Years ago when I heard that there was more than one Guggenheim Museum, I immediately looked for a picture of the one in Bilbao, Spain.  When I saw it, I knew I had to go there.  In October 2015, Mom and I squeezed in a day visit to Bilbao on our way from Barcelona to Seville.  Four years later, I have just recently commuted from Valencia to Bilbao and back, for another one day visit.  I wondered if the museum’s initial spell would still hold.  And it did!  It was a true testament to good design having a lasting impact.  Here are some experiences from that wonderful day:

Remembering that a building doesn’t have to be a box

Riding the local bus from the airport, I eagerly looked out the window for my second ‘first glimpse’ of Frank Gehry’s imagination.  We turned a corner to drive over the red bridge and there it was – bold, bright, confident, and distinctive.  It is a good reminder of what each of us can be! 

I am impressed partly because in my own days at the drafting table, I was often told that my designs looked like barns. Perhaps I had a minimalist style, perhaps I was overly swayed by the cost of steel, perhaps I enjoyed the challenge of achieving maximum efficiency – perhaps it was just a blunt message to find a career that was ‘design-adjacent’! I respect how hard it is to design truly outside of the box, and to get an inhabitable, functional, sculptural vision implemented.  Even in the most supportive and progressive environments, there will be pushback, obstacles, budget constraints, and schedule pressures when doing something that doesn’t have a precedent and isn’t in the manuals.

I am impressed partly because it is beautiful.  I like his vision.  Every vantage is different, when looking at the building’s exterior or interior.  It is just as much an art exhibit as the permanent collection.  I see something different in it every time – choices of materials and where and how they are used, refractions of the exterior metal through windows and bouncing on the interior walls, and angles of staircases to create intimate nooks and imposing vaults.

I am grateful for this renewed reminder to challenge assumptions of what is normal.

Exploring sculpture that defies physics

Entering the museum, I went directly to the Richard Serra permanent exhibit.  This dedicated gallery on the first floor is a sensory oasis.  Through his career, Serra has continually pushed the boundaries of engineering and physics, finding ways to twist and turn large pieces of steel while still having them be free standing.  His combinations of torqued ellipses, spheres, spirals, and toruses, create unique pieces to experience as you walk through them.  With their height, tilts, concave/convex, angles, proximity to each other, etc. they test your senses.  I was slowing down when I was in shadows.  I was wondering if someone was coming my way when I heard voices but no one was around the next bend.  I was hearing my own footsteps sometimes, and sometimes not.  I was pausing when it looked like a dead end ahead even though I knew that the path continued.  I was focusing on keeping my balance on the flat concrete floor when I had steel leaning over me – was it pushing me?!

In one of the looping videos in the corner of the exhibit, the artist talked about the trust he had to build with engineers, manufacturers, and installers.  He would make models of his sculptures that would stand up, but that could not be replicated in any engineering software – they defied preset calculations.  This not only complicated fabrication, it also complicated how to lift the pieces to keep their shapes, and place them safely.  Sculpture that connects art with mathematics and construction – that gets my attention, and it was wonderful to have given myself the opportunity to be in the space for as long as I wanted.  (And wonderful that it was a relatively quiet random Wednesday.)

Similar pieces are all over the world*, so I hope that you see one, and have the time to really walk around it, and in it, and get a glimpse of what I’m talking about.

Believing that completely static wall art can move

Walking into a temporary exhibit called “Soto: The Fourth Dimension”**, I was curious what I would encounter.  I started reading some of the information on the walls, and following along with his early sketches.  I’m familiar with trompe l’oeil techniques – hasn’t everyone had an M. C. Escher print by the desk at some point?  I was skeptical of what could be accomplished with optical effects. Then I was mesmerized by piece after piece!  I kept hearing myself whisper, “So cool!” as I walked back and forth in front of the same piece three times.  More than once I went to the gallery wall to get a good profile view of a piece to confirm in my brain what was in front and what was background, and that it was all very much fixed in place.

Not everything, and perhaps nothing, is what it seems.  And magic, even (and perhaps especially) when you know the trick, can be beautiful.

Realizing that a camera can turn an audience into an art piece

Wandering through a gallery on the second floor, I was intrigued by a photograph.  It was called Aquarium, Atlanta 2013, and noted as 207.5cm x 357cm (6 feet 10 inches x 11feet 8 inches), it covered an entire wall.  The photographer, Thomas Struth, captured what probably happens every day at the Atlanta Aquarium – little kids pointing at fish in a huge fish tank and their parents watching them.  But now I was watching the parents watching the kids watching the fish.  Huh?!  This led me to an even larger work called Audiences.*** He captured museum patrons in Florence, Italy, as they looked at Michelangelo’s David, and he took the same photo multiple times, with different patrons.  Here I now was, looking at people looking at art.  In other words, looking at myself in that moment similarly standing in an art gallery and/or myself when I too visited the David??  The size of the photographs, and their clarity and details, are impressive and captivating.  Then add on these ironies with the content, and I have a new photographer on my favourites list.

It is easy to feel invisible in a gallery, with all eyes directed at the works on display.  Struth’s pieces awakened my awareness of my surroundings and that my being present in the gallery is what gives the art any meaning and purpose.

Smiling at a puppy

Strolling around the exterior of the museum, I was able to spend time with more pieces, like Tulips by Jeff Koons, Maman by Louise Bourgeois, and Tall Tree and the Eye by Anish Kapoor.  My favourite though is Puppy by Jeff Koons.  Some of my Remote Year traveling companions are “dog people” and they were really excited in Split, Croatia with the opportunity to play with shelter dogs on the beach.  I had no interest in participating that day.  But I have time for a dog that is over 12 meters (40 feet) tall, continually covered in flowers, and poised to play.  Changing colours with different flowers at different times of year is part of his charm.  He is impossible to hug, but that’s what I wanted to do the first time I saw him, and again this time.  So I just smiled and reveled in the joy that everyone around the puppy seemed to share.

The piece gets me outdoors and looking at flowers; gets me out of my head and grateful for natural beauty.

It was a wonderful day soaking in the vibrancy of art, visiting old ‘friends’ and meeting new ones, and returning to Valencia with a full and happy heart.

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* A piece called Tilted Spheres by Richard Serra is in Toronto Pearson International Airport, Terminal 1, Pier F.

** Here is a link to learn more about Jésus Rafael Soto and see some of his work, though it is hard to get the visual effects from a simple photo.  (Video was not allowed in the museum!) <https://www.wikiart.org/en/jesus-rafael-soto>

*** Here is a link to see the piece Audiences, by Thomas Struth, though it is hard to appreciate the dominating life-size scale of the photographs from a website. <http://thomasstruth32.com/smallsize/photographs/audiences/index>