Breathe
By Mónica Hernández
We never like to look at what displeases us, what provokes us, what hurts us and that is why we look the other way, to that of unconsciousness, to that of anesthesia to avoid pain. And yet, morbidity is inherent to human beings. We like to imagine what happened, we theorize about how it happened and also about the consequences of what happened. Worse, we judge about that which can no longer be changed, that which is already past and which only serves as a witness. This is true for the war in Ukraine, for the war in Gaza and the hostage situation and the thousands of dead, for the missing women, for the dismembered and in general, any issue that requires us to shed the superficial layer of skin and allow it to hurt underneath, to scratch us. It turns out that it is also true, this of looking the other way, in more intimate, more personal matters, those that make us blush. And it happens with art. And no, I am not referring to contemporary art, the kind that shows you a severed cow's head in some kind of liquid that keeps it from smelling or rotting.
The subject comes up because the Prado Museum decided to dust off a scroll containing a painting that has been "in safekeeping" for more than eighty years. What motives would a painter have to paint this scene? What motives would a museum have to decide not to exhibit it and let it be filled with the dust of time and oblivion? Why is it now being unrolled, framed and exhibited?
