"For me art is everyday life, it is an unmistakable sign of equality. Art itself is an everyday affair". The intervention of plastic artist Isidoro Válcarcel Medina (Murcia, 1937), one of the referents of conceptual and performative art in Spain, put an end to the IX Iberian meeting : Art and Life. An event organized by the School of Architecture of the University of Navarra, the group of Aesthetics and Contemporary Art, in partnership with the School of Philosophy and Letters and the Society of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts (SEYTA). 

"Art is an option staff that can serve as an example, but never become an exemplary value". With this phrase, which he pronounced at the beginning of his intervention in the classroom Magna of the School of Architecture, Isidoro Válcarcel (award National of Fine Arts in 2007 and award Velázquez of Plastic Arts in 2015) defended his particular conception of art and the artist, whom he prefers to call author. "We are all artists," said Valcárcel, who insisted on qualifying as a work of art "every action staff of daily life that is performed with awareness and responsibility," from cooking, sweeping the leaves in a yard or putting a paper clip on four sheets of paper. 

In the face of what he called "the social, political and economic montage that classifies art," he advocated fostering people's creativity and teaching them to appreciate art in the everyday. "If art were to emerge only when the environment propitiated it or when inspiration came or when an appetizing commission was received, it would be very restricted, in time and space, in quantity and even in quality," he assured. 

Supporting creativity

The artist defended the difference between artisticity and creativity. "Museums and centers are attended by artists, people moved by their vocation and by their Schools, by their faith in a proper training ; but most people do not have access to express and disseminate their creativity," he continued. "Creativity is not supported, training is offered in art, because of this social setup of ignoring the ability staff to face creative action," he insisted.

Isidoro Valcárcel opted for the active pleasure of creation and not for the passive pleasure of contemplation. "What experts cannot stand is that their professional product can be equated to the amateur or the ignorant of their supposed mastery. Everyday life equated to art can sound like an insult; an art that is not valued economically or culturally. What I ask from society is that evaluation of art not as something sublime but as something imperative, made with the conscience manager of the author", he concluded. 

More than 60 national and international experts spoke at congress on three main areas: everyday aesthetics, aesthetic-artistic issues and the various artistic disciplines. The relationship between life and art; the rupture of formats in areas such as theater, music or dance; the expansion of artistic frontiers beyond museums; the role of art and the artist in society; everyday aesthetics and care; or art and new technologies, were some of the issues that were put on the table.