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Museum of Forbidden Art has opened in Barcelona

In the vibrant heart of Barcelona, Spain, a new kind of museum has emerged.

As originally envisioned by Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly actually exists as two silent, fragmentary configurations comprising footage shot on Super 8mm film in three locations (Mexico, 1986; New York City, 1986 – 87; San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1987): 1) a 13-minute version opening with a title card and closing with an end title.....

A Fire in My Belly is one of the most notorious and least understood films in contemporary art. Notorious because of its removal, in 2010, from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery after the Catholic League and conservative members of the House of Representatives complained that an 11-second scene depicting ants crawling on a crucifix amounted to anti-Christian hate speech. Misunderstood because the cut produced for that exhibition (“Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”) was re-edited from disassembled footage from a work in progress that Wojnarowicz never completed or presented during his lifetime. Rather, the artist edited and intercut the disassembled footage for use in Rosa von Praunheim’s 1990 documentary, Silence = Death. Most viewers now equate Wojnarowicz’s film with the 1990 or 2010 excerpts and with AIDS activism in general (the 1990 version is associated with Diamanda Galas’s “This is the Law of the Plague”; the 4-minute edit shown in 2010 added a soundtrack from a June, 1989 ACT-UP demonstration).

The censored or attacked works by artists such as Picasso, Ai WeiWei, Goya, Banksy or Klimt are on public display in a new museum in Barcelona, the Museum of Forbidden Art, which opened last Thursday, October 26th.

The museum's objective is to “address censorship in art from different perspectives: commercial, religious, political censorship, self-censorship itself”, according to information about the project sent to the press.

The collection on display at the Museum of Forbidden Art includes several works by the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, the American artist Andy Warhol and the artist Banksy.

One of the audiovisual works is “A Fire in My Belly”, from 1986-87, by David Wojnarowicz, which the National Portrait Gallery in Washington removed after criticism from Catholic institutions and conservative politicians.

Among the artists is also represented the North American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, in Porto, exhibited in 2018, in a retrospective with close to 180 photographs, and which grew in controversy until the dismissal of the then director of the museum and exhibition curator, João Ribas, replicating the controversy of the artist's previous exhibitions, such as “The Perfect Moment”, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, in 1989.

The sculpture features “Not dressed for conquering”, by Austrian Ines Doujak, who, for reproducing the sodomization of a person who looks like the king emeritus of Spain, Juan Carlos de Borbón, was involved in controversy when it was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, in 2015. The museum's management initially wanted to remove the work, which led to his dismissal.

Among the oldest works in the collection of the new Museum of Forbidden Art are several by the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, such as “Los Caprichos” (1797-1799), a series of engravings that are a satire on society at the time, especially on members of the nobility and clergy.

The museum initiative is from Catalan businessman Josep Maria Benet (known as Tatxo Benet), who in 2018 started this collection with the purchase of the work “Political prisoners in contemporary Spain”, by Santiago Segura.

This work, a set of 24 'pixelated' photographs of Catalan independence activists then in prison, among other people, was removed that year from the international contemporary art fair ARCOmadrid, at the request of IFEMA — Feira de Madrid, which organizes the event and which more later apologized for the decision

The removal of the work — which is on loan to the Lleida Museum, in Catalonia, and will therefore not be on display at the inauguration of the new museum in Barcelona — marked that year's ARCOmadrid, with accusations of censorship of the organization.

The collection of the Museum of Prohibited Art currently includes more than 200 works that “have been censored, prohibited or denounced for political, social or religious reasons”, and includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, engravings and audiovisual pieces, according to the presentation text published on the museum’s website.

Most of these works were created in the second half of the 20th and 21st centuries, but there are also artists from the 17th and 19th centuries in the collection.

The museum will operate in the Casa Garriga Nogués building, a modernist construction from the beginning of the 20th century, and will have 2,000 square meters of exhibition space, “in a route that evokes both the scandalous character of the collection” and “its more ironic side and reflective, biting and liberating, critical and empowering”, according to the project's website.

Among the 200 works that businessman Tatxo Benet has brought together in this collection of censored, banned or attacked works, and which will be at the Museum of Forbidden Art, is, for example, “Filippo Strozzi in LEGO”, from 2016, by the Chinese artist Ai WeiWei.

The Lego company refused to sell the pieces to the artist for the creation of the work, fearing their use for political purposes, at a time when it had an expansion plan that included China.

With works that were censored or considered controversial for political, social or religious reasons, such as the iconic Christ crucified on an air force plane by the Argentine artist Leon Ferrari either a sculpture of Saddam Hussein tied uphas just been inaugurated in the city of Barcelona a Museum of Forbidden Art that brings together 42 pieces arising from the collection of a Catalan journalist and businessman who has been collecting uncomfortable or controversial art for five years.

Tatxo Benet He began to collect works that the art system or society considered inappropriate: because they were controversial, because they were violent, because they were discriminatory, obscene, offensive, harmful or scrupulous. Thus, the businessman gradually acquired assets that today make up 200 pieces, of which 42 are exhibited in the brand new museum.

The Museum of Forbidden Art brings together works from that collection and loans. There are Goya, Klimt, Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei -artists whose productions have sometimes had a “but” for the readings they evoked- but also pieces that captured the attention of the public and the press, such as the statue of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco stuffed in a refrigeratorfor which its author, Eugenio Merinowas reported, or the Christ submerged in urine by American artist Andrés Serrano.

The works that can be seen cover a wide period of art history, from the 18th century to the present, which reveals that censorship of art has had echoes throughout the centuries and is not a contemporary phenomenon.

The Argentina It is also represented in the Catalan museum: by the brilliant and provocative León Ferrari, the collection includes a plate of the first letter to the Pope (2008), a piece from the series “Ideas for hells” and the republished work “Civilization Western and Christian”, in which Christ is depicted crucified on a US Air Force plane. With that piece, Ferrari denounced in 1965 his shock due to the Vietnam War and its exhibition generated controversy among religious sectors.

Tatxo Benet with "Shark" by Czech artist David Cerny

León Ferrari and Marta Minujín

"McJesus" (2015) by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen. JOËL CODINA/MUSEUM OF FORBIDDEN ART

Visitors look at "Shark" by Czech artist David Cerny,

photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP)

Eugenio Merino and his work "Always Franco"

by WION

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