Tag Archives: Spain

August 23, 2012 · 9:59 am

Wipe Out II: When New Media Attacks

Today I have a brief follow-up to the piece I wrote yesterday – which you can read here – about the botched restoration of a fresco of Christ at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mercy, in the town of Borja, Spain.  News reports indicate that the 81-year-old woman at the center of this story is now suffering from anxiety attacks, and has taken to her bed.  Friends and neighbors say they have been having difficulty persuading her to eat, because she feels so overwhelmed at the flood of media reporting on her and what she did.  In fact the Culture Minister has stated that media coverage of this incident has been completely “disproportionate.”

This level of coverage would have been impossible without new media.  It seems everyone in the commentariat has weighed in on the terrible job this woman did in “restoring” the fresco, which she claims she was doing with full permission of her parish priest, and they are able to do so because the images were shared around the world in an instant.  The hipster-atheist crowd took advantage of the opportunity to take pot-shots at God – as if they could somehow hurt Him – while others simply recoiled in horror at how the painting had been ruined.  I myself am perhaps more likely to recoil in horror at the fact that one or two of my readers said they actually preferred the new version (for if that is the case, this blog has been for naught.)

Even as late as this morning, friends who had not seen my blog post yesterday were sending me links to the original story from various new media sites in case I had missed it, not realizing that I had already weighed in on the matter.  Therefore to repeat and sum up what I wrote yesterday: the destruction of this fresco is unfortunate, but it was not a “masterpiece”, as many new media outlets have claimed.  It was a perfectly average image of Jesus, of the sort that used to be quite commonly found in churches around the world, before we started building churches that look like high school gymnasiums and drive-through banks.

I will freely admit, when I first read the story yesterday I thought, “Good gravy what a disaster.”  Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was simply the case of a well-intended human being making a mistake, and this is what I tried to put across in my piece.  This woman should never have undertaken her task, since she clearly had no proper skills or training for art conservation and restoration, but does that give us free license to pile on and laugh at her for doing so?

The work done here was not completed by a professional restoration service, which holds itself out as being fit to provide this type of work.  This is not the huge academic and popular debate that went on over the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel by experts, which some hold ruined the frescoes and others hold brought them back to their original state.  Rather here we simply have a case of an elderly parishioner, who wanted to do something good for her community.

Her age and good intentions do not excuse the bad job that she did, of course.  However the reaction to her mistake is so grossly out of proportion to its significance, that it begs the question: is laughing at the mistake of a private individual worth sending them to their sick bed for?  This is not the case of a public figure like Prince Harry or Kim Kardashian behaving badly, but rather one of a private person whose life is being scrutinized and pored over by new media solely for the purpose of mockery.

In addition to which, this is fundamentally a local matter, made utterly distasteful thanks to the insidious influence of new media, which so often seems to turn off people’s sense of decency.  I will be the first to admit that sometimes, perhaps more often than I would like to admit, I am just as guilty of indulging in this sort of long-distance cruelty as anyone else.  I need to be reminded that I am commenting on actual, living human beings, not characters in a work of fiction.

For centuries, it was common practice in this country for someone who had done wrong to be placed in the stocks in the center of town. People would then be able to come by and publicly mock the person, as both a punishment and a deterrent.  This practice was later eliminated, as we came to realize that it was cruel, but cruel as it was it always a local matter for the community.

New media, it seems, is giving us the chance to revive this old form of torture, only to be able to do so from the other side of the planet with the click of a button.  In this case, we are putting an old woman none of us will ever ever meet into a kind of virtual stocks, to suffer and be humiliated for doing something wrong which has nothing whatsoever to do with any of us – and all with no consequence to ourselves.  That, to me, is a very troubling development indeed.


Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mercy (XVI century)
Borja, Spain

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August 22, 2012 · 10:53 am

Wipe Out: A Lesson in Being Human

While I read the news from Spain every morning, I often cannot share the stories I read with a wider audience, since not all of my readers are fluent in Spanish. Fortunately however, a story about an attempt at art restoration gone horribly, horribly wrong in Spain has attracted enough international attention to warrant reporting in English. According to news reports, a 19th century fresco painting of Christ at the moment when Pontius Pilate declared, “Ecce Homo,” located in the historic 16th century church of Our Lady of Mercy in the Aragonese town of Borja, was horribly “restored” by an elderly parishioner acting without permission.  She began by scraping off huge sections of loose paint, and then re-painting what can only be described as a rather blobby substitute over the bits she had ruined.

The fresco had begun to flake due to some moisture problems in the building, and was in need of preservation and restoration. Ironically, the local center for cultural studies had recently received a donation from the granddaughter of the artist, Elías García Martínez, to undertake restoration of the painting. Experts will now have to assess whether anything can be done to bring it back: though from the look of things, I suspect they cannot.

The woman responsible, who is in her 80′s and lives in the neighborhood, has come forward and admitted what she did. It was not intended maliciously, but rather she appears to have been unaware that efforts to raise funds to restore the painting were underway. It is telling that the effort to undertake this restoration began in 2010, and yet no one noticed what this woman was doing until August 2012. The church is apparently left open all day long, but there must not be many people visiting it if this ongoing work of hers passed unnoticed for such a long time.

Much of the reporting describes this painting as a “masterpiece”, when it fact it is not. More to the point this alleged “masterpiece” is really just a fresco version of the highly sentimental, colorful, holy card designs still sold everywhere. The fresco is – or was – a pious work of art, but it is not a great painting by any means. In this respect the continued inability of the secular media to understand the Church, let alone art, comes shining through in this story.

That being said, once we get past the images of the destruction of this work of art and calm down a bit, we come to look more clearly at the woman at the heart of this story. It seems to me that most of us do a pretty good job of making a mess of our own lives, without having to look to this woman’s actions in horror and say to ourselves that we would never have done something so stupid. In fact, we do stupid, self-destructive things all the time. Sometimes we do so with the best intentions, but more often than not we are simply selfish.

We have all sat down to eat something like pizza, knowing it was too hot and had to cool off a bit, but decided our appetite was more important than being prudent. The end result is that we scalded the roof of our mouth, suffering pain for days. What’s more, we don’t limit ourselves to self-inflicted harm as a result of own stupidity. No, we go out and spread it around to others, acting recklessly or foolishly in what have become accepted parts of our everyday life.

Take driving, for example. Do you speed, scream at other drivers, or sail along through heavy commuter traffic or intersections while talking on the phone, thinking you can perfectly control a gigantic pile of metal traveling at speed because everyone else is operating under the same delusion? How many more times will you be lucky, and avoid injuring or even killing someone?

Being human means we are going to do stupid things. We are going to eat pizza that is too hot, drive 90 mph in a 65 mph zone, and yes, even some rare percentage of us will wipe out a work of art. We will say and do things in our personal or public lives, that we will all regret.

The point is, when that happens – and it will – we need to stand up, admit what we have done, and ask forgiveness, and accept the consequences. We also need to make amends, if possible, by putting ourselves last, and those we have injured, first. To do otherwise than admit to one’s shortcomings and mistakes, is to have an over-inflated sense of ego, not worthy of any of us. And while in this case there is not much that can be done by this woman, on a practical level, to save this work of art, perhaps in the example of her failure we will all learn something.


Original, Underway, and After images of
“Ecce Homo” by Elías García Martínez (c.1890)
Santuario de N.S. de la Misericordia, Borja, Spain

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August 17, 2012 · 11:48 am

The Foul and the Pussycat

As I was watching the BBC this morning, it struck me that probably not since Mrs. Slocombe had there been so much use of the word “pussy” on British television.  Members of the Russian punk band “Pussy Riot”, which most Americans will be forgiven for never having heard of, were today convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism”.  Their story has largely been ignored on this side of the Atlantic, as we head into a tightly contested and very close Presidential election, but the case is fascinating not only for the student of Russian history, but also as we consider the polarization taking place in our own Western society.

The Pussy Riot case stems from the arrest of three of the band’s members back in March of this year, after they performed a blasphemous punk rock tune, critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.  This performance did not take place in a concert hall, in a park, or on a street corner.  Rather, Pussy Riot performed their tune before the main altar of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

From a legal perspective, it is interesting to note several aspects of these women’s actions.  For one thing, this was not a spontaneous protest: the band informed members of the press, who were there to film and photograph the event.  In addition, apparently the band did research to determine what time services would be held and when the building would be open, so that they could have free and open access to the altar area for the filming of their exploits – at least until the police were called,  of course.

The band did not seek a license or permission from either the authorities or from the Cathedral to perform their piece, which permission would almost certainly have been refused in any case.  They were also repeatedly asked to stop what they were doing and to leave, by custodians who worked at the Cathedral, but these workers were ignored and, in at least one case, physically pushed out of the way.  In other words, putting aside for a moment the content of Pussy Riot’s “speech”, the band intentionally planned and carried out what in this country would be considered at the very least a trespass.

Turning to the speech side of the matter, the frustration felt by many Russians with their present government, as expressed by Pussy Riot, is not only understandable, but certainly felt by this country, in its diplomatic relations with Russia.  Mr. Putin is, of course, Russia’s once and current strongman, and there have been many of these throughout Russian history.  Not unlike the Spanish, of whom it is colloquially said “the Spaniard only understands the cudgel” (more on them later),  the Russians have an unfortunate history of falling to pieces and becoming ungovernable, without an autocrat at the head of the table.  Putin 2.0 – now with 20% more Botox – still intimidates many people, and squashes dissent within Russia just as well as his predecessors Peter the Great or Josef Stalin did.  Yet as anyone who has studied the history of Russia knows, nascent attempts at actual Russian democracy usually flare up only for a period of time, and then are stamped out by these types of men.

So what are we to make of the events surrounding this case? Pussy Riot  have been described as artists being persecuted for expressing themselves, and that all they did was perform a “punk rock prayer” to Our Lady, asking for deliverance from Vladimir Putin.  I am certainly no fan of Mr. Putin, let alone of his anti-American propaganda machine known as “Russia Today”, which has been at great pains to criticize Pussy Riot over the preceding weeks.  The women should simply have been arrested for trespassing or disturbing the peace, fined, and then set free, rather than jailed and prosecuted so publicly.  However we are talking about questions of degree, here, on both sides of this case.

For while there is no question that there is a political motivation behind such an extreme and uncalled-for level of prosecution of these women, the women themselves are simply foul.  You can make up your own mind on that point, of course, though if you choose to read the lyrics of the song which they performed, which I will not reproduce here, they are not as innocent as more vacant minds – such as those of Paul McCartney or Madonna – are so easily lead to believe.  In fact, one of the convicted members was previously a member of an “artistic” cooperative whose “art” is so irredeemably vile and stomach-turning, that I cannot even bring myself to write about it here.  In fact, I almost wish I had not done my research on it before writing this piece.

That being said, we cannot know whether the Pussy Riot trial is the tip of the iceberg in a string of deliberate political prosecutions aimed at quashing dissent carried out by the present Russian government, as many understandably suspect that it is.  Or perhaps this was simply an overly harsh punishment of some rather childish provocateurs, who went too far.  Yet a detail I noticed during the coverage of the verdict this morning has stuck with me, as I think about what happens next both in Russia and in our own society in the West.

In the broadcast from court this morning, one of the members of Pussy Riot was shown wearing a t-shirt with a logo of a raised fist and arm, bearing the words, “¡No pasarán!” (“They shall not pass!”)  For those unfamiliar with it, this was one of the leftist mottoes of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict in which quite literally half of the population of Spain died.  Horrific atrocities were committed by both the left and the right during the war, and Spain has never fully recovered from it.

It concerns me that a combination of historical ignorance about what our grandparents and great-grandparents witnessed in the first half of the 20th century, and the pop-glamorization of violent words, images, and actions as somehow being “cool”, is leading us down a path such as that Spain took in the 1930′s.  In this country for example, the clever put-down of one’s political opponent a la Benjamin Franklin or JFK has been abandoned, in favor of a type of bloodthirsty screaming, going beyond a sense of fun into language so perverse and repulsive, that it leads supporters to make and occasionally carry out threats of actual, physical violence.  Oftentimes, these actions are coordinated in advance, through the use of electronic means, which allow people of ill-will to find and encourage one another to physically harm someone else.

Fortunately, we are not Russia, and thus not dragged down by a millstone of totalitarian history around our neck.  Yet if we are not careful, we may not be able to escape such consequences ourselves, for very long.  We do not have to alter our political views to try and please someone else.  However perhaps we can refrain from the type of actions that bring our causes and positions no credit, and in fact bring them into disrepute, in the eyes of our fellow citizens.


Members of Pussy Riot in Moscow Cathedral

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July 16, 2012 · 10:53 am

A Golden Age in Two New Exhibitions

Having specialized in Spanish art of the 17th century when I was studying at Sotheby’s in London, I have continued to keep my eye on the art market and news from the museum world about art produced in Spain during that Golden Age of culture on the Iberian Peninsula.  Thus, some news caught my eye this morning which involves two of the most important painters working in Spain during the 17th century.  One is a major rediscovery for art historians, which has been announced in Barcelona, while the other is an exhibition on the work of a well-known Spanish Old Master painter that has recently opened in Madrid.

Juan Bautista Maíno (1581–1649) is not a household name in the history of art, partially because we know of very few of his paintings to survive – only about 40 or so are known or believed to be by his hand – and partially because he became a Dominican friar when he was in his 30′s. However his influence on the development of Spanish art was tremendously important. Maíno left his native Castile and studied painting in Rome, soaking up the influence of painters like Caravaggio and Reni, and then brought this more theatrical style back with him to Spain. He became a popular, if not prolific painter, and helped the careers of many up-and-coming young painters, including Velázquez, the greatest of all Spanish artists.

Now the National Museum of Catalan Art (“MNAC”) in Barcelona is exhibiting, after a lengthy restoration process, a very large painting depicting “The Conversion of St. Paul” on the road to Damascus, which after careful study has been definitely attributed to Maíno. It had been in the collections of the MNAC for many decades, but incorrectly attributed to another artist, until it was damaged in a fire and had to undergo restoration. Given the scarcity of paintings by Maíno, this is a major find for art historians. The newly restored work will be on display as part of a special exhibition from July 5 to September 30th, along with a short documentary film, a contemporary sketch of the painting on a smaller scale, x-rays from the research process, and other information detailing the giant painting’s restoration.

Meantime at The Prado in Madrid, a new exhibition has opened on works by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682), whose name or at least whose art is well-known to most students of art history. The stark realism of Velázquez was later supplanted by the softer, more dreamy qualities of Murillo’s style of painting, which often reflects a kind of golden, mellow light. Murillo was one of the greatest painters of children, in all of their innocent beauty, and his work has a sentimental quality that later influenced many French, English, and American salon/society painters of the 19th century.

The show “The Art of Friendship” which opened at The Prado a few weeks ago and runs until September, features paintings by Murillo which he created for or as a result of commissions obtained through the artist’s good friend, Justino de Neve.  Father de Neve was one of canons of Seville Cathedral, and a great friend of Murillo, who helped the artist to obtain a number of his most important artistic commissions. This included paintings Murillo produced for the hospital of elderly and disabled priests in the Andalusian city, which de Neve himself founded, several of which are in this exhibition. The show will later move to the former hospital founded by Father de Neve in Seville, before continuing on to The Dulwich in London.

If you happen to find yourself in Barcelona or Madrid this summer, and can avoid the rioting leftists, then both of these exhibitions would be well-worth paying a visit.


Josep Serra, Director of The MNAC, examines the newly-restored
“The Conversion of St. Paul” by Juan Bautista Maíno

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May 10, 2012 · 9:14 am

New Art Discovery Shows Why Practice Makes Perfect

As regular readers of these pages know, just about any time there is a press report regarding the discovery of a previously unknown work by a master painter, I get somewhat more excited about the news than perhaps the average person would. I hope the reader will indulge my interest in a story from the Spanish press about the recent identification of a painting by one of that country’s most important artists, for it is a lovely work in and of itself. The story affords us the chance to explain a bit about what the academic tradition means in art, and why on the whole it produced far better painting than, on the whole, we see today in much of contemporary art.

Although today he is probably less well-known than he ought to be, the Valencian painter Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) was the most popular artist in Spain at the turn of the previous century, and was celebrated across Europe and the United States as well.  A painter of great skill in capturing light, movement, and the elegance of the human form, his work hangs in many public and private collections, including at the White House here in Washington.  Stylistically and thematically, his work is comparable in some respects to American painters John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), among others, and like them he received many commissions for society portraits and paintings with historical themes.  Arguably Sorolla’s greatest facility, and the work of his which is the most highly sought-after by collectors, was found in his portrayal of beach scenes. Using the glowing light of the Mediterranean, he captured elegant ladies in billowing dresses and veiled hats promenading or resting languidly at the seaside, or groups of naked, suntanned children laughing and frolicking about in the surf.

Before he developed his signature style, Sorolla was educated in much the same fashion as all other aspiring painters of his day. The academic tradition insisted that an artist learn how to draw and to paint by looking at art history and tradition, as well as observing nature and what he saw around him. Sorolla dutifully studied and copied the works of the Old Masters, traveled to see the work of other artists, and completed countless drawings and studies, so that he could become a better artist.

The “Study of Christ”, which was identified this week by experts at the University of Lleida in Catalonia as being from the hand of Sorolla, is an example of the type of training Sorolla engaged in to understand how to paint. The existence of an early work by him depicting Jesus was known to the compiler of the artist’s “catalogue raisonné”, which in art history means a comprehensive listing of works known or believed to be by a particular artist. It was also known that Sorolla had inscribed it, along with the date and his signature, “To Mrs. Clotilde García”, but its whereabouts were unknown until now.

Before this investigation took place, the painting had been identified for many years as the work of an unknown 19th century Spanish academic painter. It was put up for auction in 2006, when it entered a private collection in Madrid. The new owner subsequently had the piece examined by experts, and after a thorough cleaning the signature, date, and inscription to his patroness appeared in the lower right-hand corner. This in combination with the use of modern investigative methods such as x-rays, infrared light, and microscopic analysis, allowed the researchers to determine that this was indeed the lost work of the Valencian master.

Because interest in Sorolla has long focused on his large-scale society and seaside pictures, his work as an art student is not as well-known or documented. At the time he painted this “Study of Christ”, Sorolla was only 20 years old and was living in Madrid.  Two years later, he would travel to Rome for the first time, on a four-year academic scholarship to study painting at the Spanish Academy there, which was followed by a lengthy stay in Paris. Thus, this work represents the young artist absorbing all he can from his native environment, before going out into the wider world to see what his contemporaries were doing.

While in the end this is not a painting that screams “Sorolla” when you look at it, its real importance lies in documenting Sorolla’s training. He did not simply sit down one day and decide to splatter some paint across a surface and call himself an artist. Rather, he studied his craft and practiced it, taking the time to educate himself so that his work could improve as he did more of it.

Today it seems that we too often indulge those who are little more than untalented publicity hounds when it comes to contemporary art, which is an area of human creativity that has increasingly lent itself to such behavior in ways we would not tolerate elsewhere. For example, imagine you went to a supposed three-star restaurant where the alleged master chef held no training or standards other than what he “felt” like cooking.  And then, said master chef throws various, random ingredients together at will, cooks them (or not) for a few seconds, and puts the concoction on a plate before you, expecting not only that you will eat it, but that you will be positively enraptured by it, and honor his supposed genius in breaking conventions. You might get lucky, of course, and find something unusual but tasty, but on the whole it is far more likely that you would simply get food poisoning.

This is not to say that all contemporary painting is bad, of course: merely because something is non-representational or unusual does not make it a bad piece of art. You can still be a great artist and not work in a realistic or traditional style. However the idea that one must have the humility to learn from the masters before one attempts to hold oneself out as a professional artist has been lost. The celebration of mediocrity as achievement is perhaps the inevitable result of a society where all is relative, and there is no good or bad, simply opinion.

Looking at this newly identified work of a then-twenty-year-old painter, we can see that Sorolla took the time to become a craftsman, and worked hard at his craft, in order to become good at what he produced. The rediscovery of this piece represents what we used to believe was the way in which great artists were made. An accomplished athlete, musician, writer, or painter is not someone who is great solely because of any natural talent they may have, but rather someone who takes that talent and achieves something with it, by following the mantra of practice, practice, practice.


“Study of Christ” by Joaquín Sorolla (1883)
Private Collection, Madrid

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