My status as a layman has not prevented me from following with interest the recent – and very heated – controversy surrounding the restoration of The MacarenaFor those who have been living on another planet for the past month, I'll summarize that this popular Sevillian Virgin underwent surgery, after which many parishioners cried out in outrage, understanding that the statue had lost its expressiveness to the point of being unrecognizable.
Between these devotees demanding the restoration of the image to its original state and those who see the issue as a case of fundamentalist hysteria, typical of idle fanatics, the social networks have been ablaze, perhaps missing a good opportunity to raise a calm debate about what conservation means and how we should do it. Those who advocate for keeping the Macarena as it always was (and who, according to the latest news, have finally achieved their goal) were undoubtedly within their rights to demand a faithful restoration, worthy of the work's importance. I wish we were all as fired up by the frequent attacks on our culture and our tangible and intangible heritage.
We should consider, however, to what extent the "lifelong" works are such, or have been the product of more or less successful interventions and modifications, which the passage of time takes care of approving and favorably sanctioning. Without leaving Seville, no one would think of restoring the Giralda to its original appearance, that of the minaret of the old mosque of the 12th century, as no one would dare to return the cathedral of Syracuse to its status as a Greek temple, not even removing the very recent glass pyramid of Yeoh Ming Pei of the parisian Louvre.
These cases are not limited to architecture: many paintings in museums have an appearance that does not exactly match the original color, light, and form, not to mention those whose figures, in their day, were given angelic wings and golden halos in order to Christianize them. There is no need to resort to the usual Ecce Homo of Borja to know that the History of Art is full of daring modifications that, sometimes and surprisingly enough, end up being preferable for the masses.
At the root of the Macarena's anguish and indignation lies the tranquility of the immutable, or, in other words, the terror of change. That things remain as we knew them soothes us with the balm of familiarity and certainty, while transformations lead us into the realm of the unknown., of the incomprehensible or, worse still, the unpredictable. However, denying these changes doesn't just mean denying the natural course of life, but also closing the door to better things.
«Also in the flamenco We know something about that tension between the need to preserve and the benefits of evolution. (…) Those who rescued, recorder in hand, cante"Artists and letters that were on the verge of being lost just four or five decades ago are just as deserving of praise as those who broke the established rules and ventured into unknown areas."
The German writer Judith Schalansky He recalled that while working on his book Inventory of some lost thingsA space probe had burned up shortly after entering Saturn's atmosphere; a space module had crashed on Mars; the 2.000-year-old temples of Bel and Baalshamin had been blown up with explosives; the Iraqi city of Mosul witnessed the destruction of both the Great Mosque of al-Nuri and the Mosque of the Prophet Jonah; and in Syria, the early Christian monastery of Saint Elian was reduced to rubble and ashes; an earthquake brought down the Dharahara Tower in Kathmandu for the second time; and a third of the Great Wall of China fell victim to vandalism and erosion; in Guatemala, the Atescatempa lagoon dried up; in Malta, the rock formation known as the Azure Window sank into the sea; and the mosaic-tailed rat and the white rhinoceros became permanently extinct...
But a lost disc of John Coltrane, a 19-year-old student intern had found hundreds of Piranesi drawings in the Print Room of the National Gallery of Art in Karlsruhe; the oldest alphabet in the world, carved on a stone slab 1966 years ago, was identified; image archives with photographs taken by lunar orbiters in 1967-XNUMX were recovered; fragments of two poems by Safo Unknown; ornithologists have spotted several blue-eyed columbine birds in Brazil, a bird thought to be extinct for decades; and biologists have described a new species of wasp, among other events…
In view of this news, we come to the conclusion that our world, with its natural and man-made disasters, with its debacles and its miracles, is anything but staticHow do we reconcile these things with each other? How do we reconcile the fact that thousands of years old archaeological artifacts are being destroyed in the face of general indifference with the rivers of ink that have flowed millimeters of eyelashes up and down the Macarena?
Also in the flamenco We know something about this tension between the need to preserve and the benefits of evolution. The prestige of the old ignores that canonical works are often betrayals of something that came before, and that Art, by definition, is only alive if it moves in both directions, like the two-faced Janus: looking back to nourish itself., and looking forward so as not to die. Those who rescued them, recorder in hand, canteand letters that were on the verge of being lost just four or five decades ago are just as deserving of praise as those who broke the established rules and ventured into unknown areas.
Let's avoid oversimplifications, let's not give in so easily to visceral impulses. Let's pay attention to the intentions, the processes, and the results. It's not the same as letting go of the Acropolis of Athens as it is, whether to paint it in colors to restore the appearance it had in the time of the Greeks, or to do so to pay homage to the master of pop Andy Warhol. Or allow its demolition to feed our romantic spirit in the contemplation of the ruins.
Munoz Molina I remembered that, in the 60s, Francisco Moreno Galvan, the mentor of Jose Menese, wanted to found a magazine called The ConservativesHe defended true conservatives, those who "wanted to preserve clean air and unpolluted land, habitable cities, the best traditions of art and popular culture," against those conservatives who were ultimately only concerned with preserving their privileges and who better deserve to be called reactionaries. Perhaps we should join the maestro Moreno Galván, to strip the word conservative from its pejorative connotations, recognize their ethical side and above all ask those who proclaim themselves as such: “But you, what exactly do you want to preserve?”
