So we went to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Do I have to tell you the story of the Guggenheim? Doesn't everyone know this by now? So in the mid-90's the Guggenheim foundation wanted to build a new museum to house their giant collection of weird modern art. Being a little low on funds, they wanted a locale that would be willing to shell out for the new museum themselves. Enter Bilbao. Bilbao and the Basque people suffered big-time under Franco's incredibly evil military regime, forcing Basque culture underground and bringing Basque industry to a relative standstill. Franco passed and Spain began to ease uncertainly into the modern age, with the Basque people leading the way. The old shipdock and iron production centers in Bilbao were renovated, new industries opened up in the city, and Bilbainos became determined to transfer their fading industrial city into a people-and-business friendly powerhouse. To everyone's surprise, they did it. When the Guggenheim came a'knocking, the city's leaders decided that a super-prestigious museum of its nature would be the perfect accent to the renovated banks of the Nervión river. The expensive prestige project was approved, and Frank Gehry - the best known Canadian architect (like I know any others) - was called in to design it.
The Guggenheim.
As Bilbao wanted not just a museum but a monument, Gehry conceived the structure as a modern art statue in and of itself, taking cues from the nearby river and other aquatic themes in its glimmering and silvery construction. Sheets of super thin titanium were used to produce the simultaneously undulating and sharp look of the museum's facade, and reflecting pools and outdoor art were added to complete the visually arresting affect. Completed in 1997, the building was hailed immediately by love-besotted art critics as the most impressive building of its time - and to Bilbao's delight, provided the artsy kick in the ass the city's tourism industry needed. Twelve years later, it's still one of the Basque country's must-sees.
The giant spider outside the museum. Often shrouded in fog due to fog-machines. Named after the artist's mother.
Another view.
Despite the Guggenheim's jaw-dropping exterior appearance, it actually is not a gigantic facility, containing a fairly limited number of exhibits. Derided as a mere warehouse for the Guggenheim's extras in past years, it's come into its own as a powerful exhibition center for modern art. At least that's what the modern art critics I skimmed for this blog post said, anyway. Don't quote me.
Bridge outside the Guggenheim.
The Sinophile in me was ever so happy to see that Cai Guo-Qiang was headlining the summer's exhibitions. Guo-Qiang specializes in working with fire and explosives in a long, proud, and sulphureous Chinese tradition. On display were a dizzying array of his weird-ass fire paintings, produced by detonating explosives to produce both abstract images and startlingly deft drawings of specific subject matter. Guo-Qiang is a performance artist: he helped master-mind the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony (the steps made of fireworks were his idea) and has produced videos of his explosions-as-happenings all over the world. His powers extend far beyond his bizarre "gunpowder drawings": Guo-Qiang also produces huge and disturbing works of modern sculpture, many of which were in display in all their unavoidable bigness at the Guggenheim. Claiming to be influenced by ancient Chinese culture, Maoist revolutionary tactics, and the inherent bizarreness of modern 21st century life, I suspect Guo-Qiang is the closest thing to an artist-laureate that China has. He's unmissable.
Some highlights:
- Guo-Qiang engineered a work in Hiroshima where he detonated black fireworks on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombings. I was glued to the video and could not get away: it was eerie and horrifying, some sort of vision from an alternative and sick universe, a warning that we should never go there again. Black fireworks are dreamlike because we have never seen them before and did not conceive that they could exist, a dark counterpoint to July 4th shindigs and Chinese New Year, apparent and mildly disgusting.
- "Reflection: A Gift From Iwaki," which is tremendous Japanese ship filled to the brim (and spilling over) with crushed Japanese porcelain plates and statues of the Buddha. As I have never sat through a modern-art appreciation class (possibly due to a life-long fear of people with oblong haircuts and Ideas About Bauhaus), I could not begin to interpret this for you. I also forgot what the display card said. But it is an image that will stay with me.
- Head On, wherein a huge and slavering pack of timber wolves ascend into the air, dance merrily along like hideous reindeer, then smack snout-on into a clear-plastic sheet, skittering away. Guo-Qiang says it represents the inherent and deadly perils of soaring ambition, others may find it cruelly comedic, everyone finds it unforgettable.
- The Rent Collector's Courtyard has an interesting story behind it. Seemingly appearing to be a creepy collection of crumbling clay sculptures of downtrodden, wailing Chinese peasants, it too contains an element of performance art. Bilbao's Rent Collector's Courtyard is one of many replicas Guo-Qiang has orchestrated of an original piece from the always-overwrought Cultural Revolution, where it was produced to show the savagery and evil of the capitalist system (in Communist eyes, anyhow).
The sculptures, wherever they are replicated, are intended to crumble to dust, leaving behind stark wire frames and little wooden hands and feet and black-button eyeballs. When you walk into the room all the statues are in different stages of decay, some missing limbs, some missing heads, all of them crumbling to dust, making the marble floor crunch-crunch a little under your feet.
Some gentleman out on the beach.
After Etxebarri, which of course you can read about here, we drove back to Bilbao in a state of torpid and animal fullness, we wanted nothing more then to nap and not go anywhere. I felt personally like a boa constrictor that had just ingested an errant toddler - bursting and extremely self satisfied. Possessing no steaming tropical swamps to wallow in, I decided to go for a walk in town to settle things a little bit, and watch the happy hordes of mulleted Basques begin their evening pinxtos and booze crawl.
As I ambled along the sea wall (having adjusted my rate of speed to that of the Spanish, who do not go anywhere in a hurry even in this modern era,) I realized the lighting was ridiculously beautiful, little tendrils of yellow sun busting out of dark evening clouds, tide coming, all right with the universe. So I took some photos.
The town of Lekeitio.
The island outside town.
The island from the seawall.
Cars by the harbor.
Crashing waves outside the fisherman's club.
Fishing boats in the harbor.
More of the harbor.
My dad and I, true brave souls, decided we would go and have a bit of dinner after all. I make no apologies for my metabolism: I turned 21 a week ago and am skinny and nervous, always tapping my leg on things, I am unable to go for more then four consecutive hours without eating someone or I turn into a blonde and nervous imitation of foul Caligula, you get the picture. We picked out one of the little seafood restaurants on the sea-wall and ate. It was 10:00, about in the middle of Basque Country's very relaxed dinner hours.
My dad had a simple dish of scrambled eggs with a bit of salt cod, a nice and comforting combination, the kind of thing a little Basque grandmother (with a mullet) might serve you in bed if you had contracted a sniffle.
Prawns. Yes, for God's sake, I ate more prawns, I might consider eating all the Spanish prawns in the universe if you let me, enginer the wholesale destruction of an entire species, for as said earlier they taste of all that is good and honest in the universe, little fatty heads and tails and bodies. This was a fine salad with artichoke hearts and grilled prawns and some balsamic vinegar, the sort of simple fare I desire most of the time (when I am not dining on barnacles and smoked butter in certain other Basque locales). I ate all the shrimp, but for the first time in a very long while, I could not finish the salad. But it hit the spot.
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