Texto cat\u00e1logo \u201cConceptos Opuestos 2001 \u2013 2011\u201d. Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia, Septiembre 2011<\/p>\n
David Carrier<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n To be an artist means to know deeply about all types of art, about art history, theory, \u2014Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The development of modernist abstraction took place in two distinct waves. Early in the twentieth century, artists such as Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Olga Rozanova invented abstract painting, a line of investigation that coincided with the early masterpieces of Henri Matisse and the cubist pictures of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Abstraction was thus one current\u2014and not the most important one\u2014within early modernism. The second wave of abstraction came with the birth of Abstract Expressionism in New York around 1945. This was a great moment in art\u2019s history, one of those rare magical times when extremely influential large-scale radical change occurred very suddenly. After long apprenticeships to European modernism and Depression-era social realism, American artists were producing original masterpieces that changed the way that art was understood. To understand Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria\u2019s paintings\u2014and this exhibition reveals just a portion of his production of the last ten years\u2014we need to place them in relation to this transatlantic history of abstract art.<\/p>\n Something dramatic evidently occurred to Jackson Pollock between 1943, when he made The She-Wolf, a relatively small easel painting using surrealistic imagery, and 1950, when, working on the floor, he painted the enormous Autumn Rhythm: Number 30. Dramatic change came to Willem de Kooning, too, between 1945, when he made Pink Angels, and 1948, when he painted Asheville, stitched together out of irregularly shaped cubist planes. The same is true of Mark Rothko between Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (1944) and No. 3\/No. 13 (Magenta, Black, Green on Orange) (1949), in which he revealed his signature style of coloured rectangles suspended in the pictorial void of a vertically oriented canvas\u2014and also of Barnett Newman between the early 1940s and 1948, when he painted Onement, I (an appropriate title, given that this painting was the starting point for his mature style). In the immediate postwar period, with Europe, Japan and the USSR lying in ruins, the scale and boldness of Abstract Expressionism marked it as the art of the war\u2019s newly powerful victors. Though built on the achievements of European modernism, it was a distinctly American movement. Mark Tansey\u2019s anecdotal Triumph of the New York School (1984), based on Diego Vel\u00e1zquez\u2019s Surrender of Brera (1634\u201345), wittily pictures the Abstract Expressionists as victors in a military struggle with their European rivals. On the left are Picasso (wearing a fine fur coat), Braque, and other figures of the vanquished French school, dressed in uniforms dating from World War I. At the center, Andr\u00e9 Breton signs the surrender, watched by Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Pollock and de Kooning, who wear World War II American uniforms(1). The art historian Meyer Schapiro offered an optimistic political analysis of Abstract Expressionism. For these artists, he wrote, \u201cthe object of art is . . . more passionately than ever before, the occasion of spontaneity or intense feeling. The painting symbolises an individual who realises freedom and deep engagement of self within his work. Hence the great importance of the mark, the stroke, the brush, the drip, the quality of the substance of the paint itself, and the surface of the canvas as a texture and field of operation\u2014all signs of the artist\u2019s active presence\u201d(2). Such art, he argued, \u201cstimulates artists to a freer approach to visible nature and man. . . . Abstraction by its audacities also confirms and makes more evident to us the most daring and still unassimilated discoveries of older art\u201d(3).<\/p>\n Ciria, born in 1960 in Manchester, England, was trained in Spain and first exhibited his art there, and is now a resident of New York since 2005. To understand his development, then, it is necessary not only to refer to the history of abstract painting, but also to grasp what happens when a painter moves from one culture to another: one\u2019s language, one\u2019s everyday life, and so also one\u2019s art changes. When, in the 1620s, Nicolas Poussin moved from northern France to Rome, he initially made eclectic pictures, before finding his style and painting his masterpieces. Similarly, Picasso became Picasso by moving to Paris. And, more recently, Sean Scully, Dublin born, English trained, found his mature style by moving from London to New York. Ciria has explained:<\/p>\n By the end of the 80s my painting was still figurative, I had carried out many experiments trying to move into Abstraction but the results were really disappointing, and I do not mean only that I did not \u2018understand\u2019 abstract things. . . .<\/p>\n The main problem . . . is that I had a classical and autodidactic training. Thus, I did not know how to come into Abstraction. I did not manage to \u201cfeel\u201d those compositions, I could not understand painting as a mere pointless and aimless formal experimentation.<\/p>\n I wanted to paint abstract things but I kept anchored to Figurativeness, and the nightmare lasted approximately two years(4).<\/p>\n When he moved to New York, he was able to totally redefine his relationship with painting:<\/p>\n The move of my studio from Madrid to New York gave me a wider freedom to try to make different experiments. Many times the bigger problem of an artist is that the market demands only one type of work, the corridor gets more and more narrow, and at last you are an \u2018epigone\u2019 of yourself<\/p>\n Ciria wanted to move his art forward while preserving the continuity of his concerns. Some of his descriptions of this process suggest that it was primarily an intellectual exercise, as when he describes \u201ctaking apart\/deconstructing a work systematically, showing the elements or units that make it up\u201d(5). But in truth what was at stake was his very identity as an artist, and even as a person: \u201cI needed to invent a ground on which to stand in order not to fall into the void\u201d(6). When a figurative artist emigrates, he finds new potential subjects; Ciria\u2019s more difficult concern was to develop while maintaining his identity. Moving from figuration to abstraction was, without question, an extremely dramatic change, but in the end one that grew out of this foundational state \u201cAs I have often said half-jokingly, I am not a painter, but someone who observes and analyses the constituent elements of painting and experiments with them\u201d(7). Ciria likens the profound change to that experienced by an individual who changes gender: \u201cI keep painting the same thing in a different way and I compare my experience painting with the man who becomes a woman, or viceversa.\u201d<\/p>\n Just as Ciria\u2019s art underwent a radical change when he moved to New York, Abstract Expressionism had been transformed by Americans who worked elsewhere. Cy Twombly, after early success in the United States, moved to Italy, where he has often incorporated classical references into his painting. \u201cI would\u2019ve liked to have been Poussin, if I\u2019d had a choice, in another time\u201d(8), he has said. Like Poussin, he found himself as an artist in Rome. The friend who commented that Twombly\u2019s ideal abode would be a palace in a bad neighbourhood aptly evoked his peculiarly Italian synthesis of austere high art and populist street culture(9).<\/p>\n Abstraction changed more drastically when artists in other countries with different political histories emulated this movement. When he moved from East to West Germany, Gerhard Richter, who had been trained in the style of socialist realism, was impressed by exhibitions of American abstraction. But when he too painted abstractly, how different was the result. His magnificent abstract paintings, which are so hesitant, so absent of the bravado of the Abstract Expressionists, are the art of the defeated. In Italy, Emilio Vedova, who had been active in the Partisan Resistance, aggressively took up the American style. Although Abstract Expressionism in New York had displaced the socialist realism favoured by leftists of the 1930s, Vedova held that abstraction was a politically progressive force, a position that has earned him the epithet \u201ca Jackson Pollock of the barricades\u201d(10).<\/p>\n In post-Franco Spain, Ciria\u2019s situation was very different from that of Richter or Vedova. Spain had for so long suffered from arrested development in comparison with the rest of Western Europe For him, one key figure was Mir\u00f3.<\/p>\n I always though that the history of art is really\u2018pulled\u2019 [pushed] by the clumsy like Goya or Mir\u00f3, not by the virtuous like Vel\u00e1zquez or Picasso. By those who invent their own way to use paint, beyond their \u2018clumsiness\u2019. All artists want to kill art, all painters in the past tried to assassinate painting. A difficult task that today seems naive<\/p>\n To be a major visual artist, you must find and develop an original style. This was true of the old masters and remains true for artists today. In the 1980s, many American critics believed that appropriation artists and other postmodernists showed that this way of thinking was obsolete. \u201cArt history\u201d, Rosalind Krauss influentially said, has \u201cturned militantly away from . . . style\u201d(11). But this claim that art history can avoid talking about style is unconvincing. I take style to be an identifiably individual way of making art, and in that sense Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman\u2014both of whom have been championed by Krauss\u2014have styles as much as do any major Renaissance artists. So too does Ciria.<\/p>\n Forgers can copy, but only a gifted artist achieves a style. The dusty back rooms of museums show how difficult it is to accomplish this. Ciria\u2019s style, that mark of continuity running through his art, both abstract and figurative, is defined by his placement of a figure or mark, often in intense black or red, or white markings, what he calls the \u201cstain\u201d, against a background field or grid. Always he employs this duality, as if this figure\/ground structure, derived from his figurative paintings, has to be present for him even when he works abstractly. Its presence is the guarantee of his stylistic continuity. Indeed, all of Ciria\u2019s paintings are unmistakably his, for the continuity in this development preserves his personal identity. \u201cAbstract? Figurative? Aren\u2019t they the same?\u201d he asks rhetorically. Ciria has no interest in ironic postmodern image appropriation, but adopts a selective reading of the history of abstraction. He never does pure monochromes, like Robert Ryman, or all-over pictures, like Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning circa 1945. He is attracted by the very late figurative Kazimir Malevich, but not the Russian\u2019s more famous earlier reductive painting.<\/p>\n Two of Ciria\u2019s favourite artists, Richard Diebenkorn and Philip Guston, also moved between figuration and abstraction. After making his early abstractions, such as Berkeley No. 1 (1953), which deserve comparison with the greatest New York school paintings, Diebenkorn frustrated some influential champions by creating magnificent figurative pictures in the manner of Matisse, before turning to his abstract works in series, the Ocean Parks. He started the Ocean Parks when he moved to Santa Monica and ceased to do them once he departed. They were inspired by that location, for their structure resembles what you can see looking out a California window towards the horizon. Diebenkorn\u2019s hidden point of reference is always Matisse, whose Studio, Quai St. Michel (1916) supplies the basic armature of the Ocean Parks, but his art is rooted in the landscape of his native California. As for Guston, he transformed himself from a good Abstract Expressionist into a great figurative painter. Sean Scully rightly describes this evolution: \u201cIt was only when Guston stopped trying to be high-minded and fell into his authentic personal rage that he became important. Then he could escape his difficult relationship with the sublime abstractions of de Kooning\u201d(12). The story of Ciria\u2019s movement from figuration to abstraction is very different. Like Diebenkorn and Guston, he needed to preserve the continuity of his visual thinking, but unlike both of them, who were much more intuitive visual thinkers, he needed to reason his way into abstraction.<\/p>\n Ciria is not just an aesthetic painter who makes pleasurable pictures, but a visual thinker whose art is driven by an idea of what painting is.<\/p>\n In Spain I very often say that I am really a conceptual artist, that I choose painting to express myself. I can say that because when I jumped from figurative painting to abstraction in the very early nineties, I needed a huge theoretical and conceptual platform [on which] to stand my work. If we think that \u2018painting\u2019 is a dead body, [we need] to work like a forensic doctor, opening huge cuts and injuries, trying to analyze what can be found inside: skin, muscles, tendons, veins, blood.<\/p>\n Hence his fascination with Mir\u00f3, who wanted to assassinate painting. But as Ciria has also said,<\/p>\n I belong to that group of artists who completely ignore the subtleties of trying to make something that could be called beautiful when they\u2019re painting and whose works\u2019 lack of \u2018charm\u2019 is perhaps where precisely their beauty can be found. My paintings simply are.<\/p>\n The triumph of Abstract Expressionism led, soon enough, to debates in America about the end of art. But today that period seems very distant.<\/p>\n After the second half of the 20th century, after Nietzsche and Fluxus, after so much blood and Santiago Sierra, the only thing that lasts for an artist today is to do the last performance, the last possible painting: take a big knife from the kitchen and start to kill all your neighbours and all the people that you find in the streets, using their fluids and blood, heads, bodies, arms, and legs to create \u2018beautiful\u2019 collages. So, as we are not so crazy, we can get relaxed and start making paintings without trying to transform nothing of our environment; on a trip back to the small things, to the spirit, to a relaxed knowledge.<\/p>\n His \u201cleap to an abstract model of painting\u201d, he writes, \u201cwould not have happened if my formal experiments had not gone hand in hand with a series of meditations and observations\u201d, which he gathered in a notebook. He calls this written material \u201ca kind of armature\u201d, as if this verbal articulation held together his practice. In 1990, he observed recently, his writing was more mature than the paintings he was creating at the time. He now finds his own earlier observations \u201cstrange and telling\u201d as if he were surprised by his written accounts of his own paintings.<\/p>\n A great many abstract artists have written about their art. We have Kandinsky\u2019s and Mondrian\u2019s manifestos in defence of abstraction; Frank Stella\u2019s Working Space, an elaborate account of the relation of his abstract painting to old master art; Sean Scully\u2019s commentaries on his own paintings as well as those of other modernists and old masters; Peter Halley\u2019s essays interpreting his Cells; and, of course, a great many more informal position statements. We are very familiar, then, with the artist-writer, the painter well prepared to articulate his or her practice with reference to the literature of art. Ciria, well read as he is, is something different. What is special, indeed almost unique, is that for him art is a form of autobiography whose development can only be understood with reference to a theory of art. Two documents, the short \u201cExperimental Lines of Investigation and Analytic Proposals\u201d and the longer \u201cPools of Light: Voyages among Paintings\u201d, reveal how closely his art is tied to his written reflections. He is interested in the semiotics of pictures, in how they are composed of a language that, as he writes, \u201chas laws of its own\u201d Following Norman Bryson, certain art historians have been interested in the semiotics of visual art, employing the influential model of Roland Barthes\u2019s French-style structuralism to study how painters might use linguistic models. Just as the simple sentence \u201cThe cat is on the mat\u201d conveys meaning by placing the animal (\u201ccat\u201d) on the surface (\u201cmat\u201d) using the verb \u201cis,\u201d so in painting, we might imagine, the relationship of elements has meaning, and this can be verbally articulated through semiotic analysis. Ciria\u2019s style lends itself to this mythical way of thinking.<\/p>\n I call this semiotic account of painting a myth because more recent scholars have become sceptical about the explanatory power of structuralism. Ciria is interested in the \u201cvirgin support\u201d, the unmarked background, and what lies on top of it, a stain or preexisting image, and he describes the different ways that we can understand this relationship. For example, he imagines the support of a sheet of paper\u2014what he calls the \u201cplatform\u201d\u2014divided into circular areas, and then three such pieces of paper pierced by an axis. This imaginary device, the \u201cDeconstructive Automatic Abstraction\u201d (DAA), would make it possible to consider various combinations of images that constitute the codes of painting. The practicing artist would need to realise, \u201cto translate\u201d, these combinations presented by the mechanism.<\/p>\n It is revealing that Ciria was soon bothered by his reliance upon DAA in his art, thus recapitulating the problems that intellectuals had with structuralism. This system, though it was his own creation, displaced his creativity. And, he came to realise, art \u201cmust all be in the artist\u2019s head before the formal execution of the piece.\u201d It\u2019s not surprising that the friends, artists, and intellectuals he consulted were clueless about these problems. In this stressful, visionary state, Ciria replaced DAA with another system, which he christened \u201cAlfa Alignment Dynamic\u201d (AAD). With this, he describes three elements that are found, he argues, throughout the history of art from the Greeks to the present: points of weight or gravity, primary lines of tension, and traction components.<\/p>\n I think this is yet another mythology, for I very much doubt that, citing Ciria\u2019s examples, any interesting theory of the structures of such varied paintings as Arnold B\u00f6cklin\u2019s Battle of the Centaurs (1873), Robert Motherwell\u2019s Elegies to the Spanish Republic, Anselm Kiefer\u2019s Paleta alaa, and Leonardo\u2019s Last Supper is possible. \u201cIt would be fabulous\u201d, he writes, \u201cto be able to \u2018dictate\u2019 the order a painting is read, determining the elements and protagonists that draw our gaze first and then points or places where our eye stops as it is going through the painting.\u201d It would be\u2014but a workable structuralist analysis for all these paintings, a general science of painting if you will, would, in my opinion, be too good to be true. But this myth has been immensely suggestive for Ciria\u2019s practice, and that is what counts. And in the end, he rightly notes, \u201cThe factors that lead to the emergence of a painting are, on countless occasions, the result of fortuitous situations where there is, as a general rule, neither intention nor control.\u201d<\/p>\n For all of Ciria\u2019s fascination with abstract reasoning, ultimately his art is about the pleasure in looking, as is evident when he describes his feelings on a day when everything was going very well:<\/p>\n Painting in movement, where the cans, the brushes and the oil paint were dancing around with a life of their own. Then, all of a sudden, stillness. A gigantic bizarre flower, I thought. Oh, how I love this job!<\/p>\n His semiotic theories left behind, he enjoys the activity of making art.<\/p>\n The muses may be the most capricious beings in our imagination. They push us around while making us believe that at some point we have some influence over what we are doing. A pure conceptualist would probably not agree with that statement. Even though, to tell you the truth, if you ask me I reject all that entirely: theory, philosophy, aesthetics, history, concepts, thought.<\/p>\n In the end, for him painting is a matter of intuition.<\/p>\n The five rooms of this exhibition present ten years of Ciria\u2019s life in art. We go from Fragmentation of Clouds (2002) to the figurative images of the Post-Suprematist series (2005), and then to the Abstract Memory series of the past three years, made following his move to the studio on La Guardia Place in Manhattan. At the end of the fifth room, on the far wall, is a massive recent piece, a forty-four-panel canvas from the Abstract Memory series. Here you momentarily come to rest, aware that Ciria\u2019s stylistic journey is sure to continue, in unpredictable ways. It is unsurprising that Ciria wants to become an American citizen, for our country, with all of its problems, offers the most promising environment for an ambitious painter. As he says:<\/p>\n Art is probably the territory in which human beings express themselves with greatest intensity, and this is linked to what makes us up, to that which we are. For instance, in denouncing social situations that are intolerable(13).<\/p>\n Here we find a twenty-first-century updating of Schapiro\u2019s vision of the political potential of Abstract Expressionism. Right now Ciria\u2019s development is very much a story in progress. And that is an exciting prospect.<\/p>\n Unless otherwise noted, quotations from Ciria come from email correspondence with the author.<\/p>\n 1.Arthur C. Danto, Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions (New York: Abrams, 1992), 50\u201351, chart 136.<\/p>\n 2.Meyer Schapiro, Modern Art, 19th & 20th Centuries (Selected Papers), (New York: George Braziller, 1978), 218.<\/p>\n 3.Ibid., 232.<\/p>\n 4.Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria, Limbos de F\u00e9nix\/ Phoenix\u2019s Limbo (Barcelona: Bach Quatre, 2005), 139.<\/p>\n 5.Ciria: Squares from Richmond Grove, (Madrid: Seacex, 2004), 28.<\/p>\n 6.Ibid., 28.<\/p>\n 7.Squares, 39.<\/p>\n 8.Nicholas Serota, \u2018History Behind the Thought\u2019 (interview), in Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, ed. Nicholas Serota (London: Tate, 2008), 46.<\/p>\n 9.Kirk Varnedoe, Cy Twombly: A Retrospective (New York: MoMA, 1994), 36.<\/p>\n 10.Christopher Masters, The Guardian, 28 November 2006, www.guardian.co.uk.<\/p>\n 11.Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985), 25.<\/p>\n 12.Sean Scully, Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings (London: Merrell, 2006), 122.<\/p>\n 13.Squares, 41.<\/p>\n David Carrier. IVAM. Valencia.<\/p>\n Texto cat\u00e1logo \u201cConceptos Opuestos 2001 \u2013 2011\u201d. Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia, Septiembre 2011.<\/p>\n LAS OBRAS RECIENTES DE JOS\u00c9 MANUEL CIRIA<\/p>\n David Carrier<\/p>\n Para ser artista se deben conocer a fondo todos los g\u00e9neros art\u00edsticos, la historia, teor\u00eda y Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria<\/p>\n El desarrollo de la abstracci\u00f3n modernista se dio en dos dimensiones distintas. A principios del siglo XX, artistas de la talla de Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian u Olga Rozanova inventaron la pintura abstracta, una l\u00ednea de investigaci\u00f3n que coincidi\u00f3 con las primeras obras maestras de Henri Matisse y las pinturas cubistas de Georges Braque y Pablo Picasso. La abstracci\u00f3n fue, pues, una corriente \u2013y no la m\u00e1s importante\u2013 dentro del primer modernismo. La segunda vertiente de la abstracci\u00f3n se origin\u00f3 en Nueva York con el nacimiento del Expresionismo abstracto en 1945. Fue un per\u00edodo clave en la historia del arte, uno de esos momentos m\u00e1gicos en que de repente se dan algunos cambios dr\u00e1sticos a gran escala que son de suma importancia. Tras profundos aprendizajes del modernismo europeo y del realismo social de la era de la Depresi\u00f3n, los artistas americanos empezaron a crear obras originales que cambiaron el modo de entender el arte. Para entender las pinturas de Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria \u2013y esta exposici\u00f3n muestra solo una parte de su producci\u00f3n en los \u00faltimos diez a\u00f1os\u2013 necesitamos ubicarlas en relaci\u00f3n con esta transatl\u00e1ntica historia del arte abstracto.<\/p>\n Sin duda algo dram\u00e1tico le ocurri\u00f3 a Jackson Pollock entre 1943, cuando pint\u00f3 The She Wolf (La loba), un lienzo relativamente peque\u00f1o en el que aplic\u00f3 la imaginer\u00eda surrealista, y 1950, cuando, pintando en el suelo, pint\u00f3 la enorme Autumn Rhythm: Number 30 (Ritmo de oto\u00f1o: n\u00famero 30). Alg\u00fan cambio dr\u00e1stico le sobrevino tambi\u00e9n a Willem de Kooning entre 1945, a\u00f1o en que pint\u00f3 Pink angels (\u00c1ngeles rosados), y 1948, cuando realiz\u00f3 Asheville, obra confeccionada a base de planos cubistas irregulares. Lo mismo le ocurre a Mark Rothko entre Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (Lento remolino en el borde del mar, 1944) y No. 3\/No. 13 (Magenta, Black, Green on Orange) (N\u00ba3\/N\u00ba13 [Magenta, negro, verde sobre naranja], 1949), en las cuales afirm\u00f3 su estilo de coloridos rect\u00e1ngulos suspendidos en el vac\u00edo pict\u00f3rico de un lienzo orientado verticalmente. Tambi\u00e9n podemos decir lo mismo de Barnett Newman entre principios de los cuarenta y 1948, cuando pint\u00f3 Onement I (un t\u00edtulo muy apropiado si tenemos en cuenta que el cuadro ser\u00eda el punto de partida de su estilo m\u00e1s maduro). En la inmediata etapa de postguerra, con Europa, Jap\u00f3n y la URSS devastados, la escala y la osad\u00eda del Expresionismo abstracto hicieron de \u00e9l el arte de los heroicos vencedores. Aunque se instituy\u00f3 sobre los logros del modernismo europeo, fue un movimiento espec\u00edficamente americano. La anecd\u00f3tica obra de Mark Tansey Triumph of the New York School (El triunfo de la Escuela de Nueva York, 1984), basada en La rendici\u00f3n de Breda (1634-1645) de Diego Vel\u00e1zquez, retrata ingeniosamente a los expresionistas abstractos como vencedores de una contienda militar frente a sus rivales europeos. A la izquierda vemos a Picasso (con un exquisito abrigo de piel), a Braque y otros representantes de la vencida escuela francesa, vestidos con uniformes de la I Guerra Mundial. En el centro, Andr\u00e9 Breton firma la rendici\u00f3n, y es observado de cerca por Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Pollock y de Kooning, todos ellos vestidos con los uniformes americanos de la II Guerra Mundial(1). El historiador del arte Meyer Schapiro aport\u00f3 un an\u00e1lisis pol\u00edtico optimista del Expresionismo abstracto. Para estos artistas, escrib\u00eda, \u201cel objeto del arte es\u2026 m\u00e1s febrilmente que nunca, la ocasi\u00f3n para la espontaneidad o los sentimientos profundos. El cuadro simboliza el individuo que logra la libertad y el gran compromiso de uno mismo con su obra. De ah\u00ed la vital importancia de la marca, la pincelada, el goteo, la calidad sustancial de la propia pintura o de la superficie del lienzo como una textura o un campo de operaci\u00f3n \u2013todos son signos de la presencia activa del artista\u2013\u201c(2). Este arte, afirmaba, \u201cinvita a los artistas a aplicar un enfoque m\u00e1s libre de la naturaleza y el hombre\u2026 La abstracci\u00f3n por sus atrevimientos tambi\u00e9n confirma y nos hace m\u00e1s evidentes los descubrimientos m\u00e1s osados pero todav\u00eda no asimilados del arte antiguo\u201d(3).<\/p>\n Ciria naci\u00f3 en 1960 en Manchester, Reino Unido, pero se form\u00f3 en Espa\u00f1a donde empez\u00f3 a exponer, y actualmente reside en Nueva York desde 2005. Para entender, pues, su evoluci\u00f3n es preciso no solo recurrir a la historia del arte abstracto, sino tambi\u00e9n comprender lo que ocurre cuando un pintor se traslada de una cultura a otra; el propio idioma, la propia rutina, e incluso el propio arte cambian. Cuando, en 1620 Nicol\u00e1s Poussin se traslad\u00f3 del norte de Francia a Roma, empez\u00f3 pintando ecl\u00e9cticamente hasta que encontr\u00f3 su estilo y acab\u00f3 realizando sus obras maestras. Del mismo modo, Picasso se convirti\u00f3 en Picasso cuando se fue a Par\u00eds. Y m\u00e1s recientemente, Sean Scully, dublin\u00e9s de nacimiento e ingl\u00e9s de formaci\u00f3n, logr\u00f3 su estilo m\u00e1s maduro al trasladarse de Londres a Nueva York. Ciria explica:<\/p>\n A finales de los 80 mi obra todav\u00eda era figurativa, hab\u00eda intentado de m\u00faltiples maneras caminar hacia la abstracci\u00f3n, pero los resultados fueron muy decepcionantes, y no me refiero solamente a que yo no \u201centendiera\u201d lo abstracto\u2026<\/p>\n El principal problema\u2026 es que yo ten\u00eda una formaci\u00f3n cl\u00e1sica y autodidacta. Por eso, no sab\u00eda como introducirme en la abstracci\u00f3n. No llegaba a \u201csentir\u201d esas composiciones, no pod\u00eda entender la pintura como una mera experimentaci\u00f3n sin sentido o prop\u00f3sito alguno. Quer\u00eda pintar cosas abstractas pero estaba anclado en la figuraci\u00f3n. La pesadilla dur\u00f3 dos a\u00f1os(4).<\/p>\n Cuando se traslad\u00f3 a Nueva York, fue capaz de redefinir totalmente su relaci\u00f3n con la pintura:<\/p>\n Al dejar mi estudio de Madrid e irme a Nueva York sent\u00ed mayor libertad para experimentar libremente. A menudo el gran problema de un artista es que el mercado demanda solamente un tipo de obra, el pasillo se estrecha cada vez m\u00e1s y acabas siendo un ep\u00edgono de ti mismo.<\/p>\n Ciria quer\u00eda hacer avanzar su obra, pero al mismo tiempo deseaba que conservara la continuidad de sus intereses. Algunas de sus descripciones sobre el proceso indican que se trataba sobre todo de un ejercicio intelectual; lo vemos cuando dec\u00eda \u201cseparar\/deconstruir una obra sistem\u00e1ticamente, mostrando los elementos o unidades que la componen\u201d(5). Pero en realidad lo que estaba en juego era su verdadera identidad como artista, e incluso como persona:<\/p>\n \u201cNecesitaba inventar un terreno sobre el que tenerme en pie y no caer al vac\u00edo\u201d(6). Cuando un artista figurativo emigra, halla nuevas posibilidades; la mayor preocupaci\u00f3n de Ciria era progresar sin perder su identidad. El paso de la figuraci\u00f3n a la abstracci\u00f3n era, sin lugar a dudas, un cambio absolutamente dr\u00e1stico, pero que en verdad ten\u00eda el origen en esa fase inicial suya: \u201cMuchas veces he dicho, medio en broma, que no soy pintor, sino alguien que observa las partes constituyentes de la pintura y experimenta con ellas\u201d(7). Ciria compara el cambio con el que puede experimentar alguien que cambia de sexo: \u201cSigo pintando lo mismo de diferente modo y comparo mi experiencia con el hombre que utiliza su lado femenino y viceversa.\u201d<\/p>\n Del mismo modo que la obra de Ciria sufri\u00f3 un poderoso cambio cuando \u00e9l se traslad\u00f3 a Nueva York, el Expresionismo abstracto tambi\u00e9n se transform\u00f3 gracias a los americanos que trabajaban en otros lugares. Cy Twombly, tras un temprano \u00e9xito en los Estados Unidos, se fue a Italia, y a menudo incorpor\u00f3 referencias cl\u00e1sicas en sus pinturas. \u201cSi hubiera tenido oportunidad, en otro tiempo, me hubiera gustado ser Poussin\u201d(8), dec\u00eda. Como Poussin, se vio como artista en Roma. El amigo que comentaba que el hogar ideal de Twombly ser\u00eda un palacio en un mal vecindario evocaba apropiadamente su peculiar s\u00edntesis italiana de arte elevado austero y cultura populista callejera(9).<\/p>\n La abstracci\u00f3n cambi\u00f3 m\u00e1s dr\u00e1sticamente cuando los artistas que estaban en otros pa\u00edses y ten\u00edan historias pol\u00edticas diferentes emularon este movimiento. Cuando pas\u00f3 del este al oeste de Alemania, Gerhard Richter, que se hab\u00eda formado en el estilo del realismo social, qued\u00f3 impresionado por las exposiciones de la abstracci\u00f3n americana. Pero cuando \u00e9l mismo se inici\u00f3 en la pintura abstracta, el resultado fue diferente. Sus magn\u00edficas obras abstractas, tan inseguras y ausentes de la osad\u00eda de los expresionistas abstractos, son el arte de los vencidos. En Italia, Emilio Vedova, que hab\u00eda formado parte de la Resistencia partisana, adopt\u00f3 con arresto el estilo americano. Aunque el Expresionismo abstracto de Nueva York hab\u00eda desplazado al realismo social, que era apoyado por la gente de izquierdas de los a\u00f1os treinta, Vedova sosten\u00eda que la abstracci\u00f3n era una fuerza pol\u00edticamente progresista; esta posici\u00f3n le otorg\u00f3 el ep\u00edteto de \u201cJackson Pollock de las barricadas\u201d(10).<\/p>\n En la Espa\u00f1a post-Franco, la situaci\u00f3n de Ciria era muy diferente a la de Richter o Vedova. Espa\u00f1a hab\u00eda sufrido durante mucho tiempo un estancamiento del desarrollo en comparaci\u00f3n con el resto de Europa occidental. Para \u00e9l, una figura clave fue Mir\u00f3.<\/p>\n Siempre cre\u00ed que la historia del arte fue impulsada por artistas torpes como Goya o Mir\u00f3, y no por los virtuosos como Vel\u00e1zquez o Picasso. Por aquellos que inventaron su propio modo de usar la pintura, m\u00e1s all\u00e1 de la \u201ctosquedad\u201d. Todos los artistas quieren matar el arte, todos los pintores del pasado intentaron asesinar la pintura. Una tarea dif\u00edcil que hoy parece de lo m\u00e1s ingenua.<\/p>\n Para ser un artista visual importante, se debe encontrar y desarrollar un estilo original. Esto se cumpl\u00eda con los maestros antiguos y todav\u00eda hoy se cumple con los artistas actuales. En los a\u00f1os ochenta, muchos cr\u00edticos americanos cre\u00edan que los artistas de la apropiaci\u00f3n y otros postmodernos demostraban que esta manera de pensar era obsoleta. Seg\u00fan las influyentes palabras de Rosalind Krauss, \u201cla historia del arte se ha apartado radicalmente del estilo\u201d(11). Pero esta afirmaci\u00f3n de que la historia del arte puede evitar que se hable del estilo es poco convincente. Yo entiendo el estilo como un modo personal identificable de hacer arte, y en ese sentido Richard Serra y Cindy Sherman, ambos defendidos por Krauss, tienen estilos equiparables a los de los principales artistas renacentistas. Lo mismo podemos decir de Ciria.<\/p>\n Los falsificadores pueden copiar, pero solo un artista de talento logra el estilo. Los polvorientos almacenes de los museos son una prueba de lo dif\u00edcil que es cumplir esto. El estilo de Ciria, esa huella de continuidad que corre por sus obras, tanto abstractas como figurativas, queda definida por la ubicaci\u00f3n de una figura o marca, a menudo en negro o rojo intenso, o manchas blancas; es lo que \u00e9l llama la \u201cmancha\u201d contra un fondo o cuadr\u00edcula. Siempre emplea esta dualidad, como si esta figura\/estructura b\u00e1sica derivada de sus pinturas figurativas, tuviera que estar presente incluso cuando trabaja lo abstracto. Su presencia es garant\u00eda de su continuidad estil\u00edstica. De hecho, todas las pinturas de Ciria son inequ\u00edvocamente suyas, ya que la continuidad en el desarrollo conserva su identidad personal. \u201c\u00bfAbstracta? \u00bfFigurativa? \u00bfNo son lo mismo?\u201d \u2013pregunta el artista ret\u00f3ricamente\u2013. Ciria no tiene inter\u00e9s en la apropiaci\u00f3n de im\u00e1genes ir\u00f3nicas posmodernas, pero adopta una lectura selectiva de la historia de la abstracci\u00f3n. Nunca hace obras puramente monocromas como Robert Ryman, o pinturas all-over como hac\u00edan Jackson Pollock o Willem de Kooning hacia 1945. En 2005 se siente atra\u00eddo por la figurativa \u00faltima etapa de Kazimir Malevich, y no en esta ocasi\u00f3n, por la obra reductiva anterior y pintura m\u00e1s famosa del ruso.<\/p>\n Dos de los artistas preferidos de Ciria, Richard Diebenkorn y Philip Guston tambi\u00e9n pasaron de la figuraci\u00f3n a la abstracci\u00f3n. Tras sus primeras abstracciones, como por ejemplo Berkeley n\u00ba1 (1953), la cual est\u00e1 a la altura de las mejores pinturas de la escuela de Nueva York, Diebenkorn decepcion\u00f3 a algunos influyentes defensores suyos al crear grandes obras figurativas al estilo de Matisse, antes de volver a trabajar en su serie abstracta Ocean Park. Empez\u00f3 sus Ocean Parks cuando se instal\u00f3 en Santa M\u00f3nica y dej\u00f3 de hacerlos una vez se fue de all\u00ed. Estaban inspirados en aquella localizaci\u00f3n y su estructura recuerda las vistas al horizonte desde una ventana en California. El punto de referencia escondido de Diebenkorn es siempre Matisse, cuyo Studio, Quai St. Michel (1916) le aporta la armadura b\u00e1sica para los Ocean Parks, no obstante su obra tiene sus ra\u00edces en el paisaje de su California natal. En cuanto a Guston, dej\u00f3 de ser un buen expresionista abstracto y se transform\u00f3 en una gran pintor figurativo. Sean Scully describe a la perfecci\u00f3n esta evoluci\u00f3n: \u201cSolo cuando Guston dej\u00f3 de intentar ser grande, y plasm\u00f3 toda su furia, empez\u00f3 a ser importante. Entonces pudo escapar de su dif\u00edcil relaci\u00f3n con las sublimes abstracciones de De Kooning\u201d. La historia del paso de Ciria de la figuraci\u00f3n a la abstracci\u00f3n es muy diferente. Como Diebenkorn y Guston, necesitaba conservar la continuidad de su pensamiento visual, pero al contrario que ellos, que eran pensadores visuales m\u00e1s intuitivos, necesitaba razonar su entrada en la abstracci\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Ciria no es solo un pintor est\u00e9tico que hace pinturas agradables, sino un pensador visual cuya obra surge de una idea sobre lo que es la pintura.<\/p>\n En Espa\u00f1a muchas veces digo que realmente soy un artista conceptual, que utilizo la pintura para expresarme. Puedo decirlo as\u00ed porque cuando dej\u00e9 la pintura figurativa por la abstracci\u00f3n a principios de los noventa, necesitaba una gran base o \u201cplataforma\u201d te\u00f3rica y conceptual sobre la que erigir mi obra. Si creemos que la \u201cpintura\u201d es un cuerpo muerto, necesitamos trabajar como un forense, abriendo cortes y heridas, intentando analizar lo que podemos hallar dentro: piel, m\u00fasculos, tendones, venas, sangre.<\/p>\n De aqu\u00ed su fascinaci\u00f3n por Mir\u00f3, quien quer\u00eda asesinar la pintura. Pero como tambi\u00e9n dijo Ciria,<\/p>\n Pertenezco a ese grupo de artistas que no tienen en cuenta las sutilezas de intentar hacer algo que pueda llamarse hermoso cuando pintan y la falta de ese \u201cencanto\u201d en sus obras quiz\u00e1 sea donde radica realmente su belleza. Mis cuadros simplemente son.<\/p>\n El triunfo del Expresionismo abstracto desemboc\u00f3, bien pronto, en algunos debates en Am\u00e9rica sobre el final del arte. Hoy sin embargo, esa etapa parece muy lejana.<\/p>\n Tras la segunda mitad del siglo XX, despu\u00e9s de Nietzsche y Fluxus, y tanta sangre y Santiago Sierra, lo \u00fanico que le queda a un artista hoy es hacer la \u00faltima performance, la \u00faltima obra posible: tomar un cuchillo bien grande de la cocina y empezar a matar a todos los vecinos y a todo aquel que te encuentres en la calle, usar sus fluidos y la sangre, cabezas, cuerpos, brazos y piernas y crear \u201chermosos\u201d collages. Pero como no estamos tan locos, nos podemos relajar y empezar a pintar sin intentar transformar nada de nuestro entorno, en un regreso a las peque\u00f1as cosas, al esp\u00edritu, al conocimiento tranquilo.<\/p>\n Su \u201csalto a un modelo de pintura abstracto \u2013escribe\u2013 no habr\u00eda tenido lugar si mis experimentos formales no hubieran ido de la mano de una serie de meditaciones y observaciones\u201d, que recogi\u00f3 en un cuaderno. \u00c9l mismo llama a este material escrito \u201cuna especie de estructura\u201d, como si esta articulaci\u00f3n verbal mantuviera unida su pr\u00e1ctica. En 1990, observaba recientemente, su escritura era m\u00e1s madura que las pinturas que realizaba por aquel entonces. Hoy considera sus observaciones anteriores \u201cextra\u00f1as y reveladoras\u201d, como si le sorprendieran sus escritos sobre sus propias pinturas.<\/p>\n Muchos artistas han escrito sobre su arte. Tenemos los manifiestos de Kandinsky o Mondrian en defensa de la abstracci\u00f3n. Working space de Frank Stella da elaborada cuenta de la relaci\u00f3n entre su pintura abstracta y antiguas obras maestras. Tenemos tambi\u00e9n los comentarios de Sean Scully sobre su propia obra, as\u00ed como los de otros modernistas y antiguos maestros; los ensayos de Peter Halley en los que interpreta sus Cells (celdas) y, sin duda, otras muchas afirmaciones m\u00e1s informales. Estamos muy familiarizados, pues, con el artista-escritor, el pintor o la pintora bien preparados para articular su pr\u00e1ctica con referencia a la literatura del arte. Ciria, aunque profusamente le\u00eddo, es algo diferente. Lo que es especial, y casi \u00fanico, es que para \u00e9l, el arte es una forma de autobiograf\u00eda cuyo desarrollo solo se puede entender con referencia a una teor\u00eda del arte. Dos documentos, uno corto \u201cL\u00edneas experimentales de investigaci\u00f3n y Propuestas Anal\u00edticas\u201d y otro m\u00e1s largo \u201cPozos de luz: Un viaje entre pinturas\u201d, muestran lo unido que est\u00e1 su arte a sus reflexiones escritas. Le interesa la semi\u00f3tica de la pintura, c\u00f3mo se compone de un lenguaje que, seg\u00fan \u00e9l escribe, \u201ctiene sus propias leyes\u201d. Con el referente de Norman Bryson, algunos historiadores del arte han mostrado inter\u00e9s por la semi\u00f3tica del arte visual, y han utilizado el influyente modelo de Roland Barthe y su estructuralismo de estilo franc\u00e9s para estudiar c\u00f3mo los pintores llegan a utilizar los modelos ling\u00fc\u00edsticos. Del mismo modo que la sencilla frase \u201cThe cat is on the mat\u201d (El gato est\u00e1 en el felpudo) transfiere significado ubicando al animal (cat) sobre la superficie (mat) usando el verbo \u201cis\u201d (est\u00e1), en la pintura podemos intuir que la relaci\u00f3n de elementos tiene significado y esto se puede articular verbalmente a trav\u00e9s de un an\u00e1lisis semi\u00f3tico. El estilo de Ciria se presta a este modo m\u00edtico de pensar.<\/p>\n Llamo mito a esta reflexi\u00f3n semi\u00f3tica sobre la pintura porque recientemente algunos eruditos se han mostrado esc\u00e9pticos ante la fuerza explicativa del estructuralismo. A Ciria le interesa el \u201csoporte virgen\u201d, el fondo sin marcas y lo que hay por encima de \u00e9l, una mancha o una imagen existente, y describe las diferentes maneras en que podemos entender esta relaci\u00f3n. Por ejemplo, se imagina el soporte de una hoja de papel \u2013lo que \u00e9l llama \u201cplataforma\u201d\u2013 dividido en \u00e1reas circulares, y despu\u00e9s tres trozos de papel perforados por un eje. Este mecanismo imaginario, la \u201cAbstracci\u00f3n Deconstructiva Autom\u00e1tica\u201d (ADA) har\u00eda posible considerar diversas combinaciones de im\u00e1genes que constituyen los c\u00f3digos de la pintura. El artista en pr\u00e1ctica necesitar\u00eda tener en cuenta, \u201ctraducir\u201d, estas combinaciones ofrecidas por el mecanismo.<\/p>\n Es importante resaltar que a Ciria enseguida le preocup\u00f3 su dependencia de la ADA en su obra, lo cual resum\u00eda los problemas que los intelectuales ten\u00edan con el estructuralismo. Este sistema, pese a que era una creaci\u00f3n propia suya, alejaba su creatividad. Lleg\u00f3 a darse cuenta, \u201ctoda obra debe estar en la cabeza del artista antes de ejecutar la pieza\u201d. No nos extra\u00f1a que los amigos, artistas e intelectuales a los que consult\u00f3 no tuvieran ni idea de estos problemas. En este estado ut\u00f3pico y estresante, Ciria reemplaz\u00f3 la ADA con otro sistema, que bautiz\u00f3 como \u201cDin\u00e1mica de alfa alineaciones\u201d (DAA). Con esto, describe cuatro elementos que se encuentran, dice, a lo largo de toda la historia del arte, desde los griegos hasta la actualidad: los puntos de peso o gravedad, las principales l\u00edneas de tensi\u00f3n, los componentes de tracci\u00f3n y los elementos atmosf\u00e9ricos esenciales.<\/p>\n Al mismo tiempo, Ciria tambi\u00e9n observa, \u201cLos factores que conducen a la urgencia de la pintura son, en innumerables ocasiones, el resultado de situaciones fortuitas en las que, por regla general, no hay ni intenci\u00f3n ni control\u201d.<\/p>\n Por toda esta fascinaci\u00f3n de Ciria con el razonamiento abstracto, al final su obra trata sobre el placer de mirar, y as\u00ed lo sentimos cuando describe sus impresiones en un d\u00eda en que todo sal\u00eda bien:<\/p>\n Pintar en movimiento con los botes de color, los pinceles y los \u00f3leos con vida propia bailando a mi alrededor.<\/p>\n Y de repente, el sosiego. Una flor gigantesca y extra\u00f1a, pens\u00e9. \u00a1Ay, c\u00f3mo me gusta este trabajo!<\/p>\n Dejando a un lado sus teor\u00edas semi\u00f3ticas, \u00e9l disfruta en su actividad como artista.<\/p>\n Las musas pueden ser los seres m\u00e1s caprichosos de nuestra imaginaci\u00f3n. Nos impulsan haci\u00e9ndonos creer que en alg\u00fan momento tenemos influencia sobre lo que hacemos. Un conceptualista puro no estar\u00eda de acuerdo con esta afirmaci\u00f3n. Aunque, si me preguntas y te digo la verdad, cuando cojo los pinceles, rechazo de plano todo eso: teor\u00eda, filosof\u00eda, est\u00e9tica, historia, conceptos, pensamiento\u2026<\/p>\n Las cinco salas de esta exposici\u00f3n muestran diez a\u00f1os de la vida de Ciria en el arte. Vamos de Fragmentaci\u00f3n de nubes, (2002) a las im\u00e1genes figurativas de la serie Post-Suprem\u00e1tica (2005), y hasta la serie Memoria Abstracta de los \u00faltimos tres a\u00f1os, realizada ya en el estudio de La Guardia Place de Manhattan. Al final de la quinta sala, en la pared m\u00e1s alejada, se puede ver una obra reciente enorme, un lienzo de cuarenta y cuatro paneles de la serie Memoria Abstracta. Llegados a este punto, descansamos por un momento, sabedores de que el viaje estil\u00edstico de Ciria sin duda continua de modos impredecibles. No nos sorprende que Ciria quiera convertirse en ciudadano norteamericano, ya que el pa\u00eds, con todos sus problemas, ofrece un ambiente prometedor a un pintor ambicioso. Tal y como \u00e9l afirma:<\/p>\n El arte es probablemente el territorio en que los seres humanos se expresan con mayor intensidad, y esto est\u00e1 relacionado con lo que nos configura, con lo que somos. Por ejemplo, cuando denunciamos situaciones sociales que son intolerables.<\/p>\n Aqu\u00ed tenemos una actualizaci\u00f3n en el siglo XXI de la visi\u00f3n de Schapiro sobre el potencial pol\u00edtico del Expresionismo abstracto. Ahora mismo, el desarrollo de Ciria se trata b\u00e1sicamente de una historia en proceso, lo cual es un panorama emocionante.<\/p>\n A menos que se indique lo contrario, las citas de Ciria proceden de la correspondencia via email con el autor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1.Arthur C. Danto, Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions (Nueva York: Abrams, 1992), 50\u201351, gr\u00e1fico 136.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Texto cat\u00e1logo \u201cConceptos Opuestos 2001 \u2013 2011\u201d. Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia, Septiembre 2011 THE RECENT PAINTINGS OF JOS\u00c9 MANUEL CIRIA David Carrier To be an artist means to know deeply about all types of art, about art history, theory, and philosophy,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8815"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8815"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11236,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8815\/revisions\/11236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand philosophy, but you also have to take risks and, very important, have fun or suffer.<\/p>\n
\nfilosof\u00eda del arte, pero adem\u00e1s hay que asumir riesgos y sobre todo pasarlo bien o sufrir.<\/p>\n
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