Catalunya Andalucia

Marcus Rees Roberts

Catalunya Andalucia

Marcus Rees Roberts Catalunya Andalucia

For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.

Walter Benjamin T heses on the Philosophy of Histor y, 1940

Catalunya It was in a hotel in Girona in northern Spain that I first conceived of an ongoing series of works that would evoke Walter Benjamin’s last night.

I stayed in the hotel many times over about twenty years. On a narrow street in the centre of the old town, it was a place that had not been touched, I imagine, since before the Spanish Civil War – indeed, one of the ancient night porters would recount in what was to me incomprehensible Spanish his reminiscences of the Civil War. It was a vast, decaying place, with a large dining room and an even larger ballroom. Over all the years I stayed there, I never stayed in the same room twice, and I am not sure that there was ever another guest. Sometimes I stayed near to the reception on the first floor, sometimes far away, down endless corridors and up vertiginous staircases. The rooms always had balconies; once or twice I even stayed in rooms with a balcony overlooking the internal courtyard.

The floors of the rooms were terracotta tiles laid in a herringbone pattern, the walls were plaster, once painted pale green or blue up to shoulder height, then white. The ceilings had a central metal light, the bedsteads were iron and the windows had slatted shutters painted green or brown. Most rooms had a bentwood ar mchair, a table and a wardrobe, painted or varnished dark brown.

It would have been a room very similar to one of these that Walter Benjamin stayed in at the Hotel de Francia in September 1940, in the border town of Portbou, about twenty miles north of Girona.

The suicide of Walter Benjamin had haunted me for a long time. In my younger years I had been very interested in his work, and even before that I had known Portbou well – passing through it almost every year. Overshadowed by the dark Pyrenees, it is a dismal place, where everything seems dusty and grey, even the sea. It has a vast, echoing Art Deco railway station and very little else, apart from a large and forbidding police headquarters situated just round the corner from The Hotel de Francia. His brief stay in the hotel was initially spent in desperate attempts to get per mission, one way or the other, to continue his journey across Spain to Lisbon and then to the USA. At a certain point he would have realized that his efforts were futile: he would either be turned over to the French border police the following morning, or he could commit suicide.

I wanted these paintings to be rough and direct, black, white and grey, unadorned by any colours other than those of my hotel – brown or green. There is no attempt to portray Walter Benjamin himself, nor a particular room. I did not want any trace of specificity. Despite the initial idea, they have become simply images of a figure in a room.

Marcus Rees Roberts, 2010

Catalunya 1 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 165 x 119cm (65 x 46 7/8 in)

Catalunya 2 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 165 x 119cm (65 x 46 7/8 in)

Catalunya 3 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 165 x 119cm (65 x 46 7/8 in)

Catalunya 4 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 5 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 6 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 7 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 8 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 9 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 10 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 11 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 12 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 13 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 14 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 15 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 16 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 17 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 18 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 119 x 165 cm (46 7/8 x 65 in)

Catalunya 19 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Catalunya 20 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia These paintings were begun shortly before the Catalunya series, and the two series now run concurrently.

I had in mind another last night of another great writer: Federico Garcia Lorca. He was held at La Colonia, a schoolhouse converted into a makeshift prison in a small village in the hills above Granada. Sometime during the night of August 1936 he was taken outside and shot by Nationalist militia. He was buried somewhere in an olive grove nearby.

For a man who was terrified of death, and for a poet whose almost every line betrays a presence of death, Lorca’s end has a terrible poignancy.

I have already made etchings, artist’s books and films that try to evoke this event, but as with the Catalunya series of paintings, I did not want any trace of biography or portraiture: no specificity. The event described above was simply a catalyst. In this series of paintings I have tried to imagine fear and claustrophobia in a dark room, and a hot August night beyond a barred window.

Marcus Rees Roberts, 2010

Andalucia 1 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 2 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 3 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 4 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 5 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 6 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 7 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 8 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Andalucia 9 Oil on canvas, 2006-10 120 x 80.5 cm (47 1/4 x 31 3/4 in)

Following his degree in English at Cambridge, Marcus Rees Roberts studied Film Theory at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he wrote his thesis on Ger man Expressionist Cinema. He then completed a second post-graduate course in printmaking at the Slade.

In 1977 he was awarded the Slade Prize and appointed teaching assistant in printmaking.

In 1980 he moved to Scotland to lecture at Edinburgh College of Art. In 1982 he was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Central F lorida and in 1989 as Lecturer in charge of Printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art, a post he held until 1995, when he returned to live and work in London.

Pratt Contemporary The Gallery, Ightham, Sevenoaks, Kent, TN15 9HH, England +44 (0) 1732 882326 pca@prattcontemporaryart.co.uk www.prattcontemporaryart.co.uk Š Pratt Contemporary, 2010

The suicide of Walter Benjamin had haunted me for a long time. In my younger years I had been very interested in his work, and even before that I had known Portbou well – passing through it almost every year. Overshadowed by the dark Pyrenees, it is a dismal place, where everything seems dusty and grey, even the sea. It has a vast, echoing Art Deco railway station and very little else, apart from a large and forbidding police headquarters situated just round the corner from The Hotel de Francia. His brief stay in the hotel was initially spent in desperate attempts to get permission, one way or the other, to continue his journey across Spain to Lisbon and then to the USA. At a certain point he would have realized that his efforts were futile: he would either be turned over to the French border police the following morning, or he could commit suicide.