A Visit To The Guggenheim (Bilbao)
After a picnic lunch by the beach at San Sebastian we caught the bus to Bilbao, which is about 2 hours away. The main point of our trip to Bilbao was to visit the world famous Guggenheim Museum. We didn't visit the one in Berlin or Venice but thought that we'd expand our minds a little and take in some culture and modern/contemporary art. It's gotta be good stuff if its in the Guggenheim right?
The bus terminal was a fair bit away (not that Bilbao is huge) but we eventually made it to the museum, which is that weird looking shiny silver thing. It was designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry and is his most famous building. That's the Guggenheim Dog (aka Puppy) guarding the entrance. How cute.
Gehry seems to be one of those people that are fascinated with shiny things.
He likes curves too.
You aren't allowed to take any photos inside the museum which is a shame as they had some very cool things. These included Richard Serra's massive walk-through "The Matter of Time" work. We really liked the Color Field Painting exhibit. It's got some really pretty abstract paintings playing with colours and different techniques of painting. They even had some works which we've already seen before at the Tate Modern in London. As is our opinion of a lot of contemporary and modern art, some of the works were weird or just plain sucked. They did have a really cool exhibition on African art, which included some very colourful paintings, cute traditional sculptures and even robots.
This is one of the outdoor works. Its Fujiko Nakaya's water-fog sculpture entitles "Fog Sculpture #08025". It's just one of the pedestrian bridges outside which produces fog every ten or so minutes. Trust me to be cynical but it sounds like she's got at least 8,025 of these things. Maybe she's trying to say something about putting some magic into the everyday. Who knows. Moving on...
That's the "La Salve Bridge". It's the Guggenheim's ten year anniversary next year and they're running a competition called "Pimp My Bridge". They have some models from artists which you can vote for to have their ideas and visions on how the bridge should be decorated to commemorate their anniversary. And no, it's not really called "Pimp My Bridge". I thought it was a cool name.
Some fancy shots.
GacK! A spider!! This is Louise Bourgeois' work curiously entitled "Maman" (those of you who know French will know that this means "mum").
Closing time and after a tram ride and a quick stroll through the old town of Bilbao, we ended up at this cool cafe called Cafe Iruña. It was recommended in the Lonely Planet and is done up in the same Arabesque style as the Alhambra (which we'd be visiting in a few more days time).
It's a cool little place with lots of atmosphere that you can sit and relax in and wait for the overnight train back to Madrid.
The bus terminal was a fair bit away (not that Bilbao is huge) but we eventually made it to the museum, which is that weird looking shiny silver thing. It was designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry and is his most famous building. That's the Guggenheim Dog (aka Puppy) guarding the entrance. How cute.
Gehry seems to be one of those people that are fascinated with shiny things.
He likes curves too.
You aren't allowed to take any photos inside the museum which is a shame as they had some very cool things. These included Richard Serra's massive walk-through "The Matter of Time" work. We really liked the Color Field Painting exhibit. It's got some really pretty abstract paintings playing with colours and different techniques of painting. They even had some works which we've already seen before at the Tate Modern in London. As is our opinion of a lot of contemporary and modern art, some of the works were weird or just plain sucked. They did have a really cool exhibition on African art, which included some very colourful paintings, cute traditional sculptures and even robots.
This is one of the outdoor works. Its Fujiko Nakaya's water-fog sculpture entitles "Fog Sculpture #08025". It's just one of the pedestrian bridges outside which produces fog every ten or so minutes. Trust me to be cynical but it sounds like she's got at least 8,025 of these things. Maybe she's trying to say something about putting some magic into the everyday. Who knows. Moving on...
That's the "La Salve Bridge". It's the Guggenheim's ten year anniversary next year and they're running a competition called "Pimp My Bridge". They have some models from artists which you can vote for to have their ideas and visions on how the bridge should be decorated to commemorate their anniversary. And no, it's not really called "Pimp My Bridge". I thought it was a cool name.
Some fancy shots.
GacK! A spider!! This is Louise Bourgeois' work curiously entitled "Maman" (those of you who know French will know that this means "mum").
Closing time and after a tram ride and a quick stroll through the old town of Bilbao, we ended up at this cool cafe called Cafe Iruña. It was recommended in the Lonely Planet and is done up in the same Arabesque style as the Alhambra (which we'd be visiting in a few more days time).
It's a cool little place with lots of atmosphere that you can sit and relax in and wait for the overnight train back to Madrid.
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