Barcelona: MACBA

Sitting in Barcelona's MACBA, bathed in pure, blinding, modern art gallery white (Dulux ought to use that name for the whitest white they have), Francesc Torres, the artist exhibiting here at the moment, just made a very good point that rings true with me.

Modern art galleries are so often destinations in their own right.  Architecturally interesting, they cut up pure blank wall with angles and shadows, with light making its own show.  Moving through some of them, it doesn't matter where you are.  You can't tell - they remove time, history, season, nationality.  They strive to blank it all out.

What is the point?  So much modern art, taken away from its frame of reference, removed from your culture, the places you've visited, the things you like and the things that move you, leaves a bizarre grainy projection above a pile of sticks.  Or an oversized glossy photograph of a place that reminds you, and makes you think, of nothing.

You might as well hang it in a carpark, or by the beach, or outside a supermarket, because without the frame of reference, you have no art at all.

(Yes, I get the necessity of white walls.  I also very much like these big white buildings.  Just an observation, felt the need to write something...)