Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stepping past the black iron gates of Madrid\u2019s 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 \u2014 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 \u201cdiamond\u201d made from more than 1,400 whisky glasses.The artwork is by Portuguese maverick Joana Vasconcelos, whose larger-than-life statements give\u00a0grandeur to traditional\u00a0crafts.\u00a0She is\u00a0also 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\u00a0shape of a\u00a0three-tiered\u00a0wedding cake, adorned\u00a0with 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\u00a0one of\u00a0Spain\u2019s oldest\u00a0noble ancestries \u2014\u00a0the 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 \u2014 through centuries of\u00a0political alliances and\u00a0careful marrying \u2014 to royal\u00a0and aristocratic\u00a0families across Europe, including the Bourbons, Braganzas and Medicis. This titled household\u2019s 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\u2019s finest private art collections, amassed since the 16th century and containing masterpieces by Rubens, Titian, Murillo, Zurbar\u00e1n, Vel\u00e1zquez 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 \u2014 titled Flamboyant \u2014 is being sold as the Palacio\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u201cThis palace has an attitude,\u201d says the 53-year-old artist, showing me her chandelier-shaped installation \u201cCarmen\u201d \u2014 named after the Prosper M\u00e9rim\u00e9e story that inspired Bizet\u2019s opera \u2014 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 M\u00e9rim\u00e9e wrote to the countess Eugenia de Montijo \u2014 also part of the Alba dynasty \u2014 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\u2019s wealthiest aristocrat, who held so many noble titles that she outranked the Spanish monarch. This\u00a0fearless, 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 \u2014 a quarter-century her junior \u2014 aged 85 while dancing flamenco barefoot. Also a key figurehead in the family\u2019s art custodianship, the tastemaker-agitator might have welcomed an unusual flourish or two in her palace. \u201cCayetana is not here, but I think she would love this show,\u201d says Vasconcelos. \u201cShe\u2019s the flamboyant one!\u201dAmong 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 \u2014 her baby Jesus is a Nenuco, a popular brand of Spanish doll launched in the 1970s. Vasconcelos\u2019s massive black heart made of plastic cutlery, slowly rotating to melancholic fados by Portuguese singer Am\u00e1lia Rodrigues, hangs in a room filled with sombre paintings by Murillo and Vel\u00e1zquez.Vasconcelos has also made a huge wrought-iron teapot in homage to Portugal\u2019s Catherine of Braganza, who is said to have inspired the fashion of drinking tea in England during her period as Charles II\u2019s queen in the 1600s. It reveals the artist\u2019s fondness for powerful queens \u2014 as does \u201cPerruque\u201d, featuring locks of hair sprouting from an egg-shaped wooden cocoon. It sits next to Goya\u2019s Liria Palace-commissioned 1795 portrait of the 13th Duchess of Alba, whose hair hangs similarly loose and unbridled.\u201cIt\u2019s a game of scale,\u201d the artist tells me, as we sit between two enormous stilettos made from more than 230 stainless steel saucepans and their lids. The work, \u201cMarilyn\u201d, is about the invisibility of female labour, transforming mundane, domestic objects into visions of glamour for the public gaze. \u201cBy decontextualising things from the domestic to the public, you\u2019re freeing women from their usual role, hidden from society,\u201d she says. \u201cBut public life can also be a prison, so there\u2019s a duality established.\u201dVasconcelos soared to fame in 2005 with \u201cThe Bride\u201d, a chandelier made of 14,000 tampons: the work was banned from Versailles and is also absent from Liria\u2019s exhibition. Through\u00a0provocative, monumental gestures using everyday objects of women\u2019s private lives, the artist also highlights the enduring role of such items. \u201cI work with symbols that are stable,\u201d she explains. \u201cSome symbols disappear but some continue through time.\u201d Established to uphold the family\u2019s 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 \u00c1lvarez de Sotomayor hangs. \u201cI don\u2019t understand much about contemporary art,\u201d the Duke confesses \u2014 ask him about the Renaissance instead \u2014 but his 34-year-old son, Fernando, is steering the foundation as it explores new realms. The heir and his wife Sofia \u2014 the Duke and Duchess of Hu\u00e9scar \u2014 say that only a \u201cbrave woman\u201d could compete with the weighty content of this palace without being swallowed by it. \u201cThis house has a classical order, but Joana\u2019s baroque is like a bit of a chaos,\u201d says Fernando, admiring Vasconcelos\u2019s installation of disused Dior perfume bottles in the form of a gigantic pink bow. The couple, who fell for the artist\u2019s 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\u00a0Alba collection. \u201cThe family has always supported artists of the time,\u201d explains Sofia. \u201cIn his moment, Goya was a contemporary artist, so it makes total sense.\u201dTo July 31, entradas.palaciodeliria.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stepping past the black iron gates of Madrid\u2019s 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-228639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228641,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228639\/revisions\/228641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}