A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE

Press preview: Wednesday, 23 May 2007, 11.30 a.m.

Opening: Thursday, 24 May 2007, 7.30 p.m.
Exhibition dates: 25 May 2007 to 11 September 2007
Curators: Bernard Blistne and Yann Chateign, with the collaboration of Pedro G.
Romero.
Co produced by: Museu dArt Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Museo
Berardo in Lisbon

A Theatre Without Theatre, which opens on 24 May at the MACBA,

explores the metaphors in which the influences of the theatre model
made themselves felt in the arts of our times throughout the 20th
century. This exhibition brings together more than 600 works,
including
paintings,
sculptures,
installations,
drawings,
photographs, videos, manuscripts and various other types of
documents.
The exhibition reflects on the condition of the subject in
contemporary society and on the links between the experience of
the senses and action. At the same time, it considers the dramatic
roots of art as a constituent element of western modernity: from
Vsevolod Meyerhold to Oskar Schlemmer, from Antonin Artaud to
Judith Malina and Julian Beck (founders of the Living Theatre
company), from Samuel Beckett to Tadeusz Kantor, the theatre has
been a wellspring of ideas and theories that have been absorbed by
art, becoming models of the aesthetic and spatial relationship. Art
could, to a certain extent, be the other stage of dramatic practice.
A wide range of approaches to the notion of drama and the points of convergence
between an archaic art and aesthetic innovation and the break with the past are
presented in various fields of research in this exhibition, which reveals the artists
and the themes common to both the theatre and art. The exhibition is not
structured to show a pattern of evolution over time but instead centres on various
core areas of analysis in which the genealogies and influences from the early 20th
century are set out.
The theatre stage is a space isolated from the real world and hence is fictitious
(though not false). It is perhaps this separation the distance between the actor
and the audience member that enables the theatre to serve as a critical model as
regards the apparent and to use its full weight to facilitate the circulation of ideas.
The 20th century was a period when the theatre got caught up in a process of

transformation that eventually came to affect the roots of western culture as a

whole and art in particular.
From the mid-1960s onwards, the notion of theatricality was a prominent element
in contemporary art criticism. Minimalism was initially regarded as harmful and
thought likely to destroy art as it had been known till then. Michael Fried, the
American critic, railed against it in his famous essay Art and Objecthood (1967) on
the grounds that it proposed a relationship between the work and the spectator
that could lead the space of the artwork to absorb the viewer. The artists of the
generation immediately after Minimalism appropriated the theatre model in order to
create a core from which the foundations underpinning the contemporary could
extend outwards. These foundations were the simultaneity of action and perception
in the arts and the constant swapping of roles between actors and audience.
In the early 20th century, Dada, Futurism and Constructivism clearly expressed
the close bond between aesthetic renewal and the theatre model. Cabaret, music
hall, soires or social gatherings, declamation and reading became modes of
presenting active art for many artists after 1916. Playwrights such as Antonin
Artaud and Samuel Beckett have been regarded as the true founders of artistic
approaches and practices that go beyond the mere quotation.
A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE begins with the confrontation between the
invention of Minimalism with works by Carl Andr, Robert Morris and Donald
Judd and its rejection and refutation by the following generation Dan Graham,
Bruce Naumann, Marcel Broodthaers, James Coleman and Michelangelo
Pistoletto-. In the works of these latter artists, it is possible to see the importance
of the text and the set and to appreciate the need for a new attitude on the part of
the audience, which is sometimes directly addressed and always questioned during
the act of perception.
Live action is an important element in the work of the American Mike Kelley and
combines the influence of the subcultures of the world of rock with the staged
aspects of Futurism and Dada, whose momentum continues through movements
such as Fluxus and happenings, performance art and action art.
Lastly, the section in the exhibition given over to the public space in cities looks at
the way the street has been taken over as a place where performance and action
seem to have acquired the immediate political dimension, from the Futurists
fascination with movement and the masses, to Miraldas use of the processional,
the festive guerrilla art of the Provos and the urban experiments of the
Situationists.
A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE is complemented by the research of Pedro G.
Romero into the relationship between art and the theatre model in Spain:
works by Federico Garca Lorca, Ramn Gmez de la Serna, Helios Gmez,
Antonio Miralda, the Teatro Estudio Lebrijano Company and Ocaa, among
others, are featured in the various sections of the exhibition.

For further information and/or graphic material:

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