Quintaesenciados Tonos
(The following is an older piece of writing. I lost my other account and put it here to preserve it. It has been unchanged to maintain it’s authenticity.)
Aug 15, 2018
If you find yourself in the labyrinth of streets that make up the old Jewish quarter of Córdoba, you should wander into the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Rafael Boti. Entrance is free. There you will find selected works of the Corobés master. When I walked in I felt as if I had been transported into a mirror image of the Córdoba in which I had been living in for the past two months. The only difference is that the Córdoba I now found myself in was not made out of bricks and Cobblestones, but out of inks and oils, carved with a painter’s knife and brush.
The first and most notable characteristic of Botí is his love of color, especially the infinite tones of blues, greens, and whites he seems to have at his disposal. In the glass case below his small biography lies his pallet, spattered in color. It was a wonder to think that from that pallet arose all of the artwork I found myself surrounded by. The pallet itself was a masterwork and you could see the protoplasmic clouds of color he used to mix and create his unique shades. The paintings themselves were all fantasmic photographs of places in Córdoba, not as they really are, but as they might be remembered.
The large landscapes I saw that day in the small exhibit were as follows: El Cristo de los Faroles, Un patio de las Rejas de Don Gome, Patio antiguo, Patio de la Judería, Arquitectura cordobesa, La fuente del olivo, Patio de la Madama, Calle Santiago, Alcornoques en la sierra de Córdoba, Interior Campesino. All of which were inscribed with a “(Córdoba)” after the title, which I found was unnecessary because if you have spent any time at all in the city you would see the painstaking lengths that Botí has gone to in order to capture its essence. Aside from these there were a few still lifes, or ‘bodegónes’ such as Bodegón del caldero, Bodegón de la bota, Bodegón de pan. But the painting I found most striking was El patio de la Fuensanta (Córdoba 1925).
The painting is a perfect square (60cm x 60cm) and every corner of it is packed with detail. Each detail not only informs on the location of the cite it was painted for, but the city of
Córdoba as a whole. Dozens of green shades explode from the shrubs against the patient white of the church in the background. In this piece Botí shows an complete mastery not only of color theory but also of composition. He has placed the large square of white directly in the center of the painting, which allows every other abundant color to be magnified even more in their brilliance. His choice to use that sunset shade between pink and purple as a stand in for simple black as shadow, allow for an even more striking contrast against all the green in the piece. In fact, that large chunk of of the purple in the bottom left corner of the painting balances the piece perfectly against the the large green pool of water and the blue corner of the sky on the opposite, top right corner. That corner in turn is meticulously decorated with white clouds that serve to match the white of the church wall, which seems to be one white slab but upon further inspection, each individual brick can be found.
Each color is geniusly painted to correspond to something else in the painting in a way that is hypnotizing to the eye. The blue door matches the blue sky and the blue flower pots (another subtle clue to the rest of the city). The red door matches the dozens of small red flowers spread around the garden, and the same goes for the peach arches and the yellow columns. Even the brown cross has its match in the trunk of the large tree that divides the painting into four perfect quadrants. My favorite detail though, was probably the orange tree hiding in the shadows in the top left corner. If there is one single detail I will remember in my stay here in Córdoba it will be the Orange trees found on almost every corner and that decorate the streets as they fall.
I found myself staring in front of it for almost an hour, when the security guard of the museum, Pedro came up and started a conversation. He showed me his biography, and walked with to each painting in the museum. While we talked, and through the museum resources he gave me, I learned that Botí was a contemporary of Julio Romero de Torres, Daniel Vázquez Díaz, and even Pablo Picasso. I learned he lived a life dedicated to art, not just in painting, but in music as well; he was a viola teacher for the Madrid Philharmonic Orchestra and later on for the Spanish National Orchestra. During the Spanish Civil War, his Madrid home was bombed in an air raid and he and his family fled to Manzanares in Ciudad Real where he worked as a drawing teacher and Librarian in a local secondary school. What I found most interesting was that he and a group of other artists founded thh “Agrupación Gremial de Artistas Plásticos” and published a Manifesto on 29 April 1931. According to the museums biography of Botí, the publication ‘censured all forms of high-handedness and sought to endow the national art world with a broader scope and a new lease on life.” This fascinated me and I tried to find a copy of the manifesto, but of the many personal letters of Botí that the museum had, the Manifesto was not one of them.
I asked Pedro if he knew where el Patio de la Fuensanta was and he rushed behind the front desk of the museum to grab me a map. I did my best to understand his specific brand of breathy Cordobés Spanish, but it was difficult for me to follow as I am still learning the language. He started by describing the streets, but before I knew it he was pointing to the empty wall above my head and saying something enthusiastically about a caiman crocodile. I nodded and thanked him and told him I would be back in a few days to discuss what I had seen.
After a long walk and fearing that I might have been lost I came across the grand church, even from outside I could see many orange trees in the patio just inside the walls, and high up was the preserved body of a Caiman Crocodile! Despite that excitement, I was met with a slight disappointment: it looked nothing like the painting. It was still beautiful and decorated with flowers, but there was no cross, no shimmering pool of green water. The plaque outside posted by the Ayuntamiento de Códoba titled ‘Santuario de La Fuensanta’ explained why.
The church was constructed in 1476 after the Virgin Mary appeared to Gonzalo Garcia in 1442 in a nearby well. That’s where the church gets its name of ‘holy fountain’. There were several renovations and add ons throughout the years, but in the 80’s a renovation accidentally destroyed much of the patio. Botí’s painting was realized in 1925, which meant that his painting was one of the few remnants we have of the old patio before it’s destruction.
The next day after school I decided to walk back to the museum before lunch, and before a siesta consumed most of my day. I took what I thought would be a direct route to the river Guadalquivir, so I could make a quick stop at the aptly named ‘el laberinto’ bookstore, and then head to the museum. This was a fatal mistake and I ended up wandering the high walled streets of Córdoba, too stubborn to ask for directions, for over two hours. And this was one of the happier accidents of my life, because I got to see that city through Botí’s eyes.
Paintings such as La Puerta del Convento de Santa Isabel (Córdoba 1929) began to jump out at me from those walls painted white to protect los Cordobeses from the sweltering Andalucian summers. As I walked deeper into the maze of streets that turn right left and backwards with no rhyme or reason I was reminded of Architectura cordobesa o Cuesta del Bailio, 1960. As I wandered into one of the many open patios in the city I saw one with a plaque that read ‘Dios bendiga cada rincón de esta casa’ and the flowers and fountains inside reminded me of Jardín cordobés. 1987. Many of these paintings were not in the museum and were on my mind because all that night I had been scouring Botí’s collected works on the beautiful website ‘rafaelboti.com’ a beautiful digital museum.
In the middle of me being desperately lost, a single painting popped into my head that refused to leave. It looked like none of the other paintings I had been thinking about, and yet it seemed to sum up all of them. It was the one painting that I hadn’t paid much attention to when I went to the Museum: La Noche en una calle de Córdoba.
And maybe it was because my subconscious was packed with all things Botí that in my wanderings I found my way to the Biblioteca Central, not very close to the river at all. I went out of curiosity, but without being there for more than a minute I found a large sign directing me to “Los artes plásticas”, Boit’s style, and I couldn’t resist.
As if it were waiting there for me, I found a large book –too large to be placed upright in the shelf, and so it was placed on it’s side– with the title sticking out of the shelf demanding attention: ‘BOTI´. The book was a collection of writings on Botí as well as some of his personal letters. But the most interesting part of the book was that it contained 30 poems about 30 different paintings by Botí by different Spanish poets. And the painting I couldn’t seem to get out of my mind, that had transplanted itself there out of nowhere, had two different poems. It seems that this painting had something addicting to its nature, the following is my favorite of the two.
Nocturna Cordobés
Por Manuel Tomás Sigüenza
Sólidos muros ocres, dos ventanas,
Azul intenso y un farol que expande
Su débil luz, quintaesenciados tonos
De nuestra Córdoba. ¡Con qué delicia
me extravió en tus calles: del Hinojo,
Abrazamozas, Mucho Trigo, Hoguera…;
A ser posible solo o con serena
Charla de amigos cultos y discretos!
¡Que el tiempo se detenga, que se acabe
El vano trajinar, y me disuelva
En esta noche y la calleja breva,
Jazmines y farol, rotunda lun,
Sortilegios de sta Córdoba amada!
And I realized that this painting was able to capture the essence of Botí’s love for Córdoba in a single blue square. I don’t have the language skills to translate the poem into an english poem, but I can describe it’s verses. The poet talks about the intense blues of the painting as capturing the ‘quintessential’ tones of the city of Córdoba. This is interesting because the city walls are painted white, and even at night do not hold a blue shade to them. And yet when I saw the painting for the first time, I knew exactly where it took place: anywhere and everywhere in this city of three cultures. And maybe that’s another reason for the blue, the fact that there is a famous Jewish quarter in the city, and maybe the blue is a nod to the jewish city of Chefchaouen in Morocco. Or maybe it was a reference to the blue flower pots the city is famous for. But if that’s the case then it’s only a part of the whole meaning. The painting isn’t just blue, and if you look closely, you can see that Botí’s fascination with color: every single color is worked into its shades, with loving dedication. There’s something about the painting that aims to capture the feeling of walking around at night in Córdoba, rather than the photographic representation. And as someone who loved walking around those streets at night, and who never seemed to master it’s labyrinth no matter how many times I tried, I can assure you that Botí has succeeded.
Look at the title of it, La noche en una calle de Córdoba’, the painting is just as much about the night itself as it about a the street. And there is a reason the street isn’t named, because it doesn’t exist. It is any and every street in cordoba, it is the essence of that sad and lonely blue you feel when you are walking around by yourself or with a few friends, as the poem says; the color seems to capture that feeling that time stops while you are in the labyrinth, and before you know it, it’s two hours later and you are nowhere near where you started.
I returned to the Museum twice more to look at the painting, the last time on my last day in Córdoba. Before I left, Pedro rushed to the back room and said he had something for me. When he came back he presented R Botí en la colección de arte de la diputación de Córdoba, the museum’s own printed collection of his works. As I left he told me ‘!Tienes un amigo aquí en Córdoba!’ and then he shook my hand and slapped my shoulder hard in the way I had become accustomed when we met. When I landed in Paris off my flight from Córdoba, I saw that he had sent me a video. It was of the church of Fuensanta in the rain, the church bells were singing loudly, the oranges looked even oranger against the clouded sky, the crocodile was smiling. The video came with a caption:
“Ola cómo estás
Te mando la iglesia del patio de la fuensanta.
Y recuerdos de un CORDOBÉS.”
Referencias
El Centro De Arte Rafael Botí. C/. Manríquez, 5 • 14003. Córdoba. All biographical information comes from the biography they graciously provided me.
R Botí en la colección de Arte de la Diputación de Córdoba. This was the book Pedro gave to me and which made looking at each of the paintings incredibly easy.
Nocturno Cordobés, a poem by Manuel Tomás Sigüenza contained in the collection Rafael Boti, Córdoba 1900- Madrid 1995
