Madrid & Barcelona

I'm so over travel.

The people in Barcelona are so nice. Many towns have nice people, but are somewhat standoffish about tourism, but in Barcelona, they really appreciate the mixing of cultures that tourism brings. From the moment we showed up, we were treated as visiting royalty. This friendliness must derive from generally trusting and interdependent relationships with their surrounding neighbors as well. That being said, I am somewhat tired of travel, at least in the traditional tourist sense. Oh yay, your city has old beautiful Cathedrals with gaudy gold plated ugly art. You claim romantic meandering streets, I see filthy, uneven, dilapidated, narrow and overcrowded alleys. I bet you even have a museum or two. Well odds are those are boring or filled with crappy art. Noone cares that you had some people in the 60s that explored their sexuality by dumping paint on themselves, or someone in the late 80s who thought painting a canvas a single color was art. Yeah, and that guy that was born in your city that actually was a good artist? Well he probably left because your crappy city didn't appreciate him when he was around, and that's probably why your museum about him doesn't have any of his good stuff. You probably even have an old castle or two which might actually be cool, except that your country isn't a power anymore, and hasn't been since most likely the 1500s. And you of course won't talk about that. In Spain for five whole days, and not one mention of the Spanish Armada. Not ONE. Nevermind that its probably the most important battle in Spain's history, but noone mentions it. Oh sure, you sent off Columbus to the new world, and Ferdinand and Isabella and all that. Congratufuckinlations. Noone even seemed to know when the Spanish Armada was defeated. (8/8/1588 for those who are wondering). With that, I'll end my rant.

Madrid was actually full of nice people, unlike the Catalonians. There wasn't a whole lot in Madrid, but we had some great Mexican food, and saw the palace. Apparently Madrid was a tiny city until the last century. I can't really blame anyone for that -- there's no real reason for it to be anything special: no water, no natural beauty, just centrally located as a seat of government. Barcelona was a bit cooler. There was a really awesome church that has been under construction since the late 1800s, called La Sagrida Familia. Its unbelievably cool, and large. Gaudi started work on it, and realizing he had no chance of finishing it in his lifetime, he started making blueprints and plaster molds of how he wanted it to look. Then he got run over by a tram. No joke -- though its only mentioned sort of indirectly at the museum. Anyway, Gaudi sort of ran the show in Barcelona for a while, as he influenced all kinds of architecture there. He made some really cool apartments, designed an awesome park on the top of the highest hill overlooking the city, and of course the church. Anyway, the church really took off again in the early 1990s, when the Olympic money started pouring in. Apparently construction has just exploded since 2001, and they now hope to finish it by 2026. Seriously though, this thing is amazing. Its humongous. The aerial picture above is a couple of years old. A couple of the pictures were taken from the towers that we had to take a lift up to access.

The other cool thing in Barcelona, perhaps surprisingly so, was the Picasso museum. I really wasn't much of a fan of his stuff, but the museum was much more about him, and his progression as an artist, which was fascinating to see. They showed a whole bunch of his early stuff, which showed a lot of impressionism influences. Seeing his ability to paint quite compelling in that style made me appreciate his later cubism pieces, as it was quite clear that he could paint more traditionally pleasing art pieces, but chose instead to paint as he did. Viewed in this light, his later work became much more amenable to me, as I think I am a fan of imperfection. Generally perfection is pretty boring and stale. I mean, take college football for example. Having a playoff and declared national champ would be boring because the system would be "perfect." The more chaotic old bowl system provides much more enjoyment precisely because it is imperfect. Perfection is just too easy, too simple. Part of me wonders if much of academia exists precisely for this reason -- the "correct" answer is often too easy and boring, so intellectually gifted and astute person either consciously or subconsciously confuse the issue or devise abtuse and abstract ways of viewing the issue out of sheer boredom rather than any desire for knowledge or correctness. And while that sort of imperfection annoys me, in art I do believe I appreciate it. A perfectly crafted watercolor of a gorgeous sunset or stunning waterfall may be quite pleasing to the eye, but there's nothing to it. Its just a pretty picture without any real substance. Every now and again simple beauty is pleasant to admire, but it isn't going to compel deep thought, intimate conversation, or spiritual enlightenment, or whatever other phrase you want to use to describe what art is supposed to do to oneself. Anyway, that's about all I've got on the issue. And the weekend.



Next week to Brussels, Bruges, and Amsterdam.