I’m glad I returned to Barcelona. Jess wanted to do some stuff I had not done the first time I was there. We went to the contemporary art museum and saw some really interesting exhibits, many of which were American or even Argentine. I enjoyed Eleanor Antin’s 100 Boots: a series of photos of 100 boots in different locations. We also saw Edward Ruscha’s Every Building on Sunset Strip from 1966. He took photos from towns across the US and arranged them in an accordion-style book. I especially liked one from Argentina, by an artist name Munditas, which dealt with the legacy of the dictatorship. It was a series of photos of Buenos Aires during times of turmoil. Each photo was paired with another one showing that same location (or idea) in 2007.
We also went back to the Picasso Museum and the Barceloneta area. This time, however, I paid more attention to sculptures like the Lichtenstein on the Rambla that ran the length of the coast. In addition, we spent more time walking around looking at graffiti and buildings. This is partially because we were there on a Sunday and Monday was a holiday. Most businesses were closed and we had some difficulty finding veggies/fruit for snacks.
On that Monday, we went to see the Guadí apartment buildings and Park Güell. We also made a special trip across town to see the Mies Van Der Rohe pavilion for the 1929 World’s Fair. Jess was very excited about seeing this building because Van Der Rohe is considered the iconic Bauhaus architect. The structure is made of large planes of glass and stone. He actually cut the marble and repositioned it to form symmetrical patterns. It’s not a house, more like a representation of an art style.
After seeing the building, we went across the street and continued our architectural Barcelona tour. We were in the Caixaforum, a building which used to be a fabric factory and is not an arts center. The first thing we saw upon entering was a Sol Lewitt mural. He does large scale pieces of art, most of which are paintings, which are geometric series of lines or shapes in bright colors. This one was a series of bright squiggly lines. I imagined myself walking through the white line and it seemed like the wadi you must traverse when entering Petra. Jess thinks the paintings are very “high-energy,” which is probably why I like them so much. At the Caixaforum, we saw two more exhibits on architecture: one about Palladio, the Italian architect remembered for his use of symmetry and order, and another of works by Richard Rogers, a British architect famous for buildings like the Pompidou Center in Paris. The latter was a great exhibition because of its use of color and energy in the space. The room was white with bright-colored signs and neon-pink benches. It contained many models of projects and buildings which were never built. Some of the designs were meant for the US, but almost none of them ever came to fruition.
Tuesday morning, our last few hours in Spain, was spent at the Boqueria Market. Mom and I had gone there in April, but Jess and I spent much more time there. We walked around sipping fresh juices (which were more like pureed fruit). She has a raspberry one and then a strawberry-mango. I had banana-blackberry and then papaya. We also munched on some dried fruit and I bought veggies for dinner (I ate them at the airport). One of the produce stands had really interesting foods: wheat asparagus (asparagus, but as think as wheat), mini-cucumbers that looked like baby watermelon, huge mushrooms and tons of edible flowers. The market also provided some great people-watching, always a fun pastime.
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