Barcelona Littleshell

In my previous post,  I didn't use to like Picasso , I wrote about how I found two of his self-portraits, painted at the age of 91, really impressive. I was also shocked because I tend to read labels closely when something interests me, and I discovered both paintings had come to the Barcelona Picasso Museum from as far as Japan. So I decided to look them up. Head of a man  was there thanks to the Hakone Open Air Museum;  Self-portrait  was courtesy of the Fuji Television Gallery, which was even more surprising. Wasn't that weird? A Japanese TV company lending Barcelona a Picasso painting for a temporary exhibition. Just click on this picture of Hakone to see where this town is, ten thousand kilometres away: Hakone Fortunately, Fuji Television has an English translation of its website, so I could learn that the TV giant that owns Picasso's Self-Portrait also sponsors the  Hakone Open Air Museum , which has lent B...

Some art you enjoy immediately, some you don't. Likings are not always politically correct. I never liked Picasso much, neither his art when I visited his museum in my city the first time nor himself as an artist later, when I learnt about how he abused all the (many) women he was together with. A couple of years ago, I found a Sunday Times interview with Françoise Gilot enlightening. She claimed to be the only woman who could truly say she had dropped Picasso. Françoise Gilot A few days ago I went to see Picasso's self-portraits exhibition (on at the Picasso Museum, Barcelona, until September 1 st ). I walked around the rooms as I usually do, going back to the paintings that caught my attention, like that in which Picasso and Junyent are sitting at a table close to a celestine (euphemism for a prostitute provider).  It is made entirely with wax crayons, those we all have at home. It was dark, there were lines of different colours, pinks and blues and greys g...

Desde que decidí escribir el post Ver el mundo plano puede ser una ventaja , Rembrandt me persigue allá  por donde voy, así que la mejor manera de detenerlo es enfrentarme a él. Me detuve en Rembrandt semanas atrás porque una investigadora de Estados Unidos estudió sus autrorretratos y concluyó que tal vez veía el mundo en dos dimensiones y por eso dibujaba tan bien. Si queréis saber más sobre Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, pintor barroco considerado el mayor artista holandés de la historia, supongo que junto al más popular Vincent Van Gogh, podéis leer este documentado artículo de wikipedia. Buscando los autorretratos de Rembrandt (el anterior es uno de los que más llamaron mi atención, lo pintó aproximadamente a los 49 años y está en Viena), encontré este cuadro suyo de Cristo en la tormenta del mar de Galilea. Lo pintó a los 27 años; siempre me gusta saber cuántos años tenía el pintor. Curiosamente, al haber catorce personas en el barco, se cree que Rembrandt...