Bilbao Guggenheim

In Bilbao this extraordinary sight greets you

It's Jeff Koons' Puppy, guarding the Guggenheim - a gargantuan West Highland terrier covered with flowering plants growing in soil - about 40 000 of them. 
(If you're wondering, as I did, how this living flowering structure is maintained, read here and discover what's inside el corazon de puppy!)

While Puppy almost dwarfs the museum itself, inside the Gugs, Richard Serra's installation A Matter of Time fills the largest gallery space, consisting of huge, curved maze-like structures to get lost in.

If the exterior of Gehry's building is extraordinary, the interiors are no less striking

but is it functional as a space for art? Very much like Gehry's Fondation Louis Vuitton (I posted about it here), there's masses of vast, unused space and volume which limits the capacity for exhibiting (curved walls are not really practical either!)

More interesting perhaps are the permanent art installations outside the building, on the river, where French artist Daniel Buren's Arcos Rojos stand out on the La Salve bridge

Niki de Saint Phalle's The Three Graces dance joyfully, reflected against giant windows 

Anish Kapoor's shiny Silver Balls, blend with the wavy, shimmering silver exterior

and Jeff Koons' Tulips lie scattered above the river, bringing to mind children's birthday parties

My favourite was Louise Bourgeois' giant spider cradling a sac of eggs, sweetly called Maman

On this June summer Sunday the museum spaces inside and out were getting good use from locals and tourists 

chilling under umbrellas and cooling down in the fountains.

Another fabulous Basque city.

Bilbao, Spain June 2015
More Day 2, Iberian road trip

Spring at Somerset House

Stately Somerset House on the Strand was the venue last month for Photo London, an international photography exhibition of vintage, iconic, as well as contemporary photographs from around the world.

In the courtyard (transformed in winter to an ice rink), where fountains play in spring/summer, as well as children of all ages, there were poetry readings, stalls ...

and endless entertainment in the fountains.

And on the spot is the gorgeous Spring restaurant which opened late last year in Somerset House ...

It's the baby of Skye Gyngell, ex-Aussie/Sydneyite who, as chef at the Petersham Nurseries where she won a Michelin star, became famous in London for her simple, seasonal style of cooking.

I loved the decor at Spring, which like Skye's food is light and fresh with a courtyard garden that makes you oblivious to the busy Strand outside the huge picture windows.

Photo London and Spring at Somerset House, May 2015

In Norwich last month I was lucky enough to spend a day exploring an exhibition in four different venues of the city of extraordinary works by the Brazilian artist Ana Maria Pacheco.

At the Gallery of Norwich University of the Arts is The Banquet - a grotesque, life-size scene ...

 in which four avaricious, gloating men in black are about to feast on a pleading naked figure prone on a table. The host seems to gleefully invite his guests to tuck in, while the figure on the right is already eyeing the buttocks of their defenceless victim. 

In the Cathedral of St John the Baptist is a small but powerful work: the severed head of John the Baptist, powerfully displayed in a spotlit nave behind a wrought iron door.

Pacheco's largest work of the exhibition is in Norwich Cathedral ...

Shadows of the Wanderer is a huge sculpture on a wooden plinth in a transept of the cathedral, below stained glass windows.

A group of black cloaked figures stand as shadows behind a young man carrying his ailing father on his back. The younger and older man are carved from a single tree.

 There are echoes of Greek myth here, but the work has generally been interpreted as portraying the vulnerability and fear of exile, displacement, migration or asylum, and thus has a very contemporary impact.

The faces are haunting: there are lifelike onyx eyes and expressions etched with fear and anxiety. As with her other sculptures, the mouths have real human teeth, embedded in wooden gums.

Her art is unsettling, but full of humanity: there is violence, cruelty, abuse of power and fear, as much as vulnerability, love, and the possibility of transformation.

In the words of Neil McGregor, director of the British Museum:

"The young man at the front ... fleeing from something we cannot see, carries nothing but his father - his past, his identity ... This man literally cannot leave his past behind, but must take it with him. And that young man is about to step off the plinth and be among us. How are we going to react? ... What will we do? Will we behave with justice and with love?"

Norwich, April 2015

Sailing in the clouds: Louis Vuitton, Paris

Curiosity took me recently to the suburbs of Paris to see Frank Gehry's extravagant construction for France's richest man, Louis Vuitton owner Bernard Arnault. 
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is designed as a cultural centre to house Arnault's collection of modern and contemporary art, borrowed works for exhibitions, and a concert hall.

On the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement, it's designed as a vast sailing ship, intended to appear as if floating, suspended, above the ground.

To create the ship effect, beneath it is a sort of sunken, artificial lake, with water cascading towards it. 

Above, twelve enormous glass 'sails' are draped in curving, billowing shapes. 
It's impossible to get the whole building in camera view from the ground, but a side view gives some idea of the scale.

The effect is spectacular, certainly, and gets more so the higher you ascend to the roof top.

But the sails, and the crazy amount of timber and steel columns, beams, struts and props needed to support the illusion of weightless sails from afar, actually do rather block the views and potential connections with the surroundings.

Inside there's a ground floor restaurant with giant suspended sculpted fish, another of Gehry's favourite forms 

and impressive gallery spaces.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the place though. Critics have called it a 'crazed indulgence of over-engineering' in which the overwhelming effect is of a building with lots and lots of empty, functionless space. 

And local residents protested vigorously against its construction, on the grounds that it broke multiple laws intended to preserve the character of the Bois. But, proof that money talks, their objections were overruled when a special law was passed in the Assemblée Nationale declaring that it must go ahead as a 'major work of art for the whole world'. 

Whatever you think of it, it's worth a visit for the building alone, and now to see a major exhibition of Modernists - Les Clefs d'une Passion (here).