Happy Constitution Day!

December 6th, the Spanish Constitution Day, is a national holiday much like the 4th of July is celebrated in in the US.  Though I don't think there are fireworks.  Regardless, this is one of the few days of the year when all the museums are free, so I decided to take advantage and take a look around the National Museo Reina Sophia, which I suppose is closest akin to a modern art museum.

The building itself is quite cool.  It was a hospital in the 18th century, but has had a lot of remodeling done, most recently three glass elevators that zoom you up to the correct floor.  The entire thing is square with an outdoor courtyard in the center, so you'd think that going through each exhibit would just be a matter of circling around to see the entire thing.  Not so.  It's super easy to get lost or to miss a few rooms if you don't know where you're going or paying attention to room numbers.  There is also an addition building attached that has an awesome terrace that was fun to explore even on a freezing cold night.

I'll just start by saying that there was a lot of odd modern art going on inside.  I decided on a whim to start at the top floor, which turned out to be the most modern of the modern art, and subsequently moved backward through time as I went.

They had expositions on both art as language and sound, both of which were kind of unexpected and interesting.  I didn't realize that there had been a whole artistic movement about language and writing and the symbols we use to represent sounds.  I really liked a lot of the pieces in that exhibit, maybe just being a language person and all.  I'm kind of interested in experimenting when I get back now.  And the sound pieces were pretty cool too.  There were a lot of rooms that you would walk into and hear shouts or murmurings, or dark rooms with videos of people talking and reading aloud.

There were a number of other strange rooms, such as one that had apparently trucked in gravel and sand and set up a beach area, complete with alive, occasionally shrieking birds.  Another room had rows and rows of water goblets set up, and yet another had parts of picture frames spread across the floor in a seemingly random pattern.  There was also a section of the museum dedicated to sexual freedom (though that was a no-pictures-allowed area no doubt due to the more graphic nature of the exhibitions).  There were a number of photos too, many documenting war and atrocities committed.  There was also a section on art propaganda, which I always find interesting.  Really makes me want to work on my art skills.

La convaleciente, by Maria Blanchard

Nature morte cubiste, by Maria Blanchard

 Down on the lower levels there were, of course, the obligatory paintings of more traditional 20th century art, before art went abstract beyond the frame.  Cubism was one of the major movements, and there were a couple of Picassos, a number of Barques and an entire exhibit dedicated to the works of Maria Blanchard, who I found fascinating as an artist.  She had a lot of different periods for her work, producing a wide variety of paintings from the strict line cubist to lovely and very Spanish images of people.  I also saw another side of Picasso that I appreciated a bit more than his more signature work of people.  After seeing so many traditional paintings, I kind of like how everything in a cubist painting isn't immediately obvious, and how, even in different colors and jagged angles, objects can still look like objects.

Les oiseaux morts, by Pablo Picasso

The most popular place of the night was obviously the section of the second floor that had the exhibition on the Spanish civil war, with art and photos from that time.  It was interesting to see art both for and against Franco coupled together, as well as everything just about Spain and their lifestyle and way of thinking then.  Picasso's famous painting Guernica was on display, which shows the cost of war on its often innocent civilians, and which specifically depicts the civil war.  Considering the day was about celebrating the end of the war, I think it was a pretty fitting place to end my tour of the museum remembering all that was lost and gained.

After, I made my way over to the Teatro Espanol and bought a ticket for Yo Soy Don Quixote de La Mancha, seeing that the book Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes, seems to be the most famous and popular piece of Spanish literature around, and the one that everyone here seems to reference.  Shakespeare isn't that popular here, maybe because his archic form of English is even more difficult to read than normal English, and any translator would have quite a difficult time putting the same level of word brilliance into another language.

I ducked into a bar for some sangria and carne empanadas before the show at a very strange but good pub, then went back to the theater, prepared for Spanish language.  I already knew the plot of the story, but unfortunately for me, they had put a bit more of a modern twist on it, which made things a little harder to follow, but I got along all right.  There were times when I actually worried for the older actor playing the delusional Don Quixote (who is apparently a very famous and well-regarded Spanish actor, the mother told me), because if he actually forgot his lines like he seemed to every now and then, who would know if it was an act or if he was just actually really old and feeble?  It was a masterful performance, and I'm definitely glad I went, even though I'm certain I didn't get all the subtleties.

That left just enough time to walk back to Princpie Pio through Puerta del Sol and La Plaza Mayor, where all the Christmas lights were lit, the stores open late, and people were dancing in the streets for the fiesta.