As Javier Cansado warns -part of the Faemino and Cansado duo and one of the gurus of the absurd in Spain- this humor has a lot of generational. Its routes of transmission are the languages of popular culture (magazines, radio, television programs, graphic humor, orality on public roads ...), and these usually have a certain radius of influence that affects two or rarely to three generations Or what is the same: for those born in the 70s, it is difficult for The Quail of the 40s to be a benchmark of humor. However, in the constellation of the nonsense that the exhibition shows, various transgenerational transmission lines have emerged from a certain tradition of absurd humor that characterizes Spanish culture.
The selection of authors and practices of the absurd is distilled from the meetings and cross-talk of six specialist advisors who were born around the 70s, namely Joaquín Reyes (humorist), Luis E. Parés (film critic), Gloria G Duran (avant-garde academic), Gerardo Vilches (comic book critic), Desirée de Fez (internet culture specialist), and myself as curator and head of the matter. Our vision of almost a century of absurd humor in Spain stands as new, since so far, the academic and institutional review of this genealogy of humor seemed to be interrupted in the 40s with La Codorniz . The exhibition and the book published by the publishing house Astiberri about it, have the mission of moving forward with the story through a vision that is not based on chronology or a hierarchical podium of names but, rather, that attends to various thematic lines or procedures to unleash the laughter that groups more than a hundred nonsense cultivators in transgenerational corridors.
But what do we mean with absurd humor? The basic definition of the absurd from any cultural context always refers to the result of the interruption of logic. This idea of cutting, of dislocation is a key element. The collage perfectly embodies the mechanism of rupture of meaning and aesthetics as it is a procedure based on the cutter, in the recontextualization of originally separated fragments. The notion of the new is very present at the birth of this humor that occurs with the height of the artistic avant-garde in Spain. As humor descended from the subversive and groundbreaking spirit of avant-garde, the absurd wants to break with the clichés of costumbrismo and fight against conventions. Ramón Gómez de la Serna would be the catalyst for this form of new humor and his contributions are inscrutable. On the other hand, absurd humor seeks the evasion of reality and avoids making references to facts, characters or current political situations. Like the famous image of Ramón on a swing at the Circus Price, the absurd rises as a form of philosophical thinking and observes the world and the individual from a playful and suspended perspective of pure actuality. The pure absurd is not found in political satire , dispatching with this or that politician on duty. However, it is natural that - like all kinds of humor - be infected by other types such as parody, black humor or slapstick .
The tour of the sample reflects about 120 authors who express themselves in different languages (cinema, television, comic, graphic humor, illustration, radio, visual arts, internet, performance) and does not respect a chronological criterion, but is articulated in nine thematic areas. The first of them, Towards nonsense in Spain , starts with the Goya's Disparates and the expressionism of Gutiérrez Solana as representations that crystallize the subversion of logic and carnival immersion with the concept of the popular. Next, Vanguard and humor travels to the cafés and botilleries of the 20s and 30s where a type of humor is born that is practiced in a group, looking for the mess and the picturesque chance in the heat of the liquors and of a playful spirit of celebration of the new. Glosan this section authors such as K-Hito, Equipo Crónica, the collagista Amparo Segarra or the duo of electro-disgusting Las Bistecs. Absurd costumbrismo addresses the presumed signs of identity of an absurd humor rooted in the Spanish costumbrismo. The verbenas, the fairs, the rural life and the tavern, or even the history of Spain itself are the backdrop for the contributions of Forges, Miguel Noguera, Gila or the Maria Dolores de la Fe , one of the great discoveries of the exhibition that highlights one of the few humorous women of the absurdity that this country has given in almost a century. Subsequently, the exhibition evokes symbolic territories such as family life, institutional bureaucracy, death or beyond to refer to the toning and liberating power of absurd humor in situations of existential heaviness, chaining various figures such as Dalí, Gomaespuma, Fernando Krahn, Tip and Coll and, of course, Chiquito de la Calzada, whose one of his famous shirts is on display .
As a whole, the exhibition has a clear vocation to reach the general public and therefore combines juicy fetishes such as the shirt of the yearned humorist from Malaga or the ties of Gloria Fuertes, along with other little airy findings such as the biography of Dalí drawn by Manuel Summers or the collages of Millán Salcedo, of the duo Tuesday and Thirteen. Salcedo has been developing for a long time a collagista activity in parallel to that of humorist based on the transformation of fragments of advertising magazines into kaleidoscopic and fascinating visions, palpable fruit of the richness of his imagination and talent.
Throughout this text we have highlighted only a handful of growers of dislates and dislocations in the visual culture in Spain . The investigation is still open and we launched an invitation to expand this constellation, because it is a panorama that must be enriched with new stars and others with remote brightness. With respect to today, we wanted to record the celestial bodies that shine in the firmament of contemporary culture in Spain and that weave a superb intergenerational constellation infecting each other of the most liberating spirit that exists: the absurd.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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