Guggenheimlich Manoeuvres (Bilbao)

Member Name: theediscerning

Product:	Bilbao
Date:	04/10/04 (211 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Childhood dreams came true

Disadvantages: The op mentions many, why not give it a try?

Many yonks ago, when theediscerning was a nipper, he took a map of Europe, and chose nearly at random a selection of places he'd like to visit when older. Out of a few in Iberia, Bilbao, on the northern Spanish coast was one. Why? "England played their opening World Cup 1982 game there."

Needless to say, it was a different reason that prompted theed's visit to the town in the summer of 2004. Yes, it was a guided tour of the whole country. And the reason so many similar tours pass through is the subject of this op, the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao.


THE BUILDING

If you haven't seen or heard of the building involved with the Museum, then you share a great affinity with Helen Keller. It is a very large sprawl of forms, shapes and surfaces, in what appear to be metal tiles, probably because they are metal tiles. Memory and many a TV programme on the place focus on the fact that the rounded curves and sprightly angles form some sort of wave pattern, or a billowing flower blossom.

What the memory ignores is the awful lump of square, brick-shaped blocks that are also attached to the museum. These do however lurk, and from close up become more apparent to the wandering eye.

Enter through the main doors and the forms of the outside are mirrored within, with a bulging atrium, featuring a tower reminiscent of one outside, and many angled exits to galleries. One of these is surely the largest gallery that one could wish for, an aircraft hangar of a space, which they do manage to fill with adequately gigantic artwork.


THE VISITOR EXPERIENCE

For some strange reason, in this day and age, the entrance is hidden from street level, down a whole host of shallow stone steps. On an architectural level this surely separates the passer-by from the art, if one cannot see people leaving having been culturally entertained. On a sensible level, are disabled people and wheelchair users still supposed to cherish the fact they have a different way in?

The ingress is through some strong security. Bags will be checked and taken off you, cameras will be given a hard-to-remove plastic bag covering, so no photographs of the artwork can be taken. There is one desk for each of these things, as well as the actual paying, and a further one for picking up the audio guide.

Happily the last can be completely ignored, for being utterly useless. Get the chap started on the interior of the atrium, and 20 minutes on you're still there, hugging the walls at his behest, or hammering your head into them if not. You can key in a code next to a select few works of art, but of course Uncle Sod and his law state they'll be the selection you have no interest in. Much of the work has Spanish and English panel descriptions anyway.


THE ARTWORK

You don't get to be a Guggenheim museum without owning some prime modern art. However it is more a case of finding it. The galleries are arranged in very higgledy-piggledy fashion ~ the inside is more successful than the outside in abandoning straight lines, and none of the walkways, paths or gantries are direct. There is even what they proudly call a "hidden gallery" ~ a cube half-way up the interior tower. It's about as hidden as a supernova in a very dark room.

The Guggenheim Bilbao's very dark room is home to one of the more visible artworks present. An array of banners of vertical display units celebrate something or other with a stream of bright words, in various languages, both front and back, scrolling past at moderate pace. It's one of the few works that are permanently on display, as even the permanent collection is only that by name ~ swapping, changing and being put out in themed exhibitions.

Even in the huge long gallery there have been changes. And when you consider the art featured there at the time of the visit under review included hundreds of tons of the least engaging Edward Serra metal sculpture, the changes are not made lightly. Around it were Warhols, an unexpected Liechtenstein, and more.

The main focus on the publicity for the Bilbao is invariably the list of temporary exhibitions, which last a few months or more. These can be on a whole variety of themes, from Wim Wenders cinematography, to the most celebrated American pop artist.

But to discuss this further, one must turn from a general overview to a whole telling of the experience theed had at the Guggenheim.


THE THEED VISIT

The museum was approached with great trepidation. With just a couple of hours of fleeting visit to spare, would enough be seen to make the entrance worthwhile? Would the party get lost in those hours, considering the size of the place?

Taking the guidebook in hand, it was seen in 2003 the entrance was 7 Euros, or some such reasonable fee. Glance at the displays before entry, and find it is 12 Euros all of a sudden. Hmmm, some price hike. Engage the multilingual ticketer in conversation, and find it will actually be 8 Euros, as a lot of the galleries are not able to be seen, due to a new temporary exhibition arriving over the next weeks.

So the 8 Euros duly handed over, the place is experienced. The central atrium is OK, it might be nicer but we're still stuck experimenting with the audio guide, remember? The main gallery is impressive, although the Warhols are very poor (as per...) and the rest hit and miss. The central snake of towering metal is very mediocre, and like walking through a metal alley somewhere oop north. Not very aesthetic, and no washing hanging out.

On the first floor, we can start to see the problems with the place. As far as one can tell from the free floor plan, which has a busy-ness about it necessary because of the architecture, here is where "A Hidden Picasso" will be. It's not arrived yet, so that part is closed. The entire top floor has a lot of the permanent exhibitions on, in several large galleries. There are great names listed, so they'll be good. Except the whole floor is out of bounds, because of the incoming artworks. So too is a lot of the first floor, which although not supposed to have much of the permanent collection, is still a shame.


There now follows a mini diatribe against the artwork that *was* seen, and especially against the reasons for that which was *not* seen.


It is a great pity that one of the most highly budgeted, well-planned, computer-designed art galleries in the world cannot have the sense to have a way to install visiting artwork that does not entail cutting whole sections from view. Yes of course the art must be secure in transit, arrival and installation, and with a building that has a "ground level" on about three floors access must be awkward, but surely a floor and a half of restriction cannot be necessary?

What is all the more galling is that the incoming material was a Mark Rothko exhibit. The most valueless and uninteresting modern American artist with his out-of-focus fields of monotone, getting in the way of Dali and many other works of *Spanish* genius? That takes the tapa, it really does.

So, there is the ticker-tape type lettered display, a few selections in the long gallery, and that is about it for the permanent collection. The only temporary one visible, as the Rothko is still arriving and the Hidden Picasso is still just that, is a retrospective of James Rosenquist.

Not a name tripping off the man on the Clapham omnibus's lips, Rosenquist turns out to have been rather a name in American circles from the 1960s on. Recently he has been expanding and expanding his canvasses, and they now approximate in size to the aforementioned bus, but only if it is a double-decker. He paints in photo-realistic clarity, but a great majority of his work is just vacuous, meaningless juxtaposition and abstract appropriation of nature, cheap sci-fi images and some "meaning". Like so much modern art, it's nonsense until you walk (half a mile from the adequate viewing distance) to the panel and read the title. The obvious thing to do is to dispense with the canvas and just have the titles.


This diatribe ends with the warning that its author still thinks that Guernica, seen elsewhere in Spain, is some over-hyped graffiti, and the review continues.


And so that's about all that could be seen of the museum, barely a third of the number of rooms, and given the size of the lower main hall, almost half of the space. To be honest, we were informed of this beforehand, but to have such a reason for losing so much is still disappointing, whatever was paid.

The party then trudged off to the gift shop, all three floors of it ~ one focussing on souvenirs, and gradually going down to the more serious art books and publications. Of course the souvenirs were of more interest, and there was a great selection, but at what a price. The art postcards are 90 cents, twice the national going price, and about as third as thin ~ they define flimsy.

The main focus of the entire gift-shop is a subject we've not broached in this op yet, a huge puppy, officially called "Puppy" but given a nickname that's lost in the mists of memory by now, which sits proudly at the museum entrance, and is coated with tens of thousands of flowers. (Of course, from the official description, he's "about" man's relationship with God. And not a flowery Duluxy puppy-wuppy at all.)

The discerning party were lucky to arrive when he had been given a new coat of blooms, and he did look spankingly kitsch, and a lot better than the representations on the souvenirs. But as cool as he might look, and as handy a landmark and selling point of the musem as he is, there's a small problem with the Guggenheim relying on him, which they don't advertise ~ he's second hand. Jeff Koons made him for one of Kassel's documenta shows, and they clearly didn't want him enough to pay the foliage bills.


Anyway, theydiscerning have duly left the building by the bottom entrance to the gift-shop, less well staffed, but still secure, to prevent people entering the galleries on a free. Which brings us to...


HEY THEED, THIS IS A CATEGORY ABOUT THE CITY AS A WHOLE, NOT JUST THE MUSEUM.


Well, let's explore then ~ we still have time. But where are we? We're round a corner of one of those metal bricks the mental image of the place ignores. Let's turn this way, and see where we are.

Where we are is walking along the riverfront that the Guggenheim is now the most famous and obvious landmark of. Wide open promenades and small tidy features mark the area out ~ or that is to be hoped, as it wasn't finished when this visit was made. We're walking around the 'back'(?) of the museum, with views of the flowery curves, and even a stem made from a stand-alone shade-giving structure.

We now seem to be walking a very long way ~ of course, we must go round the long gallery. But here's something huge to occupy our interest, but woe is us, it's another cast-off, Louise Bourgeois's gigantic horror spider (she's bearing young but she's still a horror spider) which the Tate Modern's turbine room famously opened with.

Get to the end of the complex, and we're at the foot of the exterior tower mentioned oh-so-many paragraphs ago. Climb up inside this, and you reach a bridge, and emerge on to the busiest, least tourist-friendly roadway north of Barcelona.

Avoiding the hellish junctions there doesn't give us much time to see the rest of the town, although the guidebook, very accurate about everything except the entry fee (oh, and the Irish pub in Pamplona has moved across the street), doesn't have much to recommend anyway. But we can get a small feel of the town by seeing its sense of fun and public spirit. All along the riverfront, which is a much larger area than that near the museum, is a whole host of man-sized pigeons, painted in gaudy themed colours ~ blue sky and clouds, hippy symbols, etc. This is a bigger gallery than the Guggenheim can provide, it's all open, it's free, and it's probably better art.


So this review cannot discuss the town in full, but from what was seen a comparison can be made. Which is, briefly ~ go to Valencia instead. There the whole dried riverbed is worthy of perambulation, and miles and miles of it have interest, especially the new tecnhology park at the SE corner. A fabulous collection of the most unique buildings, an IMAX, aquarium, science museum and Expo hall, and an arena really do create an out-of-this-world ultra-modern and fun district.

As opposed to the very over-rated, fussy and pointless modern architecture Frank O Gehry created in Bilbao. Theed had never been sure whether he liked the building or not, and seeing it in the flesh (or titanium) he decided he didn't.

He wouldn't have liked it had the experience inside been fabulous either. Yes, this is not the most comprehensive survey of the place, as nothing was eaten nor drunk, and nothing bought (at those prices?!). The loos are good, the disabled access questionable from the off with the different entrances the steps demand. It's hoped no further price increases are planned ~ didn't the Guggenheim start because some American had too much money on his hands in the first place?

Other people didn't seem too keen on the experience either, whether they seemed terribly au fait with modern art or otherwise. It wasn't just theydiscerning who found the whole set-up (or should that be setting-up?) underwhelming.

We end with a brief description of the most popular and widely-looked at exhibit in the whole place. It was the touch-screen computer monitors displaying the building of the musem.


http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm for more info, and details of the exhibitions. You'll be pleased to hear the Rothko isn't coming *out* at its own pace for a while...

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