This Spanish museum full of forbidden art shows criticism, hypocrisy and kitsch

Visitors shuffle uneasily through the halls. „Es muy vulgar”, whispers an older lady as she stares at a large screen. It shows a video of a woman suggestively putting a banana in her mouth, followed by a scene in which a blob of white stuff drips from her lips.

It is the controversial work Consumer Art from 1973 by the Polish artist Natalia LL. The creator wanted to use her work to ridicule the communist system, in which food such as bananas was very difficult to obtain due to major shortages. In 2019, almost fifty years later, her work was removed by the National Museum in Warsaw. According to the director, many complaints were received and that the artwork would “harm young people”. Consumer Art is one of the many works on display in the recently opened Museu de l’Art Prohibit in Barcelona, ​​which claims to be the first museum in the world exclusively dedicated to prohibited art – the House of Representatives in The Hague had some time after 2008 a ‘Free Thinkers’ Space’, an initiative by artist Jonas Staal.

“People and societies change,” explains Rosa Rodrigo, director of the museum. She left her dream job at the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid and signed for the Museu de l’Art prohibit. “Something that was possible in the 1970s without resistance is now hardly accepted. I think that is because we are now becoming more and more conservative and our norms and values ​​have changed.”

This is reflected in the collection of more than two hundred international works of art that have led to controversy, discussion or protest in recent decades. Next to the painting Con flores a María by Charo Corrales (2019), a portrait of a masturbating Saint María, and La Revolucion (2014) by Fabián Cháirez, a portrait of a naked Mexican general on a white horse with an erection, images and sound fragments are projected of angry crowds who attempted to remove those works of art from museums in Mexico and Spain.

“You can admire the work of art, but also see the shadow that the work cast when it was exhibited,” Rodrigo nods to a punching bag in the shape of a woman’s torso, an artwork by Zoya Falkova from Kazakhstan that aims to address gender violence. “In this museum, the story behind the works of art is more important than the works themselves,” says Rodrigo.

Prayer rug and gold pumps

The idea for the museum arose in 2018 from a hobby of businessman and journalist Tatxo Benet that got out of hand. He started his private collection with the work Presos políticos en la España contemporánea (2018) by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra. His 24 portraits of Catalan prisoners were removed from an exhibition at the ARCO art fair in Madrid because of the use of the term ‘political prisoners’.

Not long afterwards, Benet bought the work Silence rouge et bleu of the Algerian-Russian Zoulikha Bouabdellah. With the thirty blue-red Islamic prayer rugs topped with gold pumps, she wanted to bring two ‘incompatible worlds’ together. The artwork was removed from an exhibition in the French municipality of Clichy in 2015, for fear of reactions from the Muslim community. This happened shortly after the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

“This museum actually came about unintentionally,” says Rosa Rodrigo, “Tatxo became intrigued by controversies surrounding censorship, so he looked for other works to expand his collection.”

He turned his attention to the cement work La bestia y el soberano by Ines Doujak. Spanish King Juan Carlos I sits naked on his hands and knees on a wheelbarrow with the Bolivian trade union leader and feminist Domitila Barrios and a German shepherd on his back. Symbolism, physical instability, political criticism and kitsch come together in this work.

Current political developments in Spain and the poor timing of the exhibition at the Macba in Barcelona ultimately led to Doujak’s work being temporarily removed. Juan Carlos I recently stepped down as king and the Catalan independence movement grew.

“I think the queen would open the exhibition. When the museum took a closer look at the works of art a few days before the opening, director Bartomeu Marí decided to remove Juan Carlos I’s cement work. Out of fear.” Mari’s decision caused internal arguments with, among others, the curators. The scandal ultimately destroyed the director.

Freedom

Rodrigo stares at a wall with drawings made by prisoners held at the American base Guantánamo Bay. The Statue of Liberty drowning, only the torch and crown are visible. In another drawing, the Statue of Liberty’s mouth is gagged. “To me this is pure censorship.” The works were exhibited in New York in 2017, but that did not go down well with Republicans and victims of the attacks on September 11, 2001. “There were senators who did not understand how the prisoners had been given the right to exhibit artistic work.” The exhibition continued, but the US government determined that from then on the art of a Guantánamo prisoner must be destroyed upon release. “Well, it is the land of the free,” she sighs.

On the ground floor of the museum there is a Coca-Cola refrigerator showing the Spanish dictator Franco, dressed in a military uniform and aviator sunglasses. Maker Eugenio Merino wanted to show that although Franco is dead, his thought still lives on in Spanish society and is within reach. “Just like a cool can of Coke.” The Franco Foundation took Merino to court, but although the court twice ruled that the artwork was not punishable, Merino opted for self-censorship. “Because the Franco Foundation is looking for attention they don’t deserve.” The chilled Franco stares at the naked hanging corpse of Saddam Hussein in a tank full of gas made by the Czech David Černý.

The art in Museu de l’Art Prohibit causes discomfort and shocks, but also shows that a work of art can provoke different reactions in different places in the world. Take, for example, the coastal work of a woman’s torso as a punching bag. Rodrigo: “What we consider acceptable art here is offensive elsewhere.”

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