modern art

A morning in Toledo.

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Since we had gone to the Puy de Fou night show the evening before, and the theme park does not open until noon, Celia and I recently found ourselves with time to kill in Toledo on a Saturday morning.

Our first stop was the Santa Fe Roberto Polo collection, which hosts the Centro de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Castilla-La Mancha. This is a huge ancient church complex featuring Roman ruins, gorgeous, intricate ceiling paneling, and a beautifully delicate chapel, which is mixed with ridiculous modern art pieces that only add to the beauty of the old pieces and underscore the stupidity of the modern ones.

From there, we turned the corner to the Santa Cruz Museum, an astonishing Renaissance structure that once housed the late medieval Children’s Hospital. To our surprise, there was a phenomenal exhibit of fairly random pieces, including a feared pre-Roman falcata sword. But the real star of that exhibit was an El Greco painting of St. Peter, where I had a bit of a Stendhal moment —amazing!

From there, we had time to walk across Zocodover Square, almost down to the Cathedral, before turning up on Trinidad Street to the Capilla de la Inmaculada Concepción for a moment of quiet contemplation and meditation (did you know that you should be meditating?). This chapel has perpetual adoration, which means that it is open 24/7 for people to pray. It is a quiet oasis in the tourist frenzy that is Toledo.

After that, we had to get back to the car to head out to Puy de Fou for a hot, blistering day of fun. You can read about that here.

The amount of mind-blowing, beautiful, culturally enriching things you can do in Toledo is almost limitless. That Saturday, that is what we came up with.

Musings on modern art.

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Confession time: I do not always understand modern art, it does not move me, it does not make me question anything, it does nothing for me -maybe giggle. Having said that, I do not agree with the “I could have done that”, “My toddler could have done that”, “A drunk monkey could have done that” variations. It does take some creativity to come up with the idea to make/paint something.

Walking around the Retiro park recently, Celia and I dropped by an exhibition at the beautiful Palacio (or Casa) Velazquez by renown modern artist James Lee Byars. Having just come from seeing the Colecciones Reales a few days earlier (check that our here), the contrast was, to say the least, amusing.

The show included fixed pieces, which ranged from interesting to outright questionable, (half a golden sphere, seriously?). More interesting were performance numbers with people walking around the gallery and performing different activities. I did stop by a fire extinguisher wondering if it was part of the exhibit or part of the emergency equipment of the building.

Did I miss anything? Please enlighten me in the comments below.

Ad Reinhardt, the victory of minimalism

/ antonioyrocinante / 1 Comment

One of the wonderful things of being in Madrid is that many interesting places are walking distance from home. If they are a bit farther away, I can always jump on a rental scooter, on a little motorbike, or a bicycle, if it’s harsh weather I can take public transportation like buses or metro. In a worst-case scenario, I can rent a car per hours. My dinosaur Land Rover cannot be legally parked downtown.

Recently I walked to the Fundación Juan March, which I have talked about before in this blog to see a great exhibit on Ad Reinhardt, a groundbreaking abstract American painter. The exhibit was split into two distinct areas: an area of his paintings showing his evolution into the purest minimalism (see the photo of the red painting) where a monochromatic canvas has only the most subtle color variations, mesmerizing!

The other part covers Reinhardt’s career as an illustrator, teacher, activist, and designer.

He also coined some evident but necessary phrases like

Art is Art. Everything else is everything else

Ad Reindhardt

or

Art is too serious to be taken seriously

Ad Reindhardt

If you get a chance to see the exhibit in Madrid, go now. If Madrid is not an option go check out his paintings at the Museum Folkwang Essen, SFMOMA in San Francisco, and of course the New York MOMA and the Met.