This is art

Ramon Gener explores the various manifestations of vanity, deeply rooted in the creative spirit and an undeniable part of human nature, on a journey through Madrid, Versailles, and Barcelona. With art critic Manuel Antón, Ramon uncovers the secrets of some royal portraits housed at the Prado Museum, while with Sarai López, Spanish bodybuilding champion, he explores the influence of classical sculpture on this sport. Sculptor Jaume Plensa and soprano Desireé Rancatore also feature on the program.

What would remain of art if we eliminated the madness that, along with inspiration, curiosity, and transgression, is a fundamental element of the creative process? From Hieronymus Bosch to Vincent van Gogh, from Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf to Salvador Dalí and Robert Schumann, Ramón Gener traverses the history of art, literature, and music to reveal the small and large follies hidden behind immense masterpieces.

Cain killing Abel to gain God's favor, Bernini and Borromini competing for the Pope's favor, Venus betraying Vulcan with Mars, Medea killing her own children to punish Jason's betrayal, Veronese and Tintoretto competing for a job. Ramon Gener recounts the most famous cases of jealousy in the history of art, music, literature, and opera. He approaches the topic by explaining how jealousy always involves three parties, unlike envy, which involves two. He also meets the three architects of Studio RCR, who won the 2017 Pritzker Prize for Architecture, to discover that their successful collaboration excludes any form of jealousy. In closing, drawing inspiration from an installation by artist Judy Chicago, he reflects on the fact that jealousy can only be overcome when the love behind it comes to light.

Like the nine Valkyries who traveled the world in search of heroes worthy of entering Valhalla, in this journey to discover the bravest figures in art, Gener ranges from music (Beethoven) to sacred (David) and profane (Achilles) mythology, passing through literature (Don Quixote and Peter Pan), history (Joan of Arc), architecture (Bernini), and engineering (Leonardo). Through paintings, sculptures, symphonies, and stories, the various declinations of the concept of courage lead to the conclusion that even more courageous than the artist who creates the work is the viewer who admires it and who, therefore, deserves a place in Valhalla alongside the other heroes.

Fear: A journey through fear—which confines us within its four walls, preventing us from living—to discover how artists have suffered from it and fought it: from composers (Rachmaninoff, Chopin) to painters (Turner, Cézanne, Masson), from writers (Kafka, Shelley, Polidori, Wilde, Lovecraft, Poe, Stevenson, Stoker), to film directors (Balagueró). The episode shows how the ancient Egyptians' way of exorcising fear is not dissimilar from that of ordinary people today, leading inexorably to the conclusion that fear is only in our heads.

Desire. Since ancient times, desire in art has been embodied by the goddess Venus, of whom numerous reproductions exist today in both painting and sculpture. In more recent times, Goya's Maja vestida and Maja desnuda, two paintings designed to be superimposed so that the "nude Maja" would only be revealed by activating a mechanism, have also interpreted desire. In the episode, Ramon Gener also visits Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, furnished in Rococo style, which houses one of the first examples of a writing desk in which nobles kept secret letters from their lovers. It's impossible not to mention the novel "Dangerous Liaisons" by Choderlos de Laclos. To explore the characteristics of desire, Ramon also recounts Bosch's painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and, through the birth of Pop Art, also explores the desire for consumer goods, citing Andy Warhol and the birth of silkscreen printing, with which the artist immortalized the idols of his time, objects of popular desire.

A journey through solitude in art, seen in its various forms: from Schubert's music to Mirò's paintings, passing through cave paintings, waiting to be discovered. A journey that, from Friedrich's paintings, leads to an interview with a hermit to understand his choice of solitude; and that, through the analysis of a psychologist, leads to an interpretation of the works of Hopper and Giacometti. The exhibition concludes with the experiment of freeing a painting by Masriera from the solitude of a museum's storage rooms and displaying it in a public square; and an interview with a former death row inmate, to understand the hopeless loneliness of those who live in that condition.

Confession is one of the ways to combat guilt, starting with Original Sin, as described in the Bible. Gener interviews Father Kern, a priest at the Church of St. John of Nepomuk in Munich, and several people—including a prisoner for theft—whom he asks to explain what guilt means to them. He also highlights the stories of several artists who used their art to allay their feelings of guilt (from Brahms with his music to Picasso and Caravaggio with their paintings), and some world literature that has addressed this theme, such as Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" and Shakespeare's "Macbeth." As a final reflection, Gener suggests following the example of these artists and using art as a way to allay guilt and the resulting voice of conscience.