El Greco en la pintura contemporánea y los "mass media"

Resumen

The influence of El Greco on Contemporary Art and the mass media has been explored in this Ph.D. dissertation. He has been a permanent source of inspiration for both the painters in the last decades of XIX century, and also for a selected group of painters along XX century, which borrowed some figures in paintings by El Greco to compose their own works. Pablo Picasso has been considered the inflection point, the link between the artist that used El Greco as a source of inspiration and at the same time felt free to make a reinterpretation of many of his master pieces. It has been also documented how other artist followed Picasso in the reinterpretation of El Greco paintings. The presence of El Greco in the literature has been explored, and how he is no longer a cursed painter in contemporary films. His influence on the impressionist movement has been considered, just to enter into the analysis of his on the Spanish painting of XIX and XX centuries. Painters that were admirers of El Greco, those directly influenced by his work, and also those using his paintings to make a reinterpretation of the master�s works have been considered. The compositions once performed by El Greco have been extended to the present times through their influence on contemporary artists. Among the painters that are under the long shadow of El Greco, the works of Mariano Fortuny, Ignacio Zuloaga, Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Salvador Dalí, Angeles Santos, Remedios Varo and José Caballero have been analyzed. Among those doing a plain reinterpretation of El Greco paintings, Equipo Crónica, Eduardo Arroyo and Victor Pulido have been considered. Special attention has been devoted to point out the presence of El Greco in the mecamistica and the collages of José Val del Omar. The presence of his works in the collages decorating Ramón Gómez de la Serna�s office is also documented in this dissertation. However, not only paintings, collages, and other pieces of contemporary art show the signs of being influenced by El Greco. His presence is also evident in recent advertisements, as a connecting path from the cretensic painter to nowadays cultural world. The universal figure of El Greco is also traced back in the literature of great writers. Five contemporary plays have been studied, belonging to the production of the last decades of XX century and the beginning of XXI century. Filmed biographies about El Greco, by Italian film director Luciano Salce (El Greco, 1966) and by the greek film director Iannis Smaragdis (El Greco, 2007) have been studied. The master piece El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz has a starring role in both films. And it is not by chance, because some of El Greco biographers consider this work as the summit of his art. Not only the films have surrounded to El Greco, but also mass media include his works, specially El Caballero de la mano al pecho, where sarcasm is poured onto the well-known figure, as initiated by Equipo Crónica. This very same composition is included frequently in advertisements. As a general conclusion drawn from this Ph.D. dissertation, El Greco and his work are still alive in the Contemporary Art, both in painters taking his compositions as a source of inspiration and others reinterpretating them. Frequent apparitions in contemporary play works have been increasing for a long time, and also in non conventional films -as those by Val del Omar- and commercial films. On the other hand, advertisement activities have often employed the figures extracted from works by El Greco, as a sign of modern times. Such an intense activity around a painter is not very frequent, including great artists at the same level of El Greco. All this facts and analysis have been documented in this Ph.D. dissertation, and also previous works relatives to the painting of El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz, by the same author, have also been included.