14 thursday, july 23, 2020 - majorcadailybulletin.com · 7/23/2020 · 14 majorca daily bulletin...

14 MAJORCA DAILY BULLETIN THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2020SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

SPECIAL RAZONES HUMANAS - JOAN BENNÀSSAR

Joan Bennàssar: “You know what your

vocation weighs on you. And if you betray this, it is

you who you disfigure. But you know your truth will

be done slowly, because it is the birth of a tree and not

the finding of a formula.” A. Saint-Exupéry

T he circumstances by which I de-cided to dedicate my life to draw-

ing things and ideas and to beauty and art were both fortuitous and predictable. I was born in Pollensa, where culture had been dignified for years. My drawing teacher, Mateo Llobera, showed my parents that I knew how to observe and that I had the hand for drawing. After looking at some of my drawings, Simeón Cerdà, son of the painter Lorenzo Cerdà, gave me copies of his father’s paint-ings, which were to be my first watercolours and opened the doors to the School of Arts and Crafts in Palma, where I had Jaume Mir as teacher of sculpture. When I finished my studies in Palma, I en-tered the Barcelona Fac-ulty of Art and, at the age of eighteen, the Club Pol-lença staged my first exhi-bition, something which was to give me a degree of financial freedom. Finding a vocation at such a young age helped me not to waste time and effort.

As a child, I learned to play and swim in a Medi-terranean village: in a sea where the waves carry past stories full of culture, art and philosophy; stories

of peoples who traded, made war, who were at-tracted, were afraid and mixed; a sea full of gods with human weaknesses and states with borders as volatile as the marine storms.

In my youth, the beaches were full of young people from other countries with other music and beautiful nymphs relaxing in the

sun. While I mixed de-sires with longings for new worlds, my muses and I scruti-nised those bodies, their strange red-ness and

their freedom. I dreamt of love in other languages; its

sensuality enriched my work and disturbed my summer nights. Then came other cities and stud-ies, work, family, friends, love ... . And without ever having left, because one is the future and the past, I returned. It was a neces-sary return out of love for my mother after the death of my father.

The present was a well-known but different vil-lage: a world more my own, more diverse, more complex and highly visi-ble. Pollensa projects an infinite horizon. The yearnings of the old paint-ers and their efforts to cap-ture the beauty of the coastline, the light and the blues of the sky will have something to do with the words of the poets, who sought to name the infi-

Joan Bennàssar Pollensa

Finding a vocation at such a young age helped me not to waste time and effort

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT 15MAJORCA DAILY BULLETINTHURSDAY, JULY 23, 2020


nite, as this is a village which is prolific in its po-etry, art and social com-mitment, which is to sow, to illuminate, to ennoble and to dignify human rela-tions.

To communicate and make truths understand-able through shapes and ethical content are, I be-lieve, classic values of a re-turning past. Intent on not limiting my curiosity and seeking to comprehend a present that looks askance at stories of a past as meta-phors for a changing world, made me put aside my thematic routines and

to focus my creative ef-forts on this sea: the Medi-terranean, its islands and its peoples; its goddesses and heroes. Its laws, phi-losophy and art were themes of my paintings, sculptures, exhibitions and books, and the Medi-terranean is the trilogy of sex, society and culture, as I have felt them.

They are books that com-bine research with images, their communicative power obviating the need for long print runs. I com-plemented them with ex-hibitions at Can Llobera in Pollensa, the Es Baluard Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Palma and La Defensora theatre in Soller. At the same time, I started in-stalling examples of my sculptures on breakwaters in Cala Ratjada, Can Pica-fort and Puerto Soller.

“Mallorca erótica”, the first book, is a compen-dium of ‘gloses’, old spicy songs from the Majorcan countryside and party songs of courtship, love and the desire of bodies for each other. I lost my fear of being descriptive, and artistically this made it made easier for me to rear-range formal concepts re-

lated to figuration: with-out wishing to be con-tained, I was comprehensi-ble.

The second book, “El vino que bebo sabe a mar”, is a social history of the is-lands through the eco-nomic impact of vine cul-tivation and winemaking. There are landscapes of earth and green leaves, of Bacchus and his troop of maenads and satyrs; hu-man stories diluting the barriers that match the gods with their devils. It is a book that was born out of a mutual dependence: art and the source of knowledge; and wine, the stimulus and source of in-spiration.

“Latir de remos golpeando el mar” (The Beat of the Oars Striking The Sea) is blue sky and open sea. It is about identity and culture; it is the journey to the sources, to the ports from which ships and knowl-edge sail. It underpins common values, plays down the small things and praises the mixture as a factor of respect for being human.

Each step raises new questions, and it is the stu-dio - with my work - where I look for questions. “Human Reasons” is my new project and the re-sponse to the most danger-ous crisis which, I believe, humans face: forgetting humanity. It seeks to re-call how the soul unloads its passions on false values when man loses his dig-nity; reopens truths based on reason, science and law; sets aside fear in this world of disorder; and prevents people with common sense from being slaves to those who lack it.

The present was a well-known but different village: a world more my own, more diverse ...

To communicate and make truths understandable through shapes and ethical content are classic values

CONTINUED ON FOLLOWING PAGE

human reasons



Calvari: The steps of the weariness but the nobility of the heart are about the doubts, the sufferings, the difficulties and efforts in ascending to cleaner hori-zons. This is a song of gen-erosity, responsibility, knowledge, friendship and wel-come. It is truth and it is vigi-lance. It is dreaming and offer-ing for-giveness and justice. It is skirt-ing the borders and expanding the human horizon. “The world must be made by oneself. Steps must be cre-ated for you to climb, to take you out of the well. You have to invent life, because it ends up being true.” (Ana María Matute).

The Sant Domingo Con-vent Church: The forum of public business and law

desecrate my most sacred spaces. “I want death to find me planting my cab-bages, but caring little for it, and even less for my imperfect garden.” (Mon-taigne).

We live a fragile balance of opposing forces: we confront memory and fear and the chance of desire and delight at living. Nowadays, the avant-gardists, who taught us to look at and name objects and man in a new way, are academies of jaded signifi-cance. Distant from the common good, they achieve a loss of interest and drive the message away, diminishing their authority.

In a creative world, the most fascinating works are born in the cracks.

is defence of the space in which the individual and society create codes and agreements to form rela-tionships and thus adapt to each other. It is the search for fulfilment and community, tolerance, freedom, and the defence of belonging to a single civilisation. It is fear of the irrelevance of the hu-

man being and his less ideal behav-iours. “Truth is corrupted as much by lies as by si-lence.” (Cicero).

The tower of the garden of the muses is the magi-cal space that provokes the poetic atmosphere; the walled garden where goddesses, inspired by the arts, pamper the poet, possessed by his truth, eternal in a woman’s body and ephemeral by nature. It is the workshop where I scribble alchemical traces of desires, longings that

Human Reasons is my new project and the response to the most dangerous crisis which, I believe, humans face

FOLLWED FROM THE PREVIOUS PAGE The tower of the

garden of the muses is the magical space that provokes the poetic atmosphere

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT 17MAJORCA DAILY BULLETINTHURSDAY, JULY 23, 2020


We confront memory and fear and the chance of desire and delight at living

I am a transmitter of moral criteria and, with each image, I seek to ex-pand my limits and show myself how I know that I can be different tomorrow if my learning modifies me or I lose my dreaming.

In a creative world, the most fascinating works are born in the cracks

The works are enlarged by the amount of love and of the past that you can sense in them. I don’t know if my works are the answer to the question, but I know that they are the fruit of this feeling.

These troubled and strange times, this epi-demic that threatens us and alerts us to how frag-ile the future is, accentu-

ate the multiple ties that unite we humans to a common goal. As an artist, neither fear nor deception should guide my thinking.



“Through the artist’s work, Pollensa is sending a message of

tranquility to the world”Bartomeu Cifre Ochogavia,

the Mayor of Pollensa T he strange times during which we have lived in the re-

cent months have cre-ated fears, concerns and uncertainties which at times have made us think about the irrepara-ble damage to the human spirit. However, it is the case that, despite every-thing, we have as a soci-ety responded with many examples of soli-darity, sacrifice and de-termination that have revealed magnanimity often hidden from view.

These have been and are difficult times that will lead us to continue to bring out the the best in ourselves in order to face the immediate fu-ture. For institutions, there is the requirement, more than ever, to be up to the task in taking re-sponsibility in respond-ing to the most basic of needs.

Culture has become a right and a basic spiritual element which, together with housing, health and education, make up the precious welfare society.

In this regard, it is es-sential that Pollensa town hall promotes ini-tiatives which facilitate reunion with the desired normality and are a pub-lic cultural investment for the benefit of all.

At this stage of the new normal, the work of the Pollensa artist Joan Bennàssar is without doubt extraordinary, brave and stimulating. When it was suggested, all exhibition program-ming at the Pollensa Mu-seum was suspended be-cause of the health emergency. But it is in such a situation where public institutions are most needed in leading courageous initiatives to reactivate the local econ-omy and the emotional

well-being of citizens. Pollensa’s image, thanks to Joan Bennàssar’s work, will send the world a message of tran-quility and invite all those who want to visit us. It is an exhibition that is large in terms of space and great because of its message. Joan Bennàssar presents a timeless, humanistic dia-logue for recovering es-sential values through the beauty of ethics, hu-man relationships, the pleasures of love and, ul-timately, life and its rea-sons.

“Human Reasons” speaks of the fragility of the future and empha-sises the ties that unite humans with a common goal. It is a synthesis be-tween two spaces: the Calvari and the Convent Church. The one lifts us up the steps of the weari-ness but the nobility of the heart; the other takes us into the forum of public business and law. Both seek, now more than ever, to an-swer the big questions about what it is to be hu-man.

As the representative of all the people of Pol-lensa, I wish to express my sincerest thanks to Joan Bennàssar for his contagious hope and his efforts in making this particular journey to Ith-aca possible.

19SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTMAJORCA DAILY BULLETINTHURSDAY, JULY 23, 2020


The markets have a bad name

Would art exist without those who contemplate it, observe it, enjoy it or criticise it? A public is needed.

Pere Salas

T he markets are as old as humanity. They occupy the same level as ar-

tistic and philosophical ex-pression. They are part of civilisation, if not in fact one of its essential founda-tions. As a superior mam-mal, man can live without any of these intellectual activities, but it would be difficult for him to be truly human if he did not participate in a space for exchange. Barbarians, like wild beasts, meet to kill themselves; men, in order to exchange goods and words. From the crossing between these, at the in-

tersection of diverse cul-tures, arises civilisation.

Joan Bennàssar thinks of the church and cloister of Sant Domingo as a large area for exchange. The art-ist has always needed con-tact with a faithful or un-faithful public, willing to receive intellectual mer-chandise. Would art exist without those who con-

template it, observe it, en-joy it or criticise it? I do not think so. A public in-terlocutor is needed.

I had already sensed this at the end of the seventies, when art classes were given by that teacher with long hair and a moustache at the Pollensa institute. Then, we didn’t imagine reality being made trans-parent by a computer, al-though television and cin-ema had left far more of a mark than the printed word or a painting. Noth-ing comparable to the cur-rent void, or is it simply nostalgia for a time when markets were places where buyers and sellers traded face to face?

Antoni Planas

T hrough sacri-fice, effort, perseverance and, above all,

work, work and more work, Joan Bennàssar has managed to con-struct a unique, magi-cal, totemic and capti-vating project. It is one born out of creative genius but which also becomes mythical and transcends fashions and times. Joan Bennàssar is one of the hardest working people I have ever met. He is always

Art is the work of some people who, through genius, show us the landscape from their vantage point

working, even when he is not in the studio. He is one of those chosen ones, who have known how to climb the ladder step by step, without haste but with resolve, conquering all the difficulties that

have arisen, overcom-ing the climb, even when it became desper-ately vertical. He has fought and he has won. He has reached a sum-mit from which he has privileged views of the world that he reveals through his work. In fact, is this not art? Be-cause for me, art is the work of some people who, through their genius, show us the landscape as seen from their vantage point, one which most of us will never be able to reach.

Jacob’s Ladder and a metaphor for life



The tower of the garden of the muses

The artist wishes to broaden the horizon of an eternity through his or her creation.

Felip Munar i Munar

T ruth is essential for the artist, who seeks to broaden the hori-

zon of an eternity through his or her crea-tion. The truth, the appro-priateness and the consis-tency between thought and the reality of some-thing, but seen from a personal and unique an-gle; if it were not so, there would not be expressions such as “bitter truths” or “the honest to God truth”, and nor would we able to express an absolute truth, precisely because the truth is never unique or

necessarily exclusive. And the artist’s truth is the deep, unique vision that comes from reflection and has captured reality. Joan Bennàssar opens “The gates of the garden of the muses” to us, doing so from the love he feels or perceives and from every-one’s capability of dream-ing. The teacher Joan Mas-caró put it this way: “Have love and all life’s prob-lems are solved. Your ene-mies are no longer ene-mies; your loathing is no longer loathing. Naturally you see evil, but you see it with a backdrop of love; a love that is the backdrop for the Universe.”

Sandra Martínez

W e need comfort. We need calm-

ness. We need huge bodies surrounded by stars. We need lovers without shame. Satyrs who drink wine, and words with sprinklings which give a little sense to everything. We need figures that take away our anguish with their serenity. Women who look to the horizon. We need all this, and my head journeys to a studio surrounded by oak

We need calmness. We need huge bodies surrounded by stars.

trees, where I am sure that Joan Bennàssar will be working. This is be-cause the world may fall, but I’m sure that he hasn’t stopped working for a single day.

I will have patience; I am sure that I will be re-warded. I will wait a little more, because I cannot imagine this scenario

without the laughter, almost that of a satyr, of Joan or the always loving hug of Cristina. I will wait for the time to pass to confirm what we already know: that, despite every-thing - fear, disease, death - beauty com-forts and responds. I will wait.

The wait

The artist’s truth is the deep, unique vision which has captured reality.

I will wait for the time to pass to confirm that beauty comforts and responds.

14 thursday, july 23, 2020 - majorcadailybulletin.com · 7/23/2020 · 14 majorca daily bulletin...

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