Authors: James Michener
Iberia (64 page)
Don Fernando drove me ninety miles east and a little south of
Madrid through virtually empty land; a few white-walled villages
appeared here and there, clean and inviting in their harsh
simplicity, and I was once more impressed with how swiftly in
Spain one passes from the heart of a major metropolis like Madrid
into empty countryside. On this street a fourteen-story apartment
building; fifty yards farther on, open land. In Spain prudent people
have long learned to live within the safety of city walls. When we
did come upon a village I again noted something that I had often
reflected on before: that the rural children of Spain all look as if
they had been fifty-six years old at birth. How ancient their faces
are.
Our route to Cuenca took us through several types of land that
could have been a summary of Spanish history. Here the flat lands
of Castilla reminded one of how the clever kings of this region
had built a nucleus around which to unite the country. Don
Fernando suspected that at one point we were close to the upper
edge of La Mancha, and when I saw how bleak and empty it was,
without a house to be seen in any direction, I appreciated why
Cervantes, wishing to poke fun at the pretensions of would-be
nobility, had set his knight down in such prosaic terrain. Next we
came to the pine forests of Cuenca province, mile after mile of
tilted and rocky land, and I could understand how the Muslims,
once they had captured such a fastness, were so difficult to
dislodge.
‘In some ways a most uninteresting drive,’ Zóbel said, ‘but if
you can imagine the ebb and flow of forces, the movement of
kings and peasants, one of the best.’
We passed through two tunnels that served somewhat as the
gates to Cuenca and in a short time we saw the distant hilltop city
perched above the gorges of two rivers that meet here for a run
down to Valencia on the coast. Don Fernando was eager that I
see Cuenca at its best, so we stopped the car for me to look up at
the remarkable collection of houses perched along the edges of
some very high cliffs; they seemed about to fall into the rivers but
were kept aloft by sturdy cantilevers set into place some five
hundred years ago. Porches and balconies projected well out into
space and even from below induced vertigo.
‘Cuenca is like the prow of a ship sailing into space,’ Zóbel
suggested, and his image was appropriate. ‘When they first
proposed Cuenca to me I couldn’t visualize locating here, but
once I spotted these fantastic houses, these cliffs, winding streets
and the tremendous views one gets from everywhere, I knew that
this was what I’d been seeking.’
As he spoke, we were in the lower town, which dates from
relatively modern times, say four hundred years ago, but we left
this by a steep and twisting road which carried us upward at a
good rate, and in a few minutes we came upon a medieval square
and a very old cathedral with a new face. I entered because I had
long ago heard of the four remarkable jacent tombs of Church
dignitaries dating from the sixteenth century, and these I wanted
to see. They were as lovely as I had been told, four high-relief slabs
of stone carved with figures of dead prelates, each highlighted by
the addition of a few streaks of color which made them seem
almost alive. The tombs were delightful and set the stage for what
I was about to see.
Don Fernando led me down a side street which ran along one
wall of the cathedral, then took me on a cobbled street which
ended in a cul-de-sac marked by several medieval doors of
handsome design. ‘This is it,’ he said as he unlocked one of the
huge doors and swung it slowly open.
I entered upon a wonderland, something so unanticipated in
a remote city like Cuenca that it has become world-famous in less
than a year, for it is a museum of Spanish abstract painting set
down in three of the cliff houses, so cleverly interrelated with
flights of stairs, balconies, strange corners and large exhibition
areas that it is a delight to the eye and a challenge to the mind.
From the windows one looks off into miles of empty space, with
the Río Huécar six hundred feet below in the gorge. Inside, one
sees a series of varying rooms filled with handsome paintings by
young artists whose reputations have been made not in Spain but
in Paris, London and especially New York. One sees the finest
work of men whose names are well known in all art circles: Antoni
Tápies, whose earthlike canvases speak so strongly of Spain;
Antonio Saura, whose works are in most modern museums; José
Guerrero, better known in New York than he is in Madrid; Luis
Feito, whose work is as modern and colorful as any being done
in the world; Eduardo Chillida, whose heavy, powerful sculpture
is much appreciated in foreign exhibitions; and Rafael Canogar,
whose reputation is the most recent of the Spanish
internationalists.
‘This is some of the best painting being done today,’ Zóbel says
enthusiastically as he points to one after another of the fine
canvases. ‘Only New York excels in concentration of talent. I
believe we have more superbly gifted young painters in Spain
today than they have in either Paris or London and certainly more
than Berlin or Rome. This group of men is going to create the art
history of the next quarter-century. Tell your friends who may
be interested that these men are as good as Picasso and Miró were
when they began.’
As we wandered through what must be one of the world’s
loveliest museums, Zóbel estimated that there were more than
thirty young Spaniards who had a chance to build major
international reputations. ‘That’s what makes this museum so
fascinating,’ he said. ‘The culture of a nation coming into focus
in a way it has not done since the early 1600s.’ We found chairs
from which, if we looked to the right, we saw the spectacular
valley or, to the left, a series of brilliant canvases by painters I had
not previously heard of. It was a visual feast, but what interested
me as much was the conversation.
: For the first time in many years Spain is taking its
contemporary artists seriously. This is good for the country.
Good for the artists.
Michener
: But is it not true that at least eighty out of every
hundred canvases these men paint leave the country? In
Pittsburgh we Americans appreciate this art. In Sevilla you
Spaniards don’t.
Zóbel
: Up to now that’s been true. This museum may change the
percentages. Spaniards may begin to buy Spanish art, other
than Sorolla-like scenes in which colorful fisherwomen sell
baskets of clams.
Michener
: The other day I had lunch with José Ramón Alonso,
the editor, and he said the typical Spanish attitude toward art
was that of a friend of his who asked, ‘Pictures? We have three
pictures. Why would we want more?’ Alonso asked him what
three he had, and he replied, ‘One Velázquez, one El Greco,
one Goya.’
Zóbel
: He was right on both counts. Families like that won’t buy
paintings. And you’d be amazed at how many El Grecos and
Goyas remain in private hands. Spain has always liked paintings,
but only the ones they liked, if you understand the
contradiction.
Michener
: I see less evidence of connoisseurship in Spanish private
homes than I would in similar homes in Israel, Japan or
Germany.
Zóbel
: The basic fact you must accept is the joyous provincialism
of Spanish thought. Have you discovered that the Prado is
really the most provincial great museum in the world? Only
Spanish painting.
Michener
: Wait a minute! What about those great Flemish and
Italian paintings?
: That’s what I mean. As long as Flanders and Italy were
Spanish colonies we accepted their painting. That’s why we
have Bosch and Titian. Because we thought of them as
Spaniards. Once the colonies broke away, to hell with them
and their painting.
: You believe then that this group of artists will be able
to make a living by painting in Spain? And selling to Spaniards?
: They already are. Every painter you see on these walls makes
a good living right now. And they don’t have to teach in art
schools or colleges the way your painters do in the States.
: They make a good living, but doesn’t it come from sales
abroad? Do Spaniards buy?
: Yes, they do. In the old days, all you could sell was the kind
of romantic subject matter done by Zuloaga and Sorolla. You’re
right that Picasso and Miró never sold in Spain. And Spanish
families would have found it inconceivable to buy something
like a Cézanne or a Paul Klee, because those men were not
Spanish. Even today no one would buy a Francis Bacon or a
Willem De Kooning or even a Morando. But they are beginning
to buy Spanish works. And I am proud that this museum has
had something to do with that change!
Zóbel had a right to be proud. That morning the Spanish
government had convened a gathering of notables at which he
was made a member of the Order of Isabel la Católica in gratitude
for what he had accomplished in Cuenca, for not only had he
personally paid for the heavy expense of converting the cliff houses
into a museum, with splendid marblelike floors and much clean
and freshly painted wall space, but all the canvases in the museum
were also from his private collection. ‘Fifteen years ago I did a
simple thing,’ he said as we finished our conversation. ‘I looked
about me and saw that Spanish painting was good…very good.
So I began to collect it. And now the world confirms my
judgment.’
The paintings which I had been admiring, by artists I did not
know, seemed to support his argument. There was a fine, swinging
op art construction by Eusebio Sempere, only forty-three years
old; a clean and hard collage by Gustavo Torner, forty-two; a
most imaginative portrait of a group of men by the Equipo
Crónica (Chronicle Team), a pair of twenty-five-year-old
Valencians who collaborate on such excellent work that they must
become internationally popular; and what pleased me most, a
wonderfully poetic white canvas by Manuel Mompó, forty and
also from Valencia. It was so good that I asked to see more of his
work, and each thing I saw showed a lyrical quality that was
enchanting. Mompó paints somewhat in the style of Miró, but
with his own fairyland interpretation, and I suppose he will
become well known throughout the world.
Part of the museum structure is leased out to an excellent
restaurant, and as we finished our dessert of coffee and ice cream
garnished with roasted and delicately flavored walnuts, a friend
said of Zóbel, ‘He and his group are the avowed enemies of corsi.’
I thought, from the way the word was used, that Corsi must
have been a competing painter. ‘No,’ my informant explained,
‘It’s the most in-word in Spanish society today. You can kill a
man with it by saying at a cocktail party, “Cayetano tries hard but
he’s painfully corsi.”’ It means cheap but pretentious, kitsch but
heavily pompous. Cuenca is the battleground of the Spanish mind
in its war against everything that is corsi.
Some dozen major painters have taken up residence in the cliff
houses of Cuenca. Travelers come from all over Spain to the
Museum. In summer students flock to the exquisite valleys that
surround the town, camp out and work during the daytime in
the fine museum library. In autumn artists and townspeople alike
climb down from their cliff to work in the fields, gathering, by
means of delicate brushes, the golden pollen of a lavender flower
on which the economy of Cuenca partially depends, for this is
the saffron capital of the world. And each day the message of this
unusual museum reverberates through Spain.
The pleasure of my visits to Madrid was enhanced when I met
one day in the Ritz Hotel my hunting companion from Las
Marismas, Don Luis Morenés y Areces. If he had been instructive
in the marshes, he was more so in Madrid, for this was his city
and he delighted in showing me aspects of it that I would
otherwise have missed. I was surprised some time later, as we
were walking down the Avenida José Antonio, when a gentleman
stopped us and addressed Don Luis as ‘Marqués de Bassecourt.’
When he had gone I asked Don Luis about this and he invited
me to join him at one of the sidewalk cafés. What he said, often
under insistent questioning by me, was a surprise.
‘Yes, my father happens to be a grandee of Spain. My family
goes back in one straight line to the early eighth century when
Pedro Duque de Cantabria fought the Muslims, but to make the
line straight a few kinks have to be kicked out here and there. My
father’s titles happen to be fifteenth Conde de Villada, eighteenth
Marqués de Argüeso. In 1491 los Reyes Católicos confirmed our
family titles as those of grandees immemorial. Duque de
Infantado, Marqués de Argüeso and Marqués de Campoo. The
present Infantado and the Campoo are uncles of mine. But I work
in government offices, as you see. I’m a clerk who hopes one day
to become a chief clerk.’
I asked him to what other families of Spanish history he was
related, and he said, ‘My own title is eighth Marqués de
Bassecourt. It sounds French and this is why. The Bassecourts
were knights of the Artois and in the Peace of the Pyrenees in
1659 Felipe IV ceded to Louis XIV the territories in which my
ancestors lived, but they refused to take up French citizenship
and remained faithful to Spain; so in 1736 Carlos III made Don
Francisco de Bassecourt a general of his army and then, because
of his heroism in the Two Sicilies, created him a marqués. Alvaro
de Luna, whose mobile statue you saw in Toledo, married into
our family, which has always been associated with the Medinacelis,
the Medina Sidonias and the Osunas. But like most young men
from such families I have to work.’
I knew the nobles Don Luis was speaking about, for they passed
like golden threads through the history of Spain, people of
enormous power whose deficiencies had perturbed me in Sevilla.
I asked Don Luis about this and he thought I was wrong. He
believed that it had been the permanence of these families that
had given Spain its solidity in duress. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘the old
charge of doing nothing no longer applies. Look at the leaders in
government now being provided by these families.’