En el aire conmovido..., with its ellipsis in the title, is an exhibition that is difficult to explain, as acknowledged by the employees of the Reina Sofía Museum who were working on its assembly last week. It is difficult because it does not have a theme, a thesis, an artist as its protagonist, or a specific time period it portrays. Instead, it has a curator/author, the philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman, who does not narrate his life through art but perhaps reveals something even more intimate about himself. It also features a poem from Romancero Gitano by García Lorca, from which the title is derived: En el aire conmovido / mueve la luna sus brazos / y enseña, lúbrica y pura, / sus senos de duro estaño. / Huye luna, luna, luna. / Si vinieran los gitanos, / harían con tu corazón / collares y anillos blancos.
En el aire conmovido... is a challenging exhibition, but in some way, it resonates with its viewers and leaves a memory that will likely be long-lasting and profound. Georges Didi-Huberman, the man who popularized the display of two juxtaposed images in a way that each changes the meaning of the other, has selected for his Madrid exhibition (which will also be shown at the CCCB in Barcelona) 300 works, texts, and films by 140 artists from the 19th, 20th, and occasionally 21st centuries: Dalí, Giacometti, Goethe, Goya, Victor Hugo, Miró, Picasso, Rodin, Shalev-Gerz, Capa, Ensor, Nietzsche, Trouvé. They are all interconnected in a sort of seemingly whimsical internal monologue, like the wandering of strollers, where each image/thought leads to another.
-What do you think of what you see?, asks Didi-Huberman, who is also a joking interviewee. He mixes languages in his responses, tends to mock the usual order of interview questions/answers, and sometimes corrects poorly formulated questions.
What to answer? En el aire conmovido... is a challenging and partly overwhelming exhibition, but it is obviously important and unique. It is likely worth more than one visit.
And then, Didi-Huberman sets off and heads to a room in the exhibition crossed diagonally by a red wool thread stretched to the maximum. "This piece may seem like geometry, but it is not. It is a thread that stirs the air. It is not just a form but a disturbance of space. Fred Sandback, the author, committed suicide afterward. For him, this thread was not a beautiful image; it was vital, a matter of fragility and survival."
The word "conmover" (to move) is the key to the Reina Sofía exhibition, giving meaning to the wandering of thoughts/images. In its Lorca-inspired title, En el aire conmovido, "conmovido" shares a verse with the word "aire" (air) in a sort of synesthesia. Because it seems that the air has more to do with evocation than with commotion, doesn't it?
Would you like to talk to us about the word evocation? Let it be known that I have not used the word evocation in this project. But alright, let's go with it. Evocation comes from vocation. It is to call, it is the voice that comes from the chest and throat. It is breathing, it is air that goes towards another person. It is memory and desire. Memory and desire are always linked, just like expiration and inspiration, invocation and evocation. Invocation and evocation are the means and the material of emotion. When we get emotional, it's hard for us to breathe.
And the word commotion? We French have "émotion," which means the same as emotion in Spanish, and we have the word "commotion" but it only represents the shock emotion. In Spanish, commotion is shock but it also means "emotion with the other." A sick child moves us... All this exposition is an essay on the ethics of emotion. Because there are so many emotions... And not all of them are a way of relating to others, of relating from a generous and modest attitude. Donald Trump always talks about emotions, but his emotions are directed against an enemy. What interests me is the emotion directed towards the other, up to the other.
Is this an idea specific to our time? Not long ago, irony was the dominant emotion in culture. That question assumes that emotions change in each historical moment. It's not true. Everything changes, everything transforms, an "I love you" doesn't mean the same today as in the 13th century. I agree. But it does participate in an anthropological dimension that survives. The present is an illusion. Today we have the same emotions as yesterday and as in the future. We have different images to express them, many images. Look at a medieval church in Italy and you'll see a thousand images of saints and angels. Today we have Instagram. New media exist. Do we have new problems? My answer is no or not always. We have old problems with new media. We must not be hypnotized by new media.
Let me put it another way: many people, not necessarily music lovers, listen to French music from 1900 today: Debussy, Satie, Fauré... Not long ago, no one took that music very seriously, it was considered sentimental. The great challenge of art history is conformism in understanding works, breaking away from that conformism. This exhibition ends with a photograph by Cartier-Bresson. People tell me, "No, man, not Cartier-Bresson, he's sentimental." Is Cartier-Bresson sentimental? Is Debussy sentimental? Saying that is not understanding anything. And yes, Debussy is sentimental, of course, but he is also much broader. Fortunately, we no longer have to say we like Schoenberg and therefore hate Stravinsky. It is now possible to love them both, to see them as parts of the same whole. Look, here we have a Tàpies next to a drawing of clouds by Goethe, magnificent clouds. A virtue of an exhibition is when a new relationship appears: this Tàpies is little more than a rag. But, seeing it next to Goethe's clouds, that rag refers to the oldest theme in art history, that of the nymph with her dress moving in the air. We put two images together and create a new meaning. That is the pleasure of an exhibition.
Goethe is important in this exhibition.
In his theory of poetry, he developed the concept of the demonic, which is not the same as demoniac because it has more to do with the Greek "daimon." And that idea of the demonic leads to the duende of flamenco and to García Lorca. This exhibition is also a way of taking a very Spanish history of culture linked to the history of European aesthetics, to Goethe, Nietzsche, and so on.
I have seen that in the exhibition posters written in English, the word "duende" is left in Spanish, untranslated.
"Duende" is impossible to translate. There are words like that in every language. Baudelaire's "spleen," "saudade"... I like that in a French or English text, a word like duende appears written in Spanish because it invites us to recognize something that moves us in a foreign language.
Do you usually like museums in 2024? Do you think they do their job well?
I can't answer because there is no such thing as "the museums." There are good and bad museums.
What is a good museum, then?
This one [referring to the Reina Sofía] is the best in the world. I have worked at the Tate, the MoMA, the Pompidou... But it is here where, since the time of Manolo Borja, I think that every time I come, I discover a new important artist. It is a knowledge machine.
And a museum that doesn't fulfill its function?
Do you want a specific example?
Go ahead
In Warsaw, there is a museum of the Jews. It is an immersive, picturesque museum, where real things are mixed with others created for the occasion, and it is impossible to see a complete picture... It is an amusement park in a place that speaks of something very serious. I detest it.