Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stepping past the black iron gates of Madrid’s Palacio de Liria, I remind myself that the blood of the family residing here is blue enough to make Spanish and British royals cling to their thrones. The neoclassical majesty of their residence emerges from among the foliage — but its facade is interrupted by a 7.2-metre-tall wedding ring standing outside. It is made from 110 golden car rims and features a giant “diamond” made from more than 1,400 whisky glasses.The artwork is by Portuguese maverick Joana Vasconcelos, whose larger-than-life statements give grandeur to traditional crafts. She is also a dab hand at palatial settings: she was the first woman to hold a solo exhibition at the Palace of Versailles in 2012; three of her large-scale installations were recently placed at the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti in Florence; and two years ago her immersive sculptural pavilion in the shape of a three-tiered wedding cake, adorned with candy-coloured glazed ceramic tiles, was delectably plonked on the grounds of Waddesdon Manor, the 19th-century country house built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in Buckinghamshire. For her latest extravagance, Vasconcelos has taken on the palace owned by one of Spain’s oldest noble ancestries — the House of Alba. Originating in medieval Toledo, their current line descends from King James II of England (and James VII of Scotland), and they are linked — through centuries of political alliances and careful marrying — to royal and aristocratic families across Europe, including the Bourbons, Braganzas and Medicis. This titled household’s history includes military and diplomatic entanglements, feuds with Franco and love affairs with famous artists. Its wealth is estimated in the billions.The House of Alba also owns one of Europe’s finest private art collections, amassed since the 16th century and containing masterpieces by Rubens, Titian, Murillo, Zurbarán, Velázquez and others. These sit alongside artefacts including a first edition of Don Quixote and letters by Christopher Columbus about his quest to colonise the Americas. Although a large part of the Liria Palace was destroyed during the Spanish civil war, most of the collection survived. The irreverent new exhibition — titled Flamboyant — is being sold as the Palacio’s first display of contemporary art. The residence has only been open to the public since 2019, when it first began granting visitors a glimpse of its treasures through cautious tours of selected rooms. The family is keen to continue attracting visitors: hence the interventions by the likes of Vasconcelos, who has thrown the palace’s musty heritage into sharp relief by dotting 20 of her characteristically kitsch creations around the premises, making whimsical links with historic elements. About 30 other small pieces showcase her ceramics, jewellery and drawings.“This palace has an attitude,” says the 53-year-old artist, showing me her chandelier-shaped installation “Carmen” — named after the Prosper Mérimée story that inspired Bizet’s opera — which she made from about 200 sevillana-style earrings during her first trip to Madrid in 2001. It now sits in the library next to a letter that Mérimée wrote to the countess Eugenia de Montijo — also part of the Alba dynasty — about his racy new tale. Vasconcelos is injecting her own wit and swagger, but the most outrageous presence in this household is the most recent Duchess of Alba, the country’s wealthiest aristocrat, who held so many noble titles that she outranked the Spanish monarch. This fearless, fiery diva was famous for her sharp tongue, raucous parties and daring fashion choices. Rumours surrounded her: that she was offered the role of Queen of Spain; that Picasso wanted to paint her nude.Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart died in 2014 but burned bright until the end, marrying her last husband — a quarter-century her junior — aged 85 while dancing flamenco barefoot. Also a key figurehead in the family’s art custodianship, the tastemaker-agitator might have welcomed an unusual flourish or two in her palace. “Cayetana is not here, but I think she would love this show,” says Vasconcelos. “She’s the flamboyant one!”Among her interventions, Vasconcelos has placed her own nativity sculpture against a backdrop of biblical scenes painted by Titian, Raphael and Maratta, but not without a giggle — her baby Jesus is a Nenuco, a popular brand of Spanish doll launched in the 1970s. Vasconcelos’s massive black heart made of plastic cutlery, slowly rotating to melancholic fados by Portuguese singer Amália Rodrigues, hangs in a room filled with sombre paintings by Murillo and Velázquez.Vasconcelos has also made a huge wrought-iron teapot in homage to Portugal’s Catherine of Braganza, who is said to have inspired the fashion of drinking tea in England during her period as Charles II’s queen in the 1600s. It reveals the artist’s fondness for powerful queens — as does “Perruque”, featuring locks of hair sprouting from an egg-shaped wooden cocoon. It sits next to Goya’s Liria Palace-commissioned 1795 portrait of the 13th Duchess of Alba, whose hair hangs similarly loose and unbridled.“It’s a game of scale,” the artist tells me, as we sit between two enormous stilettos made from more than 230 stainless steel saucepans and their lids. The work, “Marilyn”, is about the invisibility of female labour, transforming mundane, domestic objects into visions of glamour for the public gaze. “By decontextualising things from the domestic to the public, you’re freeing women from their usual role, hidden from society,” she says. “But public life can also be a prison, so there’s a duality established.”Vasconcelos soared to fame in 2005 with “The Bride”, a chandelier made of 14,000 tampons: the work was banned from Versailles and is also absent from Liria’s exhibition. Through provocative, monumental gestures using everyday objects of women’s private lives, the artist also highlights the enduring role of such items. “I work with symbols that are stable,” she explains. “Some symbols disappear but some continue through time.” Established to uphold the family’s five-century-long legacy of arts patronage, the House of Alba Foundation is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Its patriarch is the current Duke of Alba, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart, whom I meet in his imposing private salon, where a portrait of his ancestor by the painter Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor hangs. “I don’t understand much about contemporary art,” the Duke confesses — ask him about the Renaissance instead — but his 34-year-old son, Fernando, is steering the foundation as it explores new realms. The heir and his wife Sofia — the Duke and Duchess of Huéscar — say that only a “brave woman” could compete with the weighty content of this palace without being swallowed by it. “This house has a classical order, but Joana’s baroque is like a bit of a chaos,” says Fernando, admiring Vasconcelos’s installation of disused Dior perfume bottles in the form of a gigantic pink bow. The couple, who fell for the artist’s eccentric flair at her 2018 retrospective at Guggenheim Bilbao, hope to host similar shows every three years and add contemporary works to the age-old Casa de Alba collection. “The family has always supported artists of the time,” explains Sofia. “In his moment, Goya was a contemporary artist, so it makes total sense.”To July 31, entradas.palaciodeliria.com
