Still Life with Sharon Fruit
Blackpaint
Barcelona – probably worth two blogs, although only there three days; we’ll see how it goes.
Sagrada Familia
Gaudi’s famous perpetually developing cathedral/folly – first visible from the south-west by two of its towers peering like Triffids over the surrounding roofs. In some ways, it’s a rather vegetable experience, both inside and out. The towers (seven, I think) are grey cucumbers; the columns inside are like giant sticks of celery. Some way up, they swell into diving helmet bulges, with lights behind glass windows (see below); from these bulges, the branches fork upwards, ending in thorn-like fingers slayed against the ceiling, reminiscent of Graham Sutherland’s paintings.
Over the main entrance, Christ appears to be about to launch himself from the high board. Other scenes from the crucifixion below the cross; the sad man, Christ dragging the cross, the mourners…
Giant celery and diving helmets
The stained glass inside is a stunning spectacle, washing the interior in piercing blues, reds, greens and gold. I thought it was all abstract, but you can detect figures in some of the designs, and there are one or two constellations. There is another crucifixion inside, with Christ hanging with bent knees and an Art Nouveau canopy which would look OK in a French period pub.
Outside again, to the other doorways, which are thickly encrusted in decorative carving and studded with statuary depicting other biblical scenes; the Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt et al. Also worth a mention is the Ascension of Christ, the figure perched on the bridge between two of the “Passion Towers” outside. See my sketch (rough – but not bad from about 80 feet below):
Miro Museum
Spectacular Bauhaus – type white building, in a spectacular setting, up Montjuic, the hill overlooking Barcelona. The chap below was on the door. Beautiful dark green bluff behind building, cedars, poplars…
The permanent exhibition covers much the same ground as the huge Miro exhibition in London from a few years back (see Blackpaint 222 and 262): the early farms and village squares that could be anyone; the blue, green and brown backgrounds with spidery line drawings; then into the familiar Miro territory of biomorphic shapes and blazing primary colour (my two favourites below);
The huge plain canvases with the wandering line, protesting the imprisonment and execution by garotte of the Anarchist in 1974; the black fireworks; the burnt canvases.
The large sculptures below brought home to me the similarities between Miro and Karel Appel. Since Miro was earlier, the influence must have been his on the Dutchman. The bird things, the staring eyes and bared teeth of the figures, the primary colours, the painting onto wood, the highly coloured shapes and like carnival figures on floats – the two artists share all these things.
The difference between the two – Appel’s extreme “painterliness” (I saw an Appel in St. Ives on which the paint must have been two and a half inches thick) while Miro’s surfaces are mostly smooth. He famously said he wanted to “assassinate painting”.
Miro
Appel (figures for The Magic Flute, CoBrA Museum, Amsterdam)
More on Barcelona – Picasso, MACBA -next blog.
Love is the Devil (John Mayberry, 1998)
Watched this again the other night after the BBC documentary on Bacon, which revealed that George Dyer’s death on a French hotel toilet before Bacon’s Paris exhibition was concealed for two days by Bacon and several of his entourage, to avoid spoiling the grand opening.
Derek Jacobi is astounding as Bacon – Bacon’s chin was more pointed, otherwise he was perfect. And so was Daniel Craig as Dyer; he’s wasted as Bond. Fantastic (imaginary) shots of Craig, bloody, flayed, tumbling forward as from a diving board.
Little Ice Fall
Blackpaint
3.2.17
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