Trust my luck. We decide to spend the first Monday of our Spanish sojourn in Madrid and both the Prado – which I'm not so bothered about, not being a big Velasquez fan – and the Thyssen Bornemisza – more up my street – are closed. So, with temperatures around 35 degrees, we head off to the Reina Sophia, which houses Picasso's "Gernika", a couple of Goyas and loads of modern nonsense.
Now, if you enjoy looking at photographs with titles like "Dog Urine in Snow" and "Flasher" ("in Window with Big Bushy Pubes", in case you were wondering), this is most certainly the place for you. If, on the other hand, you prefer vast galleries with blobs on the wall or earthworm casts on the floor, then the Guggenheim in Bilbao (or Bilbo, as they call it in Basque) is where you need to head.
For a mere 13 euros, you’ll get a chance to walk through a dozen enormous rooms full of rubbish that someone called Robert Rauschenberg took from a scrapheap in Texas and called art after attaching a red hosepipe to the rusting hulk of a dismembered bicycle.
The blurb accompanying the junk is appropriately trashy:
"Individually and collectively, the elements that make up the Gluts are the very foundation of Rauschenberg's artistic vocabulary. His empathy for such items of trash was visceral ..."
Which was pretty much my reaction too.
So, you can imagine my horror on getting to Cuenca at the end of our trip and finding that the town's flagship museum was the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art. Fortunately, the nearby Diocesan Museum (Museo Diocesano) was a real treasure, of which more later – including the El Greco which I snapped while the curator was outside in the courtyard having a fag. (She was female, by the way, so your joke won't work.)
One positive to come out of our encounter with what is fancifully called modern "art" is that my daughter and I were inspired to try a bit of our own. Here is one of the photographs I will be submitting to international competition, entitled simply "View of Sitting Room through Dining Room with Sofa Bed down from Master Bedroom".
Now, if you enjoy looking at photographs with titles like "Dog Urine in Snow" and "Flasher" ("in Window with Big Bushy Pubes", in case you were wondering), this is most certainly the place for you. If, on the other hand, you prefer vast galleries with blobs on the wall or earthworm casts on the floor, then the Guggenheim in Bilbao (or Bilbo, as they call it in Basque) is where you need to head.
For a mere 13 euros, you’ll get a chance to walk through a dozen enormous rooms full of rubbish that someone called Robert Rauschenberg took from a scrapheap in Texas and called art after attaching a red hosepipe to the rusting hulk of a dismembered bicycle.
The blurb accompanying the junk is appropriately trashy:
"Individually and collectively, the elements that make up the Gluts are the very foundation of Rauschenberg's artistic vocabulary. His empathy for such items of trash was visceral ..."
Which was pretty much my reaction too.
So, you can imagine my horror on getting to Cuenca at the end of our trip and finding that the town's flagship museum was the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art. Fortunately, the nearby Diocesan Museum (Museo Diocesano) was a real treasure, of which more later – including the El Greco which I snapped while the curator was outside in the courtyard having a fag. (She was female, by the way, so your joke won't work.)
One positive to come out of our encounter with what is fancifully called modern "art" is that my daughter and I were inspired to try a bit of our own. Here is one of the photographs I will be submitting to international competition, entitled simply "View of Sitting Room through Dining Room with Sofa Bed down from Master Bedroom".
5 comments:
sorry, that's more Vermeer than anything else - you'll need to studiously apply some paintshop to make it more modern!
I remember that route of paintings from trips there years ago. We had a great set of books for the kids which involved a little boy in the Prado and the Thyssen, they could spend their time finding various paintings which they recognised from the book.
Did you go to the Guernica in the Museo Reina Sofía?
We did, but actually preferred the ceramic representation in the Basque town itself, which has an interesting, and pretty even-handed, as these things go, Museo de la Paz memorialising the events of 26 April 1937. Interestingly, more people were killed in nearby Durango during this appallingly cynical exercise, as the girl at the kayak place reminded us. But it is Gernika that will forever be synonymous with Franco-Hitler collusion.
Dear Ulaca - I'm glad you're enjoying your holiday. You seem to have found many things to complain about!
Enjoyed it, Joycey. Got back at the weekend. I don't know if you're a modern art fan, but I'll put something fromthe Guggenheim up in your honour tomorrow.
"Vermeer" was my immediate response too.
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