Madrid Unfiltered, the Finale

The last day has that mix of longing and farewell, a foot on either side of the threshold.

Here’s what I did the last full day in Madrid. I washed my comfy Athleta yoga pants in the sink, so they’d a have full day and overnight to dry. I’ll be wearing them tomorrow on the flight home. They look respectable and feel like jammies. Pretty much my ideal.

I popped in my ear buds and fired up my happy Madrid music mix – the one that can propel me uphill, no matter how tired I am, and flip my emotional switch to the gratitude setting. So instead of ‘woe is me, it’s the last day,’ I’m bopping down the streets thinking, ‘lucky me,  I spent April in the Prado.’

I started at Crusts for a croissant with jam to go with my delicious latte.

 

My walking route took me past a tiny outpost of the famed Florence perfumerie, Santa Maria Novella. Bought a flask of Angels of Florence cologne for my daughter and assorted scented soaps. Clipped the bag handles to the mini-carabiner that’s hooked on the loop on the top of my Longchamps bag.

ZIpping into the no waiting side of the otherwise long Prado ticket lines never lost its appeal. Still a thrill. Inside, I followed the map I’d superimposed on the room by room guides they hand out at Information desk using colored markers and notes in the corners. Checked my marginalia and took my time revisiting particular paintings, saying goodbye and thank you. My mood was 51% more appreciative than elegiac, but still – Unless these works tour, I will not see them again. Apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson, but better to have discovered and loved a work of art and have to part from it, than never to have seen it at all.

Among the unexpected pleasures of the day was finding this man at work.

I wandered off into a side room, and drew Mars from the Velásquez painting on a postcard to send to my much missed my husband.

It’s in the same room with Ruben’s copy of Titian’s the Rape of Europa. Look to the left and you see a part of it in the background of The Spinners by Velasquez, one of his last works. That’s one of the wonderful things about seeing great works of art hung on the walls of major museums. Sometimes you witness a private conversation between artists, along with ebb and rise of the tide of visitors. Thank you, curators.

Eventually, I put away my pencil and headed to lunch at La Trainera. Old world gentleman maitre d’ pulled out my chair and handed me the menu with a flourish. I dined well, on what amounted to more hake in a tomato sauce, served in a clay dish with shrimps and mollusks scattered over the top. I also ordered asparagus picturing skinny green wands. I got this instead.

I loved the bespoke china plates with their ‘yo ho heave ho’ logo.

Afterwards, I headed back to the Prado. This time, my attention was caught by a small portrait of a man by Velásquez.

The wall card speculated that it is a self-portrait, done when he first arrived at court. I can see it. I stood and drew him, for an hour at least. I am no portraitist, but I gave it my all, and was not disappointed. Mostly I loved looking into his eyes.

I took my leave of the Prado, grateful that it exists. On the way home I visited the church on the hill behind the Prado.

San Jeronimo el Real

It was peaceful and housed a multitude of Marys, like this holy lady of Spain.

Wended my way back to hotel Orfila to pack, pay the bill, and prepare for the day of travel home. Asked the nice desk clerk to take a photo of my lounging in the comfortable and charming lobby.

Yeah, I loved it.

I’ll end this trip with five things I observed in Madrid.

People sit on low walls outside the Prado and on the rims of fountains in the plazas. Under 40, they are all looking at their phones. Over 60 they are all smoking.

Walking five plus miles every day improves digestion and hurts feet.

No one speaks more than half a dozen English words. When you don’t speak Spanish, they nod or smile, and talk louder and faster. Google Translate is the answer for the linguistically inept.

Graffiti has thrown its net of tags on every surface of every building.

The heron curve of head bent, spine curved, elbow crooked is ubiquitous and universal. Everyone is texting.

Adios, beautiful Spanish city. You are justly proud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madrid Redux: last two days

Tuesday April 28

With two days left in Madrid, I wanted to pull the cork, tilt the city to my mouth, and gulp it all down. Fortunately, I have developed a few scruples and restraint. I set my greedy impulses aside and considered the time tactically. I wanted to revisit the Prado and wander, wide open, through those hallowed halls and I wanted to explore Fundación MAPFRE, located almost directly across the broad avenue from the Prado. Excellent! I could dedicate my time in the morning to FM and my afternoon to the Prado.

Another gift to myself was to seek out a well-reviewed restaurant. No more lackluster stops for fuel, I wanted the full-on Madrid midday meal experience. I planned to stop my art binge no sooner than 2:30, taxi to my chosen eatery and eat an extravagant and leisurely meal. Sure, I’d return to the Prado in a post-meal stupor, but it might help me settle down, let me focus my gaze in a deeper way. These final two days I didn’t want to hop around like a flea, frantic to sate my appetite for beauty, called away from one painting by the wink and shine of another in the corner of my eye.

With my plans made I ducked into Crusts, the café/bakery around the corner from the Orfila Hotel.  I ordered a latte and croissant.

I took out one of my remaining postcards and drew the infanta Marianna of Austria on the back. It was a very pleasant and satisfying way to spend the time before the gallery opens.

When I asked for the check, a busboy nearby scowled and corrected me. “La cuenta,” he admonished in a loud, slow voice as if I was a recalcitrant and lazy student who only fails from lack of effort. He might be right.

I walked to MAPFRE with that heightened awareness of the mundane and the refrain ‘the last time, the last time’ humming below my skin. I threaded my way through clots of tourists, couples arm in arm (a frequent sight here), and men in suits, bent like herons over their phones as they thumbed texts.

I went to the wrong MAPFRE location first, but as long as I’d gone in and put my backpack in a locker, I took the elevator down to the photography exhibition, a retrospective of Garry Winogrand’s work. The mirror and metal reflections of the elevator’s interior disoriented me. I took this elevator selfie, trying to identify the control panel through the phone screen.

The exhibition itself was similarly disorienting. MAPFRE’s comment summed it up for me; “During the chaotic 1960s, Winogrand photographed at numerous political demonstrations and his work came to express a sense of national disintegration.”  The titles were the geographic locations and the year.*

Fairly quickly I had enough of bleakness and walked over a block to the next MAPFRE outpost to see exhibition done in conjunction with the Musée d’Orsay, Swan Song.

Don’t I know you? was the first thing I thought when I saw Gustave Doré‘s Defeated. Yes, in Paris last year. It stopped me then, and it pulled my eye again, here in Madrid. The sense of numbed despair, the way the world and ephemeral beauty spin on, oblivious.

Another work that fascinated me was a slain Able, Cain’s doomed brother. I still feel a little cultural vertigo when I consider that it was the farmer who slaughtered his brother the sheepherder.

It wasn’t a sense of verisimilitude, death isn’t this pretty. it was the light on his shoulder and thrust of his hip, the out-flung arm. More like a glorious depiction of post-coital lassitude, like the way Bernini jumbled up the erotic with religious ecstasy in his Saint Theresa.  All this is lacking is a smirking angel with a spear. 

Several of the history paintings drew me in, like Ernest Meissonier’s Napoleon doomed assault on Russia. I was fascinated by the general’s expressions, how many ways the artist made hopelessness visible.

This one of Joan d’Arc leading her troops was the opposite – all motion and blind faith in action. But that’s not why I couldn’t stop looking at it.

In person, the red lances were these wild exclamations, and the color was richer, and each face has its own particular individual expression, and – well, right here, that’s the reason I chase paint. It’s the difference between the flavor of a bright green snap of a fresh pea, just pulled off the vine and popped out of its shell, and a dreary can of gray-green pea mush. Go find this – it lives at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

For lunch, I taxied to a place heartily  recommended by a NYC friend. La Castela http://restaurantelacastela.com

Of course when I got there, at 2:30, the joint was full to the brim. Come back in 30 minutes, said the sympathetic waiter. Instead of giving up and eating another pastry in a coffee shop, I took a slow stroll around the block. They did indeed find me a little table amid those already happily occupied with big groups who had tables pushed together, and four tops with business men in suits. Lots and lots of laughter and talk. They brought me a dish of olives and another dish of bread and my sparkling water. I had a sort of hot sausage appetizer that was either crazy delicious (or tasted fantastic because by 3:45 I was starving). I ordered the hake and it came like this –

I think those are stripes of tomato, kalamata olive, and an olive oil and green herb sauce. So good. Divine. I ate every bite though it was twice what I was used to. I even had dessert, which I ordered by pointing to a nearby happy diner’s plate.  That’s a mille–feuille –  crackly layers of puff pastry with fresh whipped cream inside- with an apricot sauce with fresh berries on the side. It looks substantial, but it was light with just a moment of crunch before it dissolved on the tongue. Imagine an edible feather that by some miracle is delicious.

From here back to the dear Prado, knowing it was open until 8pm.  Drifted around, and now, these many weeks later, I don’t remember every painting I revisited, except I am certain I went back to Velásquez and Mengs.

In the rotunda with the statuary of the Muses I came across a couple that were welded together, head, shoulder, hip, and thigh. It took a moment for me to realize, no, it wasn’t the intimacy of passion, they were sharing an audio guide.Though perhaps that is another kind of shared passion.

On the long, weary but happy walk back to the Orfila Hotel, I came across this ingenious poster for a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Brilliant graphic art.

At this point in my trip, I finished the audio book Forgery of Venus, by Michael Gruber. http://michaelgruberbooks.com/books/  Well worth your time to read or listen to, and Madrid is the perfect town for it. This should give you of an idea of why I loved it.  “Gruber writes passionately and knowledgeably about art and its history- and he writes brilliantly about the shadowy lines that blur reality and unreality.”  – Publishers Weekly.

*The thing is, the camera lies. It excels in capturing an expression, or a composed portrait or a candid scene. Those moments could be beautiful or awkward or horrifying.  But it isn’t the truth, any more than cable news is the truth. It’s just a forced glimpse, and the lens works both ways – it’s as much a flash of the photographer’s psyche as anything. Having said that, Jacques Henri Lartigue’s work enchants me and has, ever since Barry Lategan introduced me to his photographs in 1972.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madrid Unfiltered, Redux

Monday, April 27

I woke up after a night of utter peace and quiet in Hotel Orfila. My desire to carry on viewing art was fully restored. Sleep is underrated. It’s better than gold.

Walking through the Salamanca district streets is like walking through Buckhead on Sunday morning, instead of walking though Bourbon Street on Saturday night. From now until I head to the airport Thursday, it’s not just about racing over to do a cannonball dive into the Prado, but appreciating Madrid itself.

Stopped in a little patisserie and tried to order a latte without Google Translate. Ha. I ended up with two shots of espresso in two cups, and when I asked and gestured for milk, he added hot water. I ended up drinking it like that because he agreed with whatever I said, and the line was long and getting longer. The only thing worse than a country full of Spaniards that don’t speak English are the ones who think they can.  Lovely walk over to the Prado  all the same. The croissant I got to go with the latte I didn’t have was luscious. As crumbs fell from my napkin I thought the sparrows here must be the happiest on earth.

Here’s my path to the Prado

I wondered if the Prado would still seem so fabulous now that I’ve put in so much time there and seen so much. Not to worry. It was maybe even better. It was completely wonderful. Like spending time with someone you absolutely adore.  I spent a good chunk of time looking at Las Meninas from the farthest point across the room. I stood beside the guard’s chair and looked at values, shapes, and volumes, seeing it as a whole. I went back to the Meng portraits and just drank them in. Here’s  Antonio Pascual de Borbón y Sajonia, infante de España, 1767.

I sat and drew three postcards (NOTE: I beat them all home).  I took a good long look at Sorollo’s three boys on the beach.  I went back to that room of 18th-century enormous narrative paintings and drew the prince’s dog. I got really wrapped up in Velasquez’s Mars,  who has a sinewy body and eyes with a thousand yard stare. More like a real soldier, not just an aggressive brute in thrall to Venus. He reminds me of Robert.

I walked out a few blocks in front of the museum into the neighborhood and took a chance on a little restaurant. Pah. It was like mediocre home cooking, but at least it was cheap and the server was really nice.

Went back to the Prado (they have to stamp your ticket at the Education desk so you can reenter. It’s super easy but don’t forget.) At one point I found myself really warming up to Goya, especially his black period. The most adorable thing I saw was a group of grammar school age kids. They all wore white smocks with construction paper paint palettes glued to them, and headbands with paper candles circling their heads. The chaperones with them wore the same getup.  Here’s a blurry image.

Goya famously did his paintings at night wearing a hat with candles stuck to the brim – in fact, there’s a portrait of him in that rig.So they were baby Goyas, like our kids were little pilgrims and Indians at Thanksgiving. It was unspeakably cute and totally Spanish.

I didn’t leave until nearly 7 and limped back. Got ‘dinner’ at Starbucks – don’t judge. I wanted a chai latte and there’s no having a kettle in this fancy room. Not even a microwave.  I had an orange with me, and I bought a little slice of lemon cake. Voila, balanced diet.

Homesickness hit me hard for a few days, but it’s fine now.  I’m so close to boarding the plane  – three days  – I can smell the jet fuel.

Madrid Unfiltered, April 18 & 19

Saturday, Sunday April 18 & 19

Part of the day before I travel is spent preparing to leave so the day of departure isn’t fraught. I did laundry and packed my suitcase except for two changes of clothes I’d need. The trickiest bit turned out to be trying to print a boarding pass. Apparently, Iberia likes Windows but they don’t like Macs. There were worried messages exchanged on WhatsApp with my landlady, and emails and calls to Iberia, until finally I stood in a photocopy shop emailing my boarding pass to them to print on an ancient copier and even that was a tightrope walk. Go figure.

Having survived that, I figured it would a good day to see the churches. I walked to San Francisco El Grande Basilica, Plaza de San Francisco, thinking I’d skip the tour and just look reverently at frescoed dome and chapel by Goya. I listened to the incomparable Joanna Bourne’s The Spymasters Lady  http://www.joannabourne.com/ while I walked. Ideal for the adventure of confidently slipping through the streets of a foreign city.

Alas, the Basilica is only open for tours 10:30-12:30, 4-6. No entry for freelance viewing or praying allowed. It was 2pm, so I changed my plans.

I walked over to Santa María la Real de La Almudena Cathedral. They started construction in1883, and it was completed and consecrated in 1993, so there’s are hope for Buckhead yet!

I had hesitated to go, since it is billed as modern and I imagined an unholy cross between a high school cafeteria and an airport lounge. I was wrong. It had far more grace than I predicted and the ‘modern’ decoration, especially the brilliant colors, were pleasing.

There was plenty of what I love about Catholic churches.

They played chanting monks over the sound system, and occasionally a voice admonished everyone to be quiet. It was surprisingly effective.

I’ve been looking at paintings of Venus and Cupid, aka Eros, for weeks.  Does innocent cherub at the feet of the Virgin have a mischievous glint in his eye?Before I set out that morning, I learned someone I knew had died. We had exchanged posts online for years. I lit a candle for her in the cathedral and had more than one melancholy thought.

I miss the oddest things. Making lists. My gym routine. Talking to my friends over coffee in the morning.

That night I set my alarm for the first time. Didn’t need because I barely slept. The street noise hit new levels. It was like trying to sleep in the middle of a frat house during pledge week, or in during carnival in Rio, with a few three alarms fires and a riot thrown in. Exhausted and cranky, I left the apartment at 8am, trundled down the street to the taxi rank on the corner, bags in tow, and left for the airport.

 

Madrid Unfiltered, April 17th

Friday, April 17

An exchange of emails landed me a spot on an English language tour of the Cerralbo and I presented myself promptly at 11:15 on Friday. There is  little signage in this museum. Mostly standing plaques at the entry to a room offer a general statement about its use, with a few items identified for particular notice. Very few painters are named in any room or gallery, and several that have identifying plaques, with the exception of an El Greco, turn out to be not genuine. That said, it’s refreshing assess paintings and objet d’art not by provenance or the reputation of the artist, but purely how they strike you in the moment.

Recall the weaponry that the Marquis collected? Here’s is a tidy quartet of daggers.

Compare them to his collection of Bronze age weaponry. Below is a centerpiece made entirely of swords belong to his ancestors.  He was the XVII of his line. Here’s the smoking room, adjacent to swords central. These rooms were considered an all-male preserve. I was thinking it would not be a good idea to have a bunch of touchy aristos slamming brandy around all that weaponry.

 Columns topped with the busts of gods on the center table, including an Egyptian Anubis.

And here I am, badly lit but happy as can be, in one of the hall galleries.

While at university, the Marquis founded an art and literature society, La Alborada (Dawn). He wrote poems and romantic novels. He collected what he considered beautiful, and filled his home with luxury, opulence, and heaps of ornate objects. The reason Spain has this museum is there was no Marquis the XVIII. He had no heirs. Fun fact – he married the mother of his best friend at school, a  widow who was no beauty and thirty years his senior. I find myself wondering what their story was.

Here’s one of a pair of statues at the entrance to the ballroom.

And, finally, a fragment of the fresco on the ballroom ceiling.

Lunch was kind of a fluke. I was walking by the post office, AKA Cibeles Palace, and remembered a blogger mentioning great views and a café or restaurant inside. Just curious, I went through the security scanner and headed inside. Yes, there was a café, but also a restaurant, higher up on the 6th floor.

The hostess said ‘May I invite you to look at the menu?” before they led me to a table. I appreciated their discreet way of warning me what I was getting my wallet into. This is why I make my own breakfast and eat cheese, fruit and ham from the market for dinner. I saw the numbers, did some math, and rolled the dice.

I should’ve bought a lottery ticket too.

A gorgeous view on a perfect day. Gargoyles to the right of me, clouds scudding by to the left, and a fresh breeze to cool the sun. It was pricey but well worth it.  The kind of joint that brings on the amuse-bouche of strawberry soup and little bites when all you order is the sea bass entreé. A culinary highlight.

I also had (not one but two!)  remarkable bread rolls that were savory, yet had raisins, and the perfect crisp-crust-to-soft-interior ratio. And they were warm.

One small caveat, at these prices, don’t you think they should’ve hired a proof reader?

I know my blog is replete with grammatical transgressions, but hey, it’s free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madrid Unfiltered, April 16

Thursday, April 16

Did laundry again. It’s a luxury to have a little laundry room and a line to hang my jeans and tee-shirts on to dry, all to myself. En route to Real Academy Belle Arte I saw a window display of trim that reminded me of the sleeves I am so enamored of.

Arrived at Real Academy Belle Arte and turned left at Lucifer falling, shades of Paradise Lost,

past a really nice still life of lemons

and made a beeline to the Knight’s Dream. Sleeping man in armor and a glowing angel are all very well, but I am riveted by the table covered with allegorical objects; coins and jewels, weapons and skulls, and books. I’m fond of narratives in art.

Thought I’d draw the pistol, but instead ended up looking at the skull on the book. Stood in front of it, and made my marks on the toned paper of the sketchbook, all the while listening to Forgery of Venus.

I’ve read this novel but it was even better listening to here. When the protagonist names streets in Paris and Madrid, I see them clearly. Best of all, when he talks about his first time seeing Velásquez, recognition shivered down my spine even though he talks about it from the perspective of an embittered artist and I am whatever the opposite of that is. Grateful, maybe.

From the skull on the book, I went in search of what I am now thinking of as my favorite sleeve , especially the white kid glove the man hold in one gloved hand. More fun drawing , this time with conté sticks.

I’ve done several little drawings, my favorite way to report on a trip via postcard, but for one reason or another, I’ve been disappointed in them. They looked off, clumsy. Today, for some reason, I could just look and draw, instead of examine and judge. And though objectively it’s unlikely that these drawings are any better, I am pleased with them.

I am at the point I reach on every European trip when I am glutted on pastry, cheese, and ham, and desperate for vegetables. Yesterday it occurred to me to look up vegetarian restaurants on Tripadvisor and make a list. There are the four in this part of town. Walked to Artemisia. It was intimate, bustling and smelled great. Every table was taken, but I only waited five minutes for one to open up. I ordered the menu del dia and read Eloisa James’ Four Nights with the Duke while I laid waste to it; a bowl of minestrone, their house lasagna, and a slice of orange-scented chocolate cake. Fabulous. Generous portions. I couldn’t finish the lasagna and took the cake para llevar. 11 euros. Woot!

Stopped by Typography to buy gifts for my family. Back early-ish , 4:30, but I am ready for an early day.