The Decline of Artistic Production in Barcelona’s Raval
Jeffrey Swartz

From the book Hospital 106 4rt 1a. El lloc i el temps
de Isabel Banal y Jordi Canudas. 2006

The presence of artist studios in the Raval neighbourhood and the evolution of these spaces over the past three decades reflect processes that have been repeated in cities around the world since artistic autonomy –freedom from direct patronage and self-management of the artistic career– was consolidated about a hundred years ago. The pattern whereby the artist seeks out a large, well-lit studio in a cosmopolitan, urban core, taking advantage of low-cost industrial spaces left empty by shifts in modes of production has been observed in cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, New York or Toronto, among many others. In the same way, we have seen how the presence of artists in run-down areas has served to create a social environment –what we may call an art scene, typified by corollary and spin-off phenomena in the form of galleries, bars, restaurants, clothing and design stores– that has in turn worked to rejuvenate depressed areas of the city.

To the degree that urban revitalization around the presence of artists has had a consequent reaction in the form of rising prices and speculative real-estate operations, and has caught the eye of municipal administrations eager to connect the culturally vibrant neighbourhood with promotional, image-enhancing campaigns, artists have been participants –sometimes as victims, sometimes as active agents– in what is called in English “gentrification”. This term, derived from the word “gentry” (historically those just below the nobility, more commonly a property owning, upper middle class), is now normally associated with the creation of fashionable urban neighbourhoods. Such urban communities have become too expensive for new generations of artists, who in any case will find that the former industrial fabric has been demolished to make way for higher price housing. Thus the revitalized neighbourhood is not only more costly, but it has lost much of its constructed diversity, becoming less-pluralistic in terms of uses, which are now limited to residences and street level commerce catering to both residents and visitors from the outside, including tourists. Thus not only are artists priced out of such zones, but they no longer find in them the type of space they have traditionally sought for their studios. The most famous historical example of this process is Montmartre, in Paris. The clearest example in recent decades is that of New York’s Soho, which has lost its identity, consolidated only in the 1980s, as a neighbourhood dominated by an art scene.

Barcelona’s Raval neighbourhood, the site of the project this book is dedicated to, only partially fits the pattern described. It has its own specific characteristics, making it unique while not contradicting in any fundamental way the model. In the same way, the period of transition in the Raval has coincided with a more recent phenomenon, namely the decline of the conventional studio.

When we began the Open Studios (Tallers Oberts) initiative in Ciutat Vella in 1993, a third of the participating artists had their studios on carrer Riereta, while about half were occupying unused industrial spaces throughout Ciutat Vella. When the authors of Hospital 106, 4t, 1a began their project in 1995 these statistics were more or less the same.

We can now observe in retrospect that Hospital 106, 4t, 1a was not only able to anticipate the radical planning changes, summed up by the policy of ‘sponging’ (esponjament), that have altered –some would say scarred– the residential image of the neighbourhood. It also began in a time when embarrassment and even disdain for the industrial past of the area became officialized in the upper echelons of the Barcelona city planning department (an attitude taken to even greater extremes in Poble Nou and Diagonal Mar). The authors of Hospital 106, 4t, 1a are living witnesses to its consequences, expelled from the building at Riereta 37 they had occupied since the mid 80s along with the largest concentration of visual artists at any single address in Barcelona. The beginning of the end, an elongated ending we are still living through.

The first thing we should observe is that the Raval has not been entirely ‘freed’ of artist studios in former industrial buildings, though such studios are becoming more rare; I happen to have my own studio in such a space, shared with visual artists. Still, the handful of holdouts like myself are fully aware that our days our numbered, that eventually our time will come, whether due to a jump in rental prices or a municipal decision to give our former industrial sites over to housing interests. It is also true that the Raval has not become an exclusive neighbourhood of the city, though some parts of it, such as the ‘little Eixample of the Raval’, built on the former site of the Convent del Carme, are definitely upscale. Indeed, it continues to harbour great numbers of urban poor, many of whom are the descendents of the working class Catalans who settled in the area even before the industrialization of the 1830s. The factor of recent immigration, such as from Morocco, the Philippines or Pakistan, ensures a continuity of marginalization –social if not merely economic– for at least another generation, contradictorily since many immigrants have purchased flats in the neighbourhood. Unlike Soho, for example, the Raval has not become fully chic and artless, though its future has not been conceived in terms of the needs of working artists.

Looking back we now realize that the mid-90s were also the beginning of the digitalization of art, bolstered by the possibilities of the Internet. Though it is true that certain artists were able to create in small working spaces well before this period (especially those, like photographers, experimental filmmakers and others dedicated to mechanically reproduced 2-dimensional images, who could work off a table), the attraction of digital media art and the legitimization of the Internet as a final support led many creators to shift away from their painting or sculptural practices, whether occasionally or permanently. Thus some creators abandoned their traditional studios by choice. Yet we cannot deny that many others, faced with the impossibility of finding or paying for a conventional studio space (especially those reluctant to leave the ambience of the metropolis) were to some degree forced to abandon painting or sculptural practices in favour of digital formats. Critical backing of media art and its resultant normalization in terms of museum and private commercial support has meant that such choices have not been taken as a regression. Further to this, those insisting on creating in large dimensions have found ways of preparing projects as virtual models, with final production facilitated via outsourcing whenever museum or gallery funding makes this possible.

For all this, artists are still attracted to the idea of a large luminous studio loft in an urban context. Very successful creators are simply able to purchase such spaces, though possession of such a working environment in a fashionable city neighbourhood is now largely synonymous with older generations who were able to buy before a ‘boom’, or younger artistic elites. Another possibility is for creators to move out of downtown cores into suburban neighbourhoods combining undiscovered charm and lower costs (as what has happened with Brooklyn’s Williamsburg) or to opt to change cities altogether, providing there is easy access to the art capital (Leipzig and Dresden in Germany, Marseille in France).

Neither of these two possibilities has been played out for artists who consider Barcelona their artistic point of reference: the potential of Poble Nou has been quashed by the elimination of its industrial spaces or their designation for high-tech industries as part of the 22@ plan; no other urban core in Catalunya has shown any attraction for Barcelona artists. Neither the Raval nor any other neighbourhood of Barcelona can be typified as a place where large numbers of artists work and play, contributing to the impression that the question in Barcelona is in a moment of limbo.

Barcelona, september 2005
Jeffrey Swartz. Art critic and exhibitions curator.