Viva Espana!

These lovely paintings take you through the last 500 years of women as subjects in paintings. Along with the cello playing it creates a wonderfully serene interlude! Ah...I can't wait to lean back in the tiny little seat on the 6:30 flight to Madrid on Wednesday night and enjoy (I hope) the feeling of readiness! Ready for the meetings, the presentations, and the fun of my annual conference in Barcelona.

I'm flying into Madrid for a 36 hour art seeking interlude. Armed with Balance Bars and bottled water I'll hike from the Prado to the Thyssen-Bornemisa Museum to the Picasso Museo soaking it all up!

So, today is September 22, and its been months since my glorious trip to Spain; I returned to more work than I could imagine, more work than was fair for the doggy days of summer! Good intentions aside, posting to my blog didn't happen. So pretend this is just June 15th, just for a moment and enjoy my trip highlights.

I did just as I said above; I arrived in Madrid, grabbed a cab to my hotel; slept for 45 minutes and headed out the door w/out the balance bars and with a taste for gazpacho! I was just 100 yards or so from the Central Park of Madrid and all those art museos on my list; plus others I wasn't aware of: I was in art heaven!

The Thyssen-Bournemisa had a faboo visiting VanGogh show so I saw that and then wandered around the rest of the mueso, stopping for lunch of, you guessed it, gazpacho and a fruit salad which turned out to be so much more with a cloud of some sweet puffy meringue on top! After a cruise through the gift shop where I dropped mucho euros on postcards I headed off in search of Picasso's Guernica. Arguably, Guernica is the most powerful work Picasso created as it memorializes while simultaneously rages against the wanton bombing of innocents in the village of Guernica and the horrors of the impending German invasion and Franco's Spanish Civil War. This piece sits in it's own room and is immense; in a huge panel that just lost myself in for a long time. It is in its way timeless and dated; timeless because slaughter of innocents continues all over the world; dated because Picasso is so present in the art world today. Nonetheless, its power is undeniable and in your face. It is my favorite sort of art; art that speaks, no screams to the imperative for justice, democracy, and the value of human life.

The next day, I spent hours in the Prado soaking up the Velazquez and Goya paintings. The Goya masterpiece, The Shootings of May Third 1808 was perhaps an inspiration to Picasso as it personifies the horrors of war by it's tight close up on the execution of a bedraggled group of soldiers. I was by this time fairly bedraggled myself from hiking all over Madrid in search of masterpieces. So I grabbed my bags, paid my bill, and jumped on the first class train to Barcelona where my gal pals and conference awaited. More Spain, mas tarde!