Art History was my favorite subject in high school, so to come to Spain and seeing great artworks in person has been an awe-inspiring experience. Madrid and Barcelona are the two top cities in Spain for art (that I can say). They both house large collections specializing, of course, in major Spanish artists. Some of the greats such as Velasquez and Dali were fantastic with Velasquez's most famous work Las Meninas (in Museo del Prado) so monumental to perspective painting and Dali's crazy surrealist consciousness out on display with rooms of his life's work including the Persistence of Memory (in Reina Sofia), which was surprisingly teeny .
However, the best of Madrid and Barcelona accumulates in the works of Picasso. In Madrid's Reina Sofia, I spent a good 15 minutes just staring in appreciation and wonder at Guernica. How Picasso captures the violence of a bombing in Basque, how the composition is so well composed for its momumental size (each human figure larger than life, and the actuality of seeing this of seeing Guernica in person...was unreal. I immediately bought 3 postcards of the painting.
Then in Barcelona's Museu Picasso, similar to Dali, Picasso's progression of art styles were laid out from stays Malaga, Paris, and Barcelona (where he did the majority of his paintings). It was not only surprising to see his earlier work, which is very impressionistic (Van Gogh was shown in exhibitions in Malaga) and the sadness of the Blue Period, but to also see his sketches, which were pretty much full of sex. Despite the promiscuous nature of the sketches, you could see the skill of his hand-drawn work, and the effort he put into everything he did, careless and thoughtful at the same time. In almost all of his paintings the underlaid outline shows through the paint, which lended to a layered and rich reading of his works.
At the Museu Picasso, the series of studies Picasso did on Velasquez Las Meninas was amazing. He did almost 6 sketch paintings in one day and had so many varied and wonderful interpretations of the landmark painting, each respecting the original artist, but in finality beating Velasquez's sorry ass by having a much cooler painting. It was such a wonderful work to compare with the previous visit to Prado and the original Velasquez. (Thanks Stacy for the bday present of the mouse pad of this Picasso!)
Lastly, to end this Picasso rave: after these two months in Spain, I feel safe to say that Picasso is my favorite artist. Nothing beats his semi unfinished work and the balance in his compositions (his white space and sketches are out of this world). And to my happy astonishment, at Museu Picasso, I found out that Picasso loves me as much as I love him, having a whole series of portraits of me, Jacqueline. It's a mutual relationship. Picasso + Jacqueline
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| Portrait of Jacqueline |
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| Guernica |
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| Las Meninas- Picasso |
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| Las Meninas- Velasquez |
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