape and the frenzied choreography of The Open Theatre in the Love Scene are reflected in the matter in ferment and in the grooves of the works by Juana Francés and Antoni Tàpies, but also in the tensions of the burlap of Manolo Millares with its gloomy echoes.

 

On the other hand, the pop figuration of Eulàlia Grau and of the Equipo Crónica, with their icons of the most consumer-oriented America, confronts us with the bright colours of empty packaging: Schwarzenegger and a showcase to fill, a canned Venus which appears in the night and a war like explosion by Liechtenstein, surrounded by sombre businessmen. Two representations of the pop universe (or of nothingness itself) which will be blown up in the Final Scene.

 

Like Mark and Daria, the works displayed here roam between the arid Mojave Desert and the modern city of Los Angeles, between material abstraction and pop effervescence.

 

It’s all very dreamlike, even lysergic, with strong contrasts between the earthy tones and the fiery reds, diluted in part by the blinding light on an infinite horizon. The film has aptly been described as an orgy, and it is in two senses: an orgy of surrounding eroticism —choreography and dancing— and an orgy of pure destruction —a mansion blown to smithereens—.

 

A detonation in which everything floats and everything has a place, filmed in slow motion. Bodies which multiply in the desert and objects which are blown up. The explosion suggested by Miró, in his drawing that we present here, is a dance, with its stars, birds and trees, in a joyful choreography on a lightgrey-earth coloured background.

 

The explosive scenes are, to a large extent, psychedelic —mental images—, mainly thanks to the music which accompanies them, but also to the desire to violate, to escape from the “normalization” imposed. They are celebrations of the senses. The counterculture, which both main characters embody in some way, had one of its most notorious demonstrations in the lysergic experience. However, at the end of the 1960s, they were not the only ones who were trying out LSD and other psychotropic substances. In 1975, Michel Foucault had his own experience with acid in Zabriskie Point, “one of the most important experiences of my life”, he admitted. Just a few hours later, the philosopher expressed his desire to write bookbombs: “The ideal is not to build tools butto make bombs, because when you have used up your own bombs, nobody else can use them. […] In later years historians and others could recount that such and such a book was useful as a bomb and was beautiful as fireworks”. Both Zabriskie Point and the works shown here suggest orgiastic deflagrations, of matter and of icons, at the happy moment of their detonation “where everything has a place when it floats”; frenzied molecules of bodies in flames.

 

To conclude, we read the description that Antonio Saura offers of his series Cocktail Party, a splendid example of which we can enjoy at this exhibition: “Illustration of this Western degeneration of the primitive orgiastic party that allows the individual to take part in the collective life of the tribe. Surfaces where everything has a place when it floats. Play full scenes in technicolour which show, in the freedom of a vacuum, multiple origins which accumulate, attract and separate. A panoramic vision in which the mental pilgrimage and the modern masquerade are fossilized in a happy instant, being prolonged from one artwork to another until exhaustion”.

 

Or else as a second final, in line with the last sequence of Zabriskie Point, which takes place in the Final Scene, in which Daria drives off into the sunset, accompanied by an unexpected —following the performance by Pink Floyd and the unforgettable acid scream of Roger Waters— song by Roy Orbison, we conclude with the paragraph with which Simeon Wade closes his testimony of Foucault’s experience with LSD, with an unexpected nod to Eulàlia Grau’s mechanical Venus, which presides over this exhibition:

 

“We have had many pleasures together,” he said, as if from afar. His eyes glistened with the radiance of Venusrising over Zabriskie Point. Foucault molecularized into the arms of his men and then he was gone”.

 

- Francesco Giaveri