The Internship for the Art Theory and Criticism track on the MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture is also supported, indispensably, by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Internships entail carrying out a collective editorial and curatorial project that is sustainable over time and linked thematically to subjects studied on the MA’s courses. The curatorial project will be presented at the end of the academic year in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Space D, along with a magazine produced in the editorial project, ACTA.  

  

Curatorial projects produced

 

Chronicles of a Discourse. Galería Juana Mordó in Post-Francoist Art

Nouvel Building, Library and Documentation Centre, Space D

24 June - 14 October 2022

From the 1970s onwards, discourses on the role of Spanish art in Spanish society became more diverse. Part of the shifting aesthetic and ideological paradigm caused by the transition to democracy in the country, Galería Juana Mordó (1964–1994) was a stage that bore witness to the disputes between different forms of art-making within a context in which different discourses proliferated, all vying to occupy a hegemonic space, a concept this show looks to take issue with. The point of departure of Chronicles of a Discourse are the materials from the gallery’s archive, used to build a narrative around three core themes: political art and the politics of art, art’s international dissemination and its relationship with the market.  

After the fall of the Franco regime, a debate emerged between political art and the so-called “politics of art”, two stances which came to light in the second half of the 1970s. Political art broke through in the 37^th edition of the Venice Biennale (1976) via the curatorial approach spearheaded by Tomás Llorens Serra and Valeriano Bozal, whereby an alternative history of Spanish art over the previous four decades was called for, granting a key role to pro-democracy artists. In this context, Galería Juana Mordó became an open space for counter-hegemonic approaches, illustrated by the presence of the ZAJ Group and Equipo Crónica, or the signing of the Afrocán Document by Martín Chirino. This opening out to overtly anti-Franco positions at times brought the gallery into conflict and it was the target of two attacks in the 1970s. In 1979, Juan Manuel Bonet, Ángel González and Francisco Rivas presented 1980 in Galería Juana Mordó, a markedly programmatic exhibition reflecting the will to move beyond political art in pursuit of a sensualist and obliging art with its own discipline.  

Spanish art’s internationalisation is another of the central themes in the show in the light of curators, critics and gallerists trying to redefine the idea of Spanish art to the outside world in this period, whether it was underscoring its free, hedonistic nature or its critical and combative intent. These intentions were highlighted at different international encounters — for instance different editions of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) in Paris — and overseas shows, such as Contemporary Spanish Art (1984) at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.  

The third and final core strand of the exhibition explores the art market as one of the main channels of modernisation following the aesthetic stagnation that set in under Francoism, denoting another watershed moment for Spanish art’s image. The desire to internationalise art led to the appearance of fairs such as ARCO and they advocated its adaptation to the predominant business and capitalist logics in the international sphere. In opposition to this commercialisation came certain practices which helped to blur the limits between high and low culture, representing a change in the perception of Spanish art and ushering in new ways to connect with the market place.     

Through these central themes, Chronicles of a Discourse underlines the impossibility of building one sole narrative around what is socially understood by Spanish art, pinpointing other discursive strains that emerged in the Late Francoism period and the Transition to democracy, strains that are yet to be resolved today.

 

Design, Publish, Liberate. An Approach to the Visual Thought of Alberto Corazón

Nouvel Building, Library and Documentation Centre, Space D

25 June - 15 October, 2021

Alberto Corazón (Madrid, 1942–2021) is a pivotal figure in understanding the processes around the theoretical and artistic modernisation of Spain during the period of late Francoism and the early years of the democracy. Setting out from the materials conserved in the Marchán/Quevedo Archive, the present show denotes an approach to the work Corazón produced from 1966 to 1978, shining a light on his importance as a theoretical and critical agent, as well as the avant-garde and multidisciplinary side to his graphic output.

Alberto Corazón’s career as a graphic designer began with the foundation of the publishers Ciencia Nueva in 1964 and, subsequently, Alberto Corazón Editor in 1972 — the latter led to the collection Comunicación (Communication), which would become an all-important instrument for receiving and disseminating texts by authors linked to different branches of knowledge. Also of note in his publishing-related work are his designs for the magazines Comunicación XXI (1972–1976), Zona Abierta (1974–1976) and Nuestra Bandera (1977–1979), all of which illustrate the diversity of his work. 

Technically speaking, Corazón was ahead of his time, and in 1969 he set up a workshop with photographer and artist Tino Calabuig (Colmenar de Oreja, 1939) for the purposes of experimenting with silk-screen printing. In 1973 in Galería Redor, the workshop would evolve into an exhibition space focused on retrieving historical avant-garde movements, particularly Russian and German movements, as rendered by the pioneering exhibition on the work of John Heartfield (1973). A further example demonstrating the relevance of visual grammar in his practice is the project Documentos (Documents, 1971–1974), a series of publications featuring artistic proposals, most notably Plaza Mayor, análisis de un espacio (Plaza Mayor, Analysis of a Space, 1974), which in the series Nuevos Comportamientos Artísticos (New Artistic Behaviours), from the same year, presented an international encounter viewed as a landmark in Spanish conceptualism; it was organised by Simón Marchán, with Corazón designing the poster and programme.

 

What Are We Doing Here? Alternative Spaces in Madrid at the Turn of the Century

Nouvel Building, Library and Documentation Centre, Space D

25 September 2020 – 5 February 2021

Presented in the context of the MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture, conducted in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Centre in collaboration with the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), What Are We Doing Here? Alternative Spaces in Madrid at the Turn of the Century is an academic and curatorial exercise conducted by students from the Art Theory and Criticism track.

In a first point of contact with the archives around which this show is constructed, the question “What am I doing here?” rose to the surface — it appeared on the catalogue cover of the 1999 homonymous exhibition held in Garage Pemasa and organised by the El Perro collective, whereby various artists reflected, at the end of the millennium, on the domestic sphere and the relationship between the public and the private. Subsequently, these issues led to an investigation into the concept of space and how to occupy it, as much in an urban, social and cultural sense as symbolically, through a historical approach to some of Madrid’s alternative spaces, substantiated from archives on the cultural initiatives of Garage Pemasa and Off Limits and the art collective Fast Food.

 

Recreational and Political Resistances in Madrid during the ‘90s

Nouvel Building, Library and Documentation Centre, Space D

7 June 2019 – 7 February 2020

Presented in the context of the MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture, held in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Centre in collaboration with the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), Recreational and Political Resistances in Madrid during the ‘90s is an academic and curatorial exercise conducted by students from the Art Theory and Criticism track.

On the basis of materials from various archives held by the museum, this exhibition presents various collectives who experimented with different modes of intervention in the public space of late twentieth-century Madrid. The exhibition is organised around play as a strategy that redefines the relations of art and politics, and the exhibition space, in turn, is structured by three central lines that show the social effects of the activities of different collectives: articulation, interruption and overflow.

 

Lost Modernities. Bauhaus and Spain

Nouvel Building, Library and Documentation Centre, Space D

20 June – 1 October 2018

Presented in the context of the MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture, held in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Centre in collaboration with the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), Lost Modernities. Bauhaus and Spain is an academic and curatorial exercise conducted by students from the Art Theory and Criticism track.

The exhibition's point of departure is the imagery constructed by some of the future professors at the Bauhaus following their visits to the Spanish Peninsula in the early twentieth century and the 1920s. Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were drawn to Spanish popular culture, extracting concepts from it that they would later adapt to the formal proposals developed in the school.

 

Vis à vis: Quico Rivas, Archive and Prison

Nouvel Building, Library and Documentation Centre, Space D

8 June - 18 September 2017

Presented the context of the MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture, held in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Centre, in collaboration with the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), Vis à vis: Quico Rivas, Archive and Prison is an academic and curatorial exercise conducted by students from the Art Theory and Criticism track.

The project seeks to explore the penitentiary dimension within the vast archive of Quico Rivas, preserved in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Library and Documentation Centre. This approach to the notion of the archive from the perspective of imprisonment investigates the frictions, bonds and dichotomies produced in both the prison and the archive, two spaces that infringe the limits between the private and the public.