vicarious travelling: Spain 2016 - Madrid, rain and Reina Sophia

Rain was in the forecast and I could hear it raining in the night (I actually have a window in this hotel, I did not in Seville). It was still raining this morning and it rained all day. Seemed like a good day to go to a museum. So I went to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia. I warn you, I bought the Paseo de Arte (Ticket that gets me in all three of the main art galleries) so the blog is going to be full of art photos while I am here. As rain is in the forecast for the next 3 days it seemed like a good idea.
The Prado is the big one but Peggy (a hooking friend) and internet research both pointed to Reina Sophia, so that's where I started.

I walked down Calle Atocha and ate breakfast in a bakery. There are far more bakeries in Madrid than in Ayamonte or Seville. The croissant was not as good as those in Ceret (last year) but it wasn't bad.

It's in a modern looking building right opposite the train station.

I got there at about 10 a.m. and there was no lineup. The number of people built during the day and was also dependent on the area in the museum. Picasso's Guernica was a hot spot (almost, but not quite, like trying to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre). Because of the weather I had decided I was going to spend the whole day here and I took it easy. There are of course paintings and sculptures but also books, videos, poetry and movies.
I am going to just post some of the works that caught my eye:

Salvador Dali, "Girl at the window", 1925. I was attracted to this and surprised to find it was a Dali. I associate him with such weird stuff (which of course is also here).

Obviously I was not the only person taken by this. In the gift shop you can get posters, shirts, playing cards and puzzles, all with this image on them.

In contrast, here is another Dali. "Face of the great masturbator". 1929.

And another. "The invisible man" 1929-32. So weird.

But look at this detail from the painting above, boy the guy could paint!


Hard to explain why some paintings appeal to me more than others. In this it was the scalloped shadows of the tile roofs and that it was just a plain street, nothing fancy about the buildings. Benjamin Palencia. "Landscape". 1926.

This, "The sleeping factory". 1925

and this, "The joy of the Basque countryside". 1920. are both by Daniel Vasquez Diaz, hung side by side. They were part of a display looking at the depictions of Spain after the war.

There was not as much sculpture as paintings but I think that is probably true in terms of production too. Alberto Sanchez. "Maternity". 1930.

"Woman's Head" Pablo Picasso. 1909

There was some fascinating vintage photography. "Panorama from Triana, Seville" Anonymous. 1880/1890.

Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa. "Portrait of Sonia de Klamerry, Countess of Pradere". 1913. Unusual portrait of a countess, I wonder what she, or the count, thought of it.

It was OK to take photos throughout most of the museum, "sin flash", I was told whenever I asked, but there were some areas, mostly the temporary exhibits, in which you were not permitted to take any photos.
Two areas stand out for me. One was a temporary exhibit called:

and photos were permitted.

It was about Ulises Carrion. To quote the booklet "A key figure in Mexican conceptual art.....artist, editor, curator and theorist of the post 1960s international avante garde. ... he actively participated in most of the artistic disciplines of his time......co-founded Other Books and So, in Amsterdam, dedicated to artists publications.....developed a wide range of theoretical work....precursors to more recent theories of the digital world"
He did some fascinating things
- in one project he started rumours and documented the effects and then created a video about the process.
- in another, a video called "Death of the Art Dealer", he took a section of a movie and videoed himself holding a TV, showing the movie, and he moved with the characters. So when the character on the screen moved to the right, he walked to the right carrying the TV. It wa fascinating to watch as my brain kept slipping backwards and forwards, from the story being told on the TV to the TV moving, to the whole idea. Sorry, I can't do it justice.
- he sent out a proposal to 300 artists that they create a mail stamp, and send it to a particular printer indicating where (in an 8 page book) they wanted the stamp printed. This would then result in a collaboration without anyone knowing, until it was finalized, what it would look like.
Here's some more of his creations;

"Untitled (Numberings)".

Close up. I kept wondering how he chose the numbers, shapes, missing numbers. Had to move on.

"Syllogisms". 1977.

Close up, it was a series of (sort of) mathematical formulae.

The other attraction to this exhibit was that all his videos were in English with Spanish subtitles. It was much more accessible to me because of that.
At the entrance to the museum you can purchase an English audio guide but I thought that would actually hinder the experience, so I didn't get one. In each of the rooms there is a page of explanation available in a number of languages and I found that was enough information for me to get the gist of the room.
In an area on contemporary Spanish art I found the other fascinating piece;

"Yarns". Zaj. This is made up of over a thousand pieces of yarn in hundreds of colours each tied to bells.

I kept wanting to take pictures of it

from all different angles

and I wasn't the only one, the cameras were out in this room. The write up implied that it was supposed to be walked through, to add sound to the sensory experience, but it was roped of.

I took 100s of photos today but feel this is enough for a post. The building itself is quite interesting as there is a relatively new addition which has a restaurant, auditoriums, temporary exhibition space

and rooftop terraces, which are in turn, roofed.

This new building and a library create a partially roofed courtyard.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed my day there, I spent about 6 hours, it is complicated to get around. There does not seem to be a logical flow between exhibition areas and the new building does not connect to every floor so there were times I had to take the elevator down, walk through the building and take the elevator up 2 floors to get to the next space ("you can't get there from here" seems to have been part of the plan).
As I am probably not going to be down this side of the hill again I decided to go across to the train station to see what I had missed when I arrived yesterday,