I WONDER WHAT THEY WERE ON?

Catalunya,
Barcelona, SPAIN
Day 52

Hiya´s!

You´re probably asking why i said, ¨What are they on?¨ well...it´s because after a day of Gaudi and Picasso, this was the question that was formulating in my mind! They were so futuristic in their thoughts and endeavours...and well, i´ll tell you later what we saw at the Picasso exhibition, called Picasso´s Museu. Mind Boggling.

When we did finally get out yesterday we headed straight for Gaudi´s Temple - El Tempo de la Sagrada - which is about 2km´s from where we´re staying. I was feeling so good we decided to walk rather than catch the metro.

Not sure if that was such a good idea because just looking through his temple was quite a feat. If we thought the facade was amazing, with it´s spiers and fruit in the knaves and unique architecture that was just mind blowing, the INSIDE was even more amazing!

It looked like a forest! The columns that hold up the incredible spiers look like trees and the ceiling is reminiscent of leaves! He´s awesome. Of course, his love is nature and the natural environment and all his work is inspired by this, so the way it actually looks is nothing short of...well, a forest in architecture. There were models of his beloved Sagrada Familia which were so intricate and detailed and you just have to think what a briliant mind this man was.

He spent the last 14 years of his life totally fixated on building this temple, devoting his life and soul to it. He was such a religious man, so full of faith and wanting to honour God that you could really see it in this incredible building. An inspiration. He even used lead gun pellets in bags on strings to create the stress levels and angles for his spiers. He then took photos and inverted them so he calculate these levels and see how the towers would look. Such a perfectionist. All built on donations from the people.

A lot of his work was unfinished before he died. His dreams were beyond money. He would have seen some of it started but not completed. Today, we went to the Gaull Park which he designed and started builing from 1900 to 1914 when it was stopped due to lack of money. And it´s just as amazing as the Sagrada Familia. The thing that is really great is that his work is NOW being finished.

His use of ceramics, both in his Park and his Sagrada Familia is just amazing. What words do i use to describe his genius? The colour that peaks through the broken tiles at just the right angles in just the right places is just design at it´s best. Who could ever think of the colours and the shapes and the way he implemented birds, fruits, trees, colour, animals and just the wonderment of nature into his work.

We also saw where he lived, which is in the Gaull Park (named after an English Park because was, originally what it was supposed to have been until it later changed) and we learned that he was a furniture designer as well, winning awards for some of his furniture.

He was the first person to actually desgin and build furniture that was ergonomic! What an amazing man! We really were enthralled by his work. So much more i could tell about him too, but i won´t bore you with all the details because really, unless you are there, it doesn´t mean as much as perhaps hearing about it.

One thing i have learned is ´being there, is everything´. I have learned about all this history and historical people, but it´s only now that i realise it´s all real. Being there helps tie it all in..it clicks. The written word becomes real. It´s just wonderful to actually see it all.

I sometimes wish i´d been to Europe when i was younger so i could have a better understanding of the world, but it´s only now that i think i can truly appreciate what we´re seeing. It´ll be interesing to revisit London after being there when i was 15 because that made an impact for the rest of my life, but i don´t think i truly appreciated the history back then.

OK Picasso. When we were in the El Prado in Madrid we saw Picasso´s work. A lot of it, becuase they have quite an extensive collection there and we were very impressed. BUT. To go to Picasso´s Museu here, one dedicated purely to Picasso, is a revelation! There are works there that we just never thought we´d see and only someone with an imagination could think up the themes he did.

It was SO FASCINATING.

As we know he is known as a surrealist, cubist. But what we didn´t know was that he was so young when he started, 15 when he ´came out´in the art world, thanks to his father who was a teacher in the fine arts, and also the fact that he was so diverse in his skills as an artist, not unlike Gaudi who touched on a lot of areas of design.

Picasso was born in 1881 and what a life he had. His personal life was just weird in my impression. He had wives and mistresses and kids from different women and just seemed to live the life of a gypsy artist! I guess he was just a free spirit. But offbeat, whacky and slightly insane as well, as we could see in his art. Well, i´m not sure insane is the word but eccentric and with a touch of the deviat!

He started off as a portraitist. At 15 he did a lot of work for the art schools he was in, in Barcelona, before he headed off to Paris later on. He seemed to always come back to Barcelona, where his mother and father both lived and died.

He had periods of painting. One of the periods was the Blue Period in his later teens and the Pink Period later on when he was in his 20´s. And when i asked Greg what was one of the most memorable aspects of Picasso he did have to bring up some of the work he did in his Pink Period!

NO KIDDING.

There were paintings that demonstrated his absolute boldness in art. They were no less than pornographic. I wonder what the traditionalists thought at the time! One picture that had Greg and i laughing, even when those around us had their serious art appreciation looks, that had a guy holding a siver tray with a naked chicken on it with one hand, and the other hand was choking his own chicken! The end of him was doing number twos! GEEPERS. Talk about offensive yet comically hilarious!

And there were others, just as bold and graphic. He was out to shock that´s for sure. I´ve seen this type of work in art books, but to see it for real, is quite mind blowing.

I loved the biography they had in the museum. Fascinating man. I was itching to get a book about him and read more right there and then, but we can´t, because ´what we buy we carry!¨and i have book about the surrealists at home!

There was a room of posters that he graffitiéd over as well! Hilarious. He really did have a deviate sense of wickedness i think.

Cubism, which he developed with his mate, Braque, was the thing he was most known for, but there´s so much more. His sculptures were also there, inspired by his friend, Julio Gonzales. There were heap of ceramic pots, donated by his late last wife not that long ago, that had him called a Ceramist at the end of his life.

Anyway, we were VERY OVERAWED by both of these great Spanish geniuses. And felt quite privileged to see their work, RIGHT THERE. And as to the question, Ï wonder what they were on?¨ Must have been something they and their mates shared because it was certainly a period of extreme creativity and artistic output to which we are lucky to be able to witness.

I´m so glad we´ve come on this reconnaiscence. So far, it really has been a trip of a lifetime. And it gets better all the time, even amidst the pitfalls. (ie ¨The Rose¨ drama has yet to be resolved!)

Oh yeah, on the way home, in a nostalgic, arty mood, when both of us were thinking we should don our caps, take out or easels and create some genius brush strokes (hahaha) we decided why not go into a cathedral.

Afterall we hadn´t been to one that day, we´re become addicted to these holy places and exquisite architecture, leadlight windows and beautiful awe inspiring interiors...and it was a famous one, the gothic cathedral of Santa Maria.

And we witnessed a wedding. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....the extravagent, no expense spared wedding of Julie. (That was the only word we could make out as of course, it was all in Spanish!!!!)

The things you see when you do impromtu spare of the moment things....