A Portrait of the Inner Life of the World
«The beautiful is the beginning of the terrible that we can still endure». Rainer Maria Rilke
«One is not a painter until one has painted the gray». Paul Cézanne
Violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch said that a work of art or a dream are events that play on the boundary between conscious reality and unconscious reality, or that perhaps they are the very channel of exchange between the little we know and how much we are.
The MEAM wants to be a home for all those dreams and works of art that allow us to know a little more about who we are. In autumn 2024, the museum is proud to open the doors of REALISM NOW, an international exhibition that aims to take the pulse of contemporary figurative creation through an attentive selection of top-quality paintings, sculptures and drawings.
It is an exhibition that shows the high level and good health of realism at a global level. As one of the centers for the diffusion of this creative vigor, the MEAM approaches with enthusiasm and pride the immediate future of figuration. This is the first exhibition of a new chapter of the museum, in which we will make an unconditional commitment to the quality and coherence of the exhibitions, and in which we will always put the artists at the center of the equation, turning our location in the center of Barcelona into the home of all figurative artists. The MEAM is a living institution concerned with attending to all the voices of the figurative world and it will combine the richness of its great art collection with the reception of new works. The museum must always be attentive to the updating of the gaze, to the cultural thermometer, to ideosyncracies of new order; phenomena that we can observe on canvas, paper and clay. In the same way, we will work to ensure that all branches of figuration, from hyper-realism to expressionism, from surrealism to pure fantasy, have a place on our walls and calendars.
REALISM NOW highlights that there are many angles from which to work the mimesis or artistic transcription of nature. Realism is a plural movement, a territory with as many paths as there are artists who traverse it. But all its expressions, all its aesthetic or conceptual variations refer to a single objective, which is to translate human experience in plastic terms. Tolstoy said that any man is capable of experiencing all human feelings, even if he is not able to express them. Thus, we understand that the mission of creators is to bring before the eyes of the whole world a representation of the experience of living and to translate the state of things by capturing the reality spiced by sensibility and character. That is, to transcribe for everyone the inner life of the world through form and color.
At a time when society is subjected to the over-exposition of unverified information and to the fatigue associated with the constant audiovisual stimulus, we find in realistic figurative art a refuge of immeasurable value for several reasons.
In the first place, the works work as a parenthesis in an unbridled time. They are pieces that have required a pause, a reflection and a work that have freed their creators from the stream of meaninglessness. They are pieces that have the potential to free the spectator for an instant from the inertia of the world. These works take the pulse of society in a gray moment and, although many of them give us a clear and direct testimony of the suffering that is latent in society, they still bring us a breath of fresh air, because in them the artist has stopped time to capture a little piece of truth, whether it is fateful or not.
In second place, the works refer us to the value of conscientious work, to the mastery of a craft, to the cultivation of a gesture and the maturation of a voice, of a perspective. In other words, the paintings, sculptures and drawings of REALISM NOW respond to the mastery and respect of a craft, to the fruit of an atmosphere of discipline and sacrifice. In the age of instantaneous generation, of the canonization of the shortcut and the veneration of the absurd, realist artists, whatever their academic background or training environment, represent a true bastion of the value of meticulous work, a group of resistance anchored to the care of progressive confection and the respect for the organic and coherent growth of the work and the discourse associated with it. The artist must truly offer himself to the work, so that the work can truly offer itself to the public. Even the most untrained observer and outsider to the art world responds genuinely and easily to the truth, to the clear sound of things that make sense through perseverance and the serene and sincere observation of the world.
REALISM NOW features very different works. We will see individual and collective portraits, interior and exterior spaces of different kinds, as well as animals and motifs with pronounced iconographies, pieces of furniture and suggestive textiles. However, as usual in figurative exhibitions, the great transversal protagonist of the exhibition is the human body, that infinite source of symbols and connotations.The gesture asks for a grammar that never ends up establishing itself in something fixed and immovable. The language of time and cultures is codified in our gazes and in the way we walk, dance and stand still. Even in those works in which the human figure is absent, through the codes of tradition, we can read details about absent protagonists, about hypothetical observers, about unique characters.
In the eye the truth is concentrated: who can believe that such a small space contains the images of the whole universe? What language is capable of revealing such a marvel? (da Vinci).
This exhibition arrives at the MEAM at a good time. It serves us to savor a trend of special depth. Somehow, at a global level, figurative artists are moving away from the grandiose astonishments of neo-Romanticism -without being at odds with fantasy and playfulness- and are capturing, more and more crudely, the nuances of the Now, which calls for the study of a wide range of grays. Like a glimmer of light in the midst of the jungle of intellectual nonsense and cultural tautologies, figurative realism seems to have taken the torch of art to take the temperature of society without complexes. It is an art that speaks to the experienced and the beginner, to the brute and the sensitive. An art that shares and does not alienate. An art for everyone.
Outside is what Thomas Mann called the gray-blue cottony world that pushes against the crystals, wrapped in snow vapors and mist. One must continue painting, drawing, sculpting and creating in order not to freeze. We encourage everyone to enjoy this exhibition, REALISM NOW, a collection of windows to the inner life of the world that will not leave you indifferent. We humans live to understand what surrounds us -whether it is a work or a dream- and what better way to do it than by the hand of those who have the eyes more seasoned to the natural exercise of sensitivity.
