A Day In Barcelona

Thanks to generous and trusting friends of friends, my one full day in Barcelona was not limited to eating trail mix and husbanding my last seven euros for the metro ride back to the airport (as I thought it might upon my arrival).  Nuff said about yesterday's series of unfortunate events. I had one day to explore Barcelona for the first time and was not going miss the opportunity.

I am staying in the Gothic Quarter, and started the day by by downloading and following Rick Steves Audio Tour of Barcelona, as recommended by my seatmate on the flight over. My intent was to see and do everything there was to see and do in Barcelona. I assumed one day would be enough. Herein a selection of photos on how I did.  You be the judge.

Placa de Calalunya and The Rambles - Wherein I learn that one can sit on a bench on a busy pedestrian boulevard and not bury your nose in your phone.

Catedral de Barcelona - Where I learn the significance of 13

Jewish Quarter - Where I learn that in 1492 Ferdinand & Isabella not only sent Columbus to sail the ocean blue, but also purged all Jews from Barcelona.

Placa de Sant Jaume - Wherein I learn the administrative center of Barcelona and Catalonia is frequently the site of large protests attended primarily by young attractive women and girls.

Sagrada Familia - Wherein I learn you can get almost anything built in 150 years or less, and there are 400 scary steps down from the Passion Tower.

Picasso Museum, Friezes and Watering Hole - Wherein I learn I can make my wife jealous by exploring the art and locations to be found in the location of Picasso's formative years.

Tapas - Wherein I learn that tapas are like... um... uh... Martinis! Three are too many, one is not enough.

I intended to take a siesta after my tapas snack, then head back out for a late seaside Catalonian dinner. But I never quite recovered from the siesta after the frenetic activity of the day. That leaves something left to do when I return, and I certainly will someday.

SFMOMA - Edvard Munch

I've always liked Edvard Munch's work, and didn't want to miss the well reviewed touring exhibition at SFMOMA. The exhibit is best viewed with Sigrid - my personal art guide and consultant - who arranged timed tickets for our ongoing 25th anniversary season celebration.  As part of that continuing celebration, we arrived early to explore the expanded & renovated SFMOMA facility...

... and enjoy a tasty if overpriced lunch in the sculpture garden

Cheese, pate', prosciutto with Rose'

Thai coconut curry chicken and noodles w a Norwegian Stout

The Munch exhibit is fascinating and well curated, offering a perspective on the life that shaped his art and the contemporary artistic influences he both absorbed and influenced himself.

I won't attempt to review the exhibit as that is simply beyond my ken. Instead I'll include a few of the images that caught my eye (non-flash photography is permitted) and refer the reader to ...

 

SF Mike on the Civic Center Blog:

"A major Edward Munch painting exhibit, on loan from his namesake museum in Oslo, has just opened at SFMOMA and it's well worth visiting. Even though there doesn't seem to be a single happy person on display in any of the 47 paintings, the effect is not depressing, possibly because the colors throughout are so gorgeously vibrant, including the 1907 The Death of Marat ... 

Directly before his eight-month, 1908 hospitalization for anxiety, binge drinking, and brawling, he painted a number of commercially successful variations on The Sick Child, dying of tuberculosis. "As part of his recovery, Dr. Jacobson advised Munch to only socialize with good friends and avoid drinking in public." Munch followed Jacobsen's advice and though plagued with illness all his life, he managed to survive to age 81, dying in Nazi-occupied Norway in 1944. He also continued painting to the end and it's all great."

 

Charles Desmarius of the SF Chronicle:

"Munch’s significance lies neither in his oversensitive soul nor his painterly inventiveness, but in his unique ability to combine the two. He returned again and again to the same themes, and often to the same image. One could argue that makes him a formal experimenter — testing and revising art for art’s sake — or that his romantic heart could not bear to leave behind loves and moments that might die without continual regeneration. He did not have to choose...

There are ghostly pictures like a “Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu” (1919), ominously psychosexual ones like his hovering presence in “The Artist and His Model” (1919-20), and a cartoonish throwaway that could be a magazine liquor ad, “Self-Portrait With Bottles” (circa 1938)."

Munch was an artist both a product of and ahead of his time. Perhaps the work that best exemplified this was his startling and prescient work entitled (as I recall) "Clinton Trump Second Debate":

Go see it. You've got another week.