No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Before moving to Spain, art held a pretty low priority for me. I put visiting a museum up there with kissing a goat. It might be an interesting experience, but not one that I would venture to try twice.
Living in Spain has opened my mind to trying new things. No, I have not attempted any relations with a goat, but I have grown in my appreciation for the arts. Over the past two weeks, we have visited four top-tier museums, and I can say that I enjoyed all of them.
It is helpful to me to divide the art world into two categories--classical and modern. Those lines blur a little at the edges, but they serve their purpose in general.
The Prado in Madrid is a bastion of the classical world, comparable in style and collection to the Louvre in Paris. They have 2,000 year old sculptures and 600 year old paintings. Sculpture, especially of the human form, is almost magical to me. I cannot understand how somebody can transform a piece of hard marble into an object that looks so soft. My favorite at the Prado was Isabella II, Veiled, by Camillo Torreggiani. You can see a face behind a veil, all of which is carved out of one piece of stone. It appears to allow you to see through the stone veil.
I also had the unique opportunity to view Felipe IV, by Velázquez. This is the same painting that a friend of mine's aunt is hoping to restore for a museum in Australia, prior to their purchasing it. This was not my favorite Velázquez painting, but it had an interesting story for me. Las Minenas also became a favorite of our family after visiting the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. By viewing the Velázquez first, we were able to understand, not only Picasso's version of the same painting, but also a little bit of Picasso's cubist style.
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I must confess that modern art quite often looks to me like nothing more than random splotches of color or haphazard doodling. Some of it, however, even made sense to me, which will no doubt relieve any consternation on the part of modern artists everywhere. Some of the pieces, to be sure, were simplistic, childish and downright stupid, in my humble opinion. Placing a few sticks against a wall and sticking a label on it does not constitute art, unless you are a good enough huckster to get the curator of Reina Sofia to display it.
Seeing such absurd displays makes me wonder if the creative juices have run out of modern art and into other venues, such as the digital sphere. Perhaps we are simply between great periods. Another possibility is that I am totally clueless.
Seeing such absurd displays makes me wonder if the creative juices have run out of modern art and into other venues, such as the digital sphere. Perhaps we are simply between great periods. Another possibility is that I am totally clueless.
The one redeeming part of Reina Sofia is Guernica, by Picasso. He captured the truth of war by smashing his images into shards of horror, fear and destruction, painting in death-pale hues, leaving us hopeless and lost. You can read more about Picasso in my blog here.
Picasso
The Picasso museum presented us with a different view of the artist. He was classically trained and fully able to paint like the Masters. His genius lay in his ability to diverge from what was acceptable and known and to create a new language. As mentioned above, I have already written a blog about Picasso.
The final stop on our Spring Break tour of Spain was in Bilbao. We were not prepared for the beauty of that fair city. It is difficult to weave antiquity and modernity in the same tapestry, but Bilbao has done it. Five hundred year old buildings provide the base fabric, while ultra-modern structures act as stylistic foils. The Guggenheim Museum is one of those splashes of color and style.
Sitting astride the river that runs through the city, the museum is home to some very avant-garde art, but they have accomplished the impossible by making it accessible to simple folks like myself. In a stroke of genius, the artists actually created their pieces unfinished without the interaction of an audience. In other words, the pieces are only complete when we interact with them. We literally became art.
Ernesto Neto created sculptures, entitled The Body That Carries Me, out of netting and pantyhose material that took up entire rooms. You were allowed to crawl through, touch and even smell the exhibits. He filled several sacks with pepper, cloves and rice. It was something like an artistic jungle gym. His purpose was to make us think about our own bodies, and particularly our own skin, to help us see the beauty in the way it moves and functions.
Christian Marclay's The Clock is a fascinating 24 hour long video that captures time in real time. He has spliced thousands of films, each with references to time, that correspond to the exact time of day in which you are watching the film. It was fascinating to watch the movie unfold seamlessly along this unanticipated path. The next time you watch a movie, look for clocks. You will be amazed at the number of times you see time.
I learned a great deal about art on this trip, but even more importantly, I learned a great deal about myself. All art is intended to evoke a response. Whether you enjoy the response is not up to the artist, but to you.
