Spanish Connection

I wrote this in June, right after I got back from Barcelona. I believe I had intended to post it on the blog I was writing for at the Museum, but this was probably also around the same time they shut us down. So, here it is, out of hiding.

"Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’ve been M.I.A. from the blog for a little while. Reason being: I was in Barcelona! If you can remember a while back I had inkling to check out the Catalan capital, and my premonitions proved true. After a lot of fish-like, flip-flopping back and forth on whether it was a good time for me to go, I decided to buck up and take my flight. I travelled a good 15 hours by plane to Barcelona, Spain, solo again, and arrived there for my two week Spanish trek. If you’re familiar with Spain at all, you will know that it is very serious about claiming their artists as their own. So when I got there, there was no mistake that the likes of Picasso, Gaudi, Dali, and Miro had their roots in the city of Barcelona and other regions of Spain. Being an Art History major, I was pleased with this. Though, Barcelona had its not-so-finer points -- one being their not-so-welcoming attitudes-- I took comfort in the thought that there was still familiar personalities around me, those being of the artists I’ve studied in the past. Walking around the city I found myself interested in not just the museums, galleries, and institutions that preserve these artists work, but also the more contemporary connections that people are currently making with the artists. There was a lot of street art that portrayed or referenced different works, mostly Salvador Dali, around Barcelona and even parts of Granada, Spain. I came across a protest in a plaza in Barcelona (a common sight) that also referenced Dali’s work, and they were calling for an end to the death of the arts. Also in Barca, there was a high-fashion “pop-up” shop conveniently located next to one of Antoni Gaudi’s wild architectural creations, “Casa Batllo”, whose clothes, though most likely unintentional, seemed to channel the crazy color and gaudy pattern combinations that Gaudi’s work often does. In Granada, I attended a flamenco show in a small cave called “Le Chien Andalou”, which referenced the surrealist, short-film created by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel in 1929. I also found out that popular bands such as the Pixies and David Bowie have also used this film in their work—Pixies used “Un Chien Andalou”‘s content as lyrical material and Bowie actually showed the entire 16 minute film at the opening of his world tour shows in 1976 because “he felt that the film would more appropriately set the tone for the evening”. I guess what I’m getting at is that it was more exciting to see these artists being portrayed in a contemporary manner, by current creative-types who admire their work, rather than just seeing their work in stagnant museum spaces. "

Ciao,

Kiss