Miquel Barceló: creating and cooking

Miquel Barceló: creating and cooking

Lobster

The work of Miquel Barceló (Felanit, Mallorca 1957) stems from the Mediterranean, from the constant search of the representation of organic elements of the sea and land such as fish, squids, clams, lobsters, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, oranges, grapes... that appear in the canvas, almost white in some cases, near minimalism.

Pink still life

Black olives

                                                        

In some of his works, these elements become real, creating a culinary scene where the artist plays with the organic, with the passage of time, experiencing up to putrefaction. Cadaverina 15 (one of his early works) is an example of such setting, where he shows 225 wooden boxes with glass lid containing materials such as bananas, spaghetti, boiled rice, fried eggs, fish...

Detail of one of the 225 boxes from the work Cadaverina 15.

Detail of one of the 225 boxes from the work Cadaverina 15.

On other occasions, this interest in the organic makes his great canvases, etchings, sculptures and ceramics simply become a main course already cooked, or presented in a table with the utensils needed to sit and eat.


Thus, we can find:

 Bronze soups.

Soup I

         

Soup II

A couple of fried eggs made etchings and drypoint.

Lanzarote 15

Fish or squid made with pottery.

Plaque avec sole Squid

 

Le manger blan

Some simple cutlery, left in the meal time on a false tablecloth, where the techniques are mixed.

Or the table directly with goods, with the already cooked food made of collage on cardboard, various techniques, on fabrics or not on a stretcher frame.

 La taula

Untitled

Majorcan table

Ultimately, what Barceló does is comparing cooking with painting, and sometimes he has even asserted that he likes to mix weird things, like Ferran Adrià when he combines tempranillo with oysters and seawater. For him, the pictorial material must be "cooked" and he gets it with his dense fillings, the treatment of clothing, from which the figures emerge, without getting rid of the nature of the organic

Preba i tomatiges

   In his paintings, tomatoes, peppers ... appear on backgrounds that are nothing but prepared, cooked paint.

Inedible tomate

Today, Barceló is one of the most recognized artists in life in the world and we can find his works in important museums like the National Museum Art Centre Queen Sophia (Madrid, Spain), Guggenheim Museum of modern and contemporary art (Bilbao, Spain); moreover, he has exhibited in such outstanding places such as the Pompidou Centre (Paris, 1996), the Louvre (Paris, 2004), Acquavella Gallery (New York, 2013), among other places on a list that would be impossible to mention completely in this short tour along the cooking workshop of Miquel Barceló.

        

1- What is the name of one of Miquel Barceló’s first works?

• Conservas 15.
• Cadaverina 15.
• Cadáver 33.
• La calavera.

2- In Barceló’s canvases, sculptures and etchings there is a constant interest in…

• Organic.
• Artificial.
• Mysterious.
• Indecipherable.

3- If we want to see some works by Miquel Barceló, where can we go?

• The Alhambra. (Granada, Spain)
• National Museum Art Centre Queen Sophia (Madrid, Spain)
• Parthenon. (Athens, Greece)
• Vatican Museum (Rome, Italy)