A museum is dedicated to “banned art” in Barcelona, which includes works that were rejected, attacked, or removed from exhibitions, such as a statue of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wearing underwear and tied inside an aquarium, or a work showing Ronald McDonald crucified, or drawings made by detainees in the Guantanamo prison.
Announcement
The museum, which opened its doors to the public on Thursday, displays 42 works of art that were subject to some form of censorship or rejection for various reasons, selected from a collection of 200 works collected by Spanish businessman Tacho Benet over the past five years.
On two floors of a building located in downtown Barcelona, Catalonia (northeastern Spain), works by Francisco Goya, Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Ai Weiwei are displayed.
Among what the museum also includes is a statue of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco placed inside a refrigerator, created by the artist Eugenio Merino, and works representing religious symbols in unusual positions and situations.
Many works of art that crossed the red lines sparked widespread controversy, but their owner considers that this standard is not sufficient to display them in the museum.
“Works of art with history”
In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Binet said: “We do not display in the museum works that arouse scandal or controversy, but rather those that have been prohibited by censorship or have been attacked or banned.”
He adds: “These works have a history, and without this history they would not exist.”
The businessman, one of the founders of the audiovisual group Mediapro, began collecting these works of art in 2018 unintentionally, when he bought the work “Political Prisoners in Contemporary Spain” by Santiago Sierra. A few hours later, this work was withdrawn from the Arco Contemporary Art Gallery in Madrid.
The work, which was given to another museum and sparked widespread controversy, shows blurred images of 24 people, most notably Catalan separatists who violated the law.
But what prompted Binet to collect these unique works of their kind in the world, according to the museum, was by the French-Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah, entitled “Red and Blue Silence,” and it was part of an exhibition held in January 2015 in Clichy-la-Garenne, on the outskirts of Paris, but the artist I stopped showing it after it angered a local Islamic association.
Today the work alone occupies a small room in this “Forbidden Art” museum.
Seeing the forbidden
While standing close to a self-portrait by the late artist Chuck Close, whose Gallery of Art Museum in Washington refused to hold an exhibition in 2018 after a number of women accused him of sexually harassing them, Binet said, “The artist who cannot display his works because someone prevents him.” “He is a censored artist, which will always earn him a place in this museum.”
But the business owner does not believe that there is less freedom in art today. He does not fear that his museum will face reprisals for its content.
He explains that “the presence of such different works side by side increases the viewer’s tolerance and reduces the level of noise that the work raises.”
Fabian Tairez cannot forget how his painting “Revolution”, which depicts the Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata naked on a horse, wearing a pink sombrero and looking very effeminate, caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico.
Fabien Tairez comments as he looks at his painting that he found in this museum, “This work had great importance in my professional career.”
As for Montserrat Izquierdo (67 years old), one of the first visitors, she said in a statement to Agence France-Presse that “it is also good to be able to see what is forbidden.”
