We are not exaggerating a bit if we say calmly that Daniel Giralt-Miracle (Barcelona, ??1944) is one of the most important people in the cultural history of Catalonia. Art critic since 1966, academic and university professor, he founded the Generalitat’s Plastic Arts Service in 1982 and directed it until 1989. A friend of the great names in 20th century art, he has directed the Macba , La Pedrera and has been curator of the Gaudí Year. On the occasion of the publication of his memoirs, Guspires of memory (Edicions 62), he receives this newspaper in the old workshops of Filograf, the graphic industries of his father, Ricard Giralt-Miracle, in Gràcia.
Have you always wanted to write a memoir?
And now! I’ve done this during the pandemic, I’ve also had a stroke and I’m running out of gas. Maybe there will be more sparks, there are some topics that have remained in my mind.
The book is a tribute to his father.
We had a great rapport. I was the guy on orders, and that’s how I knew all the artists I worked for, making them books, invitations… I am what I am thanks to him.
It was the best school, wasn’t it?
From whom I have learned the most is not from books, but from people. If you become friends with them, they share what they feel and think. Here, I would mention Chillida, Clavé, Alfaro, Brossa, Tàpies… intimates, friends and also many were clients of the father.
There we discover that the famous photo of Dalí intubated, dying, is of his brother, Pau Giralt, and not of Robert Descharnes.
I am afraid that Dalí’s heirs will throw themselves at me, but it is the family truth. Copyright never collected, but at least it gets all the glory. Descharnes appropriated the authorship and made my brother swear that he would never reveal that he was the true author.
Is it true that he didn’t know how to explain contemporary art to Jordi Pujol?
well The president had me as the expert, for gifts and all kinds of situations. His wife, Marta Ferrusola, always comes to praise the flower and figurative paintings. Once, President Pujol made a great speech in New York about Joan Miró; he knew it and he did it very well, it was brilliant, but at the end he came and said to me: ‘And they don’t put landscapes in this exhibition?’ I have seen him, at a conference, speaking with great knowledge of Kant. Which European president can talk about Kant? The last time I visited him, a few months ago, he recited Goethe to me in German. We all have vulnerable points, me too, unfortunately he had his, but the president is very intelligent. In the book I draw a parallel with the great figure of my neighbor and friend Pasqual Maragall.
It explains the incidents of the first major exhibition of Catalan artists in exile.
I went to find them in New York, to convince them, but some did not want to because the Generalitat was right-wing. They were leftist exiles. In the end I convinced Muntadas by phone, who was in California, from the Miralda restaurant in New York, and we did the exhibition in Barcelona.
He says: “It’s a shame that our Macba project was ignored.”
The Macba still hasn’t been fixed and it’s been working for a few days now, right? What happens with the triangle private foundation-City Council-Generalitat is that, if they no longer understand each other in politics, in the arts even less so. My opinion is that rarely has the director been given the freedom and autonomy that a director should have, without interference. For me, the configuration of Macba’s bases is the donation of Rafael Tous, all the art of the sixties, seventies and eighties, the face of Catalonia without international mimicry. It is a flaw of the Macba to look so much outside. Can’t we say anything new from here?
The MNAC will be expanded and reinvented. what do you think
we need We are experiencing a very big big bang of the arts and culture. I feel absolutely 20th century, I belong to the avant-garde and abstraction. The XX gave a lot of life. But the new technologies, the alleged artificial intelligence, the breaking of the boundaries between disciplines, as Pina Bausch did in dance or the new cinema… the most improbable things erupt everywhere, and it becomes clear that, for example, the theater in the Italian way (with a stage) it no longer works or that it is the lighting factors that have changed the streets. What we now see every year at the Llum Barcelona festival will eventually be a common landscape for the whole city, like in Shanghai, where all the buildings are a Glòries tower. An explosion is taking place that breaks all borders and changes the arts. The world must rethink. I’m expectant
Regarding Dalí, you explain that Catalonia had no chance of keeping his legacy…
It is the Spanish State that had the money to pay for the works that were in Geneva refugees, the compensation to Eluard’s daughter for hers, to pay for the warehouses in New York… It was a matter of the State and not no president of the Generalitat could solve it.
Among his greatest praises, the ones he dedicates to Oriol Bohigas and Ricardo Bofill stand out.
After Gaudí, the greatest architect we have had is Ricardo Bofill. If Gaudí was a genius of imagination and craftsmanship, Bofill was a genius of the vision of the future. It was a new architecture, with new ideas.
And Oriol Bohigas?
He is the greatest architectural intellectual after Puig and Cadafalch. He could have been mayor, councilor or minister. But he was so honest that they couldn’t risk giving him such a position, they didn’t control him and they had him as an advisor and head of Culture.
Now that the Sagrada Família seems to be over, what do you think?
Man, I thought they would make a leap forward and integrate new technologies, new arts such as light, new materials, a tacit and non-explicit symbolism. I thought that they would adapt religiosity to today’s times, that they would make a temple for all the religions of the world. Rome and the Argentine Pope are moving faster, doing things unthinkable just five years ago. The aesthetics should also change. They have wasted the opportunity, turning their backs on the 21st century.
Criticizes the elimination of savings banks…
The large amount of money that the savings banks, well or badly administered, devoted to literature, popular festivals, music, prizes… All this money, the banks of Spain have not given back to the culture Luckily, La Caixa, with its leaders, yes, is the one that dedicates the most to it. It is savable, but it is scary that globally a great capital for culture has been lost.
He speaks highly of Tàpies as an artist, but not of how he wielded power.
He had superior moral and intellectual strength and defended his position with radicality. He was so big that he occupied the space of many, especially young people, with whom he had controversies.
He was very good friends with Joan Brossa…
When we took his exhibitions around Catalonia, he always came and I bought a set of cards because he liked to do magic tricks at the presentations. And, even if they took him to the best restaurants, he always asked for potato omelette. What wit he had!
His time at La Pedrera…
I participate in the restoration of the building. With the architect Fernando Marzá, we make the Espai Gaudí in the attic, with manual models. This space is, for me, the Gaudí museum, the place you have to go to understand him.
He also suffered a bit when he put 3,000 people on the roof…
It was a Nit Vang de La Vanguardia, a joint initiative with its newspaper to open museums at night in an era that was not held. Don’t hide it now, I remember you going around there. The general manager called me the next day and said: “What have you done! Everything could have collapsed!”. They didn’t send me away like a miracle. You are to blame!
