Gerola is a painter who grew up in his artist mother’s studio but moved to Japan in his earlies twenties, where he was to make his name. Since then his work has shown an original blend of his western origins and the Asian cultures that were such an influence on him.
As is so often the case, sooner or later one’s attention turns back towards home. Gerola’s Brussels exhibition is dedicated to perhaps the most famous Belgian landmark of them all, the Manneken Pis (the petit Julien in French). The exhibition features a large number of figures representing the well-known statue of the little boy urinating but made of all sorts of different materials and colours.
It makes me wonder what would have happened if Gerola had been Catalan?
Can you imagine the Berlaymont building full of large caganers in different sizes and colours? What’s more, the caganer tradition allows the artist more freedom because the squatting crapper can be applied to all sort of public figures, as Catalonia Today revealed in its December edition.
Imagine the impression such an exhibition would make on the world if it contained giant caganers of Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown or European Commission president José Manuel Durao Barrosso.
People say that European institutions and politicians are too far removed from the everyday person. Perhaps the caganer could act as a great way of humanising our political leaders.
There are a lot of well-known Catalan artists that would be perfect for creating the figures for an exhibition of caganers in the European capital, from Antoni Tàpies to Miquel Barceló to Joan-Pere Viladecans. However, I would recommend the Alòs-Pla family in Torroella de Montgrí, the creators of the best-selling caganers every Christmas in Catalonia.
I have my fingers crossed that this will happen someday and if it does, I’ll be ready to claim for the copyright of the idea.
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