La Más Bella
Pepe Murciego and Diego Ortiz
Magazine of art
Monographic contents provided by contributors specially invited by La Más Bella.
La Más Bella is an art magazine, we like to describe it as an “experimental” magazine. Every new edition we change everything in the magazine: we change the subject (every edition is monographic about an idea or concept), we change the contents (we ask the contents to dozens of contributors) and we change the format.
Normally the format is similar as an artist-book: there are printed stuff but there are also DVD (or CD or a vinyl disc!) and objects, sometimes handmade by the contributors.
The hole magazine is and artistic object in itself. But we make 1.000 copies each, and we do a new edition once a year (more or less) since 1993, so we are a magazine!.
Publisher: Pepe Murciego and Diego Ortiz
Madrid, Spain
c/San Millàn 3 6° Dcha, 28012
Email: diego@lamasbella.org
- Category: Art
- Periodicity: Annual
- Language: Spanish / English
- Circulation: 1,000
- Web: http://www.lamasbella.org
Founded in 1993
Exclusive Interview
We like everything: the “like”, the “challenge”, the “working” and the “magazine”
Magazine favourite(s) from your childhood.
Pepe Murciego: TBO, a legendary comic book for children very popular in the second half of the XX century in Spain.
Diego Ortiz: I liked also the comic books for children, specially Mortadelo & Filemón, two legendary comic characters that still existing.
Magazine favourite(s) that inspired you in your career.
Pepe: EL CANTO DE LA TRIPULACIÓN. Magazine of art published in Madrid (Spain) between 1989 and 1998, directed (mainly but not only) by the artist and photographer Alberto García Alix.
Diego: Professionally speaking: VISUAL, magazine specialized in graphic design, art direction and advertising creativity, borned about 1990 in Madrid. This is the place where I learned almost everything about this bussines. In the other hand: EL CANTO DE LA TRIPULACIÓN and EL EUROPEO, both very different projects, but very innovative in the late eighties in Spain.
Magazine favourite(s) now.
Pepe: LALATA, magazine-in-a-can published in Albacete (Spain) by our close friends Carmen Palacios and Manuela Martínez. (www.lalata.es)
Diego: I can not say one only magazine, I would choose many details of many projects.
What else inspires and informs you?
Pepe: The 80’s spanish pop and rock music. The work of the spanish visual poets Joan Brossa and Antonio Gómez. The independent art movements and groups working in Spain along the last two decades.
Diego: absolutely everything that I see-read-listen-eat...
Proudest moment of your career in magazines.
Why?
Pepe: the moment when the publishers of other magazines and editorial projects similar to us, told us that they started to run their projects after discover our magazine. It is wonderfull to feel yourself as a mother and father of other wonderfull projects.
Diego: I do agree with Pepe.
Most well-known moment.
Why is it so well known?
Pepe: this moment have just happened (beggining of may 2008): La Más Bella have won the EDITA 08 AWARD to our career in the last fifteen years. This prize is awarded by the EDITA festival, a meeting of independent publishers, artists and writers celebrated every year in a small town in the south of Spain (Punta Umbría, Huelva).
Diego: I absolutely agree with that.
Most important lesson learnt, and from who/where?
Pepe: I consider the spanish artist and publisher Antonio Gómez as my best influence. He has been offering the last decades an example of how your publishing dreams can be a true.
Diego: I have learned many lessons from all the people that fight to develop their personal projects (any kind of personal projects), and resist all the inconveniences to achieve their purposes.
Do you keep old copies of magazines? If so, what is your favourite in your collection?
Pepe: Yes, I hold a huge collection of art books and strange magazines. My favourite are: LALATA (Albacete, Spain), SALAMANDRIA (Almería, Spain), FÍJATE (Barcelona, Spain), AL BUIT (Barcelona, Spain), CAPS.A (Barcelona, Spain), AIRE (Barcelona, Spain), CAVE CANIS (Barcelona, Spain), LA RUTA DEL SENTIDO (Oviedo, Spain), TEXTO POÉTICO (Valencia, Spain), MENÚ (Cuenca, Spain), PLAGES (Francia), FAKIR (México), and any of the editorial projects made by the spanish artist Antonio Gómez: PÍNTALO DE VERDE, CAJA DE TRUENOS, ARCO IRIS, etc.
Diego: I am not able to collect nothing at all.
Choose three words to define your (favourite) magazine.
Pepe: assembled, crossmedia, ironic
Diego: funny, funny, funny
Why do you work in magazines?
Pepe: I couldn’t find what I liked, so I searched for a group of people with the same interest and we started to do it by ourselves.
Diego: I find the publishing bussines plenty of creative possibilites, it has no limit if you think it as a personal way of expression.
If currently involved in a magazine:
What is the magazine about?
Pepe & Diego: La Más Bella is a magazine of contemporary art.
Who reads it?
Pepe & Diego: We don’t care large audiences, our magazine is made to anyone who want to enjoy it. Probably our readers will be artists, art students and strange people involved in the world of contemporary art, music, poetry...
How do you find innovative ways to talk to your readers?
Pepe & Diego: thinking the magazine as a personal work. It makes our project different to any other, and we have noticed that this is atractive to many people.
What do you like about the challenge of working in magazines?
Pepe & Diego: We like everything: the “like”, the “challenge”, the “working” and the “magazine”. We like it all.
What don't you like about the challenge of working in magazines?
Pepe: I don’t like the lack of interest of the public institutions in this kind of artistic expressions… despite I am not sure if the commitment would be the same if we were strongly supported by the public institutions.
Diego: Well, there are millions of things that I don’t like because we work long hours, we risk our money… and sometimes you are not sure if someone will appreciate your effort.
In five years, what will you be working on?
Pepe: La Más Bella has not been a professional work for me, it has been a personal artistic work, despite I devote the 70% of my time in it. But I have made wonderfull friends, travels and I had very good moments all over this fifteen years. So, in five years La Más Bella will be 20 years old.
Diego: I have no idea of what I will be working on in 2013. Who cares?!
We are compiling answers from some of the most innovative magazine makers around the world today. Who else should we ask?
Pepe: To the spanish artist-publisher-collector Antonio Gómez. To Carmen Palacios and Manuela Martínez from Lalata magazine. To the spanish collector and publisher of Cave Canis magazine Vicenç Altaió.
Diego: To the chinese magazine O2, from Beijing, China.
Finally, please give us a brief outline of your career:
When and where did you start working in magazines?
Pepe: in the small town of Arganda del Rey (close to Madrid, Spain) when we were at school we made a fanzine called A La Deriva (1984-1985), and other fanzine called DADA (1985-1986). In 1993 borned La Más Bella.
Diego: I started working in Visual magazine in 1991. Visual is the most important magazine of graphic design, art direction and spanish advertising. It is made in Madrid (Spain) from 1989 I think, and still existing, of course. I was working there for 3 years as a writer and 2 or 3 more years as a contributor. In 1993 we started making La Más Bella.
What are the most significant titles you've worked on?
Pepe: I have made contributions for many magazines, but my main activity in the publishing world in the last fifteen years is La Más Bella.
Diego: After Visual magazine I was the director of [ñ]SHOTS, a magazine focused in spanish advertising creativity. But my main activity in the publishing world in the last fifteen years is also La Más Bella.
What are you working on right now?
Pepe: I am the co-director and co-publisher of La Más Bella magazine because I like it. And I work as a curator and organizer of artistic events because I have to eat every day.
Diego: I work mainly as a freelance TV and video director. Sometimes I work as a photographer, sometimes as a writer, sometimes I don’t work… But always I spend many of my time making La Más Bella.
E-mail interview from "May 2008". © Colophon2009.com – Mike Koedinger Editions SA (Luxembourg).
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The Most Beautiful
What is your magazine about?
La Más Bella is a magazine of contemporary art.
Who's behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
La Mas Bella was born in 1993 (true!). It is published by Diego Ortiz and Pepe Murciego in Madrid, Spain. All the contents of the magazine are contributions of artists made specially for La Mas Bella according to our proposals. We make La Mas Bella because it is our personal artistic project, we have not commercial purposes.
How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
La Mas Bella use to produce one big edition per year. Our team is just two people, Pepe and Diego. We ask for contributions, almost one hundred artists in every new edition, and we do everything with our money and efforts.
What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
The most important step was fifteen years ago, when we decide to make "a fanzine or something like that". Nowadays La Mas Bella is almost our main personal and professional activity, so every new day is an important step for the project.
Which are the key ingredients for the success of your magazine?
We think the main ingredient is to make something personal, different and funny. And of course the work of the contributors, this is really the most important ingredient for La Mas Bella.
What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be the thing to help the magazine to improve?
La Mas Bella is not a commercial project, we make it with our money and effort, and sometimes you feel it is too much effort and too much money spent. But anyway we enjoy a lot making La Mas Bella, so we don't complain.
Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
Our plan is just survive.
Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
La Mas Bella is interesting for any people involved in the world of contemporary art, experimental poetry, sound and video art, visual poetry, performance art... We publish art, so our audience is people involved in this world as an artist or collector.
Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
No, we have not plan to be independent, our main strategy is to survive, and we don't need anyone to survive at the moment, so we remain independent. Anyway we are not really sure what "independence" is. You know, Vogue is very independent, they have a lot of money to make what they want!, they are independent! So we don't think about it.
What's your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
We have not any relationship with this world. Our only relationship with advertising is when an advertising agency copy our ideas to make their work, it has happened a couple of times.
What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
Our first issue is very different and very similar to our last issue. Formally it is completely different, but conceptually it is just the same. Is it good or bad? We think it is not bad, anyway.
Magazine favorite(s) that inspired you in your career.
El Canto de la Tripulacion. This is an independent magazine made in Madrid in the early 90's, made by a group of artists. Their only motivation was just to publish all together. Visual magazine (from Madrid, they are still existing, www.visual.gi) was also important for us, we learnt a lot from them.
Do you keep old copies of magazines? If so, what is your favorite in your collection?
In this point we (Diego and Pepe) have to split our answer, because we are quite different:
Pepe: Yes, I hold a huge collection of art books and strange magazines. My favourite are: LALATA (Albacete, Spain), SALAMANDRIA (Almería, Spain), FÍJATE (Barcelona, Spain), AL BUIT (Barcelona, Spain), CAPS.A (Barcelona, Spain), AIRE (Barcelona, Spain), CAVE CANIS (Barcelona, Spain), LA RUTA DEL SENTIDO (Oviedo, Spain), TEXTO POÉTICO (Valencia, Spain), MENÚ (Cuenca, Spain), PLAGES (Francia), FAKIR (México), and any of the editorial projects made by the spanish artist Antonio Gómez: PÍNTALO DE VERDE, CAJA DE TRUENOS, ARCO IRIS, etc.
Diego: I am not able to collect nothing at all.
How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
We have also two different answers for this question: one of us is a hard collector of magazines, but the other is not at all. Well, these are different types of foolish, aren't they?
We are compiling answers from some of the most innovative magazine makers around the world today. Who else should we ask?
This year we have found a magazine in China which name is O2, from Beijing. Recently we have found a couple of examples in Chile: Kiltraza and La Nueva Grafica Chilena, two very experimental and funny projects. In Spain there is La Lata, a wonderfull magazine in a can.
Answered by Diego Ortiz (copublisher)
Magazine: La Mas Bella
Email: diego@lamasbella.org
Date: 29-09-2008
Publisher
Pepe Murciego and Diego Ortiz
Madrid, Spain
- 2044
- 5180
- 2482
- 662
