Yesterday was a time of cultural overload.
Starting in La Caixa Madrid with a beautifully photographed exhibition of pollution. The photographs chart a sickening variety of the ways in which the planet has been polluted and the ways that people have to live off that pollution. The photos are impressive and almost because of their professional attractiveness unbearably sad. Children are shown sorting rubbish; whole populations literally living on rubbish, smoke pouring into the atmosphere from various polluting industries.
Some of the most touching photographs show the devastation which came with the disaster in Chernobyl. An ariel photo shows the ghost towns which have been abandoned because of the contamination.
There were also success stories: the cleanup of inner London and the improvement in the water quality of the Thames and the remarkable improvement in some Indian cities after only a decade of more sensitive environmental improvements.
One or two photos stood out because of the housing in the background – instantly recognizable as British; a little tug of emotional recognition dashed as the subject of the photos turned out to be the proximity of housing to toxic nuclear installations in Britain.
Altogether a thoughtful and provocative exhibition.
It was something of a relief to get out into the sunshine of Catalunya, the centre (albeit more polluted that the centre of London) of Barcelona.
One of the good things about going “culturing” with a diabetic is that the option to plough on regardless, ignoring the human demands of sustenance, is not an option.
I was therefore delighted to stop in a coffee and cake shop in the Ramblas which I had often passed and never patronized. Its quaintness appealed but the truly appalling service more than repelled.
Ignoring past experience I recklessly ordered tea.
The pot, when it eventually arrived was armed with a tea bag like a small bolster and, in spite of my urgent agitation of said object, I was unable to produce anything more than a truly insipid liquid which was instantly turned to ecru by the most modest addition of milk.
The cake, which took even longer to arrive and needed the attention of three waitresses, was duly consumed and thus fortified we progressed further down the Ramblas.
The ostensible reason for coming to Barcelona was to see the pictures that had been produced for Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Pat Andrea.
With a charcoal drawing of Alice with an elongated and twisted neck stretching from the ground floor flowing up the staircase wall to the exhibition on the first floor the visitor is given a taste of what is to come.
The pictures themselves are variously startling and languorously beautiful. He uses mixed media in his large canvasses with watercolour, pastel, charcoal and gold jostling on the surface with various stuck on additions of paper and card.
The portrayal of Alice is of a very knowing yet innocent girl whose overt sexuality reminds one of Balthas – with all the uncomfortable underage sexuality that the comparison implies!
This is a reinterpretation of the iconic Tenniel images, though perhaps not as radical in their differences as I might have expected.
The images are disturbing, funny, provocative and unsettling. The most painstakingly rendered and finished portrayal of flowers might be juxtaposed with a rough sketch like outline of a person. The vitality of the productions jumps from every canvass.
This was an exhibition which encouraged possessiveness and there were a few pictures that I would have liked to have taken away with me – especially one of Alice in a puddle of hair!
Then it was time for lunch.
As ever in Suzanne’s hands when it comes to places in Barcelona I was encouraged to try a meal in the restaurant of the Maritime museum at the very bottom of the Ramblas.
The setting is frankly startling as the Restaurant is situated in one of the vast glass and brick domed shipbuilding structures that make up the museum.
The meal was at the right level of pretentiousness that I enjoy: cold sandia and prawn curry soup, followed by pescaditos and ice-cream (though those last two served separately) with a glass of cold white wine to wash it all down.
Then, through the winding, stickily hot and terminally confusing streets of the gothic quarter, to the textile museum for another glass of white wine. Well deserved after our negotiating the labyrinth of odd passageways.
Liberlis is our wine of choice. It is very sweet, but served ice cold is an absolute delight. We discovered this wine in the winter and we have been faithful to it ever since!
Our teachers’ passes got us into the wallpaper exhibition where the most interesting wall covering also came with a hair dryer so that you could make the outer apparel of the muscular gentlemen posing on the wall disappear revealing muscular legs and fetching underpants. I think that we must have come towards the end of this particular exhibition as the clothes of the men were rather ghostly having been mostly warmed away!
I was not impressed with this display though I always pay lip service to the applied arts and am prepared to do my duty!
The other exhibition in the same building was of computer produced three dimensional objects. Film showed people “painting” with light pens and their “objects” then being made by computer. There were also objects produced by “printing” by computers. This was an exhibition where the possibilities of the technology were breathtaking though the objects produced so far less so.
Even going to Suzanne’s flat for “a little something” (and red wine this time) the culture did not stop. We watched with the true thrill of horror a terrifying short film entitled something like, “How to clean your office.”
It was, you will be unsurprised to learn, an American film with a very confident young man browbeating a shell-shocked lady head teacher as he encouraged her to denude her office of everything which made it an office.
His approach to her secretary’s office was just as Draconian and produced convulsive gulps of horror from the pair of us as we recognized all the signs in our own situations which were clear indicators of the lack of “impeccability” that was the aim of the Confident Young Man.
Watching a “TED” video about population growth (vividly illustrated with a series of IKEA plastic boxes) was positive light relief!
Home and a quick shower and it was time to ferry a couple of generations of The Family to the airport and then to go out for dinner with Irene.
A full day!
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