Interview (Ache G. Louis)

My appointment with Angel Haro happens in an unpleasant afternoon at the end of the autumn. Squalls raise skirts and plastics resembling jellyfishes. The sky is quite blue and a lukewarm and mentholated wind turns Madrid into a rattlesnake sloughing off its skin. After coming into the cafeteria, everything is calmer. Without spending much time, I can see Angel through the pane of glass, he is trying to get something out of his eyes, something probably swept away by the wind.

A.H.-What a windy afternoon! Have you been longer waiting for me?

A.G.L.-No, just a few minutes.

A.H.-I like these windy afternoons, It’s like a premonition or rather a warning of nature.

We have just sat down and ordered some brandy when he asked me whether I’ve been to Museo del Prado.

A.G.L.-Whenever I come to Madrid I try to visit it. I went there yesterday afternoon.

A.H.-What did you see?

A.G.L.-Velázquez, Rubens (his carnality kills me). I also watched The Delightful Garden. What a feeling of disappointment restorations provoke!

A.H.-However, (theoretically) that’s how El Bosco painted it.

A.G.L.-Yes, but when we are accustomed to one picture, it’s difficult to see it different without being jolted.

A.H.-When we face a restoration, we notice that what really captivates us is the effect of time on the picture more than its characteristics, as if the only value of art were that of activating our nostalgia. Generally speaking, emotions bound to memory and history are overvalued. So far as I’m concerned, however, this picture’s X-ray fascinated me. It was literally like watching the image’s bones. Likewise, it could be appreciated the stretcher as well as its adjustments, the X-ray monochrome made it purer. I assure you that in front of that radiography I felt the emotion this picture had been painted with. I’m sure that El Bosco would be pleased to see it.

A.G.L.-You have just referred to a subject I find interesting to start our talk: memory and history. How do you face both so present at the moment in art and politics mainly in Europe?

A.H.-Personally I feel saturated. I think history is being used as a justification tool of extermination. I mean cultural extermination. When nationalists and patriots use the historic memory as an argument, they do not only idealize it but also advice against the contamination of unavoidable changes entailed in the development of any culture. What they wish is that independently-born culture becomes blocked forming then part of the utopian scenery. Any attempt on reviewing that memory is aborted, what has become institutionalized. On the other hand, I don’t agree with the statement the man who doesn´t know his history is doomed to repeat it......Instead., noting where some conflicts start nowadays, better ....the man who does know his history is also doomed to repeat it. I think that it is more and more difficult to situate the works of art geographically.......

A.G.L.-However, art has been a witness so that certain symbols could survive to time or, at least, it has been like that up to both the conceptual art and that so-called political art when art takes a different turn and the artist gets involved in public life.

A.H.- Apart from other facts, the conceptual art liberated the artist from the market, though this failed clearly, and art has become one more product. I don´t know whether it is right or wrong, but that´s the way it is. It happened to the political art as well. Furthermore, I think that certain pieces of art function like vaccines immunizing us against pain. Anyway, wherever the origin of a work, what interests me is its excitement capacity over its obviousness or simplicity. I don´t like ingenuousness in art.

A.G.L.- Some artists see an anachronism in the traditional supports, which displays interest as an archaeology. I mainly notice it in Spain. Even a work is called decorative derogatorily. I don´t know whether it worries you.

A.H.- I don´t bother the word anachronistic. Even more, I think that art is an anachronistic attitude. I doesn´t have to do with a race, and, anyway, such a race can only be against oneself. What is the use of one support or another if there is nothing to express?. Besides, I’m interested in technology. It would be stupid to refuse something happening around us and I think this is here to be used whenever needed. As an artist I don’t have an interest in becoming a member of the new technology-slave group that comprises the Western middle class. Nowadays, the cellular phone, the portable computer, the car, and the whole catalog of small desktop robots are the identity signs of a new slavers caste. If I were extremely rich, I will throw all stuff away or give it to someone working for me. On the other hand, art exerts a limited influence on life. The argument “there is no enough repercussion on society because the traditional supports are obsolete” seems an ingenuousity.

A.G.L.- Nevertheless, there are activities known as creative out of the Art institution which affect our behavior.

A.H.- You’re right. That’s why it is funny to see that when the communication strategy fails, we invent something called “new territories”, without accepting that what we are really doing is to unite, for the Art institution, activities that have been working for a long time and with much more clear purposes too. Let it be clear that the contamination is essential, but we should be coherent assuming the risks from inside and not sheltered behind “Mother Art”. I´d like to listen to expressions such as Now I´m going to publish my works in porno magazines or no more cybachrom in the art fair stalls,...”. That would be much honest. In other words, many of these artists try to poeticize their discourse by means of the perverse mechanism of replacing the ordinary circuits (mass media, shop windows, etc.,...) by the sacred room of the art grounds, i.e. galleries, fairs, and museums. There are artists who would never assume that their happenings are pieces of contemporary dance unsuitable for a theatrical circuit, or whose scenographies are perfect stage designs for a fair. My question is: would these artists show their works is such circuits without the label: this is art?. It’s ironical that a century after Duchamp´s ready made, what worries us is which object is worthy of the appreciation that the name Art entails, and for that, the iconography of the pain is used in many cases. Well, it’s also true that tragedy is within the raw material of the creation. Anyway, I think that the art crisis has to do mainly with its exhibition rather than its content. Too much attention focuses on the general public.

A.G.L.- With regard to the tragedy and except political issues: in your opinion, how is art going to react after S 11 in New York?

A.H.- We have attended a sort of live virginity loss which is affecting everybody and so artists as well. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I will be disappointed of any obvious reaction. We, artists who do not work with images from a reality are accused of escapism. I personally know what I feel as a citizen but nobody can oblige me to express my feelings of helplessness, perplexity or fury. At any rate, it’s difficult to compete in terms of impact with the reality and its spreading through the mass media. Buñuel said that it was an stupidity to provoke after Hiroshima bomb. Now, his statement possesses a special validity. I think that efficacy is like a virtue activated with a temporizer and thus I reserve my right to say what?, how?, where?, and when I want?. The problem is in the constraints. Few people is able to restrain themselves. We need to show everything we know and what we don’t know but overall we are unable to avoid communication, I think we should restrain ourselves in the use of materials, production, discourse, and communication. There is a moment when John Cage decides to stop composing till, in his own words, I found a better reason to compose than that of communication. We say we don’t communicate each other but I think there is an excess of communication. Perhaps its deficit doesn’t lie on the quantity but in the generosity to express our wishes and emotions. On the other hand, it is the high artistic pollution originated in Western countries what saturates the artistic production without paying attention to its consequences. There should be containers in the cities for recycling art materials.

A.G.L.- In any case, the communication factor adds an item appreciated by certain audience that the critics, so-called literary, support with theoretical arguments consecrated by the mass-media, thus, closing a circle that shows a new taste, from a supposed poetic objectivity.

A.H. –We have come to a point in which communication fills completely coexistence, it is also another artificial attitude because communicating means channeling and in this process it is inevitable to castrate impulses. Expressing is much natural. If you don’t intend to communicate, there is no place for regret; then, your work is not useful and thus nothing presses you while you’re going on your work. The vehement character of expression makes it more imperfect, less mass-produced, more amazing, and, consequently, more necessary. Its arrogant to believe that we are entirely the authors of the impulse that arrives to our work receiver.

A.G.L.- In spite of what you say, I notice a deep political concern looking at your notebooks that, though they contain sketches, present more and more political contents which are far away from your public production.....

A.H.- Sense of shame, contention, and violence are fundamental for me. Sense of shame to explode integrity, contention to be cured of obviousness, and violence to construct. In my opinion this position is political enough. When, for example, I paint a red oil painting on a red plastic, I think my discourse is quite clear. This is what really worries me. Gombrich stated: If art teaches us to pay attention to new visual combinations which are around, then art teaches us to watch....and for me that is a political vision. Personally I think that self-compassion only leads us to a disgraceful exhibitionism, to an elite pessimism which in turn results in interesting pieces of art –I hate this term used within the creation field. In my notebooks I’m rather automatic, that’s how these images are drawn. However, these aren’t sketches, at least, formally. Rather, buds of attitudes that will build their corresponding work. Looking at my notebooks, I was told that it seemed a contradiction to make political art in that private space. Nevertheless, I donut see those sketches in my works, I couldn’t stand such obvieties in my pictures, perhaps they fit better in a book, I’m not sure. As far as I’m concerned, debates on figurative-abstract or object art-conceptual-art belong to market affairs. How is that in the USA?

A.G.L.-In Europe, a great deal of such debate mainly focuses on the conquest of a fragile market. It ´s different in the States since the American Art concept is being reviewed. Exhibitions as that in the Withney Museum, you know, are shaking up a field with an enormous European background though the American market let the coexistence of different artistic trends. Now, with the incorporation of new historical references, the horizon is more complex and we’ll have to wait and see how the artistic community behaves. I agree with you that memory and history are overvalued because both are usually used as an alibi for speculative, economic, and conceptual transactions that justify almost everything. I think that such perversion is shared by both cultures and is even extending since it is effective for any power structure. By the way, I´d like to talk about something I perceive in your work and that I feel you worry at demonstrating. I mean a certain vital nomadism, a stateless position. I’m not sure if I’m going this too far.

A.H.- ...You’re touching on a vital subject for me. I still keep a fresh image in my memory that helps me to understand an stateless feeling I find difficult to escape from. I was five or six years old and lived with my family in an old timber building in a suburb in Paris. We were low-income immigrants and the only Spaniards in that block. I liked to spend the afternoons with an Algerian boxer who lived next to our room. His room was covered with other boxers´ photos and pin ups, and there always were four or five compatriots who used to visit him. Everybody spoke Arabic sat on the floor, smoking, having tea, laughing, arguing, and I used to spend the time rocked by that strange language I never could decipher and surrounded by that so alien atmosphere. I however felt so comfortable that sometimes I fell asleep and then this guy took me to my mother’s arms. I never knew what I particularly liked of that atmosphere but I realize I find outside places enormously attractive. I know it’s not a patriotic feeling but I get especially annoyed when I am too much linked to a group. I get the jitters when more than three persons say exactly the same with equal intensity. I have the sensation that it is dangerous or it’s a lie. Probably, it has to do with my denial to become accustomed to things and miss the astonishment that impregnates childhood, as Miguel Espinosa pointed out.

A.G.L.- That could explain your mobility though I think you’re very marked by some visual structures which give coherence to your work. Your transitions can be clearly noticed, overall, assessing the book you have just published.

A.H.- I’m not an artist of style. Perhaps, that is an impossibility. I’m deeply infidel to myself and my findings because I get bored quickly so that I have to shift. I used to have a dispersion complex that doesn’t bother me at all now. After all, we don’t behave in the same way so we have to accept how we are. After my book, which is a review of eighteen years, I observed, whether I like it or not, that I’m more coherent than I thought. Things are how they are and we can not be pending of making an interesting piece of art...

A.G.L.- In your last work, there is a formal process that turns your vehement vocation substantially cool and has, from my point of view, enriched your ways of expression without losing strength throughout your trajectory. I see that the combination of photolytes and brushed oils creates a trans-artificial atmosphere, as if you had decided to integrate within the nature context a steady tolerance towards previously unacceptable expressions.

A.H.- My arrival to these materials results, on the one hand, from the desire to remark the components involved in the process. These plastics used in printing to sensitize the offset sheets are so beautiful which have impacted me much more than any printed paper so that I wanted to bring them to light, dignify their texture. I wanted them to coexist equally with such a noble substance as the oil painting unstrongly applied, aiming at a more armonic interrogation. On the other, It was the fascination of the landscape which has been introducing bit by bit on my drawing desk. When I was thinking over working on it, one of the nearest piece I feel, I found the difficulty to repeat it. Furthermore, models and sketches were not quite helpful. Thus, I finally photographed and filmed that image in high-size photolytes. Then I came across one of the highest conflict: picture depending on the image. It was a tempting challenge to reverse the process: create an evocative atmosphere using, as basic material, an image deprived of any information and also serving as a support of a visual stimulus without allowing any narration ......I like the result!

A.G.L.- Besides, there is one element that provokes an active attitude and certain violence in the spectator, I mean the brightness and its difficulty. I´d like to know how do you assume such a risk as I notice you defend it as a part of your work.

A.H.- There is always something aggressive in the fact of being reflected in one work, as if trying to deviate our mind to another field we couln´t manage to avoid ourselves. At the beginning I doubted about it but I realized I was dishonest because that was the nature of the material, and if I were using it I had to assume its character. Later on, I got into the habit of my reflection and next I learnt to contemplate my picture without noticing my presence, in the same way we observe a landscape without perceiving an electricity pole in front of us. Perception is a subjective attitude. On the other hand, it was the first time I passed from a work of concave into a convex atmosphere one and I didn’t want to deprive myself of that adventure.

A.G.L.- There is however a clear tension we could call beauty though this is a voluptuous term. Your pictures´ atmosphere is indebted of romanticism that leads them to the anachronism we are talking about. I think they are very noble works from a human point of view. They are experiences instead of spaces.

A.H.- I like you talking about beauty which is a dreadful and mutable word scarcely used constructively. The metamorphosis such term implies occurs when the distance between observed object and observer changes. From a distance, pictures always show such a stupid cleanliness that turns them into images, an image is the representation of something which is not present so that it’s virtual. That is thus a conforting beauty, a beauty for inhabitants. As we approach, the work turns imperfect and dirty, which only reflexes itself together with the artist’s work process. The result is a cracked beauty, something we have to habituate, a beauty for survivors, for nomads. Non we are not in front of some data or pieces of information but facing an apprenticeship. Those are the works I wish to accomplish.

A.G.L.-The term beauty presupposes an empirical quality. I´d like to know whether you’re interested in the truth.

A.H. I think that the truth is a lie with reputation and the lie is a truth which has fallen into disgrace.

The afternoon has turned into darkness, the air is calmer, and Madrid has again that crooked atmosphere which gets us out of the conversation towards the street.


Interview for the 2001 exhibition "El paisaje privado"