The Washington Diplomat

Imagining Don Quixote
Two Artists Offer Different Visions of Legendary Spanish Character
by Gary Tischler

Don Quixote has to be imagined!” So says Juan Romero de Terreros, the Spanish painter, printmaker and sculptor, in reference to a sketch for his sculpture, “Don Quijote Deconstructed.”

The sketch, along with drawings and space-oriented visual works by Terreros and more accessible drawings, charcoal works and paintings by Francisco Castillo, are part of an exhibition on the theme of “Don Quijote: The Visible and Invisible,” now at The George Washington University Art Gallery, in association with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain.

The exhibition is also a part of larger salute to Castillo on the part of the Spanish Cultural Office. Castillo—who died in 1999—and Terreros offer up radically different ways of looking at, seeing and perhaps feeling Quixote, the “knight of the woeful countenance,” and Spain’s greatest literary character.

Castillo, time and again, in works on paper from watercolors to charcoal to drawings, lets us see the fully imagined face of Quixote when not directly portraying scenes from the great novel by Miguel de Cervantes—the tilting of the windmills, Quixote and his faithful but exasperated companion Sancho Panza—almost in the manner of great book illustrators. Terreros offers up spaces, dual images, meaning and abstract outlines. But for Castillo, the face of Quixote is often the face he sees in the mirror.

These artistic approaches—one abstract, full of ideas and swirling imagination, the other direct, moving, haunting and familiar—could be said to be fairly typical of how the world at large sees Quixote, as well as how Spanish artists see him. “Don Quixote has to be imagined!” says Terreros. But a simpler way of saying it might be like a graffiti scrawl: “Don Quixote lives!” And he always has.

“Don Quixote” the book was every bit as big and monumental an achievement as anything produced in Europe in its time: It was one of the first novels, and it dealt with complicated themes of modernism, cynicism, idealism, fashion, literature, fiction versus reality, idealism versus practicality and opportunism versus goodness of heart. Cervantes ranks right up there with Shakespeare for that one work.

He was at the heart of the Spanish golden age of empire and culture. So in embracing, interpreting, reassessing and “imagining” Quixote anew, Spanish artists of all sorts are in a way embracing a certain kind of nostalgia—the memory of greatness. But Quixote has survived, not so much as a Spanish symbol, character or creation, but as a universal man and figure: Tilting at windmills has become a lexicon phrase that suggests a somehow admirable but hopeless task for the always dwindling ranks of idealists.

Seeing a woman of easy virtue and thinking of her as an ideal of chaste womanhood is an idea that has echoed through the ages, appealing to reformers and slightly innocent young men. Doing good, being a real, untainted knight, having adventures, staying alive, upholding tradition, struggling against modernity—these are artistic as well as real life themes.

Don Quixote and his sidekick have long ago moved into the realm of popular culture, in film, on stage, even in ballet, although here they are on the periphery of the athleticism of youthful dancers. “Man of La Mancha,” a Broadway musical that had some serious things to say and was starkly original when it debuted, probably had a lot to do with that, and not necessarily in a good way. Repeated revivals diluted the power of the original, as did thousands of piano bar renditions of “The Impossible Dream.”

Quixotic is a word. To the world, Don Quixote is real. We think we know what he looks like, as if from some poster or dream. We think he has a scraggly, ill-kept beard, a large nose, feverish face, white, matted hair, his eyes burning with obsession and kindness, wearing a barber’s tool for a helmet—a warring face. Quixote is a visual image in our heads. Small wonder the exhibition looks almost familiar—an idea of space and imagination for Terrero, with thick, swirling drawings and sketches, and works on paper by Castillo, who looks at Quixote and sees himself—he imagines.

“Don Quijote: The Visible and Invisible” runs through Feb. 8 at The George Washington University Art Gallery, Media and Public Affairs Building, 805 21st St., NW, from Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call (202) 728-2334.

Gary Tischler is a regular contributor to The Washington Diplomat.