we enter its rooms of wonders

In 1988, American anthropologist James Clifford published cultural dilemmas. It was a compilation of articles that included one that had proven fundamental to understanding the way in which collections were built and taken over by museums. It was about “About the collection of art and culture”. In it, Clifford reminded us that in the West the collecting impulse responded in principle to the need to understand the world.

This is ordered, classified and cataloged through collections, which are also a form of appropriation. This is what children do when they collect shells on the beach and store them in jars that they then place on a shelf, organized by date or place where they were found.

In fact, he argues that the basic difference between a “good and a bad collector” has to do precisely with this idea of order, classification and cataloging. If there is no systematization, the collector will not be good. Accumulation for the sake of accumulation answers other questions, perhaps a way of resolving a lack, something that comes dangerously close to another drive, that of the fetishist.

There are ten artists who kept objects that belonged to non-Western cultures

In Gods, magicians and sageswhich was presented at CaixaForum Barcelona and has now arrived in Madrid, curators Àngels de la Mota and Maite Borràs worked private collections of artists and also against the backdrop of the works of contemporary art that the ”la Caixa” Foundation collected, redefining it.

They selected the works of ten artists, surely there could be many more, which they saved, because some would not be recognized by the collector's label, objects that belonged to non-Western cultures. These objects are now exhibited alongside these paintings, sculptures and photographs, highlighting the relationships that exist between them.

The fascination of artists with this type of object is not something new, but can be found in the need that avant-garde artists had to break with the canon of tradition, the one that led them to Greece and Rome, and seek out other cultures that they were further away in space or even in time. Cultures considered “primitive”, reflecting a mentality that placed Europe at the center and justified the processes of colonization and exploitation of these territories.

These artists -Picasso is one of the paradigmatic cases- Not only were they made with some of these objects, but they also appropriated their plastic characteristics.. In this way, these objects that were considered ethnographic testimonies began to acquire the status of works of art; From anthropology museums, heirs to the natural history museums of the Enlightenment, in some cases they moved to art museums, sometimes simply because of the importance of the person to whom they belonged.

[Dani Levinas, collector of collectors]

The exhibition opens with the installation pathetic by Rosa Amorós, which serves as a manifesto of her intentions. On shelves reminiscent of museum warehouses, masks and figures from Africa, Asia, Central and North America mingle with his ceramic sculptures. The origins of these objects are confusing and Amorós' works acquire characteristics of archaeological pieces. He creates a kind of alphabet that recovers the traditional idea of survival and continuity of forms.

If Amorós' installation transports us to the warehouses of an archeology museum, the wall dedicated to Miquel Barceló refers to the chambers of baroque wonders, those spaces where curiosities were confused with works of art: several animal skulls hanging next to a painting by Basquiat; a narwhal horn, a Mayan ritual object and a sculpture by surrealist Jean Benoît coexist on the same plane. On the sides there are two paintings from the 90s by the Balearic artist that allude to his table in the studio.

Tàpies and Miró's interest in Japanese calligraphy and Millares' Guanche culture are well known.

Study reconstructed in the case of Luis Feito, who bought kachinas from the Hopi on his trips to the United States, dolls that did not respond to the concept of “authenticity” because they were made as memory for tourists. Others are made by the artist himself and reconstruct those he was unable to acquire.

Joan Hernández Pijuan's collection is remarkable, which began late, when she had already developed the central interests of her work, and in which she did not seek knowledge as much as recognition. For Susana Solano, the relationships with her works are not so direct and the objects she owns have more to do with the memory of her travels to this continent.

Photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto considers his collection his master, as is undeniable in the series. Five elements, in which he uses the symbolism of Buddhist stupas. Better known are Tàpies and Miró's interest in Japanese calligraphy, Millares' interest in Guanche culture, although the objectivity of the references is surprising, and Georg Baselitz's Yombe-Kongo maternities.

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