4 days in Madrid - wow - an amazingly vibrant city - a great way to eat and in general exist - gotta love the small plates and 'brunch' beer. Eating your way through the evening/night in bars with plates of extraordinary food - highlights include - squid sandwiches - fried pigs ear - and of course patatas bravas but I could just list everything I ate. Spending time with 'old art' in the big 3 galleries is mind blowing. "Oh that's where it is" becomes a common refrain' especially in the Prado. The highlights from your knowledge of art history come thick and fast - Goya and his depiction of the Royal Family, did he actually like any if his sitters? Raphael's history paintings, Bosch's interior world in the garden of earthly delights, Caravaggio's brooding world view, a room of Zurbaran's still lives containing objects you feel you could pick up, the details in the clothes that Velazquez sitters are wearing. I was transfixed by the red eyes of an onlooker in Van der Weyden's descent from the cross, obviously previously upset but now trying to hold back tears. The luminescence of Fra Angelica's The Annunciation takes your breath away. There are a couple of strands of research to embark on - the labels in Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia were extraordinary, a work in themselves, something to consider. I thought about the idea of the witness, the one person slightly outside the main focus, towards the edge of a painting or photograph sometimes looking out at the viewer. What were they doing there? How did they get there? What are they thinking? Again something that has previously occupied my thoughts - how hands are used, what are they holding? The meaning, the symbolism of the objects that would of been understood, now lost to the majority of viewers. How blood is depicted in paintings, if you were nailed would the blood look like it does in say a Durer or would it be more like the slain in Goya's The Execution's? Other notes include - Walking with bread / objects on your head after watching Louis Bunuel's L'age d'Or Extraordinary titles of organizations - for example - the Crossbowmans guild of Louvain, The grand cross of the order of the reunion. If the rules are that there are no rules what are the rules? A need to find out about the Strappo technique of removing murals and the meaning if the sticks/staffs held by the members of the Royal Family in Velazquez paintings. To look again at the knots used to tie up Jesus. The idea of the thread of life controlled by the fates in Goya's black paintings. The list goes on - lots of breathing in, there is a need to breathe out, can't wait to get into the studio.
