Paisatge Costa Brava (Carretera de Castelló d'Empúries a la Bisbal), 1982 (2012)
Beaches full of cars, roadside pottery shops, cemeteries surrounded by apartment blocks, abandoned buildings... When Joan Rabascall photographed the north of the Costa Brava in the summer of 1982, the real landscape didn’t quite gel with the idyllic image that postcards and tour operators were peddling. Conceived as a reflection on the idea of landscape, Rabascall’s series Paisatge Costa Brava (Costa Brava Landscape) avoids the usual, clichéd point of view, but rather directs the gaze beyond the picture frame. By printing the word ‘Landscape’ in six languages on the image, as if it were an actual postcard, the artist directly confronts popular customs and mass culture: the idyllic construction made by pictorial landscaping with the devastating consequences of mass tourism.
Technical details
- Original title:
- Paisatge Costa Brava (Carretera de Castelló d'Empúries a la Bisbal)
- Registration number:
- 5272
- Artist:
- Rabascall, Joan
- Date created:
- 1982 (2012)
- Date acquired:
- 2015
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium
- Object type:
- Photograph
- Media:
- Inkjet print on paper
- Dimensions:
- 65 x 92.5 x 2.5 cm (height x width x depth)
- Credits:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium. Gift of the artist
- Copyright:
- © Joan Rabascall, VEGAP, Barcelona
- It has accessibility resources:
- No
The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.
For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.
If you need a high resolution image of the work, you must submit an image loan request.
