It’s all about art: Madrid Day 2 (22 Aug 2013)

Travelling technologically

As we headed out for Day 2 in Madrid, we were thinking that we’d start the day’s blog by saying how much we’re enjoying travelling electronically – travel guides on the iPad, books on the kindle, digital camera – and so on. Although there are cables and connectors to worry about, we feel lighter. Sue had even downloaded the Museo del Prado’s guide app, ready to have at hand as we toured the gallery. And that’s where her bubble burst. We arrived at the Prado, logged into their free Wi-Fi looking forward to using what they had to offer, clicked on the app, and followed the prompt to apply an available update.  The app jammed and that was it. According to Information there was some commercial reason why the app was blocked by the Prado. OK, we said, though it didn’t make sense to us, but having an intricate conversation when you don’t speak the language isn’t really possible. In the end it was probably just as well we didn’t have the app, as it would have slowed us down … but we now have it for future reference rather than a beautiful but heavy, printed guide.

The art …

Now to the art. Somewhat ambitiously we bought the Paseo del Arte ticket giving us admission to three art galleries (and allowing us to avoid the main queues) – Museo Nacional del Prado, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. It was an exhausting day. We spent nearly four hours at Prado, and then two hours each at the other two, finishing around 8pm. What to tell you in a paragraph or two? We’ve included a few photos in the slider – as a taster – from the last two galleries at which you could take non-flash photographs. But, of course, their websites will be much better for showing off their art.

Before continuing, we must say that we didn’t see one Australian artist. There were artists from most of Europe, from England and from the US … but none, that we saw anyhow, from Down Under. Are we not good enough to hold our own? Or do we just not compute in the European imagination when it comes to culture?

Prado

Prado has over 100 rooms and is overwhelming. We were grateful for Lisa’s (ANZLitLovers) advice to start at the top. It was a good strategy for seeing the major Spanish artists early. It’s amazing, really, isn’t it, how many paintings there are in the world! We loved a lot about the Prado, but the main value was its Spanish collection. While Sue studied Fine Art for two years at the ANU, she never really did focus a lot on the Spanish artists (except of course Picasso). It was great being able to see rooms and rooms, for example, of works by Velazquez and Goya, and to meet many new artists like Jose de Ribera.  We enjoyed seeing Spanish contributions to the History, Landscape and Portrait painting traditions, but were intrigued that there was no Turner, though there were English painters.

Sue always enjoys Still Lifes and discovered here an artist she didn’t know, Francisco_de_Zurbarán. His still life (1635-40) of four pieces of pottery – not a flower or fruit in sight – was eye-catching. We love the fact that friend Kate’s daughter, Elly Freer, is taking the still life tradition into photography. It’s an art form that can be used to say much while often looking simple!

Prado also had a delightful – and free – special exhibition titled Captive Beauty: Fra Angelica to Fortuny. It contained 281 works from the collection, “characterised by their small format”. We could have spent a couple of hours here alone. It was exquisite.

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

This museum apparently contains one of the world’s most distinguished private art collections. It is, in a way, a mini-Prado though we suspect aficionados would see it differently. But it does cover the history of, mostly, European art starting with the “Italian Primitives”. The emphasis is different though as it has proportionally more art from the Impressionist, Expressionist and modern eras.There were works by well-known artists, such as Picasso and Van Gogh, that Sue hadn’t seen before. We both liked German-American Expressionist Lyonel Feininger‘s “The White Man” (which is in the slide show). Sue enjoyed seeing the similarities between Picasso, Braque, and Spanish artists Juan Gris and Salvador Dali, particularly in the 1920s.

But, the painting that we really want to mention is one that captured Sue’s attention immediately as a war painting. She hadn’t heard of the artist before and is not well-versed in World War II art, particularly German. The painting – which is in the slide show – is German Expressionist Max Beckmann’s “Despedida” which shows the leave-taking of a soldier from his girl. It is for works like this that we go to galleries, isn’t it?

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

This gallery is Spain’s main museum of modern art – and it covers not only the traditional art gallery forms of painting, sculpture etc, but also movies, television, photography. It is most famous for Picasso’s “Guernica”. That room was the most crowded, not surprisingly, and it was great to see it in the flesh (so to speak). This museum does a great job of showing the development of art movements in the modern era – and included forms we didn’t know like the Brazilian originate Concrete Art. And, of course, a big issue in the Twentieth Century has been the relationship between art and politics.

Sue was fascinated by the photographs of photojournalists W. Eugene Smith of the Spanish Village, Deleitosa. They were published in Life magazine in 1951 with text, probably not by Smith, describing the town as “barren of history, unfavoured by nature, reduced by wars, lives in poverty”. She wonders what the Delietosans thought of that description?

There was so much here, as in the other galleries, that we could write pages. We’ll just end with a point that fascinated Sue and her interest in the relationship between fact and fiction. The gallery told us that realist paintings of the 1930s (as we recollect) were often used in newspapers to document significant events, including wars, because they were “as valuable and as incriminating as any photographic proof”. Such is the power of art – and we love such a concrete expression of it.

Three-words-of-the-day (of two days, on this occasion)

LEN: So Much Art
SUE: Art, Friendly, Tired

and the stills…

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