Inglesez 3

A story for my friend

the painter Jose Luis Zumeta

Bernardo Atxaga

Zumeta 98-99-00

Uribitarte in Bilbao, La Brocha, 2000

 IN Hamburg, not far from the Binnenalster lake, there is a house whose neglected state stands in contrast with every other house in that part of the city and which would appear to be utterly dead were it not for the roses that still bloom in the garden even today, doing their best to overflow the railings that separate them from Vertriebstrasse, the street linking the lake and Eichendorf Square.

Any passer-by chancing to pause outside the house will notice the peeling plaster of its walls, the faded paint on both front door and window frames, and recognise the air of desolation that clings to all abandoned houses, a desolation that speaks to his own heart, perhaps itself an abandoned place. But he sees no statue there, no plaque, no sign to excite his curiosity, so the passer-by lingers a little longer, thinking how lovely the rose gardens must have been and then continues along the road. He reaches the shore of the lake, sits down on the jetty and looks out at the fragile sailing boats, watching them slip along, bobbing up and down each time a motorboat passes, making rings in the water; and barely has he begun his contemplation than he has forgotten all about the abandoned house he stopped to look at in Vertriebstrasse. He has thus missed the opportunity of knowing that the painter Hans Menscher lived there, and was found dead in that very garden on 27th july 1923.

Had the passer-by shown more curiosity and, prompted by the need to know why the house had been abandoned, asked for more details, perhaps —as happened with me— someone would have delved into their memory to recall that july morning and then, with the expression of one trying but failing to remember thing, directed him instead to the city's central library.

“If you want to know what happened to Menscher, look in the newspapers of the time. They're bound to have something about him.”

The passer-by will then endeavour to follow his informant's advice for, like all passers-by, he too has gone out into the street in search of something to relieve the monotony of his life, without knowing quite what that something might be, and following the trail of the painter Menscher seems as good a way as any of spending the afternoon. Continuing with our hypothesis, it would not be long before the passer-by was sitting down in front of one of the many newspapers which, the day after Menscher's death, described what happened in the house on Vertriebstrasse.

Were he to choose the same newspaper I chose, the Bild Zeitung, the passer-by would read: “Hans Menscher, the painter and close friend of Munch, never really fulfilled the promise of his early work. It would not, we believe, be an exaggeration to say that Menscher was lost to painting the day he went mad, rapidly becoming the laughing stock of all who observed him painting in the garden of his house.” The first reaction of the passer-by, who is now the reader, would be one of surprise. He would probably remember the names of painters whose genius verged on madness without having any ill effects on their work —quite the contrary— and he would want to know the details of the madness from which, according to the journalist, Menscher suffered; a madness which brought about not only his failure as a painter, but also made of him a public laughing-stock, a figure of fun.

Needless to say, there will be no shortage of such details in the article. Indeed, the passer-by, who is well aware of the vileness of life but does not care to dwell too much upon it, will find himself obliged to skip most of the anecdotes that the journalist —with the malice ordinary people reserve for those different from them— poured into his work. And when, at last, the passer-by comes across the concrete fact on which the idea of Menscher's madness was based, the fact will strike him as banal, because it will turn out that Menscher's madness consisted in a view of pictorial art that is taken absolutely for granted today: the idea of painting according to the dictates of the imagination.

“As many Hamburg citizens who walked down his street will know,” the journalist writes, “the painter seemed incapable of seeing what was right in front of his eyes. After looking hard at his rosebushes, he would take up his brush and with just a few strokes produce, for example, a Mediterranean landscape, a field of almond trees. And if he turned his gaze on Vertriebstrasse, a Greek square or some other exotic landscape would appear. But that was not the worst of it...”

Indeed, it wasn't, the worst thing was that people —the bored citizens of Hamburg— would stand on the pavement and keep plying him with questions and the unfortunate Hans —”unfortunate” being the correct epithet for someone blind to the evil intentions of others—  would reply as if “he really was, body and soul, in the midst of a Mediterranean landscape or in a Greek city, even speaking in some sort of Italian or Greek...” The italics are, of course, the journalist's.

That was the worst thing, the fact that Menscher slowly became what the English call a “village idiot” and because of that —again I yield the floor to the journalist—”no one considered what the consequences of that alienation from reality might be”.  The consequences were his tragic death one July morning.

The BiId Zeitung journalist relates the circumstances surrounding the incident with a certain glee: “As many of us who stopped in Vertriebstrasse had the opportunity to observe, for the whole of this past year Menscher painted only one subject. A Moorish city, always the same Moorish city... White streets, mosques, medersas, men wearing long robes, women with their faces veiled... That was what appeared in the paintings. And along with that mania, there arose in him a rare joy, a joy many considered pathological. When questioned about it, the painter explained the reason for his state of mind as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He said that be was having a love affair with Nabilah, a woman he had met in the city of Jaddig that appeared in his paintings. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Jaddig is a city situated on the coast of Arabia.”

I imagine Menscher speaking from behind the railings round his garden and I imagine the faces of those who listened to him. I cannot bear that image, it wounds me. On reflection, though, perhaps Menscher really was mad, because only mad men can bear the mocking smiles of the people who address them. “It seems,” writes the journalist, and it is not hard to imagine a mocking smile on his lips too, “that the relationship between Menscher and Nabilab was a most passionate one. An old friend of the painter, whose name must remain secret, explained to me that Menscher had spoken to him of that passion in lurid and intimate detail, the kind of detail which, for obvious reasons, we cannot go into here.

”The journalist then emphasises what he said before: “According to what his childhood friend tells me, the painter spoke of Nabilah as if he had really and truly lain with her in some lowly bed in the city of Jaddig. It is possible that Menscher died believing this to be so... That he died or was killed, because it is still unclear as to what exactly happened.” The journalist is, at last, back on familiar ground. He knows that readers of the article will appreciate the sincerity required in recounting such tragic events and he does his best to achieve this. “Some months ago,” he writes, “the painter began to paint a very different image to the one described earlier. There was no longer joy in his heart. On the contrary, he seemed distressed, frightened. When anyone asked him the reason for that change, Menscher replied saying that he had seriously violated the ancient customs of Arabia, which not only forbid carnal relations before marriage but also any relationship between an Arab woman and a foreigner; he and Nabilah had been found out, and now her family were locking for him with the intention of killing him. Naturally, no one believed his story, although many people felt sorry for Menscher and pitied his sufferings. They thought too that he would get over his bad spell and go back to being happy again.

Unfortunately the exact opposite happened. Menscher's fear became terror and that terror caused him to cry out and run madly from one side of the garden to the other. Menscher asked for help from those who, with a feeling of impotence one can easily imagine, watched from the pavement, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. Now, however, we all know that the situation merited the second reaction, for Hans Menscher is now dead. He was found stabbed to death in his garden yesterday morning, the twentyseventh of july. The dagger that put an end to his life was authentically Arabian, with a long blade and a damascene hilt —a detail that has been remarked upon in every café conversation.”

The passer-by who made that walk to the library does not feel disappointed. His curiosity has provided him with an entertaining afternoon and he now has a story to tell at supper time. Contented, he goes down the steps of the building and is lost amongst the crowd. However, that passer-by will not have had the luck which, purely by chance, I had; a stroke of luck, as I will now explain, that allowed me to discover how the Menscher story ended.

It happened that I was invited to the house of a retired judge and when he told me that he was writing a book on unsolved court cases, it occurred to me to ask him about the mad painter and the matter of the Arabian dagger that had killed him.

That case, he said, “was indeed never solved.”

Seeing that I was clearly hoping for a more detailed reply, the judge asked me to follow him. When we reached his study, he took down a file from the bookcase and placed in my hands an envelope bearing a seal. My hands trembled: the seal bore Arabic characters.

“Read what the letter says.”

The letter was written in English, a language I do not know well, but well enough to see that it was a request from the police in Jaddig for information on a German subject, Hans Menscher, giving as a justification for that request a complaint made in their offices by a woman called Nabilaln Abauati. In her statement Nabilah Abauati declared that on the night of the twenty-sixth to twenty-seventh of july 1923 three members of her family had murdered the above-mentioned German citizen.

“So,” I asked, “what really happened?”

“You're forgetting that I deal only in unsolved cases,” smiled the judge and indicated that it was time for us to rejoin the other guests gathered in the drawing room.

Zumeta, an individuality¹ of our own
Koldo Izagirre

Zumeta 98-99-00

San Martingo azoka

Donostian, 2000 

IT is not necessary to have a knowledge of the complete works of the great Basque poet Gabriel Aresti in order to appreciate the admiration he had for our artists: amongst the numerous references in his poems the names of Oteiza and Ibarrola particularly resound. Because he had admired them, he eamed the right to criticise them. And never so openly as in the article (published in Spanish) in the journal Hierro (“Iron”), where he lambasted those critics and artists who, enthusing over the film Pelotari ("Basque handball player'), had invented a cultural "Basque spirit". He wrote:

"It has been argued and indeed shouted from the hilltops, that Pelotari is fundamentally Basque (2), given its spirit and the character in words and deeds. All this has been accompanied by arguments that have failed to prevail upon my powers of understanding, a relationship being made between this “spirit” and the so-called Basque school of art which, with Arteta as a starting point, has culminated in our time with the Gaur ("Today") group centred on San Sebastian... All this is but evasive discourse, given the sad but trenchant fact that the great majority of those involved in the Basque school of art are not speakers of Basque at all (Oteiza, Arteta, Basterretxea, Ibarrola) while those who do speak the language cannot be compartmentalised into this school."

As a general rule and historically speaking, the perspective of our artists has been that of "That is the way Basques are" (I am reminded of the painting, Los intelectuales de mi aldea —"The intellectuals of my village"— by Ramon Zubiaurre). Their gaze has always been towards the outside (amongst the village intellectuals the painter is missing), at times in a comicality totally lacking in humour, at other times with a folkloric perspective (even with Arteta's efforts to overcome this). We Basques were a theme, a motif, part of the scenery. We did not have a voice or, when we talked, it provoked hilarity. The creators were always others and this otherness was repeated so often on canvas and in books, that certain Basques began to imitate this bad copy of themselves, in an attempt to be real Basques. Thus we always had the artist as a visitor, Basque or otherwise, and we have only been Basques in art in so far as having to be spectators, buyers... Fake authenticity.

When our poet rebelled against this pigeon-holing alienation of our artists, a young man named Zumeta was beginning to exhibit his work and what he offered then, and still does today, is a far cry from any "Basque spirit" or "Basque school". Being Basque, in that sense and essence of how Basques as Euskaldunak (Basque-speakers) define themselves, Zumeta does not have to justify anything that is not himself. Like his people, he has had to feel his way along, starting from scratch building his own "school", like those involved in the renewal of our literature have had to do. Ibarrola decorated the Euskal Harria ("The Basque Stone") of Gabriel Aresti with some beautiful social realism engravings; Zumeta understood and took on board Hartzabal's poems, his toad-crows or blackbird-toads fusing with the texts of Laino guzien azpitik... ("From below all the fog...") and Eta sasi guztien gainetik ("And from above all the brambles"). Quite conscious of these, his own, surroundings, Zumeta feeds off the reality, an environment where there is, amongst other things, all that which is produced by the Basque people. This is why he cannot be pigeon-holed into any one school. His identification with his people is through the very language and this gives him all the freedom an artist needs in order to create. Zumeta is both himself and his talent.

I would say, without fear of contradiction, that the aesthetic foundations of our artist were laid in the decade of the 70's. In those tough years, this country was witness to the birth of an exceptional group of creators in song, in literature and in art and all of which contributed a great sensitivity to our common historical conscience, even to the point where, in representing its people as an aesthetic vanguard, it was able to create a new manner of culture. It was this, revolutionary, aesthetic ambience that challenged the asphyxiating reality of the period and out of which rose Zumeta's powerful individuality. I believe it was he who best transmitted, through his painting, that collective pain of ours; in other words, it was through his own, personal interpretation that we felt that we were alive. In our shared mind's eye is that mural in Usurbil, the itinerant exhibitions of any number of cultural weeks and historic posters such as 24 orduak euskaraz ("24 hours in the Basque language"), Laboa-Llach kontzertua, Korrikaren jaia... Zumeta introduced a certain Fauvist element, an expressionist courage that disconcerted at first but then excited people, flames from the Saint John's Eve bonfire breaking the monotonous weight of blue. Fortunately, Zumeta is still creating today with the same courage as then.

No slight to the reader is meant in any way when I say that Zumeta's painting is but a gigantic mural which reveals itself to us piece by piece. Rivera and Siqueiros painted “el pueblo”, the most genuine representation of which is the oppressed native (Mexican muralism is full of paternalism, despite the politicisation of the folkloric element). Zumeta's muralism has to be understood at a very different level: the person who should appear in the painting has held the paintbrush and what he produces is something totally unexpected from a Basque: the native has overcome the indigenous, the black person their negritude. What might have been thought to have been domesticated has been expressed in blows and needs the space, the dimensions of the forest.

Ours has been hues of green, autumn ochres and a range of mist greys; the more adventurous offering rusty irons. But, apart from these, nothing had "taste". Standing before his paintings, the observer who is unaware of Zumeta as a Basque, might talk to us of the Mediterranean sun, of a fiesta of colour; they might mention the Chinese carnival or African naïf or tropical joy. And why shouldn't we Basques talk about Zumeta like this? Do we also not live in our times? Zumeta paints the way he does because he is a citizen of the world, not because they say he is Basque. He is a creator who proclaims, "This is the way I am!" without any prejudices.

It is sometimes said that such-and-such a painting has a marine taste, that one a vegetable taste, the other an industrial one... if t be the case that paint has a taste different from its chemical composition, we can say that Zumeta's painting is strong but not primitive, sweet-and-sour but not melancholy. Those who wish to taste "a country" will not get satisfaction with Zumeta because he is not "selling" the Basque Country. Nevertheless, for those wishing to know about the Basque people, he is a must. In this individuality, the dreams and anxieties of a contemporary being can be perceived.

We will not find "The Fisherman", "The Sunset" nor "The Train Station" but simply, "Oil on Canvas". It is up to us to give a title, if indeed, needs be. Better still, let his work transport us with its colours and its lines. In the same way as the agonising cry in Munch's The Scream is not coming from the person's gaping mouth but is in that restless sky, from Zumeta's version of Guernica there screams two great, pale and screaming legs, like the legs of the dead. They are those of the martyred poet Laueta, and, at the same time, those of the many more dead in Gernika, in Warsaw... they are naked because the executed want to be standing on and at one with their earth, flesh on crust, just like the villager waking barefoot in the dew of the morning of Saint John's Day. Earth (l)y ritual and collective clamour uniting in a symbolic dimension.

The village intellectuals became universal on having the courage to let themselves flow onto the canvas. And as the world said: here indeed is an artist.

(1)     Nitasun in Basque means the quality of set or I-ness as opposed to bestetasuna, othemess.

(2) “Basque” often refers to a cultural and national identity and can also refer to the basque language and to those who speak it. In euskara, the basque language, there is no such ambiguity: euskaldunak means "basque-speakers".

Born in Pasaia (Gipuzkoa) in 1953, Koldo Izagirre is welknown for his collection of poems and short stories. He’s also working for the cinema.

Collateral harm, of course
Joxe Austin Arrieta

Zumeta 98-99-00

Uribitarte in Bilbao, La Brocha, 2000

 
I.- We are the children
of those frightened eyes
under the wreckage of Gemika,
on the last remains
of this century of ruin,
hardly human beings,
scarcely the highest order primates,
(they say):
pretty collateral harm of the Brave New World,
from the incendiary bombs of the Luftwaffe,
to the, of course, intelligent missiles of NATO
as hetero-cruel as the auto-compassive Sisyphus,
like a Phoenix Bird
sometimes burner
sometimes burned...

(Oh my! Is there no one
who can put an end
to this endless nauseating madness?)

From Gernika to Pristina,
Coventry-Dresden
Leningrad-Hiroshima
Bagdad-Beirut included:
always the face of the same child
wailing frightened under the howling bombs.

Il.- I agree. Hegel foresaw it
This and That

Let us be comforted
sheltered by knowledge.
You know:
la condition humaine...

Everything can be ex-plain-ed- a-way.
Relax, citoyen

Or, ad libitum:
there are religions, too, you can choose,
if the strong logic designed
by the Nikkei-Dow Jones stock indices
and the Lords of the War
does not suffice you.

Or again, citoyen,
think
how exciting for your adrenaline
is the daily shot
of the controlled horror dose
since better be a TV-ruminant mild sheep
than a butchered sheep,
and the farthest away from it all, the better...

(Oh my! Is there no one
who can put an end
to this endless nauseating madness?)

pretty collateral harm of the Brave New World
from the incendiary bombs of the Luftwaffe,
to the, of course, intelligent missiles of NATO

Il).- Being a child of Gemika:
This is the crushing honour,
that belongs to us basques,
from the mid 20th century onwards,
a dubious primacy...

But
we can have, in this century of horror,
as much
pride as humility:

ever since that 27th of April 1937,
the moaning of any child
throughout the world
is not foreing to us,
and we still believe
we stilt are alive
we still are sure

the hidden face of human condition,
softness
solidarity,
moon side so grievously concealed..

will relight it again,
we, the higher order primates
forced to become
collateral losses,

Proud of our humbleness
unassuming basques
we the children
of those frightened eyes
under the wreckage of Gernika,
we know how to conceive from firericks a Zumeta (1).

(1) The author makes a phonetical pun. Su-meta, a composite word of  
Su (fire) and meta (rick) sounds like the name of the painter Zumeta.