Guggenheim

Thanks to a very unfriendly weather pattern we had moved into the marina and our new best friend Álvaro showed us around  indicating the hugely impressive clubhouse ( it's three stories ) and the swimming pool. Of course we were more interested in the laundry and showers. Once Dark Tarn was settled and safe we had planned to visit the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Meanwhile we could enjoy a night ashore, after a wander about, in the way of these things we discovered a bar that was a couple of hundred metres from the boat. It was comfortable and the bar owner had installed a really good sound system and played mainly mainstream English rock music a bit of jazz and world music. We immediately appointed it as our local. Which in fact it was.

 We left rather late.

Oh, Lynne had also become a brunette again at this point.

In the morning we woke and looked out at a grey and drizzly day, as we walked along the pontoons we bumped into Alvero who asked us where we were going, it turned out that Alvero was going into Bilbao and would give us a lift into the city. As we drove along the Ria Álvaro talked me through the pilotage to take Dark Tarn up the Ria into the heart of the city of Bilbao, " on the pontoon the Kayak man will say you can not stay but tell him no, he must only use the end of the pontoon" you can't buy this stuff!

Alvero dropped us at the Guggenheim museum.

The famous building designed by Frank Gehry is very impressive and sits in a bend of the river.

There are several exhibits around the exterior of the building including the giant spider...........

Scary isn't it? After negotiating the rather large queue to get into the galleries we were free to wander around this strangely shaped and slightly disconcerting building.

At the time of our visit the main exhibition spaces were given over to works by Jeff Koons and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

It's all too easy to be dismissive about modern art. However I found Jeff Koons work to be quite interesting and had a surprisingly high 'craft' element, by which I mean to say they are beautifully made, whether they are actually made by Jeff Koons is another debate about the nature of art, however the piece above for example is made of aluminium, yes even the inflatable turtles...... It's very accomplished. I suppose it needs to be said that I would have to exclude the " found art " from this comment, try as I might a vacuum cleaner mounted on two neon tubes " found " or not, doesn't come under my definition of art.

The museum attendants are very anal about photography in the museum and you are only allowed to photograph certain works and only from little green photo point symbols on the ground, so the photo above is of me, slightly rebelling and the resultant 'selfie ' happens to include Jeff Koons Lobster.

Ever since Lynne had read about Jeff Koons work when we were in Newry she had wanted to see it for herself little realising that the opportunity would occur so soon, of course we had to see that dog.......

Notice how we are standing on the green photo opportunity stickers? Infuriating isn't it? Talk about killing creativity, what are they scared of?

This piece is called ' Tulips ' obviously...

Between exhibition spaces I for one enjoyed the building itself, it's a fantastic puzzle with aerial walkways and unexpected views because of the strange geometry.

One of them revealed one of the biggest of the permanent exhibits and begged the question, which came first the art or the space?

  It's by Richard Serra and is called ' The Matter of Time ' the tiny figures in the photo above may give you some idea of the scale of this piece or rather collection of pieces. It's huge and wandering about in and through the twisted ellipses etc. Lynne found quite disconcerting. It supposedly ruminates on the physicality of space and the nature of sculpture freeing the sculpture from the pedestal or base and allows the viewer to experience a private space and time within a public space by exploring the real space within the piece.......................uuummmmmm?

We also looked around the other major exhibition by an artist called Jean-Michel Basquiat which to be honest both Lynne and I felt was just indulgent rubbish.

I offer this example and it's far from being the worst.

On a lighter note as we finally left the museum we found Jeff Kooms west highland terrier standing guard outside the building. It's impossible not to like this fella.....

As we walked across the bridge crossing the river we walked under yet another huge piece called red arches which unsurprisingly were.........red arches.

However something which wasn't in the catalogue was hiding under the bridge on the far side of the river.

In some respects this seemed more honest than a lot of the art we had seen that day.............hearts and minds........