Cultural, day two
Thursday, 30 January 2025
When in Bilbao…and especially if it’s rainy…. This famous Frank Gehry-designed museum opened in October 1997, riverside where the port was, opening up this part of the city with a major international attraction. Alternatively, people come to see “Puppy” by Jeff Koons, a flowering-plant bedecked West Highland terrier behemoth.
We joined a HS group crowded under a meager overhang waiting for the museum to open. They were speaking French and English, perhaps from a posh school over in Bayonne…I didn’t ask.
It took just a moment to scan our phone-born tickets, and another moment for a brief uncurious security inspection of my purse, and in we were. Entry hall, empty and quiet, so different subsequently.
We went directly to the top/third floor, and our amazing first stop was to be closed in a room, just the two of us, with lights and reflections…guaranteed to make anyone smile. It’s called “Infinity Mirrored Room—A Wish for Human Happiness Calling from Beyond the Universe” (2020), by Yayoi Kusama. Her works are very diverse and include novels; she has done many Mirrored Rooms. The vibrancy of the space seems appropriate to someone who experienced hallucinations beginning at age 10.
The rooms and spaces elsewhere tend to be huge. Five pieces only are in this room, e.g., a Warhol multi-Marilyn to the right, and a Roy Lichtenstein on the far wall, with a Jeff Koons flower bouquet in the middle.
Making art with art…selfie of the two of us…and a different school group.
A whole wing held this Richard Serra eight-piece composition called “The Matter of Time” (1994–2005). My favorite section was the fifth one, called “Torqued Spiral (Right Left).”
The steel walls framed a passage that kept going and going. This was the view looking out from the dead end.
Much of the second floor was dedicated to the works of Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), a pioneer (almost everyone uses this word about her, so don’t call me a copycat) in abstract art. This is her “The Ten Largest” (1917), showing the four stages of human life: childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age/being elderly.
Her other pieces are smaller, sometimes much smaller. This is one of a series called “Tree of Knowledge” (1913–1915).
It was just too wet/windy to comfortably visit the many sculptures outdoors, so we glimpsed them through the windows.
Life outside the museum—endlessly eye-catching. Hopeful umbrella vendor and two museum patrons, already equipped.
Bridge view, by river.
Bridge view, with lift and moto.
Building detail—nuts and bolts of it, and the beams they join.