Collectable

DISCOMFORT shows us the way

The Collectables of the Year Thirty

Atomic Kiss, by Joan Rabascall, is an emblematic work in the MACBA Collection that featured in the exhibition The World Goes Pop at Tate Modern, London, in 2015. Produced in 1968, the year of student revolts from Berkeley to Berlin, via Paris, this atomic kiss stands in clear opposition to the dangers of a possible nuclear war. As Claudia Arbulú, citing Paul Virilio, commented in her study of Catalan artists in Paris: ‘The purpose of these works is not to cause fear; you have to show the writing of disaster. We are illiterate when it comes to catastrophe. Legibility is needed to try to understand.’ To superimpose two images as deeply ingrained in the Western social imaginary as the stroke of a red lipstick and an atomic mushroom cloud says something about societies that hide a massively destructive military potential behind a glamorous façade. At the same time, the technique of collage on canvas combining photographic emulsion and acrylic paint questions the very essence of image-making and the media. Yet it is discomfort that shows us the way: legibility is needed to try to understand.