Tag: bilbao

Postcard from Bilbao, Spain: Heart of Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz

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Above: Detail of mosaic portion of “Eskuz Esku” in Basque, or “Hand to Hand.” Lead artist John Pitman Weber and assistant Alicia Vallejo Sanz, a 2010 project of Itinerario Muralistico of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

While Bilbao with the Guggenheim and San Sebastian’s Running of the Bulls have made those cities well known in the United States, Vitoria-Gasteiz is the actual seat of government of Basque Country. With a population of about 250,000, the Basque capital lies only 40 miles outside Bilbao. The hyphenation reflects the duality of Spain’s sometimes dueling cultures: Vitoria is Spanish while Gasteiz is the Basque half of its name.

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Postcard from Bilbao, Spain: Art scarcely has a chance to shine

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Above: Detail of “Tall Tree and the Big Eye,” Anish Kapoor

Guggenheim Bilbao has turned 25. While 25 years is but a small blip on my age chart, I feared it might prove too long to wait to visit architect Frank Gehry‘s monumental project. People described it as a ship, a giant flower, a fish with shimmering titanium scales. Would it simply seem dated, as much contemporary architecture does after a decade?

My answer is no! It’s a massive, awe-inspiring, sculpture – its scale rendering it overwhelming both inside and out. The deconstructive shapes seem not unlike the Pablo Picasso sculptures of women featured in a major exhibition while we were there. Or Richard Serra’s curvilinear weathered-steel sculpture, “A Matter of Time,” drawing people inside like a giant human mousetrap.

Even spectacular, large-scale artworks encounter difficulties asserting themselves inside the soaring sensuous interior. This is a building one would pay to explore even if there were no art inside.

Maybe that should not be a conflict up for debate. So often architecture is dumbed down by budget, with function superseding inspirational design.

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Postcard from Bilbao, Spain: Picasso’s sculptures reflect women he loved

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Above: Museum-goer interacting with Pablo Picasso’s “Head of a Woman” made from sheet metal

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.” 

Pablo Picasso

And Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) loved a number of women, many of whom served as temporary muses appearing in his work until his romantic attentions turned elsewhere.

He once famously said, “For me, there are two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats.” Some of his goddesses soon found themselves in the role of doormats.

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