"Merdra!": Alfred Jarry and Ubú burst into the Museu Picasso to the rhythm of rock'n'roll

BarcelonaKing Ubu, the mythical literary creature of the Frenchman Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), is all stomach and has a pear-shaped head. He is an infamous character who caused a scandal when he was first published in 1896. The opening of the work is legendary:Shit!"And Ubu has a corrosive force that has unfolded throughout the world and reaches to this day, as can be seen from this Thursday until April 5 in the new exhibition at the Museu Picasso, the magnificent Ubu the painter. Alfred Jarry and the arts, curated by the museum's director, Emmanuel Guigon.

"Ubu is a grotesque character. The adjective ubuesco "It has marked the language of the 20th century, which is as universal as Madame Bovary, Sade and sadism, and Kafka and the Kafkaesque," Guigon states. "Guy Debord said in the 1960s that the 20th century was marked by the disasters of war and by the Kafkaesque, but that the character who permeated all of contemporary culture, with all of contemporary culture, with all of contemporary culture, was Ubu. He said that nothing was destroyed unless it destroyed everything, a symbol that can be very relevant today," Guigon emphasizes, culminating the tour with the portrait of "one of the many Ubuses that exist today," a Ubu-Trump represented by the artist Hélène Delprat as a painting monkey.

Ubu the painter. Alfred Jarry and the arts It is a Guigon-branded exhibition, a huge, ambitious, and innovative display that occupies two floors of the museum. Nearly 500 works and documents by dozens of renowned 20th- and 21st-century artists, photographers, and writers are on view, including, in addition to Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Adeau Rousseau, Andrés Andrés, Félix Vallotton, Georges Rouault Ernst, Joan Miró, Dora Maar, Le Corbusier, Jean Dubuffet, Enrico Baj, Raymond Queneau, Francesc Català Roca, and William Kentridge. Furthermore, the exhibition includes documentation of theatrical productions of Ubu, among them those featuring a young woman. Pilar Aymerich at the Adrià Gual School of Dramatic Art; the one from Bob Wilson, promoted by Imma Prieto during her time at the Es Baluard museum; that of Els Joglars, with the controversial Ubu president inspired by Jordi Pujol; that of Joan Baixas, who brought to life the giant puppets of Joan Miró in Death to the Merma, and that of the company Cheek by Jowl, led by Declan Donnellan.

Pilar Aymerich's participation in the exhibition dates back to a conversation she had with Guigon: they started talking about frogs and ended up talking about Alfred Jarry and his most famous creation, the infamous and grotesque King Ubu, as they both explained this Wednesday.. Aymerich then revealed that she had translated the play into Catalan and directed it in 1964 as the culmination of her studies at the Adrià Gual School of Dramatic Art. Obviously, given the Franco regime, the performance was held behind closed doors. And this Wednesday, Aymerich recounted the fascinating story of how she discovered the text thanks to a mysterious young man, a cross between "Dracula and a beetle," whom she met when, clandestinely, she indulged her passion for rock 'n' roll dancing. In one of those sessions, the young man, whose name Aymerich doesn't recall, told her he was leaving the country and, before departing, gave her a paperback edition of Ubu.

"I read the book and was completely taken aback," says Aymerich. "I had studied at a French convent school, but convents nonetheless. Barcelona was a very arid, very sad city, and suddenly I came across this completely atypical dictator, a black shirt under a canopy, and suddenly I discovered that there was also a world to be lived within a dictatorship, and I kept looking for things about Jarry, especially in France."

A vanguard under fire

In the case of Picasso, it is well known that the reference point for the deformed protagonist of the 1937 engravings Franco's dream and lie It's Ubu, but the associate curator, historian María González Menéndez, recalls another unmissable episode from some thirty years earlier: a legendary dinner that took place in 1905 at Maurice Raynal's house, attended by Guillaume Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry, and the sculpted history. "There, something happened that many consider fantasy, but which probably took place: Jarry started arguing with Manolo and, at one point, he transformed into Ubu: he pulled out his revolver and started shooting at the ceiling," says González. “Then,” he adds, “the women fainted, and there was a great commotion. Apollinaire intervened, took the revolver from Jarry, and gave it to Picasso, who kept it for a while in his studio at the Bateau-Lavoir. This episode was extraordinary because Picasso’s friends saw an emblem, a kind of comet-like emblem that heralded a new aesthetic century. And, indeed, at that moment Picasso was moving toward a different period, also conducting research that would lead to Cubism.”

The exhibition also includes previously unseen works, such as a small portrait of a woman by Picasso from 1942. Also new is the exploration of the character’s influence on Le Corbusier’s work: when German troops entered Paris in June 1940, Le Corbusier sought refuge in the town of Ozon, where he created sculptural versions of the character. Upon his return to Paris in 1942, the architect began to identify these works as "Ubus," because, he said, the international scene was saturated with them.

Interest in folk art

The exhibition begins with a portrait of Jarry by Hermann Paul that belonged to Picasso's collection. "Picasso's collection of Jarry's works is quite extensive," says González. The first sections delve into Jarry's work as an art critic. At the age of twenty, he was fascinated by Parisian galleries and salons, and by innovative artists such as Van Gogh and Degas. "Jarry's career began with art, and it's very interesting to see how his prose was so focused on the image," explains González. Popular art and theater were also key influences, as can be seen in a tapestry by the Norwegian artist Gerhard Munthe, recently acquired by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and now on display at the Museu Picasso, and in a series of drawings and watercolors by Charles Filiger. In fact, Guigon, who already curated an exhibition on Jarry when he visited the IVAM some 25 years ago, hasn't ruled out another one at the Museu d'Orsay.

The image of Ubu Roi is the result of a caricature Jarry drew of his physics teacher when he was about twelve years old. And in the Museu Picasso, further on, you can see the sets from the 1896 puppet theater performance of the play, and the magnificent Ubu imperator by Max Ernst, a result of Jarry's influence on the Surrealists. And before reaching the theatrical part of the exhibition, the sections dedicated to Jean Dubuffet's art brut and the "nuclear painting" of the Italian Enrico Baj are not to be missed.