Miquel Barceló (Felanitx, Mallorca, 1957) has two interlocks in a row. It is as if he had left one cistercian monastery and had gone into another at once, this time with brushes and cloth instead of crucifixes and litanies. He's a bit of a hermit, so it wasn't trauma either. He was first isolated in southern Thailand trying to paint. Later, he gave him time to reach Mallorca by the hair and locked himself in his house in Artà. He has been working for two months. Now he is immersed -in collaboration with the epidemiologist Pedro Alonso- in the organization of an auction of paintings and sculptures donated by various artists, whose funds will go to scientific research works. In addition, he is finishing an original work with the Barcelona graphic artist Salvador Saura who, under the mottoAid to the sick, support to the toilets and protection of the population, will become a poster that will give away "to public hospitals that want to have it." And from time to time, have dinner with friends ... through the computer screen, understand. The interview is like most on days like this. One is in Mallorca, the other in Madrid.
All in order? Sorry for the recurring question…
Well, because the truth is that this life of confinement is by definition the life of the painter. I am in Mallorca, in the country, I have animals, I have forest, and that is ... well, it doesn't show that much. But everything is very worrying. The day to day of my life has not changed so much but of course, around yes.
The artistic 'I' is the same, and surely the social 'I' is no longer…
Sure. Every day I have learned that I had a friend in the hospital, or in the emergency room, ... and also this insidious disease, with the fact that someone enters and after a few days it becomes fatal is ... all very unpleasant. And I follow what happens in France, and in Italy, and in the United States ... and everywhere they are just as screwed. But it looks like it's a parcel problem.
What does it mean?
Well, we should have a global view on this subject and we have not had it. The virus does have that global look, we don't. Viruses are smarter and older than us ... and more Democrats.
The plagues are millennia old, you know something.
Yes, but we continue counting for small villages. We are poorly prepared, and each one applies his story.
How do you manage to cope with the confinement, apart from working?
We had dinner together several friends in front of the computer and we told each other things, we toasted ... that's fine. The truth is that I was very skeptical about all those things and look, very well. The other day a pianist friend of mine was playing the harpsichord, it was like an air of celebration, the truth is that during the confinement everyone has managed to do things and that is very good.
And on a creative level, has this confinement inspired you, spurred you, or the contrary?
It's funny, because I had been locked up for a month in an absolutely empty place in southern Thailand, where I had gone to work on a project about The Iliad. And I was wondering if I was staying there or coming to Spain, it was a matter of days, and if I didn't make up my mind quickly I had to stay there for a long time, and being in such a lost place seemed a bit extreme. So I arrived two or three days before the airports closed… so anyway, it's like it took a month more than mili. But the truth is that being locked up for me is the daily bread. It is what I do as normal. The bitch is seeing how bad people are having it. After all, I was trained, like the priests, that this does not surprise them either.
Do you think that people will have this anger, this boredom, this fear… installed in their heads, or will everything be relocated?
No, some things have to change by force, it is inevitable. And I hope some good things come. The anger is immediate, but it is annoyance at the inevitable, at something that we have not yet fully understood. It is frustration, and it is common everywhere. If you see what people say in France, or in Italy, or in Spain or in the United States, it is the same. And this to use the masks is a very Asian custom, here there is no custom. In Thailand, in February, 100% of the people I saw wore a mask. Here nobody. Well, it is that in those Asian countries people carry them almost always, even if it is due to pollution.
And you?
I have masks because I use them to paint! To protect me from gas and varnish and things like that. But in general, at home nobody had, of course. But going back to before, I think there should be a general reflection, to see what we have done wrong and what and how it can be done better. But a global reflection to understand that something like this is not solved by small communities.
Perhaps the maximum expression of that going for free and of that disunity has been the inability of the European Union to act as one voice ...
Of course. It was very disappointing, and there was also a lot of bad grapes. But even the European Union falls short on this, I think we have to be more ambitious, and more supportive. Because if it turns out that we fix this in Europe but let it stay the same in Africa, America and elsewhere, that returns to us after three days. And in a worse way. Looking at the Spanish media, at first it seemed that this was a disease of Madrid. We are very blind, but surely we will learn something from this.
Are you optimistic about that?
The truth is, no, I am not very optimistic about people's ability to learn. One thing, the Spanish flu was on the 19th, right?
Between 18 and 19 ... In other
words, after the First World War. And the Dry Law?
Eeeh ... I think it basically worked in the 1920s.
What about abolition? It is that a lot of money entered the United States with the abolition of the Dry Law. I am thinking that it is very possible that now is the time for the big states to decide to legalize drugs. This way money would enter the public coffers.
Are you talking about legalizing drugs so that it is the states and not the traffickers who run the business?
Sure. For pasta to enter. That will be very necessary. Something like that would have to happen. I don't know ... there is a helluva book that goes about all this and that nobody talks about, by an American writer named Laura Kasischke, and which is titled In a perfect world . It is an American pandemic and it is a kind of slow motion apocalypse. After a while the phone stops working, then the internet also stops ... it is a great book, like a scary story. I have also remembered a lot about Jean Giono and his book The hussar on the roof, very good, which talks about how people spend a confinement on the roofs ...
Speaking of stories of confinement: a good '80s book that has aged very well, The Bathroom , by Jean-Philippe Toussaint.
It is that Toussaint is one of the great European writers! A Belgian, by the way. I like Toussaint, French-speaking, more than Houellebecq and all those ...
Speaking of art, books, etc. ... the paradox is curious: on the one hand people have turned to all possible forms of culture - books, music, movies, series, virtual art on different platforms ... - to better pass the confinement . And on the other hand, the world of culture is scared with the one that comes upon the theaters, museums, movie theaters, with compulsory reduced capacity… and that when they can open.
Yes, and both in Spain and in France and in other countries, states and governments do not seem to care much. Just when it is most needed, culture is most ignored. But hey, it doesn't matter, culture exists above those ... those ...
Above who decides if it exists or not?
Of course, of course. Goodness. I dont know. Many people are saying that something good will come out of all this. I do not know. Most bad things come out of a corpse.
How do you think this crisis is going to have a concrete impact on your world? Artists, the art market, galleries, collectors, museums ...
Everything that is a market is going to affect it greatly and, therefore, the art, too. All that constant money movement ... although be careful, what happens is that this in the art market attracts more attention, but if you compare it with other worlds, that money movement is little. The one of art collides more, but nobody talks about the pharmacy market, for example. Well, I, what I hope is that something good comes out of this, especially in the spiritual field, that things change at the level of human demand. But hey, we are going to have a terrible time. And I'm not talking about Spain or Europe. I speak of the world in general. Because we believe that we are like a bit at the end of this - what if lack of confinement, what if de-escalation, by the way, ugly words, I don't know who chooses them, they should ask someone like Pere Gimferrer to choose the important terms - In places like Asia or Africa, what has come to pass has not yet been seen. I believe that we are not at the end of anything, but at the beginning of something that can be very long. Of course, we are not able to see this as something global. On the other hand, it is a bit normal. People are up to their nerves and want to go out, and live the life of before ... that will not be.
Certainly not in the short term.
Do you know what I think is going to happen a little? Like when here in Mallorca there is a storm and suddenly these three hours without light. So you have to look for the candles and the matches and such, but after a while it is very pleasant. And when the light comes back it's very disappointing. It is like a disappointment. And I think this is going to happen.
It is also possible that everything can be repositioned quickly. Including the bad, of course. Maybe about everything bad.
Let's see, if there is one clear thing, it is that, after the crisis, the bad guys are not going to become good.