Today it was raining pretty heavily in Bilbao so it was good
that we had planned to spend the day in the Guggenheim because the weather was
perfect for museum going. There were two
things that were featured in the museum; an exhibition of Egon Schiele’s early
drawing and Claes Oldenburg’s work during the 60’s. We both came away from the Schiele
presentation with a new appreciation for his work, even as stark and disturbing
as it is and secondly how fertile Oldenburg was in developing his particular
brand of creativity in that time period.
But what really stood out today for us the Richard Serra exhibition of
sculptures in massive iron constructions titled; ‘The Matter of Time’. We had seen TV presentations on it when it
was installed here but nothing prepared us for just how subtly powerful and
involving it is. He has created
sculptures that are comprised of iron plate walls 12 or 14 feet tall that have
been constructed in geometric forms through which the observer, us,
walks. There are about 6 different
shapes/installations/ mazes. The a set of walls subscribes a shape like a spiral
but each wall leans independently of the other and opens or closes the space
being traversed, so sometimes you feel closed in or open to the sky, or more
disturbingly like the floor is out of balance to the walls so you instinctively
lean to compensate. In the “spiral” shapes, when you reach the open center, it
feels so wide and open and large that it seems impossible it could be enclosed
in the space you’ve just walked through. If this is an incoherent explanation,
it’s because it was an unexpected and hard-to-describe experience. (Deb comments
that Serra is now her new favorite modern artist, hands down.)Just a little walk in the park
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