The Big Redux: Goodbye Henrietta, Adeu Barcelona! Hello America, Good or Bad

I don’t like to use this blog for personal rants, but we live I interesting times at this moment, and I couldn’t resist, so here goes:

I just made my last trip to Barcelona.  My last was over half a century ago, when I was a graduate student in art history and looking at where I wanted to plant my professional feet.  That was a time when, if I wanted to study old stuff and not the contemporary world, the U.S. was definitively not an option.  Italy was being assaulted by art historians from every country, and now they were beginning to invade the other canonical countries of “Western” (i.e. Western European) Art.  All except for Spain, which, except for some 17^th-century big guns like Velázquez, Zurbarán, Murillo and Ribera, or that 18^th-19^th century powerhouse Goya, was considered an artistic wasteland until the early 20^th century, at least up until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Contrarian that I am, I fell in love with Medieval Spain, and particularly Catalonia, even though they had kicked their Jews out in 1492, and the country was now being run by Fascists.  The Barcelona of 1964, when I first went, was still a somewhat derelict place: most of its historic buildings were very Guardia Civil with their patent leather hats everywhere.

grimy, the interior of the church of Santa Maria del Mar still bore marks of the fire it suffered in 1936, there were still a large number of elderly maimed individuals who had barely survived the civil war, and you saw

My Favorite Medieval Catalan Painting; Augustine Crowned, by Jaume Huguet; a fragment of something originally  much, much bigger.

But this apparent wasteland was good territory for what I wanted to study.  There were still prewar scholars active there, though they were ageing, at this point, little activity among young Spaniards (much less Americans) to take up studies again.  Dusty archives, dingy dark churches, and wonderful but somewhat chaotic museums beckoned--and I returned in 1966, ready to take the leap.

I stayed two years while researching my doctoral dissertation, and even discovered new documentation and works of art: the Art Historian’s dream!  On top of that, I got to know some Natives, mostly young Catalan painters, few of whom subsequently became famous.  I also learned Catalan, technically illegal during Franco’s time.  If anything, my love affair with Catalonia, Barcelona and Catalan deepened. By this time, Fascist rule was running dry, and Catalan cultural revolt was beginning to stir.  I cried when I had to go back to the U.S. to take up a real job.

But the affair kept on.  In Oregon, where I was teaching, l looked for someone to talk Catalan to, and so met my future husband.  Maybe we could eventually move back to Barcelona, and live happily ever after in my favorite city.

In the long run, it didn’t work out that way.  I may speak Catalan, but I’m an American, and no matter how distasteful I find American politics at the moment, here I stay--half a century later.

Though the marriage didn’t last, my love of Barcelona and medieval Spanish art history kept on over the years.  I went back to Barcelona a lot, and could easily slip back into speaking Catalan.  It was a real comfort zone. But it’s only now that I realize that my relationship with Barcelona was basically a professional one.  Going back now, as a jubilated art historian, I realized that this intellectual marriage has run its course.

There are lots of Catalan art historians now, many of them wonderful scholars, who live among the artworks and can study them everyday.  Archives are much better organized, and the digital age has made so much material immediately accessible with out my having to leave home.  The historic buildings are much, much cleaner, museum works are carefully and thoughtfully labeled and many are beautifully restored and well displayed and lit.  The discipline, thank you very much, has also changed, and the emphasis on context and cultural art history, in which I participated in its pioneering generation, is now one of its most respected approaches, part of a growing tool in our methodological toolbox.

So well has Barcelona organized its artistic riches, that it has become a sort of touristic theme park.  Part of this shift is probably due to the fact that it has become a regular stop for gigantic cruise ships. 

Sagrada Familia and its Tourists

Hoards of tourists, in the city for a day, pack the Gothic Quarter and swarm Gaudi’s idiosyncratic structures, led by their handlers holding aloft furled umbrellas or pinwheels.  I went up to check on the progress of the Sagrada Familia, which were just the four towers that Gaudi left behind at his death in 1926, unchanged when I first got there in the 60’s. At that point, nobody was there, and you could even climb up into the towers and on the walkway between them.  It’s now nearly finished, and will serve as the city’s co-Cathedral when it is.  There were so many tourists around it that I couldn’t even get close, unless I wanted to pay admission and wait an hour or so in line to get in.  I fell into conversation with some cruise tourists, who explained that they were embarking again in two hours, and so didn’t have time to go inside, in fact they still had three more Gaudí buildings and his park to drive by before they sailed on.

Admission is charged everywhere, including all of the old Gothic churches and the Cathedral itself.  I know I must sound elitist, but there’s the fun and the thrill of discovery if you are herded through in fifteen minutes? 

Maybe it’s because I’m officially an Old Fogey, which puts me squarely in the category of one who feels that “it’ll never be the same again.”  There was a lot not to love about the city in in the waning days of Francoism in the 60’s, but I was so much younger then, and seeing its good points through the screen of youthful callowness.

Demonstration: Passeig de Gràcia

On the other hand, the Catalans themselves are terrific.  The day after I got there, there was a  remarkable demonstration: people of many different groups protesting the neglect of their country by the European Union “Pooh-Bahs.”There were hundreds of people who formed an unbroken line along the Passeig de Gràcia, from the Plaça de Catalunya to the Diagonal, organized by affiliations, from Anarchists (they’re back) to feminists to Greenpeace, from the very young to the very old.  Such a demonstration would, of course, have been unthinkable half a century ago.

The Infamous #29

I can even update the Vampire of Barcelona for you a bit.  The infamous Carrer Ponent, where she lived at number 29, has long been renamed the Career Joaquim Costa--and this way before I ever got to Barcelona.  But when I first came in the 1960’s it was still the Infamous Raval, or as we called it then, the top portion of the Barrio Chino.  I used to go there to study at the Biblioteca de Catalunya,  which has always been located there, but I would kind of slink in and out, keeping my eyes out for who knew what.Now Carrer Joaquim Costa, though not exactly gentrified (and, of course, downed by graffiti), is far less menacing.  It appears to be an Asian neighborhood now; the north Africans live a little further east, towards the harbor.  Number 29 is still there, and looks pretty unchanged and not particularly inviting, but trees line the street, and just around the corner is MACBA, Barcelona’s contemporary art museum.  But I guess the cruise-ship Barcelona itinerary does not include the infamous Enriqueta Martí, because most of the people on the street seem to be locals.

MACBA, Barcelona's Contemporary Art Museum: Right Around the Corner

So now I’ve seen all the art Barcelona has to offer me for the umpteenth time, and its cleaner now.  Everything is publicly written in Catalan.  Most of the Catalans I knew, including my late ex-husband, are long gone, and so it’s time to look at other places, up to now unseen, with new eyes.

And maybe with all the turmoil here, it’s right to be right here, right now.  We may not agree with our recent political outcomes, but we are free to speak out and to organize our own objectives, objections and outcomes---and hopefully these very American values will continue……..as we soldier on.