Abstract life in the 70s.
Where were you in 1976? I was in Lincolnshire (that’s in England, where the finest Cathedral in the world happens to be). It was hot. There were ladybirds that summer. Lots of them. I don’t know if I really remember them, or if it’s a cultural memory that’s been implanted in my brain. I remember three houses we lived in, and boarding school. So I do remember bits of the end of the 70s, though not much. I have a terrible memory. I like it that way. I remember listening to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “The Best of the Carpenters”. I remember coming home from school one day to find out that my grandfather had died. In my house. I remember listening to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto on my brother’s plastic mono record player. I remember frilly fronted shirts and bow ties. I remember a huge jumper that my mother knitted for me, with wide, wide stripes of colours, and the embarrassment I wore with it on a school trip. I remember the mug we all got to commemorate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. And I remember Janet Allison, and the box of Matchmakers I gave her for Christmas that year. And the tiger lillies I gave her, when we met again three years later.
The truth is, I prefer the future. I prefer to be planning, looking forward to something special. Because life can always be better. Life should always be better. And the only way that is going to happen is if you make it so. Which preamble takes me to this week’s show, at Galería Atelier. Adrià Lanuza’s new paintings are not new at all. They come from his thirties, that period of time I am having so much difficulty remembering. Now 75, he has dusted off some acrylic paintings that have been hidden away for all my adult life. He has framed them, and proudly displayed them and challenged us to believe in them, to see in them something new, or something old, or something timeless.
These abstract paintings are just that. Abstractions from my life in the 1970s. They are the iridescent veined wing of a ladybird. They are the over-exuberant bow-tie of a concert violinist. They are the bony limbs of my grandfather. They are flowers bursting with promise. There are buttresses, and flying buttresses. If you want, there are lions and unicorns and English roses. There is time and there is eternity. There is implosion and explosion. There is stained glass and blood stain. There is Jackson Browne, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
The artist will have other memories, of course. He will have his own interpretation of his work. And maybe over time his perception has changed. Maybe he has forgotten what he was thinking, what he believed, who he even was when he made these works. Perhaps they remind him of metamorphosis. Perhaps for Lanuza there is authoritarianism and democratic freedom. There is the eruption of openness and change.
But there is another reading too. Your reading. What were you doing in the 1970s? Were you even born? What cultural memory has been laid upon you? What does the 70s mean to you? Because these paintings are inclusive, comprehensive, ecumenical. Like all great art they allow you to bring your life, your memories, your hopes and plans. And to sit comfortably with them, reconciled. Art is art. Make it your art. Life is life. Make it your life.
