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19/11/2009

Edward Gordon Craig

La Casa Encendida, Madrid

Curated by Aurora Herrera Gómez

La Casa Encendida of Obra Social Caja Madrid presents, for the first time ever in Spain, a retrospective of the life and work of Edward Gordon Craig, (Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, 1872; Saint-Paul de Vence, France, 1966), a pioneer of the 20th century in theatre research and a crucial figure in the development of contemporary theatre.

Entitled "Edward Gordon Craig. El espacio como espectáculo", the exhibition explores "scenic space", a term coined by the author in direct contrast to traditional stage productions based first and foremost on the text. Just as a single person is capable of creating a theatrical phenomenon (spoken or gestural theatre...), so too can space operate independently as a phenomenon, with the distances, directions and limits as the protagonists. Craig’s proposal derives from the confluence of the two phenomena: text and space.

The exhibition has several goals. The first is to provide spectators with an insight into the little-known actor, stage designer and theatre director, Edward Gordon Craig. The second goal is to unravel the varied and abundant influences that both nourished and impacted on his thinking. Finally, the exhibition analyses the theatre from the spatial perspective. Gordon Craig conceived stage design as a laboratory of architectures, folding screens, prisms, stairs and segments, achieving maximum expression through minimal, extremely simplified architecture.

The exhibition, which comprises over 200 works, offers a retrospective look at the theatre and is articulated around six themes of particular importance in the appreciation of Craig’s work: the native and chosen universe of Edward Gordon Craig, stairs - states of mind I, II, III and IV: a spatial laboratory, the window and the reticle, space and light, movement and Hamlet.
The son of the British architect and designer Edward Godwin and the stage actress Ellen Terry, Edward Gordon Craig saw the theatre as a confluence of ideas from a variety of fields (architectures, voices, laces, paintings, bodies, etc.) and believed that these should form a unified whole to formalise the art of theatre. His work is open to interpretation and brimming with suggestions. Only through the incorporation of visual and sound elements can a written work become theatre in its fullest sense.
His ideas have left a crucial legacy for modern theatre practices. One example is the use of stage elements (set design, costumes, lighting, etc.) in the mise en scène in such a way that they transcend reality. Gordon Craig had a major influence on the general conception of the art of theatre and stage design. He taught scenographers to reject flat naturalist imitations and base their work instead on the powers of suggestion, to give free reign to their imagination in order to arouse that of the spectator.

BIOGRAPHY OF EDWARD GORDON CRAIG
Edward Gordon Craig was born in 1872 in Stevenage, in the county of Hertfordshire, England. The son of the actress Ellen Terry and the architect Edward William Godwin, he commenced his acting studies with Walter Lacy and made his London debut as Arthur de Saint Valery in The Dead Heart.

At the beginning of the 1890s he played various roles, combining this activity with his work as director, actor and costume and set designer of his own company, Uxbridge (1893). His first production was Alfred de Musset’s No Trifling with Love.

However, the responsibility of running his own company did not prevent him from accepting other roles, and he gradually consolidated his reputation as an actor. He worked with Sarah Thorne’s company on Hamlet, staged Romeo and Juliet with his own company at the Parkhurst Theatre, and then returned to the Lyceum Company to play Aviragus in Cymbeline and Edward IV in Richard III.

In 1899 he began publishing a monthly theatre review entitled The Page, which he subsequently interrupted in 1901 to devote himself intellectually to the revival of the theatre as a spectacle. He started designing scenes of imaginary plays. He also devoted his energies to drawing and xylography (printing from woodcuts), and studied lighting and stage sets from Renaissance theatre. He held a large exhibition of drawings and woodcuts in London. Meanwhile his commitments as a theatre director and stage designer were growing: he put on Ibsen’s The Vikings at Helgeland and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing for Ellen Terry’s company at the Imperial Theatre, the latter his last production in England.

In 1904 Craig moved to Germany and produced stage designs for Otto Brahm, Eleonora Duse and Max Reinhardt. He held his first exhibition of stage designs in Berlin and several years later published The Art of the Theatre in English and German. He subsequently built his first model theatre to experiment with different scenes and embarked on the first of the Black Figure series. He then moved to Florence and in 1910 designed the scenery and costumes for Hamlet at Stanislavski’s invitation, travelling with him to Moscow to supervise the production process.

In 1911 he published his second book On the Art of the Theatre. He exhibited his theatre sketches and models at the Manchester Art Gallery, and then in London, Liverpool and Dublin. In 1918 he commenced publication of the monthly review The Marionette. A year later, in 1919, his standing as a theatrical theorist and researcher was consolidated with the publication in the United States of The Theatre Advancing. In 1928 he exhibited his drawings for Macbeth in New York and, in London, his drawings for The Crown Pretenders. He also exhibited his stage designs at the International Exhibition of Barcelona (1929).

In 1933 he decided to devote himself entirely to theatre research. Five years later he embarked on the Gordon Craig Collection, compiling a vast archive of essays and treatises on theatre activity. In 1942 he was arrested and taken to a Nazi concentration camp. Four years later he was elected an honorary member of the French theatre union. He presented fourteen conversations on theatre for the BBC, which were edited by the Maison Discurio in London in 1962. In 1957 he published his autobiography, The Story of My Days, and in 1966 he died at the age of 94 in Saint-Paul de Vence.

THE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
The texts included in the catalogue have been selected by the curator Aurora Herrera, who has also written several texts herself in the form of descriptions of various aspects of Gordon Craig's work. The catalogue contains essays by the keeper of the collections at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Patrick Le Boeuf; the keeper of the collections at the Gabinetto, Maurizo Copedè; and Gordon Craig's biographer, Christopher Innes. It will also include a selection of texts by the artist himself.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE CURATOR AURORA HERRERA GÓMEZ
Aurora Herrera Gómez, who obtained a PhD in architecture from the Madrid School of Architecture in 2004, is a senior lecturer at the San Pablo CEU university in Madrid and specialises in museum design.

She embarked on her career in 1985 and has worked with a variety of institutions, including among others the State Society for Cultural Action Abroad (SEACEX), the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Cultural Affairs, the Juan March Foundation, the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), Madrid City Council, the Antonio Tápies Foundation, the State Society for Cultural Commemorations (SECC), and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS).

Over the course of her career, she has organised approximately 80 exhibitions, most notably the following: "Nueva Forma" at the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid, "F(r)icciones. (Versiones del sur)" at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, "Eva Lootz" at the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, "ISMOS. Ramón Gómez de la Serna" at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, "Iberoámerica Mestiza. Encuentro de pueblos y culturas" at the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid, "España 1950. Una década de creación" at the Municipal Museum of Málaga, the Národni Galerie in Prague and the Mücsarnok in Budapest, "La casa de Borbón: Ciencia y técnica en la España ilustrada" at the Valencian Museum of Illustration and Modernity, "Roy Lichtenstein. De principio a fin" at the Juan March Foundation, "Lo[s] Cinético[s]" at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, "PICASSO. Objeto e Imagen" at the Picasso Museum in Málaga and "Tarsila Do Amaral" at the Juan March Foundation.

She has received several awards, including the Design Award from Madrid City Council in 1996, and she recently won the competition to design to the "Carmen Thyssen-Bornesmiza Museum" in Málaga.

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La Casa Encendida
Ronda de Valencia 2 Madrid
Open Monday to Sunday from 10 am to 21.45 pm
Free Admission

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