What is the most vandalized work of art in Barcelona? Difficult to know, there are no statistics but there are municipal conservation and restoration brigades that move around the city trying to erase the traces left by uncivilized graffiti on municipally owned public art; and teams of museum restorers who do the same with the pieces in their collections that they have for the good of exhibiting in squares and streets of Barcelona for everyone to enjoy.
Y In this unpleasant ‘ranking’ of the sculpture most times cleaned, therefore, most times attacked, ‘The wave’, the piece that Jorge Oteiza donated in 1998 to Macba, occupies a prominent position competing with el ‘Homage to Emili Vendrell’, un ensemble built in memory of the street musician Joaquim Costa and signed by Rafael Solanic, Beth Galí and Rosa Maria Clotet, and with ‘The Mur’ that Richard Serra created in the 80s for the Plaza de la Palmera in La Verneda.
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The town hall is in charge of cleaning the last two, but the Oteiza piece is the responsibility of the museum, which owns the work. The Macba and ‘La ola’ get up in one of the black spots of vandalism in Barcelona: the Plaza de los Àngels, so the aggression against the sculpture is constant, so much so that the restoration team from the center check daily and its regular cleaning is already part of one of the items of the conservation department. The almost three tons (2,758 kilos) of aluminum and black paint have a protection, an anti-graffiti varnish, but its properties disappear faster than usual because the sculpture has to be cleaned more than normal.
€21,000
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Among 2019 and 2020 He received a thorough restoration which meant removing it from the public space to return it to the workshop where it was forged, in Parets del Vallès. She had the protective coating removed, repainted and reprimed with the anti-graffiti varnish. An operation that Before, it was done every once in a while, but the museum assumes that it will have to be done “every two years.” And this means an expense of 21,900 euros plus complicated logistics: ”It involves dismantling it and transporting it in a truck-crane and, in addition, it involves an escort, cutting streets, permits from the Urban Guard…”, they explain from the center.
The tag, a nightmare
Oteiza’s is not the only work that Macba exhibits in public space, it also exhibits the mural ‘Barcelona, Mural G-333’ by Eduardo Chillida and ‘All together we can stop AIDS’ by Keith Haring, but these two have fewer attacks than ‘La ola’. The first by height, the spray vandals do not arrive, although the walls that surround it are disgusting; the second out of respect. Haring was a graffiti artist so those who do street murals respect her. “If a graffiti has ever appeared, it has been a tag & rdquor ;, they point out from the museum. And it is that those who are dedicated to the tags (signatures) are a bad dream. They don’t respect anything. “The graffiti artist knows very well where he does the graffiti, the problem is those who make tags, who paint them anywhere & rdquor ;, it states Pedro Rovira, restorer of the Center de Restauració de Béns Mobles, the body of the Generalitat that supervises how the pieces that enjoy patrimonial protection are repaired.