Film buffs visiting Barcelona are in luck this spring.
The CCCB will be hosting its exhibition Stanley Kubrick (1928 - 1999) till March 31st celebrating the iconic film director who is one of the 20th century’s most important artists. Featuring a selection of film clips and more than 600 items sourced from the director’s personal archives including film props and actual costumes such as the man-ape costume from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the dresses of the twin sisters and Jack Torrance’s axe from The Shining (1980), and a helmet from Full Metal Jacket (1986). The exhibition spans his entire career from his work as a photographer with the prestigious LOOK Magazine in New York to his final film Eyes Wide Shut (1999) as well as material connected with some of his unrealised projects such as Napoleon, Aryan Papers and AI, ultimately produced by Steven Spielberg after Kubricks death.
The Golden Age of Film d’auteur
Kubrick came to prominence at a seminal time for cinema when ‘film d’auteur’ provided film directors with almost complete and unlimited freedom. Kubrick’s first commercial success, Spartacus (1960) made after a number of short films and unsuccessful releases the film establishes many of the elements that would define Kubrick’s cinema over the following decades: the overblown scale of the production (with a cast of 10,000), a huge budget (at the time the most expensive film ever made), the problematic relationship with collaborators and the breathtaking artistic vision of a maverick director. Kubrick’s meticulous approach and eye for detail is best illustrated by his insistence on the cinematography for the interior scenes of his 1975 masterpiece Barry Lyndon using only candlelight to generate a sense of authenticity. To do so involved developing a special high-speed lens with NASA that would ultimately be used for satellite photography.
The Kubrick Exhibition
This exhibition is a joint venture between Deutsches Filmmuseum of Frankfurt Am Main, the Stanley Kubrick Archive of the University of Arts of London, and the Kubrick family itself, which has given its official approval and has overseen the exhibition. The work is exhaustive: It begins with Kubrick’s first photography work published in the New Yorker magazine during the 40s and the 50s and concludes with his last finished film, following his evolution as an artist in extreme detail together with an examination of his creative processes that have provided film buffs with some of the most iconic imagery and compelling translations of literary works to the screen unparalleled in their scope and breath of vision. And yet, ironically Kubrick’s work as a director was never recognised with an academy award during his life time.
A travelling exhibition
The travelling exhibition has already been warmly received in important world cities like Los Angeles, Seoul, Mexico City and Paris. For the Barcelona leg of its tour curator Jordi Costa working with Hans-Peter Reichmann and Tim Heptner, who are responsible for the general exhibition, has introduced previously unseen contents such as the sets from “2001”, storyboards from “Barry Lyndon” as well as unpublished interviews with artists who down the years collaborated with the director and a biographical film directed by Manuel Huerga.
Practical Information
The CCCB is one of Barcelona’s most important cultural institutions with regular changing exhibitions that highlight different aspects of urban culture. The CCCB is located within the Raval neighbourhood and can easily be reached on foot from the Grand Hotel Central, passing through some of the city’s most charming streets and squares on the way.
The Stanley Kubrick exhibition runs till March 31st 2019 at the CCCB with a cover charge of 6 Eur.
