The Art of Spain

The second instalment in BBC 4’s three-part programme The Art of Spain sees art-critic Andrew Graham-Dixon venturing further into the heart of Spain, as he continues his racing tour through a thousand years of great art offered up by the nation.

Graham-Dixon, bright-eyed and glossy-haired, raises the profile of Spanish art in an attempt to get the masses away from the beaches, and into the castles, churches and galleries housing some of the most spectacular paintings ever produced.

This second chapter takes on a more sombre note than the first, delving into sixteenth-century Spain’s grisly history, and bringing to light the enduring products of a harsh and brutal age.

 In the fifteenth century, Graham-Dixon tells us, Spanish Christians began to reclaim the territories occupied by the Moors, leading to the completion of the Reconquest in 1492 and a zealous return to Catholicism, carried forward well into the sixteenth century by Philip II.

What resulted was a flood of beautifully realised images of pious believers ascending to the spirit world; a disproportionately magnified Jesus soaring into heaven, a saint’s corpse cradled in the arms of his followers like a newborn babe, while his ghostly spirit rises into the clouds.

The mystical paintings of El Greco, dominated by visions, spirits, and angels, describe the sweet release death brings from earthly torment, reflecting a widespread yearning for union with God.
This is about as complex as the art history gets, but Graham-Dixon’s straightforward take on the work of the Old Masters is refreshing in its simple honesty: ‘In Spanish art, everything’s more intense,’ he explains. ‘It’s as if the volume’s been turned up.’

While the paintings’ subjects are, in the words of our presenter, ‘whooshing’ into heaven, Graham-Dixon himself is whizzing across the Spanish plains in his Mini Cooper.
It’s Top Gear, but with more churches and fewer cars.

The crescendo of church music, the bleak landscape with its ghostly sun, together with the imposing monasteries and citadels rising mysteriously out of the ether, provide a suitable backdrop to the theatrical paintings.
Characterised by the dramatic rendering of death, violent narratives and extreme human emotion, they televise extremely well, and if nothing else the programme proffers the best bits of Spanish art minus the tourists and the baking heat.

It’s impossible not to be charmed by Graham-Dixon’s enthusiasm as he gazes awestruck at the dusty relic of St Teresa’s heart, every bit the mirror of El Greco’s entranced figures.
 If it’s good enough for Andrew Graham-Dixon, it’s good enough for me.

The Art of Spain is undoubtedly a visual feast; low-brow, but none the worse for that.

 Rosie Jackson

The Art of Spain: check BBC4 for details

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