THE OTHER'S GAZE Spaces of difference
"The construction of differences. Forms from the past / forms from the present."
Conversation between Guillermo Pérez Villalta, Javier Codesal y Alexander Apóstol
Among all the things about this gallery, which I find marvellous,
I would single out that Christianity has not arrived here yet.
Everything's still rather more natural.
What we clearly see is a type of enjoyment of the body that sadly I think we have to wait
until almost the 18th century to see again.
I remember that I had a problem in the 1980s when I did a magazine
for the Ministry of Culture which had two men on it, one with his hand on the other's shoulder
and it caused a scandal.
In this work the hand on the shoulder in some way denotes a sense of companionship, man to man,
equals.
When you refer to your work with the hand on the shoulder that provoked such a scandal,
what were you intending with your project?
The fact is there was no intention to be scandalous.
It was a game involving me and my partner, and I was showing him
fictitious works by me in a gallery.
But it was immediately interpreted solely as the fact that we were a couple.
Yes, as furthermore in popular football photographs, for example,
not only do they put their hands on each other but much more, even by that time, and it wasn't a problem.
What I mean is that there was a tendency to interpret that from the viewpoint of virility, camaraderie
and much less from a sexual connotation.
So perhaps coming from you, it was easier to see it in those terms.
In Spain recently, I mean even in the period that we could call post-Francoist.
Well, censors have always had an enormous ability to see what isn't there,
or to see a bit more and above all to see what it interests them to see.
At the end of the day the person who looks and who says "there's something going on here"
has something to do with that encounter.
What's interesting is that it also happens these days.
I also remember when I was going to exhibit at the Salvador Riera gallery
and Salvador said to Soledad Lorenzo, whom I worked for,
"please, not that painting, not that painting",
which was of a naked man with an erection.
And I thought "What's going on here: can't men have erections?"
Looking at the history of art I have discovered two works, which furthermore
are by Giulio Romano, in which there are erections,
but in general we men don't have erections in art.
There always a lot of uncomfortableness with the male nude.
I think that it's not even that.
It has nothing to do with erections. It simply has to do with overt nudity.
In this normative hetero society that we have…
the female nude is totally accepted and even required
but with the masculine it's like
there's always a veil behind it.
I think the female nude has always been seen as ornamental in some way,
whereas the male nude is suddenly an affront.
In any case, this museum is an example.
If you wander around, and without looking for examples that historically explain that there is a relationship
between men and the gaze or that something from history defines a homosexual issues,
you'll find lots of male nudes and in tremendous poses.
What I mean is that the presentation of the body in the history of art has been very powerful,
including during periods of ideological repression and of great sexual censorship.
Possibly covered up by religion, mythology, by a pretext,
but they are there.
In addition, if you start to look, particularly from the 16th century
where there is a clear presentation of the male nude in the most explicit manner,
why is there a later prudishness?
I remember when I was a student and was working as a builder,
I spent one summer painting washes in a courtyard dating from 1550 in Zaragoza.
It was very interesting because there was a frieze which every so often had a faun,
and the faun had an erect penis.
A fantastical female creature in front of them that was putting its hand on the penis
in order to lift it up with the clear intention of engaging in relations.
This fascinated me because in the Renaissance it was completely normal
on a representational level.
Charles III was about to get rid of all Titian's paintings as they were erotic.
So why is something so fundamental to human beings, something fundamental
and essential to humans anathematised as bad, sinful…
I think that in a way the artist gives out messages
which people don't take on board a priori.
It's something I find funny as there are things that are evident but if you don't put
a label underneath explaining what it is, they don't see it.
The fact is we relate to images not just through what is expressed
and not consciously but also in another way.
We don't know why the images that move us most do so,
but there is something that works.
This also explains why certain patterns of behaviour which are objectively those
of companionship and sensibility between men are read as something else.
The Antonello da Messina is nothing more or less than a religious painting but from the first time I saw it
when I was eighteen, as I was in the storerooms and Pérez Sánchez got it out,
it's always had an erotic undertone in the most profound sense.
It was something relating to the most profound mysticism.
I think that really the moment which we could call the "great orgasm"
is the only moment in which we are at one with the cosmos,
The idea of that perpetual instant is where I think religion has derived
the concept of eternity from.
That moment is eternity: everything is perfect.
So that painting, which for me represents the post-orgasmic moment,
has that point of eternity: everything is perfect.
That thing which is sometimes in a painting
and which apparently has nothing to do
with the subject.
There is a film that I think has a lot to do with what we're talking about, which is Pasolini's Salò
which precisely brings together political companionship, desire, authoritarianism and repression.
There is a particular scene which is the one when they propose having a competition
to see who has the nicest arse.
And they kill the one who wins.
That instant of eternity has to end, it cannot exist.
And to some extent it makes a metaphor of what we were talking about a few minutes ago,
about something becoming the focus of attention in order to hide it, to kill it, to make it invisible.
Salò is very interesting as the issue is very much politicised.
The body is not just the place that receives desire
but is used to question politics and aesthetics.
What's very interesting is all the painting that continually appears in the film.
That presentation of pictorial modernity totally associated with Fascism.
It raises a lot of very interesting issues which are treated in a very tough manner
because Pasolini never stops saying and acknowledging that he is always in a position of desire
when he is looking.
So, whenever he makes an image there is always a position of desire
but also a political action.
He never ceases to acknowledge that in that political approach he is also desiring
and he wants to create a work almost of depredation, he wants to proceed by devouring everything.
I think this is very interesting as it means not forgetting how the issue works.
This is a film which, if you really see it in a logical way you can't deal with it
as your desire is always going to be locating itself in the worst place
as essentially that's what it's talking about.
And of course we shouldn't forget that in the context of gay pride as well,
for example, we often use images that also have to be read in a critical manner,
I mean it's not all the gym, is it?
I always find it strange that Velázquez acquired this.
It must mean that Velázquez was a stranger person than we thought.
What strikes me is how he acquired the copy of this sculpture
in order to give it to Philip IV and in some way it's an offering to power.
The Museum itself, decides to install it in the middle of this gallery,
which is a gallery that speaks to us of power and of the power not just of Philip IV as seen
by Velázquez, but also Charles V in the background.
The game of a Hermaphrodite, the game of what is shown and what is not shown,
of what it is and what it isn't, is something very interesting to do with what we've been talking about
with regard to ideologies, of how they sell us something and buy something else
and how in a way messages travel by other routes.
I would be interested to know something about how Velázquez saw it in his time.
It's interesting the way it's called the Hermaprhodite in the masculine not the feminine.
In other words there's a curious forcing of it towards the masculine in the name.
There's also an interesting thing to do with what you're talking about.
It was installed here very recently.
It had been hidden away facing the wall, with the side with the phallus facing the wall
and only since very recently has it been possible to see it in the round.
So for me this central location gives it a very powerful metaphorical significance.
In addition, you associate it with the concept of power but for me it's like
suddenly sexualising the centre of art.
I mean, this is something that goes beyond the masculine and the feminine.
I like the fact that something so radical is to be found precisely in this gallery.
For me it's not so much about sexualising art as sexualising power.
Power is an act of seduction.
It interests me a great deal from the viewpoint of both politics today
and the ideologies that existed in the 20th century.
As if, in some way, sexuality and seduction were very present in political discourses.
Not only what we saw in Europe with Communism and Fascism above all,
but also how this can be applied to Latin America and also how politics ends up,
whether in a democratic way but often in an authoritarian way, using sexuality
and sensuality within its official discourse.
This is why for me this figure raises numerous questions and we are ultimately seduced by it.
It's a figure that is of course all the more appealing for its enigmatic side.
Absolutely, it's the oddness as well.
Here, in this gallery, the naked body appears as strange.
It's very interesting and shocking as it could be the depiction of a man
and a woman, both naked, or of a woman, which would be more of a stereotype,
but interestingly the body and strangeness enter into this.
Also, in relation to power, there has always been that taste for the exquisite:
there were the court buffoons, who are in the other gallery.
But it's something that plays with the same thing.
It's oddness, it's strange appearance in relation to the norm.
The theme of the buffoons in relation to the work of Velázquez interests me enormously.
In addition, Velázquez is a totally distanced painter.
This is totally distanced.
Velázquez only reveals an emotional proximity with the buffoons and with children.
The Infanta Margarita is one of the most human things painted by Velázquez
because all the others are always distanced portraits.
I think she shares that type of emotion with the Hermaphrodite.
This is an emotional sculpture.
Then there's Mars, which is marvellous and also has that emotion.
He's a pitiful character.
In contrast to what we might expect, he's a character who arouses pity,
who has a ridiculous element, totally deliberately.
But he also has a carnal quality, and with regard to the representation of the masculine…
I don't want to guess about Velázquez's taste but it's true
that it's a painting that allows for an approach to the body that is quite different to all of these
and which is also close to those others that you refer to, the depictions of the buffoons.
So perhaps it's there that we can understand the presence of this work.
In fact, this gallery offers a vision of Velázquez as a painter close to power.
Returning to Latin America, there's a painter who worked with Pérez Jiménez,
the right-wing dictator in Venezuela in the 1950s,
who designed the entire image of power.
Pedro Centeno Ballenilla era un pintor manierista y sus motivos se dirigían hacia
on patriotic history, an exaltation of militarism, very close to right-wing discourses
from then until now.
His figures were perfect men, marvellous women and his image of power
was created from these very seductive, impossible figures…
Very close to Tom of Finland's male figures.
However, neither the dictator in question nor anyone in power
saw Tom of Finland, they saw a great Venezuela.
So, in a way, the work of this totally Mannerist, exaggerated artist
ended up being a reflection of an entire, very right-wing political system
and it was exactly what they wanted to see.
These days these paintings are still part of the Presidential Palace, in the military club.
It's interesting that in general all these representations of power within Fascism
are the most gay thing you could possibly imagine.
It might seem crazy
but in today's context and in popular depictions
of the gay body today one might recognise an approach
involving that impossible aspect that you were referring to.
Are they also drawing on that authoritarian political position: a bit Fascist, as it were?
I think it's a circular argument.
There are two directions.
I think that it's the other way round.
When the right-wing lot hear me say this they'll kill me
but I think the far right is very gay.
In Venezuela that political discourse took hold among the population to the extent that the
female figures drawn and painted by Centeno Ballenilla are exactly the reflection
of Miss Venezuela.
They were figures that could never exist at that time but thanks to plastic surgery
they are now possible.
So, that ended up being appreciated in the popular mentality.
Venezuela in relation to beauty is a contemporary popular model.
It's a requirement.
Through those extremely beautiful, impossible women.
Requirements from the source of power itself.
It's what I find interesting and it's a tremendous form of racism.
Well yes, it's that Centeno Ballenilla's themes were precisely patriotic history, race and militarism.
And why was race of such interest?
Because for the government, the dictatorship of Pérez Jiménez, it was a key theme
for creating a new national ideal.
And in fact during those years, the 1950s, many Spaniards
emigrated to Venezuela.
Not just Spaniards, also Italians, Portuguese, Europeans. It was an emigration
totally devised by the system in order to raise the "racial level"
of the Venezuelan, in Pérez Jiménez's words.
A completely artificial, invented racism.
As invented as Miss Venezuela.
I'm going back to thinking about what we were saying about the structure of these galleries.
It's true that this is the representation of the monarchy, of power, etc.
But it's also true that there's more warmth in looking at that other gallery
and the depiction of the royal bodies through the strange bodies, the deformed,
really underappreciated ones. They were rickety bodies or dwarves…
But they all have an impressive dignity.
Absolutely, and what you were saying before, where one sees a completely different approach,
"El Niño de Vallecas"…
Speaking of Pablo de Valladolid in the other gallery, Manet said that it was the great work
of art of universal culture.
A body that could be so derisory and become the representation of the void.
The painting is a miracle of art as it depicts the space
without any help from perspective.
The space is solely represented by the presence of the figure.
Which is a marvel.
He did it there because he wouldn't have dared to do it with the king.
But there he created what is truly a great work of art,
the same as with the buffoons.
Whatever the case, from the viewpoint of our reading he's in an outstanding position.
Really when he takes that step that you describe, which is a step forward in aesthetics
and in the creation of art, it's with regard to an object or subject that is not
the empowered subject but exactly the opposite.
And it's not the perfect, slim, idealised body but a particularly real one.
So we see reflected in it what we were talking about earlier: "where do the politics come about?"
There, no?
Next to it is another painting which relates to what we are looking at, which is The Crucified Christ.
The problem for people is that they look at this painting through the religious image.
But it's not a Christ, it's not bleeding, there's no drama.
It's devoid of drama.
It's a work that I have discovered in the past few years.
I soon realised that it was a body.
When you succeeded in forgetting what it traditionally represents.
Absolutely.
It's a luminous body, it's a body that doesn't suffer.
I think it's the most real, carnal depiction as it's also one of Velázquez's
most beautiful nudes.
It's a marvellous, Apollonian luminous body with no suffering.
It's a body.
A body that offers itself.
Really I think that it's a painting that has a very special sort
of mystical eroticism.
When you start to discover it, forgetting that it depicts Christ, you think,
how could it become a religious image if there's nothing religious about it, as it's totally pagan?
Well, the limits have always been there.
Approaching religious iconography has always been through words,
rituals and the Church.
That was there and people approached directly.
In reality the uses of the body are political but across the entire spectrum of the political.
From the most private thing to the different forms of love and of course
to the public representation of the body.
THE OTHER'S GAZE Spaces of difference
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