If your wanderlust leads you to Bilbao, you will no doubt take that rare opportunity to visit one of the world's best contemporary art museums - The Guggenheim! I was not sure how I would feel about this place at first, or if it was worth the €11.00 to go inside (€6.00 for students - and I do not think they check ages!). Many reviews said it was not. Having taken the chance, I can honestly say, they are wrong - it was worth every euro-cent. It is also worth its own blog post! Come with an open mind - and comfortable shoes. Listen to the audio guides - though not all of them because that would take days you do not have. Most importantly, have fun getting lost in an alternative world of mind-boggling, terrifying, and humorous artwork.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is one of four famous institutions (one in New York, one in Venice, and one in Berlin) funded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to display and educate the general public about modern and contemporary art. In 1991, suffering economic decline in the Bilbao industrial region, the Basque government proposed to the Guggenheim Foundation that it would fund the $ 100 million construction of an institution, establish a $ 50 million acquisition fund, pay a fee of $ 20 million to the Guggenheim Foundation and subsidize the annual museum budget of $ 12 million. In exchange for this multi-million-dollar expenditure, the Guggenheim Foundation agreed to manage the museum, organize temporary exhibitions, and rotate its permanent collections through the site.
Frank Gehry, a Canadian-American architect renowned for his deconstructivist or neo-baroque style, was selected to design the building. Much like anything he has created, this building matches the art it holds by thinking far outside the box. Gehry’s first sketch of the titanium complex was, in reality a doodled line drawing on a hotel notepad. He made his therapeutic musings a reality through innovative technology: to make the bricks match the curves he sketched and seemingly defy all laws of physics, they were computer generated, and then cut with precision using the computer design. No two bricks were the same, and each fit like a glove. Not only did Gehry continue to defy architectural odds with his Guggenheim creation, he also came in under budget, with construction costs totaling $ 89 million. The museum was inaugurated by King Juan Carlos I in October of 1997. Nearly four million tourists patronized the museum before it was three years old, resulting in €500 million in economic activity for the area, not counting the €100 million in tax revenue it attributed to tourist growth. The Guggenheim Museum is now regarded as one of the most important architectural works in modern times, and rightly so.
Outside the museum, a few structures are worth pause and analysis. When arriving from the city center, your first understanding of what you are about to experience manifests itself with the confrontation of an intimidating, spindly-legged arachnid.
Maman (French for "Mother") is a sculpture composed of bronze, stainless steel, and marble, created by Louise Bourgeois in 1999. Standing over 30 feet tall, the work evoked fear in me as I contemplated the idea of it coming to life. To me, it seemed to be a monster - the exact opposite of what the artist had truly intended. Louise Bourgeois lost her mother - and her best friend - when she was just 21 years old. The spider was an ode to her mother, a strong yet fragile individual, a weaver, and her protector.
We continued our stroll along the perimeter, and things became more abstract. The Tall Tree and the Eye by Anish Kapoor (inaugurated in 2009) was situated on a platform in the shallow pool separating us from the museum. A steel structure of 76 reflective, polished spheres spiraling 15 meters into the air in a chaotic fashion, the structure reminds me of magnetic marbles I used to have as a child.
Ready for a more friendly, less abstract visualization, we rounded the corner of the museum and headed towards its main entrance were Puppy by Jeff Koons awaited our affection. Puppy is a West Highland White Terrier, bathed in a variety of flowers, and standing 43 feet tall. The work was originally commissioned for Arolsen Castle in Germany in 1992. Then, in 1995, it was dismantled and reassembled at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney Harbour, this time with a few upgrades - an irrigation system (which, to us, made the cute creature look like it was slobbering over its guests as water dripped from its chin) and an increase in plants, from 20,000 to 60,000. In 1997, it was purchased by the Guggenheim Foundation to be placed at its Bilbao location, and its most recent vacation was in 2000 at the Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Koons receives a decent amount of criticism for his art, which seems to carry a more simplistic, commercialized view of the world around it. He has made clear in interviews that he has no interest in hiding some deeper meaning in his works - that what you see and feel is what you get. I guess when people are used to spiders representing mothers and metal orbs representing - well, I am not sure I ever managed to understand that one - they become critical of superficial understandings and shallow pleasures such as joy or nostalgia. Refined art critics say the work juxtaposes the elite with mass culture by blending the concepts of topiary and dog breeding with that of chia pets and Hallmark greeting cards. The only juxtaposition for me was terribly wanting a puppy, and not yet having one.
Koons work is not limited to plants. He did a series of balloon animals (more fun-loving puppies!) made out of vibrantly-colored steel that sold at an auction for record-breaking amounts. His Tulips, created between 1995 and 2004 and also displayed at the Guggenheim, carried the same feel as his balloon animals, taking on a ballon-like shape, and using the same vibrant colors.
The wonder does not end when one enters the museums cornucopia of stone, titanium of glass, but rather it grows. Whether one loves contemporary art or absolutely despises it, it is worth it just to stand in the building’s Atrium (Gehry called it a flower, I call it a vertical labyrinth of mystery), and look up! Sorry, from here-on no photos were allowed inside the museum :(
And when your neck gets sore, you should absolutely continue on to the 120,000 square feet of exhibition space, starting with the largest of the nineteen gallery spaces, filled with the museum’s only permanent exhibit, Richard Serra’s “The Matter of Time” (2005). I am not a person who typically enjoys contemporary art. However, I decided to approach the Guggenheim with an open mind (and the free audio guide that comes with the visit), and I was rewarded greatly for it. Until I found myself lost in a maze of weathered steel twisting and turning without an apparent end, I could not see what would be magnificent about Serra’s work, what could make it worthy of international fame. I am without a doubt a believer now.
Apart from “The Matter of Time” a large number of galleries were dedicated to the dynamic works of Niki De Saint Phalle. As I walked from room to room I felt increasingly as if I was become lost in a grotesque representation of wonderland. Her art varied greatly from space to space, some festive mosaic structures honoring Rosa Parks in a quizzical caricature way, some with grotesque plasters of deformed women representing the mother she despised, some aiming guns at crucifixes to show her rejection of her Catholic upbringing, and a memorable dartboard holding up an ex-boyfriend’s shirt as what she called a form of voodoo art. Suppressed rage has made her famous.
On and on, for four hours and three floors, the exhibits continued to both impress and bewilder us, until we were starving and sore, and ready to begin our pintxo-hopping evening...
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