The Battle of Wad-Ras and the Handira

Conversation between Leire Vergara and Teresa Lanceta.

Work Study, session 13
Thursday 19 November 2020, 11 am

L: [...] We were saying that you spent some time in Morocco...

T: Yes, between 1985 and 1990 I lived in Marrakesh for half the year.

L: Well, about Morocco, I would like to show you this painting. It’s called Episodio de la Guerra de Africa en 1860 and belongs to the Spanish Senate’s collection of historical paintings, which was started in 1882 with the aim of projecting a sovereign, national and patriotic consciousness. This painting is by César Álvarez Dumont and depicts the battle of Wad-Ras in the Spanish-Moroccan War. Dumont painted it in 1899, almost forty years after the battle – in other words, it is totally anachronistic. Marià Fortuny, on the other hand, had witnessed the battle first-hand and his extraordinary account of it is kept in the Prado. (Coincidentally, César Álvarez Dumont spent four years in residence at the Academia de España en Roma, where I am now, and Fortuny’s artistic training is also linked to Rome...) While in Rome, Dumont requested permission to travel to Tangiers to paint the picture, and the Academy’s archive holds a description of the project and the motivation for this work, which, incidentally, the Senate has two paintings of: the large original and a very small replica. Fortuny’s rendered his sketches of the battle into a painting between 1860 and 1861. From what I have read, the painting alludes to the military role of the Catalan volunteers: the Catalan presence is part of an idea of a compact nation facing an enemy that must be colonised. Dumont’s painting, on the other hand, is anachronistic in several ways. While history painting had ceased to be relevant in art, Orientalism was still very much a modern theme and it is in that context that Dumont’s canvas situates the colonial project: the government, or rather the institution of government, was keen to revive the subject of this battle following recent revolts in Melilla. I happened to come across an image of Dumont’s painting in a book in the library of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía when I was in Madrid to give some lectures. I had always viewed it from the perspective of Bilbao (which maintained industrial connections with Morocco through the exploitation of resources, coal, etc) and London. I wanted to use this image to talk about the notion of governmental art collections – in this case the Senate’s – and how they serve an idea of nation, of modern-day colonialism in Africa. It’s something that has been largely ignored in Spanish art history. When I started my thesis (and things haven’t changed much since then) the subject of Spain’s colonial past in Africa was barely discussed, even though it wasn’t so long ago and is fundamental to the idea of the modern nation. Spain’s colonial link with Latin America, however, has been studied more, perhaps because its imperialist roots are still alive today in the form of the Spanish language – language being one of the vehicles that perpetuate colonialism beyond exploitation.

T: In this type of painting, Orientalism uses a tone of admiration to gloss over colonialism. Here you don’t see a Spaniard on horseback leading the battle, but a splendidly attired sheik brandishing decorated weapons, a ruler mounted on a thoroughbred trampling the fallen. In fact, you don’t see any Spaniard at all in this painting, which is another misrepresentation. Colonialism is portrayed differently depending on whether a territory is being conquered for the first time or whether it is a conquered territory being defended. The conquest is presented as a promising event to be proud of, when in fact the Moroccan soldiers who fought in this war were neither opulent nor ‘Orientalist’ in aspect, as Dumont depicts them, but poor shepherds, hardened by years of territorial struggles. We see no dead Spaniards, only the Spanish flag. The painting is deceitful because it presents the battle as if it were being fought between friendly and enemy tribes.

L: Yes, and it falsifies history for propagandist purposes: the Orientalist attires seem to suggest that it is worth going to Africa because there is heritage and wealth to be conquered. This is the message the Orientalism of this painting sends: the promise that something of value will be gained for killing Africans and that therefore the sacrifice is worthwhile. What this painting doesn’t tell us is that the Tragic Week of Barcelona, when churches and convents were burnt down, was triggered by young people protesting about being sent to Africa to die; young people whose families couldn’t survive without their income. In that war, lowly peasants and workers were sent to fight in a deadly war dressed in nothing but their own clothes and espadrilles, deprived of much needed income and work. They were sent to fight to defend the interests of the country’s wealthy colonialists, among them Basque and Catalan families, but their sons could avoid being drafted by paying a conscription fee. The Tragic Week was in fact an uprising against the Spanish-Moroccan War, and therefore also an act of anti-colonial protest. Many anti-colonial events in history have been treated as isolated events and not as a whole, making it impossible to build a specific anticolonial history.

T: Yes... In fact, Africa is directly linked to the Spanish Civil War, because that’s where it started – in Morocco. The Spanish military in Africa behaved like nasty power-hungry strategists.

L: This other painting is by Marià Fortuny. What differences do you see? Fortuny actually witnessed the battle whereas César Álvarez Dumont produced his painting while at the Academy in Rome, some forty years after the event.

T: But Fortuny was the better artist: there is art in his painting. With Dumont, it’s obvious it was a commission. Fortuny’s painting conveys a drama that is absent in Dumont’s. Colour and beauty do not eclipse the tragedy – and this is why it is in the Prado. It shows the cruelty of war, regardless of which side is fighting. Like Goya, Fortuny holds the weapon bearer responsible, because he who wields the weapon kills the man.

L: Fortuny did not let the commission get to him.

T: Both these paintings seem to suggest that it’s in Rome that Tangiers is best studied... but also in those places where migrant boats depart from... But to go back to the paintings, Fortuny’s battle plays out horizontally, it’s as if he wanted to warn everyone equally of the dangers of war. But with Dumont, the message seems to be more that the observer is safe, because he makes them identify with the man on horseback and not with the fallen. Fortuny’s painting is horizontal, and Dumont’s vertical and pyramidal. By the way, the women’s prison in Barcelona is popularly known as the Wad-Ras.

L: Changing the subject, Teresa, I would like to tell you something: I have to turn my thesis into a book, and I plan on doing this during my time here in Rome. I’m thinking of devoting each chapter to an occupied territory (in today’s world too) and pairing it with a concept specific to my practice as a curator. And one of the concepts is touch, which relates to your fabrics...

T: Yes, sure. And I would like to show you a handira. Because if anything important happened to me between 1985 and 1990, it was the acquisition of this handira. Can you see it?

L: Yes, perfectly.

T: This object conveys its geographical and social origins as well as the artistry of its weaver, whose use of ornament seems to refute Adolf Loos: its ornamentation protects the material. The more elaborate the pattern, the less wear and tear the fibre will suffer. The weaver may have wanted to make it quickly because she needed to sell it, which would explain the numerous white strips which are slightly wider than the older ones. But as she wants to make it stand out, she adds some coloured lines.

L: That’s a nice reference you make to Loos... You probably mean that from a functional point of view, this piece refutes what Loos says in his work Ornament and Crime¹.

T: Yes, that’s right. I know this handira is relatively recent because the coloured threads are made of acrylic. How has the weaver managed to make us not notice that she was in a hurry to get it finished or not care if we do? She creates perpendicular lines of yellow and red. And do you see how she introduces an upward movement that breaks the horizontality of the strips? In this handira you discover a woman who wanted to speed up the fabrication and achieve a greater expressiveness than that traditionally found in handiras. In fact, when I first saw it, I imagined the weaver to have been the same age as me. I felt she was a real person; I sensed an existence, an individualisation, and I felt that this woven object connected us somehow.