Spain
Film directors: Pedro Almodóvar - Alejandro Amenábar - Fernando Arrabal - Luis Buñuel - Jess Franco - José Ramón Larraz
Actresses: Soledad Miranda - Lina Romay
Artists: Luis Buñuel - Manu Chao - Salvador Dalí - La Fura Dels Baus - Goya
Writers: Cervantes
Architects: Antoni Gaudí
See also: South America
Las Nenas del mini-mini (1969) - Germán Lorente
Guggenheim museum, Bilbao, Spain by Frank Gehry
Culture of Spain
The culture of Spain has roots in Iberian and Latin influences, Catholicism, Moorish Islam, tension between the centralized Castilian state and its regions, and its minority peoples. In addition, the history of the nation and its Mediterranean climate and geography have played strong roles in shaping its culture. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Spain [Jun 2005]
Spanish Surrealism
When considering Spanish Surrealism, André Breton’s Freudian-based models of automatism and subconscious manifestations predominantly occupy the majority of the attention given. While these frameworks are at least partially relevant within the scope of the early twentieth-century poetry and art, other models that have been overlooked deserve due attention. Namely, the philosophical approximations concerning informe (formlessness), “the excremental,” and “the ethnographic” as developed by the French thinker Georges Bataille–a renegade surrealist–are of great importance and need elucidation. Even though critics such as Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Denis Hollier, and Hal Foster have elaborated on these Bataillean motifs in their examination of contemporary art, the influence of these theories in early twentieth-century Spain has not been extensively examined. The contention here is that Bataille’s ideas of the twenties and thirties amplify our understanding of the literature of the poets of the literary Generation of 1927 in Spain, many of them so-called surrealists. In Michael Richardson’s words, “Bataille’s understanding concentrates on elements [like ethnography and informe] within surrealism that few critics have recognized, and thus gives us a new perspective on what surrealism may mean”.
... This dialogue [between France and Spain] is evident when considering Hispanic avant-gardists such as Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Alejo Carpentier, and others, who continually cross borders and establish a correspondence between the Parisian, Hispanic, and Catalan artistic ambiences. Of particular interest here is a detailed examination of this rethinking of the surreal (in Bataillean terms) in one of the most disputed works of the period on the Spanish front: Federico García Lorca’s 1929 collection of poems Poeta en Nueva York. --David. F Richter via http://www.people.vanderbilt.edu/~david.f.richter/Informeing%20Lorca2.pdf
Erotismo [...]
Procedente del dios griego Eros, dios del amor, el erotismo se ocupa de todo lo relacionado con las relaciones sexuales y no simplemente con el acto físico sino también con todas sus proyecciones. El erotismo puede verse en combinación con la líbido, término más usado por el psicoanálisis de tipo freudiano.
El erotismo trata de todo aquéllo relacionado con el sexo y con el amor. El adjetivo erótico nos indica que el tema a tratar está relacionado con el sexo dependiendo del sustantivo al que califica. Tenemos, por ejemplo, la pintura erótica o la moda erótica.
La palabra más usada comúnmente y procedente del inglés es "sexy" que vendría a reflejar el interés erótico de una persona o de un objeto.
En el mundo de los objetos, el erotismo puede confundirse con el fetichismo que es la derivación, hacia objetos o partes del cuerpo, de la líbido; de tal manera que la vista o una simple imagen real o mental de esa parte del cuerpo provoque en el fetichista un deseo sexual. --http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotismo [May 2005]
Sonar Festival
Sonar is one of the largest festivals of electronic music in Europe. Aside from the U.S.'s "Burning Man" Festival that occurs in August, it''s one of the main places that international dj culture can explore the outter limits of mix culture. But that's an understatement. To put it bluntly: it's THE festival that determines the taste and style of the currents of electronic that flow through the world's underground and avant-garde music in the early 21st century. As such, it brings together the major themes and issues that undergird digital media, sound art, and contemporary aesthetics - it's a perfect reflection of what's going on in the rapidly changing world of digital culture. Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid, one of 21C Magazine's editors, was involved with the production of the catalog that went with the festival, and we have the pleasure to reproduce a remix of one of the main essays that went with the text that accompanied Sonar. The people who run the festival asked Paul D. Miller to write a playful homage to this years Sonar as the main catalog essay for the book that accompanied the show, and here's a revised and expanded version of his text with images. "Sonartext" is an intimate view of the mentality that accompanies the idea of a modern avant-garde festival - it's a manifesto statement about the digital NOW. --Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal KidThe Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus') (1647-51) - Diego Velázquez
The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus') (1647-51) - Diego Velázquez
The painting is unique for being the only surviving female nude by Velázquez, and one of only two such paintings in all of 17th-century Spanish art, which was often censored by the Spanish Inquisition. It was revolutionary for its depiction of the nude female form with its back facing the viewer. The composition has only three main colours: red, white and grey, which include the pigment of Venus's skin. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rokeby_Venus [Jan 2006]
Spanish Popular Cinema (2004) - Antonio Lazaro Reboll (Editor), Andrew Willis (Editor)
Spanish Popular Cinema (2004) - Antonio Lazaro Reboll (Editor), Andrew Willis (Editor) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Book Description
This is the first collection in English to focus exclusively on the various forms of popular film produced in Spain and to acknowledge the variety, range and depth of Spanish cinema. Contributors from across Hispanic, media and cultural studies explore a range of genres, from the musicals of the 1930s and 1940s to contemporary horror movies, historical epics of the 1940s and 1950s and contemporary representations of the Spanish Civil War. The book includes reappraisals of key popular directors such as Luis Garcia Berlanga and Antonio Mercero as well as critical analyses of celebrated stars like Marisol. It provides innovative consideration of the promotion and reception of horror in the 1960s, recollections of cinema-going in Madrid, and reflections on successful recent works such as Abre los Ojos and Solas.
About the Author
Antonio Lázaro Reboll is Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Kent.
Andrew Willis is Senior Lecturer in Media and Performance at the University of Salford. [Nov 2005]
Despotic Bodies and Transgressive Bodies: Spanish Culture from Francisco Franco to Jesus Franco (2002) - Tatjana Pavlovic
Despotic Bodies and Transgressive Bodies: Spanish Culture from Francisco Franco to Jesus Franco (2002) - Tatjana Pavlovic [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From the Publisher
Focusing on Spanish culture and society in the second half of the twentieth century, Despotic Bodies and Transgressive Bodies traverses a variety of disciplines: literature, film studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, and history, to examine crucial moments of cultural transition. Beginning with an analysis of the period of autarky—Spain's economic, cultural, and ideological isolation under Francisco Franco's regime—Pavlovic then explores the tumultuous passage to capitalism in the late 1950s and 1960s. She follows this by revisiting the complex political situation following Franco's death and points out the difficulties in Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy. Combining a strong theoretical background with a detailed study of marginalized texts (La fiel infantería), genres (the Spanish comedy known as the comedia sexy celtibérica), and film directors (Jesús Franco), Pavlovic reveals the construction of Spanish national identity through years of cultural tensions.
See also: Spain - Jess Franco - transgessive - body
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