Las Meninas by Manolo Valdés stroll in front of the Basilica of San Marco, unperturbed. Twelve Reina Marianas, one of which will be donated to the city of Venice, and a monumental Infanta Margarita – sculptures that the 82-year-old Valencian artist has made contemporary by deconstructing them from Velázquez’s seventeenth-century features – until 15 June sanction the partnership that Valdés has signed with the Serenissima, thanks to the Contini Art Gallery and the collaboration of the Municipality of Venice, Vela spa and the local superintendency. Manolo Valdés, who landed from New York where he lives and works and is ready for the public inauguration of Las Meninas in San Marco tomorrow (6.30 pm), has just seen the installation and, on the phone, comments: «What a thrill. The project was in my head down to the smallest details, I had a precise idea of the place of Las Meninas in the square, but in person it’s something else.”
Master, you will know that in the aftermath of the complex positioning of the statues there has been several controversies.
“A classic. I love making public art interventions, but there are aspects that make me suffer. One is the bureaucratic-organizational one, but here everything went smoothly, thanks to Stefano Contini. Then there are people’s reactions, and that’s the beauty of the game.”
What does he mean?
«I’ll tell you an anecdote. In New York, in 2010, I was commissioned to install a series of 16 monumental sculptures from the Broadway area, from Columbus Circle, the theater and gallery district, up to 166th, a more socially complicated area. I enjoyed following the path and, when I reached the end, I saw a homeless man who had placed his hat on a statue of me. I asked him the reason for the gesture and he replied that the work was so beautiful that he wanted to pay homage to it. This is how it works with public art.”
As well as?
«When meeting people, it triggers a reaction. As a user, it happens to me too. New York is full of interventions in public spaces and myself, when I see something I like, I’m happy. If I don’t appreciate it, I’m calm: I know it’s temporary and will soon be removed (laughs). This is why I am calm with my Venetian Meninas: they are proceeding on their path, someone will like it.”
The Pope could also see them: Francis, the first Pontiff in history, will visit the Art Biennale on 28 April.
“The Pope’s interest in contemporary art is extraordinary for me.”
Why does anyone recognize the shape of the Meninas?
«I can talk about my experience. Velázquez’s Infanta Margarita is an image I have been dealing with all my life. I am Spanish, I studied Fine Arts and the Prado Museum, as a student, was the first place I went and where I wanted to stay and the detail of the portrait of the Infanta in Las Meninas by Velázquez, a work that drove dozens crazy of artists, writers, philosophers, it entered my head and never came out. It is always the same, yet different.”
How is it possible?
«Over the years, my way of seeing the Infanta changes. In her own way, she is an icon: something universal and recognizable, capable of communicating on different levels.”
It seems paradoxical but in an era like ours in which everything is dematerialized, sculpture, especially large ones, enjoys excellent health and is liked by the general public. In addition to Las Meninas, you yourself are now also presenting the monumental Mariposas in Venice, a stylized head on which a multitude of butterflies flutter along the Riva Ca’ di Dio, and, on the occasion of the Boat Show at the Arsenale, a large Diadem.
«I believe the interest that the public shows in sculpture is a form of reaction.
I don’t blame digital art and new technologies with which I’m sure great things can be done, but I’m convinced that today more than ever people feel the need to touch reality, including art.”
