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Published: April 20th 2006
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I left for Bilbao, Spain in the early afternoon of Tuesday. I arrived in the city center around 3 o’clock and headed straight for the Guggenheim Museo Bilbao from the bus stop. Upon first walking up to the Guggenheim museum, I am greeted by “Puppy” the 42-foot tall West Highland Terrier made completely of flowers (around 60,000). “Puppy” is the creation of Jeff Koons. The museum is absolutely striking with the limestone and titanium collaboration, which assumes the appearance of glistening fish. I went straight through the main entrance without wandering around the structure because I saw a queue of children lining up to enter the group tours part and did not want to compete with a large group of children for gallery space. I strolled right in and declined the use of the audio-tour tapes because I wanted to read things and wander at my own pace.
I started in a gallery with a work by Robert Rauschenberg entitled “Short Circus”, which was created in 1999 from a vegetable dye transfer. It was remarkable and very interesting. The gallery also contained a long Warhol called “One Hundred and Fifty Multicolored Marilyns” made in 1979. It was a very long artwork, which extended the length of the back wall and very enjoyable to see in person. In the multi-dimensional gallery, there was an artwork by Anselm Keifer, German, which was beautifully named “Such Dark Light Falling From the Stars” and was made from such materials as shellac and sunflower seeds. He had another work in the gallery, which used salt through electrolysis. One entire gallery is dedicated to Richard Serra’s “Matter of Time”. It is a gallery of paths and shapes that the viewer can walk between and around and began as one shape, called “Snake” with the museum’s inauguration and grew to the grand scale it is today. I walked through several of the works in the whole collection and the top grows narrower as the bottom, or pathway, widens. Also, in the works, sound carries very well through the snakes and spirals and I was able to listen to a paid tour on the other side of the gallery while enjoying Serra’s creation on my own.
The temporary exhibition housed in Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museo Bilbao is !Rusa! and also a homage to Chillida. The !Rusa! exhibit was the first and explains through art the progression of Russian art and its reflections of the changes in Russian society. Most of the pieces in the collection are 1910-1930 and pre-Nazi and also soviet communist art and propaganda, which appropriately show the transition of political powers in Russia during those times. I also thought it was interesting that, before even reading about the similarities, the Russian art from the 1920s exhibited some comparable characteristics to German Expressionism during that same time period. I also thought it was interesting one of the most prominent Russian artists around this time was female, named Natalia Goncharova. Her painting, “Cats, Rayist Percep. in Rose, Black and Yellow”, 1913, was excellent and I am not surprised that her ingenuity greatly influenced Russian art during this time. The collection also exhibit more familiar artists like Vasily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall. Russian political work was especially displayed in Alexander Guerasimov’s “Hymn to October”, 1942, in which the viewers of the painting become a part of the audience with tiered balconies and pillars toward the theater stage where a political speech is in progress. The painting takes up the entire wall, is life-size and could easily include the viewer in the political campaign of the time. I won’t talk much more about the Russian art exhibit, but I did think it was also interesting that the AAhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia) received most of its support from the communist party and also that Neo-Primitivism is a compilation of French Fauvism, German Expressionism and Russian folk-art.
The exhibit, which was homage to Chillida was also interesting, but was more open to interpretation by the viewer. One work, called “Conversation”, was made of alabaster and neon lights.
I left the Guggenheim Museo Bilbao and headed down the same street to Bilbao’s Museum of Bellas Artes. This museum houses major works by more “minor” artists and minor works by more “major” artists. Although I didn’t spend as much time here as the Guggenheim, I could have easily because some of the Spanish artists’ works were absolutely phenomenal. I particularly liked the paintings by Julian Tellaeche and Marten de Vos and the upstairs had several rooms with old (19th century) paintings of Toledo, Spain which looked identical to the photographs I took in Toledo the day before. It was amazing to see paintings of the places I visited. I left the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao and headed to Plaza de Moyua to window shop and catch the metro to Casco Viejo (Old Town) to find accommodation and browse around the old Basque streets. I walked from Casco Viejo along the river to the funicular at Monte Artxanda and rode to the top for exceptional views of Bilbao and the Guggenheim situated in the mountains. I watched the sunset and returned to the Guggenheim to snap a few photographs as the last of the sun faded and was surprised to hear extremely loud guitar and music coming from the around the opposite side of the museum. The music was coming from a live concert outside the Guggenheim by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Those who didn’t have tickets were watching the concert close enough across the Nervion River facing the Guggenheim. There were over 200 people between probably 18 and 30 hanging around the edge of the river and off the bridges and stairways surrounding the Guggenheim. I figured I did not have any plans and it was already going on 10 o’clock, so I walk up and down the boulevard to the live music. The city of Bilbao is gorgeously lit at night anyway and it is ten times more beautiful after dark. I left the Salve Bridge area and wandered back down to Casco Viejo and wandered around the well-lit streets for awhile and then headed back to Casco Viejo to sleep.
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