In this exclusive text for PLOM, publicist and exponential communicator Robert Artigau talks about the value of the artistic objects that accompany us throughout our lives.
My father has a photo of Jorge Negrete next to his bed, with a simple frame, leaning against his bedside table.
There was a time when he had it hanging there, next to the bed.
It is a photo of the one of the most handsome actors of the moment: of the moment of the 40’s… Actually my father was too young to know then who that actor was.
The one who really admired the handsome Mexican charro was my grandmother Mercè.
Untitled, by Maxi Luchini. In our SHOP.
The magic of a photo signed by an artist
On one occasion my grandmother took my father to see Jorge Negrete perform at the Coliseum.
At the exit, they waited for him, and my grandmother threw her son in pursuit of a photo that that superstar dedicated to him with “To my little friend Francisco Artigau. Negrete”.
My grandmother almost fainted.
Meanwhile, my father must have left the place rather upset, but the emotion that the dedicated photo had provoked in his mother made him give it a special value.
As far as my memory goes, that photo has always been there.
Now very faded and with the dedication barely visible.
Untitled, by Juan Díaz-Faez. In our SHOP.
Those little things that make us bigger
My father taught me that the objects that accompany us every day, especially those with which we share our solitude and our intimacy, end up becoming part of our lives.
They cease to be things.
They become objects that give off energy.
To call it life is perhaps to dramatize, but it is true that their presence comforts us, reassures us, makes us feel good. And when they are gone, we miss them.
Almost as if they were people.
Art is one of the main expressions of this affective relationship with what is apparently inanimate.
Ocells de paper, by Marta R. Gustems. In our SHOP.
Artistic objects that are engines of love
Colors, textures, shapes, figures become sensations that we perceive in a more or less conscious way.
And the works take on meaning, they evoke memories of moments we have lived, of people with whom we associate those works.
With what they mean or with what we were told they would mean.
If the artists’ works are not part of our lives, the art and the emotion that the artist was trying to express and convey fades, is diluted, dies.
If we embrace those pieces and make them our own, our emotion is added to that of the artist and a new one is generated that can be transferred to other people to continue mutating and exciting indefinitely.
Robert Artigau is a publicist and exponential communicator.
His father Francesc Artigau is an artist and has passed on to him the love for art as an everyday thing, away from museums, from critics… Art as an intimate experience.Above, Untitled, by Maxi Luchini. Signed poster.
In the SHOP.
