May 30—Surrealismo, Sketching El Greco, and el Flamenco!

Dear Family and Friends:

Oh, joy to be writing in real time finally! Martha and Dani had a great day today, continuing to take advantage of their annual pass to the art museums with a return to Reina Sofia and el Prado. We have paid off one of the two passes already with our visits! WOO HOO for frugal use of funds to get us into cool places.

Our day started with a visit to Reina Sofia that was not very long, it turned out, just a couple of hours into the afternoon. We managed only rooms 9 and 10 on the second floor: the land of the 1930s Surrealists. Dani has been a fan of Salvador Dali since her first visit to this museum 15 years ago, with his dream scenes and intricate details in the background of social commentary, or psychological images that are not supposed to be explained. We thoroughly enjoyed a series of his paintings, such as Senicitas, Monumental imperial a la mujer nina, El enigma por fin, and El enigma de Hitler.

Beyond room 9 where Dali was surrounded by other late-1930s followers of the surrealist philosophy—describing the dominant nature of the mind and that artistry can somehow capture the intricate inner-workings of the mind—was room 10 … where photographic images also sought to capture these ideas. Dali was friends with a 1930s/1940s photographer/filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who skillfully captured biographical images of members of the Surrealist movement that were displayed around room 10, in front of a cinema room. An introduction to the room explained that the films were exceedingly controversial in their time, with strong sexual undertones and violent/incomprehensible images. We sat down to watch both Un Chien Andalou (also: Un Perro Andaluz, from 1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930). And our lives will never be the same.

The only people who stayed to watch the entirety of the two films included ourselves and a father and son who spoke whispered French in the seats behind us. What did we have the pleasure of witnessing that so warped our minds that we had to leave the museum to digest what had happened in those films? What imagery could have left us with such an overwhelming mindset of “huh what?”

What a treat to have found the former film—the shorter and, amazingly, more comprehensible of the two—on the World Wide Web, just so that we can share the experience with you!! How exciting!! Click here for the about-sixteen-minute experience … or just watch the first five minutes to understand where we’re coming from in describing our experience as mindbending. Honestly, we somewhat enjoyed the strangeness of Un Chien Andalou, and it was L’Age d’Or that set us over the edge. What can I say but that it’s a French film?? I have a feeling that we still would have been at a complete loss had we understood the dialogue in the movie.

Leaving the building immediately after watching these movies, Dani’s head was about to spin off, and it was time for lunch! We had packed chorizo and queso and purchased a loaf of bread on our way to the museums in the morning, so enjoyed the afternoon sunshine with sandwiches and confused looks on our faces. We agreed it was time for some realism and headed to el Prado.

Dani wanted to find a particular artists’ group of work that we had skimmed over the last visit, but we took the long way in finding it, first going through new territory: Flemish works in the right wing of the building’s third floor; through the Romanesque sculptures pre-dating Christ; past a couple of new Tintoretto paintings that had replaced a wall of his art that we had seen last week; into the 1400 to 1550 wing with its Sarto, Parmigiano, Raphael, Correggio, and Messina retratos and religious paintings; and upstairs to find Rubens, Velazquez, el Greco, and Dani’s man—who turned out to be Tiziano once again! Tiziano’s use of darkness was particularly impressive in his 1547 Ecce homo, and Martha particularly liked the perspective in La gloria. Dani found the little boy peeing on the sleeping woman in La bacanal de los andrios particularly amusing.

Martha sat down to enjoy sketching one of el Greco’s renditions of Christ’s life: La anunciacion, which is just gorgeous with the bright colors of the Madonna, the angel messenger, the Holy Spirit, and the host of angels overlooking the heavenly announcement of the virgin birth. Martha’s new sketch pad (she bought a proper dibujo/sketch pad, pencil sharpeners, and three amazing gummy erasers for three euro at the local Chinese market) has some tick marks on the side that she found very helpful in getting decent perspective in this first round of sketching. Perspective has never been one of her strong points in art, so this is quite a challenge … to actually fit the masterpiece in the proper framework!! (Yeah, most of you have seen Martha's short-armed rendition of a Henry VIII painting that hangs in the basement at our house.) She got a decent start on the sketch, but looks forward to returning to work on it some more!

Before we knew it, it was 5 PM, which we had somehow gotten into our heads as ‘closing time’. So, we picked up our tools and got a-going, only to learn that the museum was open until 8 PM!! No worries, though, because we can return there ANY TIME with the annual pass!

Back up the hill, we stopped at a grocery store to get more supplies, specifically some of the items that we have found ourselves buying in-town: croquetas, calamari, more chorizo for sandwiches, vino at $.45 a box, juices for the mornings, milk, and helado, finally, for Dani (little bars in a variety pack of 12 that will last us a week, or at least a couple of days)!

At home, Martha worked on the new blog posting and chatted online with Buford, distracting him from work, while Dani succumbed to the afternoon siesta in preparation for their night out! For today is Wednesday and the Lonely Planet says that there is free flamenco to be had!!

The Lonely Planet was indirectly right-on, as Cardamomo charged us five euro to get in the door, but gave us a free comp for one of their five dollar (!) Heinekens. (What is this, Norway!?) Anyway, we enjoyed a lovely evening watching the dancing, taking photos and video, and chatting with Claire, a wonderful grad student from Australia who has been studying for her Master’s Degree in anthropology at a university in Boston and is about to go to Japan for a year to use her degree before returning to her home in Australia. Interesting, very pretty lady, from a background of Polish on her mom’s side and Burmese/Japanese on her father’s side. Martha was the first person that she’d met who has actually been to Burma!

The singing, guitarra playing, and dancing were impressive, although not very long-lived. Dani and Martha took some video, too, of the performance, and here is a link to the five-minute video, posted on YouTube. Baile!

Much love,

Martha and Dani