and so we have, at last,
run out of the quite excellent lube that Chris
bought me when I was in Köln back in April).
Thursday was another day of complete relaxation up on the hotel roof. A bit of washing out of underwear and tee-shirts in the bath, a paella and sport nooky of a complex, entwining and mutual kind (actually Ross fucked and sucked me till I came and then I fucked him till he came) was about the sum of it. We're both rattling through the holiday reading.
Friday had to be a more active day and we went into Barcelona armed with information and Guide Books to blaze a trail round some of the galleries.
First up was the Fundació Joan Miró, which was fabby. What did I like?
Well, a couple of tapestries like you've never seen before. One - Tapia del Fundacion - the size of the side of a barn, just too big to take in all at once. Great thick ropes, bright, bright colours, textures, excrescences like mould - an enormous celebration of the materials of tapestry. The other, another off the wall creation including Magritte-like umbrellas.
The Fuente de mercurio, a fountain using mercury, in memory of a fascist atrocity at the mercury mining town of Almaden. It is Miró's Guernica. The mercury, cascading over the various planes and inclines, eventually becomes the motor of the piece as it plashes into a dangling, metal plate attached to a series of suspended wires thus setting in motion a mobile which jangles in the air above the fountain. Part of the mobile is the word Almaden insistently waving at us, defying us to forget. It is deceptively simple and quite moving. However, you have to have read the background historical information on the wall plaque behind you for the piece to make sense. I must confess that, whilst I've heard of Guernica, I've no knowledge of Almaden.
Some extraordinary maquettes (models) for the sculpture La Défense. Like cartoon animals at first sight nasty, then friendly of aspect and finally not to be trusted. Eyes and smiles or empty holes and gashes? Could be either. Very disquieting.
A series of 50 lithographs - we purchased a book of these in the gallery shop - which are a reaction to the Spanish Civil War. Like the Polish cartoons I remember off the television when I was a child. (Oh, we have three minutes to fill before the next program, let's stick on a surrealist Polish cartoon. That'll keep the little darlings quiet.) They're also like Heironymus Bosch. Eyes, lots of eyes, weird squiggles, off-the-bottom-of-the-ocean sort of creatures, half-formed, yet fully developed, wildly nightmarish and amicably approachable at one and the same time.
And lastly a sort of sculpture called Personage a sort of hat stand crowned by an umbrella and an oak twig. Almost city gent-ish. And then, as you approach it and move slightly to one side, you see that sticking out towards you and therefore almost made invisible by perspective is a huge battering ram, phallus-like thing. Dunno, maybe it's me but I found it a very disquieting comment on male sexuality.
Well, as you can see from the amount I've written and recorded, I really got off on all this stuff and there was loads more besides. A very pleasant café where we lunched. I liked the whole experience. Some of the later work I didn't respond well to - felt too abstracted and personal, almost defensively protective for my taste - but there was sufficient to live with for a morning without being overwhelmed and sufficient to become immersed into one artist's view of the world without becoming bored.
Many people walking round the Fundació were taking photographs and videos without spending time with the works. I found I couldn't do that. I took words to remember by and not photos. And, whilst I write up my notes now, I have clear images in my head of the sights and sensations of that morning. I wonder how many of those happy snappers have as deep a sense of recall as I seem to have.
We headed off over the top of the Parc Montjuic to the Palau Nacional
where one of the national art collections is housed. However, medieval and baroque
treasures held little attraction for us and we headed off into town. A quick wazz
round some gay places (that map came in useful) to track down some lube (we've been
hard at it putting pennies back in the bottle
and so we have, at last,
run out of the quite excellent lube that Chris
bought me when I was in Köln back in April).
And then it was off to the Museu Picasso.
I don't know if it was because I was getting tired and saturated by this time or not but I really didn't enjoy this experience as much as the Fundació Joan Miró in the morning. It was a shattering experience but not enjoyable.
Picasso is incomparably the greater artist of the two but his restless, monstrous ego was just too much to live with for any length of time. The relentless re-interpreting and re-processing, the matchless ability to take on any style of any previous Master and assimilate it with variations on a theme, the energy to produce, produce, produce.
After an hour, I was exhausted and dissatisfied and glad to be heading home.