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For secondary education and high school students

This project starts with material designed for use in the classroom before visiting the Museum. It contains the basis for initiating a debate that will then continue in the museum, accompanied by theart on display.

The objective of this project is to awaken and encourage an interest in art and society in the students with reference to diverse subjects. Using this material, the students will be able to approach the works of art competently, passing from a historical and culturalperspective to an aesthetic and cognitive understanding based on a direct and personal confrontation between the artwork and the observer.

'Between documentary and the poetic gesture' is the first of aseries of texts that provide different perspectives on the world of art and their historical context with reference to the MACBA Collection.

Between documentary and the poetic gesture

These two concepts will help us to analyse the changes that art underwent following the end of the Second World War. Within the desolate post-war environment, art searches for a possible escape or a response to the anguish that characterised the period, either through a need to bear witness (documentary) or as a means of escape or detachment from reality (poetic gesture). Documentary allowsa witness to reality by generating an archive, either textual (written document) or visual (photographic, cinema),which explores a fragment of individual or collective memory.

We study the work of artists likeJoan Colom, Roberto Rosellini and Robert Frank, which reflect a city in ruins, poverty and a precarious existence through an emotional and humanistic prism. On the other hand, another group of artists opted for a deliberate distancing from reality and a more poetic approach, involving the search for new solutions on the margins of representation of reality. In this sense, anger, pessimism and the need for change become apparent in the work of artists like AntoniTàpies, Henri Michaux, Manuel Millares, Lucio Fontana and Jean Dubuffet, who reflect a situation of crisis and a need to escape through an intimate expression of interior worlds.

Preparatory work in the classroom

The project is divided into two stages: the first takes place in the classroom with the help of an interactive CD-Rom provided by the MACBA for each teacher to use according to the curricular needs of each group. This initial work session provides a specific itinerary through the works of the MACBA Collection, establishing a frameworkfor debate.

Museum Visit

During the subsequent visit to the Museum, young people will have an opportunity to come into direct contact with the works. The current presentation of the MACBA Collection offers a chronological overview of key works and artistic attitudes from the second half of the twentieth century to the present.

The need to escape or to distance oneself from reality through the poetic gesture and the pictorial support that arose in the aftermath of the Second World War underwent a decisive change from the 1960s. New attitudes toward painting led artists to treat painting not as a physical support for the work but as a subject worthy of debating, questioning and above all challenging.

Painting is no longer the only means of expression for the artist’s subjectivity. It becomes a multifaceted space that can in itself provoke a debate about the condition of the work of art in the second half of the twentieth century.

The artist’s documentary vision, which we have examined through the line of documentaries that came to the fore after the war conflict, finds other formats that are closer to the incipient consumer and leisure society, increasingly dominated by the presence of the media. A connection with a more global world that is undoubtedly reflected ion the work of artists of that period. Their work observes, reveals and critiques the systems generated by this new society (economic, social and cultural systems, and the media).

The work of art eschews the labels of the classic formats (painting, sculpture, etc) and begins to adopt a subversive attitude toward form and content. It uses everyday objects and, ephemeral elements, sees language as a conceptual base, and encroaches on fields of research such as science, sociology and anthropology, among others.

Therefore, our tour of the exhibition galleries will give way to different methods of analysis through the established notions and will widen our knowledge of the evolution of artistic practices throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first centuries. The objective is to have group debates on the different opinions and points of view, and to contrast them with the specific information provided by the education officer.

Practical Information
To obtain the interactive CD-Rom, please speak to the relevant educational resources department at your school ordirectly contact the MACBA. (Free)
Duration: the material available on the CD–Rom has a minimum duration of one class and includes proposals for further work for students and additional material.

Students from the SJB Secondary School at MACBA, 2011. Photo: David Campos

Programme

Museum visits:
Visit timetable: Monday to Friday mornings and afternoons (except Tuesdays)

For group and education program information please call 93 412 14 13
educacio [at] macba [dot] cat

In order to get a file compiling every work featured in this project, write us at educacio [at] macba [dot] cat