Art and the arts: a summer agenda in Barcelona

T.S. Eliot was right when he said in a poem, "April is the cruellest month." This is true when everything is in bloom around you, but you, for some reason, are feeling very unwell. However, I've sometimes thought that June can be crueller than April, with its climate of blossoming lime trees and its cool, clear waters in coves you won't be able to visit if you're up to your neck in work, exams, or paperwork. But this year I resolved to make June a less cruel month, and I realized that this was possible in Barcelona and other places. Not everywhere. Let's see, now looking ahead to July and August.

At the MNAC we have a splendid video exhibition by Eugènia Balcells, From the Centre , which has taken over from the Franciscan Zurbarán exhibition: one marvel after another. At the CCCB there is one of the best comic exhibitions I've ever seen, dedicated to the depressing yet luminous Chris Ware. And, in addition, there is the exhibition In the Moved Air... At CaixaForum, German art in the years before Nazism. At KBr, the photography of Edward Weston and the rescue of photojournalist Joan Andreu Puig Ferran. At the Barcelona Photographic Archive, the nocturnal city contemplated by Manel Esclusa. At the all-too-forgotten Museu Etnològic i de les Cultures del Món (Seu Montcada), the avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren... I hope that during the summer we will find time for all that and more.

Coinciding with the crowds at Primavera Sound, I decided to go to London to enjoy the Renaissance exhibition in Siena and the Talking Heads concert.

Another option is a getaway. Coinciding with the crowds at Primavera Sound, this year I opted to go to London to enjoy the excellent exhibition on the Renaissance in Siena (at the National Gallery) and the Remain in Light tour concert at the Indigo venue—the size of Barcelona's Apolo, ideal—and I was able to confirm that half of Talking Heads—Jerry Harrison, Adrian Belew, and company—are still Talking Heads in their prime, albeit without David Byrne's choreography. The live anthology begins with Psycho Killer and culminates with The Great Curve . Some Catalan or Spanish promoter should bring them. I've found that some late-night, recuperative concerts can be splendid, like the legendary ones by Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook at the Apolo (2017), and by King Crimson on their 2016 and 2018 tours. My English getaway also revealed to me that in London's pubs and other venues, you no longer hear tired reggaeton, but rather decent hip-hop, like Amy Winehouse, Oasis, or The Strokes. Lucky them! Perhaps some Latin American countries live, when it comes to pop music, in a bubble that supports tacky trends.

I prefer the ironically narcissistic bubble of Carlos Pazos. The ADN gallery has just opened an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of his seminal work, Voy a Hacer de Mi Una Estrella (I'm Going to Make a Star of Myself ), from 1975. Pazos presented it at the Sala Vinçon in Barcelona in 1976, a year before the famous Cindy Sherman became known in New York with self-portraits similar to those of the Barcelona artist, but feminine and more disguised. ADN exhibits, among other works, a photographic mosaic bringing together 112 self-portraits where Pazos appears as a Hollywood or rock star, with curious variations: Gatsby-like, Marlon Brando-like in a T-shirt, or a gentleman in a bathrobe, a golfer, a gangster, a smiling skier... Images that contrast with those in the series Más cornadas da el arte (More Cornadas Da El Arte) , from 2025.

And one last recommendation: Victoria Bermejo's book, "To Know Him Is to Love Him. Cairo's Interviews ." It brings together all the interviews she conducted for the legendary Barcelona neo-comic and immerses us in the best of the 1980s. Its first thirty issues, directed by Joan Navarro, featured the most avant-garde and elegant cartoonists: Pere Joan, Micharmut, Guillem Cifré, Gallardo, Sento, Mique Beltrán, Montesol... And Victoria Bermejo gives them the attention they deserve. It includes the last interview with the great Coll, conducted with Ana Rey.