The Guggenheim Bilbao, finally!

What a splendour of coppery shininess, glinting in the pure morning sun! Curved planes from different spheroids all reflecting differently against the blue sky, and creating astonishing abstracts in the 'moat' (second extra). It's a quite extraordinary building, even after all the hype: outside the light bounces off, inside it pours in and casts shadows made of curves onto curved surfaces. There is some sort of recursive geometry going on here that is way beyond any maths I've ever learnt.
 
But after this cathedral to art, what a disappointment the permanent collection is. Just three rooms on the top floor: one a meagre group of abstract expressionists, one with Anselm Kiefer staring bemused across a huge space at a lonely Gerhard Richter and one half-filled with Cy Twombly along with someone I've forgotten, to whom even the Guggenheim's webpage doesn't refer. The redemption, for me, were the ground floor room of Richard Serra's monumental iron forms (first extra), where space is used as it should be, and a temporary exhibition of Anni Albers's weaving and prints. But I'd expected so much more. (Unfortunately for me the largest temporary exhibition was a Bill Viola retrospective, most of which I saw at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park a couple of years ago.)
 
Back outside, where the sun was still playing frisbee with the curves, I was much happier. We walked under a delightful Louise Bourgeois spider and along the river for another meander in the old town. Then raced to our uncharacteristically upmarket airbnb (the biggest bath I have ever seen outside a Budapest spa) to collect our downmarket backpacks and head to the station for our night train to Lisbon.


Black and white in colour 146