Searching for the Prado

This is a catch-up post. It starts at Friday, March 2, almost a week ago now.

Friday, we did nothing but pack and lounge around. We got up Saturday morning at 5:15 and left the house by a little before 7. There wasn’t much traffic. We filled up with gas just before going on the expressway, reached the airport in good time and had no difficulty returning the car. I made very sure this time to get a signed copy of the contract attesting to the fact that the car was full of gas and there was no new damage.

The flight to Madrid was on Ryanair, but wasn’t terrible, just under three hours. It did leave 40 minutes late. We arrived, almost on time, though, to heavy overcast skies, rain clearly imminent. This in spite of the pilot’s earlier suggestion that the weather at our destination was “partly cloudy.” 

The cab ride in was by a route that we realized later was not very sensible. It took us down a long stretch of Gran Via, a major avenue in the centre, that was choked with traffic, cars inching along. I had talked to our host, Richard, on the phone to tell him we were on our way. He called back 25 minutes later to ask where we were. He had been at the flat, cleaning, and was now anxious to get away, apparently. It was Spanish lunchtime.

The flat is on Calle Fuencarral, a pedestrianized shopping street lined with chi-chi fashion boutiques, jammed with shoppers. Richard was standing outside with a couple of buddies, watching out for us. He's a young guy, probably under 30, a bit pudgy, with pretty good English. The flat is in a building that is mostly given over to two hostels. Not that hostels are what they used to be. These offered rooms with private bathrooms, and some of the guests we saw were older people. Our flat was on a floor with what might once have been one quite large apartment, but it's now cut up into many tiny ones. Ours was minuscule: a double bed, wardrobe, a tiny patio table with two chairs, a tiny bathroom, a tiny galley kitchen. For this, we were paying almost $100 a night! Big city.

The only good thing about it: it faced the air shaft, so at least there would be no street noise. The many bad things: the bed frame wobbled on its stick legs when you sat on it, or budged even slightly while sitting or lying on it; everything was tired and third rate; the kitchen was poorly equipped – no corkscrew, there wasn’t even a plug for the kitchen sink, and of course no dishwasher. And it was noisy. Every time somebody went in or out through the locked door from the landing, it slammed shut right beside our room.

We went out almost immediately to walk to a Mercadona not far away and do a small shop. It took us about 20 minutes to get there. We bought a pre-cooked chicken (good for two meals), a couple of tomatoes, bacon, bread, eggs and wine – the bare necessities. We had an early dinner of chicken heated in the microwave, green beans (brought from Gran Canaria) and tomatoes.

By the time we finished up, it was after 5:30. Which made it a good time to head out to the Prado, the huge national museum of classical art. It offers free entry between 6 and 8 p.m. on Saturdays. Shortly after we got outside, the rain started, and grew heavier the longer we were out. We had a paper map, we had Google maps running on the phone. We had been to the Prado nine years before, and knew approximately where it was in relation to other landmarks. But could we find the damn place? We could not. Looking at maps later, we realized we had been right there. It’s on Paseo de Prado. Duh!

We finally gave up and went back to the apartment, wet, tired and frustrated. And no more cultured than when we went out. The night was noisy, but we slept surprisingly well, and woke to much better weather. It would be a good day: low teens, sun and cloud.

After breakfast, we went out to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, the other big national art museum – also on the Paseo de Prado. We knew where this one was for sure because we’d passed, and repassed, it the night before in our vain search for the Prado. It houses the enormous collections of Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon and his wife, Carmen “Tita” Cervera – aka Miss Spain 1961. The government bought most of the baron’s collection years ago, and the baroness has loaned a huge chunk of hers. The government built the gallery the paintings are in now. It’s a fabulous collection.

Franz Hals

We started with the 16th century Dutch paintings – Franz Hals and lesser names – then moved upstairs to the late 19th and early 20th century works. The museum is organized a little unusually, with works from the baron’s collection arranged in one set of rooms and the baroness’s in another. There is quite a bit of overlap between the two with the result that you’ll find impressionists, for example, in two different places.

John Singer Sargent, portrait of Milicent, Duchess of Sutherland (1904)

Both parts of the collection have good selections of German/Austrian expressionism, post-cubist art of the first of half the 20th century – which, I was reminded, I really like. I had seen the premiere collection of this stuff at the Belvedere museum in Vienna years ago, but the Thyssen has good examples of it too. I discovered a couple of new (or forgotten) names: Conrad Felixmuller and Lyonel Feininger. Maurice de Vlaminck and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner are well represented too.

  

Ernst Kirchner, Street with Red Streetwalker (1914-1925)

Lyonel Feininger, The Lady in Mauve (1922)

Marc Chagall, Madonna of the Village (1942)

We wandered into the rich collection of renaissance portraits, which also always attract me. I was particularly struck by this portrait of a young man by Raphael, who – little-known fact – started his career as a teenage mutant ninja turtle before switching to art later in life.

Raphael, Portrait of a Young Man (ca. 1518 - 1519)

Francois Clouet, The Love Letter (1570)

Lucas Cranach the Younger, Portrait of a Woman (1539)

Richard Lindner, Moon over Alabama (1963)

We went back to the flat to eat, then went out again in the early afternoon to do a street-art tour of the nearby Malasaña neighbourhood. We wandered up and down, back and forth along the narrow little streets, into bustling squares, past boutiques and restaurants. And we did find some interesting street art. Quite a bit of it, I’d guess, was commissioned by the businesses whose walls it was painted on, but it still has some street art edge to it. We also saw some interesting tiled shop fronts.

The last item on our itinerary for the day was the Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida (the Royal Chapel of St. Anthony of La Florida). It was built in the 1790s on the orders of King Carlos IV, who commissioned frescoes for it by Francesco de Goya. The frescoes are the reason to visit.

Madrid, Gran Via

It’s a longish walk, out to the near suburbs, the last part of it past red-brick high rises that look to have been built in the 80s or 90s. The silly thing is that, as we got closer, I started recognizing landmarks, and realized that we had come out to this place with Shelley Boyes when we were here nine years ago. Never mind, it was worth a second visit, we wanted a walk anyway, and it was a nice day.

The chapel is small and there’s very little information about it provided on the spot. The staff, sitting nattering in a small office, waved us through, calling out, ‘No photos.’ ‘Sin flash?’ ‘Nada.’ Damn. I’d forgotten that part. There is no reason for it either. It’s not as if they were selling souvenir postcards that personal photography would reduce demand for. Photography without flash poses no risk to the art. The big museums all allow it now, and they do sell postcards.

Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida

That quibble aside, it’s a marvelous thing to see. The architecture is pedestrian. But there is something alive and compelling about the images of ordinary people and holies, leaning over imaginary balustrades, looking down, or off into the heavens. In the absence of any security, people were taking pictures with their phones. It’s fairly easy to take pictures surreptitiously with a phone, not so easy with an SLR and a honking telephoto lens stuck to your face.

We walked back to the flat, partly through Malasaña again, where I spotted more interesting street art. We stayed in for the evening, as usual, and ate the second half of our pre-cooked chicken. Food adventurers, we are.

The next day, Monday, we were flying out to Naples, but not until 4 pm. We tried for late check-out, but Richard had another guest coming in so we had to be out by noon. That would give us time, though, to walk over to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the 20th century art gallery named for the first post-Franco king’s consort. We had visited it nine years ago, but figured it was worth a second look.

It took 30 minutes to walk, which left us under two hours at the museum, but it’s free for seniors. It was not our most successful gallery visit. We didn’t find a lot that inspired us. Picasso’s Guernica is here, but we’d spent quite a bit of time with it when we were here the first time. We probably should have gone back to it. It truly is inspiring. The thing I liked best this time was the display of Goya prints, which are not 20th century but are on display, I think, because they're a precursor of Spanish modernism. There are some Miros, other Picassos, many by lesser-known Spanish and non-Spanish artists – but precious few masterworks, it seems.

Francesco de Goya

Joan Miro, Man With A Pipe (1925)

Joan Miro, Painting (1927)

Hermen Anglada Camarasa, Sonia de Klamery (1913)

There was also a special exhibit of work by William Kentridge, the very hot contemporary South African artist, whose sister was at one time married to a friend of mine in Toronto. Kentridge does a lot of work in avant garde theatre all over the world. This exhibit was of costumes, models of sets, sketches and videos of plays he’d designed. Most of it was weird in the extreme. We didn’t spend a lot of time.

We grabbed a cab back to the flat. The guy took us on a long route, probably to avoid the traffic on Gran Via, but also, I’m sure, to run the meter up. Taxi cab meters typically go up faster by mileage than by time. We had just enough time to finish packing and were out the door a few minutes before noon. We walked this time up Fuencarral, away from Gran Via. It’s only a few blocks but was hard sledding, dragging the two big bags over bumpy pavements. We caught a cab right where the pedestrian section ends, and were out at the airport in not much more than 30 minutes.

This was way early for our flight, but we found a half decent, if expensive, restaurant on the top floor of the new Terminal 4, and had very nice steaks. I shopped for a while to fill in more time. There was a Camper store, maker of my favourite shoes, which are now much too expensive for me. They did have a sale on, but there was nothing I wanted. There’s also a Massimo Dutti, a relatively low-priced but good-quality Spanish fashion chain that I like. They had a gorgeous suede jacket for €275. I didn’t buy it, such is the reality of being a poor pensioner.

The flight left more or less on time. We flew Iberia Express. It was probably the most uncomfortable flight I’ve ever taken – hot and cramped. We arrived in Naples in light rain. It is our fate this year.