Madrid, Spain – 06/11 – 06/12

(TJ)
We took a overnight train to Madrid, my neck was not in good shape after the train ride. I think they purposely design these seats so you can only lean back just enough that you start to fall asleep and then you wake up as your neck snaps from falling to one side or the other. Since this was the case I decided to try something someone else was doing, sleeping on the tray table that pulled out from the seat in front of you. Sure it feels good at first as you cross your arms and put your head on top. Then you wake up and your arms have fallen totally asleep and your neck is still screwed up and you’re totally disorientated. Has the CIA looked in to using these as non-torture torture method I think it would be highly effective.

We only spent two days in Madrid and went to the Prado museum and the Reina Sofia. After visiting the Reina Sofia I’ve decided that my calling is modern art. I can put five black dots randomly on a white canvas and call it a priceless work of art or just paint a canvas one color and viola its worth millions. I don’t know why I did not think of this before. The Prado has more of the older pieces of art, my favorite was “The Triumph of Death” by Brueghel in which a skeleton army was killing all sorts of people regardless of class or trade. They also had some what I would call surrealist painting from the middle ages with very imaginative interpretations of Heaven and Hell, the Garden of Eden, Creation of Earth, very imaginative for the middle ages.

(here is a link to an example of TJ’s favorite modern art pieces: http://www.spanisharts.com/reinasofia/miro/e_paisaje.htm)

(Michelle)
While the Prado is home to a wide range of artists, it fittingly has large collections of Spanish artists including, Velazquez, Goya and El Greco (Greek but painted in Spain). (On a side note, the Prado had 2 rooms of Titian). No photos allowed, so I have to go on memory. The one that was my favorite to see was “Las Meninas” by Velazquez. As I mentioned in my Barcelona entry, we saw a whole room at the Picasso museum where he re-created pieces of the Las Meninas, so it was pretty cool to see the actual painting. My second favorite was the two paintings by Goya called “La Maja Desnuda” and “La Maja Vestida”, where he depicts the same woman laying on a couch naked and clothed. He originally painted her nude and then due to outrage of the nude painting, he painted a second one with her clothed (refusing to paint over the original). During the 1815 Spanish inquisition, he was stripped of his title as court painter, as he allegedly wouldn’t reveal who commissioned the nude painting. Scandalous. It seems to me that nudes have been painted throughout time, so I don’t get the big deal with this one.

The Reina Sofia: The modern art that TJ and I are not big fans of was one floor in this museum. My least favorite modern art piece was a series of 6 clay statues that might be urinals. On another much better floor, there was a large Salvador Dali hall, which was very good. As the second largest exhibit of Dali I’ve seen (first was the Dali museum in St. Petersburg Florida), they had pieces like "El Gran Masturbador" and some nice pre-surrealist paintings of his sister. Other pieces I liked on this floor: Ponce De Leon “Accidente”, Pablo Picasso “Guernica”, and Pablo Gargallo’s statues of Greta Garbo.

We went to some tapas restaurants and also had a couple beers with some people from the hostel, but other than that, the art museums were the main focus in our short time in Madrid.