On Monday 9th March I travelled to Barcelona on a research trip aiming to get as much primary research from touring the streets and visiting art galleries and museums of different genres.
On the day of arrival, we spent the day touring the area and streets of Barcelona and Las Ramblas. This was getting us familiar with the area and culture we was going to be living in for a few days. (We was also all very tired from the flight and wanted to settle in sooner rather than later!)
On the first morning we was faced with such warm weather. Hay Sol! So in our small group (of five!) we set off to our first place which was the inspiring Mirò Gallery in Barcelona.
Fundació Joan Miró Art Gallery – First impressions:
- Arty (because of the crayon looking ‘C E A C’ above the entrance)
- Summery and bright
- Modern
- Looked like a newly built primary school
- Aesthetically pretty inside and out
Inside the gallery… (to be completed tonight)
Museu National D’ART DE CATALUNYA- My first impressions of this Museum was:
- Big
- Historic
- Traditional
- Old
- Spacious
- Tall ceilings
- Dated decor
Medieval Romanesque Art- One art piece I decided to look at is a painting dated C.1210 and named ‘couple of bird sirens’ and I thought it looked quite humorous. It is an image of two birds with goat hooves and human heads with a standing flower or ornament of some sort between them and they are almost symmetrical. The description read: formed part of the decorative frieze around the hall of Arlanza Monastery. They apparently represent bird sirens, sheltering and protecting images from Greek Antiquity.
- Big arches
- Faded and missing paintings
- Medieval times – kings/queens
- Very large
- White porcelin sculptures that are rough and chipped, of heads, angels, figures. Also parts of exterior building decor
- Dark oranges, reds, faded navy blues
- Carvings in wood is another important factor in romanesque art. Carvings from 12th and 13th century.
Art Modern-
- Picasso
- Life Drawing
- Oil on canvas was most common media
- So many still life drawing of people/objects
- 1800’s?
- Dark colours
- All figures have no facial expressions, they are all blank or neutral
- Really big, gold frames, also all very large scale
- Portrait paintings (people)
>> Landscapes- Look at artist Joaquim Mir who is a Barcelona landscape painter from 1850 to 1880’s? This section was brighter. There was a lot of landscape paintings of hills, mountains, houses, rivers, lakes, trees and clouds etc. Also look at artist Marià Pidelaserra who created very pretty landscapes in my opinion.
>> Modernism- new media came out which was photography, illustration and film to create styles of 20th century modernism. Such as war posters (propaganda). This was classed as modern art where it moved away from still like, landscapes and all the realistic paintings that was the only art.
>>Furniture- All brown and wooden with lots of curly corners and edges. Stain glass was very common and beautiful, used in churches and religious places as decoration.
I only had time to only visit two sections of this gallery. I would’ve liked to have spent more time here or came back the following day to explore more, but I mean, I think I made good use of the time I was given here.
Caixa Forum Barcelona– First impressions:
- Spacious
- Modern
- Bright
- Fresh
- Surrealism
- Abstraction
- Juxtaposition
- Contempary
- There is pots of videos here, one in particular of a regular man tap dancing. And one with two men in black suits walking towards us up a country road in black and white. This one was by Man Ray.
- There was a lot of Man Ray’s work around the gallery who was a Spanish Photographer. I like most of his work because of the things he photographs, his innovative mind and ideas inspire me.
- Theres a lot of photography here, as previously hinted. A lot is in black and white but also of random and weird but wonderful things.
- There’s a lot of installations and big objects around. Things coming from the ceiling and walls. One installation meant we had to crawl through a little square gap in the wall to enter a dark room with yet again, another big installation. There’s string and ropes leading from one thing to another. One intriguing thing I saw was a glass table with bicycle wheels as the legs. This represented juxtaposition as it was just not possible.
I did actually end up getting a bit demotivated after viewing half of the gallery so i thought it was best to leave it there without continuing. I won’t really blame this on the gallery though as I had a long day walking around galleries and museums.
On the second full day in Barcelona, we visited two big places that were not art galleries. These were the Design Museum and La Sagrada Familiar (Antoni Gaudî).
Design Museum museum of object art and design – First impressions:
- Aesthetically good
- Big
- Modern
- Bright
- A popular attraction
- >> This was a very big and modern place with a lot of people, a cafe, and a big gift shop. There was a lot of space and areas to sit down and chill. I liked the atmosphere in here when I walked in. I also enjoyed the space outside where I had sat on the grass in the sun. There was a lovely little river with a big bridge leading into the building so overall it was very pleasant to be by.
1st Floor- Product Design, Cultural Heritage
- Modern furniture
- I didn’t enjoy and was not interested in this area so I soon skipped to the next floor
2nd Floor- Collections of Decorative and Author-Centred Art (3rd-20th Century)
- Later stuff – old
- Furniture
- Cherubs, angels, Jesus, the throne
- Stained glass windows
- Big images on diferent materials like leather, brickwalls, ceramic, wood, soft fabric
- Lots of ceramics, pottery and statues
- Paintings were done on furniture and any kind of objects like wooden boxes, glass-wear, tiles, boards, even fashion accessories like hand fans
- Nice to look at but it was not my area of interest
3rd Floor- Dressing the body. Silhouettes and Fashion (1560-2015)
- Mannequins, showing off fashion outfits
- Old royal clothing, verybold fashioned like the victorian era
- Interesting to see what they wore but overall it was quite boring to see so much of it
4th Floor- New visual communication (1980-2003)
- Reminds me of the world war posters but they aren’t – propaganda
- Graphical bright bold 80s 90s
- Posters from films bookcovers magazines and a film from 2001 “geoplaneta tv”
I thought it was a nice modern place and ithad a nice atmosphere. I thought it was a big attraction. However as he went through the gallery there was no one about it except us, and I work with masonry furniture in fashion which was very old and uninteresting to me. I find myself very bothered by the time I got to the fourth floor which is the one that was most interesting to me I was going to leave this place unfortunately.
Macba Museum
- Big
- Spacious
- Modern
- Contemporary
- Very intriguing
This building had a nice feel about it it was somewhat different to all the other modern contemporary places we have been to it was intriguing but I’m not quite sure why. Well that’s a very good idea I was amazed by the smartness and a lot of peoples minds to create and invent such stuff.
- Interesting
- Different
- Modern and old arts
- Films
- Installations
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