Profane Illuminations, Once Again In memoriam José Luis Brea

Many years ago, shortly after the Spanish translation had been published, José Luis mentioned to me (we almost always spoke more about literature than about the visual arts) how much he had enjoyed Harold Brodkey’s novel, El alma fugitiva. Unaware, at that time, of this novel, I made a mental note that it would be a good idea to read it, but like so many other books, the occasion never arose to discover the magnum opus of the North American writer –as it was described, I recall, by Susan Sontag in a review of the novel. I still haven’t read The Runaway Soul, but a little over a week ago (when José Luis was literally hours away from death) reading La ofensa, by Ricardo Martínez Salmón, I came across a quote by Brodkey which appeared in his famous novel. It reads thus: Death is the real condition which offends fantasy. Since I learned of his death Brodkey’s phrase has come to my aid, easing a black dismay, alleviating the radical incomprehension of a fact for which there is no aesthetic theory which has sufficient greatness or intelligence to be able to go beyond it, understand it. Indeed, the harshness of death offends fantasy, one of the many meanings that the word “life” possesses.

Writing about the death of a person in whom was united the most noble and honest admiration, from a professional plane, and the most sincere and fraternal loyalty, from the personal angle, is essentially a difficult balancing act, with the intention and wish to maintain feeling one degree below one’s own enthusiasm, but also one’s own sadness. As José Luis had written so many times about contemporary visual creation, and on this occasion making his words mine, let us not fall into the foolishly sentimental and accommodating position of being hostages of a false nihilism and the poison of its snares. To quote José Luis verbatim: "Let us never call art (or life) anything that does not bring us closer to this: Let us reappropriate ourselves of our destinies. Let us go through them all. Until we become, yes, -it was our real destiny- truly infinite".

This quoted sentence belongs to the article "Arte y estetización difusa de la experiencia", one of the chapters making up his book Un ruido secreto. "El arte en la era póstuma de la cultura", published at the beginning of 1996 and which for me is the most dazzling of all his essays published in the book form. “In the collected essays there is not only “the best Brea”, but Un ruido… is “all Brea”. What we want to say with this is that there was a Brea before these essays and a Brea who would give shape to later books. In Un ruido… we find the bold architect of unsuspected and daring aesthetic equations, the fervent polemicist, the friend who dedicated a dazzling and fine essay to Pepe Espaliú, the critic of all banality and common places, lover of writing as an essential co-narrative in the face of the illegibility of certain contemporary creation, the cruel ridiculer of certain “successes” of Spanish art…. Additionally, Un ruido… contains the disturbing piece of writing that José Luis wanted to rescue at the end of his life, republishing it in SalonKritik. The essay is called (everything about him was anticipatory lucidity) Los últimos días.

José Luis Brea has been (is, while nobody proves the contrary) the most brilliant and intelligent art theorist democratic Spain has had, and if we retrospectively go back in memory we will not find many more. Since the 1980s he has also had a huge influence on a large part of younger artists and critics as well as those of his own generation. The most followed and respected outside of Spain, this last a scarce quality in our country. The vastness of his work and the risk invested in it, the untiring attitude of “critical positivism” in all his writing and declarations (that constructive criticism so misunderstood by his enemies, and he had a few, or by those who were simply envious of his talent), the tireless speculation around the production of meaning of every aesthetic object, his obsession with (and admiration for) that quote by Derrida whom he so admired: “Once representation has commenced, its closure is precisely the unthinkable” are small markers (a small part as sign and signal of what we try to say) of an admirable work, a generator of new interpretations, in its incalculable richness. Yes, we know of what we speak. Incalculable. We have the consolation of knowing that “the best Brea” is coming: the study and cataloguing of his work, without taking into account (I hope, given that I want) the appearance of new writings not published in his lifetime.

Dear José Luis, rest in peace. I have to tell you that just yesterday I finally bought El alma fugitiva. You don’t know how much I would have liked the reading of this novel to have been infinitely prolonged in time. Yesterday I began to read it. I am sure that it will excite me, as it did you. You were never mistaken. Well, almost never.