Casa Battlo

A day on Montjuic

I so enjoyed my visit to Miro’s studio in Mallorca last year that I decided to visit the Fundacio Miro in Barcelona. It’s situated up on Montjuïc the mountain where the Olympic Park was in 1992 and which continues to be a tourist attraction. Three stops on the Metro to Parallel and the the Funicular up to Montjuic.

It was a disappointing trip compared with the ones in Bilbao, Budapest and San Sebastián in that it’s almost entirely in a tunnel with just occasional sights of scrappy play areas and none of the vistaS across the city I was hoping for. However, a few steps from the top of the funicular, my wish was granted with this view dominated by the magnificent Sagrada Familia.

On the way to the Miro Foundation was a sculpture garden with some of the worst signage I’ve ever come across – tiny aluminium stakes with titles engraved – totally illegible. At Miro, things were handled much better. There is a huge collection of paintings, sculptures, tapestries and found objects displayed in spacious galleries. I’m glad I’d been to the studio in Mallorca to get an idea of Miro’s working methods. It’s also good to see that artists who choose to follow a different kind of visual vocabulary are well grounded in basic draughtsmanship.

Exterior, an early portrait and two more typical Miro painted works.

I particularly love his amusing sculptures from everyday objects. As a not-very-royalists person I was much taken by King, Queen and Prince (below right), the huge (nearly 6 metres across) Sobreteixim with eight umbrellas and the dramatic use of a coat hanger.

Another artist provides a fascinating object here. Alexander Calder was the only non-Spaniard invited to contribute to Spain’s pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition. Alongside several Miro canvases, Picasso’s Guernica, Calder’s Mercury Fountain was seen as a further protest against the atrocities of the Franco regime including the attack at Almaden the town that provided a substantial quantity of the world’s mercury. Calder donated the sculpture to the Miro Foundation and we view it from behind a glass screen since the toxicity of mercury has been discovered. Funny thing is the Egyptians knew about mercury too and thought it chased away evil spirits – may have killed some of them too.

I had a coffee in the cafe before continuing my walk along Montjuic. I was heading inexorably to the National Art Museum of Catalunya, which I had told myself I wasn’t going to bother with on this trip. I remembered, bothwith the children ages ago, and with Dee more recently standing on its terrace on a Friday evening eagerly awaiting the magic fountain’s display. No use waiting for it on Wednesday afternoon. I do remember it as quite spectacular with water jets synchronised to different music genres at different times and changing colour appropriately. Looking down at it brought back good memories. I then thought ‘Well I’m here, it’s free with the Barcelona card so why not?’.

Looking down towards the magic fountain and the National Gallery.

The majestic central dome covered an area in which there were easels for wannabe artists and a fabulous soft play area with kids swarming all over. If that what it takes to get folk in and keep galleries alive, I’m all for it.

I decide to eschew the old masters which I have seen before and head for the modern floor upstairs. Neatly divided into four areas it shows the development of Catalan art from the turn of the century to the present day. In the very first gallery devoted to modernisme, what did I see but the actual dining table Gaudi had designed for Casa Battlo.? There were lots of beautiful wooden, glass and metal objects in that fluid style.

As I progressed through the galleries I saw works by familiar names like Rusinol, Sorolla and Picasso. I was especially taken by a cunning Rusinol self portrait. Look carefully!

In the next room I was introduced to the work of a female photographer Mey Rahola who shared a love of sailing and photography with our friend Joe Weiler in Boston. She was lucky to be around at a period 1934-36 when it was OK for a woman to engage in such pursuits. The Civil War put and end to that as she went into exile in France but had developed her own documentary style and continued to take photographs professional during the Second World War.

A new set of rooms for 2022 are devoted to the art of the Civil War period and range from propaganda posters, depictions of the horrors of war reminiscent of Goya – one wall of etchings reminded me of Los Caprichos. It’s interesting to see how Spain is re-evaluating the whole period that was so traumatic for so many. When I raised the refugee elements in Isabel Allende’s book with Rosa and Pepita over lunch Pepita didn’t really want to discuss it as, although born after the end of the war, so much of her childhood and early years were shaped by it. One of Rosa’s video installations Lost was on the subject of babies stolen by the church during the Franco period. It casts a long shadow.

Memories of Goya – a series of etchings and *Mass execution in the bullring at Badajoz* which reminded me of his famous *Third of May.*

Enough gloom. Back out into the sunlight of Montjuïc and a walk through the Botanic Garden towards the Olympic Stadium where a convenient bus arrived and took me back to the funicular. A little later a further trip to the Cerveseria rounded off a thoroughly enjoyable day up above the city.

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Tapas and Tapies

So refreshed with my tapas in the Cerveseria Catalana and buzzing with my visit to Casa Battlo, I thought it was time for a bit more art exploration.

As I came from the station to the hotel on my arrival I had walked past this fine building with its wild bird’s nest hair. It’s the Antoni Tapies Foundation. I’ve seen Tapies’ work in other galleries but thought I’d take a look. Entry was free with my trusty Barcelona card so even more incentive. There were two exhibitions – one showing Tapies’ increasing use of varnish to affect the outcome, the other to Bruce Conner of whom I confess. I had not heard.

My first surprise was that although the building looked like it would be a gallery, I had to descend a flight of stairs to get to the subterranean exhibition space. Excavating basements may be popular in London now among the wealthy, but Barcelona has clearly been doing it for ages. As well as this space, I’ve walked past loads of Parkings with precipitous descents to way-below-street garages – glad I didn’t rent a car this trip as entrances are frighteningly narrow as well and I did recall wedging a Transit van on the way into a car park right beside the Callao metro station in Madrid while on a shoot there some years ago.

The Tapies space itself was light and airy with a suitably small number of paintings and objects displayed. They covered 30 years of his work from 1958 when he was awarded the Carnegie medal for painting, to 1988. I liked in particular his surrealistic deconstructed chair and several of the sinuous marks he’d made with painting and overlaid varnish. And of course there’s always the coarse one – he had a thing about the black letter X. Have a look.

The other exhibit a further floor below was of work by Bruce Conner who’d escaped me but according to the descriptions on the wall was ‘the father of the video clip’. There were nine films in all ranging from three to fifteen minutes. The first was a horrific observation of the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb test, the next a sequence-shifting report on the assassination of JFK. Others were lighter – a piece called Looking for Mushrooms with music by Terry Riley,a noted consumer of same, so was all kaleidoscopic, psychedelic monochrome magic. Others used animation and effects considerably ahead of his time. I’m not always a big fan of video installations as art but these were eye-opening and thought-provoking. They also covered the period 1958 to 1976.

I stopped off at a supermarket on the way back to lay in beer, wine and brandy for the week ahead. Dee and I always liked a drink in our room to gather ourselves before going out to eat and old habits die hard. As I started writing the first blog I realised that I’d forgotten to bring the charger for the iPad mini on which I write, so scribbling would have to wait for tomorrow. So I got to my fine pigs’ cheeks a little earlier than might have been.

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Music of the stairs

One of my reasons for choosing to come to Barcelona this year was to visit Gaudi’s famous Casa Battlo. I became friends during the year with a young composer Dani Howard who had composed the tracks for the guided audio tour of the house and I was keen to see inside the amazing building and hear how Dani had responded to her brief. The hotel has a breakfast buffet but I went in quest of something simpler. Opposite Casa Battlo was a Santander Bank work cafe which I thought I’d try. Result too, as Santander account holders get a 30% discount, so it was a very cheap juice, coffee and croissant. Loads of other industrious people were poring over laptops, negotiating on the phone and working hard. Interesting idea.

The Santander Work/Cafe andCasa Battlo exterior

The first part of the tour is in the basement in a Yayoi Kusama style mirror room. You step onto a moving metal platform and make a large circle through projections of the architect himself slumped exhausted among his drawings and the objects from nature that inspired his designs – fish, shells, mushrooms, rock formations. This is accompanied by a very watery track, whooshing waves mixed with orchestral sounds and set a theme for the tour which likens Gaudi’s structure to a section through an inverted ocean – I didn’t write the script!

The tour proper is guided by a tablet with sixteen icons to select when you enter a room with that sign and commentary and music play. I absolutely love the building – the innovative elements, gorgeous woodwork, wrought iron balustrades and typical Gaudi trencadis – the patterned facades we usually call mosaics which combine broken tiles, glass and other materials making Gaudi the great recycler. I’ve added a few images from the house but it’s very tactile as well – you need to be there.

The atrium , wonderful early phone, lovely eccentric door and internal watery stained glass.

The house is tall and has this fabulous double atrium from floor to skylight flooding it with light – a very clever touch. So the the tour heads inexorably upwards until you reach the roof with great views over the city. As you mount each flight and select the next images so Dani’s music changes to fit the atmosphere and function of the room you’re in. It is wonderfully varied – simple piano pieces at times, what sounds like a marimba and cello rippling away for another but generally fully orchestral and often choral themes that work extremely well. The huge uplifting crescendo for the top of the stairs gave even my weary legs a jolt of energy. I think there’s a Battlo Suite for concert performance in there – rights permitting of course. The great thing is that the orchestra at the recording was under the baton of Pablo Urbina, now Dani’s husband.

Water supply on the roof and *trencadis* flower pots on the patio

After a few moments contemplation on the roof marvelling that the large structures were in fact the house’s water supply we descend through another work of art. What was once the fire escape has been transformed by the Japanese sculptor Kendo Kuma who has draped the walls in swirls of aluminium links of chain mail which are aesthetically pleasing and highly tactile.

You exit through an immersive screen cube with projections of Gaudi icons and responses by artist Refik Anadol. The website suggests an hour and fifteen minutes – I went in at 11:00 and out at 13:30. House and music in utter harmony and I even made it up and back downstairs. I’d heard of the nearby Cerveseria Catalana and thought that would be a good option for lunch. Hah! Why I’d heard of it is that everybody else had, so I waited a little less than the threatened twenty minutes – it sometimes helps being just one – and enjoyed the amazing atmosphere and some great carved ham with a beer and then a glass of Verdejo with some anchovies and padron peppers a combination I’d not had before.