Culture

The new exhibition of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), ‘Critical Episodes (1957-2011)’, shows the last decades’ deep and historical changes through art. This exhibition is the result of a new arrangement of the MACBA’s collection. It displays about 200 works by 64 artists such as Eduardo Chillida, Hans Haacke, Mike Kelley, Antoni Tàpies, Jaume Plensa, Susana Solano and Oriol Vilapuig, amongst others. MACBA’s Director, Bartomeu Marí, has highlighted that this new exhibition “brings out new works and others that were displayed a long time ago”. It also proves that MACBA’s collection is already “rich, mature and diverse”.

MiRA, the Music and Audiovisual Research Festival of Barcelona, merges electronic music and visual arts with artists such as Lone, Actress, Dan Tombs, Julien Mier, Hyetal, Actop, Gnomalab and the Desilence Studio. The MiRA festival has been organised for a second year, after a very successful first event. Hosted in the former Fabra i Coats factory, this year the festival will increase its offerings and double the number of related workshops. The festival is Barcelona’s autumn’s must-see event for electronic music fans and visual arts lovers.

Raimon is one of the most important artists in the Catalan language, and is part of the group of singer-songwriters of the ‘Nova Cançó’. Raimon’s protest songs became true popular anthems against Franco’s dictatorship, with titles such as ‘Al vent’, ‘Jo vinc d’un silenci’ and ‘D'un temps d'un país’. His songs and concerts were often censored. With a style combining simple musical guitar arrangements with literary and direct texts, influenced by the French Chanson, Raimon highlighted the value of the Catalan language, as it was being persecuted. Born in Xàtiva, in Valencia, he has also defended the unity of the Catalan language. The exhibition shows a wide range of documents from the artist’s personal archives. It is complemented with films, conferences and a concert at the Liceu theatre.

An intimate concert kicks off Barcelona’s month of jazz concerts, displaying some of the best local and international artists. The 44th ‘Festival Internacional de Jazz de Barcelona’ will run until the 30th of November. Pianist Omar Sosa and trumpeter Paolo Fresu opened the festival interpreting their 2011 disc ‘Alma’ (‘Soul’), together with Galician pipe player Cristina Pato. The prestigious pianist Chano Dominguez was also supposed to go on stage, but he was obliged to cancel his participation for health reasons. The 2012 Barcelona jazz festival presents a varied programme, with 56 concerts by 80 bands including Chick Corea, Sony Rollins, Brad Mehldau, Michel Camilo (with Tomatito), Mavis Staples, Esperanza Spalding and Maria de Medeiros.

The Catalan Government has confirmed that a framework agreement has been reached with the project's promoters, with the green light from Barcelona’s City Council. However the final details are still pending negotiation. No public funds from Catalan institutions will be allocated. The Catalan President, Artur Mas, will sign the agreement during his trip to Russia, scheduled for between Wednesday and Friday. Barcelona’s Hermitage will very likely occupy three old warehouses located at the city port, in front of the beach and the luxury hotel W. The architectural project was released two weeks ago and will fully renovate the old warehouses, which will have their own dock and three floors, including a basement. The Hermitage has already opened other centres outside Saint Petersburg, in Amsterdam, Ferrara and Kazan.

A journey around the world through art. This is the aim of the new museum in Barcelona, the Museum of World Cultures, which will open its doors in June 2014 in two gothic palaces in front of the Picasso Museum. This new cultural offer in the capital of Catalonia will host art pieces from non-western collections of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona and private collections, mainly from Folch’s collection which was given to the City Council in 2011. The Museum of World Cultures will display about 700 pieces from Asia, Africa, America and Oceania in permanent and temporary exhibitions. It will also host an educational area. The museum will occupy an area of 2,100 square meters and will cost approximately €5 million.

The Fundació Joan Miró, located in the Catalan capital, unveils a temporary exhibition called “Explosion! The legacy of Jackson Pollock”, which shows the influence Pollock’s works had on later artists. The temporary exhibition is made up of 70 works from 35 different artists, such as Andy Warhol, Lynda Benglis, Shozo Simamoto, Yoko Ono and Jackson Pollock himself. The exhibition is co-produced by Barcelona’s Miró Foundation and the Moderna Museet from Stockholm. It will run until 24th February 2013.

The world’s most important international film festival specialising in fantasy and horror films ended its 45th event in the Catalan coastal town of Sitges. Leos Carax wins the Best Director award. ‘Chained’, by Jennifer Lynch, receives the Jury’s Special Prize and the Best Actor Award for Vincent d’Onofrio. Alice Lowe, with ‘Sightseers’, wins the Best Actress Award. The festival has increased spectator figures by 3% compared to last year.

Based on a popular political satirical TV show of the Catalan Public Television Broadcaster, the veteran musical theatre company Dagoll Dagom presents ‘La Família Irreal’ (The Unroyal/Unreal Family). “It is a satire, a parody and a big joke […] about the Royal Family and the system that supports it”, explained Joan Lluís Bozzo, the show’s director. The musical is based on real events, such as elephant-hunting safaris, and it is portrayed by the same actors in the TV show ‘Polònia’. The Spanish King, the Queen, the Crown Prince, the Princess, the Infantas and their husbands will be singing 30 songs.

The old Fabra i Coats industrial complex in Barcelona hosts a new centre for Contemporary Art in Catalonia in one of its buildings. The industrial complex is also hosting the ‘Creation Factory’, a socialization space for artists, where they can work on new projects. The Contemporary Art centre was unveiled with the first exhibition called ‘Això no és una exposició d’art, tampoc’ (‘This is not an art exhibition, either’) based on ‘performance’. The whole project, which at the moment uses 600 square metres on the ground floor, will occupy a total of 2,450 square metres of exhibition space - three floors in the front wing of the old factory.

The Suñol Foundation celebrates its fifth anniversary with a new exhibition of 100 works from its collection, 30 of which have never been seen before. The exhibition combines works from Catalan artists such as Joan Miró, Jaume Plensa, Antoni Tàpies and Salvador Dalí, with others by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Man Ray and Alighiero Boetti, among others.

The renovation work in Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Tarragona have revealed tens of polychromes on the walls of this temple of transition from Romanesque to Gothic. The grey painting layer that covered the walls of the building concealed these polychromes which date from the 14th to the 16th centuries. The Medieval artworks were mostly painted in shades of red and green. This is the fourth phase of the renovation work that started in 2010 and have cost €3 million, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

The second film by the Catalan director Juan Antonio Bayona stars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival with the two stars in attendance. The main character Ewan McGregor faces the tsunami that devastated the Asian coast in 2004. The film will be released in Spain on October 11th.

Phonetastic Sitges Mobile Film Festival will be held next summer and aims to promote new audiovisual media and film distribution. The MWCapital, based in Barcelona as the organiser of the Mobile World Congress, and the Sitges’s International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia are organising lectures and workshops on the subject. It will be held with in the Mobile World Festival’s Summer Week, the week of cultural activities related to mobile technology that will be organised each summer. A new feature at the Sitges Film Festival will be an award for the best short films made using mobile phones and touch tablets.

The owner of one of the world’s largest art collections, unveiled the exhibition named ‘Rusiñol, Monet, Gauguin, Sunyer. Landscapes in Carmen Thyssen’s Collection’ at Girona’s CaixaForum. The exhibition shows 51 paintings by these masters as well as Joan Miró, Joaquim Mir, Antoni Tàpies, Modest Cuixart, Théodore Rousseau, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse. The exhibition aims to set a “dialogue”, and show the evolution of the Catalan and European landscape paintings. Carmen Thyssen stated her relationship with Catalonia’s National Museum of Art (MNAC) is “excellent” and “it would be a dream” to have her collection in Barcelona, although “it is still early” to make an official announcement.