MADRID FINAL DAYS...

So, the opera performance was spectacular! I attended Verdi's Un Ballo in Machero at the Teatro Real, which is located adjacent to the Royal palace, but the King and Queen were not in attendance...:-)



Over the last days, I visited the Museo Reina Sofia. The collection leans towards the modern as opposed to the Museo del Prado. The highlight was absolutely viewing Picasso's Guernica in person. I had no idea how enormous the canvas is, nor how powerful the piece is in person. I am not sure if this is the because of the scale or not, but I appreciate looking at the painting and seeing how Picasso worked through the composition as you can see traces of how the scene progressed as he worked towards its completion. The bull's eyes, for instance, became further apart and more skewed than in an earlier draft. Also included in the exhibition are studies of different aspects of this painting: large hands, feet, the bull's head, the horse...all were drawn similar to the scale of the final work.

Jean Nouvel has made an addition to this museum. He has made a concrete plaza surrounded on three sides by his new buildings and the fourth side by the original building. There is a huge and very thick canopy with different cutouts for light placed high above the plaza level. A new bookstore, library, restaurant, and office spaces are part of the program. No additional gallery spaces (or that I saw) were constructed. It is very PoMo with red everywhere. The restaurant has a smoothly molded canopy in fire engine red with different tables of white, folded corian to contrast. Everything else is grey granite...UHH.

Also, I visited the Jardim Bontanical adjacent to the Museu del Prado...at little run down, but still some great stuff. I love the idea of putting landscape (nature) on display in a formal garden setting. Plants that would probably never grow naturally next to each other or grow in the climate of Madrid in general are painstakingly cared for just for us to see...

Great wine, sangria, food, and some nice jogs in the park again before I left...sadly. Spain and Portugal have been truly amazing.

Off to Tokyo.

http://picasaweb.google.com/christopher.kitterman/MadridLastDays?pli=1&gsessionid=Znpdnndf2cshfnYqcfKueQ#