Granada check-in

I'm writing this from Granada (Spain) and can see the Alhambra (castle complex) from where I'm sitting. Like nearly all the historic sites in Europe, it was built, rebuilt, deconstructed, reconstructed, destroyed, remodeled, updated and expanded upon for centuries, then abandoned.

The Moors ruled from the Alhambra for 500 years and Spanish kings another several centuries after that but the site itself is much older, dating back to Roman times. It's the Moorish influence I find most interesting. Today it's a tourist trap that is, yes, worth seeing anyway.

Toledo for daggers

We're now launched on a 5.5 month stay in Europe. For the first three weeks my daughter and her family will be with us. Last week we stayed at an airbnb in Madrid. From there are three World Heritage sites within an hour of the city by train so it's an excellent base. Never mind the temperature hovered around 105° the entire time, the hottest in the city's recorded history, we visited a thousand year-old castle, 800 year-old cathedrals, 2000 year-old Roman walls, roads, and shrines stuffed with saints bones and the skulls of long dead Catholic Cardinals however, the big event was visiting Fabrica Zamorano, the shop of Mariano Zamorano, master sword smith of Toledo.

For just under $1000, Clark bought four daggers,
gifts for his two daughters, his wife, and one for himself.

Now we're in good old London where it's about 40° cooler and raining.

Gothic morning though a dirty window

This was this morning.

It's about midnight now and we're headed for the airport and back to the US. Travel time will be, in all, about 48 hours.

About Gaudi and Sagrada Familia

"It would be a betrayal to even think of finishing the Sagrada Familia . . . without genius. Let it remain there, like a huge rotting tooth." -- Salvador Dali, Catalan artist

Sagrada Familia from Sant Pau, another World Heritage Site

We leave Barcelona in the morning but, before we go, a word about the Sagrada Familia. the church which has been under construction here for the last 133 years.

Sagrada Familia from Montjuïc

Antoni Gaudi is the mad genius behind it all. He was the Architect Director of the Sagrada Familia for 42 years. It was his magnum opus. After photographing the basilica from different points as we explored the rest of the city, we finally did go inside.

Sagrada Familia from el Guinardó mirador

I love what he did .... especially the bugs nestled in the wild, over-grown vines surrounding the entrance under his Nativity facade. Yes, for all of it, I like the bugs best, that he included them.

Swami at Gaudi's Nativity facade

A ladybug at Gaudi's entrance

Some ants at Gaudi's entrance

A fly at Gaudi's entrance

And the light inside is excellent. I have read that he intended the interior columns to resemble a forest. hey do but, for me, the magic ends there. Sadly, this is no Gaudi forest.




And yes, as a whole, the site is impressive and unique but, in my opinion, very little of it is true to Gaudi's vision. Only the Nativity facade, crypt and apse are purely his. After completing them he died.

Interior - Sagrada Familia
Darth Vader presiding over all from the back
second tier

The rest, the 80%  done since his death in 1926, is spartan, angular and as indifferent to nature as Gaudi was intimate with it.

Darth Vader? Is that you?

After visiting the Sagrada Familia and reading about his "accident", I came away with the sense that, after being consumed by this project for nearly fifty years, he willing stepped in front of that train.

New construction

Our host agreed adding, "everyone here in Barcelona thinks so".

Photo jam at the Barcelona Cathedral

Busking is a hard job, especially during this damn heatwave.

At the time I took this photo it didn't occur to me to give the guy a donation. I feel kind of bad about that now as I was enjoying his performance. He must have been sweltering in that costume.

And the "crone" must have been really hot in all that black. I do not know her circumstances but she is not as old as she would like people to believe. For that reason, I felt less sympathetic to her and don't feel bad for not giving her a donation. Also, I didn't like the way she stuck her Jesus can out at people and rattled it. It came off like, "Hey tourist. Gimme some money!". 

But then again,  everyone is frazzled by the heat. A much needed, friendly smoke and coke break in the shade of an old Roman wall.

On the plaza and cathedral steps, the photo jam rocks on.

Every direction I looked, people were either posing for or taking photos.

Barcelona museum crawl

Pause when agitated

Barcelona:  Museums visited to date:


Museu d'Història de Barcelona (City History Museum):  Rome came alive when we explored the underground ruins of the medieval Roman city of Barcino upon, and around which, Barcelona of today is built.

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (National Museum of Catalan):  I think more famous for the building than the art. On our first visit we viewed the medieval art. I came away impressed again by how much religion depends on its martyrs, real and imagined. Especially imagined. We went a second day to see the modern collection. Thanks to smart curation, it was good in spite of itself. The Spanish artists are placed in the larger context of the Paris art scene of the 1920s, thus adding significance to what is otherwise mostly B grade work.

Of course I don't mean you!

Miro Museu:  Prepare yourself for room after room of Miro recycling the same patterns in primary colors over and over again and again. Perhaps he knew and respected his limits? I do have a new appreciation for his sculpture and mixed-media collaborations and but, otherwise, we both came away with a diminished regard for his paintings.

The temporary exhibit of the work of Alfons Borrell was absurd. Oh, colorful enough, but really. Is the world is still dazzled by "modern artists" doing monochrome paintings?  In any case, the curation is a delightful example of how absurd and pompous art-speak can be.

Picasso Museum:  Wow. Okay. Yes. Picasso the man was a flaming sexist asshole, among the extreme but a man his time but, after visiting this museum, I have a much greater appreciation for his genius and artistic contributions. Most of the work here was donated by Picasso himself in collaboration with Jaime Sabartés, his lifelong friend and, in later years, administrator and secretary. It includes wonderful paintings from Picasso's teen years up through the Las Meninas series including the pigeon paintings, all done at blazing speed at the end of his life and never, otherwise, exhibited.

Until now I did not know that Picasso also considered himself a great writer and poet. Naturally, some agree and some do not. In his 2012 publication A Psychoanalytic Approach to Visual Artists, James W. Hamilton writes, 

"some of Picasso's prose reveals concerns with oral deprivation and immense cannibalistic rage towards the breast.." 

For the hell of it, I include some of Picasso's imagery below, all from "The burial of the Count of Orgaz and other poems", courtesy of Wikipedia:

"the smell of bread crusts marinating in urine"
"stripped of his pants eating his bag of fries of turd"
"the cardinal of cock and the archbishop of gash"

MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art):  Skateboard park on the outside, pretty cool art museum on the inside, plus it's only a street away from where we're staying in El Raval. This particular sculpture, depicting Spanish King Juan Carlos having sex with the late Bolivian activist Domitila Barrios de Chúngara and a dog, was one among many excellent on display.

Not Dressed for Conquering
by Austrian artist Ines Doujak
MACBA

This spring, the night before the exhibit was scheduled to open, the museum director announced he was cancelling the entire show because the artist would not remove this piece from it. A bitter protest followed resulting in the director's resignation and the dismissal of two museum curators. MACBA, definitely worth a visit.

Crown of Aragon

We're leaving for the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in a few minutes so I'm gobbling down my oatmeal and hurriedly slurping my coffee as I write this. The museum is famous for its collection of Gothic art, all from territories once ruled by the Crown of Aragon. M. loves Gothic art so he's really looking forward to it ... me not so much ... though I do enjoy the strange old faces of Gothic baby Jesus and I want to see anything from the world ruled by the Crown of Aragon.

Photos to follow.

Madrid to Barcelona

Madrid train station

Took the high speed train from Madrid to Barcelona yesterday. It topped out at 185 mph or, as this is Europe, 298 km an hour. Counting two stops, the trip took three hours. We're here for a month, staying in a professor's airbnb apartment in the El Raval neighborhood. Wikipedia tells me El Raval is also known as Chinatown and is "historically infamous for its nightlife and cabarets, as well as prostitution and crime". The entry also mentions some notable past residents of El Raval, which includes three writers and a serial killer known as "the vampyre of Barcelona".

View from the patio

While we love local color, it further notes that,  "El Raval has changed significantly in recent years and due to its central location has become a minor attraction of Barcelona"  and I'm okay with that. Even if the neighborhood has lost a bit of its edge, it's still interesting. Last evening the fellow next door was practicing an opera solo and someone else played a lovely cello over the courtyard for about a half an hour. And, en route to the grocery store yesterday, we walked through a swarm of  20 to 40 something hipsters  in various degrees of outrageousness. Of course, for all it's liveliness, El Raval in no way compares to the outdoor cafe party scene of the neighborhood where we stayed in Madrid. There even the children played in the nearby park till midnight, as evidenced by their screams of excitement and delight, and the street parties went until 3, that's AM. But I can live with that. As usual, google images has plenty of photos of El Raval if you want an overview.

The neighbor birds

Our apartment, though most likely a million dollar place, is basically a long narrow hall partitioned into rooms with no windows in the middle and doors on both ends, giving it the feel of an open ended cave. Well, there is a window in the middle that opens onto an air shaft in the middle of the building but that's it. I'm not complaining. I just report. But, as I am always the one who flings open windows for more light and fresh air, it is a bit of an adjustment. M. Lee assures me that, after we see a few of Gaudi's famous Barcelona structures, this place will make more sense. I'm sure he's right. Anyway, I love walking narrow, winding medieval streets so what's not to love about this lovely place?

I'm writing this from the patio, a godsend located outside the kitchen at the back of the apartment. We are, as they say say in this part of the world, on the first floor. In the US it would be called the second floor. Anyway, someone, we are guess the professor, added the kitchen and patio. Metaphorically, you could say I am sitting in the canyon outside the backdoor of our cave. To my everlasting gratitude, there is blue sky above and many swallows nesting in the holes of the canyon walls, so I have the company of wildlife. An essential for my occasionally somewhat fragile state of mind.

The ruins of Spain

Early two-legged Earthling
National Archaeological
Museum of Spain

We spent the last two days at the National Archaeological Museum of Spain located here in Madrid. The minute you walk in the door they hit you with the fact that all of Spain is a huge archaeological treasure trove. We saw artifacts dating back 1.3 million years.

Because Spain is a stones throw from Africa and an inevitable destination along the Mediterranean trade routes from the middle east and Asia people, and prehistoric versions of people, have been mucking it up in Spain for a million years and, like people always do, they built and torn down, lost and left shit all over the place.

Gargoyle and me

In America, we marvel at how old something is our grandparents left behind. In Spain, loosen the dirt with a teaspoon, and you find something that someone dropped three thousand years ago. This doesn't mean that I now love Madrid but I do have an increased respect and curiosity about Spain itself. We're hoping to get to a few nearby historical sites before we leave the area but today it's back to Reina Sofia to see a bit more art.

Cloudy day in Madrid

Madrid museum crawl

Our window westward

Madrid. Hemingway loved the place, but I can't say it does much for me. Then again, if I lived in the golden haze of alcohol poisoning perhaps I'd see things differently. M. Lee has taken it to the next level and actually made it personal, even when it rains. In any case, it's clear that Madrid rewards those who start their day late. Even the church bells down the alley do not sound until 11 am. But we are here for the art and, so far, we've been to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía once and the Museo Nacional Del Prado twice.

Our window eastward

Our day at Reina Sofia did not start well. The walk there was ok but we needed to find an ATM along the way and, especially in the morning, that is something of a false hope. Maybe it isn't fair to Madrid, but these days Istanbul is the gold standard and in Istanbul ATMs are everywhere, along with public bathrooms. Not so in Madrid. Both are extremely hard to come by. Well, actually it seems there are no public bathrooms in Madrid. You are, as they say, shit out of luck. As for the ATM, we circled the streets for I don't know how long before finding one, of all places, near the museum entrance. Like I said, it's personal.

Fable by El Greco
Prado
photo by Frans Vandewalle

Of course, both museums house the work of world class artists. If you like, take a quick peak here: The Prado and here: Reina Sofia. One painting in particular stood out at the Prado, El Greco's "Fable".  It is perhaps my personal favorite among all that I have seen this week. Yes, there are more important works at both museums, including the Prado's outstanding collection of royal portraits commissioned by the very kings and princes they portray. They are not only masterfully executed, but are meant to impress upon the viewer the authority and stability of monarchy but to me they seem repetitious and vain. Anyway, of the two museums, I prefer the more contemporary Reina Sofia.

So, today we are off to the archeological museum to see who and what lived here before it was Spain. Must remember to watch out for the pickpockets.

Hemingway was here

Sorry. Couldn't resist doing a graffiti title. We're in Madrid and Hemingway spent a lot of time here. He loved the place, called it the "most Spanish of all cities" so "Hemingway was here" is in the air. His writing is one thing but, as I'm not into bullfighting or booze, machismo or meat, I am not that enamored by the lore of “Don Ernesto" as he was called here. If it's not too much out of our way, we may walk by his favorite bar. It's still here, still the same and the same family still runs it. But I have no interest in making a pilgrimage to his favorite restaurant even if it is, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the oldest restaurant in the world. Remember, we are the people who spent many hours over many days in the Louvre and never made it by to see the Mona Lisa.

But, if we do find ourselves on the Hemingway trail, I will photograph the highlights and post them here because that is what I do, make notes along the way, whether they are about the birds in the Bird Park or the bar where Hemingway drank. But, speaking of birds, it was cool this morning watching the river of swallows swirling above the dome of the old cathedral down the alley and rushing through the narrow corridors of buildings in our neighborhood in search of breakfast. We are on the fifth (top) floor and the windows are always open. It is very hot and the apartment has no air conditioning, or screens for that matter. But today we are headed out to the museum. We are in Madrid for the museums, especially the Prado. Not only did Hemingway frequent the place, Picasso was the head curator for some time. This was before the museum realized what shitty administrators artists make.