Wow. Guggenheim Bilbao: from Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons and a sidetrip to Calder. Four decades of art from the Broad Collection and a whole floor of the beautiful mobiles of Alexander Calder.
And after years and years as a Situationist aficianado, I finally got to see a real live Asger Jorn. I’m not even going to go into the questions that raises for me thinking about Benjaminian notions of aura. I’m not trying to say that the fact it’s the ‘original’ means anything to me in particular, just that three dimensional presentation makes a difference to texture and size etc than two-dimensional reproduction. I also enjoyed seeing the works of Basquiat and Schnabel, Warhol, Lichtenstein and Twombly, and discovered a few new artists too (Eric Fischl, for one). I was surprised that I really liked Koons’ Balloon Dog, because Koons has never really done much for me before.
What is raised for me though, especially by one work that appealed to me using scrolling red LED words repeated on narrow vertical poles, that first hint at one thing and then with a tiny elaboration hint at another, slowly revealing what might be a confession or an accusation (you are the one/you are the one who did it/there is blood/nobody told me/i smell you/i smell you on my skin/i cry/i cry out to you/i pray/i pray aloud/i sleep next to you/i smell your clothes/i keep your clothes) (and to my shame, I did not look at the artist’s name), is that ongoing contradiction in me concerning aesthetics. I have no objections to high tech as a tool; on the contrary, I make a living analysing the impacts and I am personally fascinated by science and devour science fiction. However, my approach is frequently a critical one and I loathe modernism, at least in architecture (although, Gaudi is modernist, I think, so maybe I just loathe most modernism).
Bilbao is effectively ‘just another city’. Anything built after about 1500 holds little interest for me. So many of the grand buildings of the post-renaissance resemble nothing so much as Monty Python’s bank building.
Toledo is entirely different. So was Carcassonne.
On my way walking to the Guggenheim, I thought about the differences. One relates specifically to the overt proliferation of advertising and the consequent brashness of capitalism’s declarations of consumerist fervour in most Western cities. While Toledo has advertising, there is very little in the old city, and shops for the most part have small white tiles with blue old-fashioned writing announcing the presence of a lawyer or something else within. Even Telefonica (the equivalent of Telstra) has no grand sign above its headquarters, but rather a demure brass plaque by the old, enormous wooden door. There are few garish colours. However, rather than the drab grays of the modernist Munchian nightmare, the colours are cobblestone browns and the creams and pinks of stone walls. Telefonica shops have navy blue and lime green signage, but for some reason, that doesn’t put me off… it’s not overwhelming. There’s hardly any neon to speak of.
Then, inside the Guggenheim, I have no aesthetic distaste for what I see, apart from a series of photos by Bernd and Hilla Becher of the typology of water towers. Industrial, then, is what I dislike. Does this make me an elitist artesan?
Regardless, Calder’s meditations on movement served to unite and synthesise many of my thoughts. Built from metals, sanded and rasped and cut and bent, these delicate works then resonate with the subtle shimmerings of leaves in light, the tremulous insight of feathers on the wind, the arcs of planets. Titled “Calder: Gravity and Grace”, the works have inspired me and I want to get home to start making mobiles of my own. Expect them as Summer Solstice presents.
I also have some ideas for ways of exhibiting poetic works, possibly as part of the fringe festival or something.
I expect a comment from you on this one, deepskin.