| Description |
A Theatre Without Theatre examines the relationships and interchanges between the theatre and the visual arts during the 20th century. Starting out from the theories expounded by Vsevolod Meyerhold, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett and Tadeusz Kantor, among others, which profoundly transformed the classic theatre space, and their correspondence with historic avant-garde movements (Futurism, Dadaism and Constructivism), a story is structured that finds its point of inflection in the inventive fervour of the nineteen-sixties. This was a time in which numerous contrasts were formulated between the two disciplines that continued up to the late eighties. The exhibition presents a critical reading of the consequences of these contributions to art by highlighting paradigmatic moments and authors through itineraries that reconstruct a complex fabric going beyond the linear, chronological reading; from Hugo Ball and Dadaism to Mike Kelley, from Oskar Schlemmer to Dan Graham, from Minimalism to the post-Minimalist generations of artists such as Bruce Nauman and James Coleman.
Reflection on the influences of theatrical language in art is today revealed as an essential tool with which to interpret a wide range of artistic proposals and attitudes. In this sense, the works presented in the exhibition analyse the different degrees of evolution in the forms of relationship between actor and spectator, their role interchanges and spatial negotiations, the presence of narrative and thus of orality, and revision of the document statute. The exhibition reflects the constant mutual interaction between popular expressions and those originating in high culture, from cabaret to opera, rock and roll to dance, street theatre to performance and the carnival parade to ritual.
As the 20th century seems to have constructed a visual culture dominated by the paradigm of film, an appeal for the theatre to take centre stage may seem anachronistic. But it is the theatre, considered as a craft, which offers us a new prism through which to approach a rereading of the history of recent art.
Featuring works by artists and theoreticians including: Carl Andre, Antonin Artaud. Hugo Ball. Samuel Beckett, George Brecht, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Tadeusz Cantor, James Coleman, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Robert Filliou, Michael Fried, Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Dan Graham, Donald Judd, Mike Kelley, Marinetti, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Antoni Miralda, Robert Morris. Juan Munoz. Bruce Naumann. Tony Oursler. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Oskar Schlemmer. Isidoro Valcarcel Medina, Ben Vautier. |