espana

So with the program here there is one extended weekend where we can go anywhere we want. Me, Brit and Kellen went to Spain. We were suppose to be there for four days, I'll get back to that later. 

Wednesday February 10

We flew out of the London Gatwick airport with another group of girls going to Spain, they stayed in Madrid the whole time, silly girls. We got into Spain around eightish and then headed out to find out hostal. Suprisingly we got there without much difficulty and after we checked in we headed off to explore. 

[ espana ]

Then after some exploration around some really cool plazas and seeing the Royal Palace and Cathedral all lite up we needed some sustinence. We found a place by our hostel and had pizza at 12:30 am. Best thing about Spain, everything is open till like 2 am. Worst thing about Spain, this is because of siesta which is around 3-5 pm when everything is closed. After pizza we went to bed. Brit and I shared a bed due to sketchy circumstances. 

Thursday February 11

we woke up nice and early and went down for our free breakfast at the hostel and then went around the corner to dunkin donuts. Our very first stop of the day was the Prado. 

Unlike England, in Spain you have to pay to get into museums. With our international student cards it was only three euros. I read the fine print on the back of the ticket and learned that if we had said we were from England, we would have got in free. Next time Prado, I'm working the system. 

[ that's me and my friend velazquez ]

The building itself is very spacious; huge ceilings and wide halls. The majority, and by majority I mean about 95% of the art in the Prado is all Spanish artists, which is to be assumed. Now I am an art history major, but I only really know about ten max Spanish artists. I wandered through all the rooms, gazing at giant canvases with depictions of Spanish history I know nothing about. But then every so often I would come to an artist I know, Goya, Velazquez, El Greco and other famous non Spanish guys like Ruebans or Titian, and it would be a sense of astonishment. 

There are pieces that you just have to see in person. No textbook can ever do any justice to how the sunlight streaming in a gallery hits the glimmering oil paint or the texture of the impasto as it stands out from the canvas.  The shear size of some works in person can completely change an opinion of a piece. 

This happened to me with Las Meninas. 

[ Las Meninas, Velazquez ]

This piece is studied endlessly no matter what art history curriculum you attend. Perspective, who's who, the Gaze, lighting, symbolism, technique; it's all in there. The size of the picture above is roughly the size it is ever shown in a standard textbook. Now I've seen it projected from a slide, making it about the size of a wall, but it looses a lot of quality that way. Walking up to this piece in the main hall and waiting for the Asian tourists to move out of the way, was like walking into my textbook. I was minuscule in comparison. It took up nearly the entire wall, and remember the ceilings are really high. Seeing it this big and being able to walk right up so that my face was mere inches from the canvas the detail and/or the lack thereof became quite apparent. The textures and fabrics of the piece are done with precision, but something that I had never noticed before was that the lower right hand corner, lacked a lot detail. The figures looked unfinished and fuzzy. That really surprised me. I know Velazquez's style generally has a sort of unfinished look to it but I was still taken aback when looking at Las Meninas. 

My second favorite at the Prado was Bosch's triptych. Yes I know I picked probably the two most famous pieces in the joint as my favorites, call me unoriginal but I'm going to justify it with that I have slaved over these pieces and discussed them so much that seeing them in person made them all the more real. Anywho, the triptych.

[ Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch ]  

This is generally how this piece is shown, so its easy to forget that it is a working triptych, meaning that the two side panels really to fold in. The rope around it doesn't really let you get super super close to it but when no one's looking you can lean right up into its business to see all the detail of all the figures. The title is Earthly Delights, so you can use your imagination about what the middle panel depicts....

After the Prado we went to the Reina Sophia, the modern art museum. 

[ Reina Sophia ]

Like most modern art museums there are usually a few really interesting galleries and the rest just get to weird and obscure. The visiting exhibit was from the Tate Modern and that was a little disappointing. We didn't even go look at it cause been there done that. Highlights of the museum are as follows:

The first gallery we went to there was this room with  psychedelic images projected onto the wall so we felt like clubbing.

[ Brit and I clubbing ]

Then we went to the Guernica Gallery. The one monumentous piece in this museum. Pretty much the only reason we came, was for Picasso. I know I have already talked about size but this thing was massive. 

[ Guernica, Picasso ]

There's not really much to say, it was huge, it was amazing and the screaming horse was my favorite part. 

The final part of the museum was a pleasant surprise. Heather, one of my professors, told us, when we were talking about the Bauhaus and the goings on of the art school that when she was in grad school her and some other students performed one of Schlimmer's (crazy german guy) Bauhaus Ballets. We walked into a gallery and there were old programs from the Ballets hanging on the walls and I started to recount to Brit and Kellen about how Heather and her classmates made their own costumes and performed a piece and as I was describing them Kellen pointed in the next room and said "like those ones?"

And yup there were the costumes. 

[ Bauhaus ballet costumes ]

pretty snazzy huh?

After the museums we found some lunch. I had a burger with a fried egg on it, delicious but the messiest burger ever. Then the rest of the afternoon we walked over to the Palace hoping to get a tour inside. Little did we know it was closed for official business that day. So instead we just basked outside the gates in the lovely Spanish sunshine for a little while. It may have only been in the fifties but that sunshine makes all the difference and that is one of the major faults in English weather. 

I'll continue with my adventures and a later time.... this takes forever. Meanwhile feel free to peruse the photo album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2318026&id=17827200&l=5f098e12fd