Human rights by Antoni Tàpies
Acrylic and surface texturing on corrugated cardboard
Height: 3 m
Donated by the Catalan artist as a model for a poster in 1989
With: Jean Frémon, President and Director General of Galerie Lelong (Paris and New York), expert on the work of Antoni Tàpies
Sound archive: Antoni Tàpies
Authors: Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger, Anne Kropotkine
To find out more:
Jean Frémon, Georges Raillard, Pere Gimferrer, Deborah Wye, Antoni Tàpies, Tàpies ou la poétique de la matière, éditions Cercle d’Art, 2001
Antoni Tàpies, Manuel Borja-Villel, Antoni Tàpies, la pratique de l’art, Bozar, 2023
Transcription
Opening titles: L'Atelier de l'Europe, discovering the Council of Europe’s art collection.
Human rights by Antoni Tàpies. Acrylic and surface texturing on corrugated cardboard, donated by the Catalan artist as a model for a poster in 1989. Displayed in the European Court of Human Rights. With Jean Frémon and, from the archives of the INA, the voice of Antoni Tàpies.
Jean Frémon: It's a rather effective work graphically speaking, on a cardboard background, with a mainly black brush drawing, and then engraved, scratched marks on the cardboard. And then a text that reads “Human Rights” in Catalan. In a way, Tàpies is connected to the school of art that developed in Italy known as Arte Povera. He always liked working with humble materials, rags, cardboard, stained paper, things like that. It’s his speciality, his trademark as it were.
Sound archives - Antoni Tàpies: You have to choose a special cardboard and cut it up in a certain way - it looks improvised but it’s actually carefully thought out. If I make a fold in the cardboard, it tears very easily and it immediately becomes something dramatic. In other words, working with cardboard lets you say some quite serious, dramatic things, more so than with softer or more supple materials.
Jean Frémon: Tàpies became famous in the early 1950s for producing paintings that depicted walls.
Sound archives - Antoni Tàpies: The thing that really shook me was discovering one day that the paintings were becoming a wall. It really surprised me because I saw myself there. You know that "tàpies" in Catalan means “walls”. In other words, other ideas could be derived from the idea of the wall, ideas that chimed very neatly with my intentions at the time. One of these ideas was graffiti. Communication, but of a slightly provocative kind. In a way, revolutionary, as is happening on the walls of every city.
Jean Frémon: In particular the walls of his native Barcelona, the old walls that are awash with both graffiti and traces of the civil war. Cardboard can be smeared and scratched. Broadly speaking, it’s the equivalent of walls.
Sound archives - Antoni Tàpies: I know that in my paintings there are signs or symbols that are sometimes traditional. But they occurred to me in a very spontaneous way, without my ever examining the usual theoretical explanations.
Jean Frémon: One of the recurring motifs in this work, but also in Tàpies's work as a whole, is the cross. The cross has many meanings. The cross recalls the T in his name. I think of this because his presence is felt in the work. It's an abstract way of signing. The cross is very often a reference to the T in his name, which is also the first letter of his wife's name, Teresa.
Sound archives - Antoni Tàpies: There are probably other explanations that are likewise rooted in the circumstances of the time. In the early days of Francoism, the cross and religion featured prominently, as did the processions during holy weeks. The whole of Spain was strewn with crosses, all the martyrs of the war. The image of the cross was something that came readily to mind.
Jean Frémon: There are different types of crosses. Such as the X, for example. Obviously, it’s not the cross of religion, nor the T, but they are signs of a vocabulary which the painter uses to express himself.
Sound archives - Antoni Tàpies: Isn't the cross synonymous with the struggle between what are in reality two opposing forces that intersect at one point? Basically, the cross is also a dynamic. It's not a completely static thing. The cross is very important, not just in my painting, but in the work of many 20th century artists, enormously so in fact. I went through the list and saw that there are huge numbers of them.
Jean Frémon: Tàpies, who was a staunch atheist, never sought to explore religious themes. And this cross evokes the history of painting in which the crucifixion plays an essential role. For example, too, the foot there, pointing downwards, is one where the body is rising towards heaven. There's even the little cross at that point on the foot. This is where, on the foot of Christ, the stigmata appeared, the mark left by the nail. As well as the feet, there are two hearts, side by side. This is another symbol he used quite often to show a form of empathy and solidarity. It's significant that he chose to use two hearts with the idea of human rights. He very often depicts the human body in the form of fragments, like this, a nose, a mouth, an ear, like elements of an abstract vocabulary. The words “Human Rights” are written in Catalan. That's significant, too. He was Catalan, he spoke Catalan, and although Catalan is widely spoken today, in Franco's time, speaking Catalan was forbidden. It was suppressed. And so to express yourself openly in Catalan in a work of art was in itself an act of protest, if not a crime in one’s own country, in those days at any rate. Well, not at the time the work was produced. But in the 1950s and 60s, it was still difficult. Actions like that could land you in prison.
Sound archives - Antoni Tàpies: They couldn't kill the Catalan soul. Franco did everything he could to extinguish the Catalan language. But it backfired and, if anything, Catalan flourished, more so than before.
Jean Frémon: He was someone who was truly politically committed, championing republican ideals, which are quite developed in Catalonia, more so than in the rest of the country. He was someone who was not afraid to take a public stand. For example, until Franco's death, he refused to exhibit in Madrid. At the end of Franco's reign, the government tried to rally artists to its cause. He always refused, right up until Franco's death, and he always defended his humanist views. And the idea of producing a work for human rights was totally in line with the things he always championed.
Closing credits: That was Human Rights by Antoni Tàpies, a Council of Europe podcast, created by Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger and Anne Kropotkine, with Jean Frémon and, from the archives of the INA, the voice of Antoni Tàpies. Other episodes are available on the Council of Europe website.
