Cortes and Mari. Manipulador Ilusionistas (Cortes and Mari. Manipulative Illusionists)

Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s fascination with the spectacle would make him a forerunner of so-called performance art. His theatre writing, propelled by an admiration for genres considered lesser such as pantomime, the operetta and popular dances, sought to overhaul the conservative Spanish scene by creating a literary and visual language that was unprecedented at that time. The avant-garde fusion of genres led to his interest in other marginal manifestations such as the circus. In 1917, he published a study on this show, waxing lyrical about its carnivalesque qualities, ludic scope and its capacity to represent the improbable. In 1923, the American Circus paid homage to the chronicler and, as part of the bill, Gómez de la Serna read a speech atop a trapeze, denoting the invention of a new genre of public speaking, the “trapeze orator”. Subsequently, in the Cirque d’hiver in Paris, he conducted another performance, this time upon an elephant. Both circus speeches are a demonstration of how literature and performance are entwined in the “Ramonian” aesthetic.



Lola Hinojosa Martínez