César Manrique and the impossible future

              CÉSAR MANRIQUE AND THE
IMPOSSIBLE FUTURE
B Y J O N A T H A N A L L EN
We are in ihe inid.st of ihc earth. We
woiidcr al wlial seeins a fossilized lorliious
System of irrigatioii: ])rinieval niagiiui
flows. rile seiisalioii we l'cel wbeii we see
ihe petrified lava river iieveí- diiiiiiiishes.
Slone llial is fldwiiifí ¡ii iiiiiiioliililx. Ilie
place described is nonc other tlian Los
Jámeos del Agua, a natural gi'otlo ¡ii thc
heart oí aii aiicienl la\a ilow in Ijaiizaiote.
There is pm'c, crvstalline waler in the
ündergfoimd pool dominaling ilie centre,
llial mocks tlie nielaplioi' oí fluid rock. Art
has iiiiervened in ihis rugged siiblerranean
beaulv. Im-ning llie wild apperaiice oí the
earth into somelliing |)asloral. A w indina
stone stairease leads us ír-om ihe surface
dowii lo a |>ladoiiii wilh reslamaiU chairs
and lables. While we deseeiul. e.votic
])lanls strangi-lv "¡n place". (íerns. cactii,
yams) delighl ihe eve. In ibis lockx reíuge
onlv moss and small spccies can
thcorclicallv grow. A brillianí
choreographer has becn al work. The
w lióle scene oí the .lámeos del Agua makes
u|i a nalural grollo alniosl unparalleled in
ei'fecl, ihal woiild oulslri|) ibc lame oí
classical eiiro|)eaii e.xamples. Manrii|ue
broiighl lile spiril oí Boniarzo. oí ihe
wonder oí llie renaissanee Kartlen to all oí
ibe Canarv Islands. Manrique was the
linilding machine o í a n impossilile bilure.
An ailisi wlio renewcd ibe pejoralive
anliqueness oí the Iradilional cañarían
rural lioiise. the man w lio deh-nded ihe
inlrinsic beaulv oí oíd roiigli sha|)es íacing
the .'\tlantic Ocean. llial llave survived in
deep isolation. The first time 1 visiled the
.lámeos del .Agua as a bov. and more
recentlv, when I loiired ihe artistas lasl
residcnce al llai'ía. I fell ihal Maiiriiiiie
bad crealed the ideal archilectiiial slyle oí
tbe Canaries., altbough sucb a visión was
paradoxicallv 'impossible".
For Manrique conee|)ts and ideas wcre
simple lliings; organic archilecture and
inicgration oí art in naliire tbal woiild
achieve deep rooted humnihsl "urges".
Maiiri(|ue. stiicllv speaking. coiiidn'l
build. To the contrary. bis was a pseiido-arcbilecture.
lie recovered ideal pre-iirban
piiiiciples tbat he then direcled lo saviiig
urbaii chaos, ll was an amending
sensil)ilil\ ihal coiild onlv be marginallv
applied in áreas of uiliaii phmning
disasler. I lis difh'reiice. wbat clearh
dcfined bis seiisili\¡l\ lowards space. was
bis lack oí lecbnological know-bow. I lis
aiiliieclmocratic spiril prevented him íroin
joining in tbe endless war waged bv tlie
theorists oí iirbaii plaiming in I be islands,
and who one dav, mav be able lo
oxercoine ihe íaibire of iheir liiiilding
ideas in citics like Las Palmas de Gran
Canaria. Manrique was anti-cily and pro-lural.
For inslance, bis soliilion lo tbe
huid iiiban developments of ibe (¡raiid
Canar\ Soiilb was plain "scorcbed earth
pohcv. A municipal towii planner can't
llieorcticallv lav waste all tbal has becn
edified bv íellow coUeagucs, and if indeed
be feels soinetbiiig similar, it remains a
repi'cssed fantasy. He is forced to accept
ihe process of gradual rationalization
applied to a chaotic. "collapsed space.
Manrique iinconscioiisly became an
allernative solulion. tbe svinbol oí ulopian
fiiliire. and the niosl dvnamic inlegralor of
art, space and Icisure, probably bccause
he wasnt overobscsscd by soleh' egoistic
forms of modernity/poslniodernitv. Aiitoni
Gandí bad ibis blend of slanncb tradition
and an amazingly free Iccbíiical and
aesibetic inind, (to a iniicb superior
degree). .Vlanri(|iie was iiol onlv llie
innovator of the alreadv menlioned
traditional valúes of po|)ular cañarían
archilecture, bul the designer of an
acstbetic coiice|)l ibal bised anslerity wilh
exoticism, (for exam|)le. bis adaplalion of
balearle motifs in decor tbat he coinbined
wilh a recycling of l\[)ical inaniifacliired
canarian goods). and llial snrprisingiv
seemed ideallv sniled lo ibe atmospberes
ol bis en\ ii'omnenls and spaces.
SoHiething else woiild be lo accepl ibis
- 7 ^ 7^ r CINKOAIIANIICOW A('( ^.^OD('í^
1SS
synthesis uncondifionally as a local
dominant stvle that could be imposed on
any future urban plan.
Sometimes university teaching of
architecture seems to inhibit the creative
capacity of the architect. To impair the
scope of natural response. The orthodoxy
of schools together with the effect of
theoretical constructs that at times benefit
from an artificiallv extended life, may turn
a building designed for life into aggressive,
unlivable space. (We can cite a few cases:
the french HLM, the 60"s Building Estates
in Great Britain, or the Viviendas
Protegidas of the 70's and early 80's in
Spain). Manrique moved in "organic time'
as Mircea Eliade would have said, for he
projected ideas of organic harmony. His
attitude towards architecture was
admirably expressed in that exceptional
catalogue he entitled: "Lanzarote, An
Unknown Architecture".
This singular work is a photographic essay
on the most notable characteristics of
precarious rural lanzarotian architecture,
an elegy to the incipient ruin, disdained in
favour of the vulgar ergonomics used to
build the chalet on the beach or the
second residence in the countryside. Every
group of isolated buildings, everv wall and
fa^ade Manrique fixed his leus on becomes
a discovered volume that varíes according
to the effects of light, (dawn, midday or
dusk). The book is also a melancholy
affair. The "undiscovered" architecture
that he reseñes from oblivion and that he
in one way or another incorporates into
his praxis simultaneously becomes an
impossible solution, at least in terms of
urban development for it symbolizes a
past link between man and nature. When
the stylistic elements of the traditional
cañarían rural house are recovered as a
new social initiative the result is a row, or
several rows, of semi-detached houses
flaunting superficial traditionalism. This
serialization destroys the rural house's
charm, because its sense of natural
harmony came from a wisely estabiished
site, correctly oriented and occupying
"secondary" ground that didn't interfere
with valuable arable land. Solitude,
visibility and distance are three traits of
this rural tradition. If once they
represented the condition of humbleness
now they represent wealth, for only the
better off in such a small territory as the
islands can afford such luxuries. This
original oíd world poverty is now real
estáte speculation, save in some
enlightened cases, where the heirs of
traditional propertv spontaneously decide
to restore and conserve the ancestral
home.
Manrique is our surreallv late versión of
the italian garden architect Pirro Ligorio,
the creator of the renaissance naturalist
fantasy. In the Canary Islands, grottos are
a frequent and fertile geological accident,
set in exuberant constrast with the sub­tropical
vegetation. Often the european
grotto has had to simúlate stone and rock
through clever use of stucco, or it has had
to build "natural" atmospheres. Manrique
goes one further. In a sense he forces a
kitsch development introducing artificial
harmonies between rock and flower; this is
one of his key visual ideas, that nearly a
century ago the symbolist-modernist
painter and designer Néstor de la Torre
began to explore.
Néstor de la Torre had inherited the fin-de-
siécle symbolist fascination for exotic
plants, minerals and birds. Modelling the
fleshy shapes of certain insular species and
exaggerating plants so that they became
visual subjecls he gave island vegetation a
transcendent aura. This is noticeable
throughout his paintings and in his
choreographic projects directed towards a
revitalization of folklore. As opposed to
Manrique, Néstores architecture is much
more urban, though it is similarly
multistylistic. Mixture of a certain
rationalism with an art nouveau
accentuation of line applied to insular
forms, all with the "swoUen" proportions
of cubist volumetric emphasis. Néstor
accentuates the characteristics of popular
design till he gives them a kind of pop
stoutness; he is the inventor of an art and
craft general design that wishes to
aesthetify the expression of a new and
powerful tertiary industry: mass tourism.
Akin to Manrique, Néstor foments a
traditionalist revolution, as he is a restorer
and conservator of the rural landscape,
although he generates a colonialist
dynamic subliminally. His canary
architecture, his folkloric cavalcade, fitted
smoothly into a regional concept that
francoist centralism was willing to
tolérate. Manrique's ciscumstances were
different, he lived through the transition
to deinocracy, yet he always knew how to
be in the good books of power. However,
his naturahst inchnations made his forms
and his style freer than Néstor's. The
traditional social reahst style frescos he
painted for the oíd Parador at Arrecife
evidently reveal conservative tastos, yet
they appear innocent in comparison to
Néstor de la Torre's plans for the National
Parador at Tejeda in Grand Canary. In
these a vast chiinney dominates a lounge;
the height of the walls, the overall
magnitude of space takes us immediatly
into the reahn of fascist architecture.
Néstor has conceived a cañarían versión of
a luxurious german alpine retreat, that
made sense in Francos dictatorial Spain.
In the aerial perspective drawings that
Néstor made of the Pueblo Canario and
the Tejeda Parador, a mass of faithful
subjects flock round the buildings, bearing
local folkloric dress that he has designed.
The uncritical, homogeneous society of
nationaiist regionalism,
Manriques sensibility is determined by
nalure and history; he can't ignore
nature's "indications ' and merely conceive
mental, abstract ideas for social urban
building. The sixteenth century castle, the
oíd farm house, the volcanic air bubble or
the natural grotto are the elements that
enable him to forge a new visión. His
folkloric ambitions, his art and craft
interest is quite limited, unlike his famous
predecessor, for Manrique always has to
work with unique natural scenery. His
architecture is intraterrestrial, semi-subterranean.
Fortunately he doesn't
know how to raise a building. He scenifies
a natural scene, and his critical
commentaries or ideas on art's function
are almost monotonously the same, despite
vigorous expression.
Recent urban development reality was
simply distasteful for Manrique. Criminal.
His constant and forceful criticism in the
media of such appalling errors was the
manifestation of his political self. He
spoke plainly: we ha ve destroyed the
coast-line by making it urban ground, we
have turned tourism into a substandard
ser\'ice because we have massified it.
These errors committed during the
seventies have affected our most recent
history negalively. They are the outcome
of weak and vacillating municipal
governments that have toleraled illegal
building in exchange for short term
political benefits. A form of sub-culture
stemming from social discontinuity usually
the result of catastrophe in very specific
models of agricultural production, (the
coUapse of cochinilla, the coUapse of the
tomato and the banana), and a prolonged
crisis in the agrarian structure of the
island brought about by mass tourism in
the 60's. We have to add a further factor,
general to the 80's in Europe, the easy
money mentality.
However Manrique isn't able to solve the
acute urban problems of contemporary
cañarían cities irrationally and
aggressively built up, because his organic
ideas aren't a workable model for westem
urban planning. This is akin to the
"exclusiveness" of the Creen Revolt, and
the Creen Future that has to propose a
very gentle, almost tiinid decentralizing
revolution, that can only enjoy fringe
success. Against the determinism of the
city as the centre of population, culture
and industry, Manrique was disarmed, he
didn't even further a decentralizing
programme, paitly because he felt he
couldn't fuUy trust the local institutions
and the local authorities. He set up as a
'"marginal", working on the periphery of
disasler. His architecture is non-valid as a
real option for a municipal government, as
cost is directed to achieving harmony
between man, housing and nature.
Nonetheless his gardens, with their eolic
sculptures and mobiles became an
immensely valuable source of relief. Any
working class person can walk through
them even if they can't have in their
habitat such ideal spatial proportion.
Manrique's "retrorevolution", his eco-conservatism,
the aesthetics of the
environment as fundamental valué for the
islands are superior, impossible ambitions.
Contemporary canary society is trying to
improve its urban plight through flexible
rationalism, yet Manrique's ideas still have
an aura of cultural élitism and enlightened
marginality. A vast all-sorts crowd
followed his coffin to the grave. The day
he died I remember farmers talking about
him. At least the idea and the memory of
his uncompromising defense of nature and
insular aesthetics was felt by many,
beyond class and wealth. His
environmental crusade eventually received
1S3
154
universal reward. This year UNESCO
declared Lanzarote "Biospheric Reserve".
Thus, the island of Lanzarote, a ''minor"
island in regional tenninology, (there are
Iwo capital isiands, Las Palmas and
Tenerife with different "minor islands"
attached to them) has been saved and it
can re-enter paradise, (the classical
paradise of the Hespérides), as indeed
could happen with El Hierro, La Palma,
and La Gomera, that haven't suffered in
the same concentrated way the ravages of
demographic explosión and economic
progress. The idea of new wave ecology
recovering the paradisial essence of these
island is riddled with doubt and
uncertainty. We must not allow aesthetic
tourist-industry inclined theories to
domínate our reality and to determine
falsa categories. The paradise island of the
West Indias is an exampla of such glossy
"unreality", for reality is the sum total of
geography and life, environment and
social destiny.
Manrique s painting is similarly structured
by an archaic principie, by a
represantation of geological time;
contemporary images based on organicist
art. This manner of inspiration is
admirably suited to the concept of the
intraterrestrial, semisubterranean house.
He visualizes anatomical debris; skeletons,
human and animal, deformed by time and
distance, covered by layers of vividly
coloured rock powder, resins and
pigments. He paints semi-abstract telluric
icons, a poetry of death and decay that
also emerges powerfuily in the work of the
painter José Dámaso, his life-long friend.
However, death in Dámaso is extremely
overt and refined, a gory pageant, that is
reminiscent of tha decadentism we find in
the French novel at the cióse of last
century. Manriques decadance is
attenuated by his abstract materiality yet
whoUy obvious. His brilliant painting,
Dead Squids, (Calamares Muertos), 1973,
has something of the cold gem-like black
that Des Esseintes loved so much. Dámaso
introduces mannerist and baroque
overtonas to his hyped up death, (drag
outfits, buttons, lace, lurid colour).
Manrique freezes it under eons of geology.
In a sense ha is projecting the fossil that
we should find in rock, making use, once
again of nature's traasure trove.
If we analyse properly his hiddan and
abstract forms glazed by fira and heat, a
fantastic anatomy emerges, beyond mere
skeletal testimony: fish that swim under
the earth. Calcined Insect, (1975), looks
like a toy, a surreal automaton. Manrique
alleviatas the gloominess of his
subterranean graves with the whimsicai,
stranga shapes of his fauna. In Thirty
Thousand Vears, a weird puppet beams at
US. An elf dwelling inside the earth. His
three dimensional creatures that made up
the serias of Fauna Atlántica ara tha
sculptural embodiment of the icons.
When Manrique first exhibited his abstract
work in Madrid at the end of the 40's, it
did not have such telluric implications,
though his colour range was already
established: deep cold blues, reds, yellows
and all the imaginable nuances of brown.
He had been influenced by European
abstract 50's art. Burri's humble sack
cloth, Fontana's spatial flights. Tapies
"minimal" gasture that canie after his
surrealism. The volcanic island of
Lanzarote has tha uncanny ability to
intensify this abstract materialism, and
this is evident not only in the natural
superabundance of earthy tonas prasent in
its soil that artists directly throw onto the
canvas, but also in an unconscious
predetarmination of subject, a mimetic
cloud that seduces tha painter. Such
influence could be found clearly in the
first work of Juan Copar at least until a
few years back, and can be easily felt in
the work of the german painter Klaus
Berends who has sattled in Fuertevantura
where his classic Beuys orientad purity has
found an enormously wealthy "poor" land.
I think that Manriqua's playful salf has
creatad thesa weird animáis, all a bit silly
and innocent. More seriously, the ludic
elements of his enviromnent works
rapresent the will to escape from tha
tyrarmy of tha womb-like earth he loved. It
took me a long time to reaMze what his
strange, sometimes bizarra land art meant.
The graat lava sculpture by Tony Gallardo,
on a promontory off the Grand Canary
north coast, is a colossus defying the
ocaan. Its monumentality in Lanzarote
would be reduced to mere anecdote.
Manrique undarstood that tha mimesis of
natura belonged to painting and its illusory
ways, and that the earth was apt for play,
for the intricate machines of man.