Nothing but the Start

The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel is a beautiful church – regardless of the fortitude or flavor of your faith.  The spot is serene; an atmosphere that could stem from the fact that Mary seems to be rather uncontroversially loved by all.  (A nice goal, I suppose.)

The church was built on top of what is considered the original home of Joseph and Mary, and excavated areas show the original village of Nazareth, including the room in which Mary was visited by the Archangel Gabriel.  It’s gone through rounds of rebuilds – originally established in Byzantine times, overseen (into disrepair) by Muslims, reconstructed by Crusaders, and again by the Franciscans.  The church today was built in the late 60s and is currently one of the largest in the Middle East.

But I am neither a history nor religion buff (really, ask anyone), so these details only half interest me.  Where I spent most of my time in the Basilica of the Annunciation was the upper part of the church and in the courtyard.  Here you can find paintings and mosaics dedicated from all around the world that depict Mary and the nationalism of the donating country.   Guess what?  Mary is not always an elegant white woman.

The American work is – can you guess – rather large and predominantly placed in the upper part of the church.  And Spain, for whatever reason, has three mosaics in the courtyard:

Nazareth is considered the Arab capital of Israel – of the 65k population, roughly 40k are Muslim.  So, the hometown of Mary – and the spot where Jesus may have played street games with childhood friends – is not without religious tension.  For example, this billboard in the center of the city:

Sometimes when visiting really popular museums, the crowds can be distracting.

Or they can be entirely fascinating.  I am intrigued by people looking at well known works.  For example, the crowd in front of Guernica in the Museo Reina Sofía.  How are they looking at the artwork and why?  What is their reaction?  WHY are they taking pictures?

And here we have people viewing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre:

La Gioconda, Louvre Museum

A documentary everyone should see is “Sketches of Frank Gehry” directed by Sydney Pollack.

Gehry can be inspiring, but he can also make huge, ugly, expensive mistakes.  I used to drive by one such mistake in Cambridge, Massachusetts on a regular basis.  A beautiful, intriguing building which got him sued by MIT of all places for negligence – the complex filled with cracks, mold, drainage issues.  But it sure was nice to drive by.

On a recent trip to Northern Spain, I had the pleasure of visiting two buildings by the paper architect in two very different settings: Bilbao and La Rioja.

Bilbao, of course, is home to the new Guggenheim museum and the building is magnificent.  (My use of adjectives with Gehry is a bit appalling isn’t it?)  But, seriously, this building is huge enough to hold gigantic installations and canvases.  And the curator has done an incredible job of it.  There are big rooms with just a few paintings – the first room visitors tend towards has a deKooning, a Rothko, a Still, and two Motherwells.  It was perfect just to stand in the center of this room. Another has a long series of Twombly, “Nine Discourses on Commodus,” which made my heart stop – and in that same room, a Rauschenberg across from a large work filled with International Klein Blue across from a Warhol of Marilyn Monroe.  Never before have I really appreciated Warhol.  I find him boring (except when David Bowie plays him), but next to everyone else… I finally got it.  Got it and appreciated it.

Upstairs were two exhibits: very late Rauschenberg and Anish Kapoor.  The Rauschenberg rooms were filled with pieces he made out of scrap metal.  The rooms were empty of people so perhaps I am alone in loving them, but I finally felt a sense of peace in my relationship with Rauschenberg, whose later work I had come to find repetitive.  The Kapoor exhibit I had seen before in Boston.  Still strange.

Before Bilboa we had hit the La Rioja area and visited the Marqués de Riscal Winery in Elciego which commissioned Gehry to design a hotel on their vineyard.

Here are the two Gehry buildings:

Hotel Marqués de Riscal

Hotel Marqués de Riscal

Guggenheim Bilbao

The Elciego building is a hotel, not the winery, and someday it would be nice to stay there…eat at their fine restaurant and take advantage of their spa offerings while sipping wine and watching this beautiful countryside:

I have mentioned before how great it is to live in a country where the majority of museums are either completely free or have reasonable hours during, say, the weekend that are free.  Not to mention that if you are unemployed, you get free entry at any time.  free free free.

Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting the CaixaForum Madrid museum.  And it is, quite simply, an incredible postmodern museum with a structure that rivals my love for the Guggenheim in New York and, yes, the Tate (but of a more manageable size than the Tate.)  I knew, just by approaching the building, that there were good things inside.  I mean just look at what greets you from the start:

seven meters of bronze elephant

Shouldn’t we endeavor to find the things in life that give us this type of giddy hope?

And there were good things inside.  The current exhibit is a body of work from Miquel Barceló.  It’s a funny thing seeing art outside of the United States because I am familiar with Barceló’s work, but never looked at him as a SPANISH artist.  Suddenly, he made more sense to me.  His textures and concepts are unabashed and I feel like I am experiencing the continuation of the line started by the likes of Rauschenberg (when he dared to be unrefined) and deKooning. (Forgive me my American late modern art crushes, they will never fade.)

The museum is actual funded by the Catalan bank La Caixa and is a great example of what societies like Spain do with banking.  La Caixa is a nonprofit that controls the largest charitable foundation in Spain and among the largest in the world.  Among its many programs are those with the purpose of the “dissemination of culture” – hence this fabulous free museum.

Go.

As I walked up to the entry, I looked at the time.  I had fifteen minutes for the entire building, or more if I didn’t mind rushing to the airport later.  Of course I don’t mind rushing, it’s how I spend a significant chunk of time every day.

So, I skipped the Arshile Gorky exhibit (skipping it hurt less than not seeing enough of it) and went to the third floor where I moved as quickly as possible until I landed in the room of Gerhard Richter paintings and had to stop.

There are three things that I adore about this museum.  1) The actual building is really cool. 2) they hang paintings the way I might in my living room – artists, mediums, sizes all jumbled up and in contrast with one another at varying spots on the wall. 3) the space is large enough to hang some really huge canvases – and some rooms are dedicated to the huge (and I mean physically large) works of just one artist so you get a distinct feeling as you walk through each grouping.

Which brings me back to Richter and the room I had to spend a high percentage of my allotted thirty minutes:

The Richter room has six pieces that the artist envisioned as a whole and named after John Cage.  I don’t know much about John Cage but I do know that the composer (among other things) had significant impact on many of my favorite painters.  These works by Richter are full of emotion yet distant at the same time.  He built layer upon layer of paint, scraping away part of one layer before applying the next.  Here’s a closer look at a section:

And then I walked speedily (no running!) until I landed in a Cy Twombly room…his later works are large and obsess over mythology.  This room is about Bachus, the Roman God of Wine.   Perhaps I use the word obsess because I myself am obsessed with how Twombly renders mythology – he takes allegories found in abundance at places like the Prado and translates them in nontraditional yet incredibly natural ways.  If you’re in Philly, find the Twombly room…it’s hidden away in the back…for good reason, it may have the ability to horrify people who are out for a nice simple stroll around the museum (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a nice simple stroll around a museum, but Twombly can be violent.)   But I digress.  Here’s a quick peek into the room with the Bachus paintings:

when you’ve got verbs?

And it’s a good thing because I finally went up to the artist I’ve been circling around for the past few week in Plaza Mayor and asked him how much he sells his work for.  Oh, you know, around €1200-€1700.   sigh.

When I finally made it to the San Antonio de la Florida Hermitage, there was a children’s puppet show happening in the small 18^th century temple.  Sadly I did not understand what the puppets were saying.  A couple more weeks of Spanish class and perhaps it would be perfect.

The draw to this tiny, neo classical temple are the frescos, painted by none other than Francisco de Goya.  They mark the beginning of his impressionism and they are beautiful.   I think the hermitage also houses Goya’s tomb – but it does not include his head because it was apparently desired by scientists.

A rather unassuming building for what is inside.

A shot of the cupola taken on the sly.

Madrid’s museums have hours of free admittance at times that actually encourage people to visit.  The Reine Sofia, for example, has free admission on M, W, R, and F starting at 7pm AS WELL AS Saturdays starting at 2:30pm and Sundays at 10am.  What a nice contrast to Boston’s MFA, which is free of charge only on Wednesdays after 4pm (yet they suggest you donate $20 anyway).  Not to mention that Reina Sofia is way better, but I suppose it’s unfair to compare.

The Museo Reina Sofía is named for the current queen of Spain (yes, Sofia) and houses 20^th century Spanish artists, with some French painters thrown in as well.  If you are on a short trip to Madrid, and can only go to one museum, I would choose this one. (However, you can’t quite get around not going to the Prado now can you?) The Sofia is a beautiful building, thoughtfully organized, and includes some great Picasso’s (including you know what), a beautiful room of Miro, early and late Dali, Juan Gris, Francis Picabia, Andre Messin, and Pablo Gargallo.

The crowd in front of Guernica could pass as an installation piece.

I don’t go to many plays.  I’ve mentioned my wish that this weren’t so, along with my concern that it is a dying art form, particularly in my fair city.  That was a tad sensationalist.  So, it was with great anticipation that I went to see Company One’s Boston theater premier of Haruki Murakami’s short story collection After the Quake – as adapted by Frank Galati.

Prior to this week, I’d only ever read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle – a strange, strange book that mixes mystery, relationships, WWII, mysticism … you name it.  It meanders around a storyline (or a dozen storylines) and you lose your place and then can’t seem to forget it.

So, a play adaptation of Murakami – with his constant interweaving of reality and its counterparts – sounded interesting.  BCA Plaza Theatre is a nice little place in the South End with about 140 seats.  (Right next door you can get really delicious fries and drinks at the Beehive.)  The play mixed two stories from the After the Quake collection: “Honey Pie” and “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo.”  One a little more grounded in reality than the other, so I thought they were a good combination.

Murakami wrote this collection of short stories after the earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan in 1995.  The “Kobe Earthquake” was at a 6.9 magnitude and killed approximately 5,500 and injured 36,896 people.  In writing the stories, Murakami set some guidelines: All had to be related to the earthquake but none could take place in Kobe or during the actual event.  They also had to be written in the third person.  Now, this last bit clears up something about the play.  Yes, there was a narrator for both stories, but every once in a while the characters themselves would deliver a self- descriptive monologue in the third person.  It felt odd, but it was Galati sticking within Murakami’s guidelines.

The two musicians on stage throughout the 90 minutes were fantastic.  A violin and a bass clarinet.  Five actors total (including a little girl), switched characters as the play jumped between stories, including the role of narrator.  The set was spare and seemed to catch an appropriate Murakami mood.  The actors were decent, but I was distracted by some of the delivery.

Not the most amazing thing I’ve experienced, but I’m glad I went.  Theater helps you look at a storyline from a different view.  For example, when reading “Honey Pie” I did not pay much attention to the story of the bears and consider what that story within meant to the overall story.  But the play got me thinking…

“I’ll have grounds/ More relative than this – the play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”

I would recommend this play for lovers of the novelist – or rather, I’d recommend reading the short stories and then going to the play, because it is impossible not to appreciate Murakami.

Now that the threat of the next frost is far far in the future and all the trees are suddenly covered in green, I want to go back to the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.  It’s a gem in Lincoln, Massachusetts and now I know why everyone looked at me quizzically when I said I’d never been.  Because it is AMAZING.

I went a few weeks ago – a Saturday that was the first unusually hot day of Spring – to be followed, of course, by many cold days.

There is nothing better than a good sculpture garden – or actually, there is nothing like a group of sculptures expertly placed in any environment.  It can be a small enclosed space for all I care – so long as it’s done well.  My favorites include: the backyard of Rodin’s house, the atrium in the Picasso museum in Paris and the Brancusi room in the Philadelphia Museum.

The DeCordova Sculpture Park is 35 acres with about 75 pieces of artwork.

There are even sharks in the trees:

People bring picnic lunches.  Small children run screaming from sculpture to sculpture, hiding from each other and yelling in delight when they come upon the next artwork.  As if they had discovered it for all mankind.  And their screams are not annoying.  That’s the awesome thing.  They are having a good time and it’s contagious.  So often, art spaces make people feel like they need to be serious.  Don’t talk out loud.  Don’t laugh!  But art is playful.  Artists can have a sense of humor – most of them do – and they make jokes in their work.  For the purpose of creating laughter.  Imagine!  Something about a sculpture garden helps you let down your guard as a viewer and just give way to the emotions that the work brings out.  It’s relieving.

There is also a traditional museum with multimedia pieces that are great.  It’s very worthwhile to go inside.

The museum is just minutes away from the Minuteman reserve.  The whole thing makes me want to go live in Lincoln MA.  I don’t need to walk down the street to get my coffee in the morning or a beer in the evening.  I will happily pour my own of both and sit out on my porch.