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CINEMATIC ART, MARUJA MALLO AND MODERN VISUAL CULTURE

2011; Routledge; Volume: 12; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14636204.2011.691675

1469-9818

Judith Nantell,

Media, Journalism, and Communication History

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. C. Brian Morris's pioneering work (This Loving Darkness) explores such intertextualities when examining the presence of early film in the literary works of a number of Spanish writers during 1920–1936. The recent studies by Gubern and Puyal are indispensible for a generational view of the cinematic culture of the era. Also see Susan Kirkpatrick's insightful article featuring the cinema and the women of 27 (“Cinema”). 2. Gómez Mesa conducted and published a number of interviews for Popular Film from January through July 1929. See Puyal for a complete listing of the names of those interviewed, including, for example, Giménez Caballero, Buñuel, Arconada, and Francisco Ayala (99). Gubern's observation regarding the “doble parentesco” (78), chronological and esthetic, of the members of the 1927 generation being “born” with the advent of the cinema, uses Rafael Alberti's now famous line from “Carta abierta” (Cal y canto 1926–1927) as a point of departure: “Yo nací—¡respetadme!—con el cine.” (78). Gubern also calls attention to Fernando Vela's 1925 observation in Revista de Occidente: “el cine tiene los mismos años que nosotros.” (78) Kirkpatrick utilizes Alberti's self-description to begin her article (“Cinema”, 63). 3. See Kirkpatrick (“Cinema”, 63–64). 4. I use Arte Nuevo as defined by Gómez Mesa. Two other articles inform my use of this term, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, “CINEMA Y ARTE NUEVO” and Sebastiá Gasch, “Cinema y arte nuevo.” Importantly, Puyal resurects this trio of articles and together they inform his 2003 book (37–38) and my article. In Spain the term Arte Nuevo, as Eugenio Carmona later defined it, encompassed what he refers to as “the Modern Movement in Europe” (13). Mauro Varela Pérez observes, “Para el historiador del arte Eugenio Carmona” Mallo was “la musa del arte nuevo de los años veinte” (Maruja Mallo Exhibit Catalog. 3 vols, 1: iii). Finally, two other essays also inform my study, Antonio Espina's “Reflexiones sobre cinematografía” and Fernando Vela's “Desde la ribera oscura (sobre la estética del cine).” 5. Concerning Mallo's 1928 exhibit see Diego (17; 38–40); Ferris (125–29); Gándara (8–9); Gómez de la Serna (Maruja, 7–10); Huici (26–27); Kirkpatrick (Mujer, 242–43); and Mangini (Las modernas, 119–20; Maruja Mallo, 72–6). 6. The twentieth-century art of Maruja Mallo was presented in Spain during the 2009–2010 long over-due retrospective bearing her name. The monumental show, overseen by Fernando Huici and Juan Pérez de Ayala, featured the prolific production of one of Spain's most important but often marginalized Spanish artists. In the words of Shirley Mangini, “Maruja Mallo fue la mujer más excepcional dentro del mundo vanguardista español de su época y hasta los años más recientes, la más desconocida” (Las modernas, 118). In 1992, Madrid's Guillermo de Osma Gallery had begun the resurgent effort to establish Mallo's place in twentieth-century Spanish art. Huici's pivotal 1999 Fuera de Orden began to bring to light both her work and also that of other forgotten women artists of the Spanish vanguard. More recent comparative studies foreground Mallo's role in advancing the modern in Spain (Mangini Las modernas; Kirkpatrick Mujer; Zanetta La otra cara). Art historian Estrella de Diego's 2008 book focuses solely on this artist while José Luis Ferris's work is the first biography on Mallo. Mangini's 2010 book is the first published in English on the artist. Finally, Consuelo de Gándara's 1978 trailblazing book deserves recognition. I thank the following libraries: the University of Arizona Special Collection for my use of La Gaceta Literaria; Madrid's Filmoteca Española, especially Javier Herrero, for my use of Popular Film and La Pantalla; the Residencia de Estudiantes, particularly Alfredo Valverde; also the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. I am grateful to Madrid's Fundación MAPFRE. I wish to thank Alfonso Puyal for discussing portions of this article with me. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments led to improvements in this article. 7. As Qurioga Plá indicates both in his review and in its title, his use of “un pintor” is deliberate. Mangini points out that “Mallo wanted to be called ‘un pintor’ because it meant that she was taken seriously” (Maruja Mallo 76). At the time, terms such as “pintora” and “poetisa” were rejected by Mallo and her fellow 1927 group members, for example Rosa Chacel and Ernestina de Champourcín, because “the gender explicitness” of these nouns in Spanish “usually signified that a woman was unsuccessful in her attempt to be a painter or a poet” (Mangini Maruja Mallo, 76). 8. Gubern notes Julepe de menta indicates publication in 1929, however, it was first published in Ciudad Lineal in 1928 (84). Diego indicates “Notre Dame de la Aleluya” originally appeared in Papel de Aleluyas (Sevilla) in March 1928 (129). 9. “Modernités—Un nouveau art: le cinéma,” La Rose rouge 7 (12 June 1919), 108, in Richard Abel 1: 182–83. 10. See Casetti's discussion of film's “gaze” (2–4). I use this term as Casetti employs it. He stresses “that film, from its inception, was first and foremost identified and publicized as a marvelously unprecedented optical device” capable of “sharpening of our visual capacity” (2). 11. See Gubern regarding Giménez Caballero (83–85). Also see Gubern regarding the format followed for presenting films for the Residencia showings and also those for the Cineclub Español (261). For an overview of the development of “ciné-clubs” after World War I, especially in Europe, see Thompson (159–60). 12. For example, Puyal cites Mallo, Gómez de la Serna, Alberti, José Moreno Villa, Chacel, Benjamín Palencia, Eduardo Ugarte, Sabino A. Micón, among others (321). He documents that the Cineclub Español was in existence from December 1928 to May 1931 (321). Gubern establishes the films shown during each of the sessions of the Cineclub Español (271–75; 279–389) as well as those presented during the three filmic sessions sponsored by the Residencia (260–71). 13. Mallo's 1939 paragraph concerning Los Cómicos del Cine (12) is absent from the 1942 Losada publication (41). 14. Four of her comedic portraits were published in two issues of La Gaceta Literaria (65, 1 September 1929, 3; 66, 15 September 1929, 5). Her Wallace Beery, detective and Charles Bower, inventor appeared in issue 65, and her Las bodas de Ben Turpin and Farina y los fantasmas appeared in issue 66. 15. Mallo's affair with Alberti was well-known in Madrid's artistic circles (Laurenson-Shakibi 40). See Ferris regarding this “rupture” (166–71). The poet finally broke his own silence on the amorous relationship in the 1980s with the publication of Books III and IV of his memoirs (Mangini Maruja Mallo, 85–90). There he also discloses their shared infatuation with the silent comic films of Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and Lloyd. See La arboleda perdida, 2 (35–42). Mangini explains: “Until recent years, the majority of critics avoided the subject of the love relationship and collaboration between Mallo and Alberti” (Maruja Mallo, 89). Recently, Laurenson-Shakibi offers interesting insights into this affair by examining Alberti's “La primera ascension de Maruja Mallo al subsuelo,” which she refers to as “one of the strangest and most improbable love poems of the twentieth century in Spain” (37). The affair, however, is not the focus of my study and I agree with one of the reviewers of my essay in that far too many female artists of the 1920s Spanish avant-garde often have been eclipsed by their male partners. The recent works featuring Maruja Mallo by Kirkpatrick (Mujer, “Cinema”), Laurenson-Shakibi and Mangini (Maruja Mallo) reverse this tendency. 16. See Puyal 292. Mallo's comic illustration Farina y los fantasmas announced and advertised Le cinema comique. (Maruja Mallo Exhibit Catalog, 359) This same drawing also appeared on the cover of Sudeste (Murcia) in January, 1931. 17. Mallo explained in 1939 that she had created fifteen comic drawings (12). Four of these, as noted earlier, were published in September, 1929 in La Gaceta Literaria. During my archival research I located Charlot and Harold en la verbena, published in May, 1930 in Popular Film, thanks to Puyal's meticulous investigation (292). Two other Mallo comic portraits were published for the first time in December, 1929 in the first issue of Madrid's Nueva Revista. These included Nochebuena de Charlot and Bodas de Ben Turpin (the latter work should not be confused with Las bodas de Ben Turpin, mentioned in an earlier note). I have examined them and they do not appear with Alberti poems. Mallo's Nochebuena de Charlot is identical to her Charlot portrait except for one detail: the presence of a gold nugget as a cinematic prop is absent in the work appearing in Popular Film. Very little is known about her other comic illustrations. I have located seven, and my inventory does not include the redundant Nochebuena de Charlot. Gómez Mesa's 1930 eye-witness account, thus, is invaluable because he both characterizes and names some of the other drawings Mallo intended to present in her Los Cómicos del Cine. For example, he surveys her Harry, trapecista, a drawing that more than likely illustrated scenes from Harry Langdon's 1926 film The Strong Man, known in Spain as El hombre cañón (Gubern 313). When visiting her studio, the film critic also names other silent stars, in addition to those already mentioned, depicted in Mallo's comic constellation, for example, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Buster Keaton, Louise Fazenda, Adolphe Menjou, Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton, and Larry Semon (3). José Ramón Santeiro's 1931 article “Maruja Mallo” published in La Gaceta Literaria mentions a few of the comics she portrays. His is the only reference to her comic drawing of Mabel Normand (8). Finally, six of her recoverable silent comic drawings were gathered for Spain's 2009–2010 Maruja Mallo exhibit and are reproduced, for the first time as a grouping, in the catalog's Appendix (2: 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 113). 18. Also see José M. del Pino: “Chaplin perfecciona la figura del vagabundo divertido y sentimental en el que los vanguardistas españoles vieron al representante del arte moderno” (197). Alberti recited three of his tonto poems on 4 May 1929 during the intermission of the sixth session of the Cineclub Español in Madrid, a special showing organized by Buñuel and dedicated to silent film comedy of the era. For reports on this session, see Gubern (301–10) and Morris (This Loving Darkness, 14, 90). Alberti's provocative vanguardist staging included first, “Harold Lloyd, estudiante,” inspired by The Freshman (1925), then “Buster Keaton busca por el bosque a su novia, que es una verdadera vaca,” inspired by Go West (1925), and, finally, “Cita triste de Charlot,” inspired by The Gold Rush (1925). Although Mallo's Charlot shares the same filmic influence used by Alberti for his poem, her drawing does not illustrate the poem's imagery. Among the more notable Hollywood silent comic films presented during the Cineclub's May 4, 1929 session, we find, for example, Las novias de Ben Turpin, which Gubern believes was the probable translation for the 1926 The Prodigal Bridegroom (304), Harold policia (Chop Suey and Co., 1919) (304), Charlot emigrante (The Immigrant, 1917) (305), the second part of Keaton's El navegante (The Navigator, 1924) (306), Los apuros de un papa, with Glenn Tryon (307), and Sus primeros pantalones (Long Pants, 1927) featuring Harry Langdon (307). 19. In the 2009–2010 Maruja Mallo Exhibit Catalog Appendix this drawing is incorrectly identified as Stan Laurel y Oliver Hardy (2: 107). 20. Mallo already is both familiar with and adept at portraying popular aspects of urban carnivals in her Verbenas (Gándara 19). Her Harold en la verbena transposes some aspects of Madrid's street fairs to Coney Island, a curious convergence of the popular and the technological. It is also noteworthy that early Spanish silent cinema cultivated the genre of the “verbena” and it enjoyed considerable audience appeal even though a number of the films were done in the studio. See “Las verbenas en el cine” in Madrid's La Pantalla (78, 4 August 1929, 1283). 21. See Casetti (93). Christie observes that Vertov would not have accepted the bourgeois term avant-garde to describe his 1920 films (450). 22. The cape and mask recall a Mallo Estampa from her 1928 series Estampas de Máquinas y Maniquíes. 23. The 1928 Estampa is part of Madrid's Fundación MAPFRE collection. It recently was exhibited in 2011 in La mano con lápiz: Dibujos del Siglo XX, and is referenced in the accompanying catalog where Juan Pérez de Ayala provides a summary (La mano con lápiz, 166–7). In 1975, when this Estampa was shown in Madrid's Galería Multitud as part of the exhibit Surrealismo en España, Mallo gave this work a humorous and telling subtitle: “Los ojos de Buñuel sobre la mesa, custodiados por Rafael Alberti, José Bergamín, Federico García Lorca, la virgin del Pilar y Pablo Neruda” (Catalog 39). Her provocative supplemental title highlights a number of her friends in Spain's “cinematic generation,” save for Our Lady of Pilar. Recently, Pérez de Ayala attempted to clarify the subtitle during the MAPFRE showing: “No se corresponde en primera instancia con la imagen de esta ‘estampa cinemática,’ y que sólo podemos considerar como la evocación de un tiempo ya pasado que la artista quiso rememorar y honrar” (166). I would argue that Maruja Mallo's 1975 subtitle is not a nostalgic reference to the past. During the 1920s decade, Mallo often had endured a number of blatantly hostile verbal attacks publicly delivered by Buñuel. It is well-known that she also often bore the brunt of many of his caustic jokes (Sánchez Vidal 175–76). It is possible that the disembodied eyeballs Mallo depicts in her 1928 Estampa could, especially when considered in the context of her supplemental title, visually recall Buñuel's own bulging eyes. But Mallo's ridicule goes farther than simply naming one of Buñuel's notable physical characteristics. Mallo was scorned publicly by Buñuel on any number of occasions. One particular incident, recounted by Kirkpatrick, involved Buñuel and a talk on film that he delivered at the Residencia de Estudiantes. He concluded his presentation by announcing “una competición sobre la menstruación” and then invited Mallo to the podium (Mujer, 230). In the opinion of the critic: “Este ejemplo da una idea de lo irreductible (y amenazante) que su diferencia sexual resultaba para sus compañeros masculinos.” (230) See also Ferris (146–48) and Mangini (Las modernas, 130). In addition, it is well known that Mallo often had been the focus of Buñuel's disrespect and machismo during the famous “concursos de blasfemias” (Ferris 147). But it is the pictorial artist, with her comical subtitle deriding Buñuel, who finally has had the last word. Her irreverent naming of the Virgen of Pilar also could be considered as another jab at Buñuel. He and his family had moved from Calanda (Aragón) to the capital city, Zaragoza, when he was four months old (Buñuel 230). The Blessed Virgen has a revered role in his native Zaragoza where she is memorialized in the cathedral and shrine dedicated to the miraculous image of her. Mallo's sarcastic verbal acuity was legendary and she also “had a profoundly critical, biting sense of humor” (Mangini Maruja Mallo, 42). Both are evident in her subtitle. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers of my article for encouraging me to pursue Mallo's reference to Buñuel. 24. Two works have influenced my approach to Mallo's images, Sturken and Cartwright's Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture and Rose's Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials.