The Third Body of Luis Barragán
A break.
A line.
A point.
Bending,
And the diagonal
crossing.
2022
Research project
Architectural Association
A story and a line share the same structure. A line is built by a succession of points “joined together
continuously in a row”.1
A story is built by a progression of events, that are, in
the same way, put together as a
single story. A line can be told as a
story, and a story can be drawn as a
line. This text originates from the
extended observation of one particular historical line that has been
fragmented. The intention here is to redraw
the trace that connects the fragments so as to depict
an alternative reading
of the events, bringing forward characters and connections that have not
been brought to focus in previous tellings.
In his study of the genealogy of the line, Tim Ingold suggests that writing
and drawing are more closely
linked than one might
initially suppose. He tracks the word writing to
its Old English origin, writain,
which signifies “to incise runic letters in stone”.2
This incision is a reductive
action characteristic of what he calls
traces, a line that is scratched, scored, etched or marked onto a surface.
Then, per its original definition, writing is drawing. Moreover, the origin of
the word shows the relevance of the gesture behind the trace, placing
writing and drawing
as a single act rather than two fundamentally different actions.
Different gestures create
different lines. Ingold
names a few, for example:
threads
traces
cuts cords
sections from bent
and broken lines
ghostly lines
vapour trails
strings
spider webs
scent trails
mazes
loops
labyrinths
routes
knots
knitting
brocades
calligraphy
text
scores
genealogies
and oral narrations,
to mention
a few.
Having recognized the different expressions of the line and the way
drawing lines relates to writing stories, this text has been drafted with three
of Ingold’s lines as an underlying concept.
The first type of lines that this text
will refer to are traces or
observable connections. These are the evident, canonical, conventional and
documented narratives about a
given set of events. The second are invisible or
ghostly lines, these are lines without substance, “without a physical
counterpart”3, that have not been documented or that are not evident
or shared as conventions. These may be
more closely related
to an interpretation than to chronicles. And last, I will refer to the sections created by the breaking and bending of the prior. These classifications will be used to draft a narrative about a set of people
that have become inextricably linked. By drawing the story through a different
gesture, hopefully, this text will
provide a different reading of the events.
Now, its time to introduce the main characters involved in this story,
all once invaded by a nostalgic ambition:
- The Architect, Luis Barragán, whose ambition was an idea of Beauty.
-
The Associate, Raul Ferrera, whose ambition was the bequest
of The Architect.
-
The Archivist, Federica
Zanco, whose ambition
is, too, the bequest of The Architect.
-
And The Artist, Jill Magid, whose ambition is her own
artistic practice, which she achieves through The Architect’s bequest.
After a series of unexpected events, all were progressively joined
together by a ghostly line during the course of almost a quarter of a
century.
By writing this story in the terms of the genealogy of the line, it can be suggested that a ghostly line
joined The Architect and The Archivist.
This line could only be drawn through The Associate as a middle point. This
line between The Architect and The Archivist was bent around 20134.
The “morbid” alchemy of
contemporary art, as performed by The
Artist, reshaped The Architect, or probably
more so the idea of him, and changed their relationship from being an
invisible link to a physical object. Her gesture (of The Artist) was a diagonal
line that crosses
over the other two characters
and creates an opportunity to question
the role of other seemingly secondary actors within this story. In that sense, this story is only an
alternative narration of the events as performed by The Artist.
Finally, a disclaimer. This is not quite a story about lines, and it’s not quite a story of the History of
Architecture either. It’s probably not even a biography of The Architect. As its all post- mortem, it
might be a ghost story. For The
Artist, the final consequence of the events are still a pending promise.
For the author of this text, its
not even quite a story at all. Let
us, by honoring the Spanish
translation of the word essay, see
this text as a trial run, not
a definitive recollection of events. A sketch rather than a drawing. Not a
ghost story, but the tracing of a ghostly line.
1. A break
Luis Barragán
and Raúl Ferrera at the Pritzker Architecture Prize Award ceremony in Dumbarton Oaks. May 1980. Photo Ulrich Ruchti,
from The Barragan Foundation.
Luis Barragán and Raúl
Ferrera in the studio at Tacubaya, 1969. Photograph by Rene Burri, from The
Barragan Foundation.
Luis Barragán
and Raúl Ferrera
in the studio at Tacubaya. Photograph taken from Pablo Aguilar,
"La Muerte del
Arquitecto" in Arquine.
The first event in this story is the
break. It begins with the death of Luis Barragán in 1988, and the
consequent suicide of his associate,
Raul Ferrera in 1993.5 Barragán
had written his testament four years prior to his passing, having already been
affected by Parkinson’s disease for years. As reported by Adriana Malvido6,
three clauses of his will determined the faith of “his architectural corpus”7.
-
Clause A
entrusted architect Ignacio Díaz Morales to choose an institution dedicated to
architecture that would receive the Architect’s Library. The chosen institution
was the expressly created Fundación de Arquitectura Tapatía Luis Barragán
(FATLB), presided by Juan Palomar Verea, which in a few years would also co-own
the house in Tacubaya with the Government of the State of Jalisco.8
-
Clause B
determined the personal belongings of the architect were now the property of
his godson Oscar González, who subsequently released them to the FATLB.
-
Finally, clause
C resolved all the authorship rights, documents,
movies, drawings, designs, sketches, models, and originals produced in the
office were left to Mr. Raul Ferrera, Barragán’s associate, and colleague since 19649.
Barragán
did not wish for his house and belongings to
become an object that perpetuated his fame. According to Palomar, "he established a public
character only to what he affirmed
was his most precious material belonging: his library."10 This is ironic considering that his House
would become the most public and accessible
of all of Barragán’s assets. But
coming back to the story, the remaining bequest was divided
between 25 heirs in. This group was made up by his friends,
nephews, and the people
who cared for him and for his house. Luis Barragán never married
or had children.
As
Oscar González, Barragán’s godson,
donated The Architect’s belongings to the FATLB,
the library and personal effects merged into a single "collection", causing the corpus to
be determined as two separate entities. In this case, the whole of what
was entrusted to the FATLB -which now held the majority of
Barragán’s inheritance- can be
called the first, and Personal Body of
Luis Barragán.
Many of his remaining heirs
wished for the assets to be
liquidated so they could obtain
their corresponding sum. Others, specifically those
involved in the FATLB, made a significant effort to
take care of the library and fulfill Barragán’s
wishes to make it public and accessible. In 1989 Palomar had
already moved Barragán’s book
collection into the Foundation’s headquarters
in Guadalajara, and in 1992 obtained the Rockefeller-Bancomer
scholarship to continue with the
classification and study of the library. On the other hand, Raul Ferrera
disagreed with the terms of the will and sued for the total of the assets,
arguing that The Architect owed him a sum much larger than what he had obtained
as a bequest.
The Architect’s growing presence in the
international media might have been the motivation for him to formally
delegate the management of
copyrights to his younger colleage
Raul. Thus happend the legal constitution of Luis Barragán y Raúl Ferrera Arquitectos, S.C. in 197911 Barragán, who was already suffering from his
disease, would have delegated the young Ferrera with any issue regarding
publishing rights of his work and of the
projects they undertook together. Having
someone in charge of administrative management, Barragán
was able to focus his energies on his creative
endeavors. According to Malvido
"since then (...) Ferrera became a fierce defender of the
authorship rights"12 of the Architect, an assignment that would
transcend both Associates.
Presumably, the sum that
Ferrera demanded was whatever value he deemed equivalent to the profit Barragán earned
from copyrights during his lifetime, thanks to his duty as a defender. For this, he started a legal
battle that lasted until 1993. In parallel he also pursued legal action against
other figures that had used Barragán’s name
and image in the past, for example,
Emilio Azcárraga Milmo (1930-1997), owner of the Latin-American TV conglomerateTelevisa, for any profits made through the
exploitation of Barragán’s image as
portrayed in a 1985 exhibition in
the Museo Tamayo, and the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas
Artes, INBA) for the use
of
Barragán’s name and oeuvre in a
homage to Armando Salas Portugal, among others.
Raul Ferrera’s material
ambition for the total of Barragán’s estate is the breaking point of this story. As he
fought relentlessly for the
rights he assumed over the assets, he also "flagrantly contradicted himself" in two of the trials13. For this he might have to
face being convicted. Nonetheles, the sucession’s
attorney asked him to cease
and desist, and let the succession take its natural course. Ferrera signed
the agreements, and
then, in a tragic turn of events,
decided to take his own life.
Rosario Uranga, Ferrera’s widow, had
become the legal heir of the whole of what was produced in Barragán’s and Ferrera’s practice: the Archive, as it has ben called, or in
terms of this text, the second
body of Luis Barragán, i.e., his Body of Works.
She proceeded to offer the Archive to the
FATLB, which had recently managed
to partner with the Government of Jalisco and of Mexico City to buy the house in Tacubaya
from other heirs. In light of
their recent investment, the members of the FATLB
were not in the financial terms to pay
the millionaire sum that Uranga was asking for.
They contacted the National Institute of Fine Arts in an attempt to keep the Archives
in Mexican territory.
Without an offer from the FATLB or
INBA, Uranga consigned the Archive to Max Protetch’s gallery in New York in 1995, who would try to sell it as individual pieces.
In another unforeseen a Swiss businessman bought the whole of the
collection as a wedding gift for his partner.
This turn of events is the start of the next part of this story. The break had concluded, and as the Archive traveled
to its new home in Basel,
to a bunker designed by Frank Gehry,
a second part of the post- mortem biography of Luis Barragán had started
to take place.
2. A line and a point
Front
and back cover of De Anda’s book, 4th edition.
An illustration of the terrace at Tacubaya
is used a cover.
Index detail, Historia de la Arquitectura Méxicana by
Enrique X. de Anda, 4th edition. Point n. 5, "The Rejection of
Functionalism" is highlighted in blue.
Long before his death, Barragán got to
see and enjoy the international recognition of his characteristic
architectural expression. He established his signature style by applying what can be called “the ethics of the rancher and the
aesthetics of the rural”14 to his practice as an architect from 1927 to 1936, and then again from 1940 until
his last works in the late 1970s in the
company of Raul Ferrera. This expression is now
a recognizable architectural grammar that has been integrated into the
global understanding of Mexican
heritage, a subject
of which Barragán is quite the protagonist15.
That is what this essay regards as the line of the history of Mexican architecture, which will be
described with more detail in the coming paragraphs.
Despite being an important reference for his country, the depiction of Barragán
within the Mexican
history of architecture is not as homogeneous as it
may seem to be. A quick
revision of “Historia de la Arquitectura Mexicana”, a book by Dr. Enrique
X. de Anda, reflects the historical
separation of Barragán’s work
within the national context. De Anda’s
book has been widely used as a reference for undergraduate students
and even for the general, unspecialized public due to its accessible language, lack of academic format,
and overall friendly
presentation of the history of architecture. The task
undertook by its author was
ambitious. He started with a revision of the settlements of the original civilizations based all over the current
Mexican territory, and ended in the contemporary
movements of the 90s. For its 4th edition, extended,
revised, and republished in 2019, he even made an additional stretch into the
21st century.
In
the preface, De Anda claims to:
“be situated
within an interdisciplinary scope, with a focus
directed to the culture
generated by the relationships between collective imaginaries, political
power, debates on the different
versions of modernity, the symbols, the meanings, and the discussion between
abstraction and figurativism”.16
The challenge of drawing a
connection between the remains of a civilization from 2000 BC and the corporate
architecture of 2016 is obvious, to say
the least. Yet, De Anda achieves a
logical progression that links one event to
the other in a seemingly smooth path. From the original settlements to the first high-rise projects in Mexico
City, every point of the line drawn by
De Anda carries an idea from its predecessor. It can be argued that even modernity, which is commonly
understood as the rejection
of tradition, fits seamlessly into this
progression of events
.
Ironically, it’s only when reaching the topic of Luis Barragán
that De Anda mentions a
dismissal or denial.
“The Rejection of Functionalism”17 is
the title under which the book introduces the Emotional Architecture, a term
coined by Mathias Goeritz in his 1953 Manifesto18, that recognizes the
“high spiritual concerns of (the) time” and aims to provide “plastic
integration to provoke a maximum emotion to the modern man”. Despite their
known professional and personal proximity, De Anda makes a clear distinction
between Goeritz’s Emotional Architecture and Barragán’s work, which is analyzed
as a detached event. The coverage is brief, only one and a half pages long, and
it is almost completely dislocated from the progression defined by De Anda.
Moreover, in these couple of pages, the author claims that Barragán’s
work is the start of the Mexican architecture
renewal and the
original Mexican stance against “the tyranny of the straight angle” seen
in functionalism. By
doing this, he
disregards (most notably)
his previous description
of the hyperbolic paraboloid
concrete shells designed by Félix
Candela and the forthcoming essay on the concrete plasticism of Teodoro González de León and Abraham
Zabludovsky in the 80s. More than being a problematic contradiction, the dismissal of two
important stages that indeed challenged modernist guidelines is a symptom of
the compartmentalization of Mexican architecture; or, in other words, the detachment of Barragán as a parallel
point in Mexican architecture rather than within the continuous line of events.
Understanding Barragán as a parallel event, that is detached yet representative
of the national identity,
has created a distorted reading
of his work and of his
personal life.
This image of Barragán had already begun to be established after the international exposure of his work in the 1976
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
of New York, the 1980 Pritzker
Architecture Prize, and other
relevant events. By 1995, the year when the first edition of De Anda’s Historiawas published, the mystic persona of Luis Barragán was already well
established within the global context of the discipline. Coincidentally, that
was the same year Max Protetch sold the entire
Barragán estate to the Swiss businessman Rolf Fehlbaum.
The events that had taken place to that date would confirm whatever belief was created around
The Architect as a figure surrounded by
mystery, solitude and silence. More importantly to this argument, they would also reinforce the isolated place
Barragán held within the collective imaginary of the discipline. In terms of
the line, the chronological succession of the events related to Barragán (in his personal and
professional life) would be sealed
within a single enclosing line, placing his history (and historiography) as a point that exists
in parallel to the continuous line
of Mexican architectural history. Furthermore,
by being acquired by a Swiss company, the Archive had been literally isolated and enclosed, now miles away
from its origin.
3. Bending
1994. Rolf Fehlbaum
and his wife, back then fiancé, the historian
Federica Zanco visited
México to know the work of Luis Barragán.
The Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza had suggested to the couple that "if they wanted to see some of the best architecture
in the world"19 they should visit México and ask about
Barragán. At this point,
the Fundación de Arquitectura Tapatía
was working on the
preparations for opening the House and Studio as a museum, and doing all the
necessary restorations to reach the
requirements this goal implied. (It’s important
to keep in mind that the House would
be granted the UNESCO World Heritage
status in 2004, meaning that many conservation works were in order even 10 years prior.) As for the other signature Barragán buildings, it is hard to
know in which conditions they operated around the time, but it’s not hard to assume the Fehlbaums found a way to pay a visit to most of them.
Regardless of the House not being open to the public, "a known architect" insisted to Juan Palomar that he granted a visit to the italo-swiss couple. Despite Palomar’s refusal, the architect insisted
until he had no choice but to accept
the couple and show them around Tacubaya. They
toured the house and then sat down to talk
and have lunch in the San Ángel neighborhood. Tequila was shared among
the visitors, per the Mexican
custom.20 According to Palomar,
the couple was stunned by the House.
They brought up the subject of the Archive and the release of the
authorship rights of the Architect, a vague concept that is still, to this day,
subject of debate. They made no comments after learning the unfortunate story of Ferrera
and the Archives. They did, however, travel
to New York the next day and
acquired the whole collection from Max Protetch.
This is the bending of
this story’s line. With the
break, the Body of Works
became detached from the Physical Body.
That was definitive. However, the
acquisition of the Barragán state by Fehlbaum
and Zanco is more of a subtle fold, it "created creases rather than
cracks"21 in the development of the story. As time went by, these
"imaginary" creases, along with the physical distance between the
Archive and the people who are interested in consulting it, have made the
Barragán Archives a virtually
inaccessible collection.
Allegedly, (although its been affirmed by the next
character of this story) Fehlbaum "gifted" the 2.5 million
dollar Barragán collection to Federica as a wedding present. The next
couple of years would be marked by important developments that expanded
their agency on Barragán as a historical figure22:
- In 1996, The Barragan Foundation (sans accent) was founded in the Vitra headquarters in
Basel by its director Federica Zanco.
-
In 1997, the BF acquired Armando Salas Portugal’s collection of negatives and photographs titled "La Arquitectura de Luis Barragán".
-
In 1998, Ray and Rolf Fehlbaum submitted an application to trademark the name "Luis Barragan" in the United States. The
application would be accepted and the
name registered in the year 2000.
-
And in 2001, Federica Zanco edited and published the book "Luis Barragan, The Quiet Revolution".
From its establishment in 1996, the Barragan Foundation had a somewhat aggressive approach to handling the copyrights that came with it Ferrera’s part of the bequest. What these rights implied was not
made explicit in the beginning, but they tried to exercise their agency of the rights
towards, for example, the
photographs and videos that are taken by the
visitors of the House and Studio. Also, the Foundation has kept the Archive under a completely hermetic seal.
For years now they have announced a coming publication of what can be assumed
is the Archive’s catalogue. This
publication is not yet in the radar, but
recently, maybe due to the publicity obtained through the work
of the US-American artist Jill Magid from 2013, they have started to released information and images of the
content of the Archives on their website. More importantly, they have made their copyrights terms very explicit.
In their Frequently Asked Questions section they provide a clear guide
to the common doubts the public has
on the access to what they call "Luis
Barragán’s architectural legacy"23. They state that they
have no association with the owners or managers of any of the Buildings
designed by Barragán, yet, the
public use of any photographic or video material derived from these buildings
must be obtained through ProLitteris, "the official collecting society for copy royalties."24
They claim to "welcome creativity and encourage" any approach to Barragán’s work through art, but
suggest seeking legal advice for any
kind before making any reference to the
work of Luis Barragán or Armando Salas Portugal. More importantly, (at least for to the person writing this) they suggest that anyone interested in studying the works of Luis Barragán
or any particular aspect of
his work should first refer to the
contents of 8 publications that might be available in the market or public
libraries. Further research can also be done, they suggest, via their website.
Physical access to the archives may
be granted in a case-by-case basis. And, of course, If any given researcher was
to obtain access, they should be
able to visit the premises of the Vitra Campus,
Multiple concerns have been raised during the lifetime of the Barragan
Foundation. The academic concern for accessibility is quickly dismissed by their suggestion of selected
bibliography. But even those who
manage to produce critical takes on
the work of Barragán (assuming they do find one valid research topic that
does not overlap
with the suggested bibliography) face the issue of how to illustrate their work accurately and acquiring the rights to reproduce photographic images. Creative solutions arise, such
as the digital rendering of projects to demonstrate
certain spatial features designed by Barragán
instead of using the photographs by Armando
Salas Portugal or any other photographer. However,
the main problem is probably the inaccessibility and physical distance
between the scholars
who have a "natural" affinity towards
the works of Luis Barragán and the Archive.
As for the artistic uses of "Barragán’s legacy", the debate carries much more nuances. In 2003, an
artist from the United States of America visited the House and Studio for the
first time. This visit would unravel the next, and probably not the final, part
of the post-mortem story
of Luis Barragán. Here, as it will be briefly covered, the discourse of Archival
theory gets intertwined with copyright law,
artistic appropriation and the events regarding Barragán’s succession, adding to this series of curious
incidents.
Neon sign from
the 2017 exhibition at MUAC, UNAM. Photograph by Devon Van Houten Maldonado.
From hyperallergic.com.
4. The Proposal, a diagonal crossing
After learning about the Archive controversy in a visit to the House and Studio, US-American artist Jill Magid was struck
with curiosity for Luis Barragán and Federica Zanco. She proceeded to contact Ms. Zanco to request a visit to the Archive to conduct artistic research with the support
of Art Basel Parcours.25 According to Daniel McClean,
Zanco denied the petition "on the grounds thattheywere "strugging for closing a major publication on the archives" and therefore that "it was
completely unable to allow access to the collection" at that time."26 The
refusal of access would be the origin of Magid’s
series of performances, installations, visual iterations and artworks
that reference the series of event described
in this story, which she has explored
in her artwork.27
Works such
as "Women with Sombrero"
(Art in General 2013, Yvon Lambert
2014, Museo de Arte de Zapopan 2014), "Homage" (RaebervonStenglin,
2014) "Quartet" (South London Gallery,
2014), "Ex-Voto" (LABOR,
2016), "The Proposal" (Kinst Halle Sankt Gallen 2016, San Francisco Art Institute 2016),
and "A letter always arrives at its
destination" (MUAC, 2017) are
occassions in which Magid has explored her interest in the "artistic"
legacy of Luis Barragán. It can be questioned, however,
how much of an
artistic legacy the Body of Works of
Barragán is, rather than a cultural asset or an architectural registry.
As a whole, "The Barragán Archives" is a powerful and witty
critique to the specific
case it refers to. Magid’s
artistic practice
has been fueled by a struggle
with privatized power, surveillance and, in a way, archival
matters from her early works in the later 90s. Copyright law enforcement by a corporate entity becomes the perfect ground for her critique. The nature of contemporary
art allows her to pose concerns
out in the open without
any need for a critical
apparatus. In that sense, even from
the beginning she assumes herself in an ongoing conversation with Vitra and
replies to the denial
she was given to visit the Barragán Archives. This reply is her first project
in the series, titled "Der Trog",
which translates to through in English or bebedero in Spanish, is an architectural
model that proposes the construction of a replica of Barragán’s 1959 water fountains
in the Vitra corporate campus. Along
with a replica of Barragán’s reading
lectern, this project was a first attempt at questioning how far does the
ownership of the Archive (and its subsequent copyrights) can be practically implemented.
Her endeavor was far from over. After "Der Trog", Magid engaged
in correspondence with Federica Zanco trying
to establish
a collaboration between them to link
the "artistic research" she was pursuing with the FATLB (which had been open and welcoming
in every sense) and the Barragan
Foundation. Zanco refused, and also
reminded The Artist how the Foundation was protected by ProLitteris, and that any kind of reproduction of Barragán’s works would lead to legal action against her.
"Der Trog" detail . From
jillmagid.com/projects/the-barragan-archives
Facistol, a replica of
Barragán’s lectern, covered in a blanket. Installation from the 2017 exhibition
"A letter always arrives at its destination." at the MUAC UNAM. From
jillmagid.com/projects/the-barragan-archives
2.02 carat diamond, blue, uncut, on a silver ring with the inscription "I am wholeheartedly yours" (soy sinceramente
tuyo). As exhibited in the MUAC UNAM, 2017.
Magid went on to show "Women with Sombrero" in Art in
General in 2013, receiving an interesting commentary by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times. Having her proceedings publicly exposed, Zanco had brought a PR emergency to Vitra and to the Foundation. From that point on,
Magid affirms Zanco’s tone changed
into a more friendly and even intimate
tone. Magid wrote her letters by hand, Zanco replied via email, and
despite never receiving a positive to any invitations or requests to
collaborate, it seemed The Artist and The Archivist were building a
relationship around the idea of The Architect.
Magid’s
critcal approach was, until this point, quite effective in posing
uncomfortable questions about the power relationships that come with artistic collections. On one hand, the Barragan Foundation claimed
agency over "the legacy" through a path materialized in fees. On the other, The Artist claimed agency by portraying objects that barely suggested
the shapes of "the legacy". To this point, the critique was focused on
the bureaucratic method that the Foundation imposed to someone
who is interested in using the archive
as a visual reference in an artistic project, i.e., someone in the same
place as Jill Magid. However, in
what has been called "morbid" but can also be seen as an act of alchemy, Magid found a way to address one of the issues that were previously identified here as the key
problematics of the Archives: their expatriate status. Around 2015, Magid
begins working on her project titled "The Proposal", thus drawing a line that crosses over this story diagonally, and generating The Third Body of the Architect, or, the Artistic Body of Luis Barragán.
The starting point
of "The Proposal" is the original
gesture that positioned
Fehlbaum and Zanco as owners of Raul Ferrera’s
part of the bequest left by Luis
Barragán: a wedding gift. In this complex performance, Magid offered Zanco a
diamond ring. In return, Federica would accede to return the Archives to Mexican
territory, releasing them into an
institution that would make it available for students, researchers and the
general public. The scandal came, of course,
with the fact that
the diamond on the ring was made out a quarter of the total of The Architect’s remains, obtained through a
collaboration with members of the Barragán family and the Government of
Jalisco. The proposal was not accepted, and
Zanco replied to Magid via email
telling her she had "turned her into
a fictional character, and that her
real existence was irrelevant to Magid’s
project".28
The critical aspect of Magid’s work
cannot be denied. Hers is an intricate series of performances and artistic
actions that rely on shock value and mediatic impact. As an artistic project,
it benefits from the isolated existance conceptual art can have. Either in a museum, gallery, or in the artist’s mind,
conceptual art can simply exist, taking whatever it needs from any source, and
establishing a conversation with whomever, or
whatever, it deems fit.
However, during her work on The Barragán Archives, Magid placed
the whole of Barragán’s history
—with all of its different dialogues—even further into a separate
point as if it was only an artistic object. She even recognizes Barragán as an artist, not as
a person that dedicated his life’s efforts
to pursue architecture as a way of living.
As a consequence, it can be argued
that Magid created the Artistic Body of Luis Barragán, not only as an artistic object, but also, as a historical
category. This Third Body is not
only a reference to his material
remains being—physically and metaphorically— pressed into an artistic shape.
The Artistic Body is the understanding of Barragán as an isolated point within
the line of Mexican Architectural History. Even
more so, it is the detachment of Barragán as a figure that connects to architecture, and the establishment of
him as a figure of Art.
Once again, there are multiple
problematic aspects for this event. It can be argued that in order to make a
critical comment about the events previously described one must understand
Magid’s work as
an artistic project,
but without releasing
it completely into an a-critical void. In that sense, the first
commentary was made by the celebrated Mexican novelist Juan Villoro, who recognized Magid’s honorable efforts for "rescuing" the Archive for its
Mexican audience in a 2016 column29, but called her out for not even trying to imagine
what the "so-called protagonist" of this
story would think of such proceeding.
While Villoro’s claims are
true and suggest understanding Barragán from his catholic context.
However, he falls for Magid’s bait and considers Barragán in
terms of The Proposal, as an artistic figure and not a historical one. Doing this, he ignores
the underlying issue: the Body of Works,
the professional archives, the set of documents, movies, drawings,
designs, sketches, models, and originals that are now (and since 2000) subject to
trademark and copyrights law.
As an institution, the Barragan Foundation is the ultimate
authority on Barragán’s Body
of Works. Following that
line of thought, both the
Archives held by the BF in the Vitra
Headquarters and "The Barragán Archives" as a collection of artistic
events have become the Barragán arkheion. Jacques
Derrida traces the meaning of "archive" (as a documentary
collection dedicated to an
institution of historical figure) to the
Greek arkheion, which refers to the residence of the archons, the people who command and
guard. In the 1994 lecture "Archive Fever",
Derrida states that these guards "have the power to interpret
the law" and that by entrusting
a collection to them, "these
documents in effect state the law: they recall the law and call on or impose the
law."30
As figures of authority, Zanco and Magid have the political power of the history of Barragán because
they have control of his history and of the archive.
Their Archive is exactly what Foucault
states in the Archaeology of Knowledge, that "(it) is first the law of what can be
said, the system which governs the appearance of statements as unique
events".31 Magid created a rupture, creating a definitive
Third Body (or Artistic Body) of
Barragán and placing it in a further place within the line of Mexican
architectural History. Zanco, by holding on to the Archive with such apprehension, blocks any kind of new approaches to the elements of the collection.
For someone who is
interested in identifying the points, lines, creases, bends and breaks that
relate to the story (and the
history) of a figure such as Luis Barragán, the Archive becomes a primary
source. However,
the archons of Barragán, so infected
with
the Archive Fever, block any
possibility of entering the realm of true historical research. We are left with stories like this. A
series of events, one after the other, that seem more as gossip than history. More importantly, we are left to wonder if the contents of this particular Archive are worth
the dying for, as Ferrera did, or
for becoming an antagonistic figure that permits the spread of misinformation
and speculation rather than knowledge and productive debates
.
The three bodies of Luis Barragán are a line that guides the post-mortem story of the most
celebrated figure of Mexican architecture. To
define these entities, the author
did not need to physically consult the archives held by the Barragan Foundation. This is a
construction made from fragments, open- sourced ideas that are publicly
available, not hidden under a Swiss bunker.
It can be argued that the real archive is exactly that: the common
knowledge. In the case of Architects, their real archive may be the actual
buildings. In any case, let us close with a long quote by Jacques Derrida, who here appears to be talking about what is happening to the characters of this story: all inextricably linked together, joined on a ghostly line of
nostalgic ambition, or of the mal d'archive.
"We are en mal d'archive:
in need of archives. Listening to the
French idiom, and in it the
attribute "en
mal de," to be en
mal d'archive can mean something else than to suffer from a sickness, from a trouble or from what
the noun "mal" might name. It is to burn with a
passion.It is never to rest, interminably, from searching for
the archive right where it slips away.It
is to run after the archive, even if there’s too much
of it,
right where something in it anarchives itself. It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute
commencement. No desire, no passion, no drive, no compulsion, indeed no
repetition compulsion, no "mal-de"
can arise for a person who is not already, in
one way or another, en mal
d'archive".32
Download full PDF
1 Tim Ingold, ‘Traces, Threads and Surfaces’, in Lines: A Brief History (London ; New York: Routledge, 2007), 40.
2 Ingold, ‘Traces, Threads
and Surfaces’. 43.
3 Ibid., 47.
4
In 2012 Jill Magid, a
US-American artist and writer visits Casa Barragán for the first time. Guided by its former director Catalina Cor- cuera,
Magid learns the "controversial legacy story".
See ‘Timeline’, in The Proposal:
Jill Magid, Critical Spatial Practice 8 (Berlin: Sternberg press, 2016), 156–62.
5 Barragán is known to have passed in his bedroom at the Casa
Estudio in the Tacubaya neighborhood
in Mexico City. When reporting the
death of Raul Ferrera, he is said to have
commited suicide in Tacu- baya. Presumably, this means he ended his life in the studio
downstairs. This is not a fact that is commonly disclosed, for example, during
a tour of the Casa Estudio
museum.
6 Adriana Malvido,
‘Poeta Del Espacio’, La Jornada, 10
March 1998, https://www.jornada.com.mx/1998/03/10/barragan.html.
7 Daniel McClean, ‘Jill
Magid and Luis Barragán’s Legacy’,
in The Proposal: Jill Magid, Critical
Spatial Practice 8 (Berlin: Sternberg press, 2016), 57.
8 Ignacio Díaz Morales
was a student at the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros
along Barragán and then became the founder of the School of Architecture of the
University of Guadalajara.
9 ‘Chronology’,
Barragan Foundation (blog), accessed 14 Jan- uary 2023, https://www.barragan-foundation.org/luis-barragan/ chronology.
10 Palomar Juan, ‘La
Biblioteca Peregrina’, in Barragán por
Palo- mar, 1st Edition (Guadalajara, México: Artlecta, Impronta Casa
Editora, 2022), 106.
11 SC, Sociedad
Civil or Civil Association.
12 Malvido, ‘Poeta Del Espacio’. Original: "Raúl Ferrera sí aceptó el legado.
Cinco años antes, en 1979, se había formado la sociedad Luis Barragán y Raúl Ferrera
Arquitectos, SC. Desde entonces, y según múl- tiples testimonios orales y documentales recogidos, Ferrera se asumió como feroz defensor de los derechos
autorales de Barragán; el mismo maestro tapatío, ya muy enfermo, había asignado
esa función a su so- cio para poder concentrarse en su labor creativa."
13 Palomar
Juan, ‘Herencias y Tribulaciones’.
14 Magdalena Picazzo
Sánchez, ‘In Search of the Photograph- ic Architecture of Luis Barragán’,
Final Essay, Historical Evidence and
Representation: Architecture Photography (London: Architectural Association School of Architecture,
January 2023).
15 The House and Studio
was inscribed as World Heritage in 2004.
According to Palomar, a key person
for this achievement was Georges Zouain who was at the time subdirector of the World Heritage Fund of UNESCO. Around that time Zouain was advising the government of San
Luis Potosí in Central México to inscribe
its historic center into the list and oered to
advise the FATLB pro bono. See Juan Palomar, Amigos, Ayudas, Gestiones"
16 Enrique X. de Anda, ‘Prólogo a la cuarta
edición’, in Historia de la arquitectura mexicana, Cuarta
edición revisada y ampliada (Barce- lona, España: Editorial Gustavo Gili, SL,
2019), IX.
17 De Anda, ‘El Rechazo al
Funcionalismo’.
18 Mathias Goeritz, ‘Manifiesto de la
Arquitectura Emocional 1953’, Museo
Experimental El Eco (blog), 29 July 2015, https://eleco. unam.mx/manifiesto-de-la-arquitectura-emocional-1953/.
19 Palomar Juan, ‘Reporte al Tapatío’.
20 Ibid.
21 Ingold, ‘Traces, Threads and Surfaces’.
22 Per the recollection
of events described in The Proposal: Jill
Magid, Critical Spatial Practice 8 (Berlin: Sternberg press, 2016), 156–62.
23 ‘FAQ’, Barragan
Foundation (blog), accessed 14 January 2023,
https://www.barragan-foundation.org/luis-barragan/chronology.
24 ‘Home’, accessed January 1, 2023,
https://prolitteris.ch/.
25 ‘Timeline’ The Proposal: Jill Magid,
26 McClean, ‘Jill Magid and Luis Barragán’s Legacy’.
27 Nikolaus Hirsch and
Hesse McGraw, ‘Locating Legacy. Jill Magid in Conversation with Nikolaus Hirsch and Hesse McGraw’, in The Proposal: Jill Magid, 2.
28 Christopher Michael
Fraga et al., eds., Jill Magid: una carta
siempre llega a su destino: los Archivos Barragán = a letter always ar- rives at
its destination: the Barragán archives, Primera edición, MUAC 056
(Ciudad de México:
MUAC, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporá-
neo, UNAM : RM Editorial, 2017).
29 Juan Villoro, ‘Anillo
de Compromiso | Juan Villoro’, El Colegio
Nacional (blog), n.d., https://colnal.mx/noticias/anillo-de-compromi-
so-juan-villoro/.
30 Jacques Derrida and
Eric Prenowitz, ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, Diacritics 25, no. 2
(1995): 9, https://doi. org/10.2307/465144.
31 Michel Foucault and Michel
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1st American ed., World of Man (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1972).
32 Derrida and Prenowitz, ‘Archive
Fever’. 57.