LLEI D'ART 14

They consider themselves unworthy of peace and think that nobody is as long as their surroundings are not to their liking. And so they please themselves in this attitude convincedof taking aposture to achieve theirmission. Many of the artists that have consciously or unconsciously taken this path have ended updevouredby bitterness and havebeendepressed to thepoint of suicide. Other,more irritable, irascible and antisocial souls have sunk into solitude. Their contribution to them has always been minor, and so they enter into a state of desperation that questions their ‘usefulness’ within a society that they so yearn to transform. They are artists not happy to just represent their surroundings, but they have the ambition todepict the thinkingof the time. These are tormentedminds that never cease in their search for that light that allows them to reach their target. They create objects as subjects, as active elements of their ownparticular war. In a life of struggle there is no room for joy, laughter, pure entertainment, nor enjoyment nor pleasure until their change is achieved.Most of these lives are snuffed out at deathwithout even spotting the so-desired success. Lives dedicated to transmitting anxiousness toothers to relieve them inbattle. Artists committed to their world. Theywere, and are,melancholy and all their art is impregnatedwith his state of permanent anhedonia. Examples abound: VanGogh,Munch, Modigliani, ElvisPresley, Tchaikovsky oVirginiaWoolf are just a fewof thebetter-known figures. EdvardMunch .Melancolía/ Melancholy, 1894-96. BergenKunstmuseum (Noruega) The greatmaster LeonardodaVinci left us amagnificent studio representative of the states of excess or defect of the ‘humours’ inhisGrotesqueHeads. During theRenaissance therewas the idea that the genius - a slave to his constant inspiration - lived in apermanent state ofmelancholy. Even todaywe have reminders of these convictions andwe consider the artist an unusual individual of erraticbehaviour who lives on the edge of society, completely absorbedby their own solitary creation. Andperhapswe are not so far from the truth. In aworld like the current one, this so-calledWestern, developedworld so immersed in a capitalismbasedonly on consumptionwhere all of us, far frombeing the client, are theproduct, we findourselves invadedby two epidemics: obesity (30%) anddepression (26%). The combination of these two excesses in consumption (gluttony) and the lack of interest in life itself suggests a fault in the system. The reasons thatmany build their existence on are farces that disappear once uncovered. The search for happiness throughpurchasingpower alone leads toquite the opposite, to adisinterest in life and suicide through excess.We should be conscious of all this and use the artist’smelancholy to fight and transgress the establishedway of being. I call all of uswhowish to contribute something tohumanity toput on their combats and using their pen, brush,music or chisel to collaborate so that the existential values are freed from the slavery that is being imposedonus.We havematerial to represent the thinking andbelief necessary to try and achieve abetter world. LeonardodaVinci Rostros grotescos GrotesqueHeads , 1490. Royal Library,Windsor Castle, Inglaterra. 116